Idries Shah’s The Way of the Sufi is a compendium of traditional tales, poetry, epigrams, anecdotes and sayings from individual Sufis and Sufi schools over the last millennia. Shah’s work presents an unparalleled cross-section of Sufi teachings—from Morocco to Indonesia—as an introductory and basic course of Sufi study.

Included are biographical sketches of some of the best-known Sufi masters from the classical Islamic period, and descriptions of four of the major Sufi orders: the Chisti, Qadiri, Suhrawardi and Naqshbandi schools. Shah considers attitudes to Sufi ideas, and evidence of their existence in other traditions. Medieval Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jewish mysticism and various modern philosophical teachings, the author shows us, all bear some imprint of Sufi influence.

Shah’s comprehensive and well-sourced introduction conveys the essentially undefinable nature of Sufism, both through what outside observers have in part believed it to be, and also what it is not.

Forming a matrix of disparate yet synergistic materials, The Way of the Sufi illuminates aspects of the Sufi tradition relevant to the contemporary world.

Category: Origins of Islam

Subjects: cultural history, Sufi schools, Sufi thought