Questions About The Sufis
by
Idries Shah
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Jude
First, there are a great many books 'about' Sufism. There are vanishingly few by non-Sufis (academics and self-styled Sufis) of essential value. This …moreFirst, there are a great many books 'about' Sufism. There are vanishingly few by non-Sufis (academics and self-styled Sufis) of essential value. This is because Sufism is a form – a truly advanced form – of personally lived experience. Indeed, there is an aphorism, used by Sufis and others familiar with them: 'Sufism is known by means of itself'. This response is not an expression of arrogance or elitism, but a statement of unvarnished fact.
When Idries Shah was asked in a magazine interview 'What is Sufism?' He replied 'This most obvious question of all is for us the most difficult to answer.' (On another occasion he might have said the answer must aim to fit the time, the place and the questioner's understanding.) He continued, 'But I'll try to answer. Sufism is experience of life through a method of dealing with life and human relations. This method is based on an understanding of mankind, which places at one's disposal the means to organise one's relationships and one's learning systems. So instead of saying that Sufism is a body of thought in which you believe certain things and don't believe other things, we say that the Sufi's experience has to be provoked in a person. Once provoked, it becomes their own property, rather as a person masters an art . . .'
In his seminal work, The Sufis', Shah comments: 'The Sufis often start from a non-religious viewpoint. The answer, they say, is within the mind of mankind. It has to be liberated, so that by self-knowledge the intuition becomes the guide to human fulfilment.'
(Sufis regard most 'mystical' experience as essentially emotional with little practical importance – with the harmful effect of causing people to believe they are being 'spiritual' when they are not.)
The above paras are intended as context for the answer to your 'other authors' question. It may be split into three rough categories:
a) Among the 'vanishingly few' academics, two are notable as being so sympathetic to the subject as to have produced works of interest. They are distinguished orientalist Prof. R. A. Nicholson (1868 to 1945); and his successor, Cambridge Prof. of Arabic, A. J. Arberry (1905 to 1969).
The latter's 'A Sufi Martyr', translation of a work composed by an eminent Sufi mystic whilst in prison in Baghdad, awaiting execution, in a vain attempt to overthrow his sentence, put to death in A. D. 1131. This apologia is a document of great poignancy.
b) An 'intermediate' category include a number (writing in English) with obvious involvement as 'dervishes' (i.e. students of Sufism).
Several who come most readily to this writer's mind are Omar M. Burke, whose fascinating and informative book, 'Among the Dervishes', is a contemporary travel writer's account of a journey to the Middle- and Near-East, meeting and living with dervishes and their communities, who work towards 'the perfectability of man'. (Octagon Press, 1973);
E.H. Whinfield's translation and abridgement of the 'Teachings of Rumi: The Masnavi', often referred to as 'The Koran in Persian'.
'To the Sufi, if not to anyone else, this book speaks from a different dimension, yet a dimension which is in a way within his deepest self' - Idries Shah, (Octagon Press, 1973);
Ernest Scott's 'The People of the Secret', a most extraordinary work part-written, and edited, by the one-time London Evening News literary editor, with an introduction by Colin Wilson.
Directly commissioned by Idries Shah's now-defunct Octagon Press, it takes the editor and a select band of colleagues into places across Europe, the Near- and Middle-East they could never have expected without Shah's introductions, to have penetrated; onto trails of people, events and facts threading and weaving through history binding the influence and power of Sufism into a vast living tapestry.
In his Intro. Wilson wrote: 'If [the book's] author had been born a few centuries ago, he would have been burnt for heresy. But his real crime would not have been in expressing heterodox and dangerous ideas, but in expressing them so brilliantly and persuasively.';
c) A scan of Shah's 'The Sufis', and of his similar works, will provide the diligent reader with a slate of references to other authentic authors and works;
'A new translation with critical commentaries, by Robert Graves and Omar Ali-Shah' of 'The Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayaam' will interest both the serious student of Sufism, and of Persian mathmatician, astronomer and poet Khayaam.
Creating a great fluttering within the academic dovecots of literary orientalism in the UK, it casts out virtually all of the so-called 'translation' of the mid-nineteenth cent. Edward Fitzgerald incoherent rendition of this Sufic masterpiece.
N.B.: Works in all three categories are generally available on other sites. All Idries Shah works are now published by 'The Idries Shah Foundation (ISF)', successor (and much more!) to the Octagon Press.
Jude Moriarty
(less)
When Idries Shah was asked in a magazine interview 'What is Sufism?' He replied 'This most obvious question of all is for us the most difficult to answer.' (On another occasion he might have said the answer must aim to fit the time, the place and the questioner's understanding.) He continued, 'But I'll try to answer. Sufism is experience of life through a method of dealing with life and human relations. This method is based on an understanding of mankind, which places at one's disposal the means to organise one's relationships and one's learning systems. So instead of saying that Sufism is a body of thought in which you believe certain things and don't believe other things, we say that the Sufi's experience has to be provoked in a person. Once provoked, it becomes their own property, rather as a person masters an art . . .'
In his seminal work, The Sufis', Shah comments: 'The Sufis often start from a non-religious viewpoint. The answer, they say, is within the mind of mankind. It has to be liberated, so that by self-knowledge the intuition becomes the guide to human fulfilment.'
(Sufis regard most 'mystical' experience as essentially emotional with little practical importance – with the harmful effect of causing people to believe they are being 'spiritual' when they are not.)
The above paras are intended as context for the answer to your 'other authors' question. It may be split into three rough categories:
a) Among the 'vanishingly few' academics, two are notable as being so sympathetic to the subject as to have produced works of interest. They are distinguished orientalist Prof. R. A. Nicholson (1868 to 1945); and his successor, Cambridge Prof. of Arabic, A. J. Arberry (1905 to 1969).
The latter's 'A Sufi Martyr', translation of a work composed by an eminent Sufi mystic whilst in prison in Baghdad, awaiting execution, in a vain attempt to overthrow his sentence, put to death in A. D. 1131. This apologia is a document of great poignancy.
b) An 'intermediate' category include a number (writing in English) with obvious involvement as 'dervishes' (i.e. students of Sufism).
Several who come most readily to this writer's mind are Omar M. Burke, whose fascinating and informative book, 'Among the Dervishes', is a contemporary travel writer's account of a journey to the Middle- and Near-East, meeting and living with dervishes and their communities, who work towards 'the perfectability of man'. (Octagon Press, 1973);
E.H. Whinfield's translation and abridgement of the 'Teachings of Rumi: The Masnavi', often referred to as 'The Koran in Persian'.
'To the Sufi, if not to anyone else, this book speaks from a different dimension, yet a dimension which is in a way within his deepest self' - Idries Shah, (Octagon Press, 1973);
Ernest Scott's 'The People of the Secret', a most extraordinary work part-written, and edited, by the one-time London Evening News literary editor, with an introduction by Colin Wilson.
Directly commissioned by Idries Shah's now-defunct Octagon Press, it takes the editor and a select band of colleagues into places across Europe, the Near- and Middle-East they could never have expected without Shah's introductions, to have penetrated; onto trails of people, events and facts threading and weaving through history binding the influence and power of Sufism into a vast living tapestry.
In his Intro. Wilson wrote: 'If [the book's] author had been born a few centuries ago, he would have been burnt for heresy. But his real crime would not have been in expressing heterodox and dangerous ideas, but in expressing them so brilliantly and persuasively.';
c) A scan of Shah's 'The Sufis', and of his similar works, will provide the diligent reader with a slate of references to other authentic authors and works;
'A new translation with critical commentaries, by Robert Graves and Omar Ali-Shah' of 'The Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayaam' will interest both the serious student of Sufism, and of Persian mathmatician, astronomer and poet Khayaam.
Creating a great fluttering within the academic dovecots of literary orientalism in the UK, it casts out virtually all of the so-called 'translation' of the mid-nineteenth cent. Edward Fitzgerald incoherent rendition of this Sufic masterpiece.
N.B.: Works in all three categories are generally available on other sites. All Idries Shah works are now published by 'The Idries Shah Foundation (ISF)', successor (and much more!) to the Octagon Press.
Jude Moriarty
(less)
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