Sufis

Idries Shah

• Publisher: ISF Publishing
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN:
  9781784793807
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Philosophy

The Sufis is the best introduction ever written to the philosophical and mystical school traditionally associated with the Islamic world.Powerful, concise, and intensely thought-provoking, it sums up over a thousand years of Eastern thought - the product of some of the greatest minds humanity has ever produced - into a single work, presenting timeless ideas in a fresh and contemporary style.When the book was originally published in 1964, it launched its author, Idries Shah, on to the international stage, attracting the attention of thinkers and writers such as J. D. Salinger, Doris Lessing, Ted Hughes and Robert Graves.It introduced to the Western world concepts which have subsequently become commonly accepted, varying from the psychological importance of attention and humour, to the use of traditional tales as teaching instruments (what Shah termed 'teaching-stories'), and the historical debt owed by the West to the Middle East in matters scientific, literary and philosophical.As a primer for the many dozens of Sufi books that Shah later produced, it is unsurpassed, offering a clear window onto a community whose system of thought and action has long concerned itself with the advancement of the whole of humankind, and whose ideas about individuals and society, their purpose and direction, need to be understood now more than ever before.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• The Situation
• Preface
• The Islanders — A Fable
• THE BACKGROUND: I The Travelers and the Grapes
• THE BACKGROUND: II The Elephant in the Dark
• The Subtleties of Mulla Nasrudin
• Sheikh Saadi of Shiraz
• Fariduddin Attar, the Chemist
• Our Master Jalaluddin Rumi
• Ibn el-Arabi: The Greatest Sheikh
• El-Ghazali of Persia
• Omar Khayyam
• THE SECRET LANGUAGE: I The Coalmen
• THE SECRET LANGUAGE: II The Builders
• THE SECRET LANGUAGE: III The Philosopher’s Stone
• MYSTERIES IN THE WEST: I Strange Rites
• MYSTERIES IN THE WEST: II The Chivalric Circle
• MYSTERIES IN THE WEST: III The Head of Wisdom
• MYSTERIES IN THE WEST: IV Francis of Assisi
• MYSTERIES IN THE WEST: V The Secret Doctrine
• The Higher Law
• The Book of the Dervishes
• The Dervish Orders
• Seeker After Knowledge
• The Creed of Love
• Miracles and Magic
• The Teacher, the Teaching, the Taught
• The Far East
• Annotations
• Appendix I: Esoteric Interpretation of the Qur’an
• Appendix II: The Rapidness
• Index