Al-Qushayri's Epistle on Sufism - Al-Risala Al Qushayriyya Fi 'ilm Al-Tasawwuf

Abu 'l-Qasim Al-Qushayri Translated by Professor alexander d. KnyshPaperback, 488 pages6.75 x 9.9 inchDar Ul Thaqafah The author of the Epistle on Sufism, Abu ’l-Qasim al-Qushayri (376/986–465/1074), was a famous Sunni scholar and mystic (Sufi) from Khurasan in Iran. His Epistle is probably the most popular Sufi manual ever . Written in 437/1045, it has served as a primary textbook for many generations of Sufi novices down to the present. In it, Al-Qushayri gives us an illuminating insight into the everyday lives of Sufi devotees of the eighth to eleventh centuries C.E. and the moral and ethical dilemmas they were facing in trying to strike a delicate balance between their ascetic and mystical convictions and the exigencies of life in a society governed by rank, wealth, and military power. In al-Qushayri’s narrative, the Sufi ‘friends of God’ (awaliya’) are depicted as the true, if uncrowned, ‘kings’ of this world, not those worldly rulers who appear to be lording it over the common h