The Hand of Poetry: Five Mystic Poets of Persia: Translations from the Poems of Sanai, Attar, Rumi, Saadi and Hafiz
10 best books like The Hand of Poetry: Five Mystic Poets of Persia: Translations from the Poems of Sanai, Attar, Rumi, Saadi and Hafiz (Coleman Barks): Master of the Jinn: A Sufi Novel, Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women, The Kabir Book: Forty-Four of the Ecstatic Poems of Kabir, Islamic Mystical Poetry: Sufi Verse from the early Mystics to Rumi, گلشن راز, Daughter of Fire: A Diary of a Spiritual Training with a Sufi Master, Open Secret: Versions of Rumi, The Drunken Universe: An Anthology of Persian Sufi Poetry, The Sufis, Journey to the Lord of Power: A Sufi Manual on Retreat
Master of the Jinn: A Sufi Novel
| Author | Irving Karchmar |
| ISBN | 1594577234 |
Here is a tale set on the Path of the Heart, a beautifully written mystical adventure wherein a modern-day Sufi Master sends seven companions on a perilous quest for the greatest treasure of the ancient world - King Solomon's ring. The legendary seal ring is said to control the Jinn, those terrifying...
| Author | Jane Hirshfield |
| ISBN | 0060925760 |
A combination of spiritual poetry and history of the poets. Really expansive, beautiful, informative collection.
My favorites were:
p 21, Zi Ye
All night I could not sleep / because of the moonlight on my bed. / I kept on hearing a voice calling: / Out of Nowhere, Nothing answered...
| Author | Kabir |
| ISBN | 0807063797 |
Not all that long ago, in another review, I wrote that I preferred the Rabindranath Tagore translation to this one. I take it back. I was a fool to say so. Revisiting Bly’s translation recently, after more than two decades, I was struck by its clarity, its passion, its vivid and compelling voice.
I...
| Author | Mahmood Jamal |
| ISBN | 0140424733 |
Written from the ninth to the twentieth century, these poems represent the peak of Islamic Mystical writing, from Rabia Basri to Mian Mohammad Baksh. Reflecting both private devotional love and the attempt to attain union with God and become absorbed into the Divine, many poems in this edition are...
کتاب گلشن راز اثر مشهور سعدالدّین محمودبن امینالدّین عبدالکریمبن یحیی شبستری، معروف به شیخ محمود شبستری، کتابی است عرفانی که در سال 717 هجری قمری به نظم...
| Author | Irina Tweedie |
| ISBN | 0963457454 |
A friend lent me this book the past week. Sometimes with spiritual books I like to just open them up to a random page and see if the book speaks to me. That’s what I did with this book the past week.
There are so many beautiful paths in the world, and this book reminds me of the commonalities between...
Mawlānā Jalāl-ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī (Persian: مولانا جلال الدین محمد بلخى), also known as Mawlānā Jalāl-ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī or, just "Rumi" as we know him. He is one of the most important minds and spirits I have ever read.
Coleman Barks always delivers...
The Drunken Universe: An Anthology of Persian Sufi Poetry
| Author | Peter Lamborn Wilson |
| ISBN | 0930872657 |
Sufism can be seen to have functioned as a positive and healthy reaction to the overly rational activity of the philosophers and theologians. For the Sufis, the road to spiritual knowledge could never be confined to the process of purely intellectual activity, without the direct, immediate experience...
| Author | Idries Shah |
| ISBN | 0385079664 |
Idries Shah's definitive work, The Sufis, completely overturned Western misconceptions of Sufism, revealing a great spiritual and psychological tradition encompassing many of the world's greatest thinkers: Rumi, Omar Khayyam, Ibn El-Arabi, Al-Ghazzali, Saadi, Attar, Francis of Assisi and...
Journey to the Lord of Power: A Sufi Manual on Retreat
| Author | Ibn Arabi |
| ISBN | 0892810181 |
Journey to the Lord of Power is the first English translation of Ibn 'Arabi's twelfth-century text dealing with spiritual ascent. 'Arabi, whose metaphysical teachings have had a profound influence on both the Muslim and Christian worlds, is known as one of the greatest writers of mystical love poetry...
| Author | الحبيب عبد الله بن علوي الحداد الحضرمي الشافعي |
| ISBN | 1887752145 |
A short work about the life stages of human beings according to Islamic eschatology. It comes highly recommended by Abdul Hakim Murad and others, though it was written many hundreds of years ago for a different time and audience. Not really a “book” per se but more of a compendium of Hadith and verses...
| Author | Hafez |
| ISBN | 0061138835 |
One of our most acclaimed poets brings the work of the great Persian mystic and poet, Hafez, to a new audience. There is no poet in our tradition who carries the amount of admiration and devotion that the Persians have for Hafez. Children learn to sing Hafez poems in the third grade, and almost every family...
Early Islamic Mysticism: Sufi, Qur'an, Miraj, Poetic and Theological Writings
| Author | Michael A. Sells |
| ISBN | 0809136198 |
The first centuries of Islam saw the development of Sufism as one of the world's major mystical traditions. Although the later Sufi writings by mystics such as Rumi are known and available in translation, access to the crucial early period of Islamic mysticism has been far more limited.
This...
| Author | Shems Friedlander |
| ISBN | 0939214067 |
Shems Friedlander has studied with Sufi Shaykhs throughout the Middle East - in Makkah, Madinah, Cairo and Istanbul. Here he presents ancient Sufi teaching stories rooted in the Islamic tradition. With common sense and insightful wit, he addresses questions and problems of contemporary life and...
| Author | Edna St. Vincent Millay |
| ISBN | 1437517013 |
I love Millay, so very much, and I pick this book up again every couple of years. Her sonnets are incredible--she has such an amazing sense of musicality, and she conveys beautiful melancholy so well that I feel less alone in the world for it.
My very favorite sonnet of hers is XLIII:
What...
I Am Wind, You Are Fire: The Life and Work of Rumi
| Author | Annemarie Schimmel |
| ISBN | 1570626456 |
This book celebrates the extraordinary career of Persia's great mystical poet, Rumi (1207–1273), through the story of his life, along with an enlightening examination of his ecstatic verse. Rumi lived the quiet life of a religious teacher in Anatolia until the age of thirty-seven, when he came...
Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East
| Author | Lila Abu-Lughod |
| ISBN | 0691057923 |
Contrary to popular perceptions, newly veiled women across the Middle East are just as much products and symbols of modernity as the upper- and middle-class women who courageously took off the veil almost a century ago. To make this point, these essays focus on the "woman question" in the Middle East...
| Author | Abu Hamid al-Ghazali |
| ISBN | 0946621136 |
This is the first English translation of the last chapter of Al-Ghazali's Revival of the Religious Sciences (Ihya' 'Ulum al-Din), widely regarded as the greatest work of Muslim spirituality. After expounding his Sufi philosophy of death and showing the importance of the contemplation of human mortality...
Tazkirat al-Awliya = Tadhkirat al-Awliya = Tazkerat-ol-Owliya = Biographies of the Saints, Farid Al-Din Attar
Tazkirat al-Awliyā "Biographies of the Saints", also transliterated as Tadhkirat al-Awliya or Tazkerat-ol-Owliya, is a 72-chapter book written by the Persian poet and mystic...
