Here are 100 books that The Book of Strangers fans have personally recommended if you like
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My exploration of Sufism began in the unlikely environment of the Soviet Union where Sufism was considered a relic of the past to be replaced by the atheist, world-asserting ideology. The fact that my Muslim academic advisor assigned this topic to me, an active customs officer, was nothing short of a miracle. It was the beginning of a chain of miracles that punctuated my teaching and research career in the USSR, UK, US, EU, and the post-Soviet republics of Eurasia, especially Tatarstan and Kazakhstan. Having observed Sufism in various shapes and forms for over thirty years, my knowledge of its precepts and rituals is of great help to me in everyday life.
This book was a revelation for me when it came out, and I continue to use it as both reference and a source of new ideas and inspiration. The author felicitously combines a deeply personal perspective on Sufism’s greatest thinker Ibn ‘Arabi (1165–1240) with academic rigor and precision in translation. His comments on Ibn ‘Arabi’s teachings are unobtrusive and helpful in navigating the Sufi master’s breathtaking exploration of the universe that he presents, paradoxically, as a giant reflection of the [self-]image and imagination of the Divine Absolute. The subtle interaction of mundane and divine imaginations determines how we ourselves imagine the world. After reading this book, you will understand why Ibn ‘Arabi looms so large in Eastern and Western imaginings of Sufism and why he is compared to Plato in the Western intellectual tradition.
"For the first time in the history of Orientalism, a thorough study of Ibn al-'Arabi's thought is now available. William Chittick has given us a translation of numerous passages from the work of the Magister Magnus and placed them in their theological context, thus removing many misunderstandings that have prevailed both among Muslims and in the West when interpreting Ibn al-'Arabi's mystical worldview. Chittick has done this with admirable clarity, and his book will always remain a most important milestone in the study of Islamic mystical theology." -- Annemarie Schimmel, Harvard University
The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.
On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive…
My exploration of Sufism began in the unlikely environment of the Soviet Union where Sufism was considered a relic of the past to be replaced by the atheist, world-asserting ideology. The fact that my Muslim academic advisor assigned this topic to me, an active customs officer, was nothing short of a miracle. It was the beginning of a chain of miracles that punctuated my teaching and research career in the USSR, UK, US, EU, and the post-Soviet republics of Eurasia, especially Tatarstan and Kazakhstan. Having observed Sufism in various shapes and forms for over thirty years, my knowledge of its precepts and rituals is of great help to me in everyday life.
Written by the renowned Sunni scholar and Sufi teacher Abu ’l-Qasim al-Qushayri (986–1074) of Khorasan in Eastern Iran, this is probably the most popular Sufi training manual ever. It is still widely used by Sufis today, so you can begin your Sufi journey by reading it. It also serves as a window onto the life of “Sufi friends of God” or “saints,” whom the author depicts as uncrowned kings of this world. We see them in a variety of contexts: suffering from hunger and thirst in the desert during a pilgrimage to Mecca, participating ecstatically or quietly in spiritual concerts, reciting and interpreting the Qur’an, waging war against outward enemies (“infidels”) and their own demonic desires, earning livelihood, meditating in a retreat, praying, working miracles, interacting with the commoners, their family members and peers, dreaming, and dying.
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. Al-Qushayri has given us an illuminating insight into the everyday lives of Sufi devotees of the eighth-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…
My exploration of Sufism began in the unlikely environment of the Soviet Union where Sufism was considered a relic of the past to be replaced by the atheist, world-asserting ideology. The fact that my Muslim academic advisor assigned this topic to me, an active customs officer, was nothing short of a miracle. It was the beginning of a chain of miracles that punctuated my teaching and research career in the USSR, UK, US, EU, and the post-Soviet republics of Eurasia, especially Tatarstan and Kazakhstan. Having observed Sufism in various shapes and forms for over thirty years, my knowledge of its precepts and rituals is of great help to me in everyday life.
While the author of my second recommended book sought Sufi wisdom in the “Muslim Orient,” this wisdom has become an integral part of intellectual, cultural, and spiritual life in “Occidental” societies. A peculiar mixture of Neoplatonic emanationism, Sufi poetry, music and rituals, perennialism, pantheism, esotericism, and New Age religiosity, it has captivated the minds and souls of Western academics, anarchists, artists, architects, faith healers, physicians, and psychiatrists, who rearranged these diverse elements to create their own distinctive versions of Sufi spirituality and lifestyle. Lively and witty, the author’s narrative guides us through several “cultural transfers”—premodern, modern, and New Age—from the Muslim world to the West, culminating in the emergence of “Western Sufism” represented by the major public figures, celebrities, and charismatic teachers.
Western Sufism is sometimes dismissed as a relatively recent "new age" phenomenon, but in this book, Mark Sedgwick argues that it actually has very deep roots, both in the Muslim world and in the West. In fact, although the first significant Western Sufi organization was not established until 1915, the first Western discussion of Sufism was printed in 1480, and Western interest in some of the ideas that are central to Sufi thought goes back to the thirteenth century. Sedgwick starts with the earliest origins of Western Sufism in late antique Neoplatonism and early Arab philosophy, and traces later origins…
When Annie Thornton, midwife and apprentice witch, falls through time to a 15th-century Yorkshire village with her telepathic cat, Rosamund, she befriends Will and Jack, two soldiers returning from the French Wars. Mistress Meg, Annie’s ancestral aunt living in the 15th century, is…
My exploration of Sufism began in the unlikely environment of the Soviet Union where Sufism was considered a relic of the past to be replaced by the atheist, world-asserting ideology. The fact that my Muslim academic advisor assigned this topic to me, an active customs officer, was nothing short of a miracle. It was the beginning of a chain of miracles that punctuated my teaching and research career in the USSR, UK, US, EU, and the post-Soviet republics of Eurasia, especially Tatarstan and Kazakhstan. Having observed Sufism in various shapes and forms for over thirty years, my knowledge of its precepts and rituals is of great help to me in everyday life.
Now that you know what Sufism is all about, it is time to find out what lies behind the romantic façade of Sufi love poetry, ecstatic outbursts, and exotic rituals. For this purpose, I cannot recommend a better guide than this collective monograph. Its authors explain the nuts and bolts of Sufi life past and present: how Sufis interact with the world that they are supposed to despise and reject, how they feed themselves and their families, how they create and sustain their fellowships and associations, how their shrines serve as centers of charity, education, and arbitration as well as objects of pilgrimages, both collective and individual. My greatest takeaway from this informative and richly illustrated volume is Sufism’s remarkable adaptability. It thrives in the countryside, urban spaces, and cyber environment, often against great odds.
This volume describes the social and practical aspects of Islamic mysticism (Sufism) across centuries and geographical regions. Its authors seek to transcend ethereal, essentialist and "spiritualizing" approaches to Sufism, on the one hand, and purely pragmatic and materialistic explanations of its origins and history, on the other. Covering five topics (Sufism's economy, social role of Sufis, Sufi spaces, politics, and organization), the volume shows that mystics have been active socio-religious agents who could skillfully adjust to the conditions of their time and place, while also managing to forge an alternative way of living, worshiping and thinking.
After my father died when I was eleven years old, I started asking those deeper spiritual questions. This started me on a journey both personally and academically to find needed answers to my queries. I became fascinated with mystical experiences and how seekers navigated their way through the vicissitudes of the spiritual journey. With this interest as a focal point, I received a doctorate in theology, attended retreats, and received guidance from Sufi, Buddhist, and Christian teachers. I taught mysticism and world religions at Ithaca College and co-founded Light on the Hill Retreat Center in 1991, where I still guide people of any or no faith on their spiritual journeys.
This engrossing and inspiring book portrays the author’s wondrous encounters with Sufi master, Hazrat Inayat Kahn, first as a beginning student and then as his assistant. He witnesses the experiences of this sage as he moves through the stages of illumination, dark night of the soul, and unitary consciousness. Interspersed throughout the book are the essential teachings of Sufism as taught by Inayat Khan, its message of love, harmony, and beauty, the Ten Sufi Thoughts, meditation, and the workings of the inner life. Memories of a Sufi Sage is a great introduction to Sufism and one of its great mystics.
Born in Baghdad and raised in America, I come from an ancient lineage of people called the Chaldeans (Neo-Babylonians who still speak Aramaic). The first book I read was Gone with the Wind, at age nine, in Arabic. We lived in Jordan at the time, awaiting a visa to the United States and Scarlett O’Hara’s land and people were my impressions of what America would look like. But Michigan in the 1980s was not Georgia in the 1860s. Still, that book proved that great storytelling transcends ethnicity, age, and gender. So in my writing and film career, I have focused on the art of storytelling as I share the stories my people, culture, and heritage.
I love biographies of the lives of individuals who go through spiritual transformations.
Daughter of Fire is one of those books. It’s about a British woman who goes to India and meets a Sufi Master. He asks her to keep a diary, which she does for five years. The account of the guru/disciple relationship is deep, touching, and intriguing.
It keeps you turning the pages through the 800+ pages of a soulful experience.
This diary spans five years, making up an amazing record of spiritual transformation: the agonies, the resistance, the long and frightening bouts with the purifying forces of Kundalini, the perseverance, the movements towards surrender, the longing, and finally, the all-consuming love.
Chasing Light is a lyrical meditation on grief, memory, and the fragile beauty of everyday life. At its core, it is a story of resilience, forgiveness, and the transformational power of human connection. It sheds light on the overlooked realities of homelessness and addiction, while emphasizing the importance of compassion…
I am a Professor of Islamic Thought and Global Philosophy at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Perpetually drawn to ideas and concepts that seek to explain the underlying nature of things, I predictably read and write books on such topics as consciousness, self-awareness, mysticism, God, philosophy of religion, metaphysical poetry, and virtue ethics. The titles listed here are in my own area of expertise (Sufi philosophy). Intellectually rigorous and spiritually informed, they each represent perfect points of entry into Sufism, which is an ocean without a shore.
Written for contemporary audiences by a living Sufi
philosopher and world-renowned authority of comparative philosophy and
mysticism, The Garden of Truth is a must-read for anyone who wants to
have an understanding of, awaken to, and joyously live in the present moment. Unlike
any book I’ve seen in English, this work explains how the Sufi path of
liberation is all about realizing that one can only return to the present
moment by proceeding from where we are in the here-and-now. Once we get There,
we realize that Here is Now, since Now was always Here.
Sufism has made significant contributions to the spread of Islam and the development of various aspects of Islamic civilisation. Many conservative Muslims disagree with many popular Sufi practices, particularly saint worship, the visiting of tombs, and the incorporation of non-Islamic customs. Consequently, in recent centuries Sufism has been a target for Islamic reformist and modernist movements. Nasr is the preeminent Sufi scholar in the U.S., and in the tradition of Martin Buber's I and Thou, here provides the beliefs and vision of the mystical heart of Islam. A gentle anitdote to the extremist Muslim fundamentalists who capture the headlines and…
I am committed to creative work. All of my adult life has been shaped by that commitment. And while I don’t directly recommend it (unconventional routes are unpaved, and, of course, there be dragons), I know it is the route to beauty and making the most out of the world as we live it. We’re lucky to make music, show love, and hand it down to our kids, but we need to tell stories, and we must have stories to tell. All of this arises from your creative power. I know a lot more than I can say with words, but the languages of sharing emerge from venturing into the unknown.
So, first things first with this list of recommendations to unlock your creativity: you got to get yourself out of the way. There’s no better way to do this than acquainting yourself with Sufism, even on an introductory level.
I am very close friends with the pre-eminent American translator of the 13th-century Sufi poet Jalal al-Dīn Rumi, and it still took me many years to get to this book. Maybe everything happens at the right time, but you still need to settle with yourself to get any ball rolling, especially the powerful tool of your own creativity–the only medicine, the single refuge.
Written in response to more than 70,000 questions received about the Sufi tradition from people around the world, this keystone work is crucial for readers wishing to approach the Sufi Way.
Learning How to Learn presents traditional teaching stories, anecdotes, and question-and-answer exchanges to illustrate the barriers and prerequisites to Sufi learning. Shah uses the language of Western psychology—concepts known in the ancient wisdom traditions of the East—to explain how and why Sufis learn, and how spiritual understanding may be developed.
The author draws from a vast array sources to illustrate the challenges and pitfalls inherent in real self-development work:…
The sixty books I’ve written wander in and out of existential thought, as that breakthrough thinking, where man was told to take personal responsibility for his life and stop looking up or elsewhere for purpose and meaning, has informed everything I do and write about. Over the years, I’ve been a family therapist, a creativity coach, an existential wellness coach, and an advocate for critical psychology and critical psychiatry, points of view that dispute the current pseudo-medical “mental disorder” paradigm.
Sufiism predates Islam and contains some of the most interesting thinking from the ancient world to stand alongside the ancient Greeks and Romans. All three traditions, the Greek, the Roman, and the Sufi, did a tremendous job of deconstructing humbug and turning a clear eye on the truth.
Teaching tales from the Sufi tradition have been passed down to us, but we no longer know where they came from—for instance, did you know that the famous tale of the blind men and the elephant is a Sufi teaching tale? Idries Shah has gathered together a wonderful collection of these teaching tales with names like The Man Who Was Aware of Death, The Man with the Inexplicable Life, and Wisdom for Sale. If you married the teaching tale, the fairy tale, and existential thought, this is what you would get. I love these tales!
Dervish tales are more than fable, legend, or folklore. For centuries dervish masters have instructed their disciples by means of these teaching stories, which are said to increase perception and knowledge and provide a better understanding of man and the world. In wit, construction, and piquancy, they compare with the finest tales of any culture. Idries Shah spent many years traveling through three continents to collect and compare oral versions of these remarkable stories. This anthology, presented in the dervish manner, contains stories drawn from the repertories of dervish masters over a period of more than a thousand years.
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman
by
Alexis Krasilovsky,
Kate from Jules et Jim meets I Love Dick.
A young woman filmmaker’s journey of self-discovery, set against a backdrop of the sexual liberation movement of the 1970s and 1980s. In Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman, we follow Ana Fried as she faces the ultimate…
I fell in love with Rumi when I was 15. My parents introduced me to him, and lines of his poetry show up in daily conversation with them. Rumi had insights about life put much more eloquently than I could have expressed myself. I have devoted myself to studying this path of Radical Love for over 35 years now, and have the great joy to share these teachings with people in both academic and communal settings. I lead spiritually oriented tours to Turkey and Morocco through Illuminated Tours. I also teach online courses on Rumi and spirituality through Illuminated Courses and courses on Islam and Islamic spirituality at Duke University.
Cemalnur Sargut, whose own first name literally means Beauty-Light, thus the title of this volume, is a reminder that this Path of Love is a living tradition. She is a living Sufi female teacher in Istanbul, who offers brilliant insights into the Qur’an, Rumi, and Ibn ‘Arabi with effortless grace. To listen to Cemalnur or read her book is a reminder of the gates to heaven are still open.
One of the first memories I have from sitting with Cemalnur is from a magical night in Istanbul, where we were treated to a night of her sohbet, mystical discourse. Hour after hour went by, and Cemalnur was sharing stories, anecdotes, Sufi aphorisms, commentary on the Qur’an, and more. It all seemed so… effortless. These were not her stories. They were pouring through her. It was as if she had simply emptied herself of her own ego, and she was a channel of grace to the magical Beyond.
There’s something about experiencing a sohbet with her that is a reminder…
