The Doctrine of the Sufis

by A.J. Arberry

The book begins with a discussion of the meaning and proposed derivations of the term Sufi and enumerates names of the great Sufis. It then states the tenets of Islam as accepted by the Sufis and tries to prove that Sufism as a system lies within and not without the bounds of orthodoxy. Further it discusses teh various stations of the Sufis such as fear, hope, love, etc. and also discusses the technical terms of the Sufis. The book concludes with descriptions of the various phenomena of Sufism and of the miraculous dispensatiosn accorded to the Sufis by God.

Genres: Islam, Nonfiction

Hardcover

First published August 26, 1977

About the author

Arthur John Arberry (Portsmouth, May 12, 1905 – Cambridge, October 2, 1969) FBA was a respected British orientalist. A prolific scholar of Arabic, Persian, and Islamic studies, he was educated at Portsmouth Grammar School and Pembroke College, Cambridge. His translation of the Qur'an into English, The Koran Interpreted, is one of the most prominent written by a non-Muslim scholar, and widely respected amongst academics.

Formerly Head of the Department of Classics at Cairo University in Egypt, Arberry returned home to become the Assistant Librarian at the Library of the India Office. During the war he was a Postal Censor in Liverpool[citation needed] and was then seconded to the Ministry of Information, London which was housed in the newly constructed Senate House of the University of London. Arberry was appointed to the Chair of Persian at the School of Oriental and African Studies SOAS, University of London 1944–47. He subsequently became the Sir Thomas Adams's Professor of Arabic at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge, his alma mater, from 1947 until his death in 1969. He is buried in Ascension Parish, Cambridge, together with his (by provenance Romanian) wife Sarina Simons/Arberry (1900-1973) whom he had first met in Cairo and then married at Cambridge in 1932.

Arberry is also notable for introducing Rumi's works to the west through his selective translations and for translating the important anthology of medieval Andalucian Arabic poetry The Pennants of the Champions and the Standards of the Distinguished. His interpretation of Muhammad Iqbal's writings, edited by Badiozzaman Forouzanfar, is similarly distinguished.