An Introduction to the History of Sufism

by A.J. Arberry

Introduces the history of the study of Sufism in the West up to the early 1940s.

131 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1993

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.

Reviews

[Ruby Jusoh · Rating 3 out of 5]

An Introduction to the History of Sufism by Arthur J. Arberry. A thin book of summary on how western scholars started studying Sufism. I expected something a bit deeper but did not feel overly disappointed.

[Matt Friedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very brilliant introduction to the history of the study of Sufism in the West up to the early 1940s. It is a slim, but important volume, especially in the light Arberry sheds on the later development of his mentor Reynold Nicholson's thinking about Sufi origins. Arberry was a great scholar in his own right. This survey is very much profitably augmented as well as updated by Annemarie Schimmel's survey in the beginning of her seminal Mystical Dimensions of Islam.

[Nazmi Yaakub · Rating 4 out of 5]

Membaca buku yang dikarang oleh orientalis dan sarjana Barat mengenai tasawuf atau yang mereka kenali sebagai sufismus, bukanlah untuk mendapatkan makna dan takrif sebenarnya bidang sepenting ini. Sebaliknya ia adalah untuk melihat evolusi kefahaman dan penyelidikan oleh orieantalis dalam merumuskan hakikat tasawuf secara akademik.