Knowledge of God in Classical Sufism

Abstract

A new collection of Sufi writings is, of course, greatly welcome. This book, geared to discussing gnosis (ma`rifah), features selections by al-Hujwiri, Suhrawardi, and al-Qushayri, among others, although with the incomprehensible omission of Ibn al-`Arabi. The idea for this collection is to present works by important Sufi authors on the knowledge of God, both exoteric (`ilm) and esoteric (ma`rifah). The introduction gives a brief snapshot of non-Sufi literature, brief biographies of Sufi authors, and a short review of the “post-classical” age. Part 2 features a selection of translations from the works of nine authors. The biographies are separated from the works of their authors, which may lead to a certain amount of flipping back and forth. For al-Ghazali, Renard translates book 21 of Ihya’ `Ulum al-Din. For Suhrawardi, he gives us three chapters of `Awarif al-Ma`arif. Renard has, however, selectively edited the texts: that is, he omits the honorifics and polite exclamations after the name of God and the Prophet. Although he states that he does this to save space and smooth out the reading (p. 5), the omission is distracting, because (a) you know the words should be there and ...