Reviews for Principles of Sufism

The average rating for Principles of Sufism based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-05-25 00:00:00 David Weil A rich study, and too much was unfamiliar to me for me to review, on a first read. Suffice to say, if the (amorphous) subject area interests you, you want to make a beeline for this book. I'm fascinated by heresies, whether in Christendom or Islamdom. I wandered here because I couldn't find much about the messianic/social justice movements of eastern Iran or Central Asia, back to the 8th century -- Muqanna and friends -- beyond brief narrative accounts that left me with more questions than answers. I see now that those accounts were what the heresy-recorders had to tell us -- they were our main informants, hostile obviously, and I was never likely to get any deeper without such a study as this: that plunges into the contextual culture fore and aft, that consults oral epics (on heretic heroes, yes), storytellers and other street-history as far as she can resurrect it. Her story arc is one of revolution betrayed. Familiar, no? Nor once betrayed, but three times: with the Abbasids, the Fatimids, the Savafis. You wonder why they persist, but the thread she follows is an idea of cyclical history (with a Zoroastrian past), and in a cyclical history, hope never perishes.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-11-24 00:00:00 Amanda Winborne Interesting perspectives on Zorastian influence on the Shi'a Sufi Orders.