A spiritual way lives also through its texts. The Sufis have written, from the ninth century to our own day, an immense literature — treatises, poetry, hagiographies, manuals. Here are the twelve works that form the foundation of any serious reading. For each one: its author, its content, its influence, an excerpt that says its temperament.
I — The classical manuals
Al-Risāla — The Epistle on Sufism
The first great systematic manual of Sufism. Composed by al-Qushayrī, an Ashʿarī theologian of Nishapur, for the Sufis of his time whom he sensed to be threatened by the attacks of the literalist jurists. The work presents the Sufi way as entirely compatible with Sunni orthodoxy: it begins by expounding the theological doctrine (faith, prophecy), then details the states (aḥwāl) and the stations (maqāmāt), and finally presents the biographies of the great masters. It is this book that laid the bases for the later codification of Sufism.
Sufism consists in abandoning every egoistic preoccupation and keeping one's heart in limpidity with God. Al-Qushayrī
Kashf al-Maḥjūb — The Unveiling of the Veiled
The first manual of Sufism composed in Persian, by a Sufi of Afghan origin who died in Lahore (where his tomb is still visited by hundreds of thousands of pilgrims). The work offers a complete panorama — the origin of the word Sufi, biographies, the doctrines of the principal schools, mystical states, the controversies of the time. More narrative and savoursome than al-Qushayrī's Risāla, it was for centuries the reference manual of Sufism in the Indo-Persian sphere.
Today Sufism is a name without a reality;
formerly it was a reality without a name.
Al-Hujwīrī
II — The masterly work of Ghazālī
Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn — The Revival of the Religious Sciences
The most influential work in the whole intellectual history of Islam. Forty books, in four volumes, which cover the whole of religious practice — rituals, transactions, vices to combat, virtues to acquire, the spiritual way — and re-found it in the light of Sufi interiority. Without rejecting any obligation of the law, Ghazālī shows how each religious act can become presence to God rather than mere duty. No other book, perhaps, has done more to make the Sufi way acceptable to the Sunni majority. Still studied today in the madrasas from Morocco to Indonesia.
Know that prayer, fasting and pilgrimage are the actions of the body;
but the soul of these actions is pure intention, humility and the presence of the heart.
A prayer performed without the presence of the heart is like a body without a soul.
Al-Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ
Al-Munqidh min al-Ḍalāl — The Deliverer from Error
A brief spiritual autobiography in which Ghazālī, at the end of his life, retraces his itinerary: the successive examination of the four ways of knowledge (theology, philosophy, Ismaili esotericism, Sufism), the existential crisis of 1095, the inner conversion, the transformed return. A text unique in Islamic literature, which has been compared to the Confessions of Augustine. Short and overwhelming.
III — The metaphysics of Ibn ʿArabī
Al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya — The Meccan Illuminations
The cathedral-work of Sufi metaphysics. 560 chapters composed over 36 years — Ibn ʿArabī began them in Mecca in 1202, completed them in Damascus in 1238. Every subject is treated there: prayer, the divine Names, sainthood, spiritual imagination, the mystical stations, the intermediate worlds, prophecy, eschatology, gnosis. The work is considered by many the summit of the mystical thought of Islam. Its complete French translation, begun by Michel Chodkiewicz and his team, is still in progress.
The real is the Real, the creaturely is the creaturely.
The world is at once He and not He.
Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt
Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam — The Bezels of Wisdom
A late work, brief in volume but of an extreme metaphysical density. 27 chapters devoted to 27 prophets — from Adam to Muḥammad — each considered as the “bezel” of a particular divine wisdom. For most commentators, it is the highest and most dangerous of Ibn ʿArabī's works. It is also the one that drew against him the most violent attacks. The text inevitably calls for commentary — and has engendered an inexhaustible exegetical tradition.
IV — The poetry that became a way
Al-Mathnawī Maʿnawī — The Spiritual Mathnawī
The “Persian Quran.” 25,000 couplets in 6 books, dictated by Rūmī to his disciple Ḥusām al-Dīn during the last years of his life. A collection of tales, allegories, meditations, commentaries on Quranic verses. No other poetic work of Islam has had such an influence — on Turkish, Persian, Indian, Uyghur, Bosnian culture. Its complete French translation by Eva de Vitray-Meyerovitch (1990) is one of the most beautiful undertakings of spiritual transmission of the twentieth century.
Listen to the reed flute, listen to its lament,
of separations it tells the plaintive song:
“Since from the reed-bed I was cut away,
at my cry men and women have wept…”
Rūmī, Mathnawī, prologue
Manṭiq al-Ṭayr — The Conference of the Birds
A major poetic allegory: the birds of the world gather to seek their king, the mysterious Sīmurgh. Led by the hoopoe, they cross seven initiatic valleys — Quest, Love, Knowledge, Detachment, Unity, Bewilderment, Annihilation-Subsistence. Of thirty survivors (in Persian, sī murgh), they discover that the Sīmurgh is none other than their own reflection. A summit of Sufi narrative art, read and imitated for eight centuries.
The Divan of Ḥāfiẓ
Five hundred ghazals — short, chiselled odes — that form the summit of Persian lyric. Ḥāfiẓ unfolds there a brilliant ambiguity: each poem can be read carnally, mystically, satirically, philosophically. No serious lover of poetry can ignore this work. The Divan is still today, in Iran, the book that every household keeps beside the Quran.
V — The aphorisms of wisdom
Al-Ḥikam al-ʿAṭāʾiyya — The Aphorisms
About 264 brief sentences — each one a line or two — condensing the wisdom of the Shādhiliyya. Compared by some to the Pensées of Pascal, the Ḥikam have been the object, for seven centuries, of innumerable commentaries (by Ibn ʿAbbād of Ronda, Ibn ʿAjība, Aḥmad al-ʿAlawī…). It is, perhaps, the most meditated work in Maghrebi spirituality.
Rest yourself from the wish to manage things:
what an Other has taken charge of for you,
do not take charge of it yourself.
Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh, Ḥikam no. 2
VI — The works of the Emir
Al-Mawāqif — The Spiritual Halts
A collection of 372 short spiritual meditations, composed by Emir Abd el-Kader during his Damascene years (1855-1883). Each mawqif (“halt”) comments upon a Quranic verse or a spiritual theme in the light of the metaphysics of Ibn ʿArabī. It is one of the most profound texts of modern Sufi thought — which recalls that the great Akbarian tradition remained alive down to the twentieth century.
VII — And beyond
This library does not claim to be exhaustive. Other essential texts complete it:
- ʿAwārif al-maʿārif by Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī (d. 1234) — a practical manual of Sufism, a spiritual derivative of the Kitāb al-Lumaʿ.
- Tadhkirat al-awliyāʾ by ʿAṭṭār — a hagiography of 72 Sufi saints, a precious source for knowing the ancients.
- The Jasmine of the Faithful in Love by Rūzbihān Baqlī — a meditation on mystical love.
- The Tale of the Occidental Exile and other visionary tales of Suhrawardī al-Maqtūl — a summit of mystical prose in Persian.
- Al-Insān al-Kāmil by al-Jīlī — a development of the doctrine of the Perfect Man after Ibn ʿArabī.
- The Quran itself — which remains, for every Sufi, the first and founding text, of which all the others are only commentaries.