For more than a millennium, Sufism has been the core of the spiritual experience of countless Muslims. As the chief mystical tradition of Islam, it has helped to shape the history of Islamic societies. Although it is the Sufi face of Islam that has often appealed to Westerners, Sufis and Sufism remain mysterious to many in the West, and are still widely misunderstood. In this new, redesigned paperback edition of this bestselling book, a scholar with long experience of Sufism in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Europe succinctly presents the essentials of Sufism and shows how Sufis live and worship, and why. As well as what Sufism is and where it comes from, the book discusses Sufi orders not only in the Islamic world but also in the West. The political, social, and economic significance of Sufism is outlined, and the question of how and why Sufism has become one of the more controversial aspects of contemporary Islamic religious life is addressed. This book assumes no prior knowledge of the subject. It is a penetrating and concise introduction for everyone interested in Islam and Islamic societies.
Sufism
The Essentials
Mark Sedgwick
15 November 2003
132 pp.
14X21cm
ISBN 9789774248238
For sale worldwide
$19.95
Related products
An Islam of Her Own
Reconsidering Religion and Secularism in Women’s Islamic Movements
Sherine HafezAs the world grapples with issues of religious fanaticism, extremist politics, and rampant violence that seek justification in either “religious” or “secular” discourses, women who claim Islam as a vehicle for individual and social change are often either regarded as pious subjects who subscribe to an ideology that denies them many modern freedoms, or as feminist subjects who seek empowerment only through rejecting religion and adopting secularist discourses. Yet in actuality Muslim women whose activism is grounded in Islam draw equally on principles associated with secularism. Here Sherine Hafez focuses on women’s Islamic activism in Egypt to challenge these binary representations of religious versus secular subjectivities. Drawing on five years of ethnographic fieldwork within a women’s Islamic movement in Cairo, Hafez analyzes the ways in which women who participate in Islamic activism narrate their selfhood, articulate their desires, and embody discourses in which the boundaries are blurred between the religious and the secular.
...read more
Hardbound
208 pp.15X23cm
$22.95
Historical Dictionary of the Coptic Church
Gawdat GabraAccording to tradition, Saint Mark brought Christianity to Egypt during the first century, and in so doing formed the basis for the Coptic Orthodox Church. Today, Copts comprise the largest Christian community in the Middle East. They make up perhaps tenth of Egypt’s population, and many hundreds of thousands also live in North America and Australia. This new and comprehensive reference work by a leading Coptic scholar details the history of one of the oldest Christian churches through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and more than 400 cross-referenced dictionary entries on important people, organizations, and structures, the theology and practices of the church, its literature and liturgy, and its monasteries and churches.
...read more
Hardbound
352 pp.15X23cm
$34.95
The Coptic Papacy in Islamic Egypt, 641–1517
The Popes of Egypt, Volume 2
Mark N. SwansonIn Volume 1 of this series, Stephen Davis contended that the themes of “apostolicity, martyrdom, monastic patronage, and theological resistance” were determinative for the cultural construction of Egyptian church leadership in late antiquity. Volume 2, The Coptic Papacy in Islamic Egypt, shows that the medieval Coptic popes (641–1517 CE) were regularly portrayed as standing in continuity with their saintly predecessors; however, at the same time, they were active in creating something new, the Coptic Orthodox Church, a community that struggled to preserve a distinctive life and witness within the new Islamic world order. Building on recent advances in the study of sources for Coptic church history, the present volume aims to show how portrayals of the medieval popes provide a window into the religious and social life of their community.
...read more
15 September 2010
Hardbound
192 pp.15X23cm
$29.95
Christianity and Monasticism in Wadi al-Natrun
Edited by
Maged S.A. MikhailMark Moussa
Wadi al-Natrun, a depression in the Western Desert of Egypt, is one of the most important centers for the development and continued thriving of the Coptic monastic tradition. Christianity and monasticism have prospered there from as early as the fourth century until the present day, when four major monasteries still flourish. Here, international specialists in Coptology, examine various aspects of Coptic civilization in Wadi al-Natrun over the past seventeen hundred years. The studies center on aspects of the history and development of monasticism inWadi al-Natrun, as well as the art, architecture, and archaeology of the four existing and numerous former monasteries of the region. Contributors: Elizabeth S. Bolman, Karl-Heinz Brune, Peter Grossmann, Johannes den Heijer, Suzana Hodak, Lucy-Anne Hunt, Mat Immerzeel, Martin Krause, Ewa Parandowska, S.G. Richter, Rushdi Said, Zuzana Skalova, Hany H. Takla, Tim Vivian, Jacques van der Vliet, Youhanna NessimYoussef, Ugo Zanetti.
...read more
1 March 2009
Hardbound
360 pp.90 b/w illus.
15X23cm
$39.50