Treatises on Sufism and Ḥadīth

Overview & Synopsis

These two volumes offer a collection of the short treatises of two influential Egyptian religious scholars of the sixteenth century. Abū al-Ḥasan Muḥammad al-Bakrī (898-952/1492-1545) and his son Muḥammad ibn Abī al-Ḥasan al-Bakrī al-Ṣiddīqī Sibṭ Āl al-Ḥasan (930-94/1524-86), who lived between Cairo and Mecca, authored numerous texts on Sufism and Ḥadīth. Abū al-Ḥasan’s works include forty-eight collections of forty ḥadīths, a work on voluntary poverty, an early defense of the consumption of coffee in Sufi ritual, his Ḥizb and his Waṣīya. Muḥammad al-Bakrī’s treatises focus on spiritual instruction, the ritual of samāʿ, Sufi theology, including the author’s rejection of waḥdat al-wujūd, commentary on poems by Ibn al-Fāriḍ and ʿAlī Wafā, and a number of prayers, especially for the Prophet, among other topics. Together they provide insights into the religious trends current in the Arabophone provinces of the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century. Furthermore, since the Bakrīs were revered from West Africa to South Asia, these texts are important for the study of the early modern Islamic cosmopolis.