Customer Reviews

Garden of Mystic Love

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This book is a treasure house of inspiration and stories about many of the mystics of Turkey. It gives unprecidented insight into the hearts and minds of the saints of the Sufi path. If you wish to journey in the garden of love, this is the book for you. Inspiring and delightful!

This is no ordinary book; it's more like something one would be handed silently on a far-flung mountain top or find in a hidden cave after long searching. Reading it, I found treasured but unrelated bits and pieces learned over many years' practice of Islam and Sufism unrolling coherently like an intricate carpet,1400 years of events and stories, history and personalities. (There are many beautiful pictures and photographs included as well.)
The Garden of Mystic Love takes us from the origin of Sufism with Muhammad and the first four imams through the development of the great teaching lineages, each with its own flavor and emphasis. The great Sufi saints and mystics appear against a background of emerging Islam, interactions with the west, the Ottoman Empire, and the rise of modern Turkey. Secrets and mysteries, Sunni and Shia, the schools of law, the role of women, scholars and wanderers, from sober ascetics to ecstatic mystics - it's all here, told by one who has walked this path as well as studying it and now acts as a guide to others.