Customer Reviews

Sufi Sage of Arabia: Imam Abdallah ibn Alawi al-Haddad (The Fons Vitae Imam al-Haddad Spiritual Masters series)

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3 star:		(1)
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Iman al-Haddad is quite a well known scholar especially amongst English speaking Muslims due to a number of his and his descendants works being translated into English by the author of this book M al-Badawi. This book, on the face of it is a biography of Imam al-Haddad (Well that is what it is described as on the back cover) However in that sense it is something of a disappointment.

This is really not a biography but rather the author traces the life of Imam al-Haddad while addressing issues relating to Sufism. While this may be of great interest to the follower of the particular Sufi order to which Imam al-Haddad belonged or to someone wanting say an introduction to Sufism or a Muslim reading up a bit more on the subject I found myself very quickly skipping pages as a large amount of this books topics have been covered in numerous other books. It would appear that Mr al-Badawi has attempted to adopt the style of Martin Lings in his excellent biography of Shaykh al-Alawi in that he attempts to tie in historical and social events that went on during the Imams life however where I think this fails is that Shaykh al-Alawi is a contemporary scholar (Living through much of the last century) Whereas Imam al-Haddad lived over 2 centuries ago so the reader requires much more historical detail to put events into context.

There are numerous photographs contained in this book which do make a fine addition to it including the zawiya, various Mosques where he taught, his historical homes etc. The introduction gives a brief history of the Imam arriving in Yemen from the Iraq area to very briefly covering his teachers. The book then goes on to discuss issues such as Sufism, Sainthood, the Imam as a teacher etc as well as his position on Islamic doctrine (Which may have been a contentious issue where he lived as Yemen was and is now divided between Shafi Sunni Muslims and Zaydi Shia) Unfortunately the problem with all of this as I have pointed out above is that this is covered in numerous other books (Martin Lings, Sufi saint being one of them and Imam al-Haddad's own books translated into English being others)

For the reasons above I only give this 3 stars. Not because this is a particularly poor book, far from it. Simply that many of the topics in the book have been covered by numerous others and therefore for the reader Muslim or non Muslim they would find very little else in this book to discover.

Perhaps the author would have been better to have written a simple biography of Imam al-Haddad. I feel it would have been much more appreciated and much more beneficial in our contribution to Islamic studies in the west.

Dr. Mostafa Badawi is a well respected name within Sufi circles. I bought this book without reading any reviews and I haven't regretted it. In my opinion this book isn't just about Imam Al Haddad's life, but it also answers many questions that individuals associated with the Sufi path might have.