Author Description

The ascetic outlook and practice characterised the life not only of Prophet Muhammad himself, but many of his earliest followers. Even at the height of the spread of Islam and its astonishing military conquests, many leading men withstood all temptation to abandon the austere life of the desert, and their example was admired and emulated by multitudes of humbler rank. This book, abridged from the famous Tadhkirah al-Awliya by Farid al-Din Attar, one of Persia's greatest poets, devotes a short chapter to each of the early Sufis.