Farid ad-Din ‘Attar’s Memorial of God's Friends: Lives and Sayings of Sufis

In Farid ad-Din ‘Attār’s Memorial of God's Friends, readers will explore the sole extant prose work of the great Persian Sufi poet Farid al-Din ‘Attār (d. ca. 1230). Integrating the writings of generations of Sufi scholars and historians, it relates the saga of Islamic spirituality through the lives and sayings of some its most prominent exemplars. ‘Attār combines popular legend, historical anecdote, ethical maxim, and speculative meditation in lively and thought-provoking biographies. ‘Attār’s lucid and economical style encourages readers to participate fully in the efforts of these pioneers of the sacred to live out and express their unfolding encounters with the divine. Scholars, shopkeepers, princes, and outcasts―God’s friends come from all classes of medieval society and embody the full range of religious attitudes, from piety and awe to love and ecstatic union. This work merges the miraculous and the everyday in one of the most engaging and comprehensive portrayals of spiritual experience in the Islamic tradition. Highlights: This translation makes the major biographies of Memorial of God’s Friends available in their entirety for the first time to a general audience in a contemporary American idiom. †