Three Treatises : Mutual Reminding, Good Manners & The Aphorisms
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Description
This small volume brings together three concise treatises of Imam Abd Allah ibn Alawi al-Haddad, translated by Dr. Mostafa al-Badawi. Each work is short by design, meant to be read and returned to rather than read once and shelved.
The first, Mutual Reminding, takes up the ethic of offering good counsel to one another, the quiet obligation believers owe each other in speech and intention. Good Manners turns to the shape of a righteous character in daily life. The Aphorisms closes the volume as a tract of beneficial wisdom, distilled sayings meant to sharpen reflection rather than argument. In this edition, The Aphorisms carries the added commentary of Shaykh Muhammad Hayat al-Sindi, which opens up Imam al-Haddad's condensed phrasing for readers working through it slowly.
This printing gathers what had circulated as two earlier translated works and adds, for the first time, the third treatise alongside them, so the reader has all three in one place. At 162 pages, it is not a lengthy commitment, but the kind of book suited to being kept near at hand, opened often, and read a few pages at a sitting for the counsel it offers rather than raced through.
About the Contributor(s)
About the author
Abdallah ibn Alawi al-Haddad: A scholar, Sufi master, and poet of the Hadramawt valley in Yemen, al-Haddad (1044–1132 AH / 1634–1720 CE) was born and lived his whole life in the town of Tarim, where his tomb is still visited. He descended from the Prophet through the Ba ʿAlawi sayyids of Hadramawt, followed the Shafiʿi school in law and the Ashʿari creed, and is widely regarded as the renewer (mujaddid) of the twelfth Islamic century. Though he lost his sight in childhood, he became one of the most influential teachers of the Ba ʿAlawi tradition, drawing on al-Ghazali and the earlier masters of Tarim. He wrote with a clarity that made deep matters accessible, and several of his books are still read daily. Landmark works include al-Nasaʾih al-Diniyya wa al-Wasaya al-Imaniyya (Counsels of Religion), al-Daʿwa al-Tamma wa al-Tadhkira al-ʿAmma (The Complete Summons and General Reminder), Risalat al-Muʿawana (The Book of Assistance), al-Fusul al-ʿIlmiyya, and a Diwan of mystical poetry, alongside his collected letters. His litanies, especially the Ratib al-Haddad and the Wird al-Latif, are recited across the Muslim world. His legacy endures in the living spiritual tradition of Tarim and in English translations that have carried his counsel to new readers.
About the translator
Mostafa al-Badawi: Mostafa al-Badawi (b. 1948 CE, Cairo) is one of the leading contemporary translators of classical Islamic texts from Arabic into English, and a scholar associated with the Ba ʿAlawi sayyids of Hadramawt in Yemen. He graduated from Cairo University Medical School in 1971 and completed his postgraduate training in the United Kingdom, where he has practiced as a consultant psychiatrist and is a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Alongside his medical career he pursued a serious study of the Islamic sciences and of the spiritual path of the Ba ʿAlawi tradition. He is best known for his translations of the prose works of Imam ʿAbdallah ibn ʿAlawi al-Haddad, the great Hadrami sage and poet, including The Book of Assistance, Gifts for the Seeker, Counsels of Religion, and The Lives of Man. His translation work also extends to The Degrees of the Soul of Shaykh al-Shabrawi and Key to the Garden of Habib Ahmad Mashhur al-Haddad. As an author in his own right, he wrote Sufi Sage of Arabia, a full biography of Imam al-Haddad drawing on the life and teachings of seventeenth-century Yemen, and Man and the Universe, among other studies. He is regarded as a careful, faithful translator who has made the devotional and ethical literature of the Ba ʿAlawi masters accessible to a wide English readership.
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