Fifteen Letters (Khamsata 'Ashara Maktuban, otherwise known as Maktubat)
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Translator
Muhtar Holland
Description
About The Book
Originally written in Persian, the fifteen letters were translated into Arabic by 'Ali Husamu'd-din al-Muttaqi (the Devout), who said of them, "these letters comprise nuggets of wisdom and spiritual counsel, couched in various forms of allegory, metaphor, paraphrase and quotation, including approximately two hundred and seventy-five Qur'anic verses. They also contain allusions to the experiences [adhwaq] and spiritual states [halat] of the Sufis (may Allah's good pleasure be conferred upon them all).
Cover art by Rohana Filippi
About the Contributor(s)
About the author
Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani: Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani (470-561 AH / 1077-1166 CE) was a Hanbali jurist, preacher, and one of the most beloved spiritual masters in Islamic history, honored across the Muslim world as the eponymous founder of the Qadiriyya Sufi order. He was born in the Persian province of Gilan, south of the Caspian Sea, and as a young man traveled to Baghdad, then the great center of Islamic learning, where he studied Hanbali law, hadith, and the Qurʾanic sciences under leading teachers of the age. After years devoted to study, worship, and seclusion, he emerged as a public preacher and teacher whose gatherings drew enormous crowds and whose disciples carried his way to nearly every corner of the Muslim world. He came to lead a Hanbali madrasa and ribat in Baghdad, combining juristic authority with the sober, ethical spirituality for which he is remembered. His landmark works include al-Ghunya li-Talibi Tariq al-Haqq, a comprehensive guide to belief, worship, and conduct; al-Fath al-Rabbani, a collection of his discourses; Futuh al-Ghayb, rendered in English as Revelations of the Unseen; and Jala al-Khawatir, The Removal of Cares. He died in Baghdad in 561 AH, where his tomb became, and remains, one of the most visited shrines in the Islamic world. The Qadiriyya named for him grew into one of the earliest and most widespread Sufi brotherhoods, shaping devotional life from West Africa to South and Southeast Asia.
About the translator
Muhtar Holland: Muhtar Holland (1935-2010 CE) was an English translator whose patient, faithful renderings opened a large body of classical Islamic literature to English readers. He was born in the city of Durham in northeast England and was drawn from school onward to the study of languages, reading Arabic and Turkish at Oxford and learning Russian during national service in the Royal Navy. He embraced Islam in 1969, taking the name Muhtar, after a period connected to the Subud movement.\n\nOver the following decades he held academic and research positions at the University of Toronto, the School of Oriental and African Studies in London (with a period studying Islamic law in Cairo), and Universiti Kebangsaan in Kuala Lumpur, and he served as a senior research fellow at the Islamic Foundation in Leicester and as director of a translation center in New York.\n\nHis most enduring contribution was an extensive series of translations of the discourses and writings of Shaykh Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, among them Revelations of the Unseen (Futuh al-Ghaib), The Sublime Revelation (al-Fath al-Rabbani), Utterances (Malfuzat), and The Removal of Cares (Jalaʾ al-Khawatir). He also translated treatises of al-Ghazali, including works on inner worship and the celebrated Deliverance from Error. Shaykh Nuh Keller described him as a translator's translator, and many regarded him as foremost among English renderers of these texts. He died on 5 November 2010 in New Jersey.
Specifications
EAN 13 / ISBN
9791882216160
Publisher
Al-Baz Publishing
Author
Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani
Pages
60
Translator
Muhtar Holland
Year Published
1997
Size
W-5.9 in | H-8.8 in | D-0.2 in
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