SAWĀNIH Inspirations from the World of Pure Spirits The Oldest Persian Sufi Treatise on Love (Sawānih by Ahmad Ghazzali)

SAWANIH Inspirations from the World of Pure Spirits The Oldest Persian Sufi Treatise on Love (Sawdnih by Ahmad Ghazzali) Nasrollah Pourjavady Ahmad Ghazzali (d. 520/1126) was one of the foremost expositors of Sufi teachings on human and divine love and one of the greatest of Persian poets. His fame has been overshadowed by his well known brother Abu Harnid Muhammad Ghazzali. Ahmad Ghazzati’s masterpiece Sawanib became a popular and influential text in Persian speaking Islamic lands. The work’s beautiful descriptions of “the mysteries of Union” in the language of love are classic expressions of Sufi love mysticism. The present volume is a complete translation of the Sawanib. The title of the book means the inspiration that a mystic experiences on his journey through the world of the spirit (or Pure Spirits), and refers to the fact that when the mystic reaches the ultimate (or ontological) station, the proper domain of love, he becomes a lover. “If he sang the love of God in verses of great beauty, it is because his soul had itself become a song of God, a melody in harmony with, and a strain of, the music issuing from the abode of the Beloved”. The work is the largest and most important work by this author and the first of his writings to be presented in English. Dr. Nasrollah Pourjavady’s translation presents the Sawdnih with a sensitivity that conveys both the metaphysical richness and the poetic subtleties of the work.