The Gulshan-i raz of Mahmud Shabistari

 Garden of Mystery :
The Gulshan-i raz of Mahmud Shabistari,
*[A5] Paperback - 207 pages,


The Garden of Mystery (Gulshan-i raz) holds a unique position in Persian Sufi literature.

 
Written in 1317 by Mahmud Shabistari (d. c 1339), less than a hundred years after the deaths of 'Attar, Ibn al-'Arabi and Rumi, it takes the form of answers to questions put to him by Sayyid Husseini, a fellow mystic. The questions raise metaphysical enigmas and controversies that were at the heart of spiritual inquiry of that time and still have relevance today. 

 
In this poem of about one thousand couplets, extraordinary for its conciseness of expression as well as its depth of insight. Shabistari not only answers the questions fully and intuitively, but also provides a coherent literary bridge between the poetry of the Persian 'school of love' and the metaphysical and gnostic compositions of what came to be known as the school of 'unity of being'.

 
Presented here in a new English translation, the Garden of Mystery is a remarkable exploration of the doctrines of Sufism at the peak of their development which to this day has remained a primary text of Sufism throughout the world.

 
Robert Abdul Hayy Darr has for thirty-five years been a student of classical Islamic culture.  In 1987 he met Afghanistan's poet laureate in exile, Ustad Khalilullah Halili and this friendship led to Darr's English translation of the poet's quatrains in 1988.  In 1989 he began the study of Persian miniature painting with Ustad Homayon Etemadi, Afghanistan's last court painter and royal librarian, who was also his tutor of Persian literature.  For the last fifteen years, Darr has continued his studies of mystical poetry with the Afghan Sufi poet, Raz Mohammad Zaray.