The Biographical Tradition in Sufism : New,

The six closely-related texts under examination include works which display a high degree of authorial control as well as those which appear to have reached their final form only after an extended period of growth beyond the death of the assumed author. The growth of individual biographical traditions is monitored through successive works of the genre, focusing on the biographies of Abu Yazid al-Bastami and Abu 'l-Qasim al-Junayd. The book also takes into consideration the popular Sufi manuals which contain substantial tabaqat sections.

On the basis of the texts considered, Mojaddedi proposes a reconstruction of the historical value of this genre, from the direct sources of 'facts' about the past which they describe, to sources for the contexts in which they themselves were produced by the considerable efforts of their authors and compilers.