Reflections of the Beloved

Mustafa Styer

Paperback

9780956016102

These seventeen qasa’id authored by Sufi masters are part of a living tradition of Sufi poetry. They are still sung in gatherings throughout North Africa, the Levant, and, increasingly, in the West. Most of the qasa’id chosen for this collection were penned in the last three-hundred years, thus demonstrating the vitality of Sufi poetry as well as its pertinence to the present time, as some of these poems were authored in the twentieth century by masters such a Sheikh Ahmed al-‘Alawi and Sheikh ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Shaghouri. The Arabic versions of the poems in this work were originally collected in a devotional manual to be sung by students of Sheikh Nuh Ha Mim Keller, and are now translated into English for the benefit of non-Arab speakers. Care has been taken to remain faithful to the original Arabic metre so that those familiar with the Arabic melody of the poems may sing them in English to the same tune.