The Secret Garden by Mahmud Shabistari, Cambridge Publications, 1435, Stralsund

This work is essential for people of ihsaan for it contains all the principles of the science of tasawwuf in a concise form. Further it is the first translation freed of the centuries-old baggage of christian and orientalist vocabulary which has often obscured the teachings of Islam. Thus, instead of the ‘mystic’ statements of a ‘Sufi Doctor’, we have Shaykh Mahmud Shabistari’s lucid exposition of the deen of Islam. He demonstrates in his analysis of the lower self how a man or woman can gain access to his or her reality: the step by step description of the method of purification leads to a spirituality and light which issues from the normal actions of everyday life, in other words a spirituality which is not‘ascetic’ but rather the product of right living. As the Shaykh himself comments within the text, his ‘work is the fruit of experience – not mere information heard from others’ and again ‘an action that comes from the secret of one’s spiritual states is much better than an action based on a knowledge one has heard, yet not experienced’ and yet again ‘realize… how actions proceed from different spiritual states and what the relationship is between informative and experiential knowledge’. In the words of another great Sufi, Shaykh ad-Darqawi it is the science of how to live the spirituality of the really great, those ‘whose candles do not go out when the wind starts to blow’.

Significant too is that Shaykh Mahmud Shabistari lived in the Mughal capital of Tabriz from where issued the great flowering of the last period of Islam in which the balanced shariat – rather than the mongrel European law [applicable to the realm of ‘real life’ and trade] cum‘religious’ additions regarding births and deaths, and family law] – was still the norm.

Extensive use has been made of the commentary Mufaateeh al-A’ jaaz fi Sharhi Gulshani Raz of Shaykh Muhammad Lahiji in this work of translation from the Persian original.

This work shall only be understood by those unversed in ‘critical analysis’ – for as the Shakyh says at the end of The Secret Garden: ‘Examine the knowledges arrived at by intellect and the knowledges of Islamic tradition

– examine them in a clear order and with precision. Do not look with the eye of negation and criticism for then the flowers will turn to thorns before your eyes’.

N.B. Despite one popular encyclopaedic classification of Shabistari, al-Ghazali, al-Hallaj, Junayd, Attar, Jami, Ansari, Shibli, Abdalqadir al-Gilani, Sa’di, Maruf Kharkhi, Rumi and Shams at-Tabrizi, for example, as ‘Iranian sufis’ they were in fact all Persian speaking and lived prior to the Safavid conversion of Iran to another religion.