Sufism: The Formative Years
by Ahmet Karamustafa
University of California Press, Berkeley, California, 2007 202 pages
The present work, written in the historicist mode, is intended as a contribution to the ongoing attempt to situate Sufism in its proper historical context. It was born out of the realisation that although Sufism, as a whole or in part, has been the subject of many scholarly surveys during the past half century, the earliest phase of Sufi history, roughly from the third/ninth to the sixth/twelfth century, has not received sustained treatment in the form of a book-length monograph. The need for a detailed and analytically-oriented historical overview of the early period is acute since this 'classical' phase provides the foundation for the study of all subsequent phases of the history of Sufism in its various aspects, and a firm grounding in this foundation is a natural desideratum for all students of Sufism.
(p. viii)
-- quote submitted by Jack Y.
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