Treatises on Sufism and Hadith

These two volumes offer a collection of the short treatises of two influential Egyptian religious scholars of the sixteenth century. Abu al-Hasan Muhammad al-Bakri (898-952/1492-1545) and his son Muhammad ibn Abi al-Hasan al-Bakri al-Siddiqi Sib Al al-Hasan (930-94/1524-86), who lived between Cairo and Mecca, authored numerous texts on Sufism and Hadith. Abu al-Hasan's works include forty-eight collections of forty hadiths, a work on voluntary poverty, an early defense of the consumption of coffee in Sufi ritual, his Hizb and his Wasiya. Muhammad al-Bakri's treatises focus on spiritual instruction, the ritual of sama, Sufi theology, including the author's rejection of wahdat al-wujud, commentary on poems by Ibn al-Farid and Ali Wafa, and a number of prayers, especially for the Prophet, among other topics. Together they provide insights into the religious trends current in the Arabophone provinces of the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century. Furthermore, since the Bakris were revered from West Africa to South Asia, these texts are important for the study of the early modern Islamic cosmopolis.