Sea Without Shore : A Manual of the Sufi Path (Nuh Ha Mim Keller)

ISBN: 9781590080665
Author: Nuh Ha Mim Keller
Publisher: Amana Publications (2011)
Pages: 453 Binding: Hardcover with Dust Jacket

Description from the publisher:

Sea Without Shore is a practical manual for those traveling the path of Sufism or Islamic mysticism, which strives, in Junayd's words, "to separate the Beginninglessly Eternal from that which originates in time," in a word, to be with the Divine without any relation.The book opens with narratives of Sufis met by the author in Syria, Jordan, and Turkey whose lives exemplified the knowledge and practice of the Sufi path.

The second part is a complete handbook of the method and rule of the Shadhili order of Sufism, transmitted to the author by his spiritual mentor, Sheikh 'Abd al-Rahman al-Shaghouri—from devotions, dhikr or 'invocation,' and metaphysical doctrine, to how a Sufi lives, marries, and earns a living in the modern world.

A third part treats wider theological questions such as other faiths and mysticisms, universalism and the finality of Islam, the promise of God to Jews and Christians, evolution and religion, and divine Wisdom and Justice in the face of human suffering.The book provides an indelible portrait of a vibrant mystical tradition spanning seven and a half centuries of endeavor to know the Divine without any other.

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About the AuthorNUH HA MIM KELLER was born in the northwestern United States in 1954. He read philosophy and classical Arabic at the University of Chicago and UCLA, and became a Muslim in Cairo in 1977. He was a disciple in the Shadhili order of the Sufi master and poet Sheikh 'Abd al-Rahman al-Shaghouri of Damascus from 1982 until the latter's death in 2004, and was authorized as a sheikh in the order by Sheikh 'Abd al-Rahman in 1996. He has studied Shafi'i and Hanafi jurisprudence, hadith, and other subjects with traditional scholars in the Middle East, and in the 1980s, under the tutelage of Islamic scholars in Syria and Jordan, produced Reliance of the Traveller, the first translation of a standard Islamic legal reference in a European language to be certified by al-Azhar, the Muslim world's oldest institution of higher learning. Among his other works and translations are Becoming Muslim, Sufism in Islam, al-Maqasid: Imam Nawawi's Manual of Islam, Invocations of the Shadhili Order, Port in a Storm: A Fiqh Solution to the Qibla of North America, and an illuminated calligraphic edition of Dala'il al-Khayrat. He has travelled and lectured on Islam extensively, and he writes and teaches in Amman, where he has lived since 1980.