Garden of Mystery: The Gulshan-i Raz of Shabistari translated by Robert Darr
In 1317, in Tabriz, western iran-less than a hundred years after the deaths of Ibn 'Arabi and Jalaluddin Rumi, and just before the time of Hafiz-Mahmud Shabistari, a follower of the teachings of Ibn 'Arabi and Attar (Rumi's literary and spiritual predecessor), composed Garden of Mystery [Gulshan-i raz] in response to questions put to him by Sayyid Husseini, a fellow mystic. The questions introduce controversies and metaphysical enigmas of Sufi thought and practice that were at the heart of spiritual inquiry of that time. In a magnificent poem of about one thousand lines, Shabistari not only answers the questions to the fullest extent possible, but also provides a coherent literary bridge between the Persian 'school of love' poetry and the rapidly growing number of metaphysical and gnostic compositions from what had come to be known as the school of the 'Unity of Being'.Garden of Mystery holds a unique position in Persian literature. It is considered one of the most remarkable and original compositions in the entire history of Persian literature. It is a compact and concise exploration of the doctrines of Sufism at the peak of their development that has remained a primary text of Sufism throughout the world from Turkey to India.
Classification: general
Size: 234 x 156 mm
Pages:224
Binding: cloth/paper
ISBN: 9781901383218 cloth 9781901383225 paper
Price:£29.95 cloth, £11.95 paper
Publication date: Mar 2007
Robert Abdul Hayy Darr has for thirty-five years been a student of classical Islamic culture. In the 1970s he studied North Indian classical music at The Ali Akbar Khan School of Music in California and by the early 1980s he was studying Persian poetry. In 1987 he met Afghanistan's poet laureate in exile, Ustad Khalilullah Khalili and this friendship led to Darr's English translation of the poet's quatrains in 1988. In 1989 he began the study of Persian miniature painting with Ustad Homayon Etemadi, Afghanistan's last court painter and royal librarian, who was also his tutor of Persian literature.
For the last fifteen years, Darr has continued his studies of mystical poetry with the Afghan Sufi poet, Raz Mohammad Zaray.
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