In his forward, Ninian Smart, Professor of Religious Studies, University of California says: “Dr. A.M.M. Sahabdeen has performed an important service to students of religion and to the wider world in making accessible some of the major writings of the Tamil Sufi Traditions. These date primarily from the late 16^th century onwards and are major contributions to Tamil and to world religious literature. They are authentically Sufi and Islamic in spirit, but they converge with some of the Bhakti writings of the Hindu South. Dr. Sahabdeen shows that such convergence indicates a certain unity of spirit among mystical writers of the major religious traditions. At the same time he also delineates some differences.

Sufism was, of course vital in the transmission and spread of Islam in the Indian milieu. Previous studies have tended to concentrate on North India. This study is particularly welcome in illuminating a strand of the vigorous spiritual life of the South.

Altogether Dr. Sahabdeen’s work is an illuminating addition to scholarly knowledge and reflection. His sympathy for alternative points of view is striking and in the best tradition of the comparative study of religion.

Through this study I hope the life and writings of Peer Muhammad Sahib Waliullah, Kottar Gnaniar, Kunankudi Masthan Sahib and other Islamic saints of this tradition will become known better to a wider public. This book is a fine contribution to the history of Islamic and world spiritual history. I hope that it will have the success it excellently deserves. –Ninian Smart, Professor of Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Lancaster, England.  

*Also available for $4.95 is Dr. Sahabdeen’s spiritual and philosophical autobiography The Circle of Lives which is a fascinating account of a Sri Lankan professor’s personal intellectual maturation while living amidst communities of Hindus, Buddhists and Christians. The quotes selected for inclusion are worth having in themselves and are a valuable assemblage of some of the insights on which the worlds great sacred Traditions are based.

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