A J Arberry: 15 books

Despite being revered as the Holy Book by Muslims throughout the world, the Koran is the least known and least understood in the West of all the great religious books. In this volume A J Arberry examines this paradox and explains the qualities of the Koran which have made it acceptable to so many...

First published in 1959, this reprint of the first edition of Edward FitzGerald’s translation of the Rubáiyát is accompanied by an introduction and notes by A J Arberry, one of Britain’s most distinguished Orientalist scholars. The Rubáiyát is a selection of poems written in Persian attributed...

First published in 1953, this translation of part of the Arabian Nights by A. J. Arberry offers four famous stories in modern idiom: Aladdin, Judar, Aboukir and Abousir, and the Amorous Goldsmith. The introduction provides a brief analysis of earlier translations of the tales and explains their value...

Originally published in 1969. This volume was composed by an eminent Sufi mystic whilst in prison in Baghdad, awaiting execution, in a vain attempt to overthrow his sentence; he was put to death in AD 1311 at the age of 33. This apologia is a document of great poignancy, composed in most elegant...

Originally published in 1964, this volume gathers together extracts from many of Arberry’s best-known works and supplements them with a selection of previously unpublished translations. The material therefore presents a vivid picture of the richness and variety of Islamic civilization from its origins to the late twentieth century.

First published in 1960, this work describes the lives and labours of six great scholars - Simon Ockley, Sir William Jones, E. W. Lane, E. H. Palmer, E.G. Browne and R. A Nicholson. These men were devoted to building a bridge between the peoples and cultures of Europe and Asia. To these biographical...

First published in 1958, this work by one of Britain’s most celebrated Orientalist scholars, tells the story of the rebirth of national literature in Persia after the fall of the Sᾱsᾱnian empire in the seventh century. It traces the course of this literature’s development and full maturity...

Originally published in 1950.Thinkers such as Ghazali and Ibn `Arabi, poets such as Ibn al-Farid, Rumi, Hafiz and Jami were greatly inspired by the lives and sayings of the early Sufis. This book was the first short history of Sufism to be published in any language, illustrating the development of its doctrines with numerous quotations from literature.

Reprint of the 1961 classic study of the discourses of the founder of the order of Whirling Dervishes.

Originally published in 1957. The "Scholastic Problem" was the focus of much debate in Islam for some centuries before it became the chief crux of learned discussion in medieval Christianity. When originally published this volume was the first survey of the subject to appear in English....

The Masnavi of Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-1273), a massive poem of some 25,000 rhyming couplets, by common consent ranks among the world's greatest masterpieces of religious literature. The material which makes up the Masnavi is divisible into two different categories: theoretical discussion of the principal...

Farid al-Din Attar, author of the book here pre-sented in an abridged translation, is to be accounted amongst the greatest poets of Persia; his dimensions as a literary genius increase with the further investigation of his writings, which are still far from completely explored, though welcome progress has been made of late in their publication.

Translation of a selection of poems from one of the world's greatest lyric poets. First published 1947.

Reprint of a classic text.