Treatises on Sufism and Ḥadīth: الرسائل البكرية في التصوف والحديث

These two volumes offer a collection of the short treatises of two influential Egyptian religious scholars of the sixteenth century. Abu al-Ḥasan Muḥammad al-Bakri (898-952/1492-1545) and his son Muḥammad ibn Abi al-Ḥasan al-Bakri al-Ṣiddiqi Sibṭ Al al-Ḥasan (930-94/1524-86), who lived between Cairo and Mecca, authored numerous texts on Sufism and Ḥadith. Abu al-Ḥasan's works include forty-eight collections of forty ḥadiths, a work on voluntary poverty, an early defense of the consumption of coffee in Sufi ritual, his Ḥizb and his Waṣiya. Muḥammad al-Bakri's treatises focus on spiritual instruction, the ritual of sama?, Sufi theology, including the author's rejection of waḥdat al-wujud, commentary on poems by Ibn al-Fariḍ 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.