Common threads · 6 books
Self-knowledge, poetry, religious life, and the stories people tell to wake one another up. A path that keeps Sufi writing connected to its Islamic setting.
A little guidance for each book, and where it might take you next.
William C. Chittick
Begin with the vocabulary and Islamic setting. Keep knowledge, love, and religious practice connected as the reading becomes more demanding.
Next: Mystical Dimensions of Islam
Annemarie Schimmel
Read the chapters on poetry and the Sufi path. Use the historical range to notice differences between teachers rather than one universal message.
Next: The Alchemy of Happiness
al-Ghazzālī
Follow the links between knowing oneself, conduct, and knowing God. Ask what inward change requires beyond an unusual experience. The 2002 date identifies an English edition or translated collection, not the original text's composition.
Next: The Conference of the Birds
Farīd al-Dīn ʻAṭṭār
Follow the birds as characters with excuses, hopes, and fears. Let the ending change how you understand the journey that came before it. The 1984 date identifies an English edition or translated collection, not the original text's composition.
Next: The Sufi Path of Love
William C. Chittick
Read Chittick's translations with their explanations. Ask how Rumi's religious vocabulary complicates a modern reading of love poetry.
Next: Rumi: Past and Present, East and West
Franklin Lewis
Separate the historical poet from later translations and popular images. Revisit a favorite passage with its setting and transmission in mind.
Finished this reading path? Mark the moment, then find your next good book.
Also includes Mystical Dimensions of Islam
Birds, flashes of insight, a visionary diary, and Rumi's many afterlives. Read Persian Sufi poetry as religious writing without losing its strangeness or pleasure.
More Common threads paths
A reading route made on ReadPath.
More paths featuring William C. Chittick
Enter Ibn Arabi's demanding account of imagination, scripture, and existence. Read selected original passages between interpreters who make different choices about how to explain them.
