PREFACE

The present translations are due to the desire to make the sources of Syriac mysticism more accessible: in the first place for its own sake, and in the second place because of its intimate connection with Muslim mysticism from its origin up to Ghazālī a prominent 11th-century Islamic theologian and mystic.

Bar Hebraeus a 13th-century Syriac polymath and cleric appears to have been largely a recipient from the side of Ghazālī. I hope that a future translation of Isaac of Ninive a 7th-century Syriac ascetic writer and an edition of the so-called John Saba John the Elder, a Syriac mystic may show to how large an extent Muslim mystics are indebted to the Syrians.

My thanks are due to the trustees of the de Goeje Fund for giving this book a place among the publications of the Fund, especially to Professor Snouck Hurgronje for the never-failing kindness and never-failing acuteness with which he read a proof.

I am much obliged to Mr. W. Rollo, M. A., who during his involuntary stay at the Hague, kindly took upon him to correct my English manuscript.

Where the pages of the Book of the Dove and the Ethikon are quoted, those of Bedjan’s Syriac text are meant. Quotations from these books and the Iḥyā’ The Revival of the Religious Sciences, a major work by Ghazālī, no page being mentioned, refer to books, chapters and sections.