The Prophetic traditions address all aspects of man’s earthly life, as well as the spiritual life, the path to the world beyond impermanence. This is a collection of over 200 such traditions, drawn from the canonical collections of ḥadith and from other authoritative traditional sources.
This present work is the first in a European language to collect over two hundred of the most spiritual hadîth, drawn from canonical collections and other authorative traditional sources, published in both the original Arabic and in English to which illuminating commentaries, drawn from the writings of Sufis from Hasan al-Basrî, al-Ghazâlî, Junayd, and Shaykh al-‘Alawî and his spiritual progeny have been added.
The Prophet received the initiative power (walâyah) from God and transmitted it to certain Companions, especially ‘Alî ibn Abî Tâlib, and that reality resulted in the establishment and developmentof the Islamic esoteric tradition identified mostly with Sufism. The present collection of ahādīth, therefore, reveals a very important dimension of the Prophet’s being, one that is often neglected in modern studies of him not only by non-Muslim Westerners but also by even many Muslim biographers.
This collection also provides precious knowledge of many aspects of the Islamic esoteric tradition itself.
The author is to be congratulated for makin such a unique work of spiritual value available at a time when the dark clouds of hatred and suspicion of Islam cover much of the sky of Europe.
This work will surely be of great value both to those in search of authentic esoteric knowledge and to those who seek in all honesty a more complete picture of the inward as well as outward reality of the Prophet of Islam.
— Seyyed Hossein Nasr, George Washington University