Abū al-Ḥasan ‘Alī b. Moḥammad al-Daylamī. A Treatise on Mystical Love. Translated by Joseph Norment Bell and Hassan Mahmood Abdul Latif Al Shafie, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2005, lxx+224 p. (Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies Monograph Series, 1)

Abstract

Daylamī’s treatise, Kitāb ‘aṭf al-alif al-ma’lūf ‘alā al-lām al-ma‘ṭūf (Book of the Conjunction of the Cherished Alif with the Conjoined Lām), written in the last quarter of the 10th century CE, appears to be one of the first on mystical love in the Islamic tradition. Though the Arabic text is only known to us from one surviving manuscript, it may have had a profound influence on Persian mysticism through Rūzbehān Baqlī and his followers. A quarter century ago, Jean-Claude Vadet translated th...