Follower and Heir of the Prophet: Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi (1564-1624) as Mystic.

• Author: Friedmann, Yohanan

The book under review is the result of the author's doctoral dissertation, submitted in 1989 to the University of Leiden. It deals with the mystical thought of the Indian Muslim Sufi, Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi, one of the most celebrated figures in the history of Indian Islam. It is based on an extensive examination of Sirhindi's epistles and other works.

Sirhindi has been a subject of numerous works of research, and it is only natural that the author had to start his work where former scholars left off. In many ways, he has been successful in this endeavor. He displays, however, a distinct tendency to refer to works of former scholars mostly when he quotes their conclusions in order to explain why he chose not to deal with certain aspects of Sirhindi's thought or activities, or when he wants to show that his own interpretations differ from those of his predecessors. In the numerous places where he closely follows the work of others, he repeatedly refrains from indicating that certain topics had been dealt with before, mostly in a manner fairly similar to his own. I have noted a dozen such cases. (See pp. 157-58, n. 105, for an exception.) This is cause for regret; ter Haar's book reflects sound research that is in no need of omissions that may be construed as attempts to enhance the appearance of the book's originality.

When the present reviewer published more then twenty years ago his own study of Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi, he concluded that Sirhindi was first of all a Sufi and must be evaluated as such; his political views were not very important in his thought and his political influence on the Mughul court was at best marginal. It is gratifying to see that the author of the book under review has been convinced of the correctness of that conclusion, and has refrained from taking up the subject of Sirhindi and politics again. It is to be hoped that the theory of Sirhindi's decisive political influence, which had been so prevalent in scholarship produced at mid-century, has now been finally laid to rest.

J. G. J. ter Haar has rightly devoted his book almost entirely to the exploration of Sufi mysteries, which are the core of Sirhindi's work. The elucidation of the mystical concepts used by Sirhindi is, indeed, one of the main virtues of the book. The author deals lucidly with issues such as Sirhindi's initiation into the Naqshbandi order, his "following" (muta-baat) of the Prophet; concepts such as "wardship" (wilayat), prophethood (nubuwwat)...