In popular culture—and possibly, due to the immense popularity of qawwalis—Sufism is often defined by its music. For many, it is the poetry and the mysticism that holds sway, but as historian, writer, scholar and translator Rana Safvi explains in her new book, In Search of the Divine: Living Histories of Sufism in India, Sufism is a rigorous discipline. Safvi, …
W ITH nearly 50 years of research and teaching experience in the best of universities in India and the United States, Muzaffar Alam has offered a work that has the quality of a swan song, the culmination of a life-long intellectual activity to produce a book on a theme that was long waiting to be written and one that only …
