FRITZ MEIER, Essays on Islamic Piety and Mysticism, trans. John O'Kane, Islamic History and Civilization: Studies and Texts, ed. Ulrich Haarmann and Wadad Kadi, vol. 30 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1999). Pp. 772. $195.00.

Extract

Of the four or five names one associates with the founding of the modern study of Islamic mysticism, Fritz Meier's is perhaps the least appreciated in North America because most of his seminal contributions to the subject have remained in their original German, and since the end of World War I North Americans have been not inclined to give Islamicist scholarship in this language its due. Such foundational works as Nöldeke and Schwally and Goldziher in Qurءanic studies, Ritter on עAttar, and the present author on Kubra and Baha al-Walad, remain untranslated and insufficiently studied or even referred to by recent generations of scholars and specialists.