Tales Frm Land/Sufis

Spiritual instruction takes on entirely new dimensions when one considers the wisdom of the Sufi tradition; and here Bayat and Jamnia have dramatically increased our knowledge of and access to the teaching stories of the great Persian Sufi masters. To the magical and almost familiar names of Rumi and Kabir, we now can add Hallaj, Abu Sa'id, Fariduddin Attar, Hakim Nazami and Abdul-Raham Jami. We knew Attar, of course, from his Conference of the Birds , but set in this new context of other Sufi voices, his narratives become all the more potent. And while we should be especially grateful for the light flashing from the pages of Nazami's love stories, the authors' translation of the Attar story, ``Sakyh San'an,'' would alone be justification for the entire volume. In short, the brilliance of these Persian teachers is exposed by the authors of this superb text. (June)