H. T. Norris – författare

This book is a study of the evidence that exists to this day in the Niger Republic, and in the adjacent regions of Saharan and non-Saharan Africa, about the life of Sidi Mahmud al-Baghdadi, who, it is believed, introduced new doctrines of Oriental Sufism into the Air Massif during the sixteenth century. The teachings of Sidi Mahmud were to reappear recently in the Khalwatiyya Sufi order ( tariqa) in Niger. They are still important for contemporary Islam in that republic which is a bridge between the Arab world and the Muslim states of the African Sahel. There is also evidence to suggest that initiated members of the Mahmudiyya Sufi order were once to be found throughout the entire Southern Sahara, from Timbuctoo to Borno and Lake Chad. This Sufi order was one of the earliest to be founded in the area of Aïr which was a crossroads of African trade and of rival empires and of conflicting tribes and peoples.

This is a detailed description of the various Sufi orders and movements which entered into the Balkans, the Crimean peninsula and other parts of Eastern Europe following the Ottoman conquests. Many of the Sufis came from Christian societies, principally from an Eastern Orthodox background, but others, such as the Bosnians, from churches that were accused or suspected of heterodoxy of belief and of antinomianism. These beliefs, together with pre-Christian beliefs, influenced by Manicheanism, Dualism and pantheism, left their mark on Sufi Islam. The book concentrates on the Bosnians, Bulgarians, Albanians and Tatars. Their Sufism reflects their national aspirations, and their writings fuse their mysticism, national faith and folklore in a Sufism which is quite distinct from that in other regions of the Muslim world.