Tales of the Dervishes

Auteur

Idries Shah spent much of his life collecting and publishing Sufi classical narratives and teaching stories from oral and written sources in the Middle East and Central Asia. The tales he retold especially for children are published by Hoopoe Books in beautifully illustrated editions and have been widely commended - by Western educators and psychologists, the U.S. Library of Congress, National Public Radio and other media - for their unique ability to foster social-emotional development, thinking skills and perception in children and adults alike. Told for centuries, these stories express universal themes from the cultures that produced them, showing how much we have in common and can learn from each other. As noted by reviewers, such stories are more than just entertaining; familiarity with them provokes flexibility of thought, since each one contains levels of meaning that unfold in accordance with an individual's experience and understanding.

Texte du rabat

Although enormously attractive as sheer entertainment, Dervish tales were never presented merely on the level of a fable, legend or folklore. They stand comparison in wit, construction and piquancy with the finest stories of any culture, yet their true function as Sufi teaching stories is so little-known in the modern world, that no technical or popular terms exist to describe them. The material in Tales of the Dervishes is the result of a thousand years of development, during which Dervish masters used these and other teaching stories to instruct their disciples. The tales are held to convey powers of increasing perception unknown to the ordinary man.