Gifts for the Seeker (Imam Al-Haddad) Answers to many questions often asked by spiritual seekers

This book “answers many of the questions often asked by seekers of inward illumination.”

The work also includes the author’s commentary on a poem on inner wayfaring which speaks of the most exalted stations of the path and goes on to explain a number of paradoxes of the Way, such as the reason as why the saints usually refuse to deploy their miraculous powers, preferring to concentrate on self-scrutiny and the compassionate guidance of others. These points are illustrated with references to the famous mystical poems of Ibn al-Farid and Abu Madyan.

The author Imam Abdallah Ibn-Alawi Al-Haddad (d. 1720), lived at Tarim in the Hadramaut valley between Yemen and Oman, and is widely held to have been the ‘renewer’ of the twelfth Islamic century. A direct descendant of the Prophet, his sanctity and direct experience of God are clearly reflected in his writings, which include several books, a collection of Sufi letters, and a volume of mystical poetry. He spent most of his life in Kenya and Saudi Arabia where he taught Islamic jurisprudence and classical Sufism according to the order (tariqa) of the Ba’Alawi sayids.