The Sufi tradition supplied much of the imagery — the wine, the beloved, the cup-bearer, the drunken sage — that secular Arabic poetry would later borrow.
01
The Luzumiyyat
Not strictly Sufi, but al-Ma'arri's sceptical mysticism opens the door to the tradition.
02
Songs of Mihyar the Damascene
Adonis's self-conscious return to the Sufi inheritance, in a modernist register.
03
The Static and the Dynamic
Adonis's prose study of the Sufi heretics — al-Niffari, al-Hallaj — as the secret heroes of Arabic literature.
04
Wine, Boys and Song
The wine poem in its secular Abbasid form — the source of much of the Sufi metaphorics that would come later.
