The Magic Monastery differs from its predecessors in that it contains not only traditional tales--mostly unpublished--but also stories specially written by Shah to complete the book as 'a course in non-linear thinking.'

    The book confronts the reader with unaccustomed perspectives and ideas, in an attempt to set the mind free, to see how things really are. As the book's foreword states, 'Do you imagine that fables exist only to amuse or to instruct, and are based upon fiction? The best ones are delineations of what happens in real life, in the community and in the individual's mental processes'.

    Original.

    In this compact volume, the author, the renowned Islamic scholar, combines his research into Sufi doctrine and history with a rich account of the spiritual and metaphysical significance of Sufism as a living tradition.

    Within a matter of weeks he finds himself in the company of powerful dervishes, God-intoxicated nomads whose eyes blaze with love, and ragged beggars with the smile of the Pure One. These men, the followers of an enlightened Shaykh, speak little, but simply to be in their company fills him with ecstasy and knowledge.

    His work greatly influenced the development of mathematics, particularly analytical geometry, and was unsurpassed for many centuries. Although he is generally better known as a poet, his work as a philosopher, scientist, and mathematician was a major contribution to the growth of human knowledge. His famous book on algebra and equations - translated here by Roshdi Khalil - is considered to be perhaps his most important contribution to mathematics. The book deals with the solution of quadratic and cubic equations. Al-Khayam solved all possible cases of such equations by using geometrical approaches, sometimes involving conic sections, parabolas, and hyperbolas. Historians of science, teachers of mathematics, and mathematicians themselves will find the book both interesting and informative.

    

    King's Book of Kings: The Sha-Nameh of Sha Tahmasp

    He shows how the interplay of memories of past Muslim supremacy, Islamic religious aspirations and modern Muslim social and economic anxieties with the political needs of the alien ruling power gradually fostered a separate Muslim politics. Dr Hardy argues (contrary to the usual view) that Muslims were able to take political initiatives because, in the region of modern Uttar Pradesh, British rule before 1857 and even the events of the Mutiny and Rebellion of 1857-8 had not been economically disastrous for most of them. He stresses the force of religion in the growth of Muslim political separatism, showing how the 'modernists' kept the conversation among Muslims within Islamic postulates and underlining the role of the traditional scholars in heightening popular religious feeling. Regarding any sense of Muslim political unity and nationhood as an outcome of the period of British rule, Dr Hardy shows the limitations and frailty of that unity and nationhood by 1947.