The Passion of al-Hallaj by Louis Massignon
Ttranslated by Herbert Mason
4 volumes, Bollingen Series
Publisher: Princeton University Press
"The English version must be considered a major achivement in the field of Islamic Studies." ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr, George Washington University.
"This is a very great book by France's most famous Islamic specialist in this century who was also a leading Catholic intellectual." ~ Julian Baldick, Times Literary Suppliment.
"The French original of this work has stood for most of this century as a model of the way Western scholarship can illuminate a foreign culture, not patronize or denature it. This translation climaxes one of the most focused projects of humanistic scholarship this century has seen. Massignon became obsessed with the figure of al-Hallaj at the age of twenty-four and poured the entire forty-five years of his career as an Islamicist at the College de France into studying him. That his student and friend, Herbert Mason, devoted thirteen year's to translating and editing Massignon's study only compounds the dedication that produced this remarkable product." ~ Huston Smith.