There was a dervish in Baghdad who daily would serve 1,200 bowls of food and he would personally supervise their preparation and cooking. One day he called a meeting of his servants and asked: ‘Did you not overlook someone while you were serving food?’ ‘No, we remembered everyone,’ they rejoined, ‘we have forgotten no one. At the time of serving we provide it to everyone who comes to be fed’. But again the shaykh remarked: ‘Something has gone awry in this procedure’. ‘O shaykh,’ implored the servants, ‘what is the intent of your line of questioning?’ ‘For the past three days,’ explained the shaykh, ‘you have given me no food. Every time you have forgotten me’.”

A true teacher takes what you do not have and gives you what is always yours. This is why the sage does his work and slips away unperceived. Real masters are like thieves: Only the ones caught are known. The best remain hidden. Yet their blessed presence though unrecognized continuously sustains the world often behind a most mundane appearance. Yosy Flug: The Illuminated Donkey – Book of Secrets; pp. 52-3 Salik wanted to meet a spiritual guide, but where to find one? It was difficult to find a murshid. Salik searched for a very long time without finding a Sufi Master who possessed all the qualities Salik thought to be necessary. That’s why Salik needed to change his method of…

Some travellers arrived at the grave of Hatim Tai, a man who was famous because of his generosity. Nothing happened and they became a little bored. One of them even fell asleep. When he woke up he told the others that he had seen Hatim Tai who told him to slaughter one of their own camels and eat it in his name. This they did, but they thought it to be a strange kind of generosity. In the morning, however, the son of Hatim Tai came and presented them with two camels. He had seen his father in a dream, who told him to present two camels to the travellers who stayed near his grave, as a compensation for the…

Within the shadow of the city wall, at the place where the cypress trees begin a long dark blue march down the mountainside to the ocean, sits the basket weaver. Daily, as his ancestors have done for generations before him, he squats in the dust, surrounded by strands of coloured straw, weaving not only baskets but tales of love, lust and longing; fabricating from the gossip of passers-by new mythologies and legends. He tells them of their own lives, yet they hear them as the stories of others. As they pass in and out of the city on various errands, some people mesmerized by his swiftly moving fingers stop for a moment, sitting next to him to listen, only later…

A seeker of God, ‘Abd ar-Rahman, happened to attend a Sufi dhikr. One of the awrad seemed so strange to him that he seriously began to doubt his sanity. There could hardly be a mistake. The dervishes were all swaying and chanting: Yellow teeth! Yellow teeth! But how could yellow teeth inspire such passion among the dervishes? Later on he discovered that what he had misheard, was actually Ya Latif – which is, as you know, one of the 99 most beautiful names of God.