About The Book

One of the purest lineages of the People of the House is that of the Ba-'Alawi sayyids of Hadramawt. Their tradition and chains of transmission remain unbroken to this day. Today, there are hundreds of thousands of 'Alawi's all over the world, a good number of whom are authoritative scholars, and many of whom achieve sanctity, whether or not they reveal to the external observer anything of their inner states.

Their influence in the Islamic world is bound to remain substantial in the foreseeable future, if not, as once stated by Imam al-Haddad, until the appearance of the Mahdi. It is in order to illustrate the continuity of their pattern of knowledge and sanctity and connect it to their current influence that this book has been written.

About The Author

Dr. Mostafa Badawi was born in Cairo in 1948. He graduated from Cairo University Medical School in 1971 and thereafter completed his postgraduate training in the United Kingdom in 1985. He has been practicing as a consultant psychiatrist since then. Dr. al-Badawi has authored several books in English, including Man and the Universe: An Islamic Perspective, The Prophetic Invocations, and Sufi Sage of Arabia: Biography of Imam al-Haddad.

He is a distinguished authority on the history and teachings of the Ba 'Alawi Sayyids. He studied under many shaykhs, foremost among whom is the late Habib Ahmad Mashur al-Haddad.

Dr. Badawi is one of the leading contemporary translators of Islamic books from Arabic to English and has authored several books in Arabic. In addition, he has translated from the original Arabic into English several of Imam Abdallah ibn Alawi al-Haddad's works, including The Book of Assistance, The Lives of Man, Gifts for the Seeker, Wisdom and Knowledge, Good Manners, and Mutual Reminding. He also translated into English Habib Ahmad al-Haddad's Key to the Garden as well as Shaykh Abd al-Khaliq ash-Shabrawi's Degrees of the Soul.