Companionship and Virtue in Classical Islam

COMPANIONSHIP AND VIRTUE IN CLASSICAL ISLAM: THE CONTRIBUTION OF AL-SULAMĪ, by Jason Welle . London: IB Tauris, 2024, xiv+221pp. ISBN: 978-0-755652273.

Reviewed by: Muhammad Isa Waley, Former Lead Curator of Persian and Turkish, British Library, London

Recent decades have seen a welcome growth in attention to, and advanced research on, Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī of Nīshāpūr (d. 412/1021), a major classical-era Sufi master and prolific author. This new study by the American Catholic scholar Jason Welle, Assistant Professor of Comparative Theology at Boston College, is a heavyweight contribution.

While some noted Sufis saw detachment from the outside world and from society as an essential means to self-purification and spiritual progress, there were those who, like Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, advocated keeping company (ṣuḥbah) – of the right kind, naturally – as a means of cultivating the virtues. In the Khurāsān region, at least, this teaching, for al-Sulamī – the leading advocate for this school of thought in his time – was intended not to be exclusive to Sufi circles but to benefit wider Muslim society as well. As Jason Welle suggests, this is something that in these troubled times one may not only admire but also contemplate and learn from .