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Revision as of 11:10, 11 September 2010
, 11:10, 11 September 2010no edit summary
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|name= the Author
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|comment= I was thankful for this review which, even though the reviewer declares herself to be ''deeply disappointed'' with my book ''God's Lovers', does notice quite a number of new and interesting elements in it.
If her disappointment has to do with the subtitle, I agree that it would have been more exact to speak of "Sufi Rituals" instead of ''A Sufi Community in Macedonia.'' In fact, until the publisher decided to publish the book in this way, God's Lovers was meant to be one of the chapters of a book that appeared two years later with the title ''Living Sufism, Rituals in the Middle East and the Balkans''.
Not that there was much more to be said about this Sufi community than described in the book; the communal aspect was very much concentrated on the ritual, the worship of the local saint Haznadar Baba, and on each member's relationship with their sheikh, Erol Baba. These aspects are covered by the book. The dervishes would bring their young sons to the zikr sessions but not their wives, and outside the sessions there was no communal life.
This said, I much profited from some of Mrs Mason's criticism in preparing Living Sufism. Especially, I realized that I was using a lot of redundant Arabic and Turkish terminology that was bound to irritate the general reader for whom the book was meant. So I thoroughly cleaned up the introduction of the new book, and the comments I have received so far seem to indicate that I was successful in producing a readable text.
Moreover, but this was already my intention, I included an extraordinary in-depth interview with a rural Egyptian sheikh, who explains in very simple language the hows and whys of the zikr ritual, and the emotions and feelings it produces in the participants.
As to the price of God's Lovers, I agree that it is exorbitant. Living Sufism, which deals with rituals in five countries in double the number of photos contained in God's Lovers, full colour at that, comes at a fraction of what the buyer of God's Lovers was supposed to spend. The price was the publisher's decision, not mine.
Sincerely,
Nicolaas Biegman.
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