Asaad Ali

The Seven Rivers of Damascus

I remember vividly my first impression of Asad Ali as he opened the door of his home. This “Arab ascetic” was dressed in a stylish white suit and greeted us with a broad smile and a flamboyant “Salaam! Salaam!” We were about to enter a new world of cultivated meaning, high conversation, and spiritual refinement. It is said that the high art of the Arab is rhetoric, and in Damascus, we witnessed a love of language and mystical discourse greater than anything we had so far experienced.

Nights in Damascus with Asad Ali

The following excerpt is from the forthcoming book, Civilization of Paradise, Revelation Poems (Fons Vitae 2014), by Asad Ali. The book contains 90 poems, each associated with a Surah of the Qur'an, as well as 60 pages of introductory materials, including transcripts of three nights during which Kabir and Mahmoud Mostafa visited Dr. Ali's home in 2005. This long awaited book completes the cycle of 114 Poems that began with Happiness without Death (Threshold Books, 1991), by Asad Ali. Annemarie Schimmel, one of the greatest scholars of Sufism of the 20th Century, wrote of Asad Ali's poetry: "if carefully read as it deserves, it can help Westerners understand the grandeur and power of pristine Islam."