Saints And Sons ― The Making And Remaking Of The Rashidi Ahmadi Sufi Order, 1799-2000

Sedgwick traces the history of the Rashidi Ahmadi Sufi order from its earliest direct origins in Mecca in 1799, to 2000, when it had spread across parts of West Africa and Southeast Asia as well as much of the Middle East. He identifies a repeating cycle in which a religious order rises under a great scholar or saint, splits as it spreads, and then stabilizes. Sedgwick (history, American U., Cairo) also considers the ways in which even the greatest shayks have been limited by their followers' expectations. Annotation c2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Mark J. Sedgwick, Ph.D. (1999) in History, University of Bergen, is Associate Professor of History at the American University in Cairo. He has published extensively on Sufism and New Religious Movements, includingSufism: The Essentials (AUC Press, 2000) and Against the Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2004)