The attention Islamic Mysticism has so far received in this country presents to the Catholic a study of no little interest. Unlike some of the Indian ascetic practices, it has largely been the object of a purely professional, rather than of a popular and slightly bizarre enthusiasm; but, within the field of scholarship, that enthusiasm has been whole-hearted and uninhibited to a degree not witnessed in our time outside the natural sciences. From the middle of last century onwards, a whole range of scholars—Palmer, Browne, Nicholson, Arberry and Margaret Smith, to name only some of the outstanding among them—have found, and unmistakably gloried in finding, a satisfaction in their studies wider and deeper than the purely academic. It is perhaps not surprising that most of these scholars ‘discovered’ Islamic Mysticism either (in the case of the earlier ones) when living in an atmosphere of confidently well-bred agnosticism, or (during the present century) when their religious appetite no longer found anything like satisfaction in their own accepted faith.