Dervish tales are never presented as simple fables, legends, or pieces of folklore. In wit, composition, and subtlety, these accounts stand comparison with beautiful literary works—yet the truth is that their real function as Sufi teaching stories is little known in the modern world.
For centuries, dervish masters trained their students using such stories, which are believed to develop a kind of perception unavailable to ordinary people. Some stories were meant to be told only to those who had already received a certain level of training; others were specially intended for people of specific eras and cultural traditions.
Idries Shah spent many years traveling across three continents, collecting and comparing the oral versions of these marvelous stories. In one form or another, many of them have made their way into both Eastern and Western literature. This anthology contains stories from the collections of dervish masters and covers a period of more than a thousand years.
The book was also published under the title “Parables of Sufi Dervishes.”