The author of this book is the great Shadhili Shaykh Sidi \'Ali al Jamal of Fez, Morocco, who died in 1194 Hijrah.
This rendering from Sidi \'Ali\'s work has been prod.
He, himself, had thought of doing something similar but had never managed it.
When Sidi Mustafa visited us from Morocco in December 2002, he was delighted to hear this selection from Sidi \'Ali al-Jamal\'s work had just been completed.
It was his successor, Moulay al-Arabi al-Darqawi, who collected the pages and put them together in the form of a book.
Sidi Mustafa al-Basir, a contemporary Darqawi Shaykh, (died 1427 AH/2006 CE), told me that Sidi \'Ali Al-jamal had written a few pages at a time and dropped them from the window into the courtyard of his house.
Throughout this project, I felt the guiding light of the deceased author and his acceptance of this work.
By Allah\'s generosity, some of my close brothers and students in Islam, especially Shaykh Hosam Raouf, encouraged me to abridge and edit the Teachings from a Classical Sufi Master and translate the book.
A few years on having enjoyed the book in the original Arabic, I felt inspired to produce a revised version with the topics rearranged, which would be more reader-friendly.
The manuscript was written in 1265 Hijrah in a partly colloquial Maghrebi script by the grandson of the author, with many variations in the quality of the writing, the size of the words and lengths of the sentences.
This version was likely to have been handed down through several generations of the family of Ibn Ajiba (another great Moroccan Shaykh, who died in 1224 Hijrah).
A method of exposition which was common practice with the learned men of past centuries, when books and reading were rare.
The style of the writing is free-flowing and repetitive, with long paragraphs and sentences covering several ideas in a charmingly quaint fashion.
The original handwritten manuscript uses Classical and Qur\'anic Arabic and Sufi terminology with a Maghrebi vernacular.
A photocopy of a handwritten version of the book later came into my possession.
I loved the book, benefited from it, and was inspired to read the original in Arabic.
My first exposure to this book came through Diwan Press, 1977 complete translation of the text by Aisha \'Abd ar-Rahman at-Tarjumana, which was produced under the direction of Shaykh Abdulqadir al-Murabit.
The original Arabic title of the book was \'Advice to the Seeker on the Path of Asceticism\' or \'Beautiful Rubies in Understanding the Meaning of Man\'.
The author of this book is the great Shadhili Shaykh Sidi \'Ali al Jamal of Fez, Morocco, who died in 1194 Hijrah
