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Where the Two Seas Meet: The Qur'ânic Story of al-Khidr and Moses in Sufi Commentaries as a Model of Spiritual Guidance. By Hugh Talat Halman. Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2013. Pp. xxi + 319. $29.95 (paper).
In this wide-ranging, well-argued, and readable study, Hugh Talat Halman, a specialist in Sufism, offers an engaged reading of select Sufi commentaries on the story of al-Khidr and Moses found in Q 18:60-82. In his foreword to the book, Bruce Lawrence captures the spirit of Halman's study when he writes: "Words invent, reinvent, disguise and reveal meaning that never cease to sustain the human quest in life and beyond life, in death and beyond death" (p. xii).
The book is roughly organized into three sections. Section one is a general introduction to the story of al-Khidr and Moses in the Quran, and provides general information on the figure of al-Khidr both in classical and medieval Islamic scholarship and in more recent Western scholarship. Halman includes an overview of the al-Khidr-Moses relationship as a model for the master-disciple relationship in Sufism, and provides brief but suggestive references to...