The Sufis
Idries Shah
 Eschewing a purely academic approach, Shah gave an overview of Sufi concepts, with potted biographies of some of the most important Sufis over the ages, including Rumi and Ibn al-Arabi, while simultaneously presenting the reader with Sufi teaching materials, such as traditional stories or the jokes from the Mullah Nasrudin corpus. The book also gave details of previously unsuspected Sufic influences on Western culture. According to Shah, the Freemasons, Cervantes, Western chivalry, alchemy and Saint Francis of Assisi, amongst others, were all influenced directly or indirectly by Sufis and Sufi ideas, often as a result of contact between East and West in the Middle Ages in places such as Spain or Sicily.