در هرگز و هميشۀ انسان از ميراث عرفانى خواجه عبد الله انصارى

This book by Mohammad Reza Shafiei Kadkani is widely lauded as the most comprehensive and scholarly work on Khaje Abdullah Ansari, offering a fresh and groundbreaking perspective on the revered mystic. Reviewers highlight its thoroughness, noting the author's detailed introduction outlining his research methodology and meticulous presentation of Ansari's genuine works, complete with explanations of complex terms and historical references. A significant achievement of the book is its rigorous analysis of the authenticity of works attributed to Ansari, successfully identifying his true contributions and debunking many long-held misconceptions. The book also offers insightful linguistic analysis of Ansari's authentic writings, connecting interesting grammatical structures to the Indo-European roots of the Persian language, and presents a notable scholarly discovery concerning historical textual transmissions in well-known spiritual commentaries.

Despite its many strengths, the reviews offer very few direct criticisms of the book's quality or methodology. One reviewer noted a minor point of contention regarding the author's positive portrayal of a specific historical figure, which felt like a brief digression from the main scholarly focus. While not a flaw in the book itself, readers expecting to find the widely known Persian works traditionally attributed to Ansari might be surprised or even disappointed to learn that the book meticulously demonstrates the non-authenticity of the vast majority of these texts, instead presenting this as a crucial correction of historical record.

Overall, this book is considered a monumental and essential scholarly contribution to the study of Khaje Abdullah Ansari and Islamic mysticism. It successfully re-establishes the authentic corpus of Ansari's work and corrects centuries of misattribution, making it a definitive resource for future research. This book is highly recommended for serious students, researchers, and academics in the fields of Islamic studies, Persian literature, mysticism, and history. Readers who appreciate rigorous textual criticism, in-depth linguistic analysis, and an objective historical understanding of one of Persia's great mystics, particularly those open to challenging conventional wisdom based on meticulous research, will find this book invaluable.