Using the original writings of two Egyptian Sufis, Müammad Wafa¯' and his son 'Ali, this book shows how the Islamic idea of sainthood developed in the medieval period. Although without a church to canonize its "saints," the Islamic tradition nevertheless debated and developed a variety of ideas concerning miracles, sanctity, saintly intermediaries, and pious role models. In the writings of the Wafa¯'s, a complete mystical worldview unfolds, one with a distinct doctrine of sainthood and a novel understanding of the apocalypse. Using almost entirely unedited manuscript sources, author Richard J. A. McGregor shows in detail how Müammad and 'Ali Wafa¯' drew on earlier philosophical and gnostic currents to construct their own mystical theories and notes their debt to the Sufi order of the Shadhiliyya, the mystic al-Tirmidhi, and the great Sufi thinker Ibn ¿Arabi. Notably, although located firmly within the Sunni tradition, the Wafa¯'s felt free to draw on Shi'ite ideas for the construction of their own theory of the final great saint.

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