Mehdi Amin Razavi, Suhrawardi and the School of Illumination, Curzon Sufi Series (Richmond: Curzon, 1997). xxi + 182 pp. ISBN 0-7007-0451-5 (hard covers), and 0-7007-0412-4 (p/b). L35 and L14.95. Shihab al-Din Yahya Suhrawardi, also known as Shaikh al-ishraq (`the master of illumination') and al-Maqtul (`the martyr'), was a Sufi philosopher and theologian born in northern Persia about 549/1170, who became attached to the court of Saladin's son Malik Zahir about 579/1200, and who was executed for heresy on direct orders from Saladin himself in 587/ 1208. The reasons for his execution are obscure, though Razavi suggests, inter alia, that a concern for his belief that at the centre of all divinely revealed religious traditions there is one truth may have contributed to it, particularly since he also may have seen himself as the unifier of two branches of wisdom, a role which would have raised him well above his contemporaries. …