Poetry. Middle Eastern Studies. Translated from the Arabic by Michael Sells. One of the great mystics of all time, Muhyiddin Ibn al-'Arabi was a prolific author who wrote on every aspect of medieval Islamic thought. Among the most widely read of his works, and certainly his most famous collection of poems, was his volume of odes, The Translator of Desires (Turjuman al-Ashwaq), which is regarded as a masterpiece of Arabic and Sufi love poetry.

Michael Sells's STATIONS OF DESIRE contains the first translations of Ibn 'Arabi's Turjuman into modern poetic English. The translator of a highly praised volume of pre-Islamic qasidas, Desert Tracings, and the newly controversial Approaching the Qur'an, Sells carries into his translations the supple, resonant quality of the original Arabic, so that the poems come to robust life in English. He also provides an insightful introduction along with a selection of his own original poems, which are modeled on the Turjuman and serve as further commentary to the medieval odes and their extension into the present climate of poetry.

About the author: Muhyiddin Ibn al-'Arabi was born in Murcia, Andalusia, in 1165 and died in Damascus in 1240. He is the author of more than two hundred works.

Michael Sells is an authority on Ibn 'Arabi as well as one of the most distinguished contemporary translators of classical Arabic poetry. His books include: Desert Tracings: Six Classic Arabian Odes (Wesleyan); Mystical Languages of Unsaying (Chicago); Early Islamic Mysticism (Paulist Press); The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia (California); Approaching the Qur'an (White Cloud); and The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: Andalus (Cambridge). He teaches at the University of Chicago.