Long popular in Arabic, as well as Swahili and Malay, this classic text offers a complete guide to Muslim devotions, prayers and practical ethics. There are many books in English which present Sufi doctrine, but few which can be used as practical travel guides along the Path. Originally written in Classical Arabic, the aptly-named Book of Assistance is today in widespread use among Sufi teachers in Arabia, Indonesia and East Africa. The author, Imam al-Haddad (d. 1720), lived at Tarim in the Hadramaut valley between the Yemen and Oman, and is widely held to have been the "spiritual renewer" of the twelfth Islamic century. He spent most of his life in Kenya and Saudi Arabia where he taught Islamic jurisprudence and classical Sufism according to the order (tariqa) of the BaAlawi sayids.

This volume answers many of the questions often asked by seekers of inward illumination. It also includes the author's commentary on a poem concerning inner wayfaring which speaks of the most exalted stations of the path and goes on to explain a number of paradoxes of the Way. These points are illustrated with references to the famous mystical poems of Ibn al-Farid and Abu Madyan.