Titus Burckhardt's masterpiece, An Introduction to Sufi Doctrine, is a distillation of the essence of Islamic mysticism, or Sufism, presenting its central doctrines and methods to a western audience in a highly intelligible form. It was Burckhardt's first-hand knowledge of Sufism that qualified him to undertake pioneering and authoritative translations of Sufi classics by renowned authors such as Ibn al-Arabi, Abd al-Karim al-Jili, and Mulay al-Arabi ad-Darqawi.