Titus Burckhardt (1908-1984) was a leading member of the "traditionalist" or "perennialist" school of comparative religious thought, well-known for its espousal of the "transcendent unity of religions." Burckhardt was also an expert on Islam, Islamic arts and crafts and its spiritual dimension, Sufism. It was his 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.

Burckhardt's little masterpiece, INTRODUCTION TO SUFI DOCTRINE, first published in French in 1959, is a distillation of the essence of Sufism, presenting its central doctrines and methods to a Western audience in a highly intelligible form.