Laury Silvers is a retired historian of early Islam and early Sufism. She is a North American Muslim living in Toronto.

Book Three in The Sufi Mysteries Quartet

It’s easier to solve a crime than solve yourself

Baghdad, 295 Hijri (908 CE)

When a young man is found dead, killed in the exact manner as a martyr slain on the fields of Karbala some two hundred years before, there is no mistaking it as anything other than an attack on the Shia community of Baghdad. The city is on edge as religious and political factions are exposed sending the caliph’s army into the streets. Ammar and Tein have to clear the case, one way or another, before violence erupts. But Zaytuna has had a visionary dream of the murder that holds the key to solving the case. Can she can read its signs? And will Tein and Ammar listen?

"Completely engrossing and richly atmospheric. Tenth century Baghdad comes alive through the eyes of a dazzling cast of characters." —Ausma Zehanat Khan, critically acclaimed author of A Deadly Divide from The Getty-Khattak Mysteries, and The Khorasan Archives

“In this exceptionally well-written and lucid book, Laury Silvers brings the intricacies of medieval Islamic religiosities and society to life. In exploring the little-known religious communities of medieval Baghdad, Silvers invites the reader to journey through the often forgotten multifaceted dimensions of pre-modern society, addressing questions such as dissent, sectarianism, and communal relations.” — Ahab Bdaiwi, Leiden and Cambridge Universities