THE MYSTICAL poems of Haji Hasan Mustapa, a Sundanese poet who died in 1930, are not known by many. This literary fi gure was not as popular as other Indonesian poets such as Hamzah Fansuri and Ronggowarsito, this despite the fact that he was close to the Orientalist Snouck Hurgronje—and saved Hurgronje’s life before he was killed in Arabia—and wrote many books about tasawuf, or Islamic mysticism. He was accused of being a follower of the unity of existence understanding, or Wahdat al-Wujud. But academicians who went through his works concluded this was not the case. They saw that Hasan Mustapa pursued the path of “seven degrees,”which says that a person must undertake a journey of seven phases to become a complete person. He was fascinated with the spiritual and embraced concepts about Sufi sm that were highly infl uenced by Ibn Arabi. Tempo recounts Sundanese culture expert Ajip Rosidi’s search for Hasan Mustapa’s manuscripts, which took him as far as Leiden, Holland.