Tales of the Dervishes is a collection of stories, parables, legends and fables gathered from classical Sufi texts and oral sources spanning a period from the 7th to the 20th centuries.

The Islamic scholar James Kritzeck, reviewing Shah's Tales of the Dervishes in The Nation, said that it was "beautifully translated" and equipped "men and women to make good use of their lives.

[2] The Stanford University professor Robert E. Ornstein, writing in Psychology Today, called the book "... a collection of diamonds ... incredibly well-crafted, multifaceted ... likely to endure in the manner of the Koran and the Bible.

"[3] Psychiatrist and author Arthur Deikman, in his book The Observing Self, uses tales from this work to illustrate the role of intuition in the human makeup and the idea that mysticism is an extension of natural psychological faculties.

[4] Philosopher of science and physicist Henri Bortoft used teaching tales from Shah's corpus as analogies of the habits of mind which prevented people from grasping the scientific method of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.