While an undergraduate at University of Malaya, he wrote "Rangkaian Ruba'iyat", a literary work, and "Some Aspects of Sufism as Understood and Practised among the Malays". He was awarded the Canada Council Fellowship for three years of study at the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University in Montreal. He received the M.A. degree with distinction in Islamic philosophy in 1962, with his thesis "Raniri and the Wujudiyyah of 17th Century Acheh". Al-Attas went on to the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London where he worked with Professor A.J. Arberry of Cambridge and Dr. Martin Lings. His doctoral thesis (1962) was a two-volume work on the mysticism of Hamzah Fansuri.