2.6.5.4 - The Book of Divine Policies (Moror)

When Shaykh Muhyiddin, may Allah be pleased with him, was in Moror, he saw with his companion Shaykh Abdullah al-Mawruri the book of Sirr al-Asraar: the Secret of Secrets, or in Latin: Secreta Secretorum by Aristotle, who wrote it for Thul-Qarnayn because he was no more able to travel with him.footnote(this treatise which purports to be a letter from Aristotle to his student Thul-Qarnayn, Alexander the Great, on an encyclopedic range of topics, including statecraft, ethics, physiognomy, astrology, alchemy, magic, and medicine. The earliest extant editions claim to be based on a 9th century Arabic translation of a Syriac translation of the lost Greek original. Translated into Latin in the mid-12th century, it was influential among European intellectuals during the High Middle Ages.

Shaykh Abdullah said to his friend: This author has considered the management of this worldly kingdom, so I would like that you make an analogous work on the management of the human kingdom in which is determined our happiness. The Greatest Shaykh fulfilled his request and wrote the book of Divine Policies in Managing the Human Kingdom: al-Tadbiiraat al-Ilaahiyya fii Iإ،laaؤ¥ al-Mamlaka al-Insaaniyya (RG 716), and this could be the first book written by him, may God bless him.

Shaykh Muhyiddin completed in less than four days when he was with Shaykh Abu Mohammed Al-Mawruri in the city of Moror, and this book is three or four times the size of the book of Secreta Secretorum, and he says that his book is beneficial for those working for the kings in their service as well as for those working for the afterlife.

However, it seems that Shaykh Muhyiddin admired Aristotle’s book and stopped by some of his ideas, and we find him quoting some of that in the book of Presenting the Righteous, saying:

I saw in the book of the Secret of Secrets by Aristotle, a circle he had drawn for Alexander recommending to him (the cyclical argument) that: the world is a grove and its fence is the state, the state is the ruling constituted by the laws; the laws are the policy stated by the king; the king is the ruler protected by the army; the army are workers supported by money, money is the provision collected by the people; the people are the servants governed by justice; justice is the goodness of the world. Thus the beginning of the argument connects with its end, and the circle completed.

[Muhadarat: c. 2, pp. 52-53].