6.5.22 - Collecting the Grand Diwan (Damascus, 13 Thul-Hijjah 634/1238)

In addition to the frequent reading of the Meccan conquests, the Greatest Shaykh continued to author and collect many interesting books in this period. One of the important works that appeared in this year was the Grand Diwan, in which he collected most of his poetry containing thousands of poems that were dispersed in his other books.

However, given the magnitude of this work that requires many volumes, it is not clear exactly what this Grand Diwan contained, as it seems that there it has been collected in various stages and there is yet no complete manuscript that contains all the volumes that this Diwan is thought to be composed of, whose number is also not certain. There are many incomplete copies of various volumes that don’t seem to belong to one Diwan, although they are all supposed to be parts of the Grand Diwan. Even after many attempts, no one have been able to assemble this Diwan out of the available manuscripts.

parts of this Diwan were printed in Cairo in 1270/1855, known as the Bulaq edition, and there are also many modern editions, but all are far from being complete.

As we mentioned in

efnazm, the Ahmediye manuscript, inscribed by Ibn al-Arabi himself, contains about half of the poems of the Meccan Revelations, and the remaining are found in the manuscript of Diwan al-Maarif copy of Paris Bibliothèque Nationale 2348. Additionally, there are also some other volumes of the original holograph(s) of the Grand Diwan still preserved today. However, they seem to belong to more than one copy, because some of them are arranged according to the alphabet while others are grouped based on the original books they were collected from, in addition to the difference in the total number of volumes they comprise.

For example, the holograph of Sehid Ali Pasa 1177 states clearly that it is volume 7, also divided into smaller parts just like the copy of al-Ahmediye, and both of which are not arranged alphabetically. On the other hand, the holograph of Khalili 225, written in Damascus in this year or 634 AH, is the fourth volume out of the 6 volumes which the author says he compiled in his Diwan. This copy is arranged according to the Arabic alphabetical letters. Two more manuscripts may also be holographs; Yusuf Aga 5501-2, but they were stolen from the library in Konya in the late 1990s, without being previously microfilmed, and the library register gives no details as to which parts of the Diwan they contained.

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[The First Page of Volume 7 of the Grand Diwan in Ibn al-Arabi’s hand writing.]The First Page of Volume 7 of the Grand Diwan in Ibn al-Arabi’s hand writing.

However, by comparing Ahmediye manuscript with Paris-2348 copy of Diwan al-Maarif, it seems that Nazm al-Futuh is 30 small parts divided into two volumes, which are parts 2 and 3 from Diwan al-Maarif according to this latter manuscript, which also contains the Tarjuman al-Ashwaq as its final part, starting from folio 250, where it is stated that this is called the “Small Diwan”. We have described the Tarjuman in section

eftarjuman in chapter IV.

Based on these observations, is possible that Diwan al-Maarif comprises the Grand Diwan and the Small Diwan, that is the Tarjuman, as well as the Nazm al-Futuh.