0.1 - Preface to Volume Three

The Greatest Master Muhyiddin Ibn al-Arabi, may Allah be pleased with him, left for us a great legacy of science, knowledge and wisdom, that he dispersed between the pages of hundreds of books ranging in size from few pages to dozens of volumes. We already mentioned before that many historians agreed that he was an exceptional author, distinguished by quantity and quality. Likewise, we mentioned in the section 2.3 of the first volume that he entered the path of Sufism at an early stage in his life, and it was quickly opened to him all these unveiling mysterious sciences in a short time. That was around the year 580/1184, when he had not yet completed the second decade of his life.

For this reason, we find that Sheikh Muhyiddin started writing at that early stage. Although we do not know the exact title of the first book he wrote, but we find many prominent titles among the first books that he composed in the following two decades, before he left the Maghreb. The list includes, for example, the Divine Providences (al-Tadbirat al-Ilahiyya), the Fabulous Gryphon (Anqaa Mughrib), and the book of the Israa ila al-Maqam Asra, which he wrote during the last decade of the sixth century AH. However, we also know that these titles are not the oldest, because he mentioned within them some of his other treatises that he wrote before, which were either lost or incorporated in other later books such as the Meccan Revelations.

Through the study of these early books that he wrote in Maghreb, we find that the main subject around which they revolve is the comparison, or competition, between the human and the universe; considering that the human is a micro-world and the universe is a macro human being. 

Other than that, it is also clear that the sciences of hadith and interpretation are among the first topics that Sheikh Muhyiddin cared about in this period, as we have previously referred in the section [ref: learning-hadith] of the first volume, on the vision he mentioned in the Treatise of Visions, which made him dedicate himself for studying the hadiths of the Prophet. That was before the year 1190/586. Among the numerous books and commentaries he wrote at that time we find: “the Holy Hadiths”, “Abbreviation of Al-Tirmidhi”, “Abbreviation of Al-Bukhari”, “Abbreviation of the Prophet’s Biography”, “Abbreviation of Al-Muhalla”, “Abbreviation of Sahih Muslim”, “the Book of Forty Long Hadiths“, “the Forty Matching Hadith”, “the Lamp in the Combination of the Sahih” and “the Lamp of Lights (in the Holy Hadith)”. However, most of these books are still missing, as it is the case of his precious book of the  interpretation of the Quran: "the Conjugation and Dissolution on the Mysteries of the Meanings of Quran", also called "the Grand Interpretation" that he mentioned in his introduction to the Meccan Revelations and described in the Fihrist treatise.

Also among the first books that the Sheikh wrote during the Maghreb era, we mention the book of Pledging Allegiance to the Pole, the book of Methods of Elevation, the book of the Bolt of the Enthusiast (ʿuqlat al-mustawfiz), the book of the Only Key to the Locks of Inspiration, the book of the Higher Fathers and the Lower Mothers, and the book of the Answers to the Mansurian Questions.

In addition to all these unique books and subjects, after the great Sheikh arrived in Mecca in the year 598/1201, he clearly increased his production in writing the books that he inaugurated with the Meccan Revelations, which is one of his largest and most influential works. It took him about thirty years in writing, to complete after he settled in Damascus in the year 1232/629, and then he rewrote it again between the years 632/1235 to 636/1239.

Also in Damascus, he wrote the most important book of his works, which is Fusûs al-Hikam (the Bezels of Wisdom). Although it is significantly shorter than the Futuhat, but that does not detract from its great value and depth of contents. This book comprises twenty-seven chapters named after prophets who characterize different spiritual types, containing abstruse and extremely profound knowledge.

In addition to that, the Greatest Sheikh wrote several hundred of other works, which might be not well-known as these titles that we mentioned above, but many of them are now available in print, while some are still manuscripts, and there are many titles that are still missing.

During the centuries that followed his death, may Allah have mercy upon him, his books began to spread widely in the spacious regions of the Islamic world, stretching from the Maghreb to the countries of East Asia, and from Arabia to Anatolia. With this wide spread, and due to the extensive circulation and multiple copying, many books were attributed to him that do not really belong to him, either because of the errors of transcribers due to the loss of the first pages, which usually contain the title and name of the author, or with the aim of promoting some malicious spiritual topics that many people wanted to acquire. At the same time, many of his important books were lost, and some during his life, as he indicated in the introduction to the Index.

Therefore we find that more than 850 books have been attributed to him, most of them are either apocryphal or can not be verified. Therefore, any title attributed to Sheikh Muhyiddin must be carefully verified before editing and publication. Fortunately, this is not a difficult task, because there are clear and certain references attributed to him in which he mentioned many of the titles of his works. Also fortunately, based on these and other reliable sources, there is no doubt about the validity of all the main books attributed to Sheikh Muhyiddin, but there are some problems with some short treatises, while many of the titles that were incorrectly attributed to him are in fact by some of his students or some contemporary sheikhs who belong to the same school, and we can easily verify this when reviewing more historical manuscripts.

In the Index (“Fihrist”) treatise, Shaykh Muhyiddin listed about 250 titles of his books that he could remember at the time. This number increases to more than 300 works when added to other titles he referenced throughout his other confirmed books, including also the Ijazah that he wrote to one the Ayyubid Kings.

In this volume, we will extract a documented list of titles of the works written by the Greatest Sheikh, based on the Fihrist treatise, after a proper editing based on the oldest manuscripts written in the handwriting of his step-son Sheikh Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi. We will also edit the Leave that Sheikh Muhyiddin wrote to King Al-Mudhaffar, the Ayyubid king of Mayfariqin, although we will find that this Leave does not add many titles. Rather, the study shows that they all the titles mentioned in it are copied from the Fihrist itself, and in the same order, while most of the differences between them result from bad copying or alteration. We will also complete this list with the titles that the Sheikh mentioned in the folds of his other well-known and confirmed books, in addition to some other sources that we will explain in the introduction.

0.1.1- The Structure of this Volume

0.1.2- A Note on the Method of the Classification of Shaykh Muhyiddin's Books

0.1.3- Note About Transliteration

0.1.4- Note About Transliteration

0.1.5- The sunofwest.com Website

0.1.6- Acknowledgment