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4.1.1 - The Previous Editions

The Leave was published several times. The first scientific study was performed by Abdul-Rahman Badawi. He published as part in his "Autobibliografía de Ibn ʿArabī" in Al-Andalus Journal: Volume xx, Issue No. 1, 1955 (pp. 107-28), and then republished it again in his book: Persons and Topics in Islamic Philosophy: Paris, 1976. However, in this edition, Badawi relied on late manuscripts in the Egyptian Book House, the best of which is copied from a copy written in 1033 AH, which includes some gaps, as we will mention in the list below. However, because this was one of the earliest editions and Osman Yahya relied on it in his book, we will compare with it to elaborate the variations. We will refer to it as the "Badawi edition".

The Leave was also published by Bassam Abdul Wahab al-Jabi, as part of his edition of the book of "The Dictionary of Sufi Conventions" (in Arabic), published by Imam Muslim House, in 1990. He relied on the previous edition by Badawi, in addition to other manuscripts from the Dhahiriya library (in Damascus). However, this edition did not provide any new information.

More recently, the Leave was published by Mohamed al-Adlouni al-Idrissi in his book: "Texts from the Sufi Heritage", published in Casablanca, in 2008. He relied on a single manuscript from Rabat library, copied in 1309 AH, as we will describe it in the list below. We will also compare with this edition sometimes, and refer to it as the "Adlouni edition".

The Leave was also published in the Journal of the Faculty of Arts at Mansoura University, in a paper entitled "A Page from the History of Islamic Science", by Saadia Mohammed Ibrahim: Issue 47, Volume 2, Part 1, August 2010. Here, the researcher relied on the same manuscripts adopted by Abdul-Rahman Badawi, and she did not bring anything new except filling some titles that were blurred in the Badawi edition. But then she merged between a number of copies, extracting additional titles, which increased the number of variations belonging to the same book. At the same time, she only mentioned sixty-three sheikhs, out of seventy.

In addition to these recent publications, this Leave was published by Sheikh Yusuf bin Ismail al-Nabhani (died 1932 AD) in his famous book of "The Collection of the Charismata of Saints". When he talks about Sheikh Muhyiddin, he says: "I have seen the Leave that he wrote to King Al-Muẓaffar ibn al-Malik Al-Ayyubi, in which he mentioned many of his sheikhs and books. For the full benefit, I will mention it here in its fullness ...", then he said at the end, "due to its importance, I have mentioned it here!". This means that al-Nabhani copied the text exactly as the found in the manuscript that he had. However, he did not mention the details of this manuscript, which seems to contain many errors and corrections in the titles of books.

Nonetheless, what Sheikh Abu Salem al-Ayyashi published in "Table Water" is striking! He mentioned part of this Leave in his famous trip: al-Rihla al-Ayyashiya, also entitle "Ma’ al-Mawa’id: Table Water", published in 2006 by Dar al-Suwaidi in Abu Dhabi, where he said at the end that he had to cut it short and he did not mention all the books, adding that there were 358 titles mentioned in the manuscript. But, again, he also did not mention the source of manuscript he was quoting from, nor even a list of these books. He only mentioned the list of sheikhs. However, this last number cannot be correct, so it may be 258, and the error is caused by the transcriber in or from the manuscript, or it may be this large number is the result of adding other titles from the Index and other sources as we have indicated above.

In fact, all the previous publications and studies of the Ijazah are not well investigated, because they either did not mention the manuscripts they relied on, or they relied on very late copies, and did not make any detailed comparison with the earliest manuscripts that we referred to above, the most important of which is the copy of Shehid Ali, due to its historical precedence and the link of its transcriber to the library of Sheikh Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi, being one of the followers of the Greatest Sheikh, may Allah bless them.