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4.3 - The Difference in the Number of Titles According to Manscripts

As in the Index, Sheikh Muhyiddin stated at the beginning of the Leave that his census of his works is not a complete statistic, but he only wrote down what he could remember at the time. He also stated that some of these works consisted of a few booklets and some of them are contained in many volumes. This might explain the difference between what the Sheikh mentioned in the Index and what he mentioned in the Leave, but how can we justify the considerable differences in the number of works between the different copies of the Leave!

Othman Yahia estimated the number of works mentioned in the Leave to be between 265 and 286, where each of the Berlin copies and the copy of Talaʿat No. 633 mention 265 works, while the manuscript copy No. 19945 in the Egyptian Book House in Cairo lists 286 works. The Dhahiriya library copy No. 4679 contains 273 titles, while in Berlin copy No. 743 contains 290 titles, the virtual library copy (5924) contains 304 books, and we add to that what Al-Ayashi mentioned in the "table water" that the number of works in the Leave he saw amounted to 358 works.

As we mentioned above, the large number in some of these copies is the result of titles added from other sources. For example, in Princeton copy, one of the oldest, the transcriber explicitly added some titles at the end of the Leave, after the main text has finished. The same is also true for the copies if Koprulu 766 and Shehid Ali Pasha 2796. The scribes clearly referred to this by saying: "This is the last (title) found in the Leave written on the date specified at the beginning of the book, and he also has ... (then listing more titles)". This occurred after mentioning the book of "The Slave and the Lord", which is the same title by which the Index treatise also ended.

Other differences between the various manuscripts can be explained as the result of copying errors, where some transcribers may have dropped some titles, mixed others or divided one long title into two or more, and some may have deliberately attached other titles to books known to be by Sheikh Muhyiddin, since some of the copies were simply a personal note. However, these differences do not diminish the importance of the Leave, but some of the details must be taken cautiously, and the titles mentioned in them must be verified, by comparing them with the Index or other authentic sources.