1.0 - THE FIRST SOURCE: The Index of Works (The Fihrist)

“Whoever takes after Allah, not after himself, how his words may ever end! There is a big difference between an author who says: I have been told by so and so, may Allah have mercy on him, who told me after so-and-so, may Allah have mercy on him, and that who says: My heart is telling me after my Lord! Yet, although this has a high statue, there is a big distinction between him and that who says: My Lord is telling me after my Lord; meaning my Lord is telling me about Himself! And this contains a reference (to the fact that) the first word is the Lord of faith, and the second is the Lord who is not bound, so this is with intermediary and without intermediary! This is the kind knowledge that happens to the heart from self-witnessing from which it overflows to the mystery, the spirit and the soul. Therefore, this who has this imbued how one can define his doctrine? You cannot know him until you know Allah, and He may not be known, the Almighty, from all aspects of knowledge. Similarly, this may not be known, because the mind may not define him.”

The Greatest Master Muhyiddin Ibn Al-Arabi (the Meccan Revelations, vol. 1, p. 57)

The treatise called "Fihrist al-Muṣannafāt", "the Index of Books", is one of the most important and authoritative historical documents on which we can rely as the primary list of books by Al-Sheikh Al-Akbar, since he himself had written for this specific purpose, in or before the year 627 AH / 1230 AD, at the request of one of his comrades, as he stated in its preface. However, unlike the Leave he wrote for King Al-Muẓaffar, we do not know the person to whom this Index was written, nor do we know the exact date in which he wrote it, even though Ibrahim bin Abdullah al-Qari Al-Baghdadi indicates in “Manaqib Ibn al-Arabi” that the Sheikh perhaps had this index written in the holy city of Makkah about the year 600 AH, but this is not possible because it contains many titles that were written after that, such as the Bezels of Wisdom. Some scholars suggest that the Sheikh wrote this Index for his stepson and close student Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi, who copied it in his own script in 627 AH in Damascus, according to the Yusuf Agha 7838 manuscript, which is the oldest copy available in our hands, as we will see in section [ref:fihrist-qunawi shortly. There are also many other manuscripts, but they may differ slightly from each other due to the errors of transcription, as well as possible additions by some transcribers who sometimes add titles which the Sheikh may have authored after that date, or perhaps before that but he did not mention them, since he clearly stated that his statistic at that time was not exhaustive, and he listed only the books that he could remember in that hasten. As we shall see in section [ref:fihrist-mauscripts, the number of books mentioned in various manuscripts and editions ranges from 248 to 255 books, distributed on various topics such as Hadith, Interpretation, Mysteries and Realities.

The Greatest Sheikh divided these books roughly according to the subject, and he says that many of them were neither broadcast nor spread among people because he had deposited them with a person for an emergency matter, perhaps while traveling to the East, and that this person had not returned them yet, until the time of writing. However, it is noted that many of these books are now available and widespread. The sheikh also decides that this statistic for his books is not comprehensive, as he only mentioned those books that he could remember their titles at that time.

The Greatest Sheikh also specifies that some of these books were brought out to people, while others were not yet ripe for release, and most of those are from books on the science of Mysteries, most of which are also still missing. This also included the book “Fusus al-Hikam”: “the Bezels of Wisdom”, which some researchers inferred to the incorrectness of its attribution to Sheikh Muhyiddin, because it was not mentioned in the Meccan Revelations, even though it is clearly mentioned in the Index, which is available in the copy written by Sheikh Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi, which is the manuscript of Yusuf Agha No. 7838, and also it is mentioned in the Leave to the Triumphant King, as well as the Leave and Auditions of Al-Qunawi, as we shall see in Chapter II. For this reason, we find that those who deny the authenticity of the Fusus also object to the Index and the Leave, by questioning their attribution to the Sheikh, without the slightest logical reason, despite the presence of dozens of historical and modern manuscripts that confirm this.

1.1- The Authenticity of the Attribution of the Fihrist to Shaykh Muhyiddin

1.2- Available Manuscripts and Editions

1.3- Description of the al-Qunawi Copy and the Audition on It

1.4- The Number of Works Listed in the Fihrist

1.5- The Edited Text of the Fihrist