1.2 - Available Manuscripts and Editions

There are more than twenty manuscripts of the Index, including some old historical copies written in the time of Sheikh Muhyiddin, and read on him, and also approved by him. This confirms the validity of the attribution of this treatise to him, beyond any doubt, despite the existence of some minor differences between these manuscripts, especially those that are late. These differences may result from copying, thus changing or dropping some titles inadvertently by the transcribers, or perhaps adding some titles that have been written later, as we mentioned above. In all cases, the differences between the original copies do not exceed a few, while all copies begin and end with the same titles and in the same order.

In addition to these manuscripts, this index has been published over the five consecutive issues of the Journal of the Arab Assembly in Damascus, in numbers 3 and 4 of volume 29 of the year 1954, and numbers 1, 2 and 3 of volume 30 published in 1955, edited by Kurkis Awwad, the director of the Iraqi Museum in Baghdad, based on a late manuscript in his possession, which was written on 1337 AH, but he says that it is copied from an old manuscript dated 689 AH. Awwad's edition contains 248 works, then he added to it other titles that he collected from various sources, and he published them in the so-called al-Mustadrak: the Appendix, which form the two sources upon which Osman Yahya heavily depended.

At about the same time, the Index was published in Cairo by Abuul-Ula Afifi, in issue number 8 of the Journal of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Alexandria, published in December of the year 1954, on two parts, from pages 109 to 117, and 189 to 207. He depended on the manuscript copy written in the year 689 AH, and it is perhaps the same as the original version from which the above anonymous manuscript, in the possession of Awwad, was copied, as we will mention it shortly.

In his counting of Sheikh Muhyiddin's books, Yahya depended on the Awwad's edition, in addition to al-Mustadrak, thus excluding Afifi's publication, because he believed that he did not specify the manuscripts on which he depended. But Afifi mentioned this in the second part of his publication in the same magazine that Osman Yahya might not have seen, so he chose to rely on Awwad's copy. As a result of close examination, we find that the Afifi's edition is more accurate and is very close to the original manuscript that was written by Sheikh Sadr al-Din Al-Qunawi, which is the oldest, but with slight differences that we will mention shortly. At the same time, there are essential differences between the edition of Awwad and this original version, as we will mention as well.

Also, a copy of this Index appeared in the book “The Title of Know-how in Those Known Scholars in the Seventh Century in Bejaia”, written by the Imam and Judge Abu Al-Abbas Ahmad Al-Ghubrini, known as Sidi Bel-Abbas al-Zawawi (d. 704 AH), edited by “Adel Noueihed”, and published in Beirut in 1969, then republished in 1979. This copy of the Index that was published within this book is also based on a manuscript dating back to 689 AH, and it is preserved in Al-Asfiyya Library in Hyderabad, under No. 140, and the author states that it is copied from the original which was written in the Sheikh's hand in the year 632 AH.

IN the following, we give a list of the most important manuscripts of the Index, arranged by date of transcription. We have seen and examined most of them and compared them, thanks to the honorable brother Abu Ahmed Muhammad Kabir al-Ansari, who provided us with many of them and gave invaluable information through lengthy discussions and important notes on the interrelated origins of Sheikh Muhyiddin's books and their various manuscripts:

1. - In the collection of Yusuf Agha 7838 (or 5624 according to older catalogs), from page 188b to 193b. This copy was written by Sadr Al-Din Al-Qunawi, and it was revised and approved by Sheikh Muhyiddin after minor correction as notes on the margins. It also includes a hearing certified by him and dated in the month of Safar in the year 627 AH / January 1230 AD. This collection survived as part of the group of manuscripts that were preserved in the Al-Qunawi private library in Konya, with a Waqf, trust or endowment, notation at the front of the collection, as shown in the figure[ref:fihristqunawiwaqf below. However, it is clear that this copy was written in two phases, the first is up to the book of “Fusus al-Hikam”, then it was completed in a slightly different script, mostly it belongs to the same transcriber, but it appears to have been written in a hurry, with the same pen, but the ink in the first part is more intense than in the second part, and it has some corrections were scripted with the same pen, perhaps after review, for being duplicates. This collection also contains a set of auditions and leaves for Sheikh Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi and it is certified by Sheikh Muhyiddin, as we will mention it in its entirety in chapter II, after the completion of the Index in this chapter. In total, the collection contains 18 texts dated between 629 AH and 651 AH, nine of them by Ibn al-Arabi, in addition to the oldest known version of Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s Dīwān.

[Image of the endowment on the first page of the Yusuf Agha 7838 manuscript]Image of the endowment on the first page of Yusuf Agha 7838 manuscript, according to which this collection was preserved in the private library of al-Qunawi in his Mosque in Konya.

2. - The collection of Beyazid 3750, from page 435 to 437a, which appears to have been copied in Aleppo in the year 682 AH, based on the history of other manuscripts found in the same volume. We have not been able to examine this manuscript.

3. - The Asafia Library in Hyderabad, collection No. 140, which was written in 689 AH, reproduced based on the original in the hand of Sheikh Muhyiddin, written in the year 632 AH. We have not seen this copy, but it is the one Afifi depended on in his above-mentioned edition, so we will compare it with it.

4. - The collection of Haraccioglu No. 801, from page 86b to 87b, and it is written in the year 879 AH, according to other manuscripts in the same volume which contains six works by Ibn al-Arabi. However, some parts are in poor condition with many smudges and darkened pages, although the text is clear and well-laid out.

5. - The collection of Shehid Ali No. 1344, from page 153a to 156a, which is a good and clear copy, written on 949 AH, and the copyist is Muhammad Ibn Abdul-Aal Ibn Ali Al-Nahwani, according to notes found on other pages of the same collection which contains 20 works by Ibn al-Arabi, Sadruddin al-Qunawi and others.

6. - The collection of Shehid Ali No. 2717, from page 44b to 47b, and it is written in Makkah Al-Mukarramah on 977 AH, according to other manuscripts found in the same collection that also contain the first part of the Leave that we will mention in chapter IV. It has some pages missing from the end.

7. - The collection of Karacelebizade No. 345, from page 92b to 97, and it was written in 980 AH, but we have not seen it.

8.- The collection at Harvard University No. 1605-225 from page 438 to 449, dating back to the tenth century AH.

9. - The collection of Hamidiye Library No. 188, from page 139b to 142a, which is reproduced from the above-mentioned Yusuf Agha 7838 manuscript, in the year 1008 AH, based on the date of other manuscripts present in the same volume which contains more than 40 treatises, mostly by Sheikh al-Islam Ibn Kamāl Pāsha (d. 940 AH). This copy also contains the hearings by Sadruddin as mentioned in the original, which are about forty titles added after the end of the text, as we will mention them in chapter II.

10. - The collection of Haci Mahmud No. 6355, from page 1a to 6a, which is copied from the above Hamidiye manuscript No. 188, and therefore after the year 1008 AH. The titles in copy are numbered, but there are errors in the numbering resulting from counting some books as two titles. For example, in the book of “(28) al-Maḥajja al-Bayḍā: the White Banner”, where the Sheikh mentioned that he is still writing in the third volume: “and I am in the Book of Friday, of it”. So the transcriber counted “the Book of Friday” as if it is a new title. Also, this copy contains the Leave to al-Qunawi with the books that he read on his Sheikh, as we shall mention in Chapter II.

11- The collection of Feyzullah Ef. No. 2119, from page 13 to 18, dated 1088 AH, according to other manuscripts found in the same volume.

12. - The collection at King Ibn Saud University No. 3189, from page 1 to 10, which is a good but incomplete copy, and the transcriber is Ahmed bin Hassan Al-Ustawani, who copied it in Damascus in 1314 AH, and this also includes the Leave to the Triumphant King, which we will mention shortly in chapter IV.

13- The collection Veliyuddin No. 1794, from page 1a to 5a, written in 1123 AH, so it is recent copy that we have not seen.

14. - The collection at King Ibn Saud University No. 1296, from page 1 to 7, written in 1135 AH, based on the date of another manuscript found in the same volume.

15. An anonymous copy that was held by Kurkis Awwad, as we mentioned above, and it is dated 1337 AH. According to this copy, he published his research mentioned above. This copy was unique in a strange phrase at its end, which states that Sheikh Muhyiddin says that one of his enthusiasts has counted for him over four thousand titles, and because of the limited time and preoccupation he mentioned only a little over two hundred in this treatise! There is no such phrase in any other manuscript, and since this copy is late and unidentified, it is most likely that this addition was made by some scribes out of their admiration to the Greatest Sheikh, so they exaggerated the number to this extent. We have not seen this manuscript, but we compared with the edition of Awwad which depended on it.

16. - A collection in the Egyptian Book House, under No. 340 collections, from page 2b to 8a, which is a late but reproduced version of the original, which is in al-Qunawi's hand, as shown at the top of page 2a.

17.- The collection in King Ibn Saud University, under No. 1272, from 29b to 33b, which is a good copy written in clear modern but undated script.

18. - The collection at the University of Istanbul, under No. 1468. We have not seen this manuscript.

19. - The collection of Asaad Effendi No. 1420. We have not seen this manuscript.

20. - The collection of Haci Mahmud No. 2718, from 44b to 49b, and it is undated. We have not seen this manuscript.

As an example of the substantial errors that can occur due to transcription, the transcriber often reads some words incorrectly and then rounds them to the form that he conceives as correct, which can completely change the original context. In the copy of Al-Qunawi of his Leave, which we will translate in full in chapter II shortly, Sheikh Muhyiddin says: “The virtuous, righteous, good, wise, and well-informed son, Sadr al-Din Muhammad, the son of the sympathetic companion, the late Majduddin Ishaq ibn Muhammad ibn Ali ibn Yusuf al-Qunawi, may Allah conciliate him - and he is the author of this script above ...", as stated on page 347b of the Yusuf Agha manuscript 7838. However, we find this last phrase on page 6b of the Haci Mahmoud 6355 manuscript, which is copied from Hamidiye 188, which is again copied from Yusuf Agha 7838, but in Haci Mahmoud 6355 it reads: “the late Majduddin Ishaq ibn Muhammad ibn Ali ibn Yusuf al-Qunawi ... the possessor of this tomb”, which then means that this copy of the Leave was written in Konya, in front of the tomb of Sheikh Ishaq al-Qunawi! The problem is that the handwriting in the modern copy is better than the original, so any transcriber who comes after this can prefer the clearer copy and take it without referring to the original, especially if this is not possible for him, or if the original is missing. Such errors can easily explain the difference between the titles of some works in the Index and the Leave, and the difference in the name of the licensed King as we will see when we talk about the Triumphant King's Leave in Chapter IV.