The Sun from the West: Volume Three

[The Sun that Never Sets]

(Volume III)
List of Books by the Greatest Master Muhyiddin Ibn Al-Arabi with the Fihrist and Ijazah

This study aims to identify the authentic works that can be attributed to the Greatest Sheikh Muhyiddin Ibn al-Arabi, and those that have been wrongly attributed to him. This is established through the critical study of the two treatises of the "Fihrist", or the "Index of Works", written by the Sheikh to one of his companions, before 627 AH / 1230 AD, and the "Ijazah", which is a Leave or Certificate that he wrote to the Triumphant King: al-Malik al-Mu岷揳ffar, son of the Ayyubid King Al-士A膩dil, in Damascus, in 632 AH / 1235 AD, in addition to the titles that he himself mentioned in the folds of his other famous confirmed books and some other authentic sources.

To complete this work correctly, it was necessary to study as many historical manuscripts of these treatises as possible, i.e. the Index and the Leave, as well as all previous editions and studies, and other related sources. For further documentation, we will affix to this study the full text of the hearings and certificates granted by Sheikh Muhyiddin to his stepson Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi, in which he mentions about forty books he read on his sheikh, or he read them on him, although most of those works were originally mentioned in the previous sources, but they add further assurances about the validity of the attribution of these books to their author Sheikh Muhyiddin, especially the book of Fusus al-Hikam: the Bezels of Wisdom, which may be questioned by some researchers and criticized due to the complexity of its topics and the audacity of its thesis.

In addition to the historical manuscripts of the Index and the Leave, and the previous editions of these two main sources, this study also draws on the vital research carried out by Osman Yahya, published in Damascus, in French, in 1964. However, after this critical study, new research have been published, and some new manuscripts have been revealed and examined, especially after the development in digitizing and publishing techniques, but these new finding are still scattered, and their results have not been collected in any book yet.

Please note that this electronic version is a pre-print. Updates will be also published on this website until the final book is ready for publication.