Al Buni
Al Buni
Al Buni
NOTES ON THE
PRODUCTION, TRANSMISSION, AND RECEPTION OF
THE MAJOR WORKS OF AMAD AL-BN*
Noah Gardiner
JAIS
major works of the medieval Bnian corpus, with a proposal that five of
these works can be attributed most securely to al-Bn; 3) a discussion of the
spread of Bnian works between the 8th/14th and 10th/16th centuries; and 4)
evidence that the work through which al-Bn is best known, Shams al-
ONLINE
marif al-kubr, is in significant ways a product of the early 11th/17th
century, and that at least two lines of teachers claimed for al-Bn in this
work were plagiarized from the works of Abd al-Ramn al-Bism. It is
argued that the tenor of al-Bns teachings and the history of their reception
have been broadly misunderstood due to reliance on printed editions and a
modern scholarly disinclination to regard the occult sciences as a serious
topic of inquiry. It ends with a call for more complete integration of
manuscript studies into the broader field of Islamic historical studies.
Introduction
In both popular and scholarly imaginations there exists an image of the
book of magic, the grimoire, as a tome of dubious authorship filled
with strange glyphs, secret alphabets, and unpronounceable names. It is
often given as an artifact possessed of an aura of menace, something
dangerous to have from a social, legal, or even soterial standpoint. As the
Europeanist medievalist Richard Kieckhefer puts it, [a] book of magic is
also a magical book, 1 and thus a potential source of spiritual and
* Research for this article was made possible by generous funding from a
number of entities within the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, including the
Medieval and Early Modern Studies Program, the Rackham Graduate School,
and the Department of Near Eastern Studies. Special thanks are due to my
adviser Alexander Knysh for his patient support of my strange interests, and to
many others.
82 Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 12 (2012)
1
Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites, 4.
2
Ibid., 6.
3 Acts 19:19.
4 Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites, 67.
5 Or some variant thereof, particularly ams al-marif wa-laif al-awrif,
although this should not be confused with the medieval work of that name,
regarding which see the second section of this paper. In his recent entry on al-
Bn in Enclopaedia of Islam, 3rd ed., Constant Hams notes that there have
been scores of printed editions since around the turn of the twentieth century,
mostly emanating from Cairo and Beirut.
6 Davies, Grimoires, 27.
7 For an excellent examination of the occult science of letters, see Denis
11
The University of Leiden manuscript studies scholar Jan Just Witkam has
recently coined the term corpus Bnianum to describe the chaotic wealth of
Bnian material that survives in manuscripts, a reference to similar appellations
for large bodies of occult writings considered to be of questionable/multiple
authorship, e.g. the corpora Hermeticum and birianum. He proposes that the
Bnian corpus is the product of the work of several generations of practicing
magicians, who arranged al-Bns work and thought probably while mixing
these with elements of their own works (Witkam, Gazing at the Sun, 183). The
Mamlkist Robert Irwin presents a strong version of a multiple-authorship
hypothesis in a recent review article, stating: It seems likely that the ascription
of writings to [al-Bn] was intended to suggest the nature of their contents rather
than indicate their actual authorship; that [a]l-Buni, like Jabir ibn Hayyan, was
used as a label for an occult genre; and that the writings of both these semi-
legendary figures were almost certainly produced by many anonymous authors
(Irwin, Review of Magic and Divination in Early Islam, 107).
12 Research for this project has involved examination of the digital or
major works of the medieval Bnian corpus; that is to say, those texts
that appear numerous times in medieval codices or are otherwise of
obvious importance, and which largely have been kept in the shadows by
the scholarly focus on ams al-marif al-kubr. It argues that five of
these works are most reliably attributable to al-Bn himself, and
discusses what may have been the important role of readers interests in
shaping the corpus. The third concerns the spread and reception of the
corpus in the eighth/fourteenth through tenth/sixteenth centuries, and
includes discussions of means through which works were transmitted, a
sketch of some of the elite social networks in which Bnian works
flourished during this period (including the neo-Iwn al-af), and the
legality of codices bearing Bnian works. The fourth concerns ams al-
marif al-kubr, the work on which so much of al-Bns modern
reputation is based. It addresses the apparent emergence of this work in
its best-known form in the eleventh/seventeenth century, and examines
the origins of some of the chains of transmission (asnd) that are alleged
in the work to be al-Bns.
Al-Bns life and death
One of the enduring problems in the study of al-Bn is a lack of reliable
biographical information. He is absent from the medieval biographical
dictionaries except for a largely unreliable tarama in Taq l-Dn al-
Maqrzs (d. 845/1442) unfinished biographical work, al-Muqaff al-
kabr.14 The entry for him in the Egyptian scholar Abd al-Raf al-
Manws (d. 1021/1631) turn-of-the-eleventh/seventeenth-century Sufi
abaqt work contains no biographical information. 15 In the vast
majority of medieval manuscripts his name is given as Ab l-Abbs
Amad b. Al b. Ysuf al-Qura l-Bn, with his fathers name
sometimes elaborated as al-ay al-muqr Ab l-asan Al. Various
honorifics often precede al-Bns name in titlepages and opening
formulae, such as al-ay, al-imm, etc., and frequently also t al-dn
(crown of religion), ihb al-dn (brand of religion), muy l-dn (reviver
14
This tarama has only recently been brout to my attention, and, to the
best of my knowledge, has not been adduced in previous Western scholarship on
al-Bn. Although I believe the biographical information it contains to be
incorrect (starting with an erroneous rendering of al-Bns name), it is of great
interest nonetheless, and I plan to discuss it in detail in a separate article. For a
printed edition see Kitb al-Muqaff al-kabr, ed. Yalw, 1: 7503.
15 Al-Manw, al-Kawkib al-durriyya, 2: 38. For a discussion of entries on
20
Ibid., 595.
21
According to Gril, [b]etween Ibn Masarra and Ibn Arab, al-Andalus was
probably never without a master in the science of letters. Gril, The Science of
Letters, 1401.
22 Morris, An Arab Machiavelli?, 256, 271ff., 279; Chodkiewicz, Toward
al-Arf, two prominent ays who may have been assassinated by the
Almoravids in 536/1141, perhaps due to their growing political
influence;24 and Ibn Qas, a Sufi ay who took the extraordinary step of
declaring himself Imm and entering into open rebellion against the
Almoravids in the Algarve, an adventure that ended with his
assassination in 546/1151. 25 The precise impact of the Almohad
revolution on Western Sufism requires further study, but suffice it to say
that a prudent esotericist Sufi might have thought it best to decamp
eastward. Of course, Cairos appeal as a major economic and intellectual
capital whose foreign military elites were generous with their patronage
and protection of exotic Sufi masters may have been sufficient incentive
in itself for migration.26
Most other details of al-Bns life remain obscure, and even the date
of his death is open to question. For the latter, the date of 622/1225 is
given at several places in alfas Kaf al-unn, although
630/123233 is given in one entry.27 No earlier source corroborating
either date has yet been discovered. Modern scholarship has generally
accepted the earlier date, although many scholars have expressed serious
reservations on account of dates and people mentioned in certain Bnian
texts which would suggest a later date (discussed below). However, on
the basis of some of the transmission paratexts surveyed for this article it
now at least can be established that al-Bn flourished in Cairo in
622/1225 as a revered Sufi ay.
The primary cluster of evidence to this effect is a series of paratexts
not previously adduced in scholarship on al-Bn. The first of these is an
authorial colophon for the work Ilm al-hud reproduced identically in
three eighth/fourteenth-century codices: Sleymaniye MS Hamidiye
260.1 (copied in Damascus in 772/1370), Beyazid MS 1377 (copied in
773/1371), and Sleymaniye MS Kl Ali Paa 588 (copied in
792/1390). In this authorial colophon al-Bn states that he began Ilm
al-hud in the first part of l-Qada of 621, finishing it some weeks
later on 27 l-ia in the same year, and that this occurred on the
Mysticism, 91929.
25 Ibid.; also Dreher, Das Imamat, passim.
26 On Cairene foreign military elites enthusiasm for exotic Sufis, see Knysh,
Ibn Arab, 4958. For a discussion of Western Sufis who took refuge in
Damascus, see Pouzet, Marbins Damas, passim.
27 For the 622 date, see, for example, the entry on ams al-marif wa-laif
28
Sleymaniye MS Hamidiye 260.1, fol. 239b.
29
Sleymaniye MS Reid efendi 590.2, fol. 130b. The date of copying for
the set is in the colophon of 590.1, on fol. 64b.
30 Sleymaniye MS Reid efendi 590.2, fol. 130b.
31 BnF MS arabe 2658, fol. 90a.
Noah Gardiner 91
This cluster of paratexts reveals at least two important points. The first
is that al-Bn was indeed alive and composing two of his major works
in 621 and early 622. The second is that both of these works were
auditioned in sessions at the Qarfa cemetary on the outskirts of Cairo
over the course of Rab al-awwal of 622. Book-audition (sam)
sessionswhich are not to be confused with the meditative scripture
and/or poetry recitation practices of the same name also common among
some Sufiswere gatherings at which a work was read aloud before the
author, or someone in a line of transmission from the author, thereby
inducting the auditors into the line of transmission for that work. 32
Neither of these references to audition sessions states explicitly that al-
Bn presided over them, but there are strong reasons to conclude that
this was the case. The typical formula for an audition certificate is:
samia h l-kitb al al-ay fulanin fulnun wa-fulnun, with the
presiding ay (the grammatical object of samia al) ideally being the
author of the work being heard or someone in a direct line of
transmission from the author, and the other named individuals (the
grammatical subjects) being the auditors who are gaining admittance to
the line of transmission of the work through the audition, and who are
thereby granted the authority to teach and further transmit the work.33
The statement copied in BnF MS arabe 2658, however, gives the names
only of two of the auditors (al-q l-adal al-li al-zhid q l-
fuqar wa-umdat al-ula Umar b. Ibrhm and his son Ibrhm)
while omitting the name of the presiding ay. Meanwhile, as mentioned
above, the statement in Sleymaniye MS Reid efendi 590.2 states of the
prime exemplar only that alayh sam al-muannif wa-auhu, i.e.
that it bore an audition certificate (sam) from the muannif (author or
copyist) and his signature (auhu). The omissions in these statements of
the precise identity of the presiding ay leave room for varying
interpretations, but the most likely one, in my estimation, given the
proximity of the dates and place of composition to those of the audition
sessions, is that al-Bn himself presided over these sessions.
The fact that some of al-Bns works were being auditioned in Cairo
at this time is valuable in assessing his standing among Egyptian Sufis,
and the image of an audition session among a group of Sufis gathered in
the Qarfa cemetary is compelling. In his study of medieval tomb
visitation practices, Christopher Taylor characterizes the Qarfa, as a
place of ancient sanctity that played an extraordinary role in the social
and moral economy of medieval Cairene urban space, a liminal zone of
social mixing and collective religious practice that was enticingly
beyond the reach of the ulam.34 If al-Bns teachings were indeed
fringe according to many ulam of the time, then this choice of
location may have been a reflection of that situation. Although the
majority of the scholarship on book-audition practices has focused on
their use in transmitting ad collections, book-audition was employed
across a variety of scientific (ilm) traditions, religious and natural-
philosophical. It functioned as a means not only of transmitting works
accurately, but also of ritually passing on the authority to teach and
utilize their contents. As pietistic events, book-audition sessions grew
during the Ayybid period to have a great deal of appeal even among
non-scholars,35 and Erik Ohlander recently has argued that they were
also a key aspect of Ab afs Umar al-Suhrawards (d. 632/1234)
strategies for legitimizing arqa Sufism in sixth/twelfth and early
seventh/thirteenth-century Baghdad.36 While al-Bn was certainly no
Ab afs, the fact that he was able to command an audience for an
audition of his freshly composed works strongly suggests that he was a
respected Sufi ay at the height of his powers in 622/1225. That he was
even regarded as a saint by some residents of the city, at least
eventually, is shown by the mention of the location of his tomb in Ibn al-
Zayyts Kawkib al-sayyra, which indicates that it was a site of
veneration in the centuries after his death. Furthermore, as Hams has
recently noted, a note in Latin from 1872 on a flyleaf of BnF MS arabe
2647 (ams al-marif wa-laif al-awrif) suggests that al-Bns
tomb was still a ceremonial site in the latter half of the nineteenth
34
Taylor, In the Vicinity of the Righteous, 568.
35
On non-scholarly participation in audition sessions, see Dickinson, Ibn
al al-Shahrazr passim. On the closely related topic of ritual and even
magical uses of ad works, see Brown, The Canonization of al-Buari and
Muslim, 33548.
36 Ohlander, Sufism in an Age of Transition, 535. Cf. Osman Yahias
37 BnF MS arabe 2647, upper flyleaf: Hic vir apud Mohamedanos non solum
doctrina sed etiam pietate insignis perhibetur, eiusque sepulchrum religionis
causa visitatur. Vulgo Sheikh Albouni illum appellant. See Constant Hams, al-
Bn, Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd ed.
38 On the use of paratexts as sources by premodern bio/bibliographical
49
Sleymaniye MS Hamidiye 260, fol. 239b. The works in question are
Kitb Mawqt al-bair wa-laif al-sarir; Kitb Taysr al-awrif f tal
ams al-marif; Kitb Asrr al-adwr wa-takl al-anwr; Kitb Y al-tarf
wa-hullat(?) al-tarf; Rislat Y al-waw wa-qf al-y wa-l-ayn wa-l-nn,
and Kitb al-Laif al-aara. The first, third, and last of these receive one-line
mentions in Kaf al-unn, although to the best of my knowledge no manuscript
copies of them have been located.
Noah Gardiner 97
and technical vocabulary, although each has its particular foci. The
science of letters permeates all of them to varying degrees, but
instructions for making and using talismans are included in only two:
ams al-marif wa-laif al-awrif and Laif al-irt f l-urf al-
ulwiyyt, while the other three works deal to a greater extent with
matters more traditionally found in Sufi literature and other pietistic
genres. Hidyat al-qidn wa-nihyat al-wiln and Mawqif al-yt
f asrr al-riyt are both relatively short works (typically 30 to 40 folia
depending on the number of lines per page) that primarily discuss topics
immediately identifiable as Sufi theory and practice. Hidyat al-qidn
establishes various stages of spiritual accomplishment, with a ranking of
aspirants into three basic groups, slikn (seekers), murdn (adherents),
and rifn (gnostics). Mawqif al-yt f asrr al-riyt deals mainly
with practices such as ritual seclusion (alwa), but also touches upon
matters taken up at length in the many of the other core works, such as
prophetology, metaphysics/cosmology, the invisible hierarchy of the
saints, and the natures of such virtual actors as angels, devils, and inn.
Many of those topics are discussed at greater length in Ilm al-hud wa-
asrr al-ihtid f ar asm Allh al-usn, a large work (250 folia on
average) structured as a discussion of the names of God, with each
section devoted to a single divine name and each name marking a distinct
station (maqma) in a Sufis progress.
The statements and stories of a host of sober Sufi and quasi-Sufi
authorities posthumously well-regarded in al-Bns lifetime are cited in
these works, such as those of Ibrhm b. Aam (d. 161/77778), Marf
al-Kar (d. 200/81516), Bir al-f (d. 226/840 or 227/84142), Ab
l-usayn al-Nr (d. 295/907), al-unayd al-Badd (d. 298/910), Ab
Abd al-Ramn al-Sulam (d. 412/1021), Ab Al al-Daqqq (d.
405/1015), and al-Daqqqs best-known student, Abd al-Karm al-
Quayr (d. 465/1072). A number of somewhat more risqu figures
associated with speculative mysticism and/or drunken Sufism are
referenced frequently as well, including Ab Yazd al-Bism (261/874
or 264/877-8), l-Nn al-Mir (d. 246/861), and Ab Bakr al-ibl (d.
334/945). Some statements and stretches of poetry attributed to the
famously controversial al-Manr al-all (d. 309/922) are discussed
near the end of Hidyat al-qidn, while al-allas great interpreter
and redactor Ibn aff al-irz (d. 371/982) and Ibn affs disciple Ab
l-asan Al b. Muammad al-Daylam53 (d. ca. 392/1001) are both
53
Regarding al-Daylam, see Meisami (ed.), Encyclopedia of Arabic
Literature, 1: 1856.
Noah Gardiner 99
Barrans work.
56 alfa, Kaf, 1033.
57 Elmore, ay Abd al-Aziz al-Mahdawi, 611.
58 The copies of Hidyat al-qidn and Mawqif al-yt consulted for
constructing the chart of intertextual references above are bound together as the
first two works of the compilatory codex Sleymaniye MS Ayasofya 2160. All
the works in the codex are in a single hand, and a terminus ante quem for the
date of its production can be set at the year 914/15089 due to a dated
ownership notice on fol. 1a, but it is probably considerably older.
100 Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 12 (2012)
austerely beautiful codex with only fifteen lines of text per page.
Probably of Egyptian origin, it is undated but almost certainly comes
from the eighth/fourteenth century too. The high production values of
many of these undoubtedly expensive codices of Ilm al-hud bespeak a
work that, at least in certain circles, was quite highly regarded, which
makes its apparent decline in popularity all the more striking. For no
other work in the corpus are there such disproportionate numbers of early
copies over later ones. Indeed, as shown in the table at the end of this
article, the surviving codices of other medieval Bnian works suggest
that they were copied far more frequently in the ninth/fifteenth century
than in the preceding ones. It is possible that this decline reflects shifting
tastes among readers and producers of Bnian works, and I would
suggest that it may have been due to the relative lack of practically
oriented occult-scientific material in Ilm al-hud, a factor that also may
account for the relative paucity of copies of Hidyat al-qidn and
Mawqif al-yt. The works of the medieval corpus that remain to be
discussed contain a good deal more material that can be characterized as
occult-scientific with a practical bent, and also boast a greater numbers
of surviving copies.
Of the five core works, the two with the greatest abundance of
practical occult-scientific material are ams al-marif wa-laif al-
awrif and Laif al-irt f l-urf al-ulwiyyt. As the table shows,
the number of surviving copies suggests that they were more widely
copied than the other three core works, and ams al-marif far more so
than Laif al-irt. It is a point of interest that the two were sometimes
conflated. BnF MS arabe 6556, a copy of Laif al-irt copied in
781/1380, has a titlepage (probably original to the codex) bearing the
name ams al-marif al-ur wa-laif al-awrif, while Sleymaniye
MS Ayasofya 2799, a copy of Laif al-irt copied in 861/1457, is
simply titled ams al-marif. Sleymaniye MS Ayasofya 2802, an
undated but most likely ninth/fifteenth-century copy of Laif al-irt,
is declared on its opening leaf to be the book ams al-marif of which
no [other] copy exists, with a further claim that this copy is not the one
found among the people, and in it are bonuses and additions to make it
complete (Kitb ams al-marif allati laysa li-nusatih wud wa-
hihi al-nusa laysa [sic!] hiyya al-nusa allat mawda bayna al-ns
wa-fh fawid wa-zawid al al-tamm).59 One suspects this note
was penned by a bookseller with enough experience in peddling Bnian
60 This notion appears to have originated fairly early in the career of the
corpus, as evidenced by the title ams al-marif al-ur wa-laif al-awrif
having been assigned to BnF MS arabe 6556 in the eighth/fourteenth century.
To the best of my knowledge, the first bibliographical notice mentioning three
redactions of ams al-marif is al-Manws entry on al-Bn in al-Kawkib al-
durriyya f tarim al-srat al-fiyya, a work completed in 1011/16023,
although al-Manw mentions only that short, medium, and long versions exist,
without giving incipits or other clues as to their contents (2: 38). H alfa,
writing a few decades after al-Manw, does not list three versions of ams al-
marif in Kaf al-unn, although he does include a very brief entry for a work
called Ful ams al-marif al-kubr, which he says is perhaps ams al-
marif (laallahu ams al-marif) (1270), and he makes a passing reference
to ams al-marif al-kubr in the entry for Ibn alas al-Durr al-munaam f
sirr al-aam (734). The notion of three redactions has since been taken up by
many modern scholars, beginning with a 1930 essay by Hans Winkler (see
bibliography).
61 Such as Sleymaniye MS Ayasofya 2799, discussed in the previous
paragraph.
62 This is the text that averages around 120 folia in length and begins with
the incipit (following the basmala): al-amd li-llh alla alaa ams al-marif
min ayb al-ayb, or some close variation thereof.
63 Thus, BnF MS arabe 6556 is actually Laif al-irt, while Harvard MS
64 I know of three codices bearing the title ams al-marif al-wus. Two of
these are probably of eleventh/seventeenth century origin, and of these two one
is a fragment and the other contains the same text found in the numerous
medieval copies with no size-appellation. I have no basis upon which to
comment on the third, Tunis MS 7401.
65 This is BnF MS arabe 2649 (copied in Cairo in 913/1508). That the al-
kubr may have been added to the titlepage at a later date (perhaps by a
bookseller?) is indicated by the fact that it is written in smaller letters, tucked in
above the leftmost end of the rest of the title.
66 The story begins with a holy man in Aleppo who has a vision of a
arabe, 230231), have expressed the hope that Manisa MS 45 HK 1445 might
be the earliest surviving copy of ams al-marif, due to a catalog entry that
lists it as a copy of that work and notes that its colophon is dated AH 618.
Unfortunately for those who had anticipated that it might be the magic bullet in
resolving the issues discussed above, the codex in fact bears the title (in the
copyists hand) Kitb ums li-l-rif laif al-irt and the text is that of
Laif al-irt rather than ams al-marif. Furthermore, while the colophon
indeed does appear to say 618, the possibility of this being accurate is obviated
by an anecdote from 621 mentioned in the text (on fol. 38a, in this particular
codex). The date is written in HindiArabic numerals rather than spelled out in
full, as is more common in colophons. Unless this was a particularly clumsy
attempt to backdate a codex, it must be assumed to be either a slip of the pen or
a peculiar regional letterform for the initial number, which should perhaps be
read as an eight or a nine instead of a six. A physical inspection of the codex
yields no indication that it is especially old. The text is copied in an Eastern
hand, i.e. one with Persianate tendencies, quite unlike the Syro-Egyptian hands
that predominate among the great majority of early Bnian codices. The fact
Noah Gardiner 105
that the support is an Oriental laid paper rather than a European one suggests
that it quite possibly was produced prior to the end of the ninth/fifteenth
century, although it is far from probative. Perhaps the most interesting item to
note about Manisa MS 45 HK 1445 is that the full name given to al-Bn on the
titlepage is quite unique, granting him descent from al-Imm Al b. Ab lib.
72 BnF MS arabe 2658, fol. 3ab.
73 Regarding the role of this ad in Astarbds thought see Bashir,
Fazlallah Astarabadi and the Hurufis, 69 ff. To the best of my knowledge this
likely connection to al-Bn has not been noted by modern scholars of
rufism.
106 Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 12 (2012)
juncture (barza) between the Creator and his creation from whence the
worlds unfold.77 To the best of my knowledge, Ibn Arab put down in
writing his cosmological conception of al-am only in al-Futt al-
Makkiyya and Fu al-ikam, neither of which are thought to have been
disseminated widely until after Ibn Arabs death in 638/1240. Thus,
given the 622/1225 dating of the audition notice for Laif al-irt
cited above, this would not appear to be a case of al-Bn borrowing
from Ibn Arab, short of positing an undocumented living relationship
between the two. Given that their systems are quite similar on certain
points but hardly identical, it well could be an instance in which the
influence of al-Mahdaw on both men can be detected.
As mentioned previously, the remaining three major medieval works
are distinguished primarily by their omission from the inter-referential
circuit that binds together the other five. While this in no way
disqualifies them from having been authored by al-Bn, it does deny
them the link to al-Bn that a reference in Laif al-irt or Ilm al-
hud would provide. As measured by the number of surviving copies, al-
Luma al-nrniyya f awrd al-rabbniyya is by far the most important
of these works, and one of the most important works of the corpus as a
whole. The survey for this project found forty copies of the work, not all
of them complete. One survives from the seventh/thirteenth century
(Chester Beatty MS 3168.5), and the greatest number come from the
ninth/fifteenth century. As with many of the other works, certain of these
codices are professionally copied and fully vocalized, suggesting that the
work was prized by some. It is in four parts:
1) a collection of invocatory prayers keyed to each hour of each day of
the week, with brief commentaries on the operative functioning of the
names of God that appear in each prayer;
2) a division of the names of God in ten groupings (anm) of names
the actions of which in the world are closely related;
3) a further series of invocatory prayers for when various religious
holidays, such as the Night of Destiny (laylat al-qadr), fall on a given
day of the week, and
4) instructions for the composition of awfq. The whole is conceived
as a comment on the Greatest Name of God (al-ism al- aam) and is
organized according to the proposition that the Greatest Name is
situationally relative; that is to say, it could be any of the known divine
77 For references to the topic in Ibn Arabs writings see Chittick, Sufi Path
of Knowledge, 1257; Hakm, al-Muam al-f, 8206; Ebstein and Sviri,
The So-Called Rislat al-urf, 2214.
108 Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 12 (2012)
Nonetheless, the earliest surviving copy found in the survey for this
project was copied into the compilatory codex Sleymaniye MS
Hamidiye 260 (copied in 772/1370) alongside Ilm al-hud, the most
obviously pious-seeming of al-Bns works, which suggests that at least
some medieval actors perceived no irreconcilable contradiction between
them. The text of this work seems particularly unstable across various
copies, and that it was often designated as a notebook (talqa) might
suggest that it was an unfinished work, or at least that it was regarded as
such.
Finally, the short work Qabs al-iqtid il wafq al-sada wa-nam
al-ihtid is somewhat tame in comparison to Tartb al-daawt,
although, as the title implies, it does contain instructions on the devising
and use of awfq. The fact that the earliest dated copies of this work are
from the ninth/fifteenth century calls its authorship into question more so
than the others. It cites the famed Maghrib ay Ab Madyan (d.
594/1197), with whom al-Mahdaw was affiliated, as well as Ab Abd
Allh al-Qura (d. 599/1202), another disciple of Ab Madyan, and al-
Quras own student Ab l-Abbs al-Qatalln (d. 636/1238).80 If the
work is authentic to al-Bn then the mentions of these Western Sufis
may hint at some further details of his life and training, although he
claims no direct connection to them. As discussed in the fourth section of
this paper, these ays also appear in some of the asnd alleged to be al-
Bns in ams al-marif al-kubr, although it is far more likely that
Qabs al-iqtid was the source of these names rather than that the two
works can be taken as independently corroborating one another.
In closing this survey of the major works of the medieval corpus, it
must be noted that the general observation made here that occult-
scientific themes predominate over Sufistic ones in some works (and
vice-versa in others) is in no way intended to suggest that clear divisions
between these categories are instantiated in al-Bns writings, or that
there is any indication that some works of the medieval corpus were
originally intended for Sufis while others were intended for occultists.
To the contrary, the themes typically are integrated seamlessly in
medieval Bnian writings, such that a division between them is a matter
of second-order analysis rather than something native to the texts. That
important interpreters of al-Bn such as Abd al-Ramn al-Bism
viewed the science of letters as a rationally cultivable path to achieve
the same knowledge of the divine and of the cosmos that was attainable
Indeed, it is made clear at many points in the medieval corpus that for al-
Bn the science of letters was the science of the saints, and thus a
secret teaching at the heart of Sufism rather than a separate or auxiliary
body of knowledge.
That there was a process of selection on the part of readers of Bnian
works in favor of material with a practical occultscientific bent is
suggested by the predominance of copies of ams al-marif, al-Luma
al-nrniyya, and (to a lesser extent) Laif al-irt and Tartb al-
daawt among surviving ninth/fifteenth-century codices, and by the
lesser numbers of copies of Ilm al-hud, Hidyat al-qidn, and
Mawqif al-yt in the same period although it must be admitted that
this could be due in whole or in part to accidents of survival and
limitations in the data gathered for this project. As discussed in the
following sections, certain trends in the reading of al-Bn alongside
other Sufi writers, especially Ibn Arab, bolster the notion of a process
of selection along these lines, as does the form taken by ams al-marif
81 Fleischer, Ancient Wisdom and New Sciences, 234. Cf. Gril, sotrisme
contre hrsie, 186.
82 For an excellent overview of the contours of this debate, see the section
tudraku ba al-ulm wa-l tudraku ill bi-sirr al-inya amm bi- ay min
asrr al-ilq aw ay min asrr al-way aw ay min asrr al-kaf aw naw
min anw al-muabt wa-m ad hihi al-aqsm al-arbaa fa-ad nafs l
fidata fhi. BnF MS arabe 2658, fol. 89b.
Noah Gardiner 111
85 Homerin, From Arab Poet to Muslim Saint, 5577. For broader studies of
the interactions of military elites and Arab scholars, Sufis, and bureaucrats, see
the works by Chamberlain and Berkey listed in the bibliography.
114 Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 12 (2012)
Sciences.
90 Karatas, The Mastery of Occult Sciences as a Deterrent Weapon, passim.
Noah Gardiner 115
utilize and teach a text, and as far preferable to simply reading a book by
oneself.94 The same grammatical construction was used by the glossator
of the exemplar for Sleymaniye MS Hamidiye 260.1 to describe his
reading of Ilm al-hud under the tutelage of Ab l-Fal al-umr,
indicating that this practice was already being employed at one step of
remove from al-Bn himself. Al-Bisms mention of having read the
book under the supervision of Izz al-Dn Muammad indicates that at
least one of al-Bns works was still being taught through a living line
of authorities at the dawn of the ninth/fifteenth century. That al-Bism
felt that his having read al-Luma al-nrniyya under Izz al-Dn
Muammad was something worth mentioning indicates that he regarded
that act of transmission as licensing his own commentary on the work,
and that his readers would have recognized this as well.
The identity of the ay before whom al-Bism read al-Luma al-
nrniyya is also noteworthy. Izz al-Dn Muammad b. ama (d.
819/141617) was a scion of the Ibn ama scholarly dynasty, and his
immediate forbears had served for three generations in some of the
highest civilian offices of Mamlk Cairo and Jerusalem, while also being
known for their devotion to Sufism. Izz al-Dn Muammads great
grandfather, Badr al-Dn Muammad (d. 733/1333), served as the af
grand q of Cairo and ay al-uy of the Sufi fraternities on and off
between 690/1291 and 727/1327,95 and his grandfather, Izz al-Dn Abd
al-Azz (d. 767/1366), and paternal uncle, Burhn al-Dn Ibrhm (d.
790/1388), had similarly illustrious careers. 96 Although the familys
power in Cairo waned during Izz al-Dn Muammads lifetime, the
Syrian branch of the family maintained a high standing in Damascus and
Jerusalem well into the Ottoman period under the nisba al-Nbulus.
Abd al-n al-Nbulus (d. 1143/1731), one of the great interpreters of
both Ibn Arab and Ibn al-Fri, was a distant relation of Izz al-Dn
Muammad.97 That Izz al-Dn Muammad was regarded (at least by al-
Bism) as an authorized transmitter of al-Bns teachings further
bolsters the notion that al-Bns works had something of a following
among Arab scholarly elites with close ties to the ruling military
recorded as samia al and qaraa al, see Makdisi, Rise of Colleges, 2413.
95 Although the fact that Badr al-Dn called for destruction of copies of some
of Ibn Arabs works suggests he most likely would have disapproved of al-
Bns works. See Knysh, Ibn Arab, 1234.
96 Salibi, The Banu Jamaa, 97103.
97 Sirriyeh, Whatever Happened to the Banu Jamaa?, 5564.
Noah Gardiner 117
106; Melvin-Koushki, Occult Philosophy and the Millenarian Quest, 1112 and
25; Fazolu, lk Dnem Osmanl lim; Gril, soterisme. Binba has made the
strongest claims for the groups coherence in arguing that the neo-Iwns were
a non-hierarchical intellectual collectivity (106).
Noah Gardiner 119
borrowings from Ibn al-ab in regard to Ibn Arab, see Knysh, Ibn Arab,
195.
111 Ibid.
112 Morris, An Arab Machiavelli? , 256.
Noah Gardiner 121
orbiting it. Gril observes that this section of al-Muqaddima does not
appear in the version of the work that Ibn aldn drafted while still in
the Maghrib, 113 which suggests that he added it sometime after his
arrival in Cairo in 784/1382 the same year that al-Als patron
Barqq first attained the sultanate. Given that al-Bn and Ibn Arabs
writings seem to have played a prominent role of in the thought of the
neo-Iwn al-af, the pro-Alid mythology and occult and millenarian
preoccupations the group cultivated, and the fact that they seem to have
been active in Egyptian elite circles as least as early as al-Als tenure
at Barqqs court, but possibly decades earlier, I think the possibility
must be entertained that this section of al-Muqaddima was aimed at the
intellectual foundations of the neo-Iwn al-saf, or some germinal
form of the group.
That Ibn aldn was not averse to attempts to enforce his views on
these matters is clear from the fatw he issued while in Egypt calling for
the destruction by fire or water of books by Ibn Arab, Ibn Sabn, Ibn
Barran, and their followers, on the grounds that they were filled with
pure unbelief and vile innovations, as well as corresponding
interpretations of the outward forms [of scripture and practice] in the
most bizarre, unfounded, and reprehensible ways.114 Although al-Bns
works are not specified in the fatw, that they would be included in this
general category seems clear from Ibn aldns earlier writings. Of
course, that a fatw was issued hardly guarantees that it was carried out,
and I am aware of no evidence that action was taken on Ibn aldns
injunction. This raises the fascinating question of whether or not codices
containing Bnian works were ever the targets of organized destruction,
or otherwise suffered the status of legally hazardous objects that books of
magic have often borne in other cultural milieux.
The Damascene mudarris and ab T al-Dn al-Subk (d. 771/1370)
dictated in his Mud al-niam that booksellers were forbidden from
peddling works by heretics or astrologers.115 The subject is not touched
upon in Ibn al-Uuwwas (d. 729/1329) acclaimed guide to supervision
of the public markets, Malim al-qurba f akm al-isba, and neither is
anything else pertaining to the supervision of booksellers by city
authorities, suggesting that enforcement of such dictates via the mutasib
116 Ibn al-Uuwwa does deal with astrologers operating in the sq, although
his directives regarding them are fairly mild. See Michot and Savage-Smith, Ibn
Taymiyya on Astrology, 280.
117 Ibid. 27980.
Noah Gardiner 123
that are claimed to be al-Bns, and which many modern scholars have
puzzled over.
The most basic observation regarding ams al-marif al-kubr to
have emerged from the survey conducted for this project is that, of the
twenty-six colophonically dated copies of the work (out of fifty-one
total), the earliest, Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek MS 2755, is dated 1623
in a handlist of the collection. Of the fourteen undated copies that I have
been able to view, none is possessed of any features that suggest an
earlier date of production, but rather they are remarkably similar in their
mise-en-page, hands, and other features to the dated copies. Given the
plethora of dated copies of other Bnian works stretching back to the
seventh/thirteenth century, there is no compelling reason that, if such a
lengthy and important work were composed much earlier than the
eleventh/seventeenth century, not even a single earlier dated copy would
have survived. The fact that al-Manw mentions ur, wus, and
kubr versions of ams al-marif in al-Kawkib al-durriyya (completed
in 1011/1602-3) could indicate a slightly earlier origin for the work,120
but, as argued above, the use of this designation could just as well have
been the result of owners or booksellers with copies of the medieval
ams reacting to the presence of other texts marked as ams al-marif
al-ur. Whatever its precise date of origin, the encyclopedic ams al-
marif al-kubr is certainly a product of one or more early modern
compilators, and not of al-Bn or his amanuenses.
A section of ams al-marif al-kubr that has commanded a great
deal of attention from modern scholars is a set of asnd for al-Bn near
the end of the work, which claim to identify al-Bns mentors in the
science of letters and other areas of knowledge, as well as to identify the
lines of teachers preceding al-Bns masters through whom this
knowledge was passed down. Indeed, some of the oft-noted issues of
anachronism in ams al-marif al-kubr stem from these asnd, insofar
as they place people assumed to have been younger than al-Bn several
steps before him in the chain of transmission, such that, for example, he
is said to have a received the teachings of Ibn Arab through five
intermediaries, and those of al-Shils pupil Ab l-Abbs al-Murs (d.
686/1287) through three intermediaries.121 Several modern researchers
have commented on these issues, although Witkam has done the most
thorough analyses of the asnd based on the forms they take in printed
editions of the work, and I have drawn in part on Witkams work in what
follows.122
It can now be shown that at least two of the asnd were copied from
the writings of Abd al-Ramn al-Bism, where they were originally
presented as al-Bisms own chains. The first instance is the chain that,
in ams al-marif al-kubr, claims to trace one of the lines through
which al-Bns knowledge of the science of letters was developed back
to al-asan al-Bar; this is Pedigree C in Witkams analysis.123 Table
1 below shows the asnd as they appear in three sources: the left-hand
column is from Sleymaniye MS Badatl Vehbi 930, a codex copied in
836/1433 of a work by al-Bism bearing the title al-Ula f all al-
anm al-muarrafa bi-am Ab l-Abbs Amad.
Table 1: First example of a plagiarized isnd
MS Badatl Vehbi 930 MS Beir Aa 89 Witkam 2007
fol. 6b-7a fol. 213b Pedigree C
Al b. Ab lib
Al-asan al-Bar Al-asan al-Bar Al-asan al-Bar
Habb al-Aam Habb al-Aam Habb al-Aam
Dwd al- Dwd al- Dwd al-abal
Marf al-Kar Marf al-Kar Marf al-Kar
Sar al-Saqa Sar al-Saqa Sar al-Dn al-Saqa
unayd al-Badd unayd al-Badd unayd al-Badd
Mimd al-Dnawar Mimd al-Dnawar ammd al-Dnawar
Amad al-Aswad Amad al-Aswad
A Faraj al-Zinjn
Amad al-azl Amad al-azl Muammad al-azl
Ab l-Nab al-Suhraward Ab l-Nab al-Suhraward Ab l-Nab al-Suhraward
Qub al-Dn al-Abhr Muammad al-Suhraward
Rukn al-Dn al-Sas(?)
Al al-Dn al-irz Al al-Dn al-irz Al al-Dn al-irz
Abd Allh al-Balyn Abd Allh al-Balyn Abd Allh al-Bayn
Qsim al-irz Qsim al-rn(?) Qsim al-Sarn
Qawwm al-Dn Qawwm al-Dn Abd Allh al-Bism
Muammad al-Bism Muammad al-Bism
Al al-Dn al-Bism Al al-Dn al-Bism
ams al-Dn Ab Abd Ab Abd Allh ams al- Ab Abd Allh ams al-
Allh Muammad b. Dn Muammad al-An Dn al-Ifahn
Amad b. al-An
Abd al-Raman al-Bism Al-Bn Al-Bn
124 This being the sentence that begins tima f ikr sanad aykin qaddasa
llh sirrahu
125 GAL, SII: 358.
Noah Gardiner 127
126 For example, large parts of the opening of the medieval ams al-marif
wa-laif al-awrif are incorporated into that of ams al-marif al-kubr,
although the latter has a different incipit: ahda azal fa-min nr hihi
ahda
Noah Gardiner 129
category in the modern social sciences and humanities, see Styers, Making
Magic, and Hanegraaff, The Emergence of the Academic Science of Magic.
Specifically in regard to the Islamicate occult sciences, see Francis, Magic and
Divination, and Lemay, LIslam historique et les sciences occultes.
130 Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 12 (2012)
certainly evidence that the works were gaining an alarming (to the
critics) degree of acceptance among people who mattered, rather than
of their having been primarily popular practices widely looked down
upon by the educated.
In keeping with Kieckhefers axiom noted at the outset of this article,
it must also be asked if al-Bns works were magical books? Whether
or not the books themselves were regarded as especially powerful
artifacts is one of many questions that require further investigation. That
some of them contained talismanic designs does not imply that these
designs would have been regarded as charged talismans, insofar as a
variety of other practices (supererogatory fasting and prayer, construction
at specific times, etc.) were required for them to be effective, and in
many cases they were meant to be inscribed on specific metals or other
media. On the other hand, it is very common to find numerous awfq
scrawled on the flyleaves of Bnian works, often accompanied by the
texts of brief invocatory prayers, which suggests that their inscription in
a Bnian work rather than in some other book was believed to enhance
their efficacy.
I cannot help but add that, in the grand sense that Bnian works may
have helped reshape the contours of Sufism and other arenas of Islamic
thought, they were magical books indeed. Despite the attempts of many
twentieth-century Sufi studies scholars to construct Sufism proper as
concerned exclusively with interior spiritual discovery and/or ascetic
withdrawal, it has increasingly been recognized of late that Sufism,
always polyphonic, was never entirely innocent of claims to occult
power in the everyday world.133 Such claims do seem to have come to
the fore in the late medieval period, and, without suggesting any
simplistic causality, I would observe that it is likely no mere coincidence
that this is roughly the same period in which certain Sufi leaders and
groups began unmistakably to flex their sociopolitical muscles and to be
incorporated into existing circles of power. Insofar as, at various times
and places, al-Bns works seem to have been some of the primary
vehicles through which occult aspects of Sufism were expressed in elite
circles, they were no doubt dangerous and powerful books in the eyes of
some.
Finally, as a methodological coda, I would note that al-Bns general
exclusion from fi studies and other wings of Islamic social and
intellectual history is to some degree due to a general negligence of
What is the History of Books?, Chartier's The Order of Books, etc. Some
important recent additions to this general area of inquiry are Frasers Book
History through Postcolonial Eyes, and Barbers The Anthropology of Texts. On
the impact of some of these authors on the broader field of intellectual history,
see Grafton, The History of Ideas, passim.
Noah Gardiner 133
how the conditions of their production and use impacted the perceived
epistemological value of their contents, but all too rarely has this
scholarship been integrated with the broader study of premodern
texts.138I hope that this article can serve as a demonstration, however
flawed, of some of what can be achieved through combining attention to
transmission paratexts and other aspects of manuscript evidence with
more conventional methods of intellectual and sociopolitical
historiography. This may be especially relevant to the recovery of a
figure such as al-Bn, who has been obscured and misrepresented in the
historical record for a variety of reasons both medieval and modern, but I
strongly suspect that a return to the manuscripts of many better known
authors particularly those of the late medieval and early modern
periods, from which so many codices survive would yield a wealth of
information about the lived worlds in which their works were read that
has not yet been taken into account.
Chart: Inter-referentiality among the five core works.
Numbers indicate the number of references each work makes to its
partners, e.g. Ilm al-hud makes seven references to ams al-marif.
N.B: the ams al-marif referred to here is the medieval ams, not the
Kubr!
Shams al-marif
-
1
2 1
3
2
Hidyat al- qidn Mawqif al-ghyt
1
7
1 5 7
2
8
Ilm al-hud Laif al-irt
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Manuscripts cited
What follows lists only the codices directly cited within this article, and
it reflects a little more than one-tenth of the manuscripts surveyed for this
project. Because manuscripts have been referred to by their shelfmarks
when discussed in the article, and because of the alternate titles by which
many of the works/manuscripts are cataloged by the collections that hold
them, this list is alphabetized by shelfmark rather than by title. In each
case, if a title is given in the manuscript, then it is noted immediately
after the author; a standardized title follows in brackets if it differs from
the given title. In cases where no title is given in the manuscript, only the
bracketed standardized title is given.