Library
Some are marked Recited: you can hear them and follow line by line. Hear and recite
73 texts
The Quran
1 text
The Quran, word by word with its grammar and recitation.
The Quran
القرآن
The Quran · 114 sūras · Arabic, English
The index of all 114 sūras by juzʾ.
Ḥadīth
1 text
The Prophet's sayings as the scholars gathered them: al-Nawawī's Forty, with each hadith's source.
The Forty Hadith
الأربعون النووية
al-Nawawī · 631–676/1233–1277 · Arabic, English · About
Al-Nawawī's forty-two hadith on the foundations of the religion, each with the collections he names.
Chains of transmission: each order's or school's own account of how its teaching was handed down, with sources.
Creed
1 text
The statements of belief that Sunni schools learn by heart and argue over, clause by clause: al-Ṭaḥāwī's creed first.
The Creed of al-Ṭaḥāwī
العقيدة الطحاوية
Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭaḥāwī · d. 321/933 · Arabic, English · About
The short Ḥanafī statement of Sunni belief, 105 articles, read by Māturīdī, Ashʿarī and Atharī teachers alike, with notes where they part.
Ibn ʿArabī
14 texts
The Ringstones with their commentaries, the Meccan Openings, the Book of Circles, his teachers, his love poems and his prayers.
The Ringstone of Adam
فص حكمة إلهية في كلمة آدمية
Ibn ʿArabī · 560–638/1165–1240 · Arabic, English · About
Why the Real willed to see Itself: the human being as the polished mirror of the world.
The Ringstone of Seth
فص حكمة نفثية في كلمة شيثية
Ibn ʿArabī · 560–638/1165–1240 · Arabic, English · About
Divine gifts and the seal of the saints: what is given, and to whom.
The Ringstone of Noah
فص حكمة سبوحية في كلمة نوحية
Ibn ʿArabī · 560–638/1165–1240 · Arabic, English · About
Transcendence and immanence: Noah's call, and why his people would not hear it.
The Ringstone of Enoch
فص حكمة قدوسية في كلمة إدريسية
Ibn ʿArabī · 560–638/1165–1240 · Arabic, English · About
Height of place and height of rank: who is the High, when nothing is there but He.
The Ringstone of Abraham
فص حكمة مهيمية في كلمة إبراهيمية
Ibn ʿArabī · 560–638/1165–1240 · Arabic, English · About
Why the Friend is called the Friend: the Real pervading the creature, and the creature pervading the Real.
The Ringstone of Isaac
فص حكمة حقية في كلمة إسحاقية
Ibn ʿArabī · 560–638/1165–1240 · Arabic, English · About
Abraham's dream of the sacrifice: the imagination, its interpretation, and what the knower creates by aspiration.
The Ringstone of Jesus
فص حكمة نبوية في كلمة عيسوية
Ibn ʿArabī · 560–638/1165–1240 · Arabic, English · About
Jesus as spirit and word, from Mary's water and Gabriel's breath: reviving the dead, and why 'God is the Messiah' is a restriction.
The Meccan Openings
الفتوحات المكية
Ibn ʿArabī · 560–638/1165–1240 · Arabic, English · About
The introduction and chapter 1: his meeting with the youth at the Kaʿba, checked line by line against the Konya autograph.
The Book of Circles
إنشاء الدوائر
Ibn ʿArabī · 560–638/1165–1240 · Arabic, English · About
His treatise on existence drawn in circles, complete, with all 857 of Nyberg's apparatus notes.
The Spirit of Holiness
روح القدس
Ibn ʿArabī · 560–638/1165–1240 · Arabic, English · About
His portraits of the saints who taught him in al-Andalus and the Maghrib, with Fāṭima of Seville.
The Interpreter of Desires
ترجمان الأشواق
Ibn ʿArabī · 560–638/1165–1240 · Arabic, English · About
His love poems I–X, with Nicholson's translation and the poet's own commentary.
The Litanies of Sunday
أوراد الأسبوع: ليلة الأحد ويومه
Ibn ʿArabī · 560–638/1165–1240 · Arabic, English · About
The opening prayer of his weekly litanies, and the prayers for Sunday eve and Sunday.
The Prayer of the Highest Circuit
حزب الدور الأعلى
Ibn ʿArabī (attributed) · 560–638/1165–1240 · Arabic, English · About
The litany of protection, recited by his followers ever since.
The Prayer of Effusion
الصلاة الفيضية
Ibn ʿArabī (attributed) · 560–638/1165–1240 · Arabic, English · About
The great prayer upon the Prophet, as the effusion of all that exists.
Sufism
28 texts
The path in its own words: al-Qushayrī's Epistle, the Ḥikam, ʿAṭṭār's birds, Ibn al-Fāriḍ's wine, Shabistarī's rose-garden, Jāmī's flashes.
The Seal of the Saints
ختم الأولياء
al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī · d. c. 295–300/c. 905–910 · Arabic, English · About
The first third: the two kinds of God's friends (the friend of God's due, who strives by his own sincerity, and the friend of God, drawn by God's favour), the 157 questions the author puts to anyone who claims to know sainthood, and the chapter on the seal of friendship with God and the Seal of prophethood.
The Epistle on Sufism
الرسالة القشيرية
al-Qushayrī · 376–465/986–1072 · Arabic, English · About
A first selection: the chapter on the Sufis' terms (waqt, ḥāl, maqām … kashf, mushāhada, sirr), and the chapters on insight and on knowledge of God.
The Conference of the Birds
منطق الطیر
Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār · d. c. 618/1221 · Persian, English · About
A first selection in Persian verse: the hoopoe's call to the birds and the Sīmurgh's feather, the seven valleys, and the thirty birds (sī murgh) who see the Sīmurgh in the mirror and find it is themselves.
The Wine Ode
الخمرية
Ibn al-Fāriḍ · 576–632/1181–1235 · Arabic, English · About
The wine drunk before the vine was created: 41 verses, with Nicholson's translation.
It Is Love
هو الحب
Ibn al-Fāriḍ · 576–632/1181–1235 · Arabic, English · About
Love's hard counsel and lament: 62 verses in ṭawīl, with the commentaries of al-Būrīnī and al-Nābulusī.
The Aphorisms
الحكم العطائية
Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh al-Iskandarī · d. 709/1309 · Arabic, English · About
The whole Ḥikam: 263 aphorisms of the Shādhilī path on works and hope, tajrīd and the means, giving up self-direction, the inrushes and the states, contraction and expansion, light and inner sight, servanthood and need; the four letters; and the intimate prayers (munājāt), with Ibn ʿAbbād's commentary beside each.
The Rose-Garden of Mystery
گلشن راز
Maḥmūd Shabistarī · d. 720/1320 or c. 740/1339–40 · Persian, English · About
The whole poem (717/1317): fifteen questions from Herat on thinking, the self, the traveller and the Perfect Human, unity and multiplicity, “I am the Truth”, the part greater than the whole, and the lovers' language of eye, lip, curl, mole, wine, tavern, idol and girdle, each answered in Persian couplets and read by the poet himself.
The Masnavī, Book I (pilot)
مثنوی معنوی
Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī · 604–672/1207–1273 · Persian, English
A pilot of Book I, verses 1–246: the Song of the Reed and the story of the king and the handmaiden, with the readings recited on Ganjoor.
Flashes of Light
لوایح
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī · 817–898/1414–1492 · English, Persian pages · About
Jāmī's Persian treatise on the One Being, which Liu Zhi turned into Chinese as the Zhenjing zhaowei: Whinfield's English, flash by flash, with the places Liu Zhi cites it.
Breaths of Intimacy
نفحات الانس من حضرات القدس
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī · 817–898/1414–1492 · Persian openings, English summaries · About
Jāmī's lives of the Sufis (883/1478): his first 180 entries, the later masters our texts name, and his closing chapter on 34 women, each with his opening words and the Lees page.
Naṣīḥat al-murīd
نصيحة المريد
Sīdī ʿAlī al-Jamal · d. 1194/1780 · Arabic, English · About
Draft reading edition, unit 1: thirty sayings in seven parts, the Arabic and the English aligned sentence by sentence, with notes in layers.
al-Wird al-LaṭīfRecited
الورد اللطيف
ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAlawī al-Ḥaddād · 1044–1132/1634–1720 · Arabic, English
The short daily litany compiled by Imam al-Ḥaddād of Tarīm from Qurʾān and supplications: follow it with a recording, in vowelled Arabic, Latin letters, English and Indonesian.
Dalāʾil al-khayrāt: MondayRecited
دلائل الخيرات
Muḥammad ibn Sulaymān al-Jazūlī · d. 869/1465 · Arabic, English
The Monday portion of al-Jazūlī's book of blessings on the Prophet, the first of its eight daily parts: vowelled Arabic from a 1902 printing, a Latin reading and English, with the objections raised against some of its wordings.
Morning and evening adhkārRecited
أذكار الصباح والمساء
From the hadith, selected after al-Nawawī · reported from the Prophet; al-Nawawī d. 676/1277 · Arabic, English
The words said at morning and evening, each tied to its hadith in al-Bukhārī, Muslim or Abū Dāwūd with its collection number, grading and count: 10 reports in 20 clauses, in the collections' own vowelled Arabic.
Ḥizb al-BaḥrRecited
حزب البحر
Attributed to Abū l-Ḥasan al-Shādhilī · d. 656/1258 · Arabic, English
A litany of protection attributed to al-Shādhilī, woven with verses of the Qurʾān: follow it with a recording, in vowelled Arabic, Latin letters, English and Indonesian, with the objections raised against it.
The Abrahamic BlessingRecited
الصلاة الإبراهيمية
From the hadith · reported from the Prophet · Arabic, English
The blessing on the Prophet reported in hadith, said by Muslims in the daily prayer.
Ṣalāt al-FātiḥRecited
صلاة الفاتح
Attributed to Muḥammad al-Bakrī · transmitted in the Tijāniyya · Arabic, English
A short blessing on the Prophet, central to the Tijānī order, and disputed outside it.
al-Ṣalāt al-MunjiyyaRecited
الصلاة المنجية
Unattributed · reported by Ibn al-Fākihānī · Arabic, English
A blessing on the Prophet asking rescue from every danger, widely recited, especially in Indonesia and Malaysia.
The Munājāt of Ibn ʿAṭāʾ AllāhRecited
المناجاة العطائية
Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh al-Iskandarī · d. 709/1309 · Arabic, English
The 33 intimate prayers that close the Ḥikam, each opening «My God», set out to recite: vowelled Arabic with every word tappable, Latin letters and English, from the Cairo print of 1901.
The Fourteen Prayers of Aḥmad ibn IdrīsRecited
الصلوات الإدريسية
Aḥmad ibn Idrīs · d. 1253/1837 · Arabic, English
Fourteen blessings on the Prophet that name him through the language of the divine Names and realities, with the author's own word on them: the vowelled Arabic of a Cairo print of 1916, line by line, with Latin letters and English.
Ḥizb al-LuṭfRecited
حزب اللطف
attributed to Abū l-Ḥasan al-Shādhilī · d. 656/1258 · Arabic, English
A litany on the divine Name the Gentle, recited in hardship: it asks to be kept inside God's gentleness, then takes shelter in verses of the Qurʾān.
Ḥizb al-ShakwāRecited
حزب الشكوى
attributed to Abū l-Ḥasan al-Shādhilī · d. 656/1258 · Arabic, English
A long complaint laid before God, opening with words close to the Prophet's prayer at al-Ṭāʾif: weakness, sickness, exile and the closed door, each brought to the one Lord who answers.
The BurdaRecited
البردة
al-Būṣīrī · 13th c. · Arabic, English
The Mantle Ode, the best known praise poem for the Prophet: all 160 verses in ten sections, to follow line by line in vowelled Arabic, Latin letters and English (the opening also in Indonesian, Turkish and more), with a recording from Tetouan for the first section.
The Hamziyya: the openingRecited
الهمزية
al-Būṣīrī · 13th c. · Arabic, English
The opening eleven verses of al-Būṣīrī's long praise poem rhymed on hamza, «Kayfa tarqā ruqiyyaka l-anbiyāʾu»: no prophet climbs as high, and the generations were chosen for him.
Ṭalaʿa l-badru ʿalaynāRecited
طلع البدر علينا
Unattributed; a report through Ibn ʿĀʾisha · reported in the 11th c. · Arabic, English
The two verses sung in welcome to the Prophet at Madina, known across the Muslim world: the Arabic as the earliest sources have it, its chain and the doubts about it, and whether it belongs to the Hijra, the return from Tabūk or, in one dictionary, the conquest of Mecca.
al-Ṣalāt al-NāriyyaRecited
الصلاة النارية
Attributed to al-Tāzī, authorship unsettled · date unsettled · Arabic, English
A short blessing on the Prophet, widely recited in groups, also called al-Tafrījiyya, Sholawat Nariyah and Salât-ı Tefriciye: 12 clauses to follow with a recording, with its wordings, what is reported of its origin and the objections raised against it.
The Prayer of Ibn MashīshRecited
الصلاة المشيشية
ʿAbd al-Salām ibn Mashīsh · d. 622/1225 · Arabic, English · About
The blessing on the Prophet attributed to the saint of Jabal al-ʿAlam, teacher of al-Shādhilī: 39 clauses in seven movements, the Arabic collated from two printed commentaries and four recordings, with the readings, the commentators' glosses and the objections raised against it.
The Book of Stations
المواقف
al-Amīr ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jazāʾirī · 1222–1300/1808–1883 · Arabic, English · About
The Emir's Book of Halts, a reading path of 169 of its 372 mawāqif, "The Emir's halts: law and light": the Law and the light of the Book, the two seas and the knower between them, mercy, the one God of every creed, war and the soul, prayer, one dream (an excerpt), then the Qurʾān recited, God's nearness, love and following, the Law's own acts, the Emir's own halts, remembrance, the friends of God, the prophets' stories, mercy and repentance.
Chains of transmission: each order's or school's own account of how its teaching was handed down, with sources.
Philosophy
11 texts
The philosophers' tales of the soul and their treatises on light and love: Ibn Sīnā, the Brethren of Purity, al-Ghazālī, Ibn Ṭufayl, Suhrawardī.
Epistles of the Brethren of Purity
رسائل إخوان الصفاء
Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ (the Brethren of Purity) · 4th/10th century · Arabic, English · About
Two parts, one page each: the animals' case against man before the king of the jinn (Epistle 22), and the ninefold order of being from the Creator to the creatures (Epistle 32) with their definition of philosophy as becoming like God (Epistle 13).
The Recital of Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān
رسالة حي بن يقظان
Ibn Sīnā · 370–428/980–1037 · Arabic, English · About
The sage who is 'Alive, son of Awake' shows the soul the way out of the world, with Ibn Zayla's commentary.
The Recital of the Bird
رسالة الطير
Ibn Sīnā · 370–428/980–1037 · Arabic, English · About
Birds caught in the net, their escape, and the journey over eight mountains to the King.
The Treatise on Love
رسالة في العشق
Ibn Sīnā · 370–428/980–1037 · Arabic, English · About
The whole treatise in seven chapters: love runs through every being, from prime matter and the plants to the lover of beautiful faces and the divine souls, and the Good loves itself.
The Ode on the Soul
القصيدة العينية
Ibn Sīnā · 370–428/980–1037 · Arabic, English · About
Twenty verses on the soul's descent like a dove from the highest place, and its longing to return.
The Niche of Lights
مشكاة الأنوار
al-Ghazālī · 450–505/1058–1111 · Arabic, English · About
The Light Verse expounded: parts I–II, on why God alone is light in the true sense.
The Tale of Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān
حي بن يقظان
Ibn Ṭufayl · d. 581/1185 · Arabic, English · About
The child raised by a gazelle who reasons his way to God: part one, to the burial of the gazelle.
The Occidental Exile
قصة الغربة الغربية
Suhrawardī · 549–587/1154–1191 · Arabic, English · About
Captives in the city of the West, the hoopoe's letter, and the climb to the Sinai of the soul.
The Temples of Light
هياكل النور
Suhrawardī · 549–587/1154–1191 · Arabic, English · About
A short treatise in seven temples: body, soul, the lights and their return.
The Philosopher's Way of Life
السيرة الفلسفية
Abū Bakr al-Rāzī (Rhazes) · c. 250–313/c. 865–925 · Arabic, English · About
The physician-philosopher answers the charge that he has abandoned Socrates, and sets out a moderate philosophic life: the whole treatise, twelve sections.
Spiritual Medicine
الطب الروحاني
Abū Bakr al-Rāzī (Rhazes) · c. 250–313/c. 865–925 · Arabic, English · About
The physician-philosopher's manual of ethics as medicine of the soul: the preface, the plan, chapter 1 (the excellence of reason) and chapter 2 (restraining passion, with a summary of Plato's view).
Ismaili thought
3 texts
The Ismaili philosophers of the Command and the Intellect: al-Sijistānī, and Nāṣir-i Khusraw in Persian verse.
The Keys of the Kingdom
المقاليد الملكوتية
Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī · d. after 361/971 · Arabic, English · About
Fifteen of its seventy keys, on God beyond attribute and beyond its denial (the double negation), the word «lā», the Command, Intellect and Soul, and the return.
The Book of Illumination
روشنائی نامه
Nāṣir-i Khusraw · b. 394/1004, d. after 465/1073 · Persian, English · About
The cosmological core of his Persian masnavī, 184 couplets: God beyond attributes, the Universal Intellect and Soul, the nine spheres, the elements and the three kingdoms, the making of the human being, the senses, and knowing the soul.
The Dīvān: odes
دیوان ناصر خسرو
Nāṣir-i Khusraw · b. 394/1004, d. after 465/1073 · Persian, English · About
His qaṣīdas, beginning with the ode on speech and the sea of revelation (54 couplets): the letter, tanzīl, is salt like the sea, its interpretation, taʾwīl, the pearl, and the seeker must find the diver.
Greek sources
7 texts
The Greek root of the tradition, word by word: Plato, Plotinus and the Hermetic Poimandres.
Diotima's Speech
Συμπόσιον
Plato · c. 428–348 BCE · Greek, English · About
Symposium 201d–212c: Love as a daimōn between mortal and immortal, birth in beauty, and the ascent to the beautiful itself.
The Winged Soul
Φαῖδρος
Plato · c. 428–348 BCE · Greek, English · About
Phaedrus 246a–257b: the soul as a winged charioteer, the vision of the place beyond the heavens, beauty that shines through sight, and the wings that grow again in love.
The Sun, the Line and the Cave
Πολιτεία
Plato · c. 428–348 BCE · Greek, English · About
Republic VI 507a–511e and VII 514a–521b: the Good as the sun of the intelligible, the divided line, the prisoners in the cave, and education as the turning of the soul's eye.
Alcibiades I: Know Yourself
Ἀλκιβιάδης α
Plato · c. 428–348 BCE · Greek, English · About
The whole Alcibiades I, 103a–135e (whether Plato wrote it is disputed): Socrates' approach to the young Alcibiades, his double ignorance, what the self is that we are told to know, the soul as the user of the body, and the eye that sees itself only in another eye; with 133c8–17, absent from the medieval manuscripts, marked, and the ancient commentaries of Proclus and Olympiodorus beside the text.
On Beauty
Περὶ τοῦ καλοῦ
Plotinus · c. 204/5–270 CE · Greek, English · About
Ennead I.6, Plotinus' first treatise: beauty as form mastering matter, the soul made beautiful by purification, and the inner eye that must become sunlike to see.
On the Good, or the One
Περὶ τἀγαθοῦ ἢ τοῦ ἑνός
Plotinus · c. 204/5–270 CE · Greek, English · About
Ennead VI.9: all things are by the One; the soul's return inward, the centre and the circle, and the vision beyond intellect, with its echoes in the Arabic tradition.
Poimandres
Ποιμάνδρης
Hermes Trismegistus (attributed) · anonymous, probably 2nd–3rd century CE · Greek, English · About
Corpus Hermeticum I, the whole treatise: Mind appears as Poimandres and shows the seer the light and the dark water, the Word, the seven governors, the Man who falls in love with his own form reflected in Nature, the ascent through the spheres, and the hymn 'Holy is God'.
Further afield
3 texts
The same questions in other languages: the Syriac Hymn of the Pearl, and Ibn ʿArabī's school in classical Chinese.
The Hymn of the Pearl
ܡܕܪܫܐ ܕܝܗܘܕܐ ܬܐܡܐ
Anonymous, in the Acts of Thomas · probably 3rd century CE · Syriac, English · About
A prince sent from the East to fetch a pearl from Egypt forgets, is woken by a letter that flies like an eagle, and returns to his robe of glory: the soul's descent and return, beside Suhrawardī's Occidental Exile.
Wang Daiyu 王岱輿 · c. 1584–c. 1658 · Chinese, English · About
The whole book: Lord and servant, the Confucian Great Learning rebuilt on the Real One, then the Real One, the Numerical One and the Embodied One, each witnessed three ways, and a conclusion against emptiness and non-being.
Liu Zhi 劉智 · c. 1670–after 1724 · Chinese, English · About
The five chapters of the Root Classic (1704), with Liu Zhi's own citations of Jāmī and Ma Lianyuan's Arabic line by line, and the five books of diagrams explained: the great world, the small world, the heart and the way back, and the three Ones, with a later commentator's notes.
Arabic grammar
4 texts
The classical primers, from the Ājurrūmiyya to the thousand-verse Alfiyya.
The Ājurrūmiyya
الآجرومية
Ibn Ājurrūm · d. 723/1323 · Arabic, English
The classical first book of grammar, chapter by chapter, with each term opened onto its root.
Qaṭr al-nadā
قطر الندى وبل الصدى
Ibn Hishām · d. 761/1360 · Arabic, English
The second step after the Ājurrūmiyya: the whole of syntax in brief, the full text with every word open to tap.
The Alfiyya
الألفية
Ibn Mālik · d. 672/1274 · Arabic, English
Grammar in a thousand verses of rajaz, the poem students memorised, with Ibn ʿAqīl's commentary in Arabic under each verse.
Shudhūr al-dhahab
شذور الذهب
Ibn Hishām · d. 761/1360 · Arabic
Ibn Hishām's middle primer, between the Qaṭr and the Mughnī: the Arabic text by section, with an index.
Recent findings from the scholars
- 20 October 20269 scholars' findings on Kitāb al-Mawāqif (hidden pilot: Mawqif 75)from Lahouari Ramzi Taleb, Itzchak Weismann · summaries by AI, with page citations
- 28 September 202685 scholars' findings on Diotima's speech (Symposium 201d–212c)from Angela Hobbs, Martha C. Nussbaum, R. E. Allen, Pierre Grimes and 6 more · summaries by AI, with page citations
- 28 September 202655 scholars' findings on Faṣṣ Ādam (Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, chapter 1)from William C. Chittick, Suʿād al-Ḥakīm, Itzchak Weismann, Claude Addas and 6 more · summaries by AI, with page citations