The Opening
الفاتحة
The Quran · sūra 1 · Arabic, English
The first sūra, seven verses: every word with its grammar, root and recitation.
Library
49 texts in eight traditions, 129,242 words of Arabic besides the Persian, Greek, Syriac and Chinese. Open any one and tap a word: its root, its grammar, and how it has been read. Each text's About page says where it comes from.
49 texts
The Quran
The Quran, word by word with its grammar and recitation.
Ibn ʿArabī
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
Why the Real willed to see Itself: the human being as the polished mirror of the world. About
The Ringstone of Seth
فص حكمة نفثية في كلمة شيثية
Ibn ʿArabī · 560–638/1165–1240 · Arabic, English
Divine gifts and the seal of the saints: what is given, and to whom. About
The Ringstone of Noah
فص حكمة سبوحية في كلمة نوحية
Ibn ʿArabī · 560–638/1165–1240 · Arabic, English
Transcendence and immanence: Noah's call, and why his people would not hear it. About
The Ringstone of Enoch
فص حكمة قدوسية في كلمة إدريسية
Ibn ʿArabī · 560–638/1165–1240 · Arabic, English
Height of place and height of rank: who is the High, when nothing is there but He. About
The Ringstone of Abraham
فص حكمة مهيمية في كلمة إبراهيمية
Ibn ʿArabī · 560–638/1165–1240 · Arabic, English
Why the Friend is called the Friend: the Real pervading the creature, and the creature pervading the Real. About
The Ringstone of Isaac
فص حكمة حقية في كلمة إسحاقية
Ibn ʿArabī · 560–638/1165–1240 · Arabic, English
Abraham's dream of the sacrifice: the imagination, its interpretation, and what the knower creates by aspiration. About
The Ringstone of Jesus
فص حكمة نبوية في كلمة عيسوية
Ibn ʿArabī · 560–638/1165–1240 · Arabic, English
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. About
The Meccan Openings
الفتوحات المكية
Ibn ʿArabī · 560–638/1165–1240 · Arabic, English
The introduction and chapter 1: his meeting with the youth at the Kaʿba, checked line by line against the Konya autograph. About
The Book of Circles
إنشاء الدوائر
Ibn ʿArabī · 560–638/1165–1240 · Arabic, English
His treatise on existence drawn in circles, complete, with all 857 of Nyberg's apparatus notes. About
The Spirit of Holiness
روح القدس
Ibn ʿArabī · 560–638/1165–1240 · Arabic, English
His portraits of the saints who taught him in al-Andalus and the Maghrib, with Fāṭima of Seville. About
The Interpreter of Desires
ترجمان الأشواق
Ibn ʿArabī · 560–638/1165–1240 · Arabic, English
His love poems I–X, with Nicholson's translation and the poet's own commentary. About
The Litanies of Sunday
أوراد الأسبوع: ليلة الأحد ويومه
Ibn ʿArabī · 560–638/1165–1240 · Arabic, English
The opening prayer of his weekly litanies, and the prayers for Sunday eve and Sunday. About
The Prayer of the Highest Circuit
حزب الدور الأعلى
Ibn ʿArabī (attributed) · 560–638/1165–1240 · Arabic, English
The litany of protection, recited by his followers ever since. About
The Prayer of Effusion
الصلاة الفيضية
Ibn ʿArabī (attributed) · 560–638/1165–1240 · Arabic, English
The great prayer upon the Prophet, as the effusion of all that exists. About
Sufism
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
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. About
The Epistle on Sufism
الرسالة القشيرية
al-Qushayrī · 376–465/986–1072 · Arabic, English
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. About
The Conference of the Birds
منطق الطیر
Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār · d. c. 618/1221 · Persian, English
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. About
The Wine Ode
الخمرية
Ibn al-Fāriḍ · 576–632/1181–1235 · Arabic, English
The wine drunk before the vine was created: 41 verses, with Nicholson's translation. About
The Aphorisms
الحكم العطائية
Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh al-Iskandarī · d. 709/1309 · Arabic, English
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. About
The Rose-Garden of Mystery
گلشن راز
Maḥmūd Shabistarī · d. 720/1320 or c. 740/1339–40 · Persian, English
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. About
Flashes of Light
لوایح
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī · 817–898/1414–1492 · English, Persian pages
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. About
Philosophy
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
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). About
The Recital of Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān
رسالة حي بن يقظان
Ibn Sīnā · 370–428/980–1037 · Arabic, English
The sage who is 'Alive, son of Awake' shows the soul the way out of the world, with Ibn Zayla's commentary. About
The Recital of the Bird
رسالة الطير
Ibn Sīnā · 370–428/980–1037 · Arabic, English
Birds caught in the net, their escape, and the journey over eight mountains to the King. About
The Treatise on Love
رسالة في العشق
Ibn Sīnā · 370–428/980–1037 · Arabic, English
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. About
The Ode on the Soul
القصيدة العينية
Ibn Sīnā · 370–428/980–1037 · Arabic, English
Twenty verses on the soul's descent like a dove from the highest place, and its longing to return. About
The Niche of Lights
مشكاة الأنوار
al-Ghazālī · 450–505/1058–1111 · Arabic, English
The Light Verse expounded: parts I–II, on why God alone is light in the true sense. About
The Tale of Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān
حي بن يقظان
Ibn Ṭufayl · d. 581/1185 · Arabic, English
The child raised by a gazelle who reasons his way to God: part one, to the burial of the gazelle. About
The Occidental Exile
قصة الغربة الغربية
Suhrawardī · 549–587/1154–1191 · Arabic, English
Captives in the city of the West, the hoopoe's letter, and the climb to the Sinai of the soul. About
The Temples of Light
هياكل النور
Suhrawardī · 549–587/1154–1191 · Arabic, English
A short treatise in seven temples: body, soul, the lights and their return. About
The Sanctification of the Sun
تقديس الشمس
Suhrawardī · 549–587/1154–1191 · Arabic, English
His prayer to Hūrakhsh, the sun, with the daily sanctification of the Highest. About
Ismaili thought
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
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. About
The Book of Illumination
روشنائی نامه
Nāṣir-i Khusraw · b. 394/1004, d. after 465/1073 · Persian, English
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. About
The Dīvān: odes
دیوان ناصر خسرو
Nāṣir-i Khusraw · b. 394/1004, d. after 465/1073 · Persian, English
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. Each couplet opens the printed page it stands on. About
Greek sources
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
Symposium 201d–212c: Love as a daimōn between mortal and immortal, birth in beauty, and the ascent to the beautiful itself. About
The Winged Soul
Φαῖδρος
Plato · c. 428–348 BCE · Greek, English
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. About
The Sun, the Line and the Cave
Πολιτεία
Plato · c. 428–348 BCE · Greek, English
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. About
Alcibiades I: Know Yourself
Ἀλκιβιάδης α
Plato · c. 428–348 BCE · Greek, English
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. About
On Beauty
Περὶ τοῦ καλοῦ
Plotinus · c. 204/5–270 CE · Greek, English
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. About
On the Good, or the One
Περὶ τἀγαθοῦ ἢ τοῦ ἑνός
Plotinus · c. 204/5–270 CE · Greek, English
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. About
Poimandres
Ποιμάνδρης
Hermes Trismegistus (attributed) · anonymous, probably 2nd–3rd century CE · Greek, English
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'. About
Further afield
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
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. About
Wang Daiyu 王岱輿 · c. 1584–c. 1658 · Chinese, English
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. About
Liu Zhi 劉智 · c. 1670–after 1724 · Chinese, English
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. About
Arabic grammar
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.
New in the library
- 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