Majmu'at Thalath Rasa'il: Collection of Three Treatises

What the Three Treatises Contain

One of the Ahmad al-Buni manuscripts in this series, Volume VI binds three works into one book of 278 pages. Only the third is attributed to al-Buni himself; the first two come from the Sufi masters whose teaching frames it, so the volume moves from inner discipline to the science of letters.

Part I: Kitab fi al-Tariqah — Al-Shadhili's Sixty Gates

Attributed to Abu al-Hasan al-Shadhili, the first treatise is a Sufi manual in sixty gates. It opens by teaching that the path to the divine Name rests on four matters: remembrance, reflection, poverty and love. From The Etiquette of the Adjuring Practitioner it moves through gates on repentance, seeking forgiveness, remembrance, reliance, love and the Lordly Letters, to the divine names al-'Alim, al-Karim and al-'Azim and a final gate On Particularity. Read our essay on the Sufi path of 60 gates.

Part II: Sharh Mahasin al-Majalis — Ibn al-Mar'ah's Book of the Balance

The second treatise, The Book of the Balance, is by Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Yusuf al-Mursi, known as Ibn al-Mar'ah, “the Andalusian of Murcia.” It is a commentary on Mahasin al-Majalis (The Beauties of Gatherings) by Abu al-'Abbas Ibn al-'Arif, and it includes a Risalah on the Qur'anic Order of the Praiseworthy Stations. A long passage on sama', spiritual audition, weighs when listening is permitted, citing al-Ghazali's replies to those who declared it forbidden.

Part III: Shifa' al-Sudur — Al-Buni on the Natures of the Letters

The closing treatise, attributed to Ahmad ibn 'Ali al-Buni, turns to the letters. Its chapter The Natures of the Letters teaches that hot letters benefit cold illness, cold letters hot illness, moist letters dry illness and dry letters moist illness. Further chapters follow The Knower's Passage Through the Letters, Whispered Prayers, The Rank Written by the Pen and The Drink of the Near Ones. For al-Buni's letter-by-letter treatment, see al-Asrar al-Rabbaniyyah.

Corpus Bunianum, the Shams al-Ma'arif and the “Forbidden” Treatises

Scholars call the body of works attributed to al-Buni the corpus Bunianum. Its best-known member is the Shams al-Ma'arif al-Kubra, whose full title is Shams al-Ma'arif wa-Lata'if al-'Awarif; modern scholarship regards much of it as the work of later authors writing under al-Buni's name (see what the Shams al-Ma'arif manuscript is). This volume shows the corpus's Sufi side, binding a treatise attributed to al-Buni to works attributed to al-Shadhili and Ibn al-Mar'ah.

The Shams al-Ma'arif is often described as a forbidden book in Islam, and the same caution has followed the shorter texts that circulated with it. Here the Sufi discipline comes first: al-Shadhili's opening gate asks for constant repentance and seeking of forgiveness before any approach to the Name.

Because the full title of the Shams al-Ma'arif ends in al-'Awarif, it is easily confused with 'Awarif al-Ma'arif, the Sufi manual of Shihab al-Din 'Umar al-Suhrawardi. That work is not in this volume; the nearest thing to an 'Awarif al-Ma'arif manuscript in this collection is al-Shadhili's sixty-gate manual of Sufi etiquette, translated here in full.