The Self-Disclosure of God (Principles of Ibn Al-Arabi's Cosmology)

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The Self-Disclosure of God offers the most detailed presentation to date in any Western language of the basic teachings of Islam's greatest mystical philosopher and theologian. It represents a major step forward in making available to the Western reading public the enormous riches of Islamic teachings in the fields of cosmology, mystical philosophy, theology, and spirituality.

"Chittick has refined his way of translating Ibn al-'Arabi's terminology to a high degree of perfection."

The Self-Disclosure of God continues the author's investigations of the world view of Ibn al-'Arabi, the greatest theoretician of Sufism and the "seal of the Muhammadan saints." The book is divided into three parts, dealing with the relation between God and the cosmos, the structure of the cosmos, and the nature of the human soul. A long introduction orients the reader and discuses a few of the difficulties faced by Ibn al-'Arabi's interpreters. Like Chittick's earlier work, The Sufi Path of Knowledge, this book is based primarily on Ibn al-'Arabis monumental work, al-Futuhat al-makkiyya "The Meccan Openings." More than one hundred chapters and subsections are translated, not to mention shorter passages that help put the longer discussions in context. There are detailed indexes of sources, Koranic verses, and hadiths. The book's index of technical terminology will be an indispensable reference for all those wishing to delve more deeply into the use of language in Islamic thought in general and Sufism in particular.

"This is the type of work that many will refer to as a tour de force. Among its other accomplishments. it represents a painstaking reading, translation, and analysis of a major Muslim Arab thinker of notoriously intimidating erudition and subtlety Best of all, it is clear and comprehensible, without sacrificing sophistication and precision."

WILLIAM C. CHITTICK is Professor of Comparative Studies at State University of New York, Stony Brook. He has published numerous books, among them, Imaginal Worlds: Ibn al-'Arabi and the Problem of Religious Divinity; Faith and Practice of Islam: Three Thirteenth Century Sufi Texts, The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-Asahi's Metaphysics of Imagination; The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, and A Shi'ite Anthology, all published by SUNY PRESS.

This book continues the investigations 1 began in The Sufi Path of Knowledge (hereafter SPK). There I promised a volume on Ibn al- 'Arabi's "Cosmology," concerning which I had already prepared a good deal of mate- rial. In 1993, I applied to the National Endowment for the Humanities for a fellowship to write a book on Ibn al-'Arabi's cosmological teachings. I received the generous sup- port of the Endowment during the academic year 1994-95, and for that I am extremely grateful. Without this support it is doubtful that this book could ever have been written. During that year I was able to put together a series of some twenty chapters dealing with the topic, ten of which are presented here. I hope to offer the remaining chapters as The Breath of the All-Merciful: Ibn al-'Arabi's Articulation of the Cosmos.