The Self-Disclosure of God: Principles of Ibn Al-'Arabi's Cosmology.

• Author: BOWERING, GERHARD
• Position: Review

The Self-Disclosure of God: Principles of Ibn [Al-.sup.[subset]]Arabi's Cosmology. By WILLIAM C. CHITTICK. Albany: STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS, 1998. Pp. x1 + 483.

This important volume of selected translations from "The Meccan Revelations" (al-Futuhat al-makkiya, 4 vols. [Cairo 1911; rpt. Dar Sadir, Beirut n.d.]), the monumental work of Ibn [al-.sup.[subset]]Arabi (d. 638/1240), increases the significant corpus of Chittick's translations from the works of the great Sufi Shaykh, which the author began with his highly acclaimed, The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn [al-.sup.[subset]]Arabi's Metaphysics of Imagination (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1989). The translated passages are divided into three chapters, "God and the Cosmos" (3-163), "The Order of the Worlds" (167-265), and "The Structure of the Microcosm" (269-370). The work includes a short section of helpful notes (389-408), excellent indices of sources, [qur.sup.[contains]]anic verses, hadith statements, proper names and Arabic words (413-53), as well as a superbly detailed index of technical terms (455-82) that cites both the Arabic terms and their English renderings. There are two appendices, the first d iscussing Ibn [al.sup.[subset]]Arabi's views on certain Sufis (371-86) and the second (387-88) listing the major technical terms whose English renderings have been modified and refined by the author subsequent to his earlier works of translation.

Together with Chittick's Sufi Path of Knowledge, the present volume makes the highly complicated thought and sophisticated language of Ibn [al.sup.[subset]]Arabi accessible to the English reader in a most...