Esoteric Texts
Al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya
Also Known As Meccan Openings The bare form of the name. The atlas files this entry under a longer, shorter or differently punctuated form.
Sufi Texts
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Ibn Arabi's enormous compendium, the Meccan Openings, running to several hundred chapters and drawing on law, cosmology, letter symbolism and his own visionary experience. It was begun after experiences at Mecca and revised over decades, and it is the work in which most of his technical vocabulary is actually defined. Its size has kept it far less read than the Fusus, and complete translations into European languages do not exist. Where the Fusus states positions, the Futuhat argues them at length and shows the material they were drawn from.
Facts
Identity
Also Known AsThe Meccan Revelations, the Meccan Openings 1Tradition: Sufi Scholarship
Critical EditionOsman Yahia began a projected fuller critical edition in Cairo from 1972, working from the Konya autograph, though it was never completed to the end of the text; the older Bulaq printing remains in wide practical use alongside it. 1 First PublishedFirst printed at the Bulaq press in Cairo in 1853, in four volumes, centuries after its completion and long after it had already circulated in Islamic scholarly circles in manuscript. 1 TransmissionIbn Arabi revised it substantially in his own final years in Damascus, so the version that circulated afterward among his students already reflected a mature restatement of ideas he had first drafted decades earlier in Mecca. 1 Origins
Era of Composition Attributed Author / CompilerIbn Arabi (Muhyiddin ibn al-Arabi). 1 Composition NoteBegun after a 1202 vision at the Kaaba in Mecca and revised until near Ibn Arabi's death in 1240; the standard edition runs to 37 volumes in 560 chapters 1Tradition: Sufi Transmission
Manuscript TraditionIbn Arabi's own autograph of his final revision survives nearly complete at the Evkaf Museum in Konya, finished in 1238 shortly before his death, an unusually direct textual witness for a medieval work of this length that scholars weigh heavily against later copies. 1 Text
Literary FormSystematic prose metaphysical work. Structure
StructureOrganized into 560 chapters covering cosmology, law, ethics and mystical practice, an encyclopedic scope that later readers have approached through selective study of individual chapters rather than through the whole work at once. 2 Scholarship and Forensics
Scholarly NoteAt roughly fifteen thousand pages in its Bulaq printing, spanning cosmology, law, prophetology and Ibn Arabi's own visionary encounters, it is often read today less as a single sustained argument than as an encyclopedic summa consulted selectively rather than read start to finish. 1 Learn More
A Revelation at Mecca, Revised for Nearly Forty Years
Al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya, the Meccan Revelations or Meccan Openings, is by far Ibn Arabi's largest work, begun after a vision he experienced while circling the Kaaba in Mecca around 1202 and continually revised and expanded until close to his death in 1240, so that the text as it survives represents nearly four decades of accumulated writing rather than a single composed book. The standard printed edition runs to thirty seven volumes, and Ibn Arabi organizes it into five hundred and sixty chapters covering an almost encyclopedic range of subject matter, cosmology, the sciences of the letters, the stations of the spiritual path, the meaning of specific Quranic verses and hadith, and detailed accounts of his own visionary experiences woven throughout.
Unlike the tightly compressed Fusus al-Hikam, the Futuhat moves at enormous length and with frequent digression, reflecting decades of ongoing thought rather than a single crystallized statement, which makes it a far less approachable starting point for a new reader even though specialists regard it as the fuller and, in some respects, more foundational expression of Ibn Arabi's system. Ibn Arabi continued adding material to the text even after settling in Damascus for his final years, so no single version can be called final in the way a deliberately completed book might be.
A Mine Worked by Later Sufis Rather Than Read Cover to Cover
Given its scale, the Futuhat has rarely functioned the way the shorter Fusus al-Hikam does, as a text students read through in sequence; instead later Sufi scholars have more often mined it for specific chapters or passages relevant to a given question, treating it as a vast reference work of Ibn Arabi's thought rather than a book with a single argument to be followed start to finish.
Chittick's scholarship on Ibn Arabi draws heavily and repeatedly on the Futuhat precisely because so much of the technical vocabulary and doctrinal detail that the Fusus only gestures toward is worked out at far greater length here, making the two texts complementary rather than duplicate expressions of the same material. The Futuhat also preserves a great deal of autobiographical and historical detail found nowhere else in Ibn Arabi's corpus, descriptions of specific teachers, visionary encounters and travels, which has made it an important source for modern biographical scholarship on Ibn Arabi's life even independent of its theological content. Its sheer length has meant that complete translations into European languages remain a long term, still partial scholarly project even in the present day. Later commentators frequently cross reference the two works side by side.
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The Meccan Openings, begun after Ibn Arabi's pilgrimage of 1202 and revised over more than thirty years, is the longest of his works.
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