The Bezels of Wisdom

Author's name: Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi

The book “The Bezels” is considered the greatest of all Ibn Arabi’s works in terms of value, the most profound, and the most far-reaching in shaping the Sufi doctrine of his time and the generations that followed him. He established the doctrine of the unity of being in its final form and established a complete Sufi terminology for it, drawing from every possible source, such as the Holy Qur’an, the Hadith, theology, Peripatetic philosophy, Neoplatonic philosophy, Christian Gnosticism, Stoicism, and the philosophy of the Jew Philo. He also drew on the terminology of the Ismailis, the Qarmatians, the Brethren of Purity, and the Islamic Sufis who preceded him.

But he gave all these terms his own unique touch and gave each one a new meaning that was consistent with the spirit of his general doctrine of the unity of being. Thus, he left behind a verbal wealth in the philosophy of Sufism that was the source of many Sufi unity of being Sufis in the Islamic world for several centuries.

Given the importance of this book, Professor Abu Al-Ala Afifi, a PhD in Philosophy from Cambridge University, took care to comment on it, to complete the benefit.