Kitab al-Majmu

Kitab al-Majmu (Arabic: كتاب المجموع, romanized: Kitāb al-Majmūʿ, lit. 'Book of the Collection') is a book that is claimed to be a primary source of teaching of Alawism. This claim has been asserted by some Sunni Muslims and former Alawites.^[1] They claim the book is not openly published and instead is passed down from initiated Master to Apprentice; however, the book has been published by Western scholars, and both the original Arabic and French translation are available on the Internet Archive.^[2]

History and translation

According to Matti Moosa:^[3]

Kitab al-Majmu contains sixteen suras (chapters) incorporated by Sulayman al-Adani in his Kitab al-Bakura... Kitab al-Majmu was published with a French translation by René Dussaud in his Histoire et Religion des Nosairis, 161-98. The Arabic text of the same is found in Abu Musa al-Hariri's al-Alawiyyun al-Alawiyya (Dubai: Dar al-Itisam, 1980), 145-74.

An English translation by Edward E. Salisbury was published in Journal of the American Oriental Society in 1866.^[4]

The man who revealed the alleged book was Sulayman al-Adani, an Alawite convert to Christianity.^[5]

It is also known as al-Dustoor, and has been attributed to an 11th-century Alawite missionary, al-Maymoun al-Tabarani;^[6] however, Yaron Friedman says that the Dustur and Kitab al-Majmu are different texts and their identification is a mistake.^[7]

Yaron Friedman suggests that Kitab al-Majmu was influenced by Jewish esoteric traditions found in the Sefer Yetzirah; Friedman in particular points to the similarity of the texts in their letter mysticism, comparing Sefer Yetzirah's "great secret" (sod gadol) of aleph-mem-shīn to Kitab al-Majmu's secret (sirr) of ʿayn-mīm-sīn.^[8]

Some Alawites insist that the Kitab al-Majmu is fabricated, some even suggesting that it is a forgery created by 19th century Christian missionaries.^[9]