Publication in Cairo
The Maymaniyya edition, also known as the Cairo edition, is the principal reference edition used by the Arabic page for the text of al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya. Dar al-Kutub al-Arabiyya al-Kubra, founded in Cairo by Ahmad al-Babi al-Halabi in 1859 under the name al-Matba’a al-Maymaniyya and situated opposite al-Azhar, printed the work in 1329 AH / 1911 CE. The publication was financed by al-Hajj Fida Muhammad al-Kashmiri and his associates in Mecca, and it sought to remedy errors in the two Bulaq printings.
The copy used for correction
The head of the correction committee, Muhammad al-Zuhri al-Ghamrawi, reported that the editors of the two Bulaq printings had not had access to the author’s manuscript. The Cairo editors obtained a copy that had been collated against the Konya manuscript in Ibn al-Arabi’s own hand. That comparison had been undertaken by a group of scholars at the request of Amir Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza’iri.
Volumes and supplementary material
Like the Bulaq edition, the Cairo edition consists of four volumes, but its page totals differ. The Arabic page gives 763 pages for volume 1, 693 for volume 2, 568 for volume 3 and 554 for the main text of volume 4, excluding the added index, concluding material and blank pages.
The edition also reproduces the concluding notice written by Muhammad Qitta al-Adawi for the fourth Bulaq volume. That notice includes a brief biography of Muhyiddin drawn from Nafh al-Tib. Al-Ghamrawi then adds a short concluding notice explaining the circumstances and date of the Cairo printing.
Why the manuscript distinction matters
The notice shows that the editors did not themselves consult Ibn al-Arabi’s autograph in Konya; they used a copy compared with it and corrected against it. The Arabic page explains that errors consequently remained. In particular, many internal headings were not distinguished as they were in the author’s manuscript, leaving long stretches of text whose beginnings and endings can be difficult to follow.
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