Kitab al-Majmu


Kitab al-Majmu‘ is a book which is claimed by some Sunni Muslims and former Alawites to be the main source of teaching of the ‘Alawi sect of Islam. 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. The Alawis, however, reject this book as baseless and state that their main source of teaching is Nahj al-Balagha. According to Matti Moosa:
An English translation by Edward E. Salisbury was published in Journal of the American Oriental Society in 1866.
The man who revealed the alleged book was Sulayman al-Adani, an Alawite convert to Christianity.
It is also known as al-Dustoor, and has been attributed to an 11th-century Alawite missionary, al-Maymoun al-Tabarani; however, Yaron Friedman says that the Dustur and Kitab al-Majmu are different texts and their identification is a mistake.
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" of aleph-mem-shīn to Kitab al-Majmu's secret of ʿayn-mīm-sīn.
Contemporary Alawis insist that the Kitab al-Majmu is fabricated, some even suggesting that it is a forgery created by 19th century Christian missionaries.