Original title: ام الکتاب

Author: Ananimo

Preface: Farhad Daftary

Original language: Persian

Translator: P. Filippani-Ronconi (edited by)

Publisher: IRFAN EDIZIONI

Year of publication: 2016

Number of pages: 374

ISBN: 8897278434

The present study aims, first of all, to offer an intelligible and coherent translation of a Gnostic text linguistically and ideally difficult to understand, especially in the points where it is more interesting, or because it expresses original conceptions, or because it exposes a synthesis singular of doctrines accepted by disparate religious systems.
Secondly, this work proposes to provide study and elaboration material for those who, not being specialized in this particular doctrinaire and linguistic field, do not have the professional knowledge necessary to face the critical reading of a text of the difficulty of this present and, nevertheless, wish to be informed about the theories it exposes, theories that are of great interest for comparative studies in the religious and philosophical field. In truth, most of the doctrines, conceptions and ideas reported by this text do not seem to belong not only to the Muslim religious world, but sometimes not even to those particular forms of gnosis which, in the Islamic ambit, acquired citizenship in various Ishmaelite movements, ḫaṭṭābī and ṣūfī. For this reason, above all, each chapter is accompanied by an apparatus of notes, with the intent to satisfy the following needs: amend and integrate the text, where possible; to make it easy to understand and, thirdly, to trace the origin of the religious, philosophical and psychological conceptions that it presents, ordering them according to a logical thread, so that the reader can realize their meaning and their ideal implications, going back also to their possible parentage from other schools of thought.