The Equinoctial Treatise: Ibn Sīnā's Interpretation of the Ḥurūf Muqaṭṭaʿāt

This article presents an English translation of Ibn Sīnā’s al-Risālah al-Nawrūziyyah (The Equinoctial Treatise), a philosophical interpretation of the Quran’s arcane alphabetical openings (ḥurūf muqaṭṭaʿāt). In it, Ibn Sīnā, combining Avicennan metaphysics with Neopythagorean numerical symbolism, uses the numerical values of Arabic letters to express the essences of existence and the relations between Allah, Intellect, Soul, Nature, and matter. From it, we learn not only Avicenna's hierarchy of existence, but also his hierarchy of interpretive primacy, and the harmonic convergence which he observed between the Quran and existential truth.