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Ibn al-'Arabi,
Muhyi al-Din (1164-1240)
Ibn al-‘Arabi, Muhyi al-Din (1164-1240) Ibn
al-‘Arabi was a mystic who drew on
the writings of Sufis, Islamic
theologians and philosophers in
order to elaborate a complex
theosophical system akin to that of
Plotinus. He was born in Murcia (in
southeast Spain) in AH 560/AD 1164,
and died in Damascus in AH 638/AD
1240. Of several hundred works
attributed to him the most famous
are al-Futuhat al-makkiyya (The
Meccan Illuminations) and Fusus al-hikam
(The Bezels of Wisdom). The
Futuhat is an encyclopedic
discussion of Islamic lore viewed
from the perspective of the stages
of the mystic path. It exists in two
editions, both completed in Damascus
- one in AH 629/AD 1231 and the
other in AH 636/AD 1238 - but the
work was conceived in Mecca many
years earlier, in the course of a
vision which Ibn al-‘Arabi
experienced near the Kaaba, the
cube-shaped House of God which
Muslims visit on pilgrimage. Because
of its length, this work has been
relatively neglected. The Fusus,
which is much shorter, comprises
twenty-seven chapters named after
prophets who epitomize different
spiritual types. Ibn al-‘Arabi
claimed that he received it directly
from Muhammad, who appeared to him
in Damascus in AH 627/AD 1229. It
has been the subject of over forty
commentaries.
Although Ibn al-‘Arabi
was primarily a mystic who believed
that he possessed superior
divinely-bestowed knowledge, his
work is of interest to the
philosopher because of the way in
which he used philosophical
terminology in an attempt to explain
his inner experience. He held that
whereas the divine Essence is
absolutely unknowable, the cosmos as
a whole is the locus of
manifestation of all God’s
attributes. Moreover, since these
attributes require the creation for
their expression, the One is
continually driven to transform
itself into Many. The goal of
spiritual realization is therefore
to penetrate beyond the exterior
multiplicity of phenomena to a
consciousness of what subsequent
writers have termed the ‘unity of
existence’. This entails the
abolition of the ego or ‘passing
away from self’ (fana’) in which
one becomes aware of absolute unity,
followed by ‘perpetuation’ (baqa’)
in which one sees the world as at
once One and Many, and one is able
to see God in the creature and the
creature in God. 1 Epistemology
While still an unbearded youth, Ibn
al-‘Arabi was introduced by his
father to the celebrated philosopher
Ibn Rushd, who eagerly questioned
him about his spiritual experiences.
Ibn al-‘Arabi describes the
interview as follows: He said,
‘How did you find the situation in
unveiling and divine effusion? Is it
what rational consideration gives
us?’ I replied, ‘Yes and no.
Between the yes and the no spirits
fly from their matter and heads from
their bodies. ’(al-Futuhat al-makkiya
I.154, in Chittick 1989: xiii) This
cryptic answer, which reputedly made
the philosopher turn pale and
tremble, implies the
existence of divinely-bestowed knowledge which is
superior to knowledge gained by
‘rational consideration’ (nazar).
But what precisely is the
relationship between them?
Elsewhere, Ibn al-‘Arabi speaks
not of two levels of knowledge, but
of three (for example, in al-Futuhat
al-makkiya I.31). First, there is
‘knowledge based on reason’ (‘ilm
al-‘aql), that is, knowledge which
can be acquired by rational
consideration. Here he probably has
in mind the principal tenets of
Muslim theology rather than the a
priori self-evident propositions of
logic and mathematics. Second, there
is knowledge based on states (‘ilm
al-ahwal), which is what we would
call empirical knowledge.
He gives
as examples the sweetness of honey,
the bitterness of aloes and the
pleasure of sexual intercourse, none
of which can be known without
‘tasting’ them. Third, there is
‘knowledge of mysteries’ (‘ulum
al-asrar) - sometimes called
‘gnosis’ (ma‘rifa) -which is
specific to prophets and saints and
is akin to Spinoza’s scientia
intuitiva (see Spinoza, B. de) It is
futile to strive for this third type
of knowledge, for it lies concealed
in every man but is only unveiled
when the divine light is effused
into the hearts of those who are
predisposed to receive it.
‘Knowledge of mysteries’
includes knowledge of the first
type, except that it is acquired
without reflection, and knowledge of
the second type but pertaining to
higher states not experienced by
lesser mortals; potentially it
embraces everything except the
unknowable Essence. It is nothing
short of divine knowledge for, in
the words of the celebrated hadith
qudsi (extra-Qur’anic revelation),
when God loves his servant he
becomes ‘the hearing with which he
hears, the sight with which he
sees’.The distinctly subordinate
role given to reason in Ibn al-‘Arabi’s
epistemology appears at first to be
out of step with the Qur’an, which
repeatedly urges man to engage in
‘rational consideration’ and
‘reflection’ (see Epistemology
in Islamic philosophy). In his view
however, there is no real tension
because the main purpose of
considering and reflecting is to
lead man to the realization that he
cannot reach knowledge of God
through his unaided reason. This is
illustrated in Chapter 167 of al-Futuhat
al-makkiyya (The Meccan
Illuminations), in which the
progressive journey of the gnostic
and the philosopher towards the
truth is depicted in terms of a
heavenly ascent akin to that
experienced by Muhammad (the
mi‘raj). As they pass through each
of the celestial spheres the gnostic
is addressed by their spirits - the
prophets who inhabit each sphere -
and perceives their inner reality.
The philosopher, on the other hand,
learns only the phenomenal or
apparent and becomes increasingly
perplexed and sceptical until he
finally becomes a Muslim and follows
the path of the gnostic (see
Gnosticism). 2 Theology Although Ibn
al-‘Arabi has often been labelled
a pantheist, he was far too subtle a
thinker to have subscribed to the
doctrine that God is everything and
everything is God (see Pantheism).
He believed that God per se - whom
he called ‘the Real’ (al-Haqq)
or ‘the Essence’ (al-dhat) –
is absolutely unknowable because he
transcends all humanly conceivable
qualifications. God’s ‘names’
(asma’) or ‘attributes’ (sifat),
on the other hand, are the
relationships which can be discerned
between the Essence and the cosmos.
They are known to God because he
knows every object of knowledge, but
they are not existent entities or
ontological qualities, for this
would imply plurality in the
godhead. It may help to understand
the status of the ‘names’ (which
of course must not be confused with
‘the names of the names’ known
to us from the Qur’an and Islamic
tradition) if we draw an analogy
with the complex web of
interpersonal human relationships.
One and the same individual may be
known to others variously as
teacher, pupil, friend, enemy,
father, son, brother, husband, lover
and so forth.
A man who knows
another as his friend genuinely
knows him, but does not necessarily
know him as his teacher or his
father and cannot know him as he is
in himself without regard to others.
Similarly, to know God as the
All-Merciful, for instance, does not
entail knowing him as the Vengeful
or the Abaser, nor does it mean
knowing his Essence even though each
of the names denotes the Essence.
The analogy must not be pressed,
however, because unlike human
beings, whose relationships are
temporal, God has possessed the
divine names from all eternity. Thus
far Ibn al-‘Arabi’s theology
remains within the confines of
Islamic kalam, although he seems in
some ways to have more affinity with
the Mu‘tazila than with the
Ash‘ariyya (see Ash‘ariyya and
Mu‘tazila; Islamic theology).
However, he differs markedly from
both in holding that, not
withstanding the fact that in his
Essence, God is independent of the
cosmos, his names none the less seek
the creation, for without it they
would remain virtualities. The
cosmos as a whole is the locus of
their manifestation and it is only
through it that their properties can
be seen and understood. Moreover,
since all the creatures in the
cosmos and everything which they
make or do are God’s ‘acts’ (af‘al),
God is present everywhere and the
all-inclusive name Allah may be used
to denote the sum total of all
things: divine Essence, divine names
and divine acts. Nevertheless, since
creatures have only relative
existence (see §3), it also has to
be said that he is nowhere to be
found (see God, concepts of). 3
Ontology In agreement with the
Islamic philosophers, Ibn al-‘Arabi
distinguishes between the essence or
‘quiddity’ (mahiyya, literally
the ‘what is it?’) of a thing
and its ‘existence’
(wujud, literally its
‘being found’), holding that the
former is mentally separable from
the latter. That is, one can define
the nature of things (unicorns, pink
elephants and so forth) regardless
of whether or not they are actually
found as phenomena. He also accepts
the distinction between necessary
being (wajib al-wujud), impossible
things and possible things.
The
necessary being is God, the one
reality who cannot not exist because
his quiddity is being (see Being).
Impossible things are things which
cannot exist as phenomena although
they may subsist in the imagination
(see §5). Possible things are
things which become ‘existent
entities’ (a‘yan mawjuda) when
God chooses to give them existence;
their existence or non-existence at
any given time depends on his will.
They have, however, been known to
him eternally as ‘immutable
entities’ (a‘yan thabita). This
latter term is rendered by Affifi
(1938: 47) as
‘fixed prototypes’ and
Izutsu (1983: 159) as
‘permanent archetypes’,
expressions which suggest that like
the Platonic Ideas they are the
original models of which objects in
the phenomenal world are multiple
copies (see Universals). Chittick
(1989: 84) objects to this on the
grounds that although the
‘immutable entities’ actually
become the ‘existent entities’,
they are the things themselves prior
to their being given existence in
the world. Although I have adopted
his translation as closer to the
meaning of the Arabic, I have
reservations about his
interpretation, for there are
passages in Ibn al-‘Arabi’s
writings which seem to imply that
some of the immutable entities are
universals. Nevertheless it may well
be the case that Ibn al-‘Arabi’s
views on this subject were not
entirely consistent. Another problem
area is Ibn al-‘Arabi’s lack of
precision in using the word wujud to
mean both ‘existence’ and
‘Being’. It was stated above
that possible things become existent
entities when God gives them
existence, but it must be stressed
that the existence which he gives
them is relative existence. They
become the ‘loci of
manifestation’ (mazahir) of the
names of God, who, as Essence, is
alone Being in the strict sense.
Another way of putting it is to say
that each entity becomes a
receptacle for Being, but that since
entities differ from one another,
they differ also in their capacity
to function as vehicles of his
self-manifestation. 4 The ‘perfect
man’ and the Muhammadan reality
The first chapter of the Fusus al-hikam
(The Bezels of Wisdom) is entitled
‘The Wisdom of Divinity in the
Word of Adam’. It begins with the
assertion that the Real created the
cosmos as an all-inclusive object in
which he could contemplate the
entities of his names, but that
until he created Adam and breathed
his spirit into him, the cosmos
remained like an unpolished mirror.
Here Ibn al-‘Arabi’s idea seems
to be that the cosmos as a whole -
the totality of existent entities
manifests all the divine
names but does so in a diffuse way,
whereas man, as a microcosm endowed
with consciousness, brings them into
sharp focus as a unity. Potentially
every man is a microcosm, but in
practice men differ in their
polishing of the cosmic mirror, with
only a select few realizing their
primordial nature.
These are the
prophets and saints, all of whom
belong to the category of ‘the
perfect man’ (al-insan al-kamil).
They alone assume the character
traits of God, which are latent in
all human beings, and manifest them
in perfect equilibrium. Muhammad is
the ‘perfect man’ par
excellence. Basing his argument on
the hadith (sayings of the Prophet),
‘I was a prophet when Adam was
between water and clay’, Ibn
al-‘Arabi propounds the view that
as ‘the Muhammadan reality’ (al-haqiqa
al-Muhammadiyya), Muhammad is
identical with ‘the first
intellect’ (al-‘aql al-awwal),
the eternal principle unifying the
immutable entities. All the other
prophets, beginning with Adam, only
became prophets during their
historical mission; each was the
bearer of a fragment of this
Muhammadan reality in a particular
place and time, a bezel in which a
jewel of the divine wisdom was
displayed. None the less, after
their mission the prophets continued
to exert an influence through the
saints who were their spiritual
heirs. 5 Imagination and mysticism
The al-Futuhat contains a good deal
of autobiographical material in
anecdotal form, some of which
strains credulity. For instance Ibn
al-‘Arabi, who was in no doubt
that he himself was one of the most
important saints in the history of
Islam, tells us that he met and
conversed with the prophets of old
including Moses, Jesus and Muhammad.
On one moonlit night, when on board
a ship in the port of Tunis, he
allegedly encountered Moses’
spiritual guide al-Khidr, who came
to him walking on the water without
getting his feet wet, before going
off to a lighthouse over two miles
away, which he reached in two or
three steps (al-Futuhat al-makkiyya
I: 186). It is tempting to dismiss
these visions as hallucinations
induced by extreme ascetic practices
or illness - n the occasion when he
saw al-Khidr he had gone to the side
of the ship because of a stomach
pain which prevented him from
sleeping - but Ibn al-‘Arabi
offers a different explanation based
on his perception of the nature of
the cosmos. In his view, the cosmos
comprises a hierarchy of three
distinct worlds or levels: the
‘world of spirits’,
‘the world of images’ and ‘the
world of bodies’. The second of
these - ‘the world of images’
(‘alam al-amthal), also called
‘the world of imagination’ (‘alam
al-khayal) - plays a key role
because of its intermediate
position. It is the isthmus (barzakh)
between the world of spirits and the
world of bodies, the realm in which
spirits are corporealized and bodies
are spiritualized. The world of
images is a really existent world,
but in the waking state we are
generally unaware of it; in our
dreams, when our souls are no longer
distracted by sensory input from the
world of bodies, we function at this
level, conversing with the departed
and with those normally separated
from us by geographical distances.
What ordinary human beings
experience only in their dreams, the
mystic may experience at other
times. Thus for example, when al-Khidr
appeared to Ibn al-‘Arabi, this
took place in the world of images,
al-Khidr - who belongs to the world
of spirits - being corporealized for
the occasion. The supposition of
this intermediate world of images
also furnishes the key to
understanding both the miracles
performed by prophets and saints and
some of the more bizarre
descriptions of the hereafter in the
hadith. As regards the miracles, Ibn
al-‘Arabi’s starting point is
the observation that we all can
create things in our imagination or
imagine things happening as we would
like them to happen. The ‘perfect
man’ is in addition endowed with
extraordinary spiritual energy or
himma, which enables him to bring
the creatures of imagination out of
the world of images into the world
of bodies thus giving them
existence. However, far from acting
like a superman, he exercises
restraint only employing his
miraculous powers when commanded by
God to do so. As regards the
traditional descriptions of the
hereafter, Ibn al-‘Arabi maintains
that they should be understood as
comparable to dream imagery. In a
celebrated dream, the Prophet was
given a cup of milk to drink, which
in the waking state he subsequently
interpreted as knowledge. What is
impossible in the world of bodies -
the corporealization of milk as
knowledge - is perfectly possible in
the world of images. Similarly in
the hereafter, our works will be
weighed in the scales and death will
be brought in the form of a salt-coloured
ram. We who are resurrected will
really see these things, but we will
see them in the world of images. 6
Assessment In view of the volume of
Ibn al-‘Arabi’s work, much of
which is still unpublished, any
assessment of his philosophy must
remain highly tentative. Although he
was influenced by earlier Sufis and
was conversant with the works of the
falasifa and the disputes between
the Mu‘tazila and Ash‘ariyya,
the dominant influence on his
thought seems to have been the
Neoplatonism of Plotinus as mediated
by the Epistles of the Brethren of
Purity (Affifi 1938: 174-94) (see
Ikhwan al-Safa’; Neoplatonism in
Islamic philosophy). Nevertheless he
differs from them in at least two
important respects. First, despite
his use of emanationist language, it
is clear that for him
‘emanation’ (fayd) is a figure
of speech for what is more
accurately described as
self-revelation. Second, he does not
simply take from the Qur’an and
hadith convenient pegs on which to
hang his doctrine, but rather offers
what amounts to a profound esoteric
commentary on both.See also: Islamic
theology; Mystical philosophy in
Islam NEAL ROBINSON Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version 1.0, London:
Routledge
List of works
Ibn al-‘Arabi (after 1229) Fusus al-hikam (The
Bezels of Wisdom), ed.
A. Affifi,
Cairo, 1946; trans.
R.W.J. Austin, The Bezels of Wisdom, New
York: Paulist Press, 1980.(A late
work which contains the quintessence
of Ibn al-‘Arabi’s spiritual
doctrine in the form of twenty-seven
brief chapters named after prophets
who epitomize different spiritual
types.) Ibn al-‘Arabi (c.1231-8)
al-Futuhat al-makkiyya (The Meccan
Illuminations), Cairo, 1911; partial
trans. M. Chodkiewicz et al., Les
Illuminations de la Mecque: The
Meccan Illuminations, Textes choisis/Selected
Texts, Paris: Sindbad, 1988.(The
definitive synthesis of Ibn al-‘Arabi’s
teaching, comprising 560 chapters
which deal with every aspect of
mystical knowledge.) References and
further reading Addas, C. (1989) Ibn
‘Arabi ou La quête du Soufre
Rouge (Ibn al-‘Arabi and The Quest
for Red Sulphur), Paris: Gallimard;
trans. P. Kingsley, Quest for Red
Sulphur: The Life of Ibn ‘Arabi,
Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society,
1993.(Critical biography.) Affifi,
A.E. (1938) The Mystical Philosophy
of Muhyid Din-Ibnul Arabi,
Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.(Pioneering work, still useful
although polemical and somewhat
dated.) Austin, R.W. J. (1971) Sufis
of Andalusia, London, George Allen
& Unwin. (Biographical essay and
partial translations of Ruh al-quds
and al-Durrat al-fakhirah, which
give valuable insight into the
spiritual milieu of Ibn al-‘Arabi’s
early years.) Chittick, W.C. (1989)
The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn
al-‘Arabi’s Metaphysics of
Imagination, Albany, NY: State
University of New York
Press.(Exposition of Ibn al-
‘Arabi’s thought, based
primarily on The Meccan
Illuminations with extensive
excerpts translated by the author.)
Chittick, W.C. (1996a) ‘Ibn ‘Arabi’,
in S.H. Nasr and O. Leaman (eds)
History of Islamic Philosophy,
London: Routledge, ch. 30,
497-509.(Clear and perceptive
discussion of Ibn al-‘Arabi.)
Chittick, W.C. (1996b) ‘The School
of Ibn ‘Arabi’, in S.H. Nasr and
O. Leaman (eds) History of Islamic
Philosophy, London: Routledge, ch.
31, 510-23.(Discussion of Ibn al-‘Arabi’s
school.) Chodkiewicz, M. (1992) Un
océan sans rivage: Ibn al-‘Arabi
le livre et la loi (An Ocean Without
Shore: Ibn al-‘Arabi, the Book and
the Law), Paris, Seuil; trans. D.
Streight, Ocean Without Shore,
Albany, NY: State University of New
York Press, 1993.(A study of the
hermeneutical principles which
govern Ibn al-‘Arabi’s approach
to the Qur’an.) Izutsu, T. (1983)
Sufism and Taoism, Los Angeles, CA:
University of California
Press.(Pages 1-283 contain the
classic account of Ibn al-‘Arabi’s
ontology, based primarily on The
Bezels of Wisdom as interpreted by
early Muslim commentators. The book
is a revised version of A
Comparative Study of the Key
Philosophical Concepts in Sufism and
Taoism, 1966-7.) Routledge
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version
1.0, London: Routledge
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