Ibn al-ʿArabī

Ibn al-ʿArabī (born July 28, 1165, Murcia, Valencia—died November 16, 1240, Damascus) was a celebrated Muslim mystic-philosopher who gave the esoteric, mystical dimension of Islamic thought its first full-fledged philosophic expression. His major works are the monumental Al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyyah (“The Meccan Revelations”) and Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam (1229; “The Bezels of Wisdom”).

Ibn al-ʿArabī was born in the southeast of Spain, a man of pure Arab blood whose ancestry went back to the prominent Arabian tribe of Ṭāʾī. It was in Sevilla (Seville), then an outstanding centre of Islamic culture and learning, that he received his early education. He stayed there for 30 years, studying traditional Islamic sciences; he studied with a number of mystic masters who found in him a young man of marked spiritual inclination and unusually keen intelligence. During those years he traveled a great deal and visited various cities of Spain and North Africa in search of masters of the Sufi (mystical) Path who had achieved great spiritual progress and thus renown.

It was during one of these trips that Ibn al-ʿArabī had a dramatic encounter with the great Aristotelian philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroës; 1126–98) in the city of Córdoba. Averroës, a close friend of the boy’s father, had asked that the interview be arranged because he had heard of the extraordinary nature of the young, still beardless lad. After the early exchange of only a few words, it is said, the mystical depth of the boy so overwhelmed the old philosopher that he became pale and, dumbfounded, began trembling. In the light of the subsequent course of Islamic philosophy the event is seen as symbolic; even more symbolic is the sequel of the episode, which has it that, when Averroës died, his remains were returned to Córdoba; the coffin that contained his remains was loaded on one side of a beast of burden, while the books written by him were placed on the other side in order to counterbalance it. It was a good theme of meditation and recollection for the young Ibn al-ʿArabī, who said: “On one side the Master, on the other his books! Ah, how I wish I knew whether his hopes had been fulfilled!”

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In 1198, while in Murcia, Ibn al-ʿArabī had a vision in which he felt he had been ordered to leave Spain and set out for the East. Thus began his pilgrimage to the Orient, from which he never was to return to his homeland. The first notable place he visited on this journey was Mecca (1201), where he “received a divine commandment” to begin his major work Al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyyah, which was to be completed much later in Damascus. In 560 chapters, it is a work of tremendous size, a personal encyclopaedia extending over all the esoteric sciences in Islam as Ibn al-ʿArabī understood and had experienced them, together with valuable information about his own inner life.

It was also in Mecca that Ibn al-ʿArabī became acquainted with a young girl of great beauty who, as a living embodiment of the eternal sophia (wisdom), was to play in his life a role much like that which Beatrice played for Dante. Her memories were eternalized by Ibn al-ʿArabī in a collection of love poems (Tarjumān al-ashwāq; “The Interpreter of Desires”), upon which he himself composed a mystical commentary. His daring “pantheistic” expressions drew down on him the wrath of Muslim orthodoxy, some of whom prohibited the reading of his works at the same time that others were elevating him to the rank of the prophets and saints.

After Mecca, Ibn al-ʿArabī visited Egypt (also in 1201) and then Anatolia, where, in Qonya, he met Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī, who was to become his most important follower and successor in the East. From Qonya he went on to Baghdad and Aleppo (modern Ḥalab, Syria). By the time his long pilgrimage had come to an end at Damascus (1223), his fame had spread all over the Islamic world. Venerated as the greatest spiritual master, he spent the rest of his life in Damascus in peaceful contemplation, teaching, and writing. It was during his Damascus days that one of the most important works in mystical philosophy in Islam, Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, was composed in 1229, about 10 years before his death. Consisting only of 27 chapters, the book is incomparably smaller than Al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyyah, but its importance as an expression of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s mystical thought in its most mature form cannot be overemphasized.