Ibn Arabi

From Hispanopedia
Ibn Arabi
Born(1165-07-28)July 28, 1165
Murcia
DiedNovember 16, 1240(1240-11-16) (aged 75)
Damascus

Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibnʿArabī al-Ḥātimī aṭ-Ṭāʾī (in Arabic: أبو عبد الله محمد بن علي بن محمد بن عربي الحاتمي الطائي‎‎; Murcia, July 28, 1165 – Damascus, November 16, 1240[1]), better known as Ibn Arabi, Abenarabi and Ben Arabi, was an Andalusi Sufi mystic, philosopher, poet, traveler and Muslim scholar.

His cosmological teachings became the dominant worldview in many parts of the Muslim world,[2] and his important contributions to various fields of the Islamic religious sciences earned him the epithet The Greatest of the Masters (in Arabic: الشيخ الأكبر, as-Sheij al-Akbar).[3]

Biography

He was born in Murcia in 1165, to a Murcian father and a Berber mother, on Cubos Street, very close to the great mosque, or aljama, of Murcia.[4]

When the so-called Wolf King died in 1172, the City of Murcia fell into the hands of the Almohads, and so Ibn Arabi, with his parents and his two sisters, moved to Seville.[5] His youthful literary studies took place between Lora del Río and Carmona. He had two great female teachers, two Sufi mystics, Fatima of Córdoba and Shams of Marchena, for whom he showed great esteem.[6]

His thirst for knowledge led Ibn Arabi to a life of travel, journeying first through his native al-Andalus and then through North Africa, visiting the various Sufi groups. Later he visited Cairo and Jerusalem. After spending two years of spiritual emotions in Mecca, he decided to continue his journey through Baghdad, Mosul, Konya (former capital of the Sultanate of Rum, and a city in present-day Turkey), and Damascus, where he finally settled for 17 years until his death.[5] His tomb, in which two of his sons were later buried, is still preserved and is a place of pilgrimage for Islam. Over his tomb, the Ottoman Empire built a madrasa in which his sepulcher is kept.

Family

Ibn ʿArabī's maternal ancestry was North African Berber.[7] In his Futūḥāt al-Makkīyah, he writes about a deceased maternal uncle, Yahya ibn Yughan al-Sanhaji, a Prince of Tlemcen who abandoned wealth for an ascetic life after meeting a Sufi mystic.[8] His paternal ancestry, by contrast, came from Yemen and belongs to one of the oldest Arab lineages of Andalusia. His paternal ancestors emigrated to Andalusia very early, probably during the second wave of the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula.[9]

His father, 'Ali ibn Muḥammad, served in the army of Ibn Mardanīsh, ruler of Murcia.[10] When Murcia fell into the hands of the Almohad Caliphate in 1172, Ibn Mardanīsh did not survive the defeat and died in battle, which led his father to swear allegiance to the Almohad caliph Abū Ya'qūb Yūsuf I.[9] At that time Ibn ʿArabī was only 7 years old, and his family moved from Murcia to Seville to serve the new ruler.[9]

Ibn ʿArabī had three wives. He married Maryam, a woman from an influential family,[10] while he was still a young adult living in Andalusia. Maryam also shared his aspiration to follow the Sufi path, as quoted by Austin in Sufis of Andalusia:

"My saintly wife, Maryam bint Muhammad binti Abdun, said: 'I have seen in a dream someone whom I have never seen in the flesh, but who appears to me in my moments of (spiritual) ecstasy. He asked me whether I aspired to the Way, to which I answered yes, but that I did not know by what means to reach it. Then he told me that I would reach it through five things: trust, certainty, patience, resolution and truthfulness.' Thus she offered me her vision (for my consideration), and I told her that this was indeed the method of the Folk (Sufis). I myself have never seen anyone with that degree of mystical experience."[11]

When Ibn ʿArabī stayed in Anatolia for several years, according to various Arabic and Persian sources, he married the widow of Majduuddin and took charge of the education of her young son, Sadruddin al-Qunawi.[9] Ibn ʿArabī also mentioned in his writings his third wife, the mother of his son Imāduddin, to whom he bequeathed the first copy of the Futūḥāt al-Makkīyah.[9]

Thought

Tomb of Ibn 'Arabi in Damascus (Syria).

Although Spanish Orientalist studies have related him to the school of Ibn al-Arif (Abenalarif), and initially considered him more a philosopher than a Sufi, Sufi masters of many orders have for centuries regarded him as a great master with knowledge through 'direct (spiritual) experience', and have even given him the title of Sheij al Akbar, "the greatest of the masters." In contemporary Western academic literature, along the same lines, the studies of his work carried out by authors such as Michel Chodkiewicz, William Chittick, Denis Gril and, in Spain, Pablo Beneito, clearly show that his contact with the Aristotelian schools of Alfarabi and Averroes, or with the Neoplatonic philosophy of the school of Ibn Hazm, was very superficial.

His work is, above all, gnostic-religious in character; his criticisms of a merely external and arid understanding of religion, and even of philosophy itself, are abundant in his work. But it is evident that he is not a simple "mystic": the metaphysical content of his work ranges from the gnostic-sapiential interpretation of the Sharia (Islamic Law) – always with a certain Zahiri outlook like that of Ibn Hazm, but one which he far surpasses – to a cosmology based on divine revelation and on its oneness (which was named by his successors the "Oneness of Existence," or Wahdat al-wuyud in Arabic).

Ibn Arabi's doctrine dwells on the absolute character of Allah as the supreme unity. It denies any kind of analogy between Him and what is created – thereby escaping the pantheism that some have ascribed to him – but it also develops a complex relationship between the created and the Creator, of whose different Names and Attributes (Allahu al-asma al-husna) the created is an expression, an idea initiated by Sahl al-Tustari. This radical separation between Allah and His creation prevents rational knowledge of Him as Essence, but it does not prevent knowledge of Him through unveiling, that is, through the certification or Realization of the Reality (Haqq) of things, which is none other than Allah. With Ibn Arabi, Sufism reaches the most refined development in the expression of its theoretical elaboration.

Like the Neoplatonists, Ibn Arabi applies a hierarchical scale of genera and species between non-existence and the creating being, which is in turn related to his idea of love, likewise composed of a series of degrees ranging from sympathy or inclination to pure love.[12]

First Vision

Seville, where Ibn Arabi spent most of his life and education

Ibn ʿArabī grew up at the ruling court and received military training.[10] As he confessed in al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya, he preferred playing in the military camp with his friends to reading a book. However, it was in his adolescence that he experienced his first vision (fanā); and he later wrote about this experience as "the differentiation of the universal reality comprehended by that gaze."[13]

His father, noticing a change in him, had mentioned it to the philosopher and judge Ibn Rushd (Averroes),[13] who asked to meet Ibn Arabi. Ibn Arabi said that from this first meeting he had learned to perceive a distinction between the formal knowledge of rational thought and the revelatory perceptions of the nature of things. He then embraced Sufism and devoted his life to the spiritual path.[13] When he later moved to Fez, in Morocco, Mohammed ibn Qasim al-Tamimi became his spiritual mentor.[14] In 1200 he took leave of one of his most important teachers, Shaykh Abu Ya'qub Yusuf ibn Yakhlaf al-Kumi, who was then living in the city of Salé.[15]

Works

Medieval list of the works of Ibn Arabi.

His works number more than 200. Osman Yahya has catalogued them, has edited some of them and has refuted some attributions of works such as the Epistle of Unity or the Kernel of the Kernel.

His most important work is the al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya, usually translated as The Meccan Illuminations or The Meccan Revelations, which is a compendium of Islamic metaphysics, although it covers most of the traditional Islamic sciences in its more than 3,000 pages.

His other major work is the Fusus al-Hikam (The Bezels of Wisdom), a synthesis of his metaphysical thought, of the unity of beliefs and of prophetology in Islam.

Other notable works:

  • Book of the Treasure of Lovers, Kitāb Dajā'ir al-a'lāq
  • Book of Divine Governance, Kitāb al-tadbīrāl al-Ilāhiyya
  • Book of the Descent of the Stars, Kitāb mawāqi' al-nuyūm
  • Book of the Mystical Journey, Kitāb tuhfat al-safara
  • Epistle of the Binding Precept, Risālat al-Amr al-muhkam
  • Epistle of the Lights, Risālat al-anwār
  • The Great Diwan, Al-Diwan al-akbar
  • The Interpreter of Desires, Taryuman al-ashwaq.
  • The Contemplation of the Mysteries
  • The Divine Governance of the Human Kingdom
  • The Splendor of the Fruits of the Journey
  • The Bezels of Wisdoms
  • Treatise on Unity
  • Book of Extinction in Contemplation
  • The Tree of the Universe (disputed attribution).
  • The Wondrous Life of Dhu-l-Nun the Egyptian
  • The Kernel of the Kernel (false attribution)
  • The Secret of the Names of God
  • The Treatise on Unity (false attribution).

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Ibn al-`Arabi al-Ta`i", Biblioteca de al-Andalus, vol. 2, p. 158, Fundación Ibn Tufayl de Estudios Árabes, Almería, 2009, ISBN 978-84-934026-6-2
  2. ↑ Ibrahim Kalin, Salim Ayduz The Oxford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Science, and Technology in Islam, Vol. 1 (Oxford University Press, 2014 ISBN 9780199812578), p. 162
  3. ↑ Galovic, Jelena (2002). Los grupos místico-espirituales de la actualidad (in español). Plaza y Valdés. p. 134. ISBN 9789707221048.
  4. ↑ "Fawaz Hussain: «Murcia siempre está en el corazón de Ibn Arabi»". La Verdad (in español). 2021-12-21. Retrieved 2021-12-21.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Las revelaciones de la Meca". World Digital Library (in español). 1900–1999. Retrieved July 14, 2013.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: date format (link)
  6. ↑ juntaislamica.com. "Ibn Arabí: Los Sufies de Al-Andalus - Webislam". www.webislam.com (in español). Archived from the original on February 1, 2018. Retrieved January 31, 2018.
  7. ↑ Hirtenstein, Stephen (1999). El mercificador ilimitado: The Spiritual Life and Thought of Ibn 'Arabi. Oxford: Anqa Publishing. p. 32. ISBN 978-1883991296. Como muchos andaluces, era de ascendencia mixta: el nombre de su padre indica una familia árabe, que probablemente había emigrado a Andalucía en los primeros años de la conquista árabe, mientras que su madre parece proceder de una familia bereber. ..
  8. ↑ Hirtenstein, Stephen C. (September 1999). El mercificador ilimitado: The Spiritual Life and Thought of Ibn 'Arabi. p. 252. ISBN 978-1905937387.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 Addas, Claude (2019). Ibn Arabi: The Voyage of No Return (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society. ISBN 9781911141402.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Chittick, William (Summer 2018). "Ibn Arabi". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford: Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Retrieved 2018-07-19. Ibn 'Arabî referred to himself with fuller versions of his name, such as Abû 'Abdallâh Muhammad ibn 'Alî ibn al-'Arabî al-Tâ'î al-Hâtimî (the last three names indicating his noble Arab lineage)
  11. ↑ Austin, R.J.W. (1988). Sufis de Andalucía: The Ruh Al-Quds & Al-Durrat Al-Fakhirah. New Leaf Distributing Company. ISBN 9780904975130.
  12. ↑ Arnau, Juan (February 19, 2021). "Ibn Arabí, el maestro del instante" (in español). Babelia, El País. Retrieved February 19, 2021. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 Chittick 2007, p. 5.
  14. ↑ John Renard (May 18, 2009). Cuentos de los amigos de Dios: Hagiografía islámica en traducción. University of California Press. p. 35. ISBN 978-0-520-25896-9. Retrieved February 11, 2012.
  15. ↑ Elmore, Gerald T. (1999). La santidad islámica en la plenitud de los tiempos: El libro del fabuloso grifo de Ibn Al-ʻArabī. Brill. p. 69. ISBN 978-90-04-10991-9.

Spanish-language editions

  • El esplendor de los frutos del viaje (in español). Edited and translated by Carlos Varona Narvión. El Árbol del Paraíso 60. Madrid: Ediciones Siruela. 2008. ISBN 978-84-9841-213-0.
  • El libro de la extinción de la contemplación (in español). Málaga: Editorial Sírio. 2007. ISBN 978-84-7808-542-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
  • Los sufíes de Andalucía (in español). Málaga: Editorial Sírio. 2007. ISBN 978-84-7808-553-8.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
  • Textos sobre el ayuno de Ibn Arabi (in español). Madrid: Mandala ediciones. 2005. ISBN 978-84-88769-86-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
  • La taberna de las luces: poesía sufí de Al-Ándalus y el Magreb (del siglo XII al siglo XX) (in español). Murcia: Editora regional de Murcia. 2004. ISBN 978-84-7564-279-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
  • El divino gobierno del reino humano. Lo que necesita el buscador. Tratado sobre el Uno y Único (in español). Córdoba: Almuzara. 2004. ISBN 978-84-933901-0-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
  • Tratado de la unidad y otros textos sufíes (in español). Palma de Mallorca: José J. de Olañeta. 2004. ISBN 978-84-9716-338-5.
  • Las contemplaciones de los misterios (in español). Murcia: Editora regional de Murcia. 2003. ISBN 978-84-7564-265-9.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
  • El intérprete de los deseos: Taryuman Al-Aswaq (in español). Murcia: Editoria regional de Murcia. 2002. ISBN 978-84-7564-241-3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
  • Tratado de la unidad (in español). Barcelona: Índigo. 2002. ISBN 978-84-89768-67-3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
  • Las iluminaciones de la meca: textos escogidos (in español). Madrid: Ediciones Siruela. 1996 (1st edition, 3rd printing). ISBN 84-7844-309-6. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: publisher location (link) CS1 maint: year (link)
  • Los engarces de la sabiduría (in español). Madrid: Ediciones Hiperión. 1991. ISBN 84-7517-332-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
  • Ibn Arabi & Zaydun, Ibn (1988). Casidas de amor profano y místico (in español). México: Porrua. ISBN 978-968-08-6402-7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)

Bibliography

  • Addas, Claude (1996). Ibn ‘Arabi o la búsqueda del azufre rojo (in español). Murcia: Editora Regional de Murcia.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
  • Asín Palacios, Miguel (2006). Vida de santones andaluces: epístola de la santidad de Ibn Arabi de Murcia (ed. facsímil) (in español). Valladolid: Maxtor. ISBN 978-84-9761-240-1.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
  • – (1990). El Islam cristianizado. Estudio del "sufismo" a través de las obras de Abenarabi de Murcia (in español). Ediciones Hiperión. ISBN 84-7517-046-3. {{cite book}}: |author= has numeric name (help)
  • Cheetham, Tom (2019). El mundo como icono. Henry Corbin y la función angélica de los seres (in español). Hardcover, 368 pages, translated by Agustín López Tobajas and María Tabuyo, Imaginatio vera collection. Ediciones Atalanta. ISBN 978-84-949054-5-2.
  • Chittick, William (2004). Mundos imaginales: Ibn al-Arabi y la diversidad de las creencias (in español). Madrid: Mandala-Alquitara. ISBN 84-88769-76-8.
  • Corbin, Henry (1993). La imaginación creadora en el sufismo de Ibn Arabi (in español). Barcelona: Ediciones Destino. ISBN 84-233-2268-8.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
  • — (1994 (2nd edition 2000)). Historia de la filosofía islámica (in español). Madrid: Editorial Trotta. ISBN 84-8164-373-4. {{cite book}}: |author= has numeric name (help); Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: publisher location (link) CS1 maint: year (link)
  • Izutsu, Toshihiko (2019). Sufismo y Taoísmo (in español). Madrid: Ediciones Siruela. ISBN 978-84-17624-45-3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
  • Ibn al-`Arabi al-Ta`i (in español). Biblioteca de al-Andalus, vol. 2, pp. 158-332, Fundación Ibn Tufayl de Estudios Árabes, Almería. 2009. ISBN 978-84-934026-6-2.
  • Mora, Fernando (2019). El perfume de la existencia: sufismo y no-dualidad en Ibn 'Arabí de Murcia (in español). Córdoba: Editorial Almuzara. ISBN 978-84-17954-42-0.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
  • – (2011). Ibn ‘Arabí: Vida y enseñanzas del gran místico andalusí (in español). Barcelona: Editorial Kairós. ISBN 978-84-9988-023-5. {{cite book}}: |author= has numeric name (help)CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
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