Insight Editions · No. 127
Ibn al-Arabi and the Sufis
Binyamin Abrahamov
Binyamin Abrahamov examines how Ibn al-Arabi read eighteen earlier Sufi masters, tracing borrowed ideas and practices alongside his criticisms and claims of intellectual originality.
A study guide to Ibn al-Arabi and the Sufis by Binyamin Abrahamov. Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the authors or publishers. Please read and buy the original.
About the Book
Binyamin Abrahamov asks two questions of Ibn al-Arabi's vast writings. How did the Greatest Master regard the Sufis who came before him, and what did he take from them? Working through eighteen figures, from al-Muhasibi in ninth-century Baghdad to his own first teacher in Seville, he finds a reader who borrowed widely, argued constantly, and still built something new.
Argument map
What the book is
Ibn al-Arabi and the Sufis was published by Anqa Publishing, Oxford, in 2014. Its author, Binyamin Abrahamov, had already written on Ibn al-Arabi's attitude to al-Ghazali and on his relation to Abu Yazid al-Bistami, and both studies were reworked into chapters here. The preface thanks Stephen Hirtenstein and the students of a course on the Fusus at Bar Ilan University, and closes with the hope of honouring a thinker who gave us "an original and penetrating perception of the cosmos".
The book is short and strictly organized. An introduction surveys the Sufi tradition and sets out the method. Eleven chapters treat the earlier Sufis and seven the later ones, each ending with a summary. A conclusion weighs the evidence and answers the question of originality. Bibliography and index follow.
- Introduction (pp.1-10): the gap in research, the method, a survey of Sufi history, the problem of originality.
- Earlier Sufis (pp.13-113): al-Muhasibi, Dhu al-Nun, al-Bistami, al-Tustari, al-Kharraz, al-Junayd, al-Tirmidhi, al-Hallaj, Ibn Masarra, al-Shibli, Abu Talib al-Makki.
- Later Sufis (pp.117-169): al-Ghazali, Ibn Barrajan, Ibn al-Arif, Ibn Qasi, Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, Abu Madyan, Abu al-Abbas al-Uraybi.
- Conclusion (pp.171-180).
The main text with its notes runs to about 59,800 words.
Why these eighteen
Abrahamov starts from a simple rule: frequency of mention shows importance. In his words, "We assume that the recurring mention of a name" in the Shaykh's texts testifies to the weight the author gives that person, whether he learns from him or criticizes him. The eighteen are the figures who recur in the Futuhat, the Fusus and the epistles, plus a few, such as Ibn Masarra and al-Makki, whom scholars have proposed as sources.
The choice also produces a natural split. Up to al-Makki, who died in 996, the figures are names in books and stories. From al-Ghazali onward they come closer, and the last three are men Ibn al-Arabi heard about from their disciples or knew himself. That distance shapes what he took: doctrine from the far past, conduct from the near.
Twelve ideas to carry in
- Mention measures importance. Bistami is named 143 times in the Futuhat, Hallaj only 15.
- Early Sufis gave ideas, later Sufis gave practice.
- Only God knows God. The Essence is unknown; the names and attributes are known.
- Truth joins contraries. God is Manifest and Hidden, transcendent and immanent, at once.
- Look from several aspects. One thing can be true from one angle and false from another.
- Sainthood (walaya) outlasts prophecy. Legislative prophecy ended; closeness to God did not.
- Stations are to be abandoned. Their perfection lies in leaving them.
- Unveiling beats transmission. Fresh meat, not dried meat.
- The Book and the Sunna remain the test. Even a true unveiling can be wrongly read.
- Spiritual miracles outrank physical ones.
- Rites keep their form and gain an inner meaning.
- Originality lies in the combination. Old parts, new whole.
1. Orientation
Scholars have long hunted for Ibn al-Arabi's sources. Abrahamov asks a different question: not only where his ideas came from, but how he treated the people they came from.
The gap
Earlier research traced the Shaykh's debts to philosophy, theology and Sufism, but, Abrahamov says, no one had studied his attitude to the Sufis as such, apart from William Chittick's pages on three mystics in The Self-Disclosure of God. Affifi's treatment of sources was brief, and Carl Ernst's article on Bistami looked at one figure only. The materials are huge. A note cites Osman Yahia's count of some 700 books ascribed to Ibn al-Arabi, of which about 95 are extant. Abrahamov works mainly from the Futuhat al-Makkiyya, the Fusus al-hikam and a handful of epistles, including the visionary Tajalliyat and Ruh al-quds.
A short history of Sufism
Its themes recur through the book.
- Dhu al-Nun (d.860 in the introduction) gave Sufism a scholarly shape, separated gnosis (ma'rifa) from learning ('ilm), and spoke of extinction and subsistence and of divine beauty and majesty.
- Al-Bistami (d.874) is known for the ascension (mi'raj) and the ecstatic sayings (shatahat), and is called "a sound representative of intoxicated Sufism".
- Al-Muhasibi (d.857) studied the psychology of the soul and opposed extreme trust in God; he influenced al-Ghazali.
- Al-Tustari (d.896) wrote a fourfold commentary on the Quran and a theory of letters later linked with Ibn Masarra (d.931). Al-Tirmidhi (d. between 905 and 910) taught sainthood in terms close to prophecy.
- Al-Junayd (d.910) stands for sober Sufism against the intoxication of Bistami and al-Hallaj (d.922), who was his disciple and was executed. Al-Shibli (d.946) was a court official turned mystic.
- The manuals followed: al-Sarraj (d.988), al-Kalabadhi (d.990), and Abu Talib al-Makki (d.996), whose Qut al-qulub blended law and mysticism and led toward al-Ghazali (d.1111).
- In the West, Ibn Barrajan (d.1141) was called "the al-Ghazālī of al-Andalus".
Pairs of opposites
The survey ends with a list that the rest of the book keeps using. Sufism, Abrahamov says, moved between "intoxication and sobriety, manifestation and concealment, conservatism and revolutionism, practice (ethics) and thought, extremism (for example in asceticism) and moderation", and also between seclusion and involvement with people. The Shaykh, as later chapters show, rarely chooses one side of such a pair. He tends to keep both and ask from which aspect each holds.
The problem of originality
Originality cannot be taken for granted. Affifi judged the Shaykh's system "eclectic in the highest degree" and said he had "a foot in every camp, so to speak". Against this, Michel Chodkiewicz showed that the 114 waystations (manazil) of the Futuhat follow the suras of the Quran from last to first, a structure without precedent. Abrahamov sets out three ways in which the Shaykh handles a predecessor:
| Mode | What Ibn al-Arabi does | Example in the book |
|---|---|---|
| Corroboration | Cites a Sufi to support a view he already holds | Bistami on lowliness and need |
| Polemic, then acceptance with change | Argues, then keeps the idea in altered form | Tustari's Real through which creation takes place, turned into the logos |
| Rejection | Refutes, sometimes in a vision | Hallaj on survival after death; Ghazali on method |
The two groups also differ in kind of debt. Contemporaries, Abrahamov argues, mattered for ethics and practice, the early masters for ideas. A note gives examples from the near past, such as the charity of Abu al-Abbas al-Sabti (d.1205), and Masataka Takeshita is cited for the view that the Shaykh owes much to the early Sufis.
2. The Baghdad Pioneers: al-Muhasibi and Dhu al-Nun
The book opens with two ninth-century masters. One left Ibn al-Arabi almost untouched. The other gave him stories, puzzles and a habit of mind he made his own.
Al-Muhasibi (781-857): respected, not followed
Al-Muhasibi's Kitab al-Ri'aya is a manual of self-examination. It analyses hypocrisy (riya'), arrogance, envy and self-conceit, and the remedies of piety and repentance. Ibn al-Arabi mentions it, and he lists four fundamentals of the moral struggle (passion, the soul, this world and the devil) that sit comfortably in that tradition. But his own list of seven subjects for the seeker runs far wider: the names of God, God's manifestation in things, His address through the laws, perfection and imperfection, the soul, imagination, and the diseases of the soul with their cures.
The decisive difference lies in the status of the stations. Abrahamov draws on his own article on "abandoning the station" (tark al-maqam). For the Shaykh, "There is no absolute station"; the values of the path are relative, and "the perfect station means abandoning the station". Al-Muhasibi's careful work on the stations therefore belongs to a lower plane.
The verdict is blunt: "To sum up, al-Muḥāsibī did not influence" the Shaykh. The chapter is useful mainly as a baseline. It shows what a famous name looks like when Ibn al-Arabi honours it without learning from it.
Dhu al-Nun (796-859): the head of the Sufis
Ibn al-Arabi calls Dhu al-Nun the head of the Sufis and wrote a whole book on his virtues, al-Kawkab al-durri. Oddly, the topic for which the introduction praised Dhu al-Nun, gnosis, is absent from the passages the Shaykh cites. What he takes instead is a set of ideas about the limits of logic.
A world that defeats reason
Chapter 8 of the Futuhat describes the earth created from the leftover clay of Adam, where a large thing enters a small one without either changing. Dhu al-Nun is called as witness. The same pattern appears in the next world: Abu Bakr enters Paradise by all eight gates at once; the dead appear motionless to one observer and alive to another; at the Resurrection the large Throne enters the small, as Paradise was shown to the Prophet in the wall of the mosque.
From such cases Ibn al-Arabi builds the idea of spheres (mawatin), each with its own rules of place and perception. The world itself joins motion and rest, and the verse "He is the First and the Last, the Manifest and the Hidden" (57:3) states the principle.
Two infinite knowledges
One passage the author singles out concerns knowledge. Both divine and human knowledge are infinite, for the objects of knowledge have no end. That what does not end enters human existence, as it enters divine knowledge, the Shaykh calls "the most wonderful of God's secrets". The difference is that God knows in detail and man in general. Abrahamov suggests a possible Mu'tazilite background in the distinction between general and detailed moral knowledge, and adds a remark that applies to the whole book: "taking an existing idea and interweaving it into another context is a characteristic of the Shaykh's thought".
Recollection and the covenant
Dhu al-Nun said he remembered hearing the primordial covenant of verse 7:172 as if it were still in his ear. Ibn al-Arabi leaves open whether this is memory or continuous awareness. Abrahamov notes that this undecidedness is typical, and the theme returns with Ibn Qasi.
Stories of love and mystery
The Dhu al-Nun chapter is rich in anecdotes.
- A young man with a yellow face keeps a mystery (sirr) he must not reveal. The Shaykh compares his own mystery in Fez in AH 594: he divulged it, the Beloved reproved him, and he was spared the punishment of alienation.
- A slave girl at the Ka'ba prays "because of my love for You", and Dhu al-Nun corrects her to "because of Your love for me". She answers with the verse on people whom God loves and who love Him (5:54) and says: "The hearts wander about the field of mysteries, therefore I knew you." Abrahamov admits that one of the Shaykh's comments here is put "in a way that I do not understand".
- A Yemeni gnostic divides man into mundane bodies, spirits as curtains and heavenly intellects. Ibn al-Arabi inverts each term: the body marks God's nearness (50:16), the essence is the curtain, the intellect a limitation to place.
Miracles and imagination
Ibn al-Arabi holds that whatever imagination conceives may take place. A man named al-Jawhari daydreamed of marrying in Baghdad and found six children at his door. Dhu al-Nun rescued a child from a crocodile in the Nile. Such powers rest on firm belief and the names of God, under two conditions: God's permission (bi-idhni Allah) and the domain of imagination, as with the ropes of Pharaoh's sorcerers. Abrahamov sums up: the Shaykh "regards the saints' miracles (karāmāt) as the outcome of an act of the imagination".
Courage before the caliph
Accused of heresy before the caliph al-Mutawakkil (d.861), Dhu al-Nun refused both denial and admission: "If I deny, I shall make the people liars, and if I agree with what they said, I shall make myself a liar." Told by a man that he did not love him, he replied that it was enough to know God, and otherwise to "seek out one who does know Him in order that he will guide you to God".
The vision of permeation
In the Tajalliyat, Ibn al-Arabi meets Dhu al-Nun in a vision. Dhu al-Nun had held that God is wholly transcendent, beyond whatever one imagines. The Shaykh asks how Being could then be empty of God, and cites "There is none like Him, and He is the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing" (42:11). Dhu al-Nun admits the error. A further point: knowledge is not bound to time, place or state, and one goes on learning after death.
3. The Intoxicated Master: al-Bistami
No early Sufi is named more often by Ibn al-Arabi than Abu Yazid al-Bistami (804-?874). The Shaykh admired him, used him and quietly softened him.
How often, and which Bistami
A note gives the counts from the 1999 Beirut index of the Futuhat: Abu Yazid 143 mentions, al-Junayd 34, al-Hallaj 15. Abrahamov first published this chapter in al-Qantara in 2011. He is cautious about the historical Bistami. Al-Sarraj already observed that the sayings attributed to him vary by period and country, so the figure in the Futuhat may not be the man himself. This, the author says, "does not detract from his originality".
The Shaykh treats the places of the saints as charged: the house of Abu Yazid, called "the house of the pious" (bayt al-abrar), al-Junayd's corner and Ibn Adham's cave all keep their impression. He also counts Bistami a Pole.
Renunciation that ends
Bistami renounced this world in one day, the next in another, and all but God on the third. Then: "I will not to will, for I am the object of will". Chapter 93 of the Futuhat turns this into doctrine. Renunciation (zuhd) is not a station; it disappears with unveiling, since God does not renounce His creation, and in the essence of reality "there is no zuhd".
No morning and no evening
The Shaykh treats the people of the oneness of the Essence as beyond bliss and chastisement. Bistami says: "I have no morning and no evening." Morning stands for the manifest, evening for the hidden, and they belong to those delimited by an attribute. The gnostic, like the olive tree "neither of the east nor of the west" (24:35), has no attribute.
Lowliness and need
God says to Bistami that he should come near through what God does not possess: lowliness and neediness (al-dhilla wa'l-iftiqar). The Shaykh builds on this the pair of connection (qiran) and isolation (infirad), and the idea that worship (51:56) is submission. Another saying, "Leave yourself and come", yields a paradox: servitude means distance, but knowing oneself a servant brings nearness, so "the essence of nearness is here identical with the essence of distance". For Abrahamov the saying is corroboration rather than source.
Gnosis above learning
Gnosis (ma'rifa), which the Shaykh calls lordly, stands above knowledge ('ilm), which he calls divine. The Verifiers who hold it are named: Sahl, Abu Yazid, Ibn al-Arif, Abu Madyan. Bistami's famous jibe at the scholars is quoted in a note: "You all took your knowledge like a dead person (receiving it) from another dead person." The heart of the gnostic is also vast: if the Throne were multiplied a million times and set in its corner, "he would not feel them".
Ecstatic sayings
Ibn al-Arabi defines the ecstatic saying (shath) severely: "Shaṭḥ is a word with a flavor of frivolity (ruʿūna) and false (?) claim (daʿwā). It is rarely found among the verifiers, the people of the Revealed Law." Ernst read Bistami's sayings as boasting; Abrahamov adds exaggeration. The Shaykh also rejects the claim to divinity (ta'alluh) and calls Bistami "a man of two facets".
He reinterprets rather than condemns. On the verse "My assault is stronger" (85:12), Bistami's boast that his own assault is stronger than God's is read as a remark about human anger without mercy: "the nearer the assault is to God, the weaker it is".
Miracles that point beyond themselves
Bistami dismissed flying as a miracle, since a bird does it too. Ibn al-Arabi takes up the distinction between the sensory (hissi) and the abstract (ma'nawi) miracle: the knowledge of God is the greatest. Bistami still revived an ant, as Jesus revived the dead. A novice heard that seeing Abu Yazid once is better than seeing God a thousand times, saw him, and died: God, Bistami said, had been revealed to him through his teacher, which he could not bear (compare Moses at the mountain, 7:143). When people touched him for blessing, he said they were touching "an ornament with which God has adorned me".
A human will that remains
The Shaykh keeps more of the self than Bistami. "I will not to will" makes the object of will nonexistent; Ibn al-Arabi retains one human will, to know God by revelation. A poem in which Bistami asks for punishment is read through the root of the word for chastisement, which can mean "to be pleasant".
4. Heart and Contraries: al-Tustari and al-Kharraz
Two ninth-century masters supplied some of the deepest structures in Ibn al-Arabi's thought: the heart of Muhammad as source of all illumination, and the joining of contraries in God.
Sahl al-Tustari (?818-896)
Drawing on Gerhard Böwering's study, Abrahamov places Sahl with Bistami at the top of the Shaykh's esteem. Sahl spoke of three revelations: the covenant (7:172), creation, and the face-to-face encounter at the Resurrection. Ibn al-Arabi does not adopt the triad, but he does adopt the habit of seeing one reality from several angles.
Muhammad's heart and the Perfect Man
For Sahl the heart of Muhammad illuminates all hearts and is the source of revelation and of union with God. Abrahamov suggests this is a seed of the Shaykh's doctrine of the eternal spirit of Muhammad and the Perfect Man. The debt is not proven, but it is plausible, and the conclusion returns to it.
The prostration of the heart
Sahl taught a prostration of the heart (sujud al-qalb) that is never cancelled. A shaykh in Abadan told him the heart prostrates forever. Ibn al-Arabi takes the term over as submission that flows from knowledge. The conclusion lists it among the terms he adopted outright.
Justice as the Real of creation
In answering al-Tirmidhi's twenty-eighth question, Ibn al-Arabi uses Sahl's phrase al-haqq al-makhluq bihi, the Real through which the heavens and earth were created (15:85, 44:29). Ibn Barrajan (d.1141) used it too. Sahl and Ibn Barrajan meant God's order or principle; the Shaykh turned it into an entity, the logos, which he also calls the Breath, the Cloud and the fixed entities. A note cites Ebstein for a possible Isma'ili origin. Sahl and Ali also spoke of primordial matter as dust (haba').
Iblis outwits Sahl
In a famous dialogue Iblis cites "My mercy embraces all things" (7:156) and asks Sahl: "Did you not know that limitation (taqyīd) characterizes you and not God?" Ibn al-Arabi does not let this stand. God can bind Himself, so the end of the verse limits His mercy after all. Abrahamov's comment is that "the Shaykh is committed to the truth" even against a revered master.
Where Sahl fell short
In the treasury of generosity in chapter 369, Ibn al-Arabi finds that Sahl's revelation was a short flash. In the science of the isthmus (barzakh), Sahl saw correctly but judged wrongly, thinking that people remain unchanged until the Resurrection. On gnosis and knowledge, the Shaykh records that "Our companions have disagreed concerning the station" of gnosis and the gnostic and that of knowledge and the knower. Sahl treated the intellect as a device for fighting wickedness; a note compares Bahya ibn Paquda.
In the Tajalliyat, the Shaykh reproves Sahl for speaking of unity, which deserves silence, and Sahl answers: "You are the leader in the science of God's unity, for you know what I have not known concerning this station." Abrahamov's summary fits many chapters: criticism within reverence. "This attitude is characteristic" of the Shaykh's treatment of the Sufis.
Abu Sa'id al-Kharraz (?-899)
Al-Kharraz belonged to the Baghdad school and sought to reconcile ecstasy with orthodoxy. He taught that in extinction (fana') the mystic loses human attributes and takes on God's, a view al-Junayd refuted and al-Sarraj thought heretical. Ibn al-Arabi counts him among the People of Blame with the Prophet, Abu Bakr, Hamdun al-Qassar (d.884) and Bistami.
Only God knows God
Kharraz held that only God knows God, a dictum for which he and al-Ghazali were attacked by Ash'arite theologians. The one characteristic of God that can be known is the joining of contraries (al-jam' bayna al-diddayn), on the basis of 57:3: God is First and Last, Manifest and Hidden, and in the same respect, not, as the theologians would have it, in relative respects.
Abrahamov could not find the notion in al-Qushayri, al-Sarraj, al-Sulami, or in Kharraz's own Kitab al-Sidq, which says rather that "every hidden thing (bāṭin) which is contradicted by a manifest thing (ẓāhir) is untrue". The Shaykh extends the principle: the gnostic and the world, made in God's image, join contraries too, holding expansion and contraction at once. The knowledge of joining contraries is the knowledge of Oneness, unity in manyness. Reason denies it; revelation affirms it. A note concedes that the Shaykh's own arguments here are partly rational.
The vision of the latecomer
In a Tajalliyat vision Ibn al-Arabi tells Kharraz: "You preceded us in time, but we preceded you in our awareness". Kharraz is ashamed. (Abrahamov proposes reading narā for tarā in the Arabic, a textual correction he makes openly.) The Shaykh adds examples: God is on the Throne (20:5) and near (53:9), ascent and descent are equal, and one thing may be in two places, as Friday prayer in two mosques.
5. The Sober Master: al-Junayd
Al-Junayd (830-910), head of the Baghdad school, gave Ibn al-Arabi two lasting principles: empty the mind to receive knowledge, and test what you receive against the Book and the Sunna.
The master of the community
Junayd taught unity through extinction followed by a return to sobriety (sahw), and defined unity as setting the eternal apart from the temporal. Ibn al-Arabi ranks him among the prophets among the saints, calls him "master of this community" (sayyid hadhihi al-ta'ifa), and cites the saying that the scholars of this community are like the prophets of the Children of Israel. Abrahamov suggests that the Shaykh's principle of aspects owes something to Junayd: extinction and sobriety can hold at once, from different aspects.
Four visions
The tone of these visions is striking. In one, Ibn al-Arabi says: "I am your successor and you are my brother." In another, an exchange runs: "What excellent people you the predecessors were, and what excellent people we the successors were!" The later master corrects the earlier one, gently, as an equal.
On thirst, the Shaykh says: "the seeker of knowledge is like him who drinks the water of the sea. The more he drinks, the thirstier he becomes." And when Ibn Ata praised God to a camel, the camel replied that God's exaltation is greater than his saying; Ibn al-Arabi has Ibn Ata repent and take the camel as teacher.
Emptying the mind
The introduction to the Futuhat describes knowledge given in seclusion to one who empties his mind and invokes God (18:65, 2:282, 8:29). Junayd, asked how he reached his stage, answered that he stayed in it for thirty years. The conclusion traces the empty-mind principle to Junayd and notes that the Shaykh used it against al-Ghazali.
The colour of the water
Junayd said of al-Shibli's absence that it was like a sleeper's seeing. His most fertile saying is "The colour of the water is the colour of its vessel". Ibn al-Arabi makes it a theory: the divine overflow is uniform, but each receiver colours it according to his make-up. The Quran is the water and the heart the vessel, so each reader finds in it what he seeks. Chapter 341 puts it sharply: one judges what one knows only through oneself, so the people of God must know every sect and religion to witness God in every form.
Bound by the Book and the Sunna
Junayd's dictum, "Our knowledge (that is, mystical knowledge) is bound (muqayyad) by the Book (the Quran) and the Sunna (Tradition)", becomes for Ibn al-Arabi the criterion of unveiling. A note mentions a variant reading, built rather than bound. The Shaykh gives the two sources three roles: source, incentive, and criterion for consensus and analogy. He then widens them to include everything the prophets from Adam to Muhammad brought, which brings Jewish and Christian scriptures within the scope of valid revelation.
No one reaches the Truth
The Shaykh repeats a saying that no one reaches the rank of the Truth until a thousand righteous men testify that he is an unbeliever. Jurists and theologians declare such men infidels; philosophers call them mad. Ibn al-Arabi wishes to be one of them. He also prefers Junayd's formulation on the eternal and the temporal to Bistami's boast of the heart's capacity: "If the created in time is linked (qurina) to the Eternal, there remains no effect (lam yabqā lahu athar) belonging to it."
6. Sainthood, Love and Letters: al-Tirmidhi, al-Hallaj, Ibn Masarra
Three figures, three very different results. Al-Tirmidhi shaped the Shaykh's doctrine of sainthood. Al-Hallaj, often named his chief inspiration, turns out to matter little. Ibn Masarra, the Andalusian pioneer, matters less still.
Al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi (?820-?910)
After al-Sulami (d.1021), Tirmidhi was the most prolific of the early mystics. He never called himself a Sufi, and the Sufi manuals largely ignore him. His later fame, Abrahamov suggests, owes much to Ibn al-Arabi, who answered the questions in Tirmidhi's Sirat al-awliya' in chapter 73 of the Futuhat. A note records that Osman Yahia published that book in 1965 under the title Khatm al-awliya', and that the Futuhat answers 155 questions against 162 in Tirmidhi's text. The answers are "not a commentary, but a platform". Radtke and O'Kane call Tirmidhi "the first and, up until the time" of the Shaykh, the only mystic author to combine mystic experience, anthropology, cosmology and theology.
God as Owner of the Kingdom
Chapter 24 of the Futuhat takes up Tirmidhi's theme of God as Owner of the Kingdom (malik al-mulk). Humans, in a sense, give God orders: "If you fulfil My covenant, I shall fulfil your covenant" (2:40), or Moses' "My Lord, forgive me" (7:151). The Shaykh is unsure Tirmidhi was the first to say this. The term enters his own vocabulary.
Sainthood outlasts prophecy
The saints are heirs of the prophets. The prophecy that brings law ended; sainthood (walaya) did not, and it is the basis of every prophet's rank. Hence the paradox that "the rasūl is more perfect in his capacity as a walī than in his capacity as a nabī". The Shaykh notes: "We have been prohibited from employing the word" prophet, although general prophecy exists among prominent persons. A note adds that Ibn Taymiyya saw Tirmidhi as the doorway to Ibn al-Arabi's errors, and that al-Jahiz (d.869) had preceded Tirmidhi on some points.
Tirmidhi's two groups of saints, those who serve God's right and those chosen by God, fit the Shaykh's own life: "in my case illumination (fatḥ) has preceded discipline (riyāḍa)". He also took over the idea of a Seal of Sainthood and claimed the Seal of Muhammadan Sainthood for himself. Muhammad's priority is stated in the tradition that he "was a prophet when Adam was still between water and clay". One disagreement is recorded: whether majesty and beauty cause awe and intimacy. Tirmidhi's view is incorrect, says the Shaykh, but acceptable from one aspect.
Al-Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj (858-922)
Affifi claimed that of all Sufis, Hallaj "seems to have exerted the greatest influence" on the Shaykh, and listed nine points of contact. Abrahamov tests the claim and rejects it.
Takeshita had already observed that "most of the similarities which Affifi mentions are not necessarily from" Hallaj. Abrahamov goes through the nine points (the One and the many, the logos, the light of Muhammad, divine love, the unknowable God and the rest) and finds that only the pair lahut and nasut, divine and human nature, uses unique Hallajian terms. Some ideas do pass across: the cosmogony of breath, air, letters and words; length as the spiritual and breadth as the bodily; the human use of "Be!" through the name of God; and creation as marriage, with the names as father, possible things as mother and concrete things as children. Julian Cook, in unpublished work passed on by Hirtenstein, found that the Shaykh quotes at least 18 of Hallaj's 138 poems, but as adornment, not source.
Two quarrels
In the Tajalliyat, Hallaj says God is not the Cause of causes, and Ibn al-Arabi agrees. But when Hallaj speaks of his own death, "the house (body) was ruined, but its inhabitant (the soul) moved away", the Shaykh replies "I can refute your argument." and they part. In chapter 463 Hallaj is said to have tasted the station of the seventh of twelve Poles. Al-Shibli's comparison, that both drank from one cup but he became sober and Hallaj stayed drunk, sets up the next chapter.
Ibn Masarra (883-931)
Ibn Masarra, son of a Mu'tazilite father, left al-Andalus for the East and probably returned in 912 when Abd al-Rahman III came to power. Palacios made him founder of a pseudo-Empedoclean school; Addas rejected the idea of an Almeria school. The Futuhat names him only three times.
Chapter 13 calls him "one of the greatest masters of the mystic way with regard to knowledge, state and revelation" and reports his teaching on the eight bearers of the Throne (69:17). Ibn al-Arabi pairs Adam and Israfil for forms, Gabriel and Muhammad for spirits, Michael and Abraham for sustenance, Malik and Ridwan for promise and threat.
The verdict follows Addas: little influence on doctrine, some on conduct.
7. Rites and Worlds: al-Shibli and Abu Talib al-Makki
The last two early figures close the first half of the book. Al-Shibli shows how rites gain an inner meaning without losing their form. Al-Makki, despite his famous manual, stays at the margin.
Abu Bakr al-Shibli (861-946)
Al-Shibli was a scholar of law and tradition who served the Abbasid court and was deputy governor of Damawand before turning to Sufism at forty. He followed al-Junayd until Junayd's death in 910, rejected al-Hallaj, and was confined for a time in a Baghdad asylum.
Ibn al-Arabi sees him as a gnostic and a lover who concealed his love out of jealousy, as God conceals His essence behind His attributes. Reading kafaru in 2:6 as "concealed", the Shaykh turns even the word for unbelief into a word about hiding. He speaks of his own absence, too: "In this state I was absent from myself and from others".
The pilgrimage dialogue
A famous exchange shows Shibli's way with rites. A pilgrim reports that he entered the holy place; Shibli: "You did not enter the holy place." He touched the Black Stone; but "Whoever touches the Stone, touches God", so "You did not touch." He cried God is great at Safa; "You did not exclaim Allāh akbar."
Sober witness preferred
Ibn al-Arabi decides between the two friends plainly: "we accepted al-Shiblī's witness of himself and of al-Ḥallāj and we did not accept al-Ḥallāj's saying of himself and of al-Shiblī, because al-Ḥallāj was drunk and al-Shiblī was sober." The conclusion cites this as a case where the Shaykh speaks without hesitation.
Patience, travel, jealousy
- Patience (chapter 125): patience in God and by God are lower than patience away from God (al-sabr 'an Allah), the hardest. Al-Sarraj tells how Shibli screamed and nearly died at hearing this. "The Patient" (sabur) is a divine name not in the Quran, derived from 33:57.
- Travel: the station of travel has two reasons, learning from phenomena (i'tibar) and alienation from people, since man is in God's image (42:11). Shibli: "Worship is not carried out with others". A note cites Takeshita for the view that the idea of Adam's traits as God's goes back to Shibli.
- Jealousy: the worthiest trait of the lover. There are two kinds of lover, the presumptuous (idlal) and the jealous. Confusion (istilam), also called bewilderment, comes from revelation in the form of beauty; Shibli returned to himself at the times of prayer.
In the Tajalliyat vision of the heaviness of unity, the one who affirms unity cannot be a caliph; he knows nothing and wills nothing. The author is unsure why a caliph is mentioned. Chapter 560 records Shibli's last advice: look at the refuse tip, the heap of sand, the excrement, and do not be arrogant.
Abu Talib al-Makki (?-996)
Ibn al-Arabi calls al-Makki one of the masters of the people of tasting (min sadat ahl al-dhawq), but refers to him rarely. The references cluster around letters and worlds.
| Topic | Al-Makki | Ibn al-Arabi |
|---|---|---|
| Letters | Letters are a community (umma) addressed by messengers | Agrees on the image; disagrees on letters and vowels |
| Worlds | Dominion (malakut), power (jabarut), the visible (mulk wa'l-shahada) | Prefers "world of exaltedness"; jabarut has two aspects |
| Two messengers at once | Denies (Moses and Aaron) | Accepts |
| Self-disclosure | Never in one form to two persons, nor twice | Agrees; a possible source of la takrar fi'l-tajalli, no repetition in self-disclosure |
| Substitutes (abdal) | Four means: hunger, sleeplessness, silence, seclusion | Follows him in Hilyat al-abdal |
The substitutes are reached through a chain: Mu'adh ibn Ashras told Abd al-Majid ibn Salama, preacher of Marshana al-Zaytun near Seville, that "They become abdāl through four things" named in al-Makki's Nourishment. One saying, that the sphere revolves by the breaths of the knower, remains obscure; the author offers a guess. On occasionalism, God's will is the throne of His essence.
8. The Ghazali Question
Al-Ghazali (1058-1111) is the later Sufi to whom Ibn al-Arabi owed most and whom he attacked hardest. The chapter, first published in 2009, is the longest in the book.
How much did he read?
Opinions on the link vary. Austin said the Shaykh "combines the scholastic expertise of Ghazālī with the poetic imagery" of Ibn al-Farid. Chittick notes that Ibn al-Arabi calls Ghazali "one of our colleagues", yet criticizes him for theology and philosophy. Gerald Elmore judged that Ghazali's work shaped the Shaykh's education more than that of any other single author, and Abrahamov agrees.
The evidence is concrete. The Shaykh's companions studied the Ihya', which Muhammad ibn Khalid al-Sudfi al-Tilimsani read to them. Ibn al-Arabi refers to al-Madnun (twice, though a note says both works so named are suspected of being spurious), to Kimiya' al-sa'ada and to al-Mustazhiri. Since he names very few books at all, these citations count.
Agreements, large and small
- Unveiling and witnessing: unveiling concerns meanings, witnessing concerns essences.
- The letter h in Allah stands for God's essence; huwa, He, is the most exalted name.
- The proof from mutual hindrance (21:22), credited to al-Ash'ari, al-Juwayni and Ghazali, is praised.
- The best of all possible worlds: Ghazali's dictum "laysa fīʾl-imkān abdaʿ mimmā kān" is cited, though the Shaykh misquotes it.
- Acquired prophecy: the Shaykh defends Ghazali against critics, using Aaron's gift of prophecy (19:53).
A neutral point shows the author's care: Ibn al-Arabi places nature between the Universal Soul and dust, but Abrahamov did not find this in Ghazali.
Four levels of unity
The central borrowing comes from the Kitab al-Tawhid wa'l-tawakkul in the Ihya'. Abrahamov finds there the source of two of the Shaykh's key ideas: that God is the only real existent, and the principle of relativity, that a thing is one from one aspect and many from another.
Ghazali's image from the Maqsad is the sun and its light: the one who sees the light sees only the sun. The text of the Maqsad has the gnostic say "I know only God and see only God." A note records that Abrahamov revises his 1993 article: Ghazali, he now thinks, merged revelation and reason. Another note insists that Ibn al-Arabi himself never used the phrase wahdat al-wujud, the unity of existence; it came from his commentators.
The Fusus gives the Shaykh's version through the limbs of a man named Zayd: the Real is "multiple in form [al-kathīr biʾl-ṣuwar] and single in essence". God and creation are distinguished only by considerations. Incomparability (tanzih) belongs to the Mu'tazilites, likeness (tashbih) to others; the gnostic sees both.
The Ihya' and the Futuhat also share a structure: knowledge first, then the five pillars and their secrets. Both scorn the jurists as scholars of outward forms ('ulama' al-rusum), a term a note says Ghazali coined. Both say the worth of knowledge follows the worth of its object. Ibn al-Arabi keeps more law; Ghazali more inward meaning.
Abrahamov's summary of this side: there is "clear evidence that al-Ghazālī influenced" the Shaykh on both cardinal and marginal issues. Yet the attitude is ambivalent. Ghazali appears in the common group with al-Muhasibi, and elsewhere as "one of the people of God, the followers of revelation or unveiling".
Disagreements
| Issue | Al-Ghazali | Ibn al-Arabi |
|---|---|---|
| God's essence | Only God knows God, yet discusses the essence rationally in al-Madnun | Self-contradiction; if meant to hide his views, wrongful conduct |
| Affinity (munasaba) between God and man | Outward (imitating attributes) and inward | Rejected |
| Saint and prophet | Saint inspired, prophet receives an angel | A mistake; difference lies in the content the angel brings |
| Highest rank below prophecy | Truthfulness (siddiqiyya) | Station of proximity (maqam al-qurba) above it |
| Path to knowledge | Sciences should precede ascetic practice as a criterion | The empty, unlettered heart receives best |
The fiercest attack
In the Ihya' Ghazali describes two paths to knowledge: inspiration, the way of the Sufis, and reflection. He reports the rational critics' view that without true sciences an ascetic may take false imaginings for revelation, and seems to accept it. Yet he also writes: "Ascetic practice also sometimes brought me to inspiration". His real view, Abrahamov concludes, cannot be discerned.
Ibn al-Arabi answers with the term ummi. In the Quran (7:157-158) it means unlettered; for the Shaykh it means a heart free of reflection and so open to unveiling. Speculation is unstable, changing with the law and the opponents of the day; revelation is stable. He then tells a story of Ghazali trying to join the Sufis, invoking God, and gaining only a juridical faculty he already had. His conclusion was that "writing upon what has been erased" (mahw) "is not the same as writing upon that which has not been erased". A note admits that the author could not find the source of this story in Ghazali's writings.
Abrahamov presses the obvious objection. The Shaykh himself mastered law, theology and philosophy and still received unveiling. His answer is that God revealed knowledge to him in seclusion, and that the third way of knowing contains all the sciences.
9. Three Andalusians: Ibn Barrajan, Ibn al-Arif, Ibn Qasi
Three twelfth-century Sufis of al-Andalus stood close to the Shaykh in place and time. Claude Addas ranked their influence; Abrahamov largely agrees, while insisting that none of them was original.
Ibn Barrajan (?-1141)
Born in North Africa, Ibn Barrajan taught in Seville in the first half of the twelfth century and was active in the Sufi opposition to the Almoravid jurists. He was known for Quran recitation, tradition and theology, belonged to the school of Ibn Masarra, and was influenced by Ghazali, hence his nickname. He wrote commentaries on the Quran and on the names of God. The Futuhat mentions him only six times, and he is absent from Ruh al-quds and al-Durra al-fakhira.
He shares with Sahl the idea of the Real through which creation takes place (15:85; a note says bi'l-haqq literally means "in true purpose"). With al-Qushayri and al-Ghazali, he held that the science of anatomy (tashrih), the world mirrored in man and the divine names found in man, belongs to the imitation of God's traits. He coined al-imam al-mubin, the clear record (36:12), for the first created entity; for the Shaykh the term means the human being as microcosm.
Verdict: a transmitter of earlier ideas without a unique contribution, though counted among the people of God, and, as Addas says, ranked below Ibn al-Arif.
Ibn al-Arif (?-1141)
Ibn al-Arif founded a Sufi order in Almeria. Abu Bakr al-Mayurki and Ibn Barrajan, suspected by the Almoravid sultan Ali ibn Yusuf, were possibly linked to his circle. His only known treatise, Mahasin al-majalis, describes conventional stations, then treats all of them except gnosis and love as values for common Sufis only. It is impossible, he says, to reach God through what is not God.
The road to abandoning the stations
Abrahamov judges the view exceptional but not original; Tirmidhi had already distinguished the two kinds of saints. The Shaykh probably had Tirmidhi, Ibn al-Arif and perhaps al-Ansari (d.1088) in mind. But he does not deny the stations' value. He recommends leaving them because stable values, God as the only real existent and the unity of phenomena, override them: "the perfection of the stations entails their abandonment". A note quotes a verse of Ibn al-Arif: "Many people repent, but I am the only man who repents of repentance."
The man of courtesy
The Shaykh calls Ibn al-Arif the man of courtesy (adib) of his time, one who "brings together all noble character traits" and knows the base ones without being described by them. A story shows him at work. His companion al-Ghazzal reported that grass and trees spoke to him, offering their benefits. Ibn al-Arif said God had tested him, sent him back, and told him the trees' silence would prove his repentance. The trees were silent. Inner experience counts; marvels do not.
Transcendence and its limits
Ibn al-Arabi praises Ibn al-Arif's statement on transcendence, that God "has no relationship with mankind except through divine providence", as the most perfect knowledge of the Essence. But he does not accept its total denial of affinity, any more than Ghazali's affirmation of it. The verse "There is nothing like Him and He is the All-Hearing the All-Seeing" (42:11) teaches both: the first half transcendence, the second some likeness, for both God and man hear and see, in different degrees. A note observes that the verse can be read otherwise, and that the Shaykh reads it to fit his system.
Ibn al-Arif's prayer is cited too: "O God, You have closed the door of prophecy and apostleship to us, but You have not closed the door of walāya." The Shaykh counts him among those who ask only for what befits them. On love, he follows Ibn al-Arif against Ghazali's definition, "the inclination of one's nature toward the object which gives pleasure": love cannot be defined, because jealousy, one of its features, involves concealment. And truth becomes pure when the outward sign (rasm) disappears.
Verdict: of the three Andalusians, as Addas says, Ibn al-Arif had the greatest influence, on practice, morals and knowledge; in novelty he stays within the bounds of the early Sufis.
Ibn Qasi (?-1151)
Ibn Qasi turned from a life of pleasure to Sufism, then to politics. He rebelled against the Almoravids, ruled a small territory, allied with the Christians of Coimbra against the Almohads, and was assassinated. His Khal' al-na'layn survives with a commentary by Ibn al-Arabi, who, a note says, first regarded him as an imam and later as an impostor.
| Issue | Ibn Qasi | Ibn al-Arabi |
|---|---|---|
| Hell | Created in the form of a snake | Paradise and Hell created and not yet created; the snake form is imaginable |
| Resurrection | As the first creation (7:29): Adam from clay, others by procreation | Disagrees: next world unlike this one (8:25); but leaves the matter open, "God knows best" |
| The Scale | Erred, with a group of the people of God | Equality of deed and reward, not of the two pans |
| Ranking of prophets | Each has a unique trait (Adam, Moses, Muhammad, Jesus) | No essential difference: all traits reflect divine names, which are one in relation to the Essence |
| Justice and kindness | Neither judges the other | True from one view, at odds with the hadith "God's mercy precedes His wrath" from another |
Abrahamov stresses the indecision: "This undecidedness is characteristic" of the Shaykh's approach. On the Scale he admits, "I am not sure that I fully understand the following paragraph". The discussion also states the Shaykh's rule: revelation overrides reflection, and if a Sufi's revelation conflicts with a prophet's, the prophet's prevails. The Sufi's revelation is true, but his interpretation is faulty.
Loving agreement, loving truth
In chapter 297 Ibn al-Arabi claims he alone has treated the idea that each divine name contains all the others (17:110), though he admits Ibn Qasi touches it. He asks readers to add to his book the name of anyone who has, explaining: "I love agreement (muwāfaqa) and not to be alone among my colleagues." Abrahamov finds this surprising in so ready a critic, and concludes that he loved agreement, but loved truth more.
10. Masters of Conduct: al-Jilani, Abu Madyan, al-Uraybi
The last three figures were near contemporaries. From them Ibn al-Arabi took not doctrines but examples: of power, of trust in God, of single-minded worship.
Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani (1077-1166)
The historical Jilani was a Hanbali jurist and preacher in Baghdad. His creed, al-Ghunya, allows novices to devote themselves to mystical practice without working, but forbids antinomianism, dancing and music, and disfavours the Sufi lodge (ribat). The Qadiriyya later ascribed sermons to him and made him a legendary saint. How the pious Hanbali became the mystic remains unexplained, and the Shaykh's testimony, written only decades after Jilani's death, sharpens the puzzle.
Ibn al-Arabi ranks Jilani among the Mounted Poles (al-aqtab al-rukban), whom he compares to Arabs riding noble camels. Some Poles are hidden yet free to act in the world; others, like Jilani, are ordered to act. He calls him "imam al-'asr" and "sayyid waqtihi", leader of his age and master of his time.
Jilani's saying to the prophets, "O community of prophets, you have been given the nickname (of prophecy), whereas we have been given that which you have not been given", supports the distinction between general and legislative prophecy, with al-Khidr, who surpassed Moses in knowledge (18:65-82), as the model. Among those brought near, Jilani belongs to those who reach God without the Prophet as intermediary: the fewer footprints a traveller sees before him, the higher he stands. He knew people by smell, swore not to lift his head from prostration until rain fell, and claimed to know what would happen by the year, month, week and day. The Shaykh counts him among the People of Blame.
A note shows the author's attention to translation: he does not know why Chittick renders sidq as "truthfulness" when the Shaykh defines it as firmness in religion.
Abu Madyan (1126-1198)
Ibn al-Arabi never met Abu Madyan; a note cites Cornell wondering why not in 1194, when he lived nearby. He knew him through disciples such as Abu Ya'qub Yusuf al-Kumi and al-Mawruri, yet called him his master. Addas notes that historians record only Abu Madyan's outward life; the Shaykh fills in the spiritual one.
He places Abu Madyan with Tirmidhi among the Poles and with Tustari, Bistami and Ibn al-Arif among the Verifiers. A disciple, Musa al-Sadrani, met the serpent that encircles Mount Qaf, who asked after Abu Madyan and said there was no being on earth that did not know or love him. Asked where the Quran says all creatures love Abu Madyan, the Shaykh answers: man is in God's image, and as all things praise God (22:18), so they praise such a man, though not all people do.
Trust and the Law
Abu Madyan ate whatever reached him, as from God. Yet the Law governed him: if a revelation made lawful what the Law forbids, he would follow the Law, because confusion may enter what is received. When told that eating by earning is better, he cited the three days of hospitality: if a guest ate from his own provisions, "would it not be a shame for the host?" The people of God become God's guests, "and a day according to God is like a thousand days according to your counting" (22:47).
Once, taking a naked beggar to a merchant who had promised help, he met a man who called himself a polytheist, a thing unknown in that country. He understood the sign: he had associated someone with God by relying on the merchant, and repented. (The book prints "mushirk" for mushrik; a minor slip, flagged.) In another story he forgot a dinar in his pocket while living in disengagement, and the gazelle that gave him milk refused him until he threw it away.
Fresh meat
Abu Madyan valued personal experience over transmission. Hearing the chain "someone says on the authority of someone else", he said: "We do not want to eat dried meat, give us fresh meat". The divine overflow does not stop. He said too that in everything he saw "the letter" ba' was written above it, meaning "through Me", as in the tradition of supererogatory works where God becomes the hearing and sight of His servant.
Abu Madyan taught that the novice is not a novice until he finds all he wishes in the Quran, and the Shaykh concludes that speech without such generality is not Quran. But he criticizes Abu Madyan's remark that "the secret of life flows in all existents" as a simple, general saying (qawl ummi 'ammi): he lacked the gift of expression given only to the perfect Muhammadan. Addas found "a kind of spiritual intimacy" between the two men.
Abu al-Abbas al-Uraybi (?-?)
The book prints no dates for al-Uraybi. A long note settles his name from manuscripts, one in the Shaykh's own hand. He was Ibn al-Arabi's first master and, after Abu Madyan, the Sufi he cites most, often without naming him. Abrahamov calls him the best example of what the immediate masters gave: practice and morals.
Al-Uraybi was grounded in the invocation of God (dhikr). His prayer brought rain to the people of Kutamah within the hour, and the rain did not touch him. Expelled from his city, he was recalled after a jinni exposed the people's sins. In his early days his wife berated him for neglecting the family's needs; God promised him twenty loads of figs, "enough to last you two and a half years", and the first arrived within the hour. (A note gives each load as one hundred rotls, a rotl being 2.88 kilograms.)
Al-Uraybi took on the traits of Jesus at the end of his life, which was also the first phase of the Shaykh's path. Ibn al-Arabi claimed to walk in the footsteps of all the prophets in turn, ending with Muhammad. Here Abrahamov is unusually sharp: the claim "remains only a declaration, being without any proof, and borders on incredibility".
Al-Uraybi repeated only the name Allah. Asked why not the full formula, he explained that he feared dying between the negation and the affirmation, "so that I will die uttering the negation of God's existence". (A note says the Shaykh later preferred the full formula.) When someone said the closest relatives deserve alms first, he corrected: the closest to God. And in Seville he told the young Ibn al-Arabi: "My son, concern yourself with your Lord!" Another master, Abu Imran al-Martuli, told him: "My son, concern yourself with your soul (nafs)!" Al-Uraybi reconciled them: "both points of view are correct", one concerns the way (tariq), the other the Companion at its end (rafiq).
11. Was He Original?
The conclusion draws the threads together: what the Shaykh took, how he treated those he took from, and whether, after all the borrowing, the whole is his own.
A living tradition
Eighteen figures were studied, eleven earlier and seven later. What stands out, Abrahamov says, is not only influence but attitude: criticism, rejection, partial or full acceptance, admiration. The Shaykh argues with his predecessors even in dreams, as if they were alive and available for discussion. For him the Sufi past was a tradition still being shaped, by him and by others; recall his request that readers add names to his book. What he wanted was the truth, reached through revelation.
The balance of debts
| Idea in Ibn al-Arabi | Earlier source named in the book | What the Shaykh did with it |
|---|---|---|
| Only God knows God; the Essence unknowable | Kharraz (also Bistami, Ibn al-Arif) | Made it part of the doctrine of the One and the many |
| Joining of contraries | Bistami, Dhu al-Nun, Kharraz, Junayd, Tirmidhi | Combined aspects into a single truth |
| Merely seeming existence of the cosmos | Bistami | A central theme |
| Primordial matter as dust (haba') | Ali, Tustari | Non-philosophical term for first matter |
| Creation by "Be!" (kun); production as marriage | Hallaj; letters with Tirmidhi | The power of letters in creation |
| Perfect Human Being | Tustari's heart of Muhammad | Eternal spirit of Muhammad containing the cosmos |
| The Real through which creation occurs | Tustari, Ibn Barrajan (a principle) | Turned into an entity, the logos |
| Unveiling above transmission | Bistami, Abu Madyan | Even analogy legitimized by revelation |
| Knowledge bound by Book and Sunna | Junayd | Widened to all prophets; reason as protector |
| Spiritual over physical miracles | Bistami | Miracles through or for the saint |
| Walaya; abandoning the stations; the Seal | Tirmidhi; Ibn al-Arif | Self-identification as Seal; freedom to criticize |
| Empty mind before unveiling | Junayd | Used against Ghazali |
| Inner meaning of rites | Shibli, Ghazali; Ibn al-Arif | Culminates in the Shaykh's chapters on worship |
| Prostration of the heart; Owner of the Kingdom | Tustari; Tirmidhi | Adopted as terms |
Nettler's view that "the issue of the One and the many, unity and diversity, may be seen as the bedrock" of the Shaykh's metaphysics is accepted, with a refinement: underneath it lies the principle that truth comes from combining several aspects, even contradictory ones. Ruzbihan Baqli (d.1209) is quoted on the starting point that "is the affirmation of both transcendence and immanence of God at the same time". The habit of viewing from several angles is early; "this notion is not original in the Akbarian thought", whatever its exact source.
A note adds a historical aside. Later authors such as Ibn Khaldun (d.1406) idealized early Sufism and blamed later Sufism for monism. Abrahamov thinks they did not know the early Sufis' views well.
How he criticized
The verdict: two criteria
Abrahamov answers cautiously, with two criteria.
First, the measure of fundamental ideas taken from others. Some of the most basic ideas are not his. But the idea that the cosmos is God's manifestation, with the mutual reflection of God in man and man in God, and most of its consequences, is his alone. So is the theory of the Fusus that each prophet stands for an idea prevalent in the cosmos. Even adopted theories are altered: the Ash'arite doctrine of continuous creation becomes a theory of manifestations always in becoming. That a thing can be gauged from different angles is early, but "the idea that all the aspects combine to create truth" is the Shaykh's contribution. His reading of the Quran is not only allusive but also rational and plain, with the whole Quran brought to bear on each story, as in the chapter on Noah.
Second, the way he handles inherited ideas. He elaborates them. Classifying the saints was not new, but his classification is more complex. What was embryonic in the first generations becomes part of an all-embracing conception. "The very fact that he formed a complete theory connecting God with the cosmos is a great novelty" in the author's judgement.
12. Reading the Notes
Abrahamov's notes do three jobs: they give references, they record where he could not find or understand something, and they carry asides that change how the main text reads.
Sources and editions
The book cites the Futuhat twice for each passage: the Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyya edition (Beirut, 1999) as "Fut." and the Dar Sadir reprint of the Egyptian edition as "FM". The Fusus is cited in Affifi's edition (Cairo, 1946). Translations lean on Chittick (The Sufi Path of Knowledge, The Self-Disclosure of God), Austin (Sufis of Andalusia, The Bezels of Wisdom), Chodkiewicz (Seal of the Saints) and Addas (Quest for the Red Sulphur). Abrahamov often gives his own renderings and sometimes says so: on Ibn al-Arif, "I did not follow the translation".
Honest gaps
- The allusion to the angels' exclamation in the Shibli pilgrimage dialogue is lost on him.
- The scheme of the eight Throne bearers is not found in the commentators he checked; the house-of-five-pillars image not in Ibn Masarra's Kitab al-Huruf.
- Nature between Universal Soul and dust is not found in Ghazali.
- The story of Ghazali's failed attempt to join the Sufis is not found in Ghazali's writings.
- He does not fully understand the Ibn Qasi paragraph on the Scale, or one comment on Dhu al-Nun's slave girl.
- He is unsure why a caliph is mentioned in the vision of the heaviness of unity, and offers only a guess on the breaths of the knower.
These admissions are a strength. They show where the evidence stops, and they keep the reader from mistaking a plausible link for a proven one.
Asides worth keeping
- On the term "unity of existence": Ibn al-Arabi never used it; it came from his commentators.
- On translation: Chittick's "homestead" for mawtin becomes "sphere"; Chittick's "truthfulness" for sidq is questioned; "rational madmen" for 'uqala' al-majanin is called inexact.
- On a revised view: the author corrects his own 1993 article on Ghazali's way to know God.
- On textual emendation: in the Kharraz vision he reads narā instead of tarā.
- On a parallel: a saying of Dhu al-Nun on seeing others' defects is compared to the Talmud, Qiddushin 70b.
- On the abdal: the four pillars of hunger, sleeplessness, silence and seclusion are traced to al-Makki and given in Hirtenstein's translation of Hilyat al-abdal.
- On al-Uraybi's name: settled from two manuscripts, one in the author's hand, with help from Stephen Hirtenstein.
13. Synthesis
What should a reader keep from eighteen short studies?
Key takeaways
- Attitude matters as much as influence. The book asks how the Shaykh treated his predecessors, not only what he took.
- Frequency of mention is the first test. Bistami 143, Junayd 34, Sahl 33, Hallaj 15.
- Early Sufis gave ideas; later Sufis gave practice.
- Three modes of reception: corroboration, argument then acceptance with change, rejection.
- Only God knows God. The Essence is unknown; names and attributes are known (Kharraz).
- Contraries join in God in the same respect. First and Last, Manifest and Hidden.
- Truth is the combination of aspects. This, not the many-angled view itself, is the Shaykh's own.
- Hallaj's influence was overrated. Affifi's nine points do not survive scrutiny.
- Al-Muhasibi and al-Makki left little mark, despite their fame.
- Junayd supplied the safeguards: empty the mind; measure unveiling by Book and Sunna.
- The colour of the water is the colour of its vessel. One disclosure, many receivers.
- Sainthood outlasts prophecy. Law-giving prophecy ended; walaya did not (Tirmidhi).
- Stations are perfected by being left.
- Spiritual miracles outrank physical ones, and the best do not involve the saint's body.
- Rites keep form and gain meaning: Shibli, then Ghazali, then the Shaykh.
- Sobriety is the better witness. Shibli's testimony is accepted over Hallaj's.
- Ghazali is the biggest debt and the biggest target.
- The unlettered heart receives best. Learning first is no criterion for unveiling.
- Revelation overrides reflection; the prophet's revelation overrides the saint's.
- The Shaykh can be undecided where he lacks revelation, and blunt where he has it.
- He loved agreement, but loved truth more.
- Old terms gain new meanings: the Real of creation becomes the logos.
- His self-image as Seal freed him to criticize.
- Originality lies in the combination: old parts made into a complete theory of God and cosmos.
Frameworks table
| Framework | Parts | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Modes of reception | Corroboration; polemic and modified acceptance; rejection | Introduction |
| Sufi opposites | Intoxication/sobriety; manifestation/concealment; practice/thought; extremism/moderation; seclusion/involvement | Introduction |
| Three kinds of seeker | Worshippers; Sufis; People of Blame | Muhasibi |
| Joining of contraries | First/Last; Manifest/Hidden; tanzih/tashbih | Kharraz |
| Kinds of miracle | Physical (hissi); spiritual (ma'nawi) | Bistami, Uraybi |
| Prophecy and sainthood | Legislative prophecy; general prophecy; walaya | Tirmidhi, Jilani |
| Two kinds of saint | Friends of God's right; friends of God | Tirmidhi |
| Levels of unity | Hypocrites; common belief; one agent; extinction | Ghazali |
| Ways of knowing | Intellect; tasting; revelation | Ghazali |
| Criteria of unveiling | Book and Sunna; all prophets; reason as protector | Junayd |
| Development of the stations | Early notes; Tirmidhi; Ibn al-Arif; abandonment | Ibn al-Arif |
| Tests of originality | Fundamental ideas taken; manner of handling | Conclusion |
A closer look
- A clear question and a clear method. Each chapter asks the same things and ends with a verdict.
- Corrections of received views. Affifi's claim for Hallaj is tested against counts and texts and rejected.
- Candour. The author marks what he cannot find or understand, and revises his own earlier work.
- Care with translation. He questions renderings and offers his own.
- Fairness to the Shaykh. He shows the criticism as well as the borrowing, and lets Ibn al-Arabi's undecidedness stand.
- Frequency is a blunt measure. A name cited often may be cited as ornament, as the book itself shows with Hallaj's poems; and influence can run without names.
- Sources and analogues blur. Many links are "possibly" or "very probably"; the book is honest about this, but the reader gets a map of resemblances more than of proven channels.
- Philosophy is set aside. By design the book leaves philosophical sources out, so the claim of originality is tested only against the Sufis.
- The historical figures stay shadowy. The Bistami or Jilani of the Futuhat may differ from the men; the book says so but cannot resolve it.
- Small slips. A few dates, counts and a verse number disagree or look wrong (see Part 12).
Who's Who
Dates are as printed in the book. Where the book gives two, both are shown.
| Person | Dates in the book | Role here |
|---|---|---|
| al-Muhasibi | 781-857 | Psychologist of the soul; little influence |
| Dhu al-Nun al-Misri | 796-859 (intro d.860) | Head of the Sufis; domain beyond logic |
| Abu Yazid al-Bistami | 804-?874 | Most-cited early Sufi; intoxicated model |
| Sahl al-Tustari | ?818-896 | Heart of Muhammad; prostration of the heart |
| Abu Sa'id al-Kharraz | ?-899 | Only God knows God; joining of contraries |
| al-Junayd | 830-910 | Sober master; Book and Sunna |
| al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi | ?820-?910 (intro d. between 905 and 910) | Sainthood and the Seal |
| al-Hallaj | 858-922 | Executed mystic; influence overrated |
| Ibn Masarra | 883-931 | Andalusian pioneer; little influence |
| al-Shibli | 861-946 | Inner meaning of rites; sober witness |
| Abu Talib al-Makki | ?-996 | Author of Qut al-qulub; marginal |
| al-Ghazali | 1058-1111 | Greatest debt and fiercest target |
| Ibn Barrajan | ?-1141 | "Ghazali of al-Andalus"; transmitter |
| Ibn al-Arif | ?-1141 | Man of courtesy; stations for common Sufis |
| Ibn Qasi | ?-1151 | Rebel Sufi; disputes on the next world |
| Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani | 1077-1166 | Mounted Pole; rebuked for presumption |
| Abu Madyan | 1126-1198 (a note: d.1197) | Master never met; trust in God |
| Abu al-Abbas al-Uraybi | no dates printed | First master; dhikr and conduct |
| Others with printed dates | Hasan al-Basri d.728; Rabi'a al-Adawiyya d.801; Abu al-Hudhayl d.c.844; al-Mutawakkil d.861; al-Jahiz d.869; Hamdun al-Qassar d.884; Ibn Salim d.909; al-Sarraj d.988; al-Kalabadhi d.990; al-Sulami d.1021; Abu Nu'aym d.1038; al-Ma'arri d.1057; al-Ansari d.1088; Abu al-Barakat d. after 1164-65; Abu al-Abbas al-Sabti d.1205; Ruzbihan Baqli d.1209; Ibn Abbad of Ronda d.1390; Ibn Khaldun d.1406; Ibn al-Muqaffa' d.c.760 | |
Glossary
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| abdal | The substitutes, a class of saints; reached through hunger, sleeplessness, silence and seclusion |
| adab, adib | Courtesy; the man of courtesy who unites all noble traits |
| ahl Allah | The people of God |
| a'yan thabita | Fixed entities: things as known by God, nonexistent in themselves |
| barzakh | Isthmus; the intermediate world |
| bast, qabd | Expansion and contraction, joined in the gnostic |
| dhawq | Tasting: direct experiential knowledge of states |
| dhikr | Invocation or remembrance of God |
| fana', baqa' | Extinction and subsistence |
| fath | Opening, illumination |
| futuwwa | Chivalry; preferring others, and God's commands, to oneself |
| haba' | Dust; primordial matter |
| hal, maqam | State (passing) and station (stable) |
| al-haqq al-makhluq bihi | The Real through which creation takes place |
| al-haqiqa al-Muhammadiyya | The Muhammadan reality, the spirit of Muhammad as first creation |
| idlal | Presumptuousness toward God |
| 'ilm, ma'rifa | Knowledge and gnosis; the Shaykh ranks gnosis higher |
| al-imam al-mubin | The clear record; for the Shaykh, the human microcosm |
| i'tibar | Reflection, learning from phenomena |
| jalal, jamal | Majesty and beauty |
| al-jam' bayna al-diddayn | The joining of contraries |
| karamat | Miracles of the saints |
| kashf, mushahada | Unveiling (of meanings) and witnessing (of essences) |
| khalwa | Seclusion, retreat |
| kun | "Be!", the creative word |
| lahut, nasut | Divine and human nature (Hallaj) |
| malamiyya | People of Blame; for the Shaykh the most perfect, hidden gnostics |
| manzil (pl. manazil) | Waystation |
| maqam al-qurba | Station of proximity, above truthfulness and below prophecy |
| munasaba | Affinity between God and man |
| muhaqqiqun | Verifiers, who reach truth by unveiling without imitation |
| nubuwwa 'amma, nubuwwat al-tashri' | General prophecy and legislative prophecy |
| qutb (pl. aqtab) | Pole, head of the saintly hierarchy |
| rasm (pl. rusum) | Outward sign; 'ulama' al-rusum, scholars of outward forms |
| sahw, sukr | Sobriety and intoxication |
| shath (pl. shatahat) | Ecstatic saying |
| siddiqiyya | Rank of truthfulness |
| sujud al-qalb | Prostration of the heart (Tustari) |
| tajalli | Self-disclosure of God |
| tajrid | Disengagement from the material |
| tanzih, tashbih | Incomparability and likeness |
| tark al-maqam | Abandoning the station |
| tawakkul | Trust in God |
| tawhid | Affirmation of unity |
| ummi | Unlettered; for the Shaykh, a heart free of speculation |
| walaya, wali | Sainthood, closeness to God; saint, friend of God |
| wara' | Scrupulousness |
| zuhd | Renunciation |
About this book
Ibn al-Arabi and the Sufis by Binyamin Abrahamov, 2014. This is a chapter-by-chapter study of the book, with summaries, maps, tables and diagrams; short quotations keep their page references. It is shared free for personal study, is not for sale, and is not endorsed by the author or publisher. Please read and buy the original.
Insight Editions · rajeshrmahapatra.com/insight-editions