Insight Editions · No. 129
Ibn Arabî et le voyage sans retour
Claude Addas
Claude Addas traces Ibn Arabi’s life from Murcia to Damascus and explains how his teachings on sainthood, divine unity, mercy, and Islamic law emerge from it.
A study guide to Ibn Arabî et le voyage sans retour by Claude Addas. 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
Claude Addas's Ibn Arabî et le voyage sans retour (Éditions du Seuil, 1996) is a short French introduction that follows Ibn Arabi's life from Murcia to Damascus and sets his doctrine inside it: sainthood, the Seal, the unicity of being, mercy and the Law.
In one sentence: for Addas, Ibn Arabi's daring metaphysics and his strict obedience to the Law are one teaching, since man recovers his divine form only by fully accepting that he is a servant.
Part 1. The Trial, the Prince and the Flight
Chapter 1. Should Ibn Arabi be burned?
Addas opens not with a birth but with a tomb. On 28 September 1516 the Ottoman sultan Selim I enters Damascus; after taking Cairo on 7 February 1517 he is back in Damascus in early October and orders a mosque and a mausoleum to house Ibn Arabi's grave, which he had already visited when it lay among weeds in an abandoned enclosure. On 5 February 1518 the Friday prayer is celebrated there in his presence.
The homage is strange, she notes, because Damascene notables of the day did not honour this man. Why Selim cared remains open: "la métaphysique n'était pas son fort et sa politique n'avait rien à y gagner" (editor's translation: ‘metaphysics was not his strong point and his politics had nothing to gain from it’).
Three centuries before, Muhammad b. Ali al-Arabi al-Hatimi al-Ta'i, called Muhyi al-din, ‘the Reviver of religion’, had died in Damascus peacefully and honoured, aged seventy-eight lunar years, on 8 November 1240 (638 of the hegira), and was buried on Mount Qasiyun. He left no property, having renounced worldly goods since adolescence, but a colossal body of writing.
- More than four hundred works: "Ibn Arabî figure parmi les écrivains les plus féconds de la littérature arabe" (‘Ibn Arabi ranks among the most prolific writers of Arabic literature’).
- A poetic summa, the Diwan al-Ma'arif, gathering tens of thousands of verses.
- A Qur'an commentary in sixty-four volumes, unfinished and now lost.
- The thirty-seven volumes of the Futuhat Makkiyya: first version finished December 1231, second version (autograph surviving) finished 1238.
The Futuhat was bequeathed to his son "et après lui à ses descendants et à tous les musulmans d'Occident et d'Orient, sur terre et sur mer" (‘and after him to his descendants and to all the Muslims of West and East, on land and sea’). A youthful vision told him the same: "Je sus alors que ma parole atteindrait les deux horizons, celui d'Occident et celui d'Orient" (‘I knew then that my word would reach the two horizons, that of the West and that of the East’). History proved him right, Addas argues, and the proof is the hostility itself: the ulema would have stopped long ago if the adversary were beaten.
An independent mind
Two claims frame the whole book. First, Ibn Arabi belongs to no legal or theological school. The common view that he was a Zahirite (a school, the note explains, that accepts only the literal text of Qur'an and tradition as sources of law) is wrong: "C'est un penseur indépendant, au sens le plus fort de ce terme" (‘He is an independent thinker, in the strongest sense of the term’). Second, he is not an "innovator" in the pejorative sense. His work is an extraordinary synthesis that gathers the scattered limbs of a long mystical tradition.
The quarrels began, she argues, once this "discipline de l'arcane" (‘discipline of the arcane’) lapsed toward the end of the thirteenth century. The concise Fusus al-hikam, about a hundred pages summing up the metaphysics and the doctrine of sainthood, gave hostile readers an easier target than the Futuhat, and disciples' glosses in more philosophical language made it more suspect still.
A trial always reopened
The comparison is pointed: no French deputy would ask Parliament to ban Meister Eckhart by invoking the bull of John XXII, yet in Egypt in 1979 a deputy got the People's Assembly to withdraw the Futuhat from sale (the measure was later reversed).
The first skirmishes came in the second half of the thirteenth century; the systematic attack began with Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), who at least knew the work well, read the Futuhat as well as the Fusus, and even admitted profiting from it. Ibn Khaldun, asked to arbitrate a controversy in Alexandria, issued a ruling prescribing that the books be burned. Yet the hostile rulings are many but their content never changes, and rhetoric often hides a subtler view.
Addas reads this as a condemnation less of the doctrine than of its spread among the mass of believers. Nor did all ulema condemn him: Firuzabadi (d. 1414) in Yemen wrote a fatwa defending his sainthood, and in 1517 Kemal Pasha Zade (d. 1534), Selim's adviser, advised the sultan to reprimand his detractors. The chapter ends on the question the book will answer: is Ibn Arabi a "vivificateur de la religion" (‘reviver of religion’) or, as his enemies say, a "tueur de la religion" (‘killer of religion’)?
Chapter 2. The prince's prayer
The young Ibn Arabi wanted armour, not asceticism. He recalls: "Je n'ai eu de cesse, dès que je fus en âge de porter des ceinturons, de chevaucher des coursiers, de fréquenter les nobles, d'examiner les lames des sabres, de parader dans les campements militaires" (‘From the time I was old enough to wear a belt I never ceased riding chargers, keeping company with nobles, examining sword blades, parading in army camps’).
His family were Arabs from Yemen, probably arriving with the "second wave" of 712 that brought thousands of Yemeni horsemen to Andalusia, and counted among the great Arab families under the first Umayyad emir (756-788). He claimed descent from Hatim al-Ta'i, the pre-Islamic poet of proverbial chivalry. His father "comptait parmi les compagnons du sultan" (‘was among the companions of the sultan’), a phrase from which late biographers made him a minister. A newer source settles it: Ibn Sha'ar (d. 1256), who met Ibn Arabi in Aleppo on 27 October 1237, says he came of a military family in the service of those who govern the country.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| May 1085 | Christians take Toledo; Almoravid victory at Zallaqa less than a year later |
| 1118 | Almoravids lose Saragossa |
| 1130 | Death of Ibn Tumart, Almohad Mahdi; Abd al-Mu'min succeeds |
| 1146-1147 | First Almohad troops land; Seville taken; Marrakesh falls 1147 |
| 27 July 1165 | Ibn Arabi born at Murcia (or 6 August, by other sources) |
| March 1172 | Almohads take Murcia; the father moves to Seville |
A sudden metamorphosis
No known text of Ibn Arabi dates his turning. But the famous meeting with Averroes in Cordoba, told in a boxed text at the end of the chapter, shows him as a beardless boy already holding illuminative knowledge from a recent retreat, so about fifteen.
Ibn Sha'ar gives the cause in Ibn Arabi's own words: at Cordoba he watched prince Abu Bakr b. Yusuf b. Abd al-Mu'min bow and prostrate in the great mosque with humility and drew the conclusion: "si un tel personnage, qui n'est pas moins que le souverain de ce pays, se montre soumis, humble et se comporte de la sorte avec Dieu, c'est que le bas monde n'est rien !" (‘if such a man, no less than the sovereign of this country, shows himself so submissive and humble before God, then this lower world is nothing!’). "Je le quittai le jour même - jamais je ne le revis - et m'engageai dans la Voie" (‘I left him that very day, never saw him again, and entered the Way’).
- Ibn Sha'ar dates it 1184, when Ibn Arabi was nineteen; the Averroes portrait contradicts that.
- Caliph Yusuf left Andalusia for Morocco in 1176 and stayed until 1184, then went straight to Seville, so he cannot be the prince at Cordoba.
- His kunya was Abu Ya'qub, not Abu Bakr.
- Conclusion: probably one of the caliph's sons, Abu Bakr, one of his generals.
The boy left army, companions and goods and withdrew, one biographer says, to a cave in a cemetery: "Je demeurai en ce lieu quatorze mois et j'obtins ainsi les secrets sur lesquels j'écrivis ensuite ; mon ouverture spirituelle, à ce moment, fut un arrachement extatique" (‘I stayed in that place fourteen months and so obtained the secrets I later wrote about; my spiritual opening at that time was an ecstatic rapture’). His earlier life he would later call his jahiliyya, the term for pre-Islamic ‘ignorance’.
Chapter 3. ‘Flee to God!’
The lightning illumination is what Sufis call jadhba, ‘rapture’. The majdhub is seized by God without passing through long discipline, but to be complete this must be followed by the via purgativa, which the Emir Abd el-Kader called "la voie la plus haute et la plus parfaite" (‘the highest and most perfect way’). The one ‘desired’ (murad) must become ‘desiring’ (murid) and walk step by step what he first flew over.
Addas sees in this meeting with the representatives of the major monotheisms a prefiguring of the universal reach of his teaching.
In the Prophet's footsteps
Qur'an 33:21 is the scriptural root: "Il y a pour vous en l'Envoyé de Dieu un exemple excellent" (‘You have in the Messenger of God an excellent example’). For Muslim mystics conformity to Muhammad is not a recommended stage but the condition of all realization, both means and goal. Hence the young man, whose book learning then went no further than the Qur'an, began to study hadith with the best masters and kept at it all his life. The point is doctrinal, not pious conformity.
- Pre-existence: the "Réalité muhammadienne" (‘Muhammadan Reality’), first being brought into existence, opens the cosmic process and is its end. "J'ai été prophète alors qu'Adam était entre l'argile et l'eau" (‘I was a prophet when Adam was between clay and water’).
- Universality: earlier prophets are partial manifestations of it; his Law and mercy embrace all beings, believers or not.
- Perfection: it is the one source from which all sainthood draws and into which it returns.
From this follows practice. Man is created in God's form, so he holds all divine Names in his clay and is God's khalifa. "Un lieutenant doit obligatoirement posséder les attributs de celui qu'il représente" (‘A lieutenant must necessarily possess the attributes of the one he represents’). But form and office expose him to "l'illusion de la souveraineté" (‘the illusion of sovereignty’). Forgetting the clay, he claims the lordship that belongs only to the One he represents. "La patrie de l'homme, c'est sa servitude ; celui qui la quitte, il lui est interdit d'assumer les Noms divins" (‘Man's homeland is his servanthood; whoever leaves it is forbidden to take on the divine Names’).
The disciple of Jesus
How can a man who calls himself the supreme heir of Muhammad revere Jesus so? Addas promises the answer in the doctrine of prophetic inheritance; the root is personal: "Il [Jésus] est mon premier maître dans la Voie; Il veille sur moi à toute heure et ne me néglige pas un instant" (‘He [Jesus] is my first master on the Way; he watches over me at every hour and does not neglect me for a moment’). Muhammad set the route; Jesus guided the journey, in the absence of an earthly master.
Following Jesus to the letter, he gave all he owned to his father, before 1184, when at nineteen he began to frequent masters. Conversions ran in the family: a paternal uncle in old age mocked a boy seeking a remedy, was told his ignorance of God was worse, and "se mit au service de l'enfant et entra par lui dans la Voie" (‘put himself at the child's service and through him entered the Way’). The father, who disapproved, came round on his deathbed: "O mon enfant, c'est aujourd'hui le départ et la rencontre" (‘O my child, today is the departure and the meeting’).
Poverty, faqr, is for Ibn Arabi a metaphysical law, not youthful zeal. "Ô hommes ! Vous êtes indigents envers Dieu !" (‘O men! You are poor before God!’) (Qur'an 35:15). He owned nothing, not even his clothes, only borrowed ones; and when told perfect servanthood was impossible while anyone could claim anything from him, he answered: "Dieu Lui-même ne pourra me réclamer quoi que ce soit !" (‘God Himself will not be able to claim anything from me!’).
Part 2. Masters, Seal and the Wide Earth
Chapter 4. The lords of the Way
The heroism of the Andalusian Sufis
In 1184, at nineteen, Ibn Arabi enters the tariq, the ‘Way of the masters’, which Addas distinguishes from his earlier ruju', his ‘return’ or conversion. "Je devins le compagnon d'hommes fidèles au pacte qu'ils avaient conclu avec Dieu" (‘I became the companion of men faithful to the pact they had made with God’). But he arrives no novice: solitary worship of the One gives way to contemplating His theophanies among creatures.
He recorded these masters three times: a first collection, never found; the Ruh al-quds, written in Egypt two years after an Iraqi shaykh told him there were no true gnostics in the West; and al-Durrat al-Fakhira, an abridgement of the first. The two surviving works hold seventy-one notices.
| Master | What Ibn Arabi remembers |
|---|---|
| Uryani | Illiterate peasant, first earthly guide; tied to the notion of servanthood |
| Mirtuli | Sold books from his library to feed the needy: "Quand il les eut tous vendus, il mourut" (‘When he had sold them all, he died’) |
| Abu Hasan al-Shakkaz | Never said "moi" (‘I’) |
| Fatima | Aged eighty-six, ate the scraps Sevillians left at their doors |
| al-Qaba'ili | His prayers reached "jusqu'aux poissons de la mer" (‘even to the fish of the sea’) |
The point, Addas stresses, is that these are artisans, shopkeepers and paupers whom the biographical dictionaries ignored. Their virtues fit Qushayri's definition: "Le héros, c'est celui qui brise les idoles" (‘The hero is the one who breaks idols’), and every man's idol is his ego. Ibn Arabi adds: "Le “héros” c'est celui dont n'émane jamais le moindre mouvement inutile" (‘The "hero" is the one from whom no useless movement ever comes’). Such men are "des princes aux apparences d'esclaves" (‘princes who look like slaves’).
The Way of blame and absolute servanthood
Servanthood is not acquired; it is the status of every creature. The hero differs by being always aware of it: "la connaissance qu'il a de sa servitude rapproche l'esclave de son seigneur" (‘his knowledge of his servanthood brings the slave near his lord’). Bistami asked how to come near; the answer was: "Approche-toi de Moi par ce qui n'est pas à Moi : l'humilité et l'indigence" (‘Come near Me by what is not Mine: humility and poverty’).
The hadith qudsi says God becomes the servant's hearing, sight, hand and foot. The only change, Ibn Arabi notes, is in the servant's perception: God always was his hearing. But works chosen by himself keep a trace of autonomy. The ‘pure servant’ does only what God imposes, when He imposes it, and paradoxically by this abdication qualifies for the kingship promised to the lieutenant: now he is God's hearing and sight. "Dieu veut par sa volonté ; s'il en a conscience, c'est qu'il n'a pas pleinement réalisé cette station" (‘God wills by his will; if he is aware of it, he has not fully realized this station’). Like Bistami, asked how he was this morning, he answers: "Je suis sans qualité, je n'ai ni matin ni soir !" (‘I am without quality, I have neither morning nor evening!’).
Hence the heroes are the malamiyya, the "hommes du blâme" (‘men of blame’), who "ont revêtu le plus haut degré spirituel" (‘have put on the highest spiritual degree’). "Ils ne se distinguent pas des autres croyants par quoi que ce soit" (‘They are not distinguished from other believers by anything’); unlike ascetics, whose effort shows the world still has value for them, they vanish into the anonymity of every man's epitaph, ‘servant of God’.
The tribe of saints
The master-disciple bond was not simple. Al-Kumi, met in 1190, introduced him to books of mysticism: "Je ne savais même pas ce que signifiait le terme" (‘I did not even know what the term meant’), that is, tasawwuf. Until then his knowledge came only from his own experience. Al-Kumi taught him discipline, yet "il était pour moi à la fois un maître et un disciple et j'étais de même pour lui" (‘he was both master and disciple to me, and I the same to him’). When he contradicted Uryani about a supposed Mahdi, a stranger reminded him of submission; on his return Uryani said: "Faudra-t-il, chaque fois que tu me contredis, que je demande à Khadir de te recommander la soumission" (‘Must I, each time you contradict me, ask Khadir to recommend submission to you?’).
- Degree: the afrad, ‘solitaries’, elite of the malamiyya, human counterparts of the enraptured angels; no one has authority over them but God.
- Function: some hold an office in the diwan al-awliya, the ‘Council of saints’ that keeps cosmic balance.
- Type: set by prophetic inheritance (Christic, Abrahamic, Mosaic...). The Christic saint may walk on water and sees the best in every being. Ibn Arabi was first Christic, then heir of Moses, of all the prophets, and last of Muhammad.
Whatever the prophet, the saint finally inherits from Muhammad, since the Muhammadan Reality is the one source. A member of the Council told him: "Ne t'affilie qu'à Dieu, car aucun de ceux que tu as rencontrés n'a autorité sur toi" (‘Affiliate yourself only to God, for none of those you have met has authority over you’). The solitaries reach the ‘station of proximity’, just below law-giving prophecy, which Ibn Arabi dares to call the ‘station of prophecy’: legislating prophecy ended with Muhammad, but general prophecy goes on in the saints.
Chapter 5. The Seal
Only one person in history receives the Muhammadan heritage whole: the "Sceau de la sainteté muhammadienne" (‘Seal of Muhammadan sainthood’).
| Seal | Who | What closes |
|---|---|---|
| Muhammadan sainthood | An Arab of noble lineage living in Ibn Arabi's time: himself | Direct inheritance from Muhammad |
| Universal sainthood | Jesus, at his descent at the end of time | The station of proximity, for all |
| Seal of children | Last man born, "en Chine", after his twin sister | Human sainthood; then the Hour |
The notion is not his. Hakim Tirmidhi in the ninth century wrote Khatm al-walaya, the first attempt to define sainthood, and was persecuted for saying that in a sense sainthood is superior to law-giving prophecy (meaning, within each prophet, the sainthood outranks the prophetic office, which ends with the world). Tirmidhi left one hundred and fifty-seven questions only the true Seal could answer; no one took up the challenge until Ibn Arabi, in chapter 73 of the Futuhat.
He hides his own name in prose but gives it in verse: "Je suis le Sceau des saints, de même qu'il est attesté / Que le Sceau des prophètes est Muhammad" (‘I am the Seal of the saints, as it is attested / that the Seal of the prophets is Muhammad’). Addas thinks the poems carry the most esoteric side of the teaching. The election was announced at Cordoba in 1190, in a vision of all the prophets where only Hud spoke; that Hud then told him he was the Seal comes not from his writings but through Qunawi to Jandi's commentary on the Fusus.
Chapter 6. ‘When what never was vanishes...’
The master most often named is one he never met in the body: Abu Madyan, ‘Master of masters’, who sent word in 1190 that they would not meet "en ce monde" (‘in this world’). Three years later Ibn Arabi left for Tunis to join Abd al-Aziz Mahdawi, Abu Madyan's disciple, his first journey out of Spain. A boxed text shows Mahdawi at sea under Christian attack, calmly speaking of essential truths while a jurist panics; captured, the shaykh asks the Christians for a place to pray, and they honour him while beating the jurist.
The imaginal world
During prayer the imam recited "O Mes serviteurs ! Ma Terre est vaste, adorez-Moi donc !" (‘O My servants! My Earth is wide, so worship Me!’) (Qur'an 29:56). Ibn Arabi cried out so that all present fainted, the only such cry of his life. This "Terre de la Réalité" (‘Earth of Reality’), made from the surplus of Adam's clay, is the imaginal world (Futuhat ch. 8): an isthmus where bodies are subtle and intelligibles take form, the stage of visions and dreams and the dwelling of souls before Judgement.
In chapter 351 Ibn Arabi ties the wide Earth to servanthood: "J'ai moi-même commencé à y adorer Dieu en 590 [1193] et nous sommes maintenant en 635 [1237]" (‘I myself began to worship God there in 590 [1193], and we are now in 635 [1237]’). Whoever enters stays: "Celui que Dieu a illuminé Le voit en toute chose" (‘Whoever God has illumined sees Him in everything’).
The supreme vision
| Imaginal (formal) | Formless | |
|---|---|---|
| State | Permanence (baqa): present to oneself | Extinction (fana) |
| Object | Created, conditioned forms | The Essence in its nakedness |
| Knowing | Sees and hears God at once | Does not know it sees; joy only afterward |
"Seul l'Éternel peut contempler l'Éternel" (‘Only the Eternal can contemplate the Eternal’), Addas sums up. Servanthood is no detour but the only road to that night: "Sache, ô mon frère, que la terre de ton corps est la véritable “vaste Terre de Dieu”" (‘Know, my brother, that the earth of your body is the true wide Earth of God’). Yet one who knows himself a servant still claims a share of being: "Celui qui Me voit et sait qu'il Me voit ne Me voit pas" (‘Whoever sees Me and knows he sees Me does not see Me’). The vision comes only "lorsque disparaît ce qui n'a jamais été et que subsiste ce qui n'a jamais cessé d'être" (‘when what never was vanishes and what never ceased to be remains’).
Tunis opens the siyaha, some thirty years of wandering through the Muslim world. Around thirty years old, he learns he is "héritier des sciences de Muhammad" (‘heir of the sciences of Muhammad’) and spends the rest of his life passing on that legacy.
Part 3. Ascension, Mecca and Being
Chapter 7. ‘At two bows' length or nearer’
Back in Andalusia in 1194, Ibn Arabi loses his father and soon, it seems, his mother; an only son, he must now provide for two sisters. His circle urges a lucrative post. Instead he begins to write, and copiously: "Il ne se contente plus de contempler Dieu, il appelle à Dieu" (‘He no longer merely contemplates God; he calls to God’).
| Contemplations of the Holy Secrets | Divine Ordinances | |
|---|---|---|
| Voice | The visionary: lyrical, rhythmic | The master: slow, discursive, detailed |
| Content | Fourteen face-to-face contemplations; saints who ‘stop’ in God and those who ‘return’ to guide | Role of intellect, body, soul and senses in restoring theomorphism |
| Note | For the ‘heirs’; God bade him make it manifest | Written in four days at Moron |
God speaks to man in the Contemplations: "Tu es Mon miroir, Ma maison, Mon habitacle ; tu es le trésor de Mon mystère, le lieu de Ma science" (‘You are My mirror, My house, My dwelling; you are the treasure of My mystery, the place of My knowledge’). Addas warns that the order of the early works cannot be fixed, since Ibn Arabi often revised earlier texts.
He was in Fez in June 1195 when al-Mansur brought his army to Seville, and says he never doubted the outcome; the Almohads crushed the Castilians at Alarcos on 18 July 1195. The Andalusians rejoiced, not knowing "la victoire qu'ils célèbrent est le chant du cygne de l'Espagne musulmane" (‘the victory they celebrate is the swan song of Muslim Spain’). When the caliph himself offered to find husbands for his sisters, Ibn Arabi courteously refused and took them to Fez. There a circle formed, including the freed Ethiopian slave Badr al-Habashi, who followed him through Morocco, Spain, Algeria, Tunisia, Arabia, Palestine, Mesopotamia and Anatolia until death parted them in 1221.
The night journey
In March 1198 at Fez he finished the Kitab al-isra. The Prophet's night journey to God, "à la distance de deux arcs ou plus près" (‘at two bows' length or nearer’), is open to his heirs too, but in spirit rather than bodily. It is vertical but nocturnal: only in the night of his poverty does the contemplative meet the One. Written in rhymed prose broken by poems, it is for Addas among "les plus grands chefs-d'œuvre de la littérature arabe" (‘the greatest masterpieces of Arabic literature’). From it he drew two certainties: the prophets greet him as Seal, and the office requires him to move from the edge of the Muslim world to its centre.
| Date | Place and event |
|---|---|
| Dec. 1198 | Cordoba: follows Averroes' funeral |
| Jan. 1199 | Vision behind the Anqa mughrib, cryptic on Jesus and the Mahdi |
| July 1199 | Almeria: Mawaqi' al-nujum in eleven days |
| Oct. 1200 | Salé: farewell to al-Kumi; at Guisser reaches the station of proximity |
| June 1201 | Bougie: vision of marriage to every star and every letter |
| Nine months later | Leaves Mahdawi's house in Tunis for Mecca |
The cryptic language of the Anqa was a needed caution under a dynasty whose legitimacy rested on Ibn Tumart's claim to be the impeccable Imam. In his farewell letter he wrote: "Dorénavant je ne visiterai plus personne aussi longtemps que je resterai" (‘Henceforth I shall visit no one as long as I remain’). Though Muslim Spain looked at its height under al-Mansur, many Andalusians felt what Maribel Fierro calls the "sentiment de précarité" (‘feeling of precariousness’); thirteen years after al-Mansur's death came Las Navas de Tolosa.
Chapter 8. The Meccan Illuminations
Saladin's heirs kept orthodoxy and obedience to the caliph, building madrasas and joining the caliph al-Nasir's futuwwa, but showed great reluctance about jihad against the Franks. They also housed Sufis in a large khanqah in Cairo, partly, Addas suggests, to control these wanderers. Ibn Arabi's verdict: their chief care was "de nettoyer leurs frocs - ou devrais-je dire leurs uniformes ? - et de peigner leur barbe" (‘to clean their frocks, or should I say their uniforms, and comb their beards’). Institutional Sufism, he saw, foretold a spiritual impoverishment; the quest is "l'aventure silencieuse d'une âme" (‘the silent adventure of a soul’).
The Youth at the Black Stone
After Ramadan 1202 in Cairo and a passage through Jerusalem, he reached Mecca at the end of 598 (August 1202). Beside the Black Stone he met the fata, the ‘Youth’, already glimpsed in Andalusia and at the start of the Night Journey.
"Ainsi naquirent Les Illuminations de La Mecque" (‘So the Meccan Illuminations were born’). The meeting is the first of the work's five hundred and sixty chapters, and his investiture as Muhammadan Seal, also at Mecca, is in its prologue: the Futuhat are both the youth's silent revelations, with Ibn Arabi as interpreter (tarjuman), and the last will of the Seal of the saints.
Chapter 9. ‘God is, and nothing is with Him’
The chapter opens with a line not by Ibn Arabi but by Ansari of Khorasan (d. 1089): "tout vient de Toi pour Toi, Tu es tout, et c'est tout" (‘all comes from You for You, You are all, and that is all’). So the ‘unicity of being’ did not erupt in the thirteenth century; it was there in germ.
- wujud: from the root wjd, ‘to find’; literally ‘being found’, hence ‘being there’; used by al-Farabi (d. 950) for ‘being’.
- wahdat al-wujud: ‘unicity of being’. Not Ibn Arabi's phrase (Qunawi used it first, in passing), but apt. Prefer it to ‘unicity of existence’ (Izutsu, for instance), since ‘existence’ implies a relation to an origin and fits only what is ‘outside God’.
- mawjudat: ‘existents’, the universe.
The unicity of being
Albert the Great's question frames it: is being said of God and creatures univocally? Ibn Arabi's answer is not Aquinas's nor the theologians'. Being is not an accident added to essence; it is univocal, "s'applique également à Dieu comme au morceau de bois" (‘applies equally to God and to a piece of wood’). An essence is only a self-determination of being; its reality is a limit, a privation.
So the universe is both illusion and reality. Taken as autonomous it is a chimera: "L'univers est une illusion, il n'a pas d'existence réelle" (‘The universe is an illusion, it has no real existence’). Taken as God's self-determinations it is wholly real: "il n'y a rien d'illusoire dans l'existence" (‘there is nothing illusory in existence’). "L'univers n'est ni être pur ni pur néant. Il est tout entier magie" (‘The universe is neither pure being nor pure nothingness. It is wholly magic’).
Eternal exemplars and divine knowledge
The universe is "tout ce qui est “autre que Dieu”" (‘all that is other than God’), namely the possibles, existent or not. The non-existent possibles addressed by "Be!" are the a'yan thabita, ‘immutable entities’, or in Eckhart's term our eternal exemplars. Unless present to God we could not hear the "Be!", which must address what can hear. They are not co-eternal with God but eternally known by Him: "Il l'a existencié selon ce qu'il était dans Sa science" (‘He brought it into existence according to what it was in His knowledge’).
Each entity has a "prédisposition" (isti'dad), and God makes it exist as it must be. So free will, Addas says, is no metaphysical problem: God wills only what He knows must be. To those who plead on Judgement Day that they sinned by His will, God answers: "Je t'ai manifesté dans l'existence conformément à la science que tu m'as donnée de ton essence" (‘I manifested you in existence according to the knowledge you gave Me of your essence’).
‘He never ceases to be and you never cease not to be’
The entities, known by God, do not know themselves: thubut is a "non-existence relative" (‘relative non-existence’). The creative Word gives them self-awareness, but they never gain existence; they are only "revêtues" (‘clothed’) with it. "L'être Lui appartient et la non-existence t'appartient ; Il ne cesse d'être et tu ne cesses de n'être pas" (‘Being belongs to Him and non-existence to you; He never ceases to be and you never cease not to be’). The hadith ‘God was and nothing with Him’ has, Ibn Arabi remarks, the force of a present tense. The possibles "n'ont jamais senti le parfum de l'existence" (‘have never smelled the perfume of existence’); they are only loci of manifestation (mazahir) of the Real, each to the measure of its predisposition.
Part 4. Names, Horizons and the Law
Chapter 10. ‘Wherever you turn, there is the Face of God’
Creation springs from the hidden treasure: "J'étais un trésor caché et J'aimais à être connu" (‘I was a hidden treasure and I loved to be known’), a hadith qudsi whose authenticity jurists mostly deny. In His Essence God is "indépendant des mondes" (‘independent of the worlds’, Qur'an 3:97); but as Divinity, holding the Names, He needs an object: "Ce qu'on appelle “Seigneur” a besoin d'un vassal" (‘What is called "Lord" needs a vassal’).
- Absolute Unicity of the unconditioned Essence (Addas suggests "unitude"): unknown, knowing neither creatures nor Names.
- Most holy effusion (al-fayd al-aqdas, Eckhart's bullitio): to the Unicity of multiplicity, Divinity with its Names.
- Assembly of the Names: they ask to show their effects.
- Holy effusion (al-fayd al-muqaddas, ebullitio) and the Breath of the All-Merciful, which produces the Cloud (al-'ama), prime matter.
- "Be!": the immutable entities appear as words; "L'univers n'est rien d'autre que Ses paroles" (‘The universe is nothing but His words’).
Addas notes these "operations" happen in the eternal divine Present; only language makes them successive.
A Name "est donc le Nommé sous le rapport de l'Essence" (‘is thus the Named as regards the Essence’) and other than it as regards its own meaning. Names and creatures feed each other: "chacun des deux est la subsistance de l'autre" (‘each is the sustenance of the other’). Creatures are like images in a mirror, real yet chimerical, and each falls back to nothing at the instant it appears, clothed anew by ceaseless theophanies: "A chaque instant le cosmos, du point de vue de sa forme, subit une nouvelle création, dans laquelle il n'y a pas de répétition" (‘At every instant the cosmos, as to its form, undergoes a new creation without repetition’).
The heart that contains God
"Mon ciel et Ma terre ne Me contiennent pas, mais le cœur de Mon serviteur croyant Me contient" (‘My heaven and My earth contain Me not, but the heart of My believing servant contains Me’). The ego corrodes this polished mirror; only its death restores it. Each receptacle colours the theophany as a cup colours water, so each person knows only the "Dieu créé dans les croyances" (‘God created in beliefs’) and denies Him in other forms. The gnostic transcends this, knowing every thing has a divine face: "Dieu est l'adoré en tout adoré" (‘God is the one worshipped in everything worshipped’).
‘My Mercy embraces all things’
From Qur'an 7:156 and 39:53 he builds a doctrine of apocatastasis (Addas suggests a comparison with John Scotus Eriugena). The people of Hell stay there forever, "Mais il n'y a aucun texte scripturaire relatif à l'éternité du châtiment en tant qu'il est souffrance" (‘But there is no scriptural text on the eternity of punishment as suffering’); when the term ends, the punishment brings a kind of bliss. Even Iblis told Sahl al-Tustari: "Je suis une de ces choses que Sa Miséricorde embrasse" (‘I am one of the things His Mercy embraces’); on this, Ibn Arabi comments, Iblis was Sahl's master.
Chapter 11. The two horizons
Two years in Mecca brought new works: Hilyat al-abdal (27 January 1203) on silence, seclusion, fasting and vigil, which work only with silence of mind and vigil of heart; the Ruh al-quds; Taj al-rasa'il (1204), eight letters to the Ka'ba. In 1202 the divine Mystery appeared to him in a young Persian woman, Nizam, and the Tarjuman al-ashwaq was born (written down late in 1214). Against those who saw only "un grammairien de l'ésotérisme" (‘a grammarian of esotericism’), Addas insists he is first a mystic lost in love; following Corbin, Nizam figures the divine Sophia, and jurists' insinuations forced him to write a commentary.
Wanderings and heirs
After Mecca he widened his reach beyond Sufi circles, as adviser to Ayyubid and Seljuk princes. Konya, 1205; later a letter to sultan Kay Kawus urging the Sharia rules on Christians, written in 1212, the year of Las Navas de Tolosa. From 1216 in Anatolia he married, sources say, the widow of Majd al-Din Rumi and raised her son, Sadr al-Din Qunawi (d. 1274); a reading certificate of 1230 calls Qunawi his stepson.
| Line | Figures (dates as printed) |
|---|---|
| Iranian, philosophical | Qunawi; Jandi (d. 1291); Farghani (d. 1300); Qashani (d. 1329); Qaysari (d. 1350); later Haydar Amoli (d. 1385), Molla Sadra (d. 1640) |
| Persian poetry | Shabistari; Fakhr al-Din Iraqi (d. 1289); Jami (d. 1492) |
| Arab world | Ibn Sawdakin (met 1207), Tilimsani (met 1237), Jili (d. 1408), Nabulusi, Sha'rani (d. 1565) |
| Return to the West | Emir Abd el-Kader, nineteenth century |
The Iranian line systematized him and so, Addas judges, "ils l'ont schématisée et du même coup appauvrie" (‘they schematized it and at the same time impoverished it’), making him more exposed to the exoterists. The chapter ends at Damietta (6 November 1219), where Francis of Assisi is said to have been present; a boxed text from the Fioretti tells how Francis preached before the Sultan.
Chapter 12. ‘Profit from my existence!’
From 1223, about sixty, he settled in Damascus, hosted by the Banu Zaki, a family of judges, and on friendly terms with leading jurists. "Profitez de mon existence avant que je ne m'en aille" (‘Profit from my existence before I go’). He began the second Futuhat in 1234, kept up the Diwan al-Ma'arif, and wrote some twenty-five works (Osman Yahia's count), including the Fusus, read behind closed doors to two or three disciples. A boxed text tells how the warrior shaykh al-Yunini, ‘Lion of Syria’, sheltered a Christian woman sent by the Virgin Mary in a dream: "Certes, c'est un musulman, mais son cœur est chrétien" (‘Certainly he is a Muslim, but his heart is Christian’).
The Letter and the Law
He likely joined the Damascene protest against Jerusalem's cession in 1229, holding it unlawful to go to or live in the city while the enemy held it: his ecumenism is subordinate to the Law. "Le “héros” [...] est celui qui est entre les mains de la science canonique comme le cadavre entre les mains du laveur des morts" (‘The "hero" is the one who is in the hands of canonical science like a corpse in the hands of the washer of the dead’). The antinomian batinites are "les plus ignorants des hommes quant aux vérités subtiles" (‘the most ignorant of men in subtle truths’). "la Loi est la réalité essentielle" (‘the Law is the essential reality’).
- "Ce n'est pas en vain, déclare-t-il, que Dieu écarte un mot pour lui en préférer un autre" (‘It is not in vain, he declares, that God sets aside one word for another’). The hidden sense lies in the apparent one; the closer the reading, the richer.
- "Toute chose sur laquelle la Loi garde le silence n'a pas d'autre statut légal que la licéité originelle" (‘Anything on which the Law is silent has no legal status other than original permissibility’).
- No filling of gaps, no rejecting the lightest of several valid rulings; no ban on taking another school's easement.
This, Addas suggests, may be the real motive of the seven-century trial: Ibn Hajar was right that the Syrian ulema's goodwill came from ignorance of his views on fiqh. Mercy to others, relentless rigour for oneself: "tels sont, en définitive, les deux pôles de l'éthique akbarienne" (‘such, finally, are the two poles of Akbarian ethics’). The Perfect Man is the one whom total adherence to the Law and the Letter has brought back to his origin, "lorsque, présent à Dieu, il était absent à lui-même" (‘when, present to God, he was absent to himself’).
Part 5. Notes on the Text
The electronic file moves italic words to the foot of each page in chapters 1 to 6 and reads "imaginal" as "imaginai" in places; these are faults of the file, not of the book, and quotations here avoid them.
Part 6. Synthesis
Key takeaways
- The posthumous trial never ends because the work stayed alive; its arguments go back to Ibn Taymiyya.
- A prince's humble prayer turned a young soldier into a seeker; fourteen months of retreat followed.
- Imitation of the Prophet and observance of the Law are the road back to man's theomorphism.
- The heroes are anonymous servants, the men of blame; servanthood fully lived is sainthood.
- Ibn Arabi held himself the Seal of Muhammadan sainthood; Jesus seals universal sainthood.
- Against Corbin, the imaginal world is not the summit: formless theophany needs extinction.
- Being belongs to God alone; possibles "n'ont jamais senti le parfum de l'existence" (‘have never smelled the perfume of existence’), yet things are not God.
- Mercy embraces all; punishment does not stay suffering forever.
- Literal fidelity to the Letter yields both his boldest doctrines and a lenient, gap-free jurisprudence.
Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), first systematic critic. Dhahabi (d. 1348). Ibn Khaldun (d. 1382). al-Ahdal (d. 1451).
Sadr al-Din Qunawi (d. 1274), stepson and heir. Badr al-Habashi (d. 1221), companion.
Hakim Tirmidhi, ninth century, author of Khatm al-walaya. Ansari (d. 1089).
Nabulusi (d. 1731). Emir Abd el-Kader, nineteenth century.
Part 7. Glossary
| Term | Meaning in the book |
|---|---|
| a'yan thabita | Immutable entities: possibles known by God |
| afrad | Solitaries, elite of the saints |
| fata, futuwwa | Hero, Youth; heroic generosity |
| jadhba | Rapture without prior discipline |
| khalq jadid | Creation renewed at every instant |
| malamiyya | Men of blame, hidden saints |
| siyaha | Wandering, about thirty years |
| 'ubudiyya | Servanthood |
| uwaysi | Saint taught by an absent or dead master |
| walaya | Sainthood, literally proximity |
| wahdat al-wujud | Unicity of being |
About this book
Ibn Arabî et le voyage sans retour by Claude Addas, 1996. 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