Insight Editions · No. 124
Ibn 'Arabi: Heir to the Prophets
William C. Chittick
William C. Chittick examines Ibn 'Arabi's teachings on prophetic inheritance, divine love, knowledge, imagination, ethics, death, and mercy within Islamic mysticism.
A study guide to Ibn 'Arabi: Heir to the Prophets by William C. Chittick. Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the authors or publishers. Please read and buy the original.
Overview
Chittick (Oneworld, Makers of the Muslim World, 2005) into a study guide. It follows the book's order: the Introduction and nine chapters, grouped here into four parts. Notes and the further-reading list are left out.
Argument Map
Chapter Map
| Ch | Title | Core idea |
|---|---|---|
| Intro | Life | Murcia to Damascus; Futuhat and Fusus |
| 1 | The Muhammadan Inheritance | Heir and Seal; two eyes |
| 2 | The Lover of God | Types of lovers; love's bewilderment |
| 3 | The Divine Roots of Love | Hidden Treasure; love creates |
| 4 | The Cosmology of Remembrance | Creation as speech; dhikr |
| 5 | Knowledge and Realization | Tahqiq; the haqq of things |
| 6 | Time, Space, Ethics | Aeon; objective norms |
| 7 | The In-Between | Imagination; gods of belief |
| 8 | The Intervening Image | Death; created for happiness |
| 9 | The Hermeneutics of Mercy | Good opinion; sweet torment |
Introduction
Introduction and Ibn 'Arabi's Life
Chittick opens by explaining why Ibn 'Arabi earned the title "the greatest master" (al-shaykh al-akbar), why he is so hard to read, and why this short book sets biography aside in favor of a series of forays into his way of looking at things.
The Greatest Master
Born in Spain in 1165, Ibn 'Arabi is "at once the most influential and the most controversial Muslim thinker" of the past nine centuries. The size of his output alone is staggering: the Futuhat al-makkiyya ("The Meccan Openings") holds more text than most prolific authors write in a lifetime, and probably no one has ever read all of his works. He is difficult because of his erudition, his consistently high level of discourse, his constantly shifting perspectives and his range of styles.
He is also original. Ghazali, speaking for much of the earlier Sufi tradition, said that unveiling, the unmediated knowledge God gives His friends, should not be written down. Ibn 'Arabi swept this prohibition aside and spread out the fruit of unveiling for all to see. Yet he was no mere visionary: most of his writing is argued with rational precision, drawing on the whole repertoire of Islamic learning. That is why scholars across the Islamic world, from Black Africa and the Balkans to Indonesia and China, took him seriously, whether they adopted his terms or condemned him. "No reputable scholar could simply ignore him."
His influence reached far beyond the learned: through the Sufi orders, several of which claimed him as a forebear, and through the poetry of Persian, Turkish and Urdu. From the later nineteenth century, reformers and modernists made him an emblem of everything wrong with traditional society; more recently young Muslims disillusioned with modern ideologies, "fundamentalism" being the latest, have returned to him. Early Orientalists called him incoherent; Henry Corbin and Toshihiko Izutsu gave him academic respectability.
A Thumbnail Life
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1165 | Born in Murcia, Andalusia; his father serves the ruler Ibn Mardanish |
| 1172 | Almohads take Murcia; family moves to Seville, where he grows up near the court, trains as a soldier, works as a secretary and marries Maryam |
| Early teens | A spiritual call and a vision of God; Jesus is his first guide; meets Averroes "before his beard had sprouted" |
| c. 1195 | First journey out of Spain, to Tunis |
| 1200 to 1202 | A vision sends him East; hajj in 1202; meets Majd al-Din Ishaq of Malatya |
| 1211 to 1212 | In Baghdad; on good terms with Sultan Kay Ka'us I of Konya and al-Malik al-Zahir of Aleppo |
| 1223 | Settles in Damascus, teaching and writing the Futuhat |
| 1240 | Dies in Damascus |
He signed himself Abu 'Abd Allah Muhammad ibn al-'Arabi al-Ta'i al-Hatimi, and was later called Muhyi al-Din, "the Reviver of the Religion." Everything he later wrote, he said, was "the differentiation of the universal reality comprised by that look," the early vision (II 548.14). The meeting with Averroes, which Corbin made famous, shows the gulf he saw between the rational thinkers and the gnostics ('arifun). He studied with many Sufi shaykhs and named seventy teachers in Hadith, Quran recitation, commentary and jurisprudence. In Mosul he received an initiatory cloak from Ibn al-Jami', who had received it from Khadir, the undying guide of Quran 18:65-82; but Chittick finds "no basis" for Corbin's claim that Khadir was his primary guide. His closeness to rulers shows that his "mysticism" did not keep him from society and politics. His stepson Sadr al-Din Qunawi (d. 1274) became his leading disciple.
- Osman Yahia catalogued 850 attributed works: about 700 authentic, over 400 extant.
- Fusus al-hikam ("Ringstones of the Wisdoms"): 27 prophets, each embodying a divine wisdom; over 100 commentaries.
- Futuhat al-makkiyya: a vast compendium of metaphysics, cosmology, ritual, the stations of the path, the letters, the 99 names; two recensions.
- Tarjuman al-ashwaq ("Interpreter of Yearnings"): love poems inspired by Nizam, met in Mecca, with his own commentary proving they are spiritual.
- A Quran commentary said to be longer than the Futuhat has not survived.
Why Not a Biography
Invited by Oneworld in 2000, Chittick chose to write about teachings, not life: Claude Addas's Quest for the Red Sulphur and Stephen Hirtenstein's Unlimited Mercifier already tell the life well. "Biography as we know it is a modern invention"; premodern readers wanted his ideas. The nine chapters began as talks and articles (1991 to 2003), revised for nonspecialists. Chittick's large project, The Sufi Path of Knowledge (1989) and The Self-Disclosure of God (1998), with a third volume promised, shows that this book is not an adequate introduction but a set of forays.
- Ibn 'Arabi is the most influential and controversial Muslim thinker of nine centuries, original and rigorously argued.
- His life ran from Murcia (1165) through Seville, Mecca and Anatolia to Damascus (1240).
- The book offers nine forays: inheritance and love (1-2), love and remembrance (3-4), knowledge (5-6), imagination (7-8), mercy (9).
Part I: Heir and Lover
Chapter 1. The Muhammadan Inheritance
Ibn 'Arabi's followers called him "the Seal of Muhammadan Friendship." Chittick explains what that claim meant: friendship with God, prophetic inheritance, the opened door, the Quran read with both eyes, and self-knowledge as knowledge of God.
Friends and Heirs
The title echoes the Quran's name for Muhammad, "Seal of the Prophets": the last of the 124,000 prophets, and the one whose revelation synthesizes all earlier prophetic knowledge. "Friend" (wali) means friend, someone close, given authority, benefactor, protector; it is also a divine name. Chittick warns against the usual translation "saint," which carries Christian connotations. God's friends are first the prophets; through the prophets, others can become friends too, and may receive an inheritance with three dimensions:
- Works: proper and appropriate activity.
- States: inner experiences that manifest noble character traits.
- Stations of knowledge: firm rootedness in the true understanding of reality.
Knowledge is the most fundamental: "As a man moves closer to perfection, God gives him discernment among affairs and brings him to realization through the realities" (II 525.2). The realities are infinite, but humans may know their principles, and each prophet has special insight into how certain divine names display their traces. "The ulama are the heirs to the prophets," says a hadith, and every age has at least 124,000 friends, one heir per prophet (III 208.14). Since most prophets' guidance is lost, their inheritance now comes through Muhammad, whose message comprises theirs. In the end, though, God chooses the heir.
The Opened Door
Effort brings the seeker only to the door; he may knock, but God decides whether to open it. Hence the title Futuhat, "Openings": its knowledge was given, not gained by study. Opening is not revelation, which belongs to prophets; the friend is a follower (tabi'), the prophet the one followed (matbu'). The way to opening is the prophet's practices under a shaykh, notably retreat (khalwa) and remembrance (dhikr):
The Seal
When the door opened, Ibn 'Arabi found he had inherited all of Muhammad's sciences, including the knowledge that no one after him, except Jesus at the end of time, would be Muhammad's plenary heir. The claim does not make him the last friend of God, only the last to inherit the totality of Muhammad's works, states and knowledge. Later friends inherit through particular prophets embraced by Muhammad; none will be "upon the heart of Muhammad" (II 49.26). In universal terms, Muhammad embodies the Logos, which Ibn 'Arabi calls the Muhammadan Reality. Critics found the claim outrageous, but "no author writing after him has come close to matching the profundity, freshness, and detail" of his reading of the sources. The Seal "and the Quran are siblings" (III 329.27).
Reading with Both Eyes
All his writings explicate the Quran, God's Word, which addresses both reason ('aql) and imagination (khayal). Every word has indefinitely many meanings, all intended by God: "When meaning repeats itself for someone who is reciting the Quran, he has not recited it as it should be recited" (IV 367.3).
God discloses Himself in two ways: He discloses His undisclosability, the path of negative theology, and He discloses Himself through scripture, the universe and the soul. Reason grasps the first and asserts incomparability (tanzih); imagination, fully realized as unveiling, grasps the second and asserts similarity (tashbih). Theology had stressed incomparability and Sufi poetry similarity; Ibn 'Arabi's contribution was the balance. The heart's beating symbolizes the shift from one eye to the other, since divine unity precludes a simultaneous dual vision.
Self-Knowledge and the Wide Earth
The soul is "an ocean without shore" (Chodkiewicz's title). God never repeats Himself, so each moment brings a new self-disclosure, and the gnostic sees each moment "as a totally new creation"; this is also why the people of paradise are never bored. "He who knows himself knows his Lord" uses ma'rifa, recognition, not 'ilm. Reason analyzing the self finds we are not God; imaginal vision finds self and world are His forms: He/not He. "There are none but knowers of God, but some ... know that they know God, and some do not" (III 510.32).
- Friends of God inherit works, states and knowledge from a prophet; perfection is open to men and women.
- Effort reaches the door; God opens it. Opening is not revelation.
- The Seal is the last plenary heir of Muhammad, not the last friend.
- Reason asserts incomparability, imagination similarity; the heart needs both eyes.
- Self-knowledge is God-knowledge, renewed every moment.
Chapter 2. The Lover of God
Ibn 'Arabi climbs to God chiefly by knowledge, but he gives love its full due. Love is the divine name that every human trait must reflect, the force behind creation, and the one passion that can absorb the whole human being.
Knowledge Above Love
Corbin wanted to place him beside Rumi among the lovers, but Ibn 'Arabi says plainly: "Knowledge is more eminent than love" (II 661.10). Lovers rank high; gnostics higher. Still, Chapter 178 of the Futuhat is a book-length treatment of love, listing forty-five attributes of the lover. He writes from tasting (dhawq), not as a compiler of lore.
This illustrates the hadith he cites most: when God loves His servant, "I am his hearing through which he hears, his eyesight through which he sees." So "the lover hears Him through Him."
Assuming the Traits of the Names
The Prophet spoke of ninety-nine "most beautiful names"; Ibn 'Arabi accepts one authority's view that only eighty-three are certain, yet holds that the names are infinite, as endless as God's self-disclosures: "Wherever you turn, there is the face of God" (2:115). All creatures display the properties and traces of the names; they "assume their traits." The cosmos is "living, hearing, seeing, knowing, desiring, powerful, and speaking"; it is "He/not He" (II 438.20).
Love is among the most important names; God is "the Lover." The objects of His love define the traits to acquire: the repentant, the trusting, the patient, the virtuous. And love explains creation: "I was a Hidden Treasure but unrecognized. I loved to be recognized, so I created the creatures" (II 322.29).
Why Only God Can Absorb Us
Both humans and cosmos are in God's form, but the cosmos shows all the names only together with perfect humans: "If [Perfect] Man were to leave the cosmos, the cosmos would die" (II 468.12). So only God, or another human, can fully satisfy human love.
Imperfect and Perfect Lovers
Love for God means love for Allah, the all-comprehensive name, not merely the Provider or the Benefactor. Yet all love is love for God in disguise: "None but God is loved in the existent things ... and there is nothing in the existent [world] that is not a lover" (II 326.19). Since one cannot love what one does not know, Chapter 208 ranks lovers by their knowledge:
| Lover | How they know God | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Believers by hearsay | Conflicting reports | Bewildered |
| Imaginative believers | Similarity; a limited form | Seek ecstasy, intimacy, vision |
| Rational believers | No limits, but miss His nearness (50:16) | He is manifest; they lack eyes |
| Rationalists who crave vision (like Ash'arites) | Reason | "The bliss of craving" |
| Rationalists who deny vision (like Mu'tazilites) | Reason | "The bliss of despair" (II 494.6) |
| The greatest lovers | Both eyes: "My Lord, increase me in knowledge" (20:114) | Never deny God in anything, never confine Him to anything |
- Knowledge outranks love, but love moves the seeker and grounds creation.
- Virtue is assuming the traits of the divine names in revealed balance.
- All love is for God; lovers are ranked by how they know Him.
Part II: Love, Remembrance and Perfection
Chapter 3. The Divine Roots of Love
Why does the Quran tie love only to human beings? Chittick follows Ibn 'Arabi's chapter on love back to its roots in wujud: love always seeks the nonexistent, God loves the fixed entities into existence, and human perfection is a love with no specific object.
Love's Quranic Roots
The Futuhat's love chapter opens with the verses where God is the subject of "to love": fourteen name those He loves, twenty-three those He does not, and all concern human beings. Life, knowledge, power, mercy and wrath have no special link to humans; love does. So love is the key to what makes humans different: they alone are made in the divine form. Citing scripture first shows that the argument rests on revelation, and that the Quran expresses love "as it is found in the deepest roots of Ultimate Reality."
Wujud: Being and Finding
His first topic is always God, the second the cosmos, "everything other than God." He calls God wujud, usually "being" or "existence," but literally "finding." Early Sufis used it for "finding God," close to witnessing and unveiling. Ibn 'Arabi keeps both senses: the gnostics are "the folk of unveiling and finding."
| Wujud for Ibn 'Arabi | "Being" in modern English |
|---|---|
| Being and existence, the "objective" side | Mere fact of being there |
| Also finding, awareness, consciousness | No built-in awareness |
| Life and consciousness are primary | Consciousness treated as a latecomer, evolved from dead matter |
The Nonexistent Beloved
Wujud in itself is the Hidden Treasure; it makes itself known through the universe, the self and scripture, and scripture is the key to the other two. Like wujud, love cannot be defined; it is "a knowledge of tasting" (IV 7.2). And love's object is always nonexistent: "Love's object remains forever nonexistent, but most lovers are unaware of this" (II 337.17). We love what we do not yet have. If you reply that you still love the kiss after getting it, then your love has moved to its permanence, which does not yet exist (II 337.18).
Fixed Entities and Love's Genesis
Tawhid, "no god but God," means "no wujud but God"; all else is nonexistence ('adam). The things God eternally knows are the fixed entities (a'yan thabita): "'I was a Treasure' affirms the fixed entities" (II 232.12). When created they are "existent entities," but "the fixed entities have never smelt a whiff of wujud" (Fusus 76). Wujud and the nonexistent entities are the two pillars of the universe; love is wujud's innate drive to show itself, as light shines.
Each entity is a possibility (mumkin), a mode in which wujud's radiance can be limited; light must be diminished by darkness to become visible. So every creature is wujud/not wujud. Why is love inherent? Through the names Light and Beautiful: Light gives the nonexistent entities the eyesight to hear "Be" (16:40) and to see; then God "discloses Himself to the entities through the name Beautiful, and they fall in love with Him" (II 112.34). "God is beautiful and He loves beauty"; "the cause of love is beauty" (II 326.24). In the end "nothing of the servant loves God but God." Since love seeks the nonexistent, God loves the next moment of each thing; His love brings about a new creation at each moment.
Love's Throne, Human Love and Felicity
The name Loving (al-wadud) means God constantly brings the universe into existence; the tongue of our state begs for existence, and He answers, answering Himself. "The Forgiving, the Loving, the Lord of the Throne" (85:14-15) links love with the Throne, where the All-merciful sits, embracing everything (7:156). He gives lovers His best, wujud itself: "Had there been anything more perfect ... He would not have been stingy with it" (IV 260.6).
Human love, too, seeks the nonexistent, so God in His Essence stays forever unattained. What lovers find is the God of belief (ilah al-mu'taqad), God as He shows Himself. "He cannot be desired or sought in His Essence" (II 663.9). So "the gnostics seek their own felicity, not God" (IV 443.1): the joy of taking part consciously in the endless renewal.
Poverty and Perfection
The goal of life is to actualize the names taught to Adam (2:31): perfection. The underlying theme of his writings is not wahdat al-wujud, "the Oneness of Being," a term he never uses, but human perfection. The Fusus begins with Adam; the Futuhat depicts the stations of perfection. God is "no thing" and loves all things; Perfect Man likewise loves all things and no specific thing, standing in "the station of no station" (maqam la maqam). His universal poverty is the annihilation of his ego; his non-delimited "divine love" embraces every level of being, for each level "has an eye from His name Light through which it looks upon His name Beautiful" (II 113.6).
- The Quran ties love to humans alone, the bearers of the divine form.
- Wujud is both being and finding; consciousness is primary.
- Love always seeks the nonexistent, so God's love creates anew each moment.
- Seekers find the God of belief and their own felicity, never the Essence.
- Perfection is universal poverty and a love fixed on no specific thing.
Chapter 4. The Cosmology of Remembrance
"This world is accursed, and accursed is everything within it, save the remembrance of God." The hadith sounds world-denying, unlike Islam's usual embrace of this world. Ibn 'Arabi's teaching on remembrance (dhikr) shows why, in the end, nothing is accursed.
Presence with the One Remembered
Remembrance is "presence and watchfulness over God's traces in your heart and in the cosmos" (III 502.12). It is often compared to the Jesus prayer, japa yoga and the Shin Buddhist nembutsu; the claim that Sufis borrowed it from Christian monks is, Chittick says, "gratuitous," given its place in the Quran and Sunnah.
| Principle | Perspective | Role of remembrance |
|---|---|---|
| Tawhid | Atemporal truth, intuited by every human; the core of all 124,000 prophets | Humans forget (nisyan) and are heedless (ghafla) |
| Prophecy | Temporal, historical | Prophets remind (dhikr) and bring guidance (huda); humans answer with remembrance |
| Return (ma'ad) | Death and resurrection | The "compulsory return" for all; the "voluntary return" chosen now |
One word, dhikr, names both God's reminder and the human response, as love runs both ways: "He loves them and they love Him" (5:54); "So remember Me, I will remember you" (2:152). Remembrance is "presence with the One Remembered" (IV 36.8) in works, states and knowledge; its practical sum is worship and servanthood. "Servant" comes before "messenger" in Muhammad's titles, and Ibn 'Arabi uses Perfect Servant interchangeably with Perfect Man. "I created jinn and mankind only to worship Me" (51:56); "There is no god but I, so worship Me" (21:25).
Three Books and the Breath
God reveals three books: the universe, the self and scripture, each made of signs (ayat), the same word as Quranic verses. Each soul answers for its reading of all three, and its understanding is written in itself: "Read your book! Your soul suffices you today as a reckoner against you" (17:14).
Creatures are words, so all knowledge of things is knowledge of divine speech: "the [world] of being knows nothing of God but His speech" (II 352.14). Speech is God's attribute; the true attribute of creation is silence. "When you hear the servant speaking, that is the Real's bringing to be within him" (III 218.34). Only what has been given wujud remembers Him (IV 92.12).
The Names and All-Comprehensiveness
A name is "something that occurs from a trace, or something from which a trace comes to be" (II 120.13), another cut in uncut wujud. "God made the divine names many only because of the diversity of the traces" (IV 36.19). Names make remembrance possible, even for God: "Were it not for the names, God would remember nothing, and nothing would remember God" (II 489.26). Each creature knows God through its own names; only Adam was taught all of them (2:31), from his own essence by tasting, through "a universal self-disclosure" (II 120.24).
Most people remain "animal man"; Perfect Man realizes the Hidden Treasure's knowledge. Ibn Abbas glossed "to worship Me" as "to know Me." Every name may be ascribed to the Perfect Servant, one by one or in groups, but never all in a single word: that is what distinguishes the Lord from His servant (III 409.16).
The Perfect Servant
Every other creature has a cosmic niche, a specific mode of knowing God; "there is nothing in the heavens and the earth that does not come to the All-merciful as a servant" (19:93). Humans alone, in their perfected state, have no niche: they are forms of the all-comprehensive name, and this is the meaning of Adam's vicegerency.
The House of God
Only the heart can expand to encompass God. Once presence is achieved, the world is accursed only inasmuch as it hides the Real, yet it is nothing but God's mention of Himself. Everything is the remembrance of God, so nothing is accursed: "the alchemy of remembrance transmutes the accursed into the blessed." "The greatest sin is what brings about the heart's death. It dies only by not knowing God." Such a person has "misappropriated the house," the heart God chose for Himself (III 179.6).
- Remembrance is presence with God in works, states and knowledge.
- Tawhid is timeless; prophecy reminds; the return can be chosen now.
- Creation is speech in the All-merciful Breath; creatures are silent words.
- Humans alone know all the names; the Perfect Servant can stand in for the cosmos.
- Seen with presence, everything is remembrance, so nothing is accursed.
Part III: Knowledge and Realization
Chapter 5. Knowledge and Realization
Ibn 'Arabi wants readers to move beyond rote learning to realization (tahqiq): finding the truth of things for themselves. Chittick asks which knowledge is beneficial, why reason alone fails, and how realization means giving each thing its haqq.
No One Can Know for You
"My Lord, increase me in knowledge" (20:114) was addressed to the Prophet, so it applies to everyone. Scripture must guide, but "the opinions of experts, scholars, and scientists have no relevance to true awareness. No one can know for you." Knowledge cannot be defined, since every definition presupposes it, yet true knowledge attaches to a thing's essence, its fixed entity as God knows it.
The phrase wahdat al-wujud was first used technically by Sa'id al-Din Farghani (d. c. 1300), a student of Qunawi, and not to label Ibn 'Arabi's view: he paired the oneness of wujud, which gives the shared existence of things, with the manyness of knowledge, which gives their multiplicity.
Beneficial Knowledge
| Left behind at death | Carried after death |
|---|---|
| Medicine, mathematics and other worldly sciences | Knowledge of God |
| The Shariah: needed "like food," in moderation; excess sickens the soul; taklif ends at death | Knowledge of the homesteads of the afterworld, so one walks there "as he walks in his own home" |
| Has a limit | Has no limit (I 581.29) |
The Form of God and the Ocean of the Possible
"God created Adam in His form" and taught him all the names. Form is a thing's outwardness, meaning its inward reality. Adam's knowledge is the form of the divine Meaning, and it is his very being; so the soul has a beginning but no end, since its knowledge unfolds endlessly. 'Alam (cosmos), 'ilm (knowledge) and 'alama (mark) share a root (II 473.33); yet signs seen without what they signify become the densest veil.
Knowledge of the possible is "an ocean ... within which ships founder ... that has no shore save its two sides" (III 275.15): Necessity and impossibility, neither knowable. Hence a "radical agnosticism": "It is impossible for anything other than God to gain knowledge of the cosmos ... or of the self of anything by itself" (III 557.4). "The thing knows nothing but itself, and nothing knows anything except from itself" (III 282.34).
Following Authority
All acquired knowledge comes from outside, so we follow authority (taqlid): teachers, books, public opinion, scientists, our senses, imagination and reason, all unreliable. In law taqlid is opposed to ijtihad; in philosophy to tahqiq. "Since ... other than God cannot have knowledge of anything without following authority, let us follow God's authority" (II 298.3), in the prophets' footsteps, and then by receiving knowledge directly, as they did. Full realization is "the standpoint of no standpoint," recognizing the relative validity of every mode of knowing while bound by none.
Haqq: Real, True, Right, Due
Tahqiq shares a root with haqiqa (reality) and haqq: real, true, proper, appropriate, right, just; as a divine name, the Real. It stands against both khalq (creation) and batil (unreal, false): "The haqq has come and the batil has vanished" (17:81). Creation is ambiguous, neither the Real nor unreal, so two questions arise: What are we? For what are we here?
- "Gave each thing its creation": by the engendering command ("Be!"), everything is haqq, real and appropriate.
- "Then guided": by the prescriptive command, relayed by prophets, which humans, gifted with freedom, may answer "Yes" or "No."
The hadith of the haqqs: "Your soul has a haqq against you, your Lord has a haqq against you, your guest ... your spouse ... So, give to each that has a haqq its haqq." That sentence is a thumbnail definition of realization, and for Ibn 'Arabi God's primary prescriptive command. "We created the heavens and the earth ... only through the haqq" (15:85). Each right is our responsibility; only humans, taught all the names, can recognize every haqq, and the scale comes through the prophets.
God's Haqq and the Soul's
First comes God's haqq, the basis of all rights (huquq); modern talk of "human rights" uses the same word but forgets that rights cannot be separated from responsibility to God (9:24). God's haqq is tawhid and worship; the servants' haqq is paradise. Then the soul: the hadith names it first, and the Prophet said, "Begin with yourself!" The Shariah covers only a small part of reality; a vicegerent must also know the Meaning of which he is the form.
- Seek knowledge that benefits at the return: of God and the afterworld.
- All human knowledge follows authority; follow God's, through the prophets and direct bestowal.
- Haqq means real, true, right and due; creation is real yet ambiguous.
- Realization is giving each thing its haqq, beginning with God and the soul.
Chapter 6. Time, Space, and the Objectivity of Ethical Norms
Ibn 'Arabi treats time and space as relations, not things, and roots them in divine names. Chittick then draws the ethical moral: a knowledge that strips things of their haqq cannot ground objective norms.
The Realizer's Method
Ibn 'Arabi mastered Sufism, philosophy, theology, law, Hadith and commentary, yet fits none of these labels; the best one is "realizer." A thing's haqq is at once its objective reality and the responsibility of the subject who meets it. In 20:50, a thing's "creation" is its reality now, its "guidance" its path back to the Source. Humans alone, being free and forgetful, need the prophets for guidance.
| Scholars | Book studied | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Jurists and theologians (transmitted learning) | Scripture | Right activity from Quran and Hadith |
| Philosophers (intellectual learning) | Universe and soul | The objective world and the knowing subject |
| Realizers like Ibn 'Arabi | All three books | The same principles and the same Haqq in each |
To lose sight of things as divine faces is shirk, the root of all misfortune.
Time and Place as Relations
Arabic says zaman wa makan, "time and place," not empty "space." Ibn 'Arabi calls both relations (nisab): not entities, but the ways observers see relationships among things.
- Makan follows the maf'al pattern, a "name of place" (like maktab, place of writing), and its root is kawn, being: literally "place of being," where a thing exists in the Breath after "Be!" Kawn is created being; wujud is God's.
- Zaman names the pattern of ongoing change, since permanence belongs to the Real, not to creation. Together they are demanded by "generation and corruption." God is qadim, beyond both.
Aeon and the Days of God
How does eternity relate to time? Through the divine name Aeon (dahr), God as the source of time's flow. The "Days of God" (14:5) prefigure time in the divine knowledge:
| Day | Length | Divine name |
|---|---|---|
| Day of ascent (70:3-4) | 50,000 years | Possessor of the Ladders |
| Day of 32:5 | 1,000 years | Lord |
| Day of the Essence: "Each day He is upon some task" (55:29) | One indivisible instant, the present, which lasts forever | He (the Essence) |
"The Aeon is nothing but daytime and night" (IV 87.18): each Day alternates display and concealment of a name's traces. In the Day of the Essence, what hides God's face is that very face: "
Glory be to Him who veils Himself through His manifestation and manifests Himself through His veil!" (III 547.12).
Aeon's mark is constant transformation (tahawwul): "There is no repetition in self-disclosure." Each creature at each moment has a unique haqq. Yet things are permanent in God's knowledge, "Not a leaf falls but He knows it" (6:59), so our persons are eternal in Him. In sum: as Speaker, God says "Be!" each instant; as Aeon, He displays and conceals His signs through His Days.
Ethics and the Ocean
Knowing a thing truly means combining its objective reality with its rightful demand on us. Cut things off from their divine context and they become "khalq deprived of haqq." Modern thought, Chittick argues, locates right and wrong only in the subject and holds "objective knowledge" to be value-free. For tahqiq, real objectivity must be rooted in Ultimate Reality, where subject and object converge: God is Knower and His own Known.
If ethics cannot be integrated into science, that would show Ibn 'Arabi that science is ultimately batil, because by method it leaves out the subject and everything beyond generation and corruption. Modern thought studies the ocean's waves while denying the ocean.
- Ibn 'Arabi is best called a realizer, reading all three books by one Haqq.
- Time and place are relations; place is "place of being," time the pattern of change.
- God as Aeon has Days; the Day of the Essence is the ever-present instant.
- Objective ethics requires knowing the haqq of things; fact and value meet in wujud.
Part IV: Imagination and Mercy
Chapter 7. The In-Between
The soul is neither spirit nor body but what arises between them. Chittick shows how Ibn 'Arabi turns this in-betweenness into a whole worldview: all knowledge is relative, everything is an image, and every god we worship is a god of belief.
The Soul Between Breath and Clay
Greek psyche became Arabic nafs, also the reflexive "self." In the myth, God molds Adam's clay with His two hands and blows His spirit into it; the nafs is what comes to be when spirit and body combine, "neither the spirit, nor the body, nor something completely new." From the start, the soul's domain is in between.
Relativity Without Relativism
Self-knowledge is the main means of realization, but the knower is caught in a radical in-betweenness (bayniyya): between spirit and body, light and clay, knowledge and ignorance. So "all knowledge is true in one respect and false in another." This relativity does not become modern relativism, because the Absolute Haqq still demands that each thing's haqq be recognized; what it rules out are false absolutes, which breed ignorance and self-deception. "Morning is not hidden from the Possessor of the Two Eyes, for he distinguishes the in-between from the in-between" (IV 384.33). One eye alone distorts; God is both absent and present, or neither.
Everything Is an Isthmus
Only the Real does not stand in between. The self has no fixity: it is "a flurry of relationships," formed by social, historical, biological and psychological factors and by much that escapes science. We cannot grasp what it is, only where it stands: "smack in the middle of everything." All things are in between the Real and nothingness, but the soul alone is all-comprehensive, the potential central point of cosmic wujud.
Cosmic Imagination
Creatures are like images in a mirror, distinct from both mirror and object. Yet "nonexistence is not there" (IV 410.30), so the mirror analogy breaks down, leaving a picture "akin to the non-dualisms of India and East Asia": infinite images, all the effulgence of Conscious Light. Cosmos and soul mirror each other: one outward and dispersed, the other inward and aware. Since Adam was taught all the names, regaining Adamic perfection means remembering who we are and recognizing what we know.
The Soul and Its Roots
"From a certain point of view, the soul is Ibn 'Arabi's only topic." What we know is always inside us: an internal image of an external image. Where knowledge matches the fixed entity, the inner image is more real than the outer, since it belongs to life and awareness.
The roots of in-betweenness are explained through two frameworks: the divine names, with God as One/Many the first principle of in-betweenness, the Supreme Isthmus, Non-delimited Imagination, the Breath; and the 124,000 prophets, the basic modes of humanness. Ibn 'Arabi's distinction is to stress the middle ground: language is always ambiguous, nothing is known in itself. "I have not perceived the reality of anything. How can I perceive a thing in which You are?" (Diwan 96). The final knowledge is bewilderment (hayra), but God is there, unknown as He knows Himself.
Controversy and the Gods of Belief
Ibn 'Arabi "threatens all the easy certainties." He reaffirmed dogma and respected ordinary faith; his targets were the learned, whose rational discourse he showed to be self-contradictory. He loosened "all the fixed points of reference," which explains hostility, especially from modern ideologues. Yet his insight is simply tawhid: every fixed point other than God must be "thrown into the fire."
- The soul arises between spirit and body; all its knowledge is relative to the Absolute.
- Everything but God is an isthmus and an image, renewed every instant.
- Imagination, universalized, is the stuff of the cosmos and the soul.
- The last knowledge is bewilderment; every known god is a god of belief.
Chapter 8. The Disclosure of the Intervening Image
This short chapter turns to the return to God. The soul's goal is the "station of no station"; death turns the soul inside out, and the universe was "created only for happiness."
The Station of No Station
Ibn 'Arabi speaks as a universalist, offering "a vast panorama of legitimate points of view," not a system. Realization's fruit is the Muhammadan station, the "station of no station": passing beyond every limit back to fitra, primordial nature. Like the Taoist uncarved block, the self is carved by circumstances: "Every child is born in keeping with the primordial nature, but then its parents make it into a Christian, a Jew, or a Zoroastrian."
Self-Awareness and the Vast Imagination
Animals differ outwardly by species; humans look alike but differ inwardly without limit. The world of imagination is "by far the vastest" world, ruling "every thing and non-thing" (I 306.6). It is also the domain of concealment, "peopled by both angels and demons," which is why prophecy is needed to tell angel from demon. Most people, loving this and that, stay "transfixed by the mirroring surface."
Death: The Soul Turned Inside Out
The soul has no fixed form; it takes on traits from the paths it follows. It becomes what it loves. "God created man in an inverted configuration, so he finds the afterworld in his inwardness and this world in his outwardness" (IV 420.1). At death the inner life becomes outward form: "We have lifted from you your covering, so your sight today is piercing" (50:22). Hence: "strive here to make your thoughts praiseworthy according to the Shariah so that your form in the afterworld may be beautiful."
The homesteads of the afterlife are "an endless succession of awakenings"; each stage of the path here prefigures one there. The only sure way to a good afterlife is to love the Beautiful and assume God's character traits.
- The goal is the station of no station: recovering primordial, uncarved nature.
- Imagination is the vastest world, holding both angels and demons.
- The soul becomes what it loves; death makes the inward outward.
- The universe was created for happiness; death is the encounter with the Beloved.
Chapter 9. The Hermeneutics of Mercy
Against a "hermeneutics of suspicion," Chittick presents Ibn 'Arabi's hermeneutics of mercy: read the Quran with a good opinion of God, and every threat yields to the mercy that "embraces everything," even in hell.
Trusting Wrath or Trusting Mercy
Theologians and jurists, guardians of order, tended to trust God's wrath; Sufis, who tasted mercy first-hand, trusted His forgiveness. Rational theology proves transcendence but loses immanence: it puts the self on one side and the Real on the other, so God calls "from a far place" (41:44). To the Sufis He called from near, "closer than the jugular vein" (50:16).
Reading the Shoreless Quran
Everything Ibn 'Arabi wrote "derives from the presence and the storehouses of the Quran" (III 334.32). Since self-disclosure never repeats, no two readings coincide. A human author cannot intend all his readers' meanings, but "the Quran is an ocean without shore, since He to whom it is ascribed intends all the meanings" (II 581.11). Not every reading is valid: it must be sustainable by the language. Then no scholar may call it wrong, though only the interpreter and his followers must act on it. Responsibility for interpretation rests with the interpreter.
Good Opinions of God
"I am with My servant's opinion of Me, so let his opinion of Me be good." Because "His mercy takes precedence over His wrath," a good opinion is a commandment; a bad opinion overcomes only its owner (II 474.26). As Muhammad's heir, sent "only as a mercy to the worlds" (21:107), Ibn 'Arabi says "God created me as a mercy," adding: "God did not specify those who have faith to the exclusion of others." "Those who curtail God's mercy curtail it only from themselves" (III 532.22).
| Argument | Gist |
|---|---|
| Most Merciful of the merciful (12:64) | "I have mercy toward all God's servants"; God is more merciful than I. "God is more noble than that!" (III 25.19) |
| Noble character (karam) | God commands pardon (42:40); He will not lack what He commands, so He pardons His own right |
| Mercy of wujud | "My mercy embraces everything" (7:156): "the cosmos is identical with mercy"; wrath is an accident; the circle returns to its beginning |
| The weak | "No fault in the blind, the lame, the sick" (48:17), and "all the cosmos is blind, lame, and sick" |
| Wording of 11:108 | Paradise is "a gift unbroken"; no such phrase is used of the Fire's state |
| The basmalah | Like an intention that makes up for lapses, "the All-merciful, the Ever-merciful" outweighs every threat in the chapter |
| Essential servanthood | All are servants by nature (19:93); disobedience is accidental, "and every accidental thing disappears" |
| Forgiveness of "all sins" (39:53) | Offered even to the unrepentant "immoderate" |
Mercy's precedence means God over creatures, light over darkness. And since wrath "is a thing," mercy embraces wrath, confines it and rules over it (III 9.23). For wrongdoers, "what they had never reckoned with" (39:47) is the Real Itself, and "nothing appears from the Good save good."
Primordial Nature and Servanthood
Every creature's first act is obedience to "Be!" In the next world all lose free choice and worship through their essences; humans were in any case "compelled in their free choice," so their excuse is accepted (III 433.4). Fitra is acknowledging God through servanthood; the dwellers of hell will reap the "Yes" they said at the Covenant of Alast (7:172). Even associators, once they name their gods, show "they worshipped none but God," imagining intercessors in the forms (III 24.34).
Sweet Torment
Ibn 'Arabi grants that hell lasts forever but denies that its suffering does. God is wrathful only in this world; in hell all act by His good pleasure, and "God is well-pleased with them, and they with Him" (5:119) covers both abodes. Annoyance ends with this world, and with it the names Avenger and Severe in Punishment (33:57).
Surrender
Wretchedness is self-made: the wretched stand "in the station of protest," asking "Why did such and such happen?" (II 447.8). Shaqq, "breaking off," echoes shiqa', "wretchedness." In time they say "Agreement is better," choose what God chose for them, and find ease. Even "scattered moths" (101:4) become creatures scattering in search of mercy, for "with God is the most beautiful place of return" (3:14).
- Read scripture with a good opinion of God; that opinion is itself commanded.
- The Quran is shoreless, but readings must fit its language, and interpreters answer for them.
- Mercy precedes and embraces wrath; wrath and wretchedness are accidents.
- Hell endures, but its pain ends: chastisement turns sweet when the soul stops protesting.
Synthesis
The whole book in takeaways, frameworks, a critical reading and the main figures.
Key Takeaways
- Ibn 'Arabi is a realizer, not a system-builder. He offers a panorama of legitimate standpoints, symbolized by the names and the prophets.
- He is the heir of all the prophets and claims to be the Seal of the Muhammadan Friends.
- See with two eyes. Reason declares God incomparable, imagination finds Him similar; one eye alone distorts.
- Love is the root of creation: "I was a Hidden Treasure and I loved to be recognized."
- Creation is speech. Things are words in the All-merciful Breath; remembrance is the human answer.
- Tahqiq means giving each thing its haqq, both its reality and its claim on us.
- Time and place are relations; God as Aeon has Days, and the Day of the Essence is the present instant.
- There is no repetition in self-disclosure.
- Everything but God is an in-between and an image; the last knowledge is bewilderment.
- The soul becomes what it loves; death turns it inside out.
- Mercy precedes and embraces wrath; the universe was created for happiness and hell's pain ends.
Frameworks at a Glance
| Framework | Use |
|---|---|
| Two eyes | Balance incomparability and similarity |
| Three books | Scripture, cosmos and soul read by one Haqq |
| Haqq as fact and duty | Joins knowing and right action |
| Days of God | Links eternity and time |
| Image of an image | Why knowledge is relative, not relativist |
| Essential vs accidental servanthood | Why mercy wins in the end |
| Name | Role |
|---|---|
| Ibn 'Arabi (1165-1240) | "Greatest Master"; Futuhat, Fusus |
| Averroes | Philosopher he met as a youth in Cordoba |
| Sadr al-Din Qunawi | Stepson and main disciple |
| Michel Chodkiewicz, Claude Addas | Scholars linking his life and the Quran |
Glossary of Key Terms
| Term | Meaning in this book |
|---|---|
| barzakh | Isthmus; anything in between, and the posthumous world |
| bayniyya | In-betweenness, the human situation |
| dahr | Aeon: God as principle of time |
| dhikr | Remembrance of God |
| fitra | Primordial nature, the uncarved self |
| haqq | The Real; a thing's truth, right and claim |
| hayra | Bewilderment, the final knowledge |
| khayal | Imagination; image |
| mahabba | Love |
| nafs | Self, soul |
| nafas al-rahman | The All-merciful Breath |
| shirk | Associating others with God |
| tahqiq | Realization |
| tawhid | Asserting God's unity |
| 'adhab | Chastisement; root also "sweet" |
| wujud | Being, finding, existence |
About this book
Ibn 'Arabi: Heir to the Prophets by William C. Chittick, 2005. 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