Insight Editions · No. 123
Ibn 'Arabi in the Later Islamic Tradition
The Making of a Polemical Image in Medieval Islam
Alexander D. Knysh
Alexander Knysh examines how medieval Muslim scholars, rulers, and communities shaped and contested Ibn 'Arabi's reputation across the Islamic world.
A study guide to Ibn 'Arabi in the Later Islamic Tradition by Alexander D. Knysh. 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
For four centuries after his death in Damascus, Ibn Arabi was argued over in fatwas, chronicles, poems and street brawls from Granada to Zabid. Alexander Knysh's book is not a study of what the Greatest Master taught. It is a study of what his readers made of him, and why.
What the book is
Ibn 'Arabi in the Later Islamic Tradition: The Making of a Polemical Image in Medieval Islam was published by SUNY Press in Albany in 1999, in the SUNY Series in Islam. Knysh spent seven years on it, in St Petersburg, Princeton, St Louis and Michigan, as his preface records. The volume contains:
- an Introduction that sketches Ibn Arabi's life (560-638/1165-1240) and the main lines of his thought, and sets out the questions;
- a first chapter that defines the approach and reviews Western scholarship;
- seven chapters that follow the controversy in time and place: the first biographers, the affair of Izz al-din Ibn Abd al-Salam, Ibn Taymiyya, the biographical literature of the eighth and ninth Islamic centuries, al-Taftazani, the Muslim West, Mamluk Egypt and Rasulid Yemen;
- a General Conclusion;
- about 108 pages of endnotes, which hold many of the book's sharpest judgements, its corrections of other scholars and much of its humour;
- a bibliography and indexes.
The main text runs to some 110,000 words and the notes to some 43,000.
Argument map
Chapter map
Twelve ideas to carry away
| # | Idea |
|---|---|
| 1 | Image, not doctrine. The debate was about a portrait assembled by others, not about Ibn Arabi's system as a whole. |
| 2 | One book did the damage. The Fusus al-hikam, not the vast Futuhat, drew almost all the fire. |
| 3 | No fight in his lifetime. Patrons and his own discretion kept him safe; organised opposition began decades later. |
| 4 | Ibn Taymiyya set the agenda. His charge sheet, built after he read the Fusus in 703/1303, framed most later attacks. |
| 5 | The question decides the answer. A loaded questionnaire made condemnation a foregone conclusion. |
| 6 | Anecdotes are arguments. Funeral scenes, the she-jinni and the Pole story were polemics in narrative dress. |
| 7 | Most people sat on the fence. Suspending judgement, as with al-Hallaj, was the common refuge. |
| 8 | Rulers, not consensus, decided. Where a sultan favoured his party, it flourished; where he did not, it went underground. |
| 9 | Rivalry fed doctrine. Posts, pensions and endowments were at stake in every round. |
| 10 | The critics were often Sufis. This was not jurists against mystics. |
| 11 | The critics saw real things. On kalam roots, Isma'ili parallels and imagination they were often right. |
| 12 | Labels fail. A literalist esotericist and hadith-scholar visionary defeats every category. |
Reading paths and method
- One hour: Part 4, Part 10 and the Synthesis. The story: Parts 2, 3, 8 and 9. The ideas: Parts 4 and 6, with Figures 7, 8 and 10.
I read the whole book, endnotes included.
1. The Enigma and the Method
The Introduction and Chapter 1 sketch the man, the teaching that made him dangerous, and the way Knysh proposes to study four centuries of argument without taking sides in advance.
Not a book about Ibn Arabi
Knysh opens by naming what he calls the 'Ibn Arabi enigma'. A Sufi from Murcia became, after his death, the most argued-over thinker in the Muslim world. Some called him the Greatest Master and a saint; others an infidel worse than Jews and Christians. The book, he says, is not a study of Ibn Arabi as such but "a study of image-making and polemics in premodern Islam". Its subject is the four centuries after 638/1240, the arguments about true belief and heresy that the name set off, and the people who made them.
He states three aims. The first is to trace how the image of Ibn Arabi was formed and changed. The second is to place the debate in its social and political setting, a kind of 'ulamalogy', the study of the learned class. The third is to test the dichotomies that modern writers use: orthodoxy and heresy, law and mysticism, jurists and Sufis.
Two limits follow. The book uses only Arabic sources, although much of the polemic was written in Arabic by Persians, Turks and Indians. And it stops around the tenth Islamic century, the sixteenth century CE, just as the Ottomans adopt Ibn Arabi as a patron saint. The Introduction notes the Ottoman sequel only briefly: Kemal Pashazade (d. 940/1534) issued an official ban on defaming the Shaykh, and Selim I commissioned an apology from one Shaykh Makki. In India the quarrel took a different form, between the 'unity of being' (wahdat al-wujud) and the 'unity of witnessing' (wahdat al-shuhud), with names such as al-Simnani (d. 736/1336) and Sirhindi (d. 1034/1624). The method is first diachronic, following the debate in time, and then synchronic, comparing regions.
A life in brief
Ibn Arabi was born in Murcia in 560/1165, as the Almoravids gave way to the Almohads. His father served at the court of Ibn Mardanish and later in Seville. The young man had a worldly youth, perhaps as a secretary, until a conversion that his own accounts attribute to an unearthly voice. He then sought out the ascetics of al-Andalus and the Maghrib, a group Knysh calls 'ragtag', including disciples of Abu Madyan (d. 594/1197). Knysh warns that Ibn Arabi's own accounts are "often self-serving and chronologically inconsistent", and a note suggests that competition with Abu Madyan's disciples may have helped push him East.
He left the West at about thirty-five and travelled through the Hijaz, Palestine, Syria, Iraq and Anatolia. He spent about a decade in Saljuq Rum, where the father of his disciple Sadr al-din al-Qunawi (d. 673/1274) was a courtier, and he wrote a letter of advice to a sultan. Yet he kept away from office and made no fortune. From the 620s/1220s he lived in Damascus under the Ayyubids until his death in 638/1240. The protests of Izz al-din Ibn Abd al-Salam, which later critics made much of, belong to this period.
The works and the style
He wrote three to four hundred works. Two dominate. The Futuhat al-makkiyya, 'Meccan Revelations', is "colossal (no hyperbole in this case)". The Fusus al-hikam, 'Bezels of Wisdom', is in Knysh's words "a brilliant, if extremely opaque essay on prophethood, mystical metaphysics, exegesis, and the nature of religious faith". Most readers in the debate knew Ibn Arabi as the author of the Fusus, and most of the polemic was aimed at it. His other works were rarely cited.
The style is the source of the trouble. Ibn Arabi used the tools of kalam, law, poetry and the occult sciences, and his discourse was "deliberately crafted so as to obfuscate its essence". Knysh quotes Morris on the texts as a 'spiritual mirror' for the reader and accepts that Ibn Arabi worked by a 'mystical dialectic' that shifts perspective to unsettle fixed ideas. He also accepts in part the 'revisionist' scholars who stress the outward side of Ibn Arabi, his hadith and law.
The teaching that caused alarm
The Introduction gives a short map of what critics fixed on.
- The names and the essences. God's names are exemplars of all that exists. The 'immutable entities' (a'yan thabita) are things as they are in God's knowledge before they exist. Creation follows from God's wish to see Himself in the mirror of the cosmos, and each thing receives existence according to its own predisposition.
- Manifestation read as identity. Opponents took the manifestation of God in things as substantial identity, so that wahdat al-wujud looked like an "Islamic prototype of Spinozian pantheism". The immutable entities looked like the eternity of the world (dahriyya) and a limit on God's power.
- Two divine commands. Ibn Arabi distinguished the creative command (takwini), under which all that happens is willed, from the obligating command (taklifi) of the law. Critics feared this made every act 'pleasing' to God and opened the door to antinomianism.
- The Perfect Man and the saints. The Perfect Man, the Pole (qutb), the mahdi and Jesus all figure in his thought, and in poetry he identified himself with the supreme saint, though he kept any messianic claim private.
Ibn Arabi founded no Sufi order, unlike the founders of the Qadiriyya, Suhrawardiyya, Kubrawiyya or Shadhiliyya. Yet his influence spread everywhere. Knysh's paradox is that "the very difficulty of Ibn 'Arabi's teaching seems to have determined its extraordinary pervasiveness and tenacity".
How the West has read him
Chapter 1 notes a disparity. Muslim writers produced a sharply contested picture; Western scholars have produced "a thoroughly sanitized (and generally sympathetic) portrait" of a misjudged genius. Knysh sorts the Western readers into schools.
The humanists looked for neo-Platonic sources. Clergymen such as Asin Palacios found a Christianised Islam; Knysh sees little real debt. Corbin and Izutsu, in the 1950s and 1960s, produced readings he finds too personal; Izutsu read the Fusus through al-Qashani's commentary. Yahia catalogued the works and began a critical edition of the Futuhat. Chodkiewicz wrote on sainthood and, in An Ocean Without Shore, presented Ibn Arabi as orthodox. A note says that book has an "obvious apologetic agenda". Chittick, in The Sufi Path of Knowledge, reclaimed Ibn Arabi for Islam and cast mainstream Sunnism as maligned by Ibn Taymiyya. Addas cleansed the life of legends but preferred Ibn Arabi's own testimony; a note calls her book a "self-portrait of the Sufi rather than his critical biography".
Knysh's objection is that this whole tradition rests on Ibn Arabi's self-image, while the critics judged him by his propositions. His own view is that Ibn Arabi was "a gifted religious reformer-not unlike al-Ghazali", who tried to cure a spiritual malaise caused by literalism with an esoteric remedy, and mostly failed.
The approach
Knysh avoids prior assumptions about who was orthodox. He uses the distortions and the fanciful anecdotes as evidence, since they show how the image was built. He follows Massignon's model in the study of al-Hallaj (executed 309/922), but notes that Massignon was a partisan. He tries to spread his own sympathy more evenly among the parties. The medieval histories and biographies, he warns, are often "thinly camouflaged polemical treatises", and he reads them as literary portraits, not as records.
The Introduction's notes add two definitions worth keeping. Monism, for Knysh, is any doctrine that makes oneness the defining feature of reality, under names like wahda, ittihad or wahdat al-wujud, often pictured as the sun and its rays or a reflection in the moon. And Futuhat, a note says, also carries the sense of 'spiritual conquests'. Another note recalls that Yahia's new edition of the Futuhat caused an uproar in Egypt, where conservative scholars had the People's Assembly impose a ban. The quarrel, in other words, is not over.
2. The First Portraits
Chapter 2 asks what the people who knew Ibn Arabi, or wrote soon after him, actually said. The answer is: less than later writers claimed, and mostly with respect.
Sources before the storm
Modern biographers, Corbin and Addas above all, built Ibn Arabi's life from his own writings: the autobiographical passages of the Futuhat, the Ruh al-quds and al-Durra al-fakhira, his memoir of the masters who benefited him. Knysh notes that these are not models of impartiality. His interest is elsewhere, in what others wrote.
| Group | Writers (dates as printed) | Tone |
|---|---|---|
| Disciples | al-Habashi (d. 618/1221), Ibn Sawdakin (d. 646/1248), al-Qunawi (d. 673/1274), al-Jandi (d. 690/1291) | Reverent; seeds of hagiography |
| Iraqi hadith scholars | Ibn Nuqta (d. 629/1231), Ibn al-Dubaythi (d. 637/1239 or 639/1241), Ibn al-Najjar (d. 643/1245) | Respectful, brief, factual |
| Syria and Egypt | Sibt Ibn al-Jawzi (d. 654/1256), Abu Shama (d. 665/1268), Ibn Musdi (d. 663/1265), al-Qazwini (d. 682/1283), Ibn Abi'l-Mansur (d. 682/1283), al-Qastallani (d. 686/1287) | Mostly friendly; first reservations; first polemic |
| al-Andalus and the Maghrib | Ibn al-Abbar (d. 658/1260), al-Ghubrini (executed 704/1304) | Know only the Western period |
The disciples left the earliest traces. Al-Habashi was his lifelong friend and servant; Ibn Sawdakin compiled a dictionary of his technical terms; al-Qunawi became the great systematiser; al-Jandi wrote an early commentary on the Fusus that, in Chittick's words quoted in a note, formed "the basis for most of the numerous commentaries that were written later". From their circle came the first hagiography.
The Iraqi hadith scholars
The first mention outside the circle is by the Hanbali Ibn Nuqta, in his Kitab al-taqyid, a dictionary of hadith transmitters. It is a single dry note: "He lived in Konya and Malatya for a while. He composed [prose] writings and poetry, though I dislike his verses." Al-Dhahabi, a century later, glossed the dislike: Ibn Nuqta must have meant the verses on union with God, on wine and on churches. Ibn Hajar later quoted the famous lines from the Tarjuman al-ashwaq, "My heart has become capable of every form: / It is a pasture for gazelles and a convent for Christian monks". Knysh suspects that the link to Ibn Nuqta may be a polemical interpolation.
Ibn al-Dubaythi met Ibn Arabi in Baghdad in 608 and spoke of his "unique mastery of [mystical] gnosis"; the two exchanged accounts of dreams of the Prophet. Al-Dhahabi restated the same entry in a negative key. Ibn al-Najjar also interviewed him and recorded a verse: "Oh you, who wavers bewilderingly between true knowledge and passion!" He gives the birth as 27 Ramadan 560 in Murcia and the death as Friday 22 Rabi al-awwal 638, with burial on Mount Qasyun. Al-Maqqari's longer version of the same report puts the birth on the 17th, one of many small discrepancies.
A note makes a point about how such entries grew. Al-Qari al-Baghdadi added to Ibn al-Dubaythi's notice a sentence of praise: "I met him and found out that he was too sublime to be described and too great to be understood." Knysh calls this 'positive' censorship, the mirror image of al-Dhahabi's negative corrections. Both sides edited the record.
Damascus: the judge, the funeral, the pension
Sibt Ibn al-Jawzi, in his chronicle Mir'at al-zaman, has Ibn Arabi say: "I know [God's] Greatest Name and alchemy through [divine] revelation". He also reports that Ibn Arabi died in the house of the qadi Muhyi al-din Ibn al-Zaki, was washed by al-Jamal b. Abd al-Haqq while Ibn al-Nahhas poured the water, and received from Ibn al-Zaki an allowance of thirty dirhams a day, which he gave to the poor. A note adds that the Banu al-Zaki were hereditary judges of Damascus, and that one of them had sheltered an earlier Andalusi mystic; protecting Maghribi Sufis was a family tradition.
Here politics enters. In 658/1260, when the Mongols took Damascus, Ibn al-Zaki led the delegation to Hulagu and came back appointed chief qadi from Qinnasrin to al-Arish. He filled the colleges with Shafi'is. Some called him a traitor; a note reports that the chronicler Ibn al-Suqa'i thought the mission was the only way to save the city. Either way, later critics could connect the protector with the protected. Al-Dhahabi wrote that the qadi's "admiration for Ibn al-'Arabi defied any description", and Ibn Kathir that "The Ibn Zaki family embraced him entirely".
Knysh's point is sharp. The critics wanted to find opposition to Ibn Arabi in his lifetime and found little. So they blamed his patrons. The spread of his teaching could then be painted as part of the malaise that brought the Mongols, and fighting it became a kind of jihad.
Three funerals
The funeral became a set piece. Abu Shama, who was there, wrote "I attended the funeral prayer" and called it "That was a befitting procession", using the stock phrase for a good funeral. Al-Qari al-Baghdadi turned it into a royal event: the ruler walking behind the bier, the bazaar shut for three days. Ibn Taymiyya, citing al-Mizzi, said the bier was "all covered with ashes", unlike the funerals of the friends of God. The same event becomes three verdicts.
The Andalusi view
Ibn al-Abbar of Valencia (d. 658/1260), the first Western biographer, knew Ibn Arabi as a secretary and hadith student who heard Sahih Muslim in Shawwal 606 and transmitted from al-Silafi. His entry ends: "He died after 640". He did not even know the date, and he knew nothing of the Eastern fame. A note adds that Ibn al-Abbar was himself executed at Bougie by the Hafsid ruler and burned with his books.
Al-Ghubrini of Bougie, executed in 704/1304, wrote a more colourful notice in his 'Unwan al-diraya. He confuses Ibn Arabi with another man, Ibn Suraqa, but preserves important stories. A charitable reader takes it as praise; a literal one as caution.
Al-Ghubrini also tells of a trial in Egypt, where Ibn Arabi was charged like al-Hallaj and saved by Abu'l-Hasan al-Bija'i, who explained his words allegorically. When al-Bija'i visited him after his release, Ibn Arabi asked, "Is it possible to imprison someone in whose humanity (nasut)" divinity (lahut) has taken up residence? His rescuer answered that these were ecstatic utterances (shatahat), spoken in drunkenness, and "one cannot blame the drunk!" Addas doubts the story, and a note agrees there is reason: Ibn Arabi himself opposed ecstatic utterances as a sign of immaturity, and the lahut/nasut pair, introduced by al-Hallaj, carries Christian overtones.
Four Syrian voices
Ibn Musdi (d. 663/1265), a Granadan scholar in Mecca, wrote in his dictionary of teachers, quoted by al-Dhahabi: "He plunged bravely into the sea of [esoteric] allusions (isharat)". He also wrote "He belonged to the Zahiri school in matters of ritual practice ('ibadat), but he adhered to esoteric teachings as regards doctrinal beliefs", and closed with "God knows better what his heart concealed!" Al-Dhahabi doubted some of the teachers Ibn Musdi listed, calling one claim "a plain lie"; a note confirms that one supposed teacher, al-Talqani, died in 590 before Ibn Arabi ever reached Iraq. Knysh finds Ibn Musdi balanced. The Zahiri label matters: a note explains that this literalist school, revived in al-Andalus by Ibn Hazm and favoured by the Almohads, may explain Ibn Arabi's close attention to the letter of the text.
Al-Qazwini (d. 682/1283), in his geography Athar al-bilad, met Ibn Arabi in Damascus in 630 and calls him a "man of letters, sage, poet, gnostic and ascetic". He tells how a palm tree in Seville was straightened by the Prophet in Ibn Arabi's dream and became a shrine, and how Ibn Arabi explained the pyramids. The image is of a sage and visionary.
Ibn Abi'l-Mansur (d. 682/1283), the first Sufi biographer, says "He had a complete understanding of God's oneness". But his praise is veiled. He was a follower of al-Harrar, a Sevillan compatriot who became a master in Egypt, and he tells stories in which al-Harrar outshines Ibn Arabi: only al-Harrar returns al-Khidr's greeting near Seville, and Ibn Arabi has to ask him to interpret a vision. A note observes that such self-serving tales were common, as disciples basked in their shaykh's glory.
Al-Qastallani (d. 686/1287), a Suhrawardi Sufi and jurist, wrote the first true polemic. His real target was his rival in Mecca, Ibn Sab'in. He cast Ibn Arabi as founding father of Western monism, said he wrote the Futuhat in Mecca and "inflicted a great damage on it", and sneered at the "abundant wealth" he received from the rulers of Rum. Al-Safadi later noted that al-Qastallani's own poetry sounded just like the monists he condemned: "Only God penetrates the secret thoughts of men". The critic, it seems, privately shared what he attacked.
What the early portrait shows
Knysh's conclusion is measured. The early portrait was accurate if schematic. The biographers were not partisans. They stressed his hadith credentials and his piety. There is no evidence they knew the Fusus or the Futuhat, and his patrons and his own discretion protected him. This was the prepolemical period. Everything changed when the Fusus became the centre of attention.
3. Between Damascus and Cairo
Chapter 3 sets the scene of the Mamluk age, shows how scholars, soldiers and Sufis fitted together, and then follows the strange afterlife of Ibn Arabi's encounter with Izz al-din Ibn Abd al-Salam.
A frightened world
The Mongols sacked Baghdad and overran Syria in 656-658/1258-1260. The Mamluks stopped them at Ayn Jalut in 658/1260. Baybars al-Bunduqdari (d. 676/1277) made Cairo the seat of a revived Sunni caliphate, and al-Ashraf Khalil (689/1290-693/1293) expelled the last Crusaders. Many scholars read the Mongol invasion as divine punishment for weak faith and 'strange beliefs'. The mood became defensive, even conspiratorial, and turned towards the 'pious ancestors' (al-salaf al-salih). A note adds that some modern scholars have adopted this 'corruption' story too uncritically.
Yet the Mamluks loved charismatic holy men. Baybars kept a fortune-teller, Khadir al-Mihrani, who had lodges in Cairo, Damascus, Ba'albakk, Hama and Homs. A note describes his career as "scandalously Rasputinian": he ended in prison accused of embezzlement and worse. Ahmad al-Badawi (d. 675/1276), later Egypt's patron saint, enjoyed the sultan's favour. Nasr al-Manbiji (d. 719/1319) was the spiritual adviser of Baybars II Jashnikir. Knysh sees in this a survival of the shamanistic beliefs of the steppe. A note tells of Nur al-din Zengi, who refused to cut subsidies to Sufi lodges before a campaign, saying their prayers were stronger than swords. Lodges multiplied; Mamluk Cairo had sixty-one. The orders, Shadhiliyya, Rifa'iyya, Burhaniyya and Qadiriyya, took root.
Sufism inside Sunnism
Al-Ghazali (d. 505/1111) had brought Sufism into the Sunni mainstream, and doctrinal Sufism spread through books. But a note warns that his synthesis satisfied neither the people of the letter nor the people of the inner meaning. Three things kept suspicion alive. Sufi exegesis was called 'farfetched' and 'garbled'. Sufi use of kalam and philosophy was feared (though the Ash'aris were also accused of Hellenism). And the doctrine of sainthood (wilaya) made the saint an heir of the Prophet with direct access to God. That threatened the scholars' claim to be the custodians of revelation, and it could inspire sedition. Al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi (d. ca. 298/910), the great theorist of sainthood, was expelled from Termez. Radical Sufis were persecuted as philosophers, atheists, libertines, extreme Shi'is or Isma'ili agents.
Scholars, soldiers and posts
Knysh opens this section with an epigraph from J. S. Mill's On Liberty and then draws a picture of Mamluk society that explains much of what follows.
- Legitimacy was thin. The Mamluks rose by usurpation and many began as slaves, so there was "the glaring deficit of" Islamic legitimation for their rule. They needed the scholars' approval.
- The scholars were the continuity. The military elite was Turkic, Slavic or Georgian; the scholars were mostly Arabs and ran the administration. The colleges (madrasas), endowed by waqf, protected family property and reproduced status from generation to generation.
- The chief qadi was a check, but a dependent one. Below him, humble scholars, preachers, muftis, hadith teachers and booksellers, carried moral weight with the townspeople. Knysh disagrees with Petry, who saw their influence as purely spiritual.
- Competition was fierce. Baybars broke the Shafi'i monopoly by appointing four chief judges. Posts were fought over through an 'old boy' network, and a young scholar's standing was "the reflection of that of his masters". Rulers often supported minority factions to keep the majority in check.
Knysh's conclusion is blunt: the doctrinal debates were often "merely ideological manifestations" of these struggles. He cites al-Munawi (d. 1031/1621), a later defender, who said scholars refuted Ibn Arabi for selfish ends and out of rivalry, a partisanship of the pagan kind, and that such opponents duly sank into oblivion.
A beheading in 741
The case shows the anti-monist faction acting as a body, a decade after Ibn Taymiyya's death, and Ibn Kathir's satisfaction is plain. The charge of 'incarnation and union' was the same one levelled at Ibn Arabi. A note adds that the sect's founder, al-Bajarbaqi, was said to have received a 'satanic unveiling' (kashf shaytani).
Looking for a precedent
Ibn Arabi's critics needed someone in his own day who had condemned him. Defenders denied there was anyone. Al-Fayruzabadi wrote that he "promulgated his knowledge without a single Syrian scholar [of that epoch] denouncing him". Al-Makhzumi (d. 885/1480) added that the scholars visited him and copied his writings: "They never condemned him even though he lived in their midst for more than thirty years".
The critics found their man in Izz al-din Ibn Abd al-Salam al-Sulami (d. 660/1262), leader of the Damascus Shafi'is. He was an activist who opposed an Ayyubid sultan's pact with the Crusaders and was exiled to Cairo; a note explains that the sultan had also sided with the Hanbalis. He was an Ash'ari who argued against Hanbali 'anthropomorphism' (tashbih) at court, clashed with al-Harrali over allegorical exegesis, refused to grant Mamluk officers free status, and preached jihad against Franks and Mongols. Baybars said at his funeral, "My reign over this kingdom has finally become firmly established, for had this Shaykh ordered my subjects to rebel, he would have easily deprived me of my power."
He was also a Sufi. He studied al-Qushayri's Risala under Umar al-Suhrawardi and received the Sufi frock. Al-Dhahabi was embarrassed by his love of music and dance. His treatise Hall al-rumuz argued, in Ghazalian style, that the conflict between law (shari'a) and truth (haqiqa) is an illusion, as the story of Moses and al-Khidr shows. Knysh lists the type: activist scholars who were not anti-Sufi in general, found in every school, from Shafi'is like Ibn Abd al-Salam and Ibn Kathir to Hanbalis like Ibn Taymiyya, Hanafis like al-Taftazani and Malikis like Ibn Khaldun.
Two lines of descent
The book's Table 2 shows how Ibn Abd al-Salam's supposed verdict was handed down in two opposite lines.
| Line | Transmitters (dates as printed) | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| Condemnatory | Ibn Daqiq al-Id (d. 702/1302), Ibn Sayyid al-Nas (d. 705/1305), Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328), al-Dhahabi (d. 748/1348), Ibn Kathir, Ibn al-Naqqash (d. 763/1361) | He called Ibn Arabi a master of evil |
| Exonerative | al-Safadi (d. 764/1362), al-Fayruzabadi (d. 817/1415), al-Suyuti (d. 911/1506), al-Sha'rani (d. 973/1565), al-Munawi (d. 1031/1621), al-Maqqari, Ibn al-Imad (d. 1089/1679), al-Nabhani (d. ca. 1345/1926) | He knew Ibn Arabi was the Pole, but spoke as a jurist |
The condemnation
Ibn Taymiyya reports, via Abu Bakr b. Salar and Ibn Daqiq al-Id, that Ibn Abd al-Salam called Ibn Arabi "a master of evil" (shaykh su'), a disgusting man, who "professed the eternity of the world and did not proscribe fornication". Knysh notes that the double charge, moral laxity plus a philosophical doctrine, was standard in the heresy manuals. A note shows that the text itself wobbles: some versions read 'Shi'i' for 'evil', a likely scribal slip that later fed the claim that Ibn Arabi was a Shi'i.
Later authors supplied a setting. Al-Safadi, a cautious supporter, and al-Dhahabi, a critic, both cite Ibn Sayyid al-Nas. Ibn Daqiq al-Id asked for proof, and was told the story of the she-jinni.
Each writer used the story in his own way. Ibn Taymiyya said Ibn Abd al-Salam "did not comprehend Ibn 'Arabi's real state": the real problem was not eternity of the world but the identity of the world with God, which put Ibn Arabi's followers with the materialists and with Pharaoh. Al-Safadi paired the story with a comic anecdote at a Damascus gate, making it a joke. Al-Dhahabi, whom Little calls "objective rather than envious, fed up and frustrated rather than malicious", wrote "I do not think that Muhyi al-din lied on purpose": too much fasting and seclusion had produced false visions, "a sort of madness". Al-Fasi, naive in Knysh's view, thought it simply unfitting to marry a she-jinni.
An epistle that was not his
The critics also cited a treatise on the hidden saints, the 'Substitutes' (abdal) and the 'Succour' (ghawth), that rejected the Pole of the Age and the seal of the saints. It blamed first al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi, then Ibn Hamawayh, Ibn Arabi and the misguided masters of Damascus, all driven by the desire for leadership. Knysh shows that the key passage is part of Ibn Taymiyya's own treatise and probably misattributed. What the attribution reveals is that the critics felt an affinity between Ibn Abd al-Salam and Ibn Taymiyya, and that Ibn Taymiyya needed a precedent so that his attack would not itself be called an innovation.
The Sufi counter-story
Ibn Arabi's admirers answered with a story first told by Abd al-Ghaffar al-Qusi (d. 708/1308) and repeated by al-Fayruzabadi, al-Qari al-Baghdadi, al-Suyuti, al-Sha'rani, al-Maqqari and Ibn al-Imad. A servant of Ibn Abd al-Salam asked his master who was the Pole of the Age. Ibn Abd al-Salam pointed to Ibn Arabi in the Umayyad Mosque: "He is the Pole!" The servant asked, "And this in spite of what you have said against him?" In al-Fayruzabadi's fuller version the master replies, "Hold your tongue!" and then, "That was a jurists' assembly!" He had condemned in public to protect the outward law and confided the truth in private.
Al-Fasi rejected the story outright: "I have a strong suspicion that this story was invented by the extremist Sufis (ghulat al-sufiyya) who were infatuated with Ibn 'Arabi." He used the tools of hadith criticism, chains and dates, to argue that the later condemnation abrogated any earlier praise.
Knysh then reads Ibn Abd al-Salam's own Hall al-rumuz and finds the key. The treatise describes the stages of the mystic: "When your feet are firmly established, your inmost self is consolidated, and your [ecstatic] intoxication diminishes", and then the ecstatic who cries out 'I!'. Three people may judge him three ways: "He is a heretic (zindiq) who should be executed!"; "He is a trustworthy one who should be praised!"; "He is overwhelmed [by a spiritual state] and should be left alone!" The principle, in his words, is that the law is shallow without the truth, and the truth futile without the law. Knysh therefore reads his ambiguity towards Ibn Arabi "not only as logical but, in fact, as the only possible one".
Conversions and dreams
The Shadhilis added another layer. Ibn Ata' Allah al-Iskandari's Lata'if al-minan tells how Ibn Abd al-Salam was won over by al-Shadhili, who brought him the Prophet's greetings. Al-Suyuti used this, and al-Mursi's testimony, to claim that Ibn Abd al-Salam retracted his view of Ibn Arabi. Knysh shows that the Shadhili story was about al-Shadhili's own claim to be the Pole; Ibn Arabi enters it by "mere coincidence". The Shadhilis themselves found Ibn Arabi uncongenial. Ibn Taymiyya quotes al-Mursi calling his adherents "unbelievers who maintain that the created world is identical with the Creator." Al-Sha'rani went furthest, putting into Ibn Abd al-Salam's mouth an apology for the feeble-minded jurists who misjudge the Sufis.
What actually happened is modest. The two men met. Ibn Abd al-Salam borrowed Ibn Arabi's copy of Ibn Hazm's al-Muhalla. Ibn Arabi's Diwan records a dream in which Ibn Abd al-Salam sits teaching on a stone bench, and a judge asks for a kiss: "I am in a vision, and the kiss signifies the [final] approval that he seeks from me." Knysh concludes that Ibn Abd al-Salam's charge of 'eternity of the world' "reveals his ignorance of the Sufi master's real views", that their encounters were few and fleeting, and that they stood for two types: the activist scholar of this world and the contemplative of the other. The dream casts Ibn Abd al-Salam as the jurist par excellence. Ibn Abd al-Salam is "a personification of this painful duality".
4. Ibn Taymiyya: The Charge Sheet
Chapter 4 is the intellectual heart of the book. Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) was, for Knysh, the most implacable and consequential of all Ibn Arabi's opponents, and the one who set the terms of the debate for centuries.
Not an enemy of Sufism
Ibn Taymiyya was a Hanbali scholar of Damascus whose clarity and combativeness made him famous and, more than once, a prisoner. He saw monism as an innovation that broke with the pious ancestors. Against Ibn Arabi's deliberate ambiguities he set a logic that was straightforward, even blunt.
He was not, Knysh stresses, an enemy of ascetic Sufism. For him the mystic's goal should not be God's essence but His command, which a note glosses as the shari'a. He opposed the cult of saints, special garments, ecstasy, music sessions (sama') and miracle-mongering, but he distinguished the Sufis of the law from the 'unificationists' (ittihadiyya), whom he did not count as Sufis at all. A note discusses whether Ibn Taymiyya was himself a Sufi, as Makdisi argued; Knysh sides with Michel and Meier, who doubt it, and adds that the answer depends on one's definition of Sufism. Ibn Taymiyya knew the Fusus intimately and had informants across Anatolia, Persia, Syria, Egypt and the Maghrib.
His list of the vices of his age is long: Christian and Jewish influence, men in women's dress, backgammon, Mongol customs, dervish miracles, shrines, Shi'ism, hashish, the futuwwa brotherhoods, price controls on food, philosophy and kalam. Monism was the worst, because it was a doctrine and not merely a practice. Unlike Ibn al-Jawzi's Talbis Iblis, which attacked Sufi conduct, Ibn Taymiyya went after metaphysics.
Four treatises
Most of his anti-monist writing survives in collections edited by Rashid Rida (d. 1346/1935), the Salafi reformer, whose edition Knysh calls a set of randomly assembled fragments; a note is harsher, saying it is "riddled with editorial blunders". Knysh analyses four works.
| Treatise | Main thrust |
|---|---|
| Exposition of the Falsity of the Unity of Being | An inventory of extremist sayings: al-Hallaj, Ibn al-Farid, Ibn Arabi, Awhad al-din al-Kirmani, Ibn Sab'in, al-Tilimsani and others. Monism is Christian incarnation in another dress; the monists differ only in their degree of unbelief. Its root lies with the Mu'tazila, who held that known things are not pure nonentities. |
| Denunciation of Disobedience Excused by Predestination | Against those who excuse sin by fate. The ecstasies of al-Bistami and al-Hallaj became Ibn Arabi's metaphysics and then the extremists' licence. Two modes of divine will, decree and command, are abused to justify licentiousness. |
| Letter to Nasr al-Manbiji (704/1304) | A letter to the Sultan's spiritual adviser that redefines love and annihilation as obedience. It cost Ibn Taymiyya his freedom. |
| The True Reality of the Teaching of the Unificationists | About a hundred pages of small print, ending abruptly. Ranks the monists; analyses the immutable entities; compares the schools to Christian sects. |
The letter that led to Cairo
The letter of 704/1304 went to al-Manbiji (d. 719/1319), confidant of Baybars al-Jashnikir, then the Mamluk majordomo and soon, briefly, sultan. Al-Manbiji was a passionate admirer of Ibn Arabi. Al-Dhahabi later wrote that "he exceeded all bounds in his veneration of Ibn 'Arabi and his like". The Maliki judge Zayn al-din Ibn Makhluf (d. 718/1318) exploited al-Manbiji's anger, and Ibn Taymiyya was sent to Cairo in 705/1305. Knysh notes that Ibn Arabi's followers led this persecution, a reminder that the persecuted could also persecute. Ibn Kathir speaks of an 'Ibn Arabi faction' at court.
In the letter, Ibn Taymiyya redefined annihilation (fana') as "active obedience to God's will as manifest in the Qur'an and the Sunna of Muhammad." He argued that the Fusus brought al-Hallaj and al-Bistami to fruition, and that after Ibn Arabi came al-Qunawi, then the 'shameless' al-Tilimsani, Ibn Sab'in and al-Balabani, each worse than the last.
How he read the Fusus
Ibn Taymiyya once admired Ibn Arabi. He wrote that at first he was "among those who held a good opinion of Ibn 'Arabi and praised him highly for the useful advice he provides in his books." He had read the Futuhat and several manuals of discipline. "At that time, we were unaware of his real goal, because we had not yet studied the Fusus and suchlike books." The chronicler Ibn al-Dawadari reports that a copy of the Fusus was brought to him in 703/1303. He studied it in Ramadan and wrote a refutation.
From then on he saw the struggle as holy war. The unificationists spread their ideas in the guise of Sufism. Some held them in good faith, others knowingly, but the danger was the same. He compared it to the fight against the Mongols, whose paganism gave divinity to idols, men, animals and stars; a note recalls that he also organised resistance to the actual Mongol armies.
A finely graded verdict
Knysh is struck by how finely Ibn Taymiyya graded his verdict. Ibn Arabi was not simply outside Islam; he "constantly oscillates between truth and falsehood". Ibn Taymiyya wrote: "However, Ibn 'Arabi is the closest to Islam among them, and his teaching is, in many respects, better than theirs." He distinguished God from the forms, affirmed the Command and the Prohibition, and many pious worshippers benefited from his works. Yet the central claim of the Fusus was fatal: "One of the two fundamental principles of his teaching laid down in the Fusus is that the existence of contingent and created entities is identical with the existence of their Creator." And "He [Ibn 'Arabi] was the first to put forward this idea, in which he had precursors neither among Sufi shaykhs nor Muslim scholars."
In The True Reality he added a disclaimer: "He was a captive of his loose imagination. In one moment, he imagined in it a right thing, in the other, a wrong one. Only God knows what state he died in." Ibn Sab'in, by contrast, was "the greatest exponent of heresy, polytheism, sorcery, and unificationism." Ibn Arabi blended strands, so that he was an incarnationist and a monist at once, a deceptive tactic of joining opposites.
The comparison with Christian sects is telling. Ibn Arabi, for Ibn Taymiyya, resembled the Melkites, who speak of one substance and two hypostases; al-Tilimsani resembled the Jacobites, for whom all is one. Al-Qunawi made absolute existence descend through stages, so that God became an abstraction without real, external status. All of them ended in perplexity (hayra): God was self-sufficient, yet needed His creatures, and that relativised the law.
Mud as well as argument
Ibn Taymiyya also used ad hominem material. He tells of the scholar al-Isfahani warning a student, "If I ever see you buy another book by him, don't even dare to show up in my house again!" He reports an oath, "By God, except Whom there is no god, he [Ibn 'Arabi] is a liar!" He quotes the Sufi Ibrahim al-Ja'bari (d. 687/1288): "Ibn 'Arabi was an old man with a dyed beard. He was an impure teacher (shaykh najis) who denied every book that God had revealed and every prophet whom God had sent!" And he cites a dream in which Ibn Arabi and Ibn al-Farid appear as blind old men asking, 'Where is the way?'. A note adds that al-Sha'rani, who wrote a long life of al-Ja'bari as a saint, quietly left out his hostility to Ibn Arabi.
The metaphysical case
Ibn Taymiyya's core argument has two parts.
First mistake: no distinction. If God's existence is the existence of things, then there is no difference between God and "jinn, devils, unbelievers, sinners, dogs, swine." God then "assumes the attributes pertaining to deficiency and imperfection," and becomes lover and beloved, eater and eaten.
Second mistake: existence and 'fixity'. Ibn Arabi distinguishes existence (wujud) from 'fixity' (thubut), the state of things in God's knowledge before they exist. These immutable entities form a matrix that receives existence. Ibn Taymiyya traced this to the Mu'tazili view that the known things are 'things' even when they do not exist; a note says Ibn Arabi followed the Mu'tazili al-Shahham here, though not al-Khayyat, who called them bodies.
From this Ibn Taymiyya drew consequences. God 'nourishes' Himself on His creatures; God and creatures need each other; the divine names shrink to 'relationships' and 'attributions'. Above all, fate passes to the essences. He quotes the Fusus: "it was the essences that did good and evil, praised and blamed, while God conferred upon them only what they had already possessed in their state of non-existence." That denies 'the Lord of the worlds', limits His power, and, he says, would "ruin the three pillars of faith, . . . that is, the belief in God, His messengers, and the Last Day." No real maker, no need for prophets, and a hell made metaphorical and harmless, which would destroy the fear that keeps order.
His alternative is nominalist. Universals are abstractions in the mind ('aqli), never found in the outer world (khariji). Existence is identical with quiddity: "in the outer world, a thing is a thing, for it constitutes its own entity, essence, and quiddity." Creation is from nothing.
He also used reductio, 'coercion' (ilzam), as a note explains: forcing the opponent's premises to an absurd conclusion. If things are nonexistent from eternity, either God is manifest in them, and so identical with every untoward creature, or He is manifest to nonentities, which is absurd. The doctrine of preparedness (isti'dad) says each viewer sees only his own reflection in the mirror of the Absolute; but since properties are names and names are the Godhead, the viewer sees only God.
Sainthood and exegesis
Ibn Taymiyya also attacked the 'seal of Muhammadan sainthood'. Ibn Arabi held that sainthood never ends and that 'friend' (wali) is a name of God as well as of man, while 'prophet' is not. He read the hadith of the wall of prophecy, with its missing brick, to make room for a second recess for the seal of saints, whom he identified with himself. Its source was al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi.
In exegesis the target was the chapter on Noah (sura 71). There the polytheists who cling to their idols appear as true gnostics who see God in every form, against Noah's one-sided insistence on transcendence. God is adored in idols and in passions. Pharaoh, too, died a believer.
- The immutable entities strip the Creator of His creative role.
- Unification and incarnation.
- A pre-established model limits God's power.
- Morality dispensed with: immorality, pretension, polytheism.
- The seal of saints demeans the prophets and the ascetic saints.
- Political sedition, messianic movements and impostors.
- Falsified exegesis.
Knysh's verdict on the critic
Knysh lists the polarities that run through the dispute: "nominalism vs. realism, transcendency vs. immanence, nomos vs. eros, activism vs. quietism, literalism vs. an allegorical vision of the world, extroversion vs. self-centeredness, common sense vs. visionary experience". Ibn Taymiyya's critique, he says, strikes at the decisive points of Ibn Arabi's system. It shows Ibn Arabi's debt to Mu'tazili thought, and it distinguishes strands within the school more carefully than many moderns do.
But it is also shallow and reductionist. Knysh uses Toynbee's contrast between "the Truth of the Subconscious Psyche" and "the Truth of the Intellect": Ibn Taymiyya judged poetry and prophecy by the rules of metaphysics. He confused the immutable entities with universals. Chittick is quoted: "what corresponds to the Platonic ideas in Ibn 'Arabi's teachings is the divine names," while the entities are "the things themselves 'before' they are given existence in the world;". The difference between them and things is one of ontological status, not of essence. Ibn Taymiyya also ignored the classification of existents in Ibn Arabi's earlier writings. A note goes further: his critique of Ibn Arabi's concept of existence is "somewhat facile", though Knysh admits that Ibn Arabi's own position is hard to pin down.
Yet on the welfare of the community Ibn Taymiyya was logical, in the Hanbali line since Ibn Hanbal. Ibn Arabi's metaphysical terms exposed him; a cosmos not made from nothing was at odds with the monotheistic mainstream. And the sainthood doctrine did serve later movements, from the Idrisiyya and Sanusiyya to the Sudanese Mahdiyya, the Tijaniyya and the Indian Ahmadiyya. A note quotes Friedmann: Ibn Arabi "served as a primary source of inspiration for Ahmadi prophetology".
Ibn Taymiyya's legacy was destructive too. The Wahhabis of the eighteenth century, whom Knysh's sources call the 'Mongols of the Arabian Peninsula', drew on him, as did Egyptian radicals; a note names Abd al-Salam Faraj, the young ideologue of al-Jihad al-Islami, as a diligent student of his fatwas. Both men's followers claimed to save the community, and each claim rested on a personal vision rather than an objective one.
5. Biographers and Muftis
Chapter 5 follows the debate into the great biographical dictionaries of the eighth and ninth Islamic centuries, and into three organised campaigns to obtain a consensus of scholars against Ibn Arabi.
How a notice grows
After Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn Arabi became, in a phrase Knysh cites, "a burning intellectual problem of the time,". Earlier critics, al-Kamili, al-Qastallani and Ahmad al-Wasiti, had prepared the ground. A note records that the earliest known refutation, by al-Kamili (d. 652/1254), had no effect at all: neither side ever cited it.
Knysh describes the mechanics of the polemic. Neutral writers hid behind the opinions of respectable scholars. The debate became an accumulation and rehearsal of a limited set of authoritative statements and anecdotes. The entries themselves grew, from half a dozen lines in the seventh/thirteenth century to a dozen pages in the eighth/fourteenth. A note lists the longest biographies: al-Dhahabi's History of Islam, al-Safadi's al-Wafi, al-Fasi's al-'Iqd al-thamin, al-Dawudi's Classes of Qur'anic Commentators, al-Maqqari's Nafh al-tib, Ibn al-Imad's Shadharat and, in the twentieth century, al-Nabhani's collection of saints' miracles.
al-Dhahabi: the reluctant critic
Al-Dhahabi (d. 748/1348) belonged to Ibn Taymiyya's circle but kept his independence and disliked his teacher's haughty intolerance; a note cites Little's essay on whether Ibn Taymiyya had a 'screw loose'. He was nuanced, and later writers who wanted to avoid extremes liked to quote him. In his History of Islam he collected earlier opinions in order, without comment, then gave his own view after analysing the Diwan and the Fusus.
His standpoint was a community-centred, fideist theology that accepts the texts without asking how. He disliked what he called 'the Sufism of the people of oneness'. A note shows how sharp he could be about Ibn al-Farid, "whose poetry bleats with unification, pure and simple". One passage sums up his outlook. It is worth giving in his own words.
He called the Fusus "the worst of all his [Ibn 'Arabi's] writings." If its contents were not unbelief, he said, then "there is no kufr under the sun." Yet he refused to call Ibn Arabi a liar or an infidel. "I do not believe that his [Ibn 'Arabi's] lie was intentional." The cause was ascetic excess, "leading to mental derangement, false imagination, and a madness of sorts (tarf al-junun)." He hoped for a deathbed repentance, in the spirit of irja', the postponement of judgement to God.
He described three attitudes among scholars: "One group [of scholars] regarded these statements as sheer apostasy and heresy, while others considered them to be the allegoric allusions of the [Sufi] gnostics", and "Still another group believed that the problem lay in his ambiguous method of expression". He allowed that "it is quite possible that he was one of God's friends, who, on his deathbed, attained intimacy with the Divine". In the History he wrote, "If it had not been for ecstatic utterances in his speech, he would certainly have been [approved] by scholarly consensus." And: "Therefore, we wish him a favorable [outcome in the Hereafter]." Behind the caution lay a fear: to slander a friend of God was itself a grave sin.
al-Safadi and al-Yafi'i: the defenders
Al-Safadi (d. 764/1362) held that Ibn Arabi was a faithful Ash'ari. A note quotes his claim that Ibn Arabi's creed was "from beginning to end identical with those of Abu '1-Hasan al-Ash'ari", together with verses he wrote on the cover of a copy he sent to a friend in Safad. Knysh calls the argument tenuous: Ibn Arabi himself said that creed was meant for 'the commoners', not for the esoteric truths of the Futuhat. Al-Safadi admitted that the Fusus contained "reprehensible things, whose external meaning is at odds with the divine Law." But "often the meaning that they try to convey is too sublime and eludes [conventional] words."
Al-Yafi'i (d. 768/1367), a Yemeni living in Mecca, Ash'ari hagiographer and critic of Ibn Taymiyya, went further than al-Dhahabi. He admitted that the matter was grave, but argued that allegory could explain even the Fusus, and pointed to a commentary on it attributed to Kamal al-din al-Zamlakani (d. 727/1327), a fellow Shafi'i and an opponent of Ibn Taymiyya. He recommended suspending judgement. He also told how Ibn Arabi met the great Umar al-Suhrawardi, who testified to his sanctity; a note says Ibn Arabi probably never knew al-Suhrawardi personally. A sceptic objected that "the al-Suhrawardi story was transmitted from one anonymous [narrator] to another", and that the defenders went on "finding excuses for them no matter how far-fetched they may be."
al-Fasi: polemic pure and simple
Al-Fasi (d. 832/1429), a Meccan scholar, was an outspoken opponent who went beyond biography and collected fatwas. Knysh calls his attitude "unbridled partisanship" and his biographical notice "polemic pure and simple". Al-Fasi himself boasted: "In this tarjama of Ibn 'Arabi we have mentioned things that have never been brought together in any other writing." He dismissed a contemporary defender as "wanting in both intelligence and learning". His method was to show a consensus (ijma'), and he reported three attempts to obtain one.
The first round and the questionnaire
The first round took place around 719/1319 or 721/1321 in Ibn Taymiyya's circle. Knysh calls it a "selective opinion poll". A questionnaire was sent to muftis, listing propositions drawn from the Fusus.
The propositions included: the Prophet gave Ibn Arabi the Fusus in a dream; Adam is called insan because he is the 'pupil' (insan) of God's eye; the transcendent God is the same as the immanent creation; Noah's people were ignorant of God when they abandoned their idols; God is in every object of worship; multiplicity is like the limbs of one body; Noah's people were spared hellfire and walked 'the straight path'; punishment ('adhab) is a 'pleasure' ('adhb), a play on one Arabic root. The questions were two: is a believer in these things an infidel, and is one who refuses to condemn him also guilty?
Knysh shows how little room this left. The propositions were out of context, and Ibn Arabi's shifts of perspective were meant to shock. A note adds that among the compilers was a Sufi shaykh, Abd al-Latif al-Sa'udi, proof that this was not a simple Islam-against-Sufism affair.
What the muftis said
| Mufti (dates as printed) | School | Answer in brief |
|---|---|---|
| Ibn Taymiyya | Hanbali | Fight the partisans of the unity of being; worse than highway robbers, for they steal faith |
| Badr al-din Ibn Jama'a (d. 733/1333) | Shafi'i | Blamable innovation from Iblis; destroy every copy |
| Mas'ud al-Harithi (d. 711/1311) | Hanbali | 'Great harm'; ornate phrases and obscure allusions; keep to the letter |
| al-Jazari (d. 711/1311) | Shafi'i | A knowing defender is a heretic; an unknowing one must be warned |
| Umar al-Kattan (d. 738/1338) | Shafi'i | Contradicts necessary knowledge; a madman; a tacit approver is an infidel |
| Ali al-Bakri (d. 724/1324) | Shafi'i | A dream of the Prophet does not override consensus; ignorance no excuse |
| Isa al-Zawawi (d. 743/1342) | Maliki | Covert heretics must be killed even if they repent; burn the book, punish owners |
Ibn Taymiyya warned that "they poison the minds and faith of many believers, including Sufi masters, 'ulama', kings, and princes." Ibn Jama'a wrote that "The aforementioned passages as well as those resembling them are nothing but a blamable innovation, delusion, abomination, and folly to which no believer must ever give ear or heed." A note qualifies this: Ibn Jama'a deeply respected Hasan Ibn Hud, whom Massignon thought the leading monist of Damascus, so his fatwa may not reflect his personal feelings. Al-Bakri, whose outspokenness towards the Mamluks nearly cost him his tongue, called the doctrine "an error and mischief." The Maliki al-Zawawi compared the covert heretics to the Isma'ilis.
Yet even in al-Fasi's selection the answers vary. Al-Fasi declared the result unanimous.
The second round
Less than two decades later, around 738/1337, a second round took place. Ibn al-Ahdal (d. 855/1451), citing al-Dhahabi, reports the verdict on the monists: "As for their writings, they are worse than any unbelief." The Maliki judge Badr al-din said Ibn Arabi's books could no longer be found in Cairo or Alexandria, and that owners were tortured. He told a vivid story: "Once, a copy of the Fusus was found in a book market. It was immediately confiscated, tied up with rope, then dragged along the street to the chief" judge and burned "for the common good."
Knysh notes the limits of this success. When Ibn Arabi's partisans won over the rulers, it was the anti-monists who were persecuted. And Ibn Taymiyya's narrowing of the debate to the propositions of the Fusus did nothing to stop the book from being copied throughout the Mamluk lands, Anatolia, Iran, Central Asia and India.
The third round, under Barquq
The third round came under al-Zahir Barquq (r. 784/1382-801/1399), the first Circassian sultan, who had secret admirers of Ibn Arabi at court. The anti faction was now on the defensive. Umar al-Bulqini (d. 805/1403) called Ibn Arabi an infidel in passing and refused to elaborate. Ibn Hajar al-'Asqalani (d. 852/1449) was cautious, like al-Dhahabi. He noted that Ibn Arabi's followers "Had a great, nay excessive belief in him and overstepped all limits", and judged the books thus: "Very little can be understood from them [Ibn 'Arabi's books]. However, the things one is able to comprehend are generally good and well-put. At the same time, his books abound in statements that are repugnant to the ear." A note says Ibn Hajar's notice in the Lisan simply rehashes quotations on both sides without stating his own view.
Others weighed in. Taqi al-din al-Subki (d. 756/1355), an Ash'ari and a foe of Ibn Taymiyya, agreed with him on Ibn Arabi. The Hanbali Ibn al-Muhibb wrote verses mocking 'the little Ibn al-'Arabi' who invited people to take "The crooked way of the one-eyed Antichrist (al-dajjal),". And Ibn Sab'in, more radical than Ibn Arabi, dismissed his rival's thought as 'whimsical philosophy', the only criticism from the monists' own side.
The most interesting voice is Ala' al-din al-Qunawi (d. 727/1327), head of Egypt's principal Sufi lodge. He held that allegorical reading was allowed only to those with infallibility ('isma), and it was unclear whether Ibn Arabi qualified. The statements were unbelief, but Ibn Arabi himself might not be an unbeliever: they might be interpolated, or he might have repented. Al-Fasi answered that the statements were attested in Ibn Arabi's own writings, that consensus removed any claim to infallibility, that there was no evidence of repentance, and that piety can deceive.
Expediency in Zabid
Al-Fasi was not above opportunism. In pro-Ibn Arabi Zabid he posed as an admirer to win favour with the wealthy patron al-Mizjaji, and wrote him a laudatory biography. When the critic Ibn al-Muqri asked for the critical one, al-Fasi refused "out of concern for the Sufis [of Zabid]."
al-Qari al-Baghdadi: the hagiographer
Al-Fasi's target was probably al-Qari al-Baghdadi's al-Durr al-thamin fi manaqib al-shaykh Muhyi al-din, 'The Precious Pearl'. A note says al-Qari was a pupil of al-Fayruzabadi, whom he heard lecture in Delhi in 784/1382. His book idealises Ibn Arabi: a physical portrait modelled on the Prophet's, a profligate youth turned gnostic, a fabulous funeral, crowds at the tomb. A note mocks the portrait's banalities: "[he was] neither tall, nor short", written some 150 years after Ibn Arabi's death, when no one could have known.
Al-Qari's approach was to show that great contemporaries admired Ibn Arabi: Fakhr al-din al-Razi, Ibn Abd al-Salam, Umar al-Suhrawardi, Ibn Hamawayh, al-Zamlakani. He invented a conversion of al-Razi (d. 609/1209-10); in fact the two only corresponded, and a note says no reply from al-Razi is known. He made the Maliki chief judge Abd al-Salam al-Zawawi (d. 681/1282) Ibn Arabi's 'humble servant' and father-in-law, an impossibility, since Baybars created the Maliki chief judgeship in 664/1266, twenty-six solar years after Ibn Arabi's death. Knysh calls him unscrupulous, but right on one point: there was no organised opposition in Ibn Arabi's lifetime.
Al-Qari also preserved al-Fayruzabadi's fatwa for the Rasulid sultan al-Nasir against a ban on Ibn Arabi's books, calling the ban an "abominable act perpetrated by an unjust person, who did not know what he was talking about." That story belongs to Yemen and Part 9.
The pattern of the chapter
| Round | Adversaries | Advocates | Neutral |
|---|---|---|---|
| First (8th/14th c.) | Ibn Taymiyya, al-Dhahabi, al-Harithi, al-Jazari, al-Bakri, Ibn Jama'a, al-Kattan, al-Zawawi, al-Subki, Ibn al-Naqqash, Ibn al-Muhibb | al-Zamlakani, al-Safadi, al-Yafi'i, al-Hindi | Ala' al-din al-Qunawi |
| Second (9th/15th c.) | Ibn al-Khayyat, al-Bulqini, Zayn al-din al-'Iraqi, al-Bukhari, Abu Zur'a, Ibn Hajar, al-Sakhawi, al-Biqa'i | al-Fayruzabadi, al-Qari al-Baghdadi, Zakariya al-Ansari, al-Sha'rani | al-Bisati |
Knysh's conclusions are these. The Fusus combined "great concentration of expression on the one hand, and extremes of exegesis on the other." It was "a doctrinal time bomb". The questionnaire made the indictment "a foregone conclusion". Biography and polemic hybridised. Hostility cut across schools, uniting Hanbalis and Ash'ari Shafi'is. The campaigns had the opposite of their intended effect, putting Ibn Arabi in the spotlight. And suspending judgement (tawaqquf), as with al-Hallaj, became the refuge of the neutral.
6. al-Taftazani: Kalam Against the Fusus
Chapter 6 moves east, to the court culture of Timur, and to the most respected theologian of the age. His Epistle on the Unity of Being became the model for later Hanafi critics.
Timur's world
Khorasan and Khorezm were overrun by Timur (d. 807/1405). Knysh describes a ruler who diluted the pagan Mongol tradition but kept it alive, claimed descent from both Chingiz Khan and Ali, and mixed strict Sunnism with pro-Alid sentiment and shamanistic custom. He was curious about theology, medicine, geography, astronomy and the occult, and history was his favourite subject. The hostile Ibn 'Arabshah (d. 854/1450), a captive at his court, mocked his learning: "even a jackass learns from repetition!" Timur was, in a phrase Knysh cites, "much more familiar with the sword than with the pen,". He gathered scholars at Samarqand, by invitation or as booty. Ibn Khaldun, who met him, found that he argued about what he knew and what he did not.
The scholar
Sa'd al-din al-Taftazani was born in 722/1322 at Taftazan near Nasa and died in 792/1390 (or 791/1389). His teacher was 'Adud al-din al-Iji (d. 756/1355), the greatest theologian of his time. A legend made the young Taftazani slow-witted until the Prophet intervened; he was writing on grammar at sixteen. His patrons were first Chagatayid and then Timurid princes, and his colophons place him in Samarqand, Damascus, Gurganj, Herat and elsewhere.
When Timur took Khorezm, al-Taftazani received a post at Sarakhs. The rival scholar al-Sayyid al-Sharif al-Jurjani (d. 816/1413), whom al-Taftazani had once recommended to a prince of Fars, was brought from Shiraz as part of the spoils. The two held a public dispute, judged by a Mu'tazili, who favoured al-Jurjani; Timur, Knysh reports, gave the edge to al-Jurjani as a descendant of the Prophet. Legend says al-Taftazani died of chagrin, and their followers formed rival camps. A note adds that one issue in their quarrels was the authenticity of a hadith about loving cats.
Western scholars have often judged al-Taftazani a mere epigone with hardly anything original to say. Knysh disagrees. His work is "marked with open-mindedness which seems to be rooted in his intellectual integrity." Ibn Khaldun wrote, "I found in Egypt numerous works on the rational sciences composed by the well-known scholar Sa'd al-din al-Taftazani". He fused philosophy and kalam, moved between Ash'ari and Hanafi-Maturidi positions, and brought al-Maturidi out of obscurity as co-founder of Sunni theology with al-Ash'ari (d. 324/935). His commentary on al-Nasafi's creed became a standard textbook. For him kalam was the noblest science, whose task was "To examine the states of the Maker, such as His eternity, oneness, power, will, and so forth."
Sufism, yes; monism, no
Al-Taftazani accepted Sufi inspiration (ilham) as al-Ghazali had. He wrote that "in the way of the mystic there is perfection of belief and absolute knowledge." He approved Sufi moral discipline and praised al-Bistami. But he denied that mystics could claim knowledge of the unseen, and he gave mystical experience no value as proof. Ibn Arabi, for him, was an erring philosopher misled by his imagination, and he knew Ibn Arabi almost only through the Fusus.
The Epistle opens with verses: "The book called Fusus leads astray all men / It is the rust upon the hearts and the direct opposite of wisdom." And: "Were you to lay on it only a tithe of the blame it deserves, / Nay, a tithe of the tithe, there still would be no blame on you!" A note traces the work's many titles in manuscripts and shows that its original name, which one scholar dismissed as doubtful, was The Humiliation of the Heretics and the Friendly Admonition of the Adherents of God's Unity.
Al-Taftazani recalled his teacher al-Iji telling a student not to learn about Mecca from the book of "that Maghribi of the dry temperament", who "apart from being an infidel was also a hashish-eater." The Fusus dream, he implied, came from hashish. Would the Prophet, he asked, come six hundred years later "to promulgate that which was bound to ruin his [Prophet's] community for the sake of which he had struggled for twenty three years? . . ." Al-Iji distinguished three kinds of unificationism, among Christians, among the Nusayris and among extremist Sufis; a note adds that al-Jurjani, though hostile to the 'existentialist' Sufis, used the Futuhat freely in his dictionary of terms.
The charge list
Al-Taftazani's targets were "the philosophizing unbelievers and heretics [adhering to] the unity of being". He listed their errors:
- everything is God;
- God has no existence in concreto;
- multiplicity is a figment;
- the subjective experience of unity is the objective truth;
- the saint ranks equal to, or higher than, the prophets;
- the scripture must be read allegorically.
His most interesting point was that mystical experience does not correspond to things as they are. He described ecstasy like the rising sun, whose light hides the moon and stars. In the state of 'absolute unity' (al-wahda al-mutlaqa), annihilation in God's oneness, the mystic sees nothing else, but the stars still exist. This is the 'oneness of the gnostics'. It frees no one from obligations. The error of the 'existentialist' Sufis (wujudiyya) was to take the experience as ontology, so that "the existence of originated things is identical with that of God Most High", and to replace the law with universal sainthood. They misused terms like absolute unity, annihilation, and 'gathering and separation', applying them to the cosmos. His summary: "You know well that all this is but heresy, atheism, and forsaking the Islamic religion." Such propositions, he said, make a laughingstock of the law. Real gnostics never hold anything that contravenes the outward law.
Two images of emanation
The key concept is emanation (fayd). Al-Ghazali, whom al-Taftazani follows, described it as a spilling over of God's munificence onto receptive quiddities by His free will, like sunlight that does not diminish the sun; the relation is causality, not instrumentality. A note adds Landolt's view that al-Ghazali was no implacable enemy of neo-Platonism. The monists, says al-Taftazani, made emanation an obligation upon God, and pictured it as water spilling from a vessel onto hands: one stuff, separated and multiplied only by the receptacles. Bestowal keeps God distinct; pervasion does not.
From this he drew absurd consequences: idolaters worship God; anyone claiming lordship is justified; multiplicity is only relations and 'entifications' (ta'ayyunat); individuals are illusions; there is no reward or punishment, no hell, no Judgement Day. He promised "rational demonstration and irrefutable logical proofs," as against Christians and Jews, but also fell back on the Qur'an and Sunna, balancing faith and reason.
The metaphysical argument
Al-Taftazani's rational case ran in steps. He said that to treat the immutable entities and the world as "an illusion, a mirage that has no reality whatsoever" was "a manifest sophism that is in conflict with both the senses and elementary rational reasoning." He argued that "knowledge, being itself an [abstract] attribute, cannot serve as a repository for a mental construct." And:
- Absolute Existence cannot be a unique individual, since 'existence' is an abstraction of the second degree, reached by the mind.
- It cannot multiply "in the eyes of observers, whilst remaining one and undivided in and of itself."
- The link between God and things is attribution (idafa), like a horse attributed to Zayd, not causality.
- 'Existence' is a general idea shared by many things, not a proper name like 'majesty'.
- If all is identical, the Absolute cannot act on itself; and if quiddities simply "are what they are in themselves.", God is reduced "to merely bringing them into existence,".
- There would be no real multiplicity at all; existence would be a hollow abstract, and since "all is God, all is good and all is permitted."
Knysh notes that much of this was aimed at the later, rationalist interpreters of Ibn Arabi, not at him. Al-Taftazani even quoted al-Qunawi's commentary on the opening sura, saying in a note's words that one could read it to "see this meaningless gibberish for yourself". A note quotes Chittick that the term ta'ayyun "assumes no special importance" in Ibn Arabi but is central to his school.
Pharaoh's faith
The second theme is Pharaoh. In heresiography, the worst offenders were the zanadiqa, the concealed heretics, for whom the penalty was death and repentance was not accepted. A note explains why: since a zindiq hides his beliefs, "there is thus no way to be certain of the truth of his statements, and especially of the sincerity of his repentance". Al-Taftazani put Ibn Arabi and his followers in this class.
Pharaoh is the archetype of the arrogant, self-deifying unbeliever. The Fusus says he found consolation in the faith God gave him at the moment of drowning, and that God took him "spotless, pure and untainted by any taint." Al-Taftazani answered with "the twenty four chapters of the Qur'an in which Pharaoh is mentioned as well as the consensus of the leading scholars of the [Muslim] Community." A note dryly counts twenty-seven suras.
| Ibn Arabi (Fusus) | al-Taftazani |
|---|---|
| Like the people of Jonah (Q.10:98), Pharaoh believed and was saved | Jonah's people believed days ahead; their punishment was only deferred |
| Faith at the moment of despair is valid (a Shafi'i view) | Faith in extremity is worthless (a stricter Hanafi view) |
| Pharaoh knew Moses' truth but hid it, as the divine scenario required | Pharaoh only imitated the Israelites and never affirmed Moses' mission |
| God saved him outwardly and inwardly: mercy prevails | To say so contradicts the Qur'an |
Knysh adds that Ibn Arabi foresaw some of these objections, and that elsewhere he himself admitted Pharaoh's profession of faith was blind imitation. Al-Taftazani's thrusts, he concludes, miss the mark, because they ignore the distinction between God's creative will and His normative wish. Al-Taftazani's own verdict: "whoever states that the accursed Pharaoh died a believer thereby contradicts the Qur'an and gainsays the words of the Supreme Ruler and the Greatest Judge."
What al-Taftazani assumed
Three assumptions shape the Epistle. First, that kalam is the court of appeal: mystical claims must be stated as propositions and tested by reason and scripture. Second, that the monists' words mean what they say: allegorical readings, he thought, were evasions, though he allowed the external meaning to yield where a decisive proof required it. Third, that the line between saint and prophet is fixed: saints are fallible and never reach prophetic rank.
| Question | al-Taftazani's answer | Knysh's comment |
|---|---|---|
| Are mystical states real? | Yes; inspiration is genuine | A real concession often missed |
| Do they describe the world? | No; the stars still exist | His strongest point |
| Is Ibn Arabi the target? | Yes, through the Fusus | Often the target is al-Qunawi's school |
| Was Pharaoh saved? | No; Qur'an and consensus | Misses the creative will and the normative wish |
| Can allegory rescue the text? | No | The same move later critics would repeat |
His teacher al-Iji supplies the background. Al-Iji had already classified unificationists into three types, and admitted Sufi inspiration and miracles. Al-Taftazani inherited both the concession and the suspicion. The result is a book that is generous to Sufi practice and closed to Sufi metaphysics, and that pattern, more than any single argument, became his legacy.
Knysh's assessment
The Epistle is selective. It concentrates on metaphysics and Pharaoh, fails to distinguish Ibn Arabi from his commentators (the reverse of Ibn Taymiyya, who blamed the founder for his followers), and contains few word-for-word quotations, some probably borrowed from Ibn Taymiyya. Its source was al-Qunawi's Avicennan reading. It attacks the polemical image moulded by predecessors. Knysh calls it "narrow, dogmatic, and superficial". A note goes further: al-Taftazani misread the bricks of the wall of prophecy, showing "remarkable ignorance" of its place in Ibn Arabi's teaching.
Yet al-Taftazani's real objection deserves respect. He did not attack gnosis as such. He rejected the idea that 'oceanic' experiences mirror the structure of being, a confusion of experience and cosmology. And his attack on Pharaoh's faith was an attack on any blurring of the border between faith and unbelief.
Why the Epistle lasted
Three features made a narrow book influential. It was short and portable: a few propositions, a few proofs, a verdict. It carried the authority of the age's leading theologian, whose textbooks were studied in every college from Anatolia to India. And it reduced the Fusus to a handful of issues, metaphysics and Pharaoh above all, that later writers could take up without reading Ibn Arabi at all. Composed in Damascus according to its colophon, it entered the common pool of controversial issues that later critics drew on.
The irony is that al-Taftazani's best insight, the gap between what the mystic sees and what is, was the least copied. Later critics took his conclusions and dropped his concession that the experience was real. Defenders, for their part, rarely answered his distinction directly; they answered with sainthood and allegory. The debate thus lost the one point at which the two sides might have met: the mystic could have kept his vision, and the theologian his ontology.
al-Dawani (d. 907/1501-2) defended Ibn Arabi and Pharaoh's faith, and called the critics unbelievers.
Burhan al-din al-Halabi (d. 956/1549), Hanafi critic, wrote three treatises indebted to it.
Mulla Ali al-Qari (d. 1014/1606), an intolerant Hanafi of Herat and Mecca, understood Ibn Arabi better but kept the same two concerns.
Ibrahim al-Kurani (d. 1101/1690), a Kurdish scholar in Mecca, reconciled Ibn Arabi and al-Qunawi in massive rejoinders.
al-Nabulusi (d. 1143/1731) and Gelenbewi (d. 1205/1791) carried acceptance into the eighteenth century, and Umar al-'Attar (d. 1308/1890) wrote rejoinders in the nineteenth.
Yahia suspected a Hanafi bias in the anti-Ibn Arabi literature, and the list gives the suspicion some weight.
7. The Muslim West: A Prophet in His Own Land?
In al-Andalus and North Africa, where Ibn Arabi was born and trained, his critics did not see a towering founder. They saw one member of a suspect group, and they judged him mostly at second hand.
Why the West saw less
In the West the Shaykh's work was known mainly through superficial exponents and digests, such as al-Sha'rani's "streamlined" paraphrases of the Futuhat. The originals stayed with a few Sufi leaders. Conservative Maliki jurists were suspicious; his ideas moved anonymously in manuals and litanies; and some Sufi shaykhs warned disciples against his writings.
Massignon called the Western heresy-hunters "witch-hunters". Ibn al-Zubayr (d. 708/1308) wrote a tract against the Shudhiyya and took part in the trial of the ecstatic al-Saffar, who barely escaped execution. The grammarian Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati (d. 745/1344), writing in Egypt, drew up a blacklist. First came the "the first generation of the impious Sufis" (al-Hallaj, al-Shudhi, Ibn Ahla, Ibn al-Farid, Ibn Arabi), and then the partisans of absolute oneness (Ibn Sab'in, al-Tilimsani, al-Shushtari). He wrote, he said, out of "compassion for the feebleminded Muslims, so as to warn them against those [Sufis]... who reject God and His messenger, teach the eternity of the world, and deny the possibility of Resurrection." Blacklisting was the trademark of Western heresiography. In the East, al-Qastallani (d. 686/1287), from a Sufi family with Maghribi ties, attacked the "adherents of nothingness" and was the likely link between the two traditions, perhaps inspiring Ibn Taymiyya.
Ibn Hisham (d. 761/1360), a grammarian like Abu Hayyan, belongs to the same pattern. His verses on the cover of a Fusus open Knysh's chapter on Egypt (Part 8). Many of these Western critics worked in Egypt, which shows how the two traditions fed each other: the Western blacklist reached Cairo with émigré scholars, and Eastern refutations travelled back.
| Author | Attitude to Ibn Arabi |
|---|---|
| al-Qastallani (d. 686/1287) | First blacklist; links him with the Shudhiyya; Ibn Sab'in a rival |
| Ibn al-Zubayr (d. 708/1308) | Pursues the Shudhiyya and their kin |
| Abu Hayyan (d. 745/1344) | Roster of "impious Sufis" |
| Ibn Hisham (d. 761/1360) | Condemns the Fusus |
| Ibn Khatima (d. 770/1369) | Unspecified "heresy"; obscure allegory; no conspiracy; unaware of his eastern career |
| Ibn al-Khatib (d. 776/1375) | Competent history; "people of tajalli"; separates him from Ibn Sab'in; denounces political activism |
| Ibn Khaldun (d. 808/1406) | Early Sufis good, philosophical moderns bad; secondhand; mahdi theory close to extreme Shi'ism; fatwa condemns |
Table 4. Western critics of Ibn Arabi, after Knysh's summary table.
Ibn Khatima: the style critic
Ahmad b. Ali Ibn Khatima of Almeria, a chancery official and poet, wrote a lost history of his city, which Ibn Arabi visited in 595/1199. His notice, preserved by al-Maqqari, says: "We do not approve [of] some of his teachings and writings. Although he had the ability to express himself clearly, he [preferred] to speak from behind the veil", "fortifying himself [by the use of] symbols in an impenetrable mountain citadel". The notice ends: "In short, he [Ibn 'Arabi] exposed himself to blame because he used vague [phrases] that elude easy comprehension and obstruct the path of those aspiring [to grasp their meaning]."
The complaint is philological, not doctrinal, and it is ironic, since Ibn Khatima's own style was florid. A note shows he copied the notice from Ibn al-Abbar and knew only the Shaykh's Western works, not the Fusus or the Futuhat, so he had no idea of his eastern notoriety. Al-Maqqari's anthology quietly omits the criticism.
Ibn al-Khatib: the vizier who was killed for a book
Lisan al-din Ibn al-Khatib (b. 713/1313) is the chapter's most moving figure. His life reads like a Nasrid court drama:
741/1340: secretary to the vizier under Yusuf I.
749/1349: after the plague, vizier and head of the chancery.
760/1359: his master Muhammad V deposed; prison; release; Fez, with Ibn Marzuq and Ibn Khaldun; two years of writing and Sufi meditation at Sale.
763/1362: restored as holder of two vizierates; intrigues, including fabricated letters.
773/1371: flees by Gibraltar to Tlemsen; the grand qadi al-Nubahi, his former disciple, charges him with treason and heresy; his books burned in the Granada market square.
776/1375: tried in Fez, tortured, strangled at night in prison; buried, exhumed and burned.
The qadi al-Nubahi had been offended by the mysticism of Ibn al-Khatib's treatise on divine love, the Rawdat al-ta'rif, and by its leniency to "downright heretics". Ibn al-Khatib answered with a savage satire painting al-Nubahi as an impish dwarf. Ibn Khaldun recorded the end and the verses Ibn al-Khatib composed in prison: "So, tell the enemies: "Yes, Ibn al-Khatib is gone, but is there anyone who will not be gone one day?"" and "Only he who thinks he will never die can rejoice on a day like this!"
The love tree
The Rawda began as an answer to the Diwan al-sababa of Ibn Abi Hajala (d. 776/1375), "a Sufi of sorts who does not seem to have adhered rigidly to any particular way of thinking." Ibn Abi Hajala hated the monists, attacked Ibn al-Farid, and was tried for slandering saints. Against his collection of the frustrations of lovers, Ibn al-Khatib chose "a nobler subject, namely love of God that leads to the summit of happiness... and proximity to Him." He built the book as a tree.
Watered with the Islamic and rational sciences and straightened by devotion and the shari'a, the tree must be kept free of delusions such as the eternity of the world and union or indwelling. The cosmos revolves around love; everything issues from it and returns to it. In the branch on knowledge, Ibn al-Khatib sorted the lovers of God into six categories:
The genuine Sufis, the "truth realizers", were the shari'a-minded masters: al-Ghazali (d. 505/1111), Ahmad al-Rifa'i (d. 570/1175), Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani (d. 561/1166) and Abu Madyan (d. 594/1198), with praise for the Shadhilis. The fourth group, "accomplished [mystics], who consider themselves to be perfect", included Ibn Arabi, Ibn al-Farid, al-Farghani (d. 700/1300-1301), Ibn Sawdakin (d. 646/1248), Ibn al-'Arif (d. 536/1141), Ibn Barrajan, Ibn Qasi (d. 546/1151) and al-Buni. Their shared pivot was the "Hidden Treasure" hadith and the descent from transcendence to multiplicity, like the emanation of the philosophers but in the language of revelation. Their practice was laudable; their metaphysics and soteriology, Ibn al-Khatib judged, were non-Islamic.
Was Ibn Arabi closer to the fifth group? No. Ibn al-Khatib placed him nearer to Islam than al-Shudhi, Ibn Dahhaq, Ibn Sab'in, al-Shushtari, Ibn Ahla and the rest. The extremists "committed a grave error by advancing the [doctrine of] absolute oneness, by letting themselves be enraptured with it, by camouflaging and disguising it with symbols, and by haughtily scorning others on account of it." Ibn Arabi's group kept a distinction between God and world; Ibn Sab'in made everything else a figment and the laws meaningless.
Ibn Khaldun: the clear thinker
Ibn Khaldun (d. 808/1406) lost his brother Yahya to assassination and watched his friend's fate, then withdrew into scholarship. Knysh describes a disillusioned pragmatist, impatient with philosophers, and "an astonishingly clear thinker", a trait he shared with Ibn Taymiyya, whose clarity also came by oversimplification. He was sympathetic to Sufism, headed the Baybarsiyya lodge in Egypt and wrote the Shifa' al-sa'il (774-776/1372-1374), answering the Granada jurist al-Shatibi (d. 790/1388) on whether a novice could dispense with a living guide by reading books. His answer: the guide is essential.
He saw two original tendencies in Sufism: the science of good works, by which the disciple must "purify his heart from wickedness and turbidity by means of abstention from the carnal appetites.", and the science of intuitive unveiling. Both were valid, and al-Ghazali had blended them. But, as he put it, "full salvation requires the performance of all demands of the divine law, externally and internally, with the additional provision that the internal states of the heart remain constant, without interruption or slackening." Later Sufism diverged into an arcane intellectual trend, "a change that went against the very character and intention of the original religion." He exonerated the early masters, but not al-Hallaj, who had divulged the divine secret on purpose.
On monism he wrote: "A number of recent Sufis, who consider intuitive perceptions to be scientific and logical, hold that the Creator is one with His creatures in His essence, His existence, and His attributes." Idle readers believe that bliss lies in the mysteries of the divine kingdom (malakut), "which they can discover on the pages of those books. How wrong they are!" He separated two forms of oneness, incarnation (as among Christians and extreme Shi'is) and absolute oneness in the strict sense, in which plurality is only perception. His original contribution was the category of the people of tajalli, built from al-Farghani's commentary on Ibn al-Farid: a chain of self-manifestations from the Universal Intellect, the "Pen", down to the earthly world.
The fatwa and the seal
As a chief judge in Egypt, Ibn Khaldun signed a fatwa, preserved by al-Fasi: It named Ibn Arabi, Ibn Sab'in, Ibn Barrajan, and "those who followed in their steps and embraced their creed." "These works reek of downright unbelief and reprehensible innovation." The Fusus, the Futuhat, Ibn Qasi's Removal of the Sandals, the poems of Ibn al-Farid and al-Tilimsani and al-Farghani's commentary must, "when found, they must be destroyed by fire or washed off by water, until the traces of writing disappear completely." Knysh asks whether the stiffening from the tolerant Muqaddima reflects conviction or the demands of the post.
His deeper focus was social and political. Sainthood, he argued, resembled the Shi'i infallible imam, and later Sufis were "virtually saturated with Shi'ah theories." The Fatimid mahdi had become the Sufi pole. He knew the seal of sainthood mainly through Ibn Abi Watil, a follower of Ibn Sab'in and commentator on Ibn Qasi, who laid out a cycle: prophecy, then caliphate, then rule by force, then a restoring seal, and finally the Antichrist and the last mahdi, Jesus.
| Ibn Khaldun's version | The Fusus |
|---|---|
| Muhammad the golden brick, the seal of saints the silver: prophet first | Legislative prophecy silver, sainthood golden and eternally relevant |
He paired Ibn Arabi with the occultist al-Buni (d. 622/1225) and was fascinated by divination; behind this lay the Maghrib's history of self-appointed mahdis who used magic to raise revolts. Knysh reverses a modern reading: Ibn Khaldun's hostility to Shi'ism and speculative Sufism came from concern for the community's stability against chiliastic theories.
Ibn Khaldun's history of Sufism
Ibn Khaldun's account of Sufism is a story of decline. The early masters joined piety to unveiling, and al-Ghazali's Revival blended the two. Later Sufis turned unveiling into a speculative system, an emanationist cosmology in Knysh's phrase, and filled their books with words of dubious import. Ibn Khaldun admitted saintly miracles, contemplation and unveiling, but treated them as private graces, not sources of doctrine. He condemned al-Hallaj, who, in his view, had betrayed the divine secret on purpose and so deserved his execution.
Knysh lists his sources: the lectures of the Andalusi master Ibn al-Zayyat, Ibn al-Khatib's Rawda, al-Farghani's commentary, and Ibn Abi Watil's commentary on Ibn Qasi. None of these is a work of Ibn Arabi himself. Ibn Khaldun's Ibn Arabi was built from Andalusi lectures and commentaries. A note adds that some moderns suspect him of a secret leaning to monism; Knysh is unconvinced.
| Ibn al-Khatib | Ibn Khaldun |
|---|---|
| Sufi sympathizer; a book on divine love | Sympathetic to Sufism as moral discipline |
| Detailed, competent account of the "accomplished" mystics | Clear, schematic, secondhand |
| Separates Ibn Arabi from Ibn Sab'in | Lumps the moderns together in a fatwa |
| Executed on charges drawn from his book | Survived, outspoken in a fatwa |
The six lovers as a political document
The Rawda's scheme looks irenic, and it is: every lover seeks the truth in his own way. But it also does political work. By placing Ibn Arabi with the "accomplished" mystics and Ibn Sab'in with the partisans of absolute oneness, Ibn al-Khatib drew a line between a metaphysics he found un-Islamic but tolerable and a doctrine he found dangerous. By praising the shari'a-minded masters and the Shadhilis, he named the Sufism a Nasrid vizier could endorse. And by warning against mystics who claimed political leadership, he spoke to a Maghrib that had seen Ibn Qasi's revolt.
What the West teaches
In the West, Ibn Arabi was not unique and had no significant following. He was seen as a continuer of Ibn al-'Arif, Ibn Barrajan and Ibn Qasi; Ibn Sab'in mattered more. Both Ibn al-Khatib and Ibn Khaldun rejected the seal doctrine as a banner for messianic uprisings, and both measured everything against an idealized early Sufism, leaving no room for Sufi metaphysics. Knysh concludes that their world allowed no mystical quest within a "dual straightjacket of rationalist speculation and blind traditionalism".
8. Egypt in the Ninth/Fifteenth Century
In Mamluk Cairo the quarrel grew louder, more personal, and more theatrical. The numbers show it, and so do the scenes: a Fusus tied to a dog's tail, a scholar slapped on the head, a donkey declared divine.
The arithmetic of a quarrel
The chapter opens with verses Jamal al-din Ibn Hisham (d. 761/1360) wrote on the cover of a Fusus: "This is the book whose delusions / Have led astray both the fathers and their sons". Knysh then counts the output.
In the seventh-eighth/thirteenth-fourteenth centuries about ten refutations were written by six authors; in the ninth/fifteenth, at least nineteen, plus numberless responsa. The pro-Ibn Arabi side produced eight to ten apologies and ten exonerating fatwas. Output tracked the balance of power. A note lists eighty-two fatwas collected by al-Sakhawi, and adds that there were no defences at all in the late seventh/thirteenth century.
Burning, by custom
Outsiders, Knysh notes, were often more intolerant. Al-Sakhawi, haughty toward non-Arab scholars, wrote of a Turkoman Hanafi official, Taghri Birmish (d. 823/1420): "He constantly attacked Ibn 'Arabi and other Sufi philosophers like him, and went to such extremes as to burn whatever [Ibn 'Arabi's] books he could lay his hands on. Once he attached a copy of the Fusus to the tail of a dog. This made him very popular with the townsfolk". Such book-burnings were ordinary; Qur'anic quotations were washed off first.
But the case of al-Hulaybi in 888/1483 shows the limits. Inventorying the library of Yahya Ibn Hijji, he declared that the book must be burnt, since Ibn Arabi was "worse than the Jews, the Christians and the idol worshippers!" He was himself charged with unbelief, stripped of his turban, and mocked in verse: "Oh Hulaybi! You were seated with a slap on the back of your head". A note adds that his rivals used the issue to take his office. The episode contradicts al-Sakhawi's claims that Ibn Arabi's admirers were banished. Most people studied him privately; in Anatolia and India he was taught openly in mosques, but Egypt was less tolerant.
Ala' al-din al-Bukhari and the Maliki judge
Ala' al-din al-Bukhari came from Bukhara, studied with al-Taftazani, served as tutor at an Indian court, fell out with the ruler, and was invited to Cairo by the sultan Bars Bay (r. 825/1422-841/1438). A note warns against confusing him with a Naqshbandi of the same name who admired Ibn Arabi. He attacked Ibn Taymiyya too, demanding that the title shaykh al-Islam be withheld from him, and drew a refutation by Ibn Nasir al-din al-Dimashqi (d. 838/1434).
Afterwards al-Bisati described the monists as philosophers hiding "their venomous delusions under the guise of Sufi piety and asceticism." Knysh wonders whether this was a smoke screen. The authorities' instinct was to avoid extremes and keep scandal off the streets.
Al-Biqa'i: a man without discretion
Burhan al-din al-Biqa'i (d. 885/1480) came from a village in the Biqa' valley; a clan raid made him a fugitive. He studied in Damascus with the anti-Ibn Arabi Ibn al-Jazari (d. 834/1430), and in Cairo with Ibn Hajar, who "greatly praised him and . . . worked for his advancement," to al-Sakhawi's envy. Al-Sakhawi's obituary of him "amounts to a slander." Like Ibn Taymiyya, al-Biqa'i "did not have self-restraint and discretion enough to act in his own best interest, without constantly creating a public uproar."
The controversy of 874/1469-875/1470 began, a note says, with his reading of al-Farghani's commentary on Ibn al-Farid's Ta'iyya. His real target was Ibn al-Farid, Egypt's "national" saint, whose tomb was a center of popular worship with Mamluk endowments. He had allies, chief judges of three schools, and the popular Sufi al-Matbuli. Against him stood the Mamluk officer Barquq, overseer of the shrine's endowment and friend of sultan Qa'it Bay. Al-Biqa'i demanded the excommunication of both Ibn Arabi and Ibn al-Farid. Secret admirers came out; verses circulated in the streets: "Verily, al-Biqa'i is accountable for his words". The sultan asked Zakariya al-Ansari, who ruled that Ibn al-Farid, properly interpreted, was orthodox. Al-Suyuti, with a stake in the shrine, wrote irenic treatises urging people to withhold judgement and discouraging lay readers. A note puts the real cause of al-Biqa'i's failure in an unfavourable alignment of social forces and vested interests.
- Creator and creatures are identical. 2. His essence permeates all. 3. All are on the straight path. 4. Pharaoh died a believer. 5. God is in every object of worship, even idols and stones. 6. No unbeliever is punished; all enter mercy. 7. Threat and promise are empty metaphors. 8. Adam is in God's image. 9. God needs creatures as they need Him. 10. Noah deceived his people by preaching transcendence only. 11. God takes human form. 12. God is the spirit of the world, the world a great man. 13. Woman is part of man; his longing for her is God's longing for the universe. 14. God is contemplated most perfectly in woman. 15. The Fusus was written at the Prophet's command.
The list was not comprehensive, and it was scattered in a jumble of quotations. Al-Biqa'i paired the Fusus with the Ta'iyya, insisting, in a note's words, that the Ta'iyya "is the same as the Fusus and there is no difference between the two". He cited Abu Zur'a al-'Iraqi's fatwa that no interpretation could reconcile the Fusus with the faith, and his father Zayn al-din al-'Iraqi on the golden calf. In the Fusus, Moses rebukes Aaron because God was manifest in the calf. Zayn al-din's first charge: "First, he portrayed Musa as condoning the worship of the calf by his people." The Qur'anic "thy God has decreed that thou shalt not serve any but Him" became a statement that one cannot worship anything else. His verdict: "Anyone who hears all this cannot but resent this insolent statement, which can never be made by anyone in whose heart there is a single grain of faith."
Al-Sakhawi as witness
Much of what we know about Cairo's quarrels comes from al-Sakhawi (d. 902/1497), Ibn Hajar's disciple and a committed opponent of Ibn Arabi, who wrote a large treatise against him. He is indispensable and unreliable. He belittled non-Arab scholars, presented his teacher as a firmer critic than Ibn Hajar's own writings suggest, and wrote obituaries of rivals that, in Knysh's words, amount to slander. He even conceded, when pressed, that Ibn al-Farid was no real unbeliever. A note warns that modern studies which rely on him should take his reports with a grain of salt. The chief chronicler of the campaign was a campaigner.
How al-Biqa'i argued
Al-Biqa'i defined the types of unbelief with care, distinguishing concealed heretics, deviators, innovators, the misguided and outright unbelievers, drawing on al-Ghazali, al-Nawawi, Qadi 'Iyad and al-Shahrastani. He then placed Ibn Arabi between the extreme Sufis, the philosophers and the Isma'ili esotericists. His aim was to forestall allegorical defences: once a text was classed as unbelief, no interpretation could rescue it.
His sources show how the anti-Ibn Arabi tradition had become a library of its own: Ibn Taymiyya, al-Qastallani, al-Wasiti, al-Dhahabi, al-Taftazani, al-Fasi, Ibn al-Khatib, Ibn Khaldun, al-Bukhari and Ibn al-Ahdal. By the ninth/fifteenth century, critics mostly quoted critics. A note reports that his original title was Al-Nusus min kufr al-Fusus, and that the 1953 Cairo editor's titles were misleadingly anti-Sufi.
Abu Zur'a al-'Iraqi, Zayn al-din's son and later chief qadi, added a key ruling: no interpretation could reconcile the Fusus with the Futuhat's more orthodox passages. This mattered because defenders often answered quotations from the Fusus with quotations from the Futuhat. The critics' move was to deny that the corpus was one voice.
Ibn al-Naqqash: the critic who read him
Ibn al-Naqqash (d. 763/1361), a prodigy who died young, linked Ibn Arabi to al-Buni's letter-magic. His fatwa: "They [Sufis] gradually arrived at the oneness of being, which is the teaching (madhhab) propagated by such infidels as Ibn 'Arabi, Ibn Sab'in, and Ibn al-Farid, who identified God's existence with that of His creatures." He spotted that the universal exists only in the mind, that imagination was Ibn Arabi's "land of the truth", and that the Shaykh taught a coincidence of opposites. And he concluded: "this world is the only thing in existence. But this is nothing but the teaching of Pharaoh." Knysh values him: he read at first hand and saw that imagination was the key to Ibn Arabi's epistemology, a point most medieval critics ignored. Al-Biqa'i missed the opportunity to build on it.
Ibn al-Naqqash's case is instructive for a reason beyond his insight. He shows that close reading did not guarantee sympathy. He understood the role of imagination better than most defenders, and condemned Ibn Arabi all the same, lumping him with the partisans of absolute oneness and comparing his circle to the Isma'ilis and the Druze. Understanding a doctrine and accepting it are separate steps. A critic can see exactly what a teacher meant and still judge it harmful, and the medieval record keeps them apart more firmly than modern admirers sometimes do.
No neutrality allowed
Al-Biqa'i rejected every middle position. Moderates, he said, were quacks selling poison as panacea; he was a doctor with bitter medicine. "One must not say: "I abstain [from judgement]," or "I keep silent." Nor should one say: "I neither affirm [Ibn 'Arabi's heresy], nor deny [it]."" And: "Therefore, whosoever doubts that [Ibn 'Arabi's teaching] is unbelief, has himself become an unbeliever."
Al-Biqa'i and his allies were not anti-Sufi; some were Sufi masters. They shared Ibn Taymiyya's thesis that "the pursuit of ecstatic experience must under no circumstances be allowed to interfere with the observance of the many obligations imposed by divine law." Knysh stages their argument as a dialogue:
| The follower asks | The opponent answers |
|---|---|
| How can you tarnish a saint recognized for two centuries? | His contemporaries were duped by his piety |
| Was there ever such a trial? | al-Hallaj's trial is the precedent |
| Can his words not be interpreted? | Allegory lets heretics escape |
| Were great scholars wrong to praise him? | They were gullible |
Why the campaigns failed
Knysh's explanation combines several forces. The Mamluk authorities disliked public disorder and preferred to keep scandal off the streets, so they referred cases to councils and let them fade. Ibn al-Farid's tomb had endowments, an overseer with the sultan's ear, and crowds of visitors; an attack on the saint was an attack on all of them. The leading scholars, Ibn Hajar first among them, hedged, and their hedging gave cover to others. And the attackers were outsiders or abrasive men, al-Bukhari from Bukhara and al-Biqa'i from a Biqa' village, who lacked local allies of the right weight. Doctrine opened the fight; interests ended it.
- The campaigns failed; interest in Ibn Arabi increased in the ninth/fifteenth century.
- Fear of political adventurers drove the critics; the advocates used sainthood and allegory to place him above ordinary norms.
- The refutations came from radical activist scholars, not the mainstream. Al-Bukhari followed the kalam of al-Iji and al-Taftazani; al-Biqa'i modelled himself on al-Fasi's questionnaire. Both led back to Ibn Taymiyya, though both opposed him.
- The moderates answered. Al-Suyuti's agnosticism rested on the infallibility of saints and a wish to limit circulation.
Egypt and the larger pattern
Set beside the other case studies, Egypt shows the controversy at its most public and least decisive. Damascus in Ibn Taymiyya's time had produced the charge sheet; Cairo in the ninth/fifteenth century produced the theatre. Book-burnings, slaps, street verses and councils of judges kept the issue alive for decades without settling it. The volume of writing on both sides grew, and so did the circle of people who had an opinion, but the sultans never allowed either party a final victory.
That stalemate had a cost and a benefit. The cost was that the debate hardened into slogans: fifteen tenets on one side, the sanctity of a saint on the other. The benefit, from the point of view of public order, was that no one was executed for Ibn Arabi in Cairo, as Ibn al-Khatib had been in Fez. Mamluk caution turned a doctrinal war into a long, noisy truce, and that truce, Knysh suggests, is one reason why Ibn Arabi's books continued to be read in Egypt in the centuries that followed.
9. Yemen: The Shaykh at the Rasulid Court
The longest case study takes the debate to Zabid and Ta'izz. Here Ibn Arabi became a frame of reference in a struggle for influence, posts and endowments, and the ruler's favour decided who won.
Testing a stereotype
Yemen is often seen as a static backwater, and Western scholarship has fixed on its Zaydi and Isma'ili minorities, the "hobbyhorse of European Islamology", while neglecting its Sunni majority. Knysh tests the stereotype. The Rasulids (632/1235-858/1454), probably Kurdish or Turkoman soldiers who crafted an Arab pedigree, ruled from Ta'izz and Zabid; the Zaydi imams were pushed back to the north, and the Isma'ilis, swept aside by the Ayyubid invasion of 569/1173, received the coup de grace early in the ninth/fifteenth century. The colleges of Ta'izz, Zabid, Ibb and Aden were linked by pilgrimage to the Hijaz, and books came by the camel-load.
Rasulid rule rested on Red Sea trade through Aden, an army of Abyssinian slaves and Turkoman mercenaries, and a running battle with tribes and succession wars. A financial crisis from the reign of al-Nasir Ahmad onward led to collapse in 858/1454. Unlike the Mamluks, the Rasulids were versatile, cultured rulers who wrote on medicine, astronomy, agriculture and history. Their courts drew visitors such as Ibn Hajar, al-Fayruzabadi, al-Fasi, Ibn al-Jazari and Ibn Battuta, and gave a free hand to Abd al-Karim al-Jili (d. 832/1428), "undoubtedly the most original thinker and the most remarkable and independent mystical writer . . . in the 'school' of Ibn 'Arabi,".
Yemeni Sufism had no large brotherhoods, only small lodges, miracle workers and rainmakers who mediated between rulers and tribes. The urban Sufis leaned to monism. The tensions were inside the scholarly community, not between orthodox jurists and heterodox Sufis.
Ibn al-Ahdal, the historian of the crisis
The main source is al-Husayn Ibn al-Ahdal (d. 855/1451; the book also prints 855/1481). A sayyid and mufti of Abyat Husayn near Zabid, he studied with al-Fasi and al-Nashiri and, ironically, began under Ibn al-Raddad. He was not anti-Sufi. His Kashf al-ghita' set out an Ash'ari creed and, in its third chapter, a critique of the Fusus. For him Ibn Arabi was the most dangerous of heretics, and he traced the heresy back like "a red thread" through earlier figures, a continuity Knysh doubts.
Ibn al-Ahdal's sources tell their own story. He drew on al-Ash'ari, al-Ghazali, Qadi 'Iyad, Ibn al-Jawzi, al-Razi, Ibn Abd al-Salam, al-Nawawi and al-Subki, a library of Ash'ari Shafi'i authority. Ash'arism, a note explains, had itself been suspect in Yemen, where the Zaydis held the field of kalam and conservative scholars distrusted speculation; it took more than two centuries to settle. By Ibn al-Ahdal's time, it was the yardstick by which Ibn Arabi was judged. Al-Sakhawi called his Kashf an enormous volume; Knysh calls its modern edition frustratingly sloppy.
Stage one: seeds
Abu'l-Ghayth Ibn Jamil (d. 651/1253), a semi-legendary saint and ex-brigand, was credited with ecstatic sayings that, per Ibn al-Ahdal, "deal with the union [of God with his creatures], the refusal to acknowledge that humans are responsible for their acts of disobedience...". Ibn al-Ahdal thought Ibn al-Raddad had foisted them on him to manufacture a pedigree. Ahmad Ibn 'Alwan (d. 665/1266), a Rifa'i, wrote in "strange languages" learned from the spirits of foreign saints.
Al-Muqaddasi of Jerusalem (d. 688/1289), made professor of kalam at Ta'izz by prince al-Ashraf Umar, was accused of denying the uncreatedness of the Qur'an; there was a plot to kill him at Friday prayer, and the sultan read out a humiliating reprimand to his accusers in the mosques. Contemporary chroniclers did not link him to monism.
The first certain link was al-Yahyawi (d. 709/1309), who brought Ibn Arabi's books from Mecca and Medina and served sultan al-Mu'ayyad Dawud. The chronicler al-Khazraji wrote, "the sultan never opposed anything he [i.e. al-Yahyawi] wanted to do, on the assumption that whatever he did was correct". He was charged with heresy and sorcery, and his reforms moved the supervision of endowments to the royal chancery. Ibn al-Ahdal saw ambition: courting the state was a mark of the Ibn Arabi party. Al-Nashiri said that with his death Ibn Arabi's teaching in Yemen came to an end. It did not.
Stage two: al-Jabarti and Ibn al-Raddad
Isma'il al-Jabarti (d. 806/1403) won the favour of al-Ashraf Isma'il by predicting the failure of a Zaydi siege of Zabid. Al-Sakhawi called him an opportunistic ignoramus; a note corrects this, since he taught the Qur'an, and his "illiteracy" meant no formal schooling. His house was a refuge for the pious and the rogue. The Fusus was mandatory: his followers carried a copy, and anyone who criticized it was shunned. A hostile observer said the Fusus took the place of the Qur'an in his lectures. Ibn al-Ahdal wrote: "Due to Ibn 'Arabi's books and the excessive belief in him the city of Zabid in Yemen has become an arena for severe trouble and temptation at the hands of the ignorant Sufis."
The stories told about the circle were wild. One follower, asked for a glass of wine, said, "By my greatness, if you give me this glass [of wine], I will surely send you to my creatures [as a Messenger]!" Another exclaimed, "This wall is God!" Knysh refuses to dismiss these reports en bloc: Yemeni Sufism was recent and unsophisticated, and antinomian readings were possible. Ibn Arabi's ideas reached Zabid through the Avicennan commentaries of al-Qashani, al-Qaysari and al-Jandi, mixed with ideas of the Perfect Man, incarnation and Shi'i messianism. Al-Jabarti was seen as God incarnate; immanence was overriding transcendence, upsetting the Shaykh's balance. Ibn al-Ahdal blamed Ibn Arabi and excused al-Jabarti, saying, "How abhorrent is the Sufi who is ignorant of the principles of the divine law to the extent that he cannot discern things permitted [by the law] from those prohibited [by it]." Yet he also wrote, of al-Jabarti and another master, "We, however, wish that they had repented from the delusion they were in."
Al-Jili called al-Jabarti the perfect axis, writing, "It is thus that I encountered him in the form of my master Sharaf al-din Isma'il al-Jabarti." He relayed his master's advice that "what you search for is exactly what the Shaykh [i.e., Ibn 'Arabi] tells you in his books." Reading became a shortcut to perfection. Sama' sessions ran from sunset till midnight; up to seven hundred Sufis processed through Zabid with drums and hymns, chanting Ibn Arabi's poetry. Knysh notes the irony that Ibn Arabi treated sama' as a sign of immaturity. When Shaykh Salih al-Misri condemned al-Jabarti, he was arrested, flogged and shipped to India, and the detractors were cowed.
Ahmad Ibn al-Raddad, of a noble Meccan family, came to Yemen around 767/1365, met al-Jabarti and gave up his career. Ibn Hajar said of him, "Whenever he learned that someone had purchased a copy of the Fusus, he would encourage him and hold him in high regard." and "His poetry and prose bleat with unification [with God]." He became the boon companion of al-Ashraf, married his daughter to al-Nasir Ahmad, and was appointed supreme judge, though the scholars preferred others.
| Ibn al-Khayyat (d. 811/1408) | al-Fayruzabadi (d. 817/1415) |
|---|---|
| Fatwa: ban the study, purchase and copying of the books; Ibn Arabi an infidel | Ibn Arabi "the leader of those who have realized the ultimate truth"; his works seas of pearls |
| Accuses his rival of currying favour | Calls his rival a rabble-rouser; claims the sultan's order |
The chief qadi al-Nashiri (d. 815/1412) wrote a treatise declaring the monists apostates who could not marry Muslim women; the sultan forbade public denunciations, and his son destroyed the treatise to placate al-Fayruzabadi. The preacher of Mawza' won a disputation with Ibn al-Raddad and was jailed for it.
Al-Jili and the Perfect Man
Abd al-Karim al-Jili came from India and settled in Zabid; the Yemeni chronicles almost ignore him. His Perfect Man opens a world in which "[The] Universal Man is the pole around which revolve the spheres of existence, from the first to the last." He met al-Jabarti in Zabid in 796 (1393) and called him the universal master, the perfect axis and the precious elixir, yet he saw himself as greater and refused his tutelage. Knysh compares the pair to Rumi and Shams-i Tabriz. Like Ibn Arabi, al-Jili drew no boundary between metaphysics and experience, which left him open to the charge of incarnation.
Ibn al-Ahdal met him at Abyat Husayn and found that he kept his views to himself. He wrote: "Among those doomed to be lost in this sea more than anyone else is 'Abd al-Karim al-Jili, the Persian." His charge was that al-Jili ascribed lordship to every human, bird and tree. Al-Jili's Book of the Forty Degrees advised seekers to look for wisdom in the writings of the saints rather than in mortification. His friends included al-Jabarti, Ibn al-Raddad and al-Mizjaji. He died at Abyat Husayn, in 826/1421 or 832/1428, and was buried at a local shrine.
al-Jabarti: the Fusus as compulsory reading; Qadiri frock.
al-Jili: the Perfect Man; books as shortcuts.
Ibn al-Raddad: Qadiri successor, poet, grand qadi.
al-Yahyawi: an earlier Rifa'i channel.
Two orders carried the teaching, the Qadiriyya and the Rifa'iyya. The method was the message: Ibn Arabi's books were read as a shortcut to perfection, bypassing the slow discipline the critics prized. That was exactly what alarmed men like Ibn al-Ahdal, for whom a Sufi ignorant of the law was the worst danger.
The quiet patrons
Not every friend of the Shaykh was a firebrand. Al-Mizjaji (d. 829/1425), rich from palm groves, studied with al-Fayruzabadi, tutored al-Jabarti's circle, walked on pilgrimage with Ibn al-Raddad, and kept scribes copying the Fusus and Futuhat for an open library at his private mosque. He was a friend of Ibn al-Muqri too; they exchanged poetic letters about the good old days. He advised three sultans, and his restraint led biographers to play down his monism, though Ibn al-Ahdal said his work was marred by excessive praise for Ibn Arabi and al-Hallaj. A note adds that al-Zahir married his daughter.
The poet Yahya Ibn Rawbak (d. 835/1431), a rival for the sultan's affections, summed up the period as "a raging war that was waged not by the thrusts and strikes [of weapons] but by the tongues." The preacher of Mawza', Muhammad b. Ali al-Khatib (d. 825/1421), shows the risks: he warned against Ibn Arabi from the pulpit, won a disputation with Ibn al-Raddad, was jailed, was rescued by an emir, and wrote a refutation of the Fusus. Some muftis, a note says, refused to answer the questionnaires, either because they could not prove the statements were really Ibn Arabi's, or because they feared Ibn al-Raddad.
Stage three: Ibn al-Muqri's campaign
Isma'il Ibn al-Muqri (d. 837/1444 or 837/1433) was the greatest poet of the Rasulid age, a pensioner of the court who wanted al-Fayruzabadi's post. He made poetry the vehicle of the attack: mockery, grotesque images, table talk for households. His long poems run: "A gruesome calamity has afflicted the Muslims: / It makes even the gravest sin look like a minor slip." "There the little Ibn 'Arabi speaks of God / with astounding insolence and extreme audacity," and "So, my friend, declare him a liar, and you will be among the cream of the faithful,". He circulated a questionnaire with a synopsis of the Fusus and Futuhat to handpicked scholars. Ibn al-Raddad answered with the sultan's soldiery: opponents were intimidated, recanted, fled, and lost their property.
When Ibn al-Raddad died in 821/1418, the tide turned. Al-Kirmani, a Persian, protected by Ibn al-Raddad and al-Mizjaji, a wealthy palm-grove owner with scribes copying the Fusus, called in al-Nasir's mercenaries during a popular revolt; they raided houses, including Ibn al-Muqri's, who took refuge with the holy clan of Bayt al-Faqih. He was recalled and compensated within a year. Under al-Mansur Abdallah the crackdown came: a ban, Kirmani's house sacked, a fatwa by Ibn al-Jazari, a trial and a forced repentance announced in Zabid, Mahjam and Ta'izz, then exile to Mecca. Ibn al-Muqri wanted more: "No sacrifice in the eyes of God is more preferable / than spilling the blood of al-Kirmani", and he scolded the ruler for leniency: "By God, oh, the best of kings, that was a grave mistake,".
Why Yemen was different
Compared with Cairo, the Yemeni quarrel was smaller in scale and harsher in method. Its scholarly world was compact, so rivalries were personal: the same men competed for the same few posts, married into the same families, and sat at the same sultan's table. Its Sufism was recent and lacked the long training that, in Egypt, softened readings of the Shaykh. And its rulers were themselves readers of mystical books, so royal taste mattered more directly. When the sultan was a patron of the Ibn Arabi party, its opponents were flogged or exiled; when he withdrew, the party collapsed. The Mamluks, by contrast, preferred to let quarrels die in committee.
Yemen also tests the stereotype of a static backwater. The controversy shows a learned society in close touch with Mecca, Cairo and Damascus, importing books and visiting scholars, and arguing about the same texts at the same time. Its distinctive feature was not isolation but the intimacy of court and college. That intimacy made the stakes personal and the penalties swift, and it explains why the reverberations, as Knysh found in conversation decades ago, have lasted so long.
Knysh's conclusion on Yemen
Ibn al-Ahdal blamed the sultans al-Ashraf and al-Nasir, calling al-Nasir an imperfect Muslim and a drunkard; a note reports his view that al-Nasir's mysticism grew from an interest in Isma'ili philosophy. Royal patronage was decisive, as were cosmopolitan tolerance and the divide-and-rule handling of the scholars. Recommending Ibn Arabi to the general reader was the real audacity. After the Rasulids his teaching retreated to a narrow circle, but dozens of manuscripts copied in Yemen and Hadramawt show persisting interest. Knysh adds a point from his own conversations in Yemen in 1986-1989: the reverberations are still palpable.
Interlude: One Charge Sheet, Six Centuries
Read across the case studies, the accusations against Ibn Arabi form a short, stable list. This interlude sets the charges against the critics who pressed them, to show how little the list changed and how much the emphasis did.
The stable core
Knysh argues that the polemic routinized: the same propositions, drawn mostly from the Fusus, were answered by the same formulas. The matrix below gathers the main charges as the book reports them. A filled mark means the charge is central to that critic; an open mark means it appears but is secondary. The marks are the editor's summary.
What the matrix shows
The metaphysical charge dominates in the East. Ibn Taymiyya, al-Taftazani and al-Biqa'i all put the identity of God and world at the centre. In the West the emphasis falls elsewhere: on style for Ibn Khatima, on politics for Ibn Khaldun. In Yemen, the charge sheet is read through the behaviour of living followers.
Pharaoh is a theologian's charge. It matters most to al-Taftazani and al-Biqa'i.
Sainthood is a political charge. For Ibn Taymiyya it threatened the rank of the Prophet; for Ibn Khaldun it was a banner for mahdis. The doctrine of the seal looked different depending on whether one feared a theological error or an uprising.
Behaviour is a Yemeni charge. Ibn al-Ahdal had something the Cairo critics mostly lacked: a living circle whose sayings and processions he could observe.
The defenders' replies were as stable as the charges: allegory, the sanctity of a recognized saint, restriction of the books to qualified readers, and withholding judgement. The critics had stock answers to each, and al-Biqa'i's was the bluntest: the doubter is himself an unbeliever.
The interlude also explains why the quarrel could not be settled by argument alone. Each side answered the other's charges with a stock reply, and each reply had a stock rebuttal. Without a court whose verdict all would accept, the exchange could run indefinitely, and it did, until a ruler, a council or a change of reign tipped the balance for a while.
How to use the charge list
Read the matrix as a map of repetition, not as a scorecard. The same few propositions return under new names in Damascus, Cairo, Samarqand, Granada and Zabid. Knysh's point is that the polemical image is portable: once a short list of charges is fixed, later writers can cite the list without reopening the Fusus.
When a region adds a charge (style, Pharaoh's faith, political danger), note whether it joins the stable core or stays local.
Pair this interlude with the Frameworks table in the synthesis and with the regional chapters. The list alone does not decide who was right; it shows what the quarrel kept repeating.
10. General Conclusion: Bewilderment and the No-Man's-Land
Knysh's conclusion steps back from the case studies. What was the quarrel really about, why did no side ever win, and what does that say about how Islamic communities settled doctrine?
The epigraph
The conclusion opens with Ibn Arabi himself: "Among the [Muslim] thinkers bewilderment (hayra) is much greater than among those of the other religious communities." And: "When a [Muslim] thinker gets tired of thinking, he stops where fatigue has overcome him." Some stop at stripping God of attributes, some at secondary causes, some at likening God to creatures, some at "We do not know!" The quotation sets the tone. Every party to the dispute stopped somewhere, and no stopping point compelled the others.
The deep axis
Knysh's lens is the coexistence and conflict of "communal-legalistic and gnostic-individualistic interpretations of faith", of "nomocentric theology and contemplative" mysticism. The question was how to value mystical experience against the "objective" world.
He warns against neat dichotomies: nomos and eros, ecstasy and control, orthodoxy and heresy, esotericism and exotericism, conformism and freethinking. All of them understate the painful ambiguity and ambivalence of the actors. Sainthood itself was vague. Many scholars feared the Day of Judgement too much to pronounce takfir, and sat astride the fence; even enemies documented retractions. A note gives two modern parallels: al-Shawkani (d. 1250/1834), who forty years after writing a fierce attack begged God's pardon on its cover, and Fazlur Rahman, who denounced Ibn Arabi in public for "foreign elements" but praised him to graduate students. Condemning in public and respecting in private is an old pattern.
The sheer volume of the polemics, Knysh adds, belies the idea of Islam as an "orthoprax" religion indifferent to belief. The critics also ignored Ibn Arabi's personal piety and fixed on his theories.
Bewilderment as a key
The epigraph is more than ornament. Ibn Arabi's own remark that every thinker stops where fatigue overtakes him describes his critics as well as the theologians he had in mind. Ibn Taymiyya stopped at the distinction between Creator and creation; al-Taftazani at the boundary of kalam; Ibn Khaldun at the welfare of the community; al-Suyuti at the reputation of a saint. Each stopping point was defensible, and none could be imposed on the others. Read this way, the long controversy is a record of honest fatigue as much as of malice, and Knysh's refusal to crown a winner follows from it.
Who decided?
Not consensus. Where Ibn Arabi was accepted or rejected, the ruler's support decided. Both sides avoided pitched battles. His legacy became a rallying point for factions. No universal consensus (ijma') was ever reached, because there was no institutional church or council to enforce one; a note observes that even Christianity, with councils, could not impose a uniform creed. What existed was local machinery for producing authoritative positions: fatwa campaigns, councils of judges, royal decrees.
Against neat typologies
Knysh engages Chittick's three dimensions of Islam: works (the province of jurists), faith (theologians, philosophers, philosophical Sufis) and perfection (active Sufis). The construct, he says, detracts from the complex identities of real people. The adversaries were "neither the dry-as-dust jurists nor the narrow-minded scholastics"; most were Sufis. "Pure jurists", "pure theologians" and "pure Sufis" are abstractions; many were all three in one. Chittick's picture of Ibn Arabi as consummate gnosis rests on an abstract definition.
The polemical image
The historical Ibn Arabi was fictionalized into a polemical image that served as a benchmark. Its elements were rumours, anecdotes, sayings and stock topoi. It was reduced to catchy propositions answered by cliched formulas, a routinization of discourse. The result was "an impoverished, castrated version of Ibn 'Arabi's legacy that consistently privileges peripheral issues over the gist." The "monistic conspiracy" running from al-Hallaj through al-Shudhi to Ibn Sab'in never existed outside the critics' imagination.
| al-Hallaj | Ibn Arabi | |
|---|---|---|
| Fate | Executed; an active martyr | No martyr; minor troubles at most |
| Stance to scholars | Defiant | Recognized their importance; shunned confrontation |
| Image | Direct, ecstatic | "a great, aloof sage" |
| In the critics' eyes | "psychopathic rebel or charlatan" | "a quiet sapper, who put a powerful mine under the community of Islam." |
Were the critics right?
Knysh's most provocative move is to grant the critics several points. They were right about the link with kalam debates over nonexistent things, about real common ground with Isma'ili thought (allegory, symbolism, a world-restorer), and about the centrality of imagination. Western scholars discard the critics, yet often reach the same conclusions. Liberal commitments cannot be transplanted: "contemporary ethical standards should not be applied to the remote historical epochs". The critics rejected Ibn Arabi not from obscurantism but from awareness of real dangers. If he was guilty, he was "guilty first and foremost of crafting a teaching which, if misinterpreted, could ruin the very foundations of Muslim communal life."
The poles exist, nomos against eros, Ibn Taymiyya against Ibn Arabi. But between them lies a vast no-man's-land "strewn with innumerable nuances, personal predilections, pragmatic calculations of one's interest," pious reservations and bet-hedging. The problem, Knysh says, is one of taxonomy. Ibn Arabi was "a reputable hadith scholar, saint, visionary, theologian, and poet, who combined extreme literalism with thoroughgoing esotericism", and he defied classification. So did most of the people who argued about him.
Knysh's theses, in brief
| # | Thesis | Main evidence |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The debate concerned a polemical image | Repeated propositions and anecdotes across centuries |
| 2 | Experience was granted; its social use was disputed | al-Taftazani, Ibn Khaldun |
| 3 | Rulers, not consensus, decided outcomes | Cairo 831, Zabid under Ibn al-Raddad |
| 4 | Typologies of jurist, theologian and Sufi mislead | Sufi critics; scholar-mystics on both sides |
| 5 | The critics were partly right | Imagination, Isma'ili parallels, kalam roots |
| 6 | The middle ground was the norm | Hedged fatwas, private respect, retractions |
Why the book still matters
The quarrel Knysh describes did not end in the Middle Ages. The notes trace both legacies forward: Ibn Arabi's ideas into later Sufi orders and modern movements, Ibn Taymiyya's into Wahhabism and twentieth-century militancy. Modern editions of medieval refutations were printed with titles that served new agendas, and a new edition of the Futuhat could still provoke a ban in Cairo. The questions at stake, who may claim direct knowledge of God, how far a text may be read beyond its letter, and who decides, remain open in Muslim societies and, in other forms, everywhere.
The book also offers a lesson in how to study any long controversy. Look for the image that stands in for the person. Count the output and ask who paid for it. Find the hedgers. And be wary of sources whose authors were themselves players. Knysh's own care in this respect, flagging al-Sakhawi's bias, doubting convenient anecdotes, and granting points to the side he finds less congenial, is the model.
- Sources are partisan. Al-Sakhawi's harshness toward al-Jabarti and al-Biqa'i reflects his anti-Ibn Arabi stance; modern scholars who rely on him should take his reports with a grain of salt.
- Dates and names wobble. The notes fix confusions (two al-Bukharis; al-Bana, al-Baba and Ibn al-Ta'ih) and correct earlier scholars, including Madelung, who reversed who was expelled to India.
- Modern editions mislead. The 1953 Cairo edition of al-Biqa'i appeared as The Destruction of Sufism, a title that served a 1950s liberal agenda; Ibn al-Ahdal's edition is called frustratingly sloppy.
- Muftis hedged. Some withheld judgement because they could not prove the statements were Ibn Arabi's, others from fear of reprisals.
- Courtiers on both sides. In Egypt and Yemen alike, the monist factions included scholars and professional courtiers eager to please the ruler.
11. Reading the Endnotes
Over a hundred pages of notes hold a second book: corrections of earlier scholars, side stories, warnings about sources, and Knysh's quieter judgements. This part gathers the most useful of them, chapter by chapter.
Introduction and chapter 1: the Shaykh in modern hands
- Biographies are not neutral. Knysh calls Addas's well-known life of Ibn Arabi a "self-portrait of the Sufi rather than his critical biography", and adds that Ibn Arabi's own autobiographical accounts are not models of impartiality either.
- The Fusus provoked most of the opposition, as Yahia had argued. A note records that Yahia's new edition of the Futuhat caused an uproar in modern Egypt, where conservative scholars arranged a legislative ban.
- Corbin's Shi'i reading of the Shaykh is, Knysh says, to be treated with caution, and Asin Palacios's "ecumenical" Ibn Arabi sits awkwardly with the Shaykh's real attitude to the Christians of Anatolia.
- Style. Following Hodgson and Weber, the notes describe a mythic-visional style: knowledge that cannot be communicated directly is cast into myths, parables and symbols. That explains much of the later confusion.
Chapter 2: the early biographers
- Two kinds of censorship. Al-Qari added a line to Ibn al-Dubaythi's notice, saying he had met the Shaykh and found him too sublime to describe. Knysh calls this "positive" censorship, the mirror image of al-Dhahabi's negative corrections.
- The name. Al-Maqqari explains that the West wrote "Ibn al-'Arabi" with the article, and the East dropped it, to tell him apart from the qadi Abu Bakr Ibn al-'Arabi.
- Damascus patrons. The Banu al-Zaki were hereditary judges; one tore up books of rationalists, another had a reputation as a covert Shi'i. Ibn Kathir reported that a Zaki judge put Ali before Uthman "in keeping with the opinion of his master, Muhyi al-din Ibn 'Arabi", but Knysh finds the claim that Ibn Arabi was a Shi'i ill-founded.
- Teachers and the Zahiri school. The notes trace the Zahiri school from Dawud b. Ali b. Khalaf (d. 270/884) to al-Andalus, where it was favoured by the Almohads against the Malikis, and suggest Ibn Arabi's concern for the letter of scripture may owe something to Ibn Hazm, while noting Morris's doubts.
- Forgeries. A treatise of predictions about the Ottoman dynasty attributed to Ibn Arabi is a forgery, and a note dates his departure from the Maghrib to 598/1201.
- Ibn Arabi disliked ecstatic utterances, treating them as immaturity. This matters, because later critics accused him of exactly that genre.
Chapter 3: Mamluk society
- Against the corruption thesis. Modern scholars, the notes say, too readily adopt a "corruptive" view of Mongol and Mamluk Islam.
- Sultans and dervishes. Baybars cultivated antinomian Qalandaris and kept a scandalous shaykh near him, yet accepted admonitions from strict jurists. Mamluk Cairo had sixty-one Sufi hospices. Nur al-din Zengi refused to cut subsidies to Sufi lodges, saying their prayers did more than swords.
- Scholars as a class. Knysh partly accepts Petry's portrait of jurist-scholars with a shared vision and a defensive attitude to power, but disagrees that their influence was purely spiritual.
- Ibn Abd al-Salam. Massignon praised his rectitude; Pouzet noted his intolerance. His expulsion from Damascus mixed doctrine with politics, since the sultan had sided with the Hanbalis and made concessions to the Crusaders.
- The earliest refutation of Ibn Arabi, by al-Kamili (d. 652/1254), had no effect.
- Moderate and extreme Sufism. The line between them, the notes insist, is artificial and blurred. Algar is quoted against "the obstinate notion that Sufism and shari'a have represented polar opposites throughout Islamic history".
Chapter 4: Ibn Taymiyya
- Labels. Chittick calls words such as monist and unificationist alien and inappropriate categories. Knysh keeps them because the medieval critics used them.
- Was Ibn Taymiyya a Sufi? It depends on the definition. Makdisi's view of a Sufi Ibn Taymiyya is questioned by others; what is clear is his wish for a salvation open to all believers rather than an elite.
- Ibn Arabi praised. Ibn Taymiyya praised several of the Shaykh's works, including the Mawaqi' al-nujum, written at Almeria in 595/1199, and praised them without interpreting them away, which Knysh calls no small praise.
- Fair criticism of the critic. Knysh finds part of Ibn Taymiyya's critique somewhat facile, notes that Ibn Arabi's view of existence has four modes (in speech, script, mind and concrete reality), and admits that, as always, the Shaykh's own position is hard to nail down.
- Long shadows. The notes trace Ibn Arabi's influence into later movements and Ibn Taymiyya's into Wahhabism and modern militancy, citing the twenty-seven-year-old ideologue of an Egyptian jihadist group who studied Ibn Taymiyya's fatwas.
Chapter 5: biographers and muftis
- Biographical chain. The main notices are by al-Dhahabi, al-Safadi, al-Fasi, al-Dawudi, al-Maqqari, Ibn al-'Imad and al-Nabhani.
- Al-Safadi's defence. He claimed Ibn Arabi's creed matched al-Ash'ari's to the iota. Knysh calls the argument tenuous: that creed was written for the commoners, not as a statement of esoteric truths.
- The questionnaire compiler was himself a Sufi shaykh. The conflict was not simply Islam against Sufism.
- Lists lump people together. Al-Sakhawi's long list of anti-Ibn Arabi authorities should be taken with a grain of salt; at least one name is unlikely.
- Ibn Hajar hedged. His biographical dictionary rehashes quotations on both sides and never commits, yet al-Sakhawi presented him as a critic. Two of his disciples, al-Sakhawi and al-Biqa'i, led the anti-monist faction.
| Kind of note | Example | Lesson |
|---|---|---|
| Scribal error | shaykh su' kadhdhab (evil shaykh, liar) read as shi'i kadhdhab | One letter can create a heresy |
| Name confusion | Two Ala' al-din al-Bukharis, one hostile, one admiring | Check identities before counting votes |
| Date drift | al-Fasi d. 832/1429, 832/1459, 831/1429 | Printed dates need cross-checking |
| Partisan source | al-Sakhawi on al-Biqa'i and al-Jabarti | Read hostile obituaries with care |
| Misleading edition | al-Biqa'i printed as The Destruction of Sufism (1953) | Modern titles can carry modern agendas |
Chapters 6 to 9
- Al-Taftazani. The famous dispute with al-Jurjani may have been invented to dramatize their rivalry. Al-Taftazani, like al-Iji, admitted Sufi inspiration and miracles, and held that saints are fallible and never reach prophetic rank. Bowering is quoted on how Ibn Arabi's theory transformed early Sufi experience of union into ontological speculation.
- The Muslim West. Ibn Abi Hajala headed a Sufi monastery in Cairo; Giffen dismissed Ibn al-Khatib's Rawda as illogical and confusing, and Knysh disagrees. Ibn Barrajan died in prison; Ibn al-'Arif was summoned to Marrakesh and died obscurely. Knysh reverses Al-Azmeh: Ibn Khaldun's hostility to Shi'ism and Sufism came from concern for the community's stability.
- Egypt. Symbolic executions of Ibn Arabi's books recurred over and over, paralleling the burning of Ibn Hazm and al-Ghazali in al-Andalus. Ibn Shihna changed from opposition to endorsement, which al-Sakhawi put down to senility. Even al-Sakhawi admitted that Ibn al-Farid was not a real unbeliever.
- Yemen. The Shafi'i school spread there only from the fifth/eleventh century, and Hanafism held on into the Rasulid era. Rasulid sultans wrote on medicine, astronomy, agriculture and history; one sent to Herat for an autograph copy of al-Razi's commentary to correct mistakes. Al-Jabarti's son followed his father's path, and the family was active until about 875/1470, when the line ended along with the school's decline in Yemen.
How Knysh uses his notes
The notes do three jobs. They correct: earlier scholars, from Rosenthal to Madelung, are set right on specific points. They qualify: wherever the main text makes a strong claim, a note often records a doubt or an alternative reading, as with the Jurjani dispute or Ibn Khaldun's alleged monism. And they widen the frame: modern parallels, such as al-Shawkani's late apology and Fazlur Rahman's double stance, show that the patterns of the medieval quarrel continue. The effect is a book that is more tentative in its notes than in its text, which is a sign of honesty rather than weakness.
Small notes worth remembering
- A dispute over whether a hadith about loving cats was authentic figured among al-Taftazani's and al-Jurjani's quarrels.
- Pharaoh is mentioned in twenty-seven suras, not twenty-four as al-Taftazani claimed.
- Ibn Arabi's date for a predicted event and Ibn Khaldun's version of it differ, because their letter-numbers differ.
- Al-Bisati, a note reports, kept his post, in al-Suyuti's view, only by divine intervention.
- One Yemeni preacher withdrew his own pamphlet against al-Jabarti on hearing what had happened to Salih al-Misri.
- Madelung mistakenly reversed the story, sending al-Jabarti, not his critic, to India.
General Conclusion
- Al-Shawkani's apology. On the cover of his own attack on Ibn Arabi, written forty years earlier, al-Shawkani begged God's pardon: fear of the reckoning, or a lack of conviction.
- No church, no ijma'. Universal consensus was impossible without councils; even Christianity could not impose one creed.
- Others agree. Nagel, the notes add, reached similar conclusions independently.
A reader's checklist from the notes
The notes suggest a short checklist for anyone reading medieval reports about a controversial figure. First, identify the reporter and his side: al-Sakhawi, al-Fasi and Ibn al-Ahdal were participants, not observers. Second, check names and dates against other passages, since scribes and later editors confused people with similar names and printed conflicting years. Third, ask whether a quotation comes from the figure's own work or from an opponent's synopsis; questionnaires often circulated summaries rather than texts. Fourth, look for retractions and hedges, which hostile sources sometimes preserve in spite of themselves. Fifth, read the modern edition's title and preface with suspicion, because they may carry a later agenda. Knysh applies each of these tests somewhere in his notes, and the main text is the stronger for it.
Synthesis
What the book teaches when its chapters are read together, how to use it, where to question it, and how its lessons carry into other fields.
Twenty takeaways
| # | Takeaway |
|---|---|
| 1 | The quarrel was about an image, not a man. A polemical Ibn Arabi, built from rumours and stock propositions, replaced the historical one. |
| 2 | The Fusus carried the debate. A short, dense book became the whole Ibn Arabi for most critics; the vast Futuhat was read far less. |
| 3 | Hagiography and polemic are one genre in two moods. The same anecdotes serve praise or blame. |
| 4 | Contemporaries were mild. Hostility grew with distance in time, as the image hardened. |
| 5 | Ibn Taymiyya set the template. His ranking of monists and his charge sheet framed later attacks, even by people who disliked him. |
| 6 | The questionnaire was a weapon. Who framed the question, and who was asked, largely decided the answer. |
| 7 | Kalam attacked the metaphysics. Al-Taftazani's central charge was that the monists took an experience for an ontology. |
| 8 | Pharaoh's faith was a boundary test. To save Pharaoh was to blur the border between faith and unbelief. |
| 9 | Critics often targeted commentators. Avicennan readers such as al-Qunawi and al-Farghani supplied much of what was condemned. |
| 10 | The West saw a group, not a founder. Andalusi and Maghribi critics placed him in a "monistic conspiracy" running from al-Shudhi. |
| # | Takeaway |
|---|---|
| 11 | Politics drove the theology. Fear of mahdis, messianic revolts and saint-kings sat behind doctrinal objections. |
| 12 | Imagination was the real key. Few critics saw it; Ibn al-Naqqash did. |
| 13 | Theatre spread the quarrel. Burned books, a Fusus tied to a dog, a divine donkey: anecdotes did more than treatises. |
| 14 | Output measured power. The number of refutations and apologies tracked who had patrons and posts. |
| 15 | The ruler decided. In Cairo and Zabid, the sultan's favour, not scholarly consensus, settled each round. |
| 16 | No ijma' was possible. Without a church or council, only local machinery produced authoritative positions. |
| 17 | The middle ground was wide. Most scholars hedged, withheld judgement or kept public and private opinions apart. |
| 18 | Categories mislead. Jurist, theologian and Sufi were often one person; many critics were Sufis. |
| 19 | The critics were partly right. On imagination, Isma'ili parallels and kalam roots they saw real features. |
| 20 | Misreading was the danger they feared. Ibn Arabi's guilt, if any, was a teaching that could be misused against communal life. |
How the image was made
The book's chapters describe stages of one process. Reading them side by side shows a pipeline that turned a life into a symbol.
The book in eleven paragraphs
Introduction. Knysh sets out to study not Ibn Arabi's teaching but the controversy about it. He treats the Shaykh as a symbol that later generations used to argue about the limits of mystical claims, sainthood and interpretation.
Chapter 1, the enigma. Ibn Arabi's life, from Murcia and Seville to Damascus, is reconstructed from sources that are themselves partisan. Western scholars have read him through their own schools, as mystic, philosopher or ecumenist, and Knysh warns that each reading selects.
Chapter 2, the early portraits. The first biographers were generally respectful. Their anecdotes, about his learning, his visions and his death, became raw material that later writers bent toward praise or blame.
Chapter 3, Damascus and Cairo. Mamluk society, with its patronage of Sufi lodges and its jurist-scholars, formed the stage. Ibn Abd al-Salam's ambiguous verdicts and the trial of 741 show how verdicts passed from mouth to mouth and changed on the way.
Chapter 4, Ibn Taymiyya. The Hanbali critic ranked the monists, praised some of Ibn Arabi's works, and drew up the charge sheet. His picture of creation as distinct from God, against the Shaykh's immutable entities, set the terms of the metaphysical debate.
Chapter 5, biographers and muftis. Al-Dhahabi and al-Fasi turned the image into a dossier, and questionnaires sent to selected muftis produced rounds of condemnation. Ibn Hajar's hedging and the mutual-curse episode show how personal the matter became.
Chapter 6, al-Taftazani. The great theologian accepted Sufi inspiration but denied that ecstatic experience described reality, and attacked the doctrine of Pharaoh's faith. His Epistle became the model for later Hanafi critics.
Chapter 7, the Muslim West. In the Shaykh's homeland, critics saw him as one of a suspect group. Ibn al-Khatib's book on love became the pretext for his execution; Ibn Khaldun signed a fatwa for burning the books and read the seal doctrine as a recipe for messianic revolt.
Chapter 8, Egypt. Polemic multiplied in the ninth/fifteenth century. Al-Bukhari's clash with al-Bisati and al-Biqa'i's campaign against Ibn al-Farid failed, because the sultans and the city's interests ran the other way.
Chapter 9, Yemen. Under the Rasulids, Ibn Arabi's admirers won royal favour, used it against their opponents, and lost when their protector died. Ibn al-Muqri's poems and Ibn al-Ahdal's history record a struggle over posts as much as doctrine.
General Conclusion. No consensus was ever reached, because none could be enforced. Between the poles of nomos and eros lay a wide middle ground of hedged positions, and the critics, Knysh concludes, were not obscurantists but people aware of real dangers.
The debate by region
| Syria and Egypt | Muslim West | Yemen | |
|---|---|---|---|
| How Ibn Arabi was seen | Founder of a school; author of the Fusus | One of a group of "perfect" mystics | Patron saint of a court party |
| Main critics | Ibn Taymiyya, al-Bukhari, al-Biqa'i | Ibn Khatima, Ibn al-Khatib, Ibn Khaldun | Ibn al-Khayyat, al-Nashiri, Ibn al-Muqri, Ibn al-Ahdal |
| Main charges | Monism, Pharaoh, sainthood above prophecy | Obscurity, absolute oneness, messianic politics | Antinomian excess, sama', courting the state |
| Main weapon | Treatise and questionnaire | Blacklist and fatwa | Satirical poem and questionnaire |
| Who decided | Councils of judges under the sultan | Courts and rulers; Ibn al-Khatib executed | The Rasulid sultan, reign by reign |
| Outcome | Campaigns failed; interest grew | No real following to suppress | Party crushed after its protector died |
Ten anecdotes that carried the quarrel
Knysh shows repeatedly that stories travelled further than arguments. A short list, drawn from across the book, shows how much of the polemic ran on scenes rather than syllogisms.
| Anecdote | Where | What it was used to show |
|---|---|---|
| The three funerals and the shrine | Ch. 2 | Sanctity confirmed or doubted |
| Ibn Abd al-Salam's three verdicts | Ch. 3 | A respected judge as witness for either side |
| Marriage to a she-jinni | Ch. 3-4 | Credulity, or a jest misheard |
| The hashish-eater of the dry temperament | Ch. 6 | The Fusus dream as intoxication |
| Ibn al-Khatib's books burned in Granada | Ch. 7 | Writing on love as heresy |
| A Fusus tied to a dog's tail | Ch. 8 | Popular contempt, and its rewards |
| Al-Hulaybi slapped and unturbaned | Ch. 8 | The limits of zeal |
| The donkey and the dung of Alexandria | Ch. 8 | Monism reduced to absurdity |
| "This wall is God!" in Zabid | Ch. 9 | Antinomian followers |
| Ibn al-Muqri's house raided | Ch. 9 | The cost of opposing the court party |
Three misreadings to avoid
- That the quarrel was Sufis against jurists. Most critics were Sufis or sympathetic to Sufism; the divide ran through Sufism itself.
- That the critics did not read him. Some did not, but Ibn al-Naqqash, Ibn al-Khatib and al-Taftazani engaged real texts, even if selectively.
- That victory went to the better argument. It went, in Knysh's account, to whoever had the patron, the post and the street at the decisive moment.
Frameworks
| Framework | Where | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Polemical image vs historical person | Throughout | Separates what was argued about from who was argued about |
| Hagiography and polemic as one genre | Ch. 2-3 | Shows how one anecdote serves both sides |
| Ibn Taymiyya's ranking of monists | Ch. 4 | Grades errors by distance from distinction between God and world |
| The fatwa questionnaire | Ch. 5, 9 | Turns doctrine into a vote of chosen experts |
| Bestowal vs pervasion (fayd) | Ch. 6 | Tests whether a picture of creation keeps God distinct |
| Experience vs ontology | Ch. 6 | Accepts the vision, rejects the cosmology drawn from it |
| Six lovers of God | Ch. 7 | An irenic map of all seekers after truth |
| Output as balance of power | Ch. 8 | Reads polemical production as a political index |
| Three stages of reception | Ch. 9 | Seeding, ascendancy under patronage, reaction |
| Nomos, eros and the no-man's-land | Conclusion | Replaces binaries with a spectrum of hedged positions |
A closer look
Strengths. Knysh reads the critics seriously, as thinkers with reasons, not as bigots. He works from manuscripts and little-used chronicles, and he takes the story beyond Damascus and Cairo to the Maghrib and Yemen, where the material is fresh. His refusal of tidy dichotomies is persuasive, and his willingness to grant the critics some points makes the book more trustworthy, not less.
Limits. The book is about the image, so the reader learns little of Ibn Arabi's own teaching in its own terms. Ottoman, Persian and Indian receptions are mentioned but not studied. Its sources are partisan by nature; Knysh warns about al-Sakhawi and Ibn al-Ahdal, yet often has no alternative to them. The approach can also cut both ways: if every position is a mix of conviction and interest, it becomes hard to say when doctrine, rather than politics, moved anyone.
The placements in Figure 16, the pipeline in Figure 17 and the matrix in Figure 15 are the editor's interpretations of the argument, not Knysh's diagrams.
al-Qunawi (d. 673/1274): disciple and stepson by tradition; his Avicennan reading shaped the school.
Ibn Abd al-Salam (d. 660/1262): Damascene jurist; three different verdicts on Ibn Arabi are ascribed to him.
Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328): Hanbali critic; ranked the monists and set the charge sheet.
al-Dhahabi: historian; ambivalent portrait of the Shaykh. Flag: d. 748/1348, once 748/1347.
al-Fasi: Meccan historian; author of the questionnaire tradition. Flag: printed as 832/1429, 832/1459 and 831/1429.
al-Taftazani (b. 722/1322, d. 792/1390 or 791/1389): theologian; Epistle on the Unity of Being.
al-Jurjani (d. 816/1413): his rival at Timur's court.
Ibn al-Khatib (713/1313-776/1375): Granadan vizier; the Rawda; executed in Fez.
Ibn Khaldun (d. 808/1406): historian; Shifa' al-sa'il; signed a fatwa condemning the books.
al-Bukhari, Ala' al-din (d. 841/1437): al-Taftazani's disciple; the Cairo gathering of 831.
al-Bisati (d. 842/1438): Maliki chief judge of Cairo.
Ibn Hajar (d. 852/1449): hadith master; chaired the council of judges; hedged.
al-Biqa'i (d. 885/1480): leader of the campaign of 874-875; fifteen tenets.
al-Suyuti: irenic defender of withholding judgement. Flag: printed as 911/1505 and 911/1506.
al-Jabarti (d. 806/1403): charismatic Zabid master; made the Fusus mandatory.
al-Jili: author of the Perfect Man. Flag: d. 832/1428, or 826/1421 per another passage.
Ibn al-Raddad (b. 745/1346 or 748/1348, d. 821/1418): grand qadi of Yemen; the party's enforcer.
al-Fayruzabadi: lexicographer and grand qadi. Flag: printed as 817/1415 and 815/1415.
Ibn al-Muqri: poet; led the Yemeni reaction. Flag: printed as 837/1444 and 837/1433.
al-Kirmani: Persian Sufi tried in Zabid. Flag: printed as 841/1437 and 845/1441.
Ibn al-Ahdal: Yemeni historian and critic; Kashf al-ghita'. Flag: printed as 855/1451 and 855/1481.
The Gregorian figures in several flags cannot both be right for one Hijri year.
Applying it
- Which text stands in for the person? Here, a short book replaced a large corpus.
- Who frames the question, and who is asked? The questionnaire tells you the answer.
- What interest rides on the verdict? Posts, endowments, a shrine's revenues.
- Who is the final judge? Formal consensus may be weaker than one patron.
- Where are the hedgers? The middle ground usually decides how long a quarrel lasts.
Discussion questions
- Knysh says the critics were partly right. Which of their points does he accept, and does accepting them weaken his defence of the middle ground?
- Was al-Taftazani's distinction between experience and ontology fair to Ibn Arabi, or only to his commentators?
- Why might Pharaoh's faith have mattered so much more to critics than technical points of metaphysics?
- Compare the trial of Ibn al-Khatib with the gathering of 831 in Cairo. What decided each outcome?
- Could a universal consensus on Ibn Arabi ever have been reached? What would it have required?
- Ibn al-Ahdal blamed Ibn Arabi but excused al-Jabarti. Is it fair to judge a teacher by the conduct of his followers?
- Al-Sakhawi is both chief witness and partisan. How should a historian use such a source?
- Why did the Western critics see a group where Eastern critics saw a founder?
- Al-Suyuti advised restricting the books rather than condemning them. Is restriction a principled position or a dodge?
- In your own field, what short text stands in for a long body of work, and who benefits from that substitution?
Glossary
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| wahdat al-wujud | Unity (oneness) of being; the label critics attached to Ibn Arabi's school |
| wujudiyya | "Existentialists": the monists, in al-Taftazani's usage |
| ittihad / ittihadiyya | Union of God and creature / its partisans |
| hulul | Indwelling, incarnation of God in a creature |
| al-wahda al-mutlaqa | Absolute oneness or unity; Ibn Sab'in's school in Western sources |
| tajalli / ashab al-tajalli | Self-manifestation of God / "people of tajalli", Ibn Khaldun's term |
| fayd | Emanation; bestowal or spilling over of being |
| ta'ayyun (pl. ta'ayyunat) | Entification; the determination of the One into things |
| a'yan thabita | Immutable entities; things as known by God before existence |
| al-insan al-kamil | The Perfect (Universal) Man |
| al-haqiqa al-muhammadiyya | The Muhammadan Reality |
| khatm al-awliya' | Seal of the saints |
| wilaya / wali | Sainthood, friendship with God / saint |
| qutb | Pole, axis; the supreme saint of an age |
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| kashf / mukashafa | Unveiling; intuitive knowledge |
| ilham | Inspiration |
| fana' / baqa' | Annihilation / subsistence in God |
| shath (pl. shatahat) | Ecstatic utterance |
| sama' | Spiritual concert; listening to music and poetry |
| khirqa | The Sufi frock of investiture |
| ribat (pl. arbita) | Sufi lodge |
| hayra | Bewilderment |
| kalam / mutakallim | Speculative theology / theologian |
| falsafa / falasifa | Philosophy / philosophers |
| ta'wil | Allegorical interpretation |
| batin / zahir | Inward / outward meaning |
| idafa | Attribution, relation |
| taqlid | Imitation; blind following |
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| fatwa / mufti / istifta' | Legal opinion / its issuer / request for one |
| takfir | Declaring someone an unbeliever |
| kufr / kafir | Unbelief / unbeliever |
| zindiq (pl. zanadiqa) | Concealed heretic; repentance not accepted |
| mulhid | Heretic, deviator |
| murtadd | Apostate |
| bid'a | Reprehensible innovation |
| ijma' | Consensus of the scholars |
| mubahala | Mutual curse, an ordeal to settle a dispute |
| qadi | Judge |
| waqf (pl. awqaf) | Pious endowment |
| shari'a | The divine law |
| madhhab | School of law; also a teaching or doctrine |
| mahdi | The rightly guided restorer awaited at the end of time |
Key works mentioned
| Work | Author | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Fusus al-hikam (Bezels of Wisdom) | Ibn Arabi | The short book at the centre of the quarrel |
| al-Futuhat al-makkiyya (Meccan Revelations) | Ibn Arabi | The vast summa, read far less by critics |
| 'Anqa' mughrib | Ibn Arabi | On the seal of the saints; known in the West |
| Tarjuman al-ashwaq | Ibn Arabi | Love poems, with his own allegorical commentary |
| Nazm al-suluk (al-Ta'iyya al-kubra) | Ibn al-Farid | The great mystical ode; al-Farghani's commentary |
| Khal' al-na'layn | Ibn Qasi | "The Removal of the Sandals"; in Ibn Khaldun's fatwa |
| Epistle on the Unity of Being | al-Taftazani | Original title: Fadihat al-mulhidin |
| Rawdat al-ta'rif bi'l-hubb al-sharif | Ibn al-Khatib | The love tree; pretext for his trial |
| Muqaddima; Shifa' al-sa'il | Ibn Khaldun | His views on Sufism |
| Tanbih al-ghabi | al-Biqa'i | His case for declaring Ibn Arabi an unbeliever |
| Kashf al-ghita' | Ibn al-Ahdal | Yemeni creed and refutation |
| al-Insan al-kamil | al-Jili | The Perfect Man |
Places
| Place | Role in the story |
|---|---|
| Damascus, Salihiyya | Ibn Arabi's last home and shrine |
| Cairo | Mamluk capital; the gathering of 831 and the campaign of 874-875 |
| Samarqand, Sarakhs | Timur's courts; al-Taftazani's career |
| Granada, Fez | Ibn al-Khatib's rise, trial and death |
| Zabid, Ta'izz | Rasulid centres; the Yemeni controversy |
| Abyat Husayn | Ibn al-Ahdal's home; al-Jili's death |
| Bayt al-Faqih | Refuge of a holy clan, for both sides |
How terms move in the quarrel
Words such as monism, union, Pharaoh's faith and the Perfect Man do not keep one sense across critics. Knysh shows that opponents often attack a proposition as popularly heard, while defenders answer with a technical sense from the school. This glossary therefore records the book's working sense, not a final lexicon for Ibn Arabi's own pages.
About this book
Ibn 'Arabi in the Later Islamic Tradition: The Making of a Polemical Image in Medieval Islam by Alexander D. Knysh, 1999. 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