Insight Editions · No. 134
Interpreting Ibn Arabi
Philosophy, Theology, and Exegesis in Later Islam
Arjun Nair
Arjun Nair traces disputes over Ibn Arabi’s teachings in the Fusus al-hikam and examines how critics and later commentators interpreted and defended them.
A study guide to Interpreting Ibn Arabi by Arjun Nair. 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
Arjun Nair's Interpreting Ibn Arabi: Philosophy, Theology, and Exegesis in Later Islam (Routledge, 2026) is a study of how the most disputed teachings of the Fusus al-hikam were attacked by critics and explained by the school of Ibn Arabi, from Qunawi and his circle down to the Ottoman defenders Makki and Barzinji. Rather than taking sides, Nair sets the charge and the reply next to each other and asks what the text itself says.
In one sentence: for Nair, almost every accusation against Ibn Arabi comes from reading him with one eye, so that a teaching built on the paired formula He/not He is heard as only He or only not He, and the cure is to read with both reason and imagination, accepting the perplexity that follows.
A work of intellectual history and close reading. Each chapter opens with a charge made by critics such as Ibn Taymiyya, Taftazani, Bukhari and Biqa'i, then reconstructs Ibn Arabi's own position from the Fusus and the Futuhat, and then follows the commentators who defended it. The method is not apologetic: Nair notes where the defenders stretched the text, and where the critics were reacting to real ambiguity in the Shaykh's language.
Readers who know Ibn Arabi only by reputation will find here the main controversies laid out with the charge first and the reply second, which makes it easy to see why the same sentences produced both praise and condemnation. Readers who already know the Fusus will find a guide to how its commentators, from Qunawi and Jandi to Qaysari, Jami, Makki and Barzinji, built their defence, and where they differed among themselves. Those interested in the history of Islamic thought will see how debates over one book shaped theology, Sufism and philosophy in the centuries after the Shaykh's death, down to the Ottoman period.
Argument map
- Introduction. One short book, the Fusus, drew both the title Shaykh al-Akbar and the insult Shaykh al-Akfar. Nair sets out two traditions of reading it and lists the charges.
- Ontology (Chapter 1). The so-called Oneness of Being is a label Ibn Arabi never used. His formula is He/not He: the fixed entities are non-existent and uncreated, and the world appears in the Real as images in a mirror or light through coloured glass.
- Power and freedom (Chapter 2). The entities bind God's knowledge but not His Essence; distinguishing the Essence from the Divinity answers the charge of a God bound by His objects, and the same Yes and No governs human freedom.
- Naming and worship (Chapter 3). Incomparability alone limits God as surely as similarity alone. The god of beliefs is the Divinity in a form, which is why every worshipper worships God and why the Calf story is read as it is.
- The Perfect Man (Chapter 4). Adam created upon His form becomes the pupil of the eye through which God sees the cosmos; man is first in intention and last in existence.
- False and true forms (Chapter 5). Pharaoh claimed a level he did not hold; al-Kharraz spoke as a tongue of God. The difference lies in levels, not in entities.
- Saints and prophets (Chapter 6). Abraham's dream and the wall missing two bricks show sainthood as the inner aspect of every prophet, not a rank above prophets.
- Exegesis (Chapter 7). Ibn Arabi's reading is crossing over ('ubur) and allusion, not interpretation by opinion; the Noah chapter shows its layers.
- Mercy (Chapter 8). A good opinion of God underlies both the faith of Pharaoh and the Fire's torments turning to sweetness.
- Conclusion. Reason and imagination are the two eyes; the one who sees with both lives in perplexity, and knowledge is only of the image.
Introduction. The Problems of the Fusus
Nair opens with a paradox of reputation. Within a few generations of his death Ibn Arabi (d. 638/1240) was called the Shaykh al-Akbar, the Greatest Shaykh, by some, and the Shaykh al-Akfar, the Greatest Unbeliever, by others. Most of that quarrel, he argues, turns on one short book.
One small book, a hundred commentaries
The Futuhat al-Makkiyya alone runs to around 2,500 pages in the 1911 Cairo print, and Nair counts a core of probably 85 works, 15 of them long, and around 800 poems. Few people have read most of this. The Fusus al-hikam (The Ringstones of Wisdom), by contrast, is a relatively small work of only 180 pages. Ibn Arabi singled it out as a teaching text and passed it to his stepson and successor Sadr al-Din Qunawi (d. 673/1273-4), and through Qunawi it became the main door by which Muslim scholars met the Shaykh's ideas. It drew over a hundred commentaries and critical studies.
The book was hard from the start. Qunawi said that understanding came to him "as a grace without intermediary… from the purity of Divine Solicitude." He never wrote a full commentary, though he urged his student Mu'ayyid al-Din Jandi to do so, and his own al-Fukuk tried to open the sealed contents and solve its problems (hall al-mushkilat). Modern specialists agree. Nair cites William Chittick's verdict that the text is "virtually unintelligible" without a lengthy commentary.
Why the Fusus, not the Futuhat, became the battleground
Nair's Introduction presses a practical point: the Futuhat is too large to serve as the ordinary site of dispute. The Fusus, short enough to circulate and dense enough to concentrate the Shaykh's hardest claims, became the book named in fatwas, questionnaires and schoolroom quarrel. Muslim scholars after the thirteenth century often called Ibn Arabi the "author of the Fusus" rather than the "author of the Futuhat," which shows which text carried the reputation.
Qunawi's role is structural, not ornamental. Ibn Arabi did not allow the Fusus to be bound with his other works, and he required those who wanted to study it to go through Qunawi. Qunawi's own al-Fukuk tried to open sealed contents and solve its problems (hall al-mushkilat). He never wrote a full line-by-line commentary, yet he trained Jandi, and Jandi reports that Qunawi's "secret" governed his inward so that God gave him to understand, in the commentary on the prologue, the contents of the entire book. The school thus begins as a chain of transmission around one short text, not as a free-floating philosophy.
Two traditions of reading
| Stream | Who | What they did with the Fusus | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commentators | Qunawi's circle: Jandi, Tilimsani, Kashani, Qaysari, Jami | Explored its depths; reverent but not slavish, and sometimes disagreed with Ibn Arabi (Tilimsani on the fixed entities) | Critics |
| Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328), Ala al-Din Bukhari (d. 841/1438), Burhan al-Din Biqa'i (d. 885/1480) | Listed troubling passages and sought to discredit the teaching at its foundations | Defenders | Shaykh-i Makki Kazaruni (d. 926/1519-1520), Abd al-Rasul Barzinji (d. 1103/1691) |
Makki wrote his two-hundred-page defense at the behest of the Ottoman Sultan Selim I, treating two dozen (24) issues, most taken from the Fusus. Barzinji later translated and expanded it. Both cite the older authorities of the school, Qunawi, Qaysari, Kashani and Jami, and later figures such as Fanari, Maha'imi and Dawani. Their stock phrase, repeated in Persian and Arabic, was that the exoteric scholars attacked the Shaykh's speech and that the source of this was "their lack of understanding" ('adam al-fahm).
Nair notes that Ibn Taymiyya once held Ibn Arabi in high esteem and found the Futuhat beneficial, and changed his mind only after meeting the Fusus and its extravagant claims. Bukhari cited the Fusus less, so Nair's statement of the problems leans on Biqa'i, Makki and Barzinji.
Commentators, critics and Ottoman defenders
The commentators of Qunawi's circle (Jandi, Tilimsani, Kashani, Qaysari, Jami) explored the depths of the Fusus with reverence that was not slavish. The critics (Ibn Taymiyya, Ala al-Din Bukhari, Burhan al-Din Biqa'i) listed troubling passages and sought to overturn the teaching. The Ottoman defenders (Makki under Selim I, later Barzinji) answered point by point with the minimum of context, citing Qunawi, Qaysari, Kashani, Jami and later Fanari, Maha'imi and Dawani.
The stock phrase of the defenders, repeated in Persian and Arabic, was that the exoteric scholars attacked the Shaykh's speech from "their lack of understanding" ('adam al-fahm). Nair does not take that phrase as a blank cheque. He notes where defenders stretched a line, and where a critic was reacting to real ambiguity in the Shaykh's language. The method of the book is therefore comparative: charge first, Ibn Arabi's own words next, then the school's reply, then a judgment about whether the reply keeps both halves of the formula.
Ibn Taymiyya's change of mind matters for the charge sheet. He once held Ibn Arabi in high esteem and found the Futuhat beneficial; he turned after meeting the Fusus and its extravagant claims. Bukhari cites the Fusus less, so Nair's statement of the problems leans on Biqa'i together with Makki and Barzinji. The Introduction thus prepares the reader to hear each later chapter as a return to the same pattern: a one-eyed reading, a two-eyed reply, and the perplexity (hayra) that Ibn Arabi took to be knowledge.
The charge sheet
- Identity. In the Enoch chapter "the Real (al-Ḥaqq, God) is creation" and "creation is the Real"; in the Adam chapter man is "the pupil of the eye" through which God sees.
- No Creator. If God is identical with every known thing, He is not the Creator or Lord of anything (ta'til), and man and world are co-eternal with Him.
- Idolatry valorized. The Aaron chapter lets God be worshipped in the Golden Calf and the idols of the Ka'ba; the Noah chapter sides with Noah's people.
- All paths straight. The Hud chapter says all worship is valid and every worshipper happy, so the next world holds only bliss.
- Distorted Qur'an. The drowning of Noah's people becomes their knowledge of God, and God's deception (makr) becomes their worship of Him.
- Saints over prophets. The saints are said to know God better than the prophets.
Makki and Barzinji answered that the critics read these lines out of context and so caught at best half of what Ibn Arabi said on an issue. Nair's book works through the most frequent of these problems, taking the criticisms mainly from Ibn Taymiyya and Biqa'i, the answers from Makki and Barzinji, and supplementing both with Ibn Arabi's own words and with the commentators those two knew.
How the six charges organise the book
The six headings in the warning box are not a random list. Identity and "no Creator" open Part One on the Oneness of Being. Idolatry valorized and "all paths straight" run through Part Three on naming, worship and mercy. Distorted Qur'an is the theme of Chapters 7 and 8. Saints over prophets is Chapter 6. Perfect Man problems (pupil of the eye, firstness, becoming a form of God) fill Chapters 4 and 5. Nair's plan table is therefore a map of the charge sheet, not a separate table of contents invented for elegance.
Makki treated about two dozen issues in a two-hundred-page defense written at the behest of Sultan Selim I; Barzinji later translated and expanded that defense. Most of those issues were taken from the Fusus.
Plan of the study
| Part | Theme | Chapters | |
|---|---|---|---|
| One | The Oneness of Being ( wahdat al-wujud ) | 1 Huwa-la Huwa; 2 Divine Power and Human Freedom; 3 Incomparability and Similarity | Two |
| The Perfect Man ( al-insan al-kamil ) | 4 The All-Comprehensive Form of Man; 5 Becoming a Form of God; 6 The Seal of the Saints | Three | Interpreting the Qur'an |
Nair asks that the core chapters be read in order, since later discussions rely on earlier ones.
Reading order and the thesis of perplexity
Nair asks that the core chapters be read in order, because later discussions rely on earlier ones. Freedom and compulsion in Chapter 2 presuppose the entities of Chapter 1. The Perfect Man debates of Chapters 4 to 6 presuppose the Levels of Essence and Divinity. The Noah and mercy chapters presuppose the two eyes of incomparability and similarity. Skipping ahead produces the same one-eyed readings the book diagnoses.
The thesis the Introduction leaves with the reader is simple and hard. For every problem in the Fusus, the followers' solution pushes toward perplexity (hayra), which Ibn Arabi took to be knowledge, citing the hadith "Oh God, increase my perplexity in You!" Ibn Taymiyya called the joining of opposites (jam' al-addad) contradiction (tanaqud). The followers called it the harmonizing of views that are outwardly opposed and inwardly complementary. Where critics separate God from creation, true religion from idol worship, wrath from mercy and prophethood from sainthood, Ibn Arabi shows the situation to be less determinate, and he holds that imagination, unlike reason alone, is needed to see it. The Conclusion will name the reader who can hold both as the Possessor of Two Eyes.
Part 1. "All is He, All is Not He"
Chapter 1 takes on the charge that stands behind all the others: that Ibn Arabi made God and the world one thing. Nair's answer runs through the doctrine of the fixed entities and through a family of images (mirrors, stained glass, the Cloud, the Breath) that the school used to say two things at once.
1.1 A label Ibn Arabi never used
Nair starts from a point he calls well established: Ibn Arabi never used the expression wahdat al-wujud in his own works and never set out the doctrine systematically, though he often wrote of the Real Being (al-Wujud al-Haqq). Chittick has argued that using the phrase as a label for his outlook distorts the record. Yet Jami and, after him, Makki and Barzinji happily called earlier members of the school the "proponents of the Oneness of Being". Makki and Barzinji gave about half their defense to issues "related to the Oneness of Being."
Chittick's description of the Shaykh's method is quoted at length. Ibn Arabi explains the idea "in hundreds of different contexts," and his point "does not, in fact, lie in any simple formulation of waḥdat al-wujūd. " Anyone who wants a simple statement, he adds, should be content with the Formula of Oneness. His aim lies in constantly reformulating it "in order to reshape the reader's imagination."
How the phrase became a school
| Stage | Figure | Role in the history Nair traces | |
|---|---|---|---|
| First technical use | Sa'id al-Din Farghani, student of Qunawi | Used wahdat al-wujud in a specific sense later followers did not adopt | Foregrounding wujud |
| Qaysari | First to put wujud , in Peripatetic language, at the head of his Muqaddima , with a second, Sufi approach beside it | Label for a school | Ibn Taymiyya |
| Used "proponents of the Oneness of Being" and "unificationists" ( ittihadiyyun ) negatively | Label embraced | Jami, with support from Jurjani | Turned the name positive; his al-Durra al-fakhira argued the superiority of the wujudiyya |
Chittick is quoted again: "there is no special reason to think that the Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam is about waḥdat al-wujūd." Makki and Barzinji confirm it in practice, since in their sixteen problems connected with the Oneness of Being they seldom discuss wujud, though both wrote introductions on its meaning.
The Real Being and the Necessary Being
Ibn Arabi did speak of Non-delimited Being. Nair quotes chapter 2 of the Futuhat: "Indeed, the Real is found by Himself for Himself (mawjūd bi-dhātihi li-dhātihi)," neither caused by something else nor a cause for something else; "Rather, He is the Creator of the effects and causes." But he did not develop the idea in the manner of the philosophers and theologians. Qunawi's line did, by linking it to Ibn Sina's (d. 428/1037) Necessary Being, the Being necessary in and by itself.
This brought a quarrel with Sa'd al-Din Taftazani, for whom wujud mutlaq names only the general concept of existence, a "being of the mind" with no existence outside it. For him it was nonsensical to say "God is Non-delimited Being." Jurjani was friendlier to the wujudi position.
| Heretical wujudiyya | Tawhid-voicing wujudiyya |
|---|---|
| God is the totality of the world (majmu' al-'alam) | Non-delimited Being is the Necessary Being, and not a mental being |
| God relates to individuals as a universal to its particulars | It is neither universal nor particular, neither cause nor caused |
| Nothing besides the world, and the world is God | It is the Reality of Being, as Ibn Arabi, Qaysari, Jami and Dawani affirmed |
For possible things, being is acquired (mustafad) or borrowed (musta'ar); it is metaphorical, while God's is real. There is one Being, the Real, and the entities of possible things are only receptacles (qawabil) for its manifestation. Nair links this to the Formula of Oneness and quotes Ghazali: "There is nothing in wujūd but God and wujūd belongs to the One Reality." Sha'rani likewise said, "There is no found thing (mawjūd) except God."
1.2 He/not He
Ibn Arabi's own commentary on the Formula is the phrase huwa-la huwa, He/not He. From one side the created thing exists through God's Being and so is He; in a truer sense it has no being of its own and is "needy/poor" toward Him, and so is not He. The key passage turns on Q. 8:17:
Ibn Taymiyya described the Shaykh's view as unification (ittihad): wujud is one, and the being of created things is "identical with the existence of their Creator." Yet he also judged Ibn Arabi closer to Islam than Qunawi and Tilimsani. Nair's reply is that the charge holds only half the position. To keep only the "He" side is to affirm the ithbat of the Formula ("but God") and drop its nafi ("no god"). Ibn Arabi wrote that God is identical to everything in manifestation but not to the things in their essences: "Rather, He is He (bal huwa huwa), and the things are the things."
Makki and Barzinji used this passage as their first answer to the charge of pantheism ('ayniyya). Barzinji writes that the Essence, as source of all properties in the world, "has an aspect of 'sameness' (ʿayniyya) in respect to all things, and an aspect of 'difference' (ghayriyya)." Sameness is half the story; difference is the other half, and Ibn Arabi affirmed each in its place.
"All are He"
The Persian slogan hama ust predated Ibn Arabi by more than a century and was revived by his admirers in Central and South Asia by the 15th century. To critics it showed where one-sided sameness leads: God worshipped equally in the rags of the beggar and the silks of the king. Jami's Naqd al-nusus answers that only the hidden He-ness of things is attributed to God, not their otherness, because the knower's heart holds the Real in both gathering (jam') and separation (farq). Rightly read, "All are He" affirms difference and sameness together, oneness in the presence of manyness.
Jami's mirror analogy
In al-Durra al-fakhira, probably inspired by Fakhr al-Din Iraqi's Lama'at, Jami offers a likeness. One form impressed in many mirrors that differ in size and shape multiplies with the mirrors and differs with them, yet "this multiplicity does not impair (ghayr qādiḥ) its [original] oneness." The One Reality is like the one form; the quiddities are like the mirrors "with their differing preparedness." God is Manifest in each entity in accordance with that entity, "without any multiplicity (min ghayr takaththur) or change (taghayyur) occurring in His Holy Essence."
1.3 The entities are not made and are non-existent
Ibn Taymiyya's charge had parallels in Ibn Arabi's own words, as Makki and Barzinji admitted: "Glory to the One who manifested the things (aẓhara l-ashyāʾ) and is identical with them (wa huwa ʿaynuhā)." But the Shaykh also kept saying that the entities in their essences are non-existent. In the Enoch chapter they "have never smelt a whiff of wujūd" (mā shammat rāʾiḥat al-wujūd). Chittick puts it plainly: "On its own Wujūd simply is, and on their own, the entities simply are not."
The entities are non-existent in God's knowledge, where their realities are fixed forever. Hence the name fixed or immutable entities (a'yan thabita): God's knowledge is unchanging, so its objects are too. Nair gives the school's image: like the fixed stars, which never leave their places yet leave their effects in the world. When God gives them existence they become existent entities, but only in description; the being they have is God's Being coloured by their eternal properties (ahkam) and traces (athar).
Why the critics objected
- God willed to create from nothing, not from some pre-existent nothingness.
- Knowledge is an attribute; it cannot be a receptacle for things.
- A mental existence in God would change whenever an entity changed, placing limits on His omniscience.
- Thingness (shay'iyya) is a thing's concrete reality in the world; the non-existent has no thingness.
- If the entities exist before the world, they are eternally identical with God, and God is removed from the office of Creator (ta'til).
Ibn Arabi used the image of an architect who sees a design inwardly before drawing it: the cosmos is "non-existent in entity (maʿdūm al-ʿayn), perceived by God," who sees it and then brings it into existence.
1.4 Mirror-entities and colour-entities
Even Ibn Arabi's student Tilimsani rejected fixity in knowledge, since it would entail a "shadow" in God, who is Pure Light. He preferred to speak of "non-existent entities" rather than "fixed entities": each entity is simply a ray of the Light. Nair grants that he had a point, but says such objections stayed inside the either/or logic of kalam, while Ibn Arabi wanted to describe the ambiguous situation of the entities, pulled between immutable non-existence and apparent existence.
Makki and Barzinji, following Jami and Iraqi, used two images.
In the mirror image, someone looking at forms in a mirror says the images exist, not the mirrors. The entities, like mirrors, never acquire being; only the forms of Wujud appear in them, each mirror gathering, reflecting and distorting the light in its own way. In the glass image, each colour on the wall seems to exist, but in truth only light has appeared. Nair concludes: "Wujūd is Wujūd, and the entities are entities. And yet, the colors on the wall are "Wujūd/not Wujūd" ("He/not He")."
Loci of manifestation
Ibn Arabi also called the entities loci of manifestation (mazahir), and Nair says he was perhaps the first to use the term in such discussions. As loci, entities display Necessity and source-ness: they become "necessary by virtue of another." In themselves they stay possible things in the darkness of non-existence. Every name applied to an entity is applied to "the Being of the Real" within it, while the entities remain in their root without any rightful claims.
A third level between being and nothing
Pure non-existence exists only in the mind. Since the non-existence of the entities is not impossible, it must be relative. Ibn Arabi's passage on the two voices is one of the most vivid in the chapter: non-existence tells the entities, "Be as you are in non-existence, for you have no right to come to be in my level." But the Real says to each possible thing, "Be!" (Q. 16:40).
| Point of view | Status of the fixed entities | |
|---|---|---|
| God's knowledge | Relatively existent: witnessed forever, and His knowledge of them is His knowledge of Himself | The created world |
| Relatively non-existent: their existence is acquired ( mustafad ) or attributed ( mudaf ) | The Necessary Being | No share in non-existence |
The first line of the Futuhat praises the One who brought things into existence "from a non-existence (min ʿadamin) and [from] its non-existence (wa ʿadamihi)." The non-existence of a non-existence, Ibn Arabi later explains, is Sheer Being: the things are "existent for God," fixed in their entities, and "not existent for themselves." Qunawi's followers called this the shadow of wujud, citing Q. 25:45.
Not made
Ibn Arabi and the commentators held that the fixed entities are both non-existent and unmade (ghayr maj'ul). Bukhari counted this among the most horrendous consequences of the doctrine. Chittick explains it: "When a bird, a tree or a man enters into existence, God does not "make" it a bird, a tree or a man. He only bestows existence upon a reality that He has known for all eternity." Qunawi adds that if they were made, something originated would occur in God's Essence. Ibn Arabi drew the order from Q. 16:40: a thing cannot be created without being willed, willed without being desired, or desired without being known. So knowledge comes before making, and in eternity separation occurred between God and creation: "the Real is not identical with the fixed entities."
1.5 The Cloud, the Barzakh, the Breath
Q. 35:15 calls people "the poor toward God" and God "the Independent/Rich." The entities are poor absolutely, as He is independent absolutely. The second symbol is the Cloud (al-'ama') of the hadith in which the Prophet, asked where our Lord was before creating, replied: "He came to be in a cloud, neither above which nor below which was any air." Ibn Arabi identified it with the Supreme Barzakh, the reality between Being and non-existence where creation begins to separate from the Real.
In the Cloud the forms of the genera of the cosmos appear "one thing after another" until the genera are complete, and the individuals then come into being "through an engendering that is a transmutation from a being to a being (min wujūd ilā wujūd), not from a non-existence to a being." Nair gives the school's homely images: the entities are incorporated in the Cloud like moisture in a rain cloud, they grow as the date tree from its pit, they lie in Adam as the seed in his loins, they float like dust visible only in sunlight.
The Breath and the words
The Cloud is also the Breath of the All-merciful (nafas al-Rahman). The entities are the words of God: unarticulated in the Breath, articulated in the cosmos. The breath of a speaker is his hidden side become manifest as letters, and the readiness of the places of articulation in mouth and throat matches the readiness of the fixed entities within the Breath. Because "the words of God are never exhausted" (Q. 31:27), the storehouse of immutability never runs out. In the Moses chapter: "The words of God are none other than the entities of existent things."
The Breath is called All-merciful because through it God relieves (naffasa) the entities from the constriction of their non-existence, and relieves His own Names of their lack of displaying effects. Being takes the colours of the entities as water takes the colours of the cups it is poured into, yet Being and non-existence do not unite, as in the two seas of Q. 55:19-20.
Love attaches only to the non-existent
- The phrase "Oneness of Being" is a later label, hardened by Ibn Taymiyya's polemic and then embraced by Jami's circle.
- The answer to "unification" is "He/not He": the world is the same as God in manifestation and different from Him in its essence.
- The fixed entities are relatively existent for God and relatively non-existent for themselves; they are unmade because they are eternally known.
- Mirrors, stained glass, the Cloud and the Breath each say the same thing in another register: only one Light appears, coloured by what never exists.
Part 2. Divine Power and Human Freedom
If the fixed entities determine what God knows, do they also bind what God can do, and what we do? Chapter 2 answers both questions the same way: Yes and No.
2.1 The charge: a God bound by His objects
To the critics, Ibn Arabi's doctrine was worse than the philosophers' eternal world. The philosophers at least kept the eternal cosmos distinct from God; Ibn Arabi joined God and the entities in an eternal union, and both views removed God from His office as Creator and as "Independent of the Worlds" (Q. 3:97).
Ibn Taymiyya's argument runs like this:
- Knowledge follows (tabi') its object, not the reverse.
- Power follows both the object of power and the object of knowledge.
- So if God's knowledge of the entities governs their future states, God must follow what they present to Him and is needy (muftaqir) toward them.
- Then He is not Lord of the Worlds nor Master of the Day of Judgment, since He has no servants over whom to exercise Lordship (rububiyya) or Divinity (uluhiyya).
A second charge follows: human responsibility (taklif) passes to the fixed entities. How could God reward or punish people whose entities predetermine all their acts?
Why the entities looked worse than philosophical eternality
Nair opens the chapter by restating the critics' fear in plain theological terms. If the entities have an eternal "mental existence" in God's knowledge or unarticulated speech, then God and the entities are joined in an eternal union. Philosophers who held the cosmos eternal at least kept it distinct from God; here, the critics said, God's office as Creator (Khaliq) and as "Independent of the Worlds" (Q. 3:97) is emptied. He looks influenced by the entities whose agency seems to surpass His own. The charge is therefore not a side quarrel about vocabulary. It is a claim that Ibn Arabi's symbolism of the entities' "life" removes God from His office.
The Qur'anic hinge the Shaykh and his defenders cite is "There is no changing the words of God" (Q. 10:64). The entities are the words of God, fixed in His unarticulated speech and existent in the cosmos as His articulated words. Nair's task in the chapter is to show how the school answers without either dissolving the entities into pure nothing or turning them into co-gods. The answer will run through the distinction of Essence and Divinity, the two senses of creation, and the Yes and No that also governs human freedom.
2.2 The Essence and the Divinity
The Essence (Dhat) has Non-delimited Freedom: it is determined by nothing within or outside itself and is not the cause of anything, since a cause seeks its effect and the Essence needs nothing. Its infinite freedom, however, includes the desire for delimitation, which Nair glosses as freedom from the limit of non-delimitation. So God takes on Names such as Powerful, Creator and Lord, which call for objects of power, creatures and vassals. That is the level of the Divinity (al-Ilah). Ibn Arabi: "Freedom (ḥurriyya) is a station of the Essence (al-maqām al-Dhātī), not of the Divinity (lā al-Ilāhī)." As a God, He is tied to the divine thrall "just as a master is tied to the existence of the slave."
At the level of the Divinity each Name calls forth its own objects: the All-knowing calls for objects of knowledge, the Potent for objects of power, the Desiring for objects of desire. Divine Perfection lies in this penetration of power into its objects; Essential Perfection is Non-delimited Independence from all of it. At this level, Nair concedes, the critics saw a truth: God's self-disclosure proceeds in accordance with the realities of the entities. He gives His Being without withholding, and they limit it according to their natures.
Ibn Arabi goes further and says there is no freedom in cosmic existence at all, only mutual dependence: "Therefore, the situation is dependent from two sides (ṣāra l-amr mawqūfan min ṭarafayn), each side depending upon the other." The Essence compels the cosmos only through the Divine Names, and the creatures know nothing of the Essence except from behind the barzakh of the Divinity. And when God is said to be compelled, the compeller is Himself: "Nothing compels Him but His knowledge (mā jabarahu illā ʿilmuhu); His knowledge is His Attribute; and His Attribute is His Essence."
2.3 Decree, predestination and the two creations
The Ezra chapter of the Fusus names the two levels. "Know that the Decree (qaḍāʾ) is the determination (ḥukm) of God (Allāh) of all the things," in accordance with the limit of His knowledge of them, and His knowledge follows what the known things give Him from what they are in themselves. "Predestination (qadar) is the temporal unfolding of the things as they are in their entity (ʿaynihā), without addition (min ghayr mazīd)."
Ibn Arabi matched this to two senses of the verb khalaqa. It can mean to determine or give shape (qaddara), as when Jesus made the shape of a bird from clay (Q. 5:110), or to bestow existence (awjada). God determines the fixed entities, and both determines and creates the existent entities.
| Creation of determination | Creation of existentiation | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Arabic | khalq al-taqdir | khalq al-ijad | Relation to "Be!" |
| Prior to the command | Accompanies the command | Who follows whom | The objects of knowledge follow God the Determiner |
| God follows the objects His Names are connected to | Linked to | Decree ( qada' ) | Predestination ( qadar ) |
Qaysari says relational Attributes have two aspects: as identical with the Essence they do not follow their objects; as distinct, "knowledge follows the known." In this way, Nair concludes, God first determines the entities and then is determined by them.
2.4 Freedom and compulsion
Bukhari pressed the human side. If the entities are united with God, there is no difference between Necessary and possible being, between Lawgiver and the one addressed by the Law; and if the entities are fixed, their content controls each destiny, so devotion without choice (ikhtiyar) is meaningless. Ibn Arabi, he thought, held the Law in low regard because it addresses only the phantasms of the sensory world.
Nair's reply: since human acts are "He/not He," human choice is real and unreal. It is real on its own level, because human beings share in freedom. But they are not Real Wujud, so they are compelled to choose guidance rather than misguidance. Servanthood "does not accept emancipation (ʿitq)." The servant is a servant and the Lord a Lord: "the Real (Ḥaqq) is the Real and the creature (khalq) a creature."
The specific Lord
Every person is compelled by his own fixed entity, which is his specific Lord (rabb khass), determined for him from eternity. Nair quotes the image "like the architect who pictures in his mind what he wants to build." The plan is lord of the building but not the Lord of All. The Ishmael chapter says that God is "One in Essence (aḥadī bi-l-Dhāt) but All (al-Kull) through the Names," and that no existent thing has anything from God "except its own specific Lord."
Two kinds of preparedness
If the servant can only follow his specific Lord, does it matter whether he chooses guidance or misguidance? Ibn Arabi did not equate them, and the commentators explain why with two kinds of preparedness (isti'dad).
| Essential preparedness | Accidental preparedness | |
|---|---|---|
| Universal, unseen ( kulli ghaybi ), essential ( dhati ) | Particular, visible ( juz'i shahadi ), accidental ( 'aradi ) | Fixed, because the entity is unmade |
| Changes through the servant's efforts: the Law and the disciplines of the Path | Tied to the eternal reality | Tied to the locus of self-disclosure |
Jami adds that guidance and misguidance concern only the locus, not the eternal reality. The practices of the Law, following the command "Characterize yourself by the Divine character traits!", aim at the servant's realization of his own non-existence before his Lord.
Why freedom and compulsion must be said together
Once the Essence is distinguished from the Divinity, the same Yes and No that governs ontology returns in anthropology. The specific Lord of each entity, and the two kinds of preparedness (isti'dad), let the school say that the servant is free in one respect and compelled in another without collapsing into either absolute libertarianism or absolute compulsion. Freedom as servanthood is not a slogan that cancels the decree; it is the form freedom takes when the servant knows that his acts are his and are God's gift. The closing note of mercy in the chapter is not an escape hatch. It is the last word of a theology in which the decree does not make God a tyrant and human action does not make man an independent creator.
2.5 Freedom as servanthood
The highest freedom turns out to be perfect servanthood. When the servant sees that his entity is non-existent and that non-existence is its intrinsic attribute, poverty disappears, "and he remains free in the state of possessing non-existence (baqiya ḥurran fī ʿadamiyyatihi), like the freedom of the Essence in Its Being." The common Sufi tongue says the same more simply: "So freedom (ḥurriyya) is a verified servitude of God."
The servant of self-love, by contrast, has run away from his Master's kingdom but cannot leave it, so he wanders aimlessly.
No argument against God, and the last word of mercy
Since creatures choose their own destinies, they have no argument against God; His is the conclusive argument (Q. 6:149). God says "Be!" and the properties that appear follow the fixed entity. The servant does not know until the end whether the name Guide or Misguider will rule his entity. God never withholds His munificence; it is the entity that displays the name Withholder. Yet if the servant asks, "why did you not make me a saint?", God remains All-merciful, knowing that by His own will the servant was compelled to choose.
- God is free as Essence and bound as Divinity, and what binds Him is His own knowledge, which is His Essence.
- Creation has two senses: determination, where things follow God, and existentiation, where God follows things.
- Each servant is ruled by a specific Lord, his own entity; freedom is following it, compulsion is being pushed from outside it.
- Effort matters at the level of accidental preparedness; the end of everything is mercy.
- Since creatures choose their own destinies in accord with their entities, they have no argument against God, and His is the conclusive argument.
- The answer to each question of the chapter, whether God is bound and whether man is free, has the same shape as the answer of Chapter 1: Yes in one respect and No in another, never a simple Yes or a simple No.
Part 3. Incomparability and Similarity
Chapter 3 moves from being to naming and worship. If everything names God, is God named by swine and idols? Nair shows how Ibn Arabi joined incomparability (tanzih) to similarity (tashbih), and how that balance shapes his treatment of beliefs, idols, the Golden Calf and the Christian claim about Jesus.
3.1 The problem of names
The kalam theologians spoke mostly of Attributes. A hadith gives God 99 Names ("one hundred minus one"), explaining Q. 7:180, though other enumerations ran to 146, 275 or 1,001. Ibn Arabi often quoted one authority's view that only 83 of the Most Beautiful Names are known with certainty, and in other contexts said the Names are infinite, because the self-disclosures of the Essence never end: "Wherever you turn there is the face of God" (Q. 2:115).
Ibn Taymiyya objected that if everything in the cosmos is a name of God, then God is named by swine, devils, dogs and unbelievers, and tied to unbelief, iniquity, idol worship, begetting, illness and hunger. Worse than ordinary anthropomorphism, Ibn Arabi seemed to affirm identity. The critics gathered the evidence from the Fusus:
| Chapter of the Fusus | Statement the critics cited | |
|---|---|---|
| Adam | God is described by any description by which humans describe themselves | Abraham |
| God is "our food" and we are "His food" | Shu'ayb | The realities of the Names are nothing but the world |
| Noah | Noah's people were right to reject a call to the incomparable God | Moses / Aaron |
What a name is
For Ibn Arabi a name is "something that occurs from a trace, or something from which a trace comes to be." Two ideas follow.
- Particular names. Every trace or articulated word in the Breath of the All-merciful is a name, so the existent entities are all names. Each possible thing has its own divine name that gives it its specific face, and since possible things are infinite, the names are infinite.
- Universal names. The particular names point to universal realities, the roots of all things, which demand loci of manifestation.
Ibn Arabi adds the brake at once: every name that expresses a meaning is God's Name, "However, it should not be ascribed to Him," either because of the Law or because of courtesy toward God (adab).
Courtesy and conditionality
Nair argues that Ibn Arabi showed more courtesy toward God than theologians who restricted the Names to seven or eight "leader" Names or to the "Four Pillar" Names (Living, Knowing, Desiring, Powerful), because his approach could take in the harder scriptural reports: God's face, hands, eyes, feet, His sitting on the Throne, and hadiths in which He laughs, wonders and descends. Nair cites "My Lord came to me in the best of appearances" and "O son of Adam, I was ill and you did not visit Me."
Yet the true knower never ascribes to God a name that does not come from Him. "So He is not named except as He has named Himself." The principle is tawqif, conditionality: God decreed this "so that the creatures would learn courtesy toward Him."
Same words, different meanings?
The Adam chapter's claim means only that knowledge of God starts from the created order. "We describe Him by no quality (mā waṣafnāhu bi-waṣfin) without ourselves being that quality," except the necessity specific to the Essence. "When we witness Him (idhā shahidnāhu), we witness ourselves (shahidnā nufūsanā)."
| Case | Ibn Arabi's position as Nair quotes it | |
|---|---|---|
| Knowledge | In one place only the word is shared ( ishtirak fi l-lafz ); in another, knowledge "in itself is a single thing" qualified by whoever has it, originated in us and eternal in Him | Sitting ( istiwa' ) |
| A shared meaning exists: sitting is an intelligible reality that can be attributed to every essence by its nature; there is no need to turn it away from its apparent meaning | Scriptural names | Only "names of the Names" ( asma' al-asma' ); the realities lie beyond them |
Since reflection on the Essence is impossible, there remains only reflection on engendered existence, through the signs in the horizons and the souls (Q. 41:53). The early commentators added a rule: only human perfections, never deficiencies, can be attributed to God.
3.2 To affirm incomparability alone is to limit
The critics read the Noah chapter as attacking incomparability. Nair gives the fuller passage. One who asserts incomparability "is either ignorant (jāhil) or is a man of poor etiquette" only when he "stops there and sees nothing other than this." A few lines later comes the other half: "Likewise, one who asserts His similarity but does not assert incomparability qualifies Him and limits Him; he knows Him not." And: "whosoever, in knowing Him, brings together the assertion of incomparability and that of similarity…knows Him."
Reason, Ibn Arabi says, has come with "one-half the knowledge of God (niṣf maʿrifat Allāh)": incomparability and the negation of many properties. The Lawgiver affirmed what reason had stripped away. The Names of incomparability (Independent, One) are those the Essence demands for itself; the Names of similarity (Compassionate, Forgiving) are those it demands as a god, and the servant can be qualified by them as a locus, not in his own entity.
To affirm incomparability alone is to restrict God by declaring Him non-delimited: He "is Non-delimited Restriction (muṭlaq al-taqyīd)." To affirm similarity alone is to confine Him to one form, which is the basic problem of idol worship. Scripture names only some of His delimitations: the Cloud, the Throne, the lower heaven, heaven and earth, His being with us, and His being identical to us.
"Our food"
Read in context, the Abraham chapter line is "you are His food through the properties (bi-l-aḥkām), and He is your food through Wujūd." God sustains the entities through His Being; the entities allow His being Creator and Provider to become manifest. God is not limited by either relation, since as the Necessary Being He owns all perfections; only the Divinity seeks loci.
3.3 Beyond the god of beliefs
The deepest charge was idolatry. Nair quotes the Aaron chapter: Aaron's failure to restrain the people of the Calf "was a wisdom from God manifest in existence, that He is worshipped in every form." The Hud chapter warns readers not to bind themselves to "a specific belief (ʿaqd makhṣūṣ) and reject others as false," but to be "a substance (haylūla) for the forms (ṣuwar) for all beliefs," since God is too vast to be confined to one form.
Contextualized, Nair argues, these lines are much less permissive than critics claimed. Ibn Arabi did not embrace the paths of idolaters and unbelievers; he recognized the legitimate impulse to worship through forms.
Two commands, two paths
The key verse is Q. 17:23, "Your Lord has decreed (qaḍā) that you worship none but Him," which can be read two ways.
| Engendering command ( amr takwini ) | Prescriptive command ( amr taklifi ) | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | God's eternal "Be!" to the whole cosmos (Q. 36:82) | God's instruction to follow the prophets | Response |
| Obeyed without possibility of disobedience | Can be obeyed or disobeyed | Preparedness | Eternal, essential |
| Accidental, visible | Path | The path of God ( sirat Allah ): general, embraces wretched and felicitous | The path of the Blessing-Giver ( sirat al-Mun'im ): leads to felicity |
From God's side the two commands are one: "All acts in respect of being acts, belong to God." From ours they are distinct. Through the engendering command, "God only wills the actual situation. And His will in the things is simply that they be what they are." Through the prescriptive command human beings choose, and if they choose misguidance they have only themselves to blame, as Satan will remind them (Q. 14:22).
The path of Muhammad
The path of the Blessing-Giver is the path of the prophets named in Q. 42:13 and Q. 6:90. Among the paths Ibn Arabi singles out the path of Muhammad: the Muhammadan leader "chooses the path of Muḥammad (ṣirāṭ Muḥammad) and leaves aside the other paths," while acknowledging and having faith in them, because Muhammad's Law is all-inclusive. "His Law embraces them (sharʿuhu yataḍammanuhā), but they do not embrace It."
So Ibn Arabi, as a follower of Muhammad, affirms the face of God in every path and every knot of belief ('aqd), without worshipping idols. The god of beliefs assumes limits; the Non-delimited God is embraced by nothing. God is "with every object of belief" and does not leave a conception when it changes into another.
The People of the Mark
Because each person's god of belief is his own carving, his praise of it is praise of himself, and he gets no help from it in disputes, since no made god is stronger than its maker. Ibn Arabi cites Junayd on water taking the colour of its cup, and adds that the Real created in beliefs is the first thing the All-merciful has mercy on, after Himself. The knower affirms each belief's colour without taking it on, and prays, "My Lord, increase me in knowledge."
3.4 The Divinity clothed in forms of belief
The critics pressed further. The Aaron chapter calls passion (hawa) "the greatest (aʿẓam) and most exalted (aʿlā) locus of disclosure in which [God] is worshipped." Ibn Arabi seemed to grant idolaters an excuse at the Resurrection, even worshippers of Manat, al-'Uzza and al-Lat, and to belittle prescribed worship as accidental.
Nair answers that for Ibn Arabi the failure of idol worship is not the worship of God in forms but association (shirk): the Meccans worshipped idols as intermediaries "to bring" them "nigh in nearness to God" (Q. 39:3), giving them the status of deputies.
| Associationism (shirk) | Corporealism (tajsim) |
|---|---|
| Distinguish the god in the idol from the god behind it, but worship both | Make God identical to the idols, worshipping Him as a body |
| Idols as bodies for angels or intercessors | Absorbed in adorning the idols; some deny the Maker (ta'til) |
| Comes from asserting incomparability | Comes from asserting similarity |
Noah's people fled from his call (Q. 71:6), Ibn Arabi suggests, because he did not combine the two perspectives. Muhammad did, in Q. 42:11: "There is nothing like Him, and He is the Hearing and Seeing." Even the first half combines them, since laysa ka-mithlihi shay' can be read as saying that there is nothing like His likeness, a negation that contains a likeness.
Ibn Arabi affirmed the impulse to worship God in engendered loci such as idols, stars, sun and fire, but the messengers called to the worship of the Essence. Idolaters fail to see the Divine He-ness in their object and so worship mere "names" (Q. 12:40). Hence the rule on taking:
The Calf and the Messiah
Aaron's lenience acknowledged the Face of the Real in the Calf, but the Calf was a passing form that perished at Moses's hand, and Moses's rebuke was truer: the Israelites had strayed from the path of the Blessing-Giver. Similarly, Ibn Arabi criticized a group of Christians for incarnation (hulul). They did not err in saying separately that God is the Messiah and that He is the son of Mary; they erred in joining the two, which restricted God's self-disclosure to Jesus, who is His word cast into Mary. They would have spoken rightly had they said, "It is God who gives life through him."
Essential and accidental worship
The follower of Muhammad's path ranks beliefs by degrees of excellence and worships only God. Ibn Arabi advises: "He who counsels his own soul should investigate (yanbaghī lahu an yabḥath), during his life in this world, all doctrines (jamīʿ al-maqālāt) concerning God." For the realized Muhammadan the two commands finally merge: the servanthood ('ubudiyya) he chose becomes one with the servitude ('ubuda) of all things, and he rejoins his root in non-existence. He is a pure servant toward the prescriptive command and a pure slave toward the engendering command.
Sinners, by contrast, follow a voluntary path of their own gods of belief toward wretchedness, though the original disposition (fitra) stays latent in them; in chastisement they come to see that their unbelief was the essential worship of the blasphemer. The chapter closes by pointing to the Perfect Man, the subject of Parts 4 to 6.
- Everything names God, but only names that come from Him may be ascribed to Him: courtesy limits naming.
- Incomparability alone restricts; similarity alone limits; knowledge joins both, as Q. 42:11 does.
- All paths reach God by the engendering command; only the prophets' path reaches felicity by the prescriptive command.
- Idolatry's error is association and confinement, not the presence of God's face in forms.
Part 4. "Created in his/His Form"
With Chapter 4 the book turns from the Oneness of Being to the Perfect Man (al-insan al-kamil), an expression that, unlike the first, Ibn Arabi used himself throughout the Fusus and the Futuhat. Nair shows how the hadith of Adam created "upon His form" became the ground of a doctrine of man as the all-comprehensive being, and how the commentators handled the puzzles of his eternity, his firstness and his lastness.
4.1 Why the Perfect Man troubled the critics
Human perfection in works, states and knowledge was, Nair says, one of Ibn Arabi's central preoccupations, and he was never far from the theme of sainthood, as Chodkiewicz points out. The scriptural base was the hadith that "many have become perfect among men, and among women Mary and Āsiya [wife of Pharaoh]." The trouble was that Ibn Arabi equated perfection with realizing the Divine Form. A hadith says God created Adam "upon His form" ('ala suratihi), so "the human being is defined specifically by the Divine Form."
- Incarnationism (hulul) or unification (ittihad): the Perfect Man claims divinity, as in the ecstatic cries "Glory be to me (subḥānī)!" or "I am God (anā l-Ḥaqq)!"
- Pharaoh's error: he too called himself "lord, most high."
- Sainthood above prophethood: the saint takes knowledge from the same source as the prophet "without intermediary" (bi-la wasita), and Pharaoh was given a higher rank than Moses.
- Social danger: the doctrine could arm charismatic Sufi leaders against the scholars and the institutions of the Law.
Nair illustrates the last fear with Knysh's account of the followers of Abd al-Karim Jili (d. 811/1408), who wrote that he met the Perfect Man in the form of his master Isma'il Jabarti (d. 806/1403). Yemeni scholars called this plain incarnationalism, and in Zabid the Sufis, emboldened by the sultan's support, defied the jurists with noisy gatherings in the mosques. In Knysh's words, "with the sultan's sympathy squarely on the latter's side, the ʿulamaʾ had to toe a fine line."
The early answers
Nair calls the attacks a straw man. Fakhr al-Din Iraqi (d. 688/1289) observed that no one says an image is incarnated in or united with a mirror; people say only that "there was no image at first, and now the image has appeared." Sa'id al-Din Farghani (d. 699/1300) defined unification as "the Eternal's subjugation (qahr al-qadīm) of the attributes of the originated thing," not the joining of two different beings into one, and rejected the outward reading as a "fatuous doctrine and false supposition." Behind both stands Ibn Arabi's maxim that "the realities never change."
So the school separated three things: God; the Divine Form in the Perfect Man; and the false form of divinity in those who claim the Form as their own. At root man is a servant who has never smelt a whiff of Wujud. The Perfect Man is in fact the only creature who fully recognizes his ontological poverty.
4.2 The pupil of the eye
The commentators read the pronoun of the hadith as "upon the form of the Real," while noting that the form of the Real is also the form of creation. So the Perfect Man is both, with a hidden form in the unseen and a manifest form in the visible world. The passage the critics singled out is Ibn Arabi's play on insan, which means both "man" and "pupil": Adam is so called because "he is to the Real what the station (manzila) of the pupil (insān) of the eye is to the eye; i.e., that through which vision occurs." And: "It is through [Perfect Man] that the Real looks upon creation."
The critics concluded that God depends on man to see the world. Ibn Arabi had already answered in the opening line of the Adam chapter: "The vision a thing has of itself in itself is different from the vision it has of itself in another thing." God knows Himself, and the cosmos within that knowledge, perfectly; vision through another is the Perfect Man's domain and adds nothing to God's knowledge.
Spirit of the world, seal on the treasury
Two more images complete the picture.
| Image | What it says about the Perfect Man | |
|---|---|---|
| Pupil of the eye | That through which sight occurs; the eye's reason for being | Spirit of the body |
| God made the cosmos a well-proportioned form without a governing spirit; the Perfect Man is that spirit, and the cosmos is his body | Seal of the ring | The King seals His treasury with it; while the seal is present, the treasury is safe, and the Perfect Man is the vicegerent of Q. 2:30 |
Jami explains that God taught the Perfect Man His Names because he "is the spirit of the world (rūḥ al-ʿālam) and the world is his body," governing it through the Names as a spirit governs a body through its faculties. When he leaves, the world decays as a body does when the rational soul departs. Through him, Ibn Arabi says, God exercises His mercy in creation.
The treasures are the Names
"[God] taught Adam the names of all things" (Q. 2:31): most exegetes took these to be the names of creatures, but Ibn Arabi took them primarily as the Divine Names. To be created in the form of the name Allah, the All-Comprehensive Name, is to carry in potential all the Names, of mercy and of wrath alike, and so to be "an all-comprehensive engendered being" (al-kawn al-jami'). The commentators add that the world too is on the form, but the form of man is God's comprehensive unity while the world is His particularized form.
The commentators insist that sura here is not the theologians' "attribute" nor the philosophers' sensory form. The Perfect Man is not knowing or powerful as God is; he holds the Divine Form by bestowal and is "necessary by virtue of another." And the distinction is only potential in most of Adam's progeny. Animality is the common condition, which is why philosophers defined man as "rational animal." Animal man is called to follow the prophets and recover the original disposition (fitra) he has forgotten.
4.3 Originated and beginningless
The Adam chapter calls the Perfect Man "originated (ḥādith) and beginningless (azalī); and the perpetual (dāʾim) and endless (abadī) configuration." Critics asked how one being could be angel and animal at once. Scripture added a complication: the reports that the Prophet's light or spirit was created before Adam, "I was a prophet when Adam was between water and clay," and "The first thing God created was my light."
The commentators' formula for his uniqueness: he is "the receptacle for all beings," eternal or originated, while the particular beings of the world cannot receive Divinity "and God is not a receptacle for servanthood."
Eternity and origination of the entities
The general answer comes from Part 1. The entities have only an attributed or shadow being in God's knowledge, a possibility that enters existence only if God wills, which separates Ibn Arabi from the philosophers, who denied will in the Necessary Being. In the Moses chapter, eternality is attributed to the entities with respect to their immutability and origination with respect to their existence. Ibn Arabi also describes a Universal Reality, "the root (aṣl) of all existents," of which "If you say that it is the world, you have spoken the truth," and equally if you say it is not the world, or is or is not God.
4.4 The problem of man's firstness
Does the Perfect Man's precedence among the entities make him God's rival in eternity? The commentators say no.
| Being | Kind of eternity or origination | |
|---|---|---|
| God | First without beginning: eternity as the negation of firstness; not preceded by non-existence | Disengaged spirits |
| Originated in essence ( hudūth dhati ) but not in time, since they have no elemental existence | Perfect Man | Like the spirits in his eternal aspect, and also originated in time in the elemental world |
Ibn Arabi's "second object of knowledge," the Universal Reality belonging to God and the world, is "eternal (fī l-qadīm) when the Eternal is described by it, and temporally originated (fī l-muḥdath) when the temporally originated is described by it."
Nair adds a historical judgment. Ibn Arabi never described the entities as existing with a mental being; he saw them as non-existent realities distinct in themselves. Some commentators, Qaysari and Jami at least, seem to have erred in attributing a shadow or mental being to the Perfect Man in God's knowledge. Even so, that error is better than the philosophers' eternal world, which issues from the Essence as a necessary concomitant rather than by choice and will.
4.5 Two senses of creation, again
In the Futuhat Ibn Arabi writes that the Real "determines the things (yuqaddiru al-ashyāʾ) in eternity without beginning," but does not existentiate them there, "for this is impossible." His two reasons: an existentiator can only give existence to a non-existent, so existentiation has a beginning; and to say the world exists in eternity is to deny God's unique firstness. So the Perfect Man may be called determined in eternity, which reverts to God's knowledge, but not existent there. Nair notes that a search of the Futuhat shows Ibn Arabi calling the entities sometimes originated, sometimes originated in time, sometimes eternal.
First in intention, last in creation
The Perfect Man is "the first in intention and the last in creation." He is first because he comprises the realities of the cosmos, the Muhammadan Reality or Reality of realities, matching the hadiths "I am the master of the children of Adam" and "Adam and those who come after him (dūnahu) are under my banner." He is last because he crowns the created order. Jami gives the sequence: first the Supreme Pen, then the Guarded Tablet, the Throne, the Footstool, the elements, the seven heavens, the productions, and then man, "the end of these creatures."
The perpetual configuration and the end of the world
As long as perfect human beings remain in the world, the King's treasury has a guardian. When the last one is transferred to the next world, the treasures go with him, the cosmos loses its replenishment, and it is destroyed, as a body decays when the soul departs; he then becomes the everlasting seal of the otherworldly treasury. Jami calls him "the pillar (ʿumud) of the Heavens (samawāt) and the earth," and cites the hadith that the Hour will not come while someone in the world says "Allāh, Allāh," the repetition showing that only one who truly knows God, with perfect recognition, can say the Name that way.
- "Upon His form" means the Perfect Man carries all the Names in summary, as the cosmos carries them in detail.
- Pupil, spirit and seal are analogies, not claims of incarnation; the realities never change.
- He is beginningless only as determined in God's knowledge, and originated as existent; God alone is first without beginning.
- First in intention, last in creation: the world lasts as long as he does.
Part 5. Becoming a Form of God
If the Perfect Man bears the Divine Form, how does he differ from Pharaoh, who said "I am your lord, most high," or from al-Hallaj (d. 309/922), who said "I am the Real" and was punished for it? Chapter 5 answers through two cases from the Fusus: Pharaoh, the false form, and the early Baghdad Sufi Abu Sa'id al-Kharraz (d. ca. 286/899), "a tongue of the Real."
5.1 The problem
Some early followers defined the Perfect Man through Divinity itself; Qunawi called him "the perfected human reality of the Essence, one of whose levels is the Divinity (al-ulūhiyya)." Critics such as Ibn Taymiyya equated Ibn Arabi's view with Pharaoh's: both identified the Lord with the whole cosmos. The hadith qudsi on supererogatory works, in which God becomes the servant's "hearing through which he hears, his eyesight through which he sees, his hand through which he grasps, and his foot through which he walks," seemed to make man and God instruments of each other. And the Enoch chapter called Kharraz one of God's faces and even a name of God.
Perfect Man, Pharaoh and "I am the Real"
Critics of the Perfect Man doctrine saw a further problem in the Divine Form (surat al-Haqq). Pharaoh's "I am your lord, most high" (Q. 79:24) and Hallaj's "I am the Real" looked, to them, like the same claim of Divinity (uluhiyya) that Sufis and some early followers attached to Perfect Man. Qunawi could describe Perfect Man as "the perfected human reality of the Essence, one of whose levels is the Divinity." Ibn Taymiyya and others therefore equated Ibn Arabi's views with Pharaoh's: both seemed to identify the Lord with the whole of the cosmos, even if Pharaoh denied a transcendent God.
The primary issue was unification (ittihad), often tied to the hadith qudsi of nearness through supererogatory works: when God loves the servant, He becomes the hearing, sight and hand by which the servant hears, sees and strikes. Nair's chapter will refuse a flat answer. The difference between a false form and a true form will be a difference of levels, not a difference of entities, and the Magicians, Pharaoh and al-Kharraz will show how the same words can be blasphemy or courtesy depending on the station from which they are spoken.
5.2 Levels, not entities
Nair's key is Ibn Arabi's teaching on levels (maratib). Every divine name and every form in the cosmos has a level no other has, so the levels are infinite, and they are the "degrees" of the Qur'an. Excellence belongs to the level, not to whoever occupies it.
Whoever knows that excellence belongs to the levels "will never deceive himself into thinking that he is more excellent than anyone else," though he may say one level is higher than another. This is the station of the knowers. God, Independent of the Worlds, transcends lordship altogether; there is no ranking in Wujud itself. So Ibn Arabi speaks of God as a god, as of a sovereign as sovereign, not as a human being: "There is no profit in speaking except about the realities of the levels."
Assuming the traits by losing the self
The Muhammadans follow the command "assume the character traits of God," but more is not always higher. A human who shows the name Subjugator (Jabbar) without balancing qualities will not be a good person. Ibn Arabi defines adornment as "the manifestation of the attributes of servitude continually," even while one assumes the Names; without that, the Names turn against the servant, as Q. 40:35 warns of the heart that is "magnificent, overbearing." The result of assuming the Names is a diminishing of stature until the human attributes are annihilated. Lowering himself along the path of "not He," the servant is carried up in respect of "He."
| Divine root used | Ibn Arabi's verdict | |
|---|---|---|
| Magnificence ( kibriya' ) held inwardly as one's own | Blameworthy in every respect | Magnificence used outwardly in a permitted situation, as a form without its spirit |
| Praiseworthy for the sake of the form | Miracles shown by prophets | Mandatory, since they are Lawgivers |
The Perfect Servant can be called by every one of God's Names, one by one or in groups, "though all the Names together are not ascribed to him in a single word," which is how Lord and Perfect Servant stay distinct. Unlike God, for whom Allah denotes all the Names, the Perfect Man has neither a name nor a station: his station is the "station of no station" (maqam la maqam).
5.3 The false form of Pharaoh
Ibn Arabi famously rejected the common view that God refused Pharaoh's last-moment faith in Q. 10:90-92 (taken up in Part 8). Here the issue is his telling of Pharaoh's confrontation with Moses in the Moses chapter. Pharaoh threatens anyone who takes another god with prison (Q. 26:29); Moses seems to accept his authority in the test and even to confirm him as his people's highest lord. Ibn Arabi wrote: "Thus his words, 'I am your lord, most high' (Q 79:24) were correct (ṣaḥḥa)." To the critics, this was slander of a prophet.
Nair, following Makki, Barzinji and the early commentators, reads it as true of the outward form and false of the inner meaning.
| Pharaoh | Moses |
|---|---|
| A materialist (dahri): he and his people held no doctrine of incomparability | Spoke to them in their own terms: "Lord of the Heavens and the Earth," "Lord of the East and the West" |
| Reflective knowledge (fikri) of the "rational animal" | Innate knowledge (fitri) of the Perfect Man |
| Language of thought (lisan al-fikr) | Language of the original disposition (lisan al-fitra) |
| Spoke from the station of Divinity, ignorant of his entity's true station | Spoke from the station of servanthood |
| Accidental, acquired lordship, a trace of God's essential lordship | Acknowledged that lordship by allusion (ishara), giving the level its due |
Pharaoh's form summed up the religious forms of his civilization; his seat was the central symbol of his people's cosmos, and he held absolute temporal authority. So "lord, most high" was his rank in outward form. But from the standpoint of the Perfect Man the excellence of that rank belonged to God, the "Uplifter of Degrees," who was manifest in it and who for a time limited the level at which Moses could show his own authority. When Moses cast his staff, the self-disclosure in his level left a lasting trace on Pharaoh, and authority passed from animal man, a self-disclosure "in a false form," to the Perfect Man.
The Magicians
Pharaoh's Magicians heard Moses, saw his miracles and submitted to the Lord of the Worlds. Yet when Pharaoh ordered their hands and feet cut off and their crucifixion, they accepted his judgment, because they saw that only God was manifest in Pharaoh's rank. They chose punishment in this passing world from the outwardly manifest lord rather than punishment in the next from the Non-manifest Lord, and so kept the levels God had set.
Pharaoh's fault was to take the Names Overbearing, Slayer and Terrible in Punishment as his own rather than observing courtesy. Ibn Arabi notes that when the spirit forgets itself it may say "I am Allāh" or "Glory be to me!" under the sway of a state, which is why such words "have never issued (lam yaṣduru mithl hādhā l-lafẓ) from a messenger, or a prophet, or a friend who is perfect in his knowledge." The refuge is servanthood. "The meaning of "servant" (ʿabd) is "lowly" (dhalīl)." God created jinn and men "only to serve Me" (Q. 51:56) because only these two kinds claimed divinity and were proud over His creatures, and to be lowly toward Him one must first know Him.
Claiming a level one does not hold
Pharaoh claimed a level he did not hold. That sentence is the chapter's hinge. The Magicians, by contrast, recognised a truth when they saw it and spoke from a different preparedness. Nair uses the contrast to keep the doctrine of form from sliding into a blank cheque for any claim of Divinity. The form of God is not a costume a ego can put on. It is a level that appears when the self is lost and the Names act through a servant who does not compete with his Lord. The later section on al-Kharraz will show the positive case: a tongue of God that does not unify servant and Lord into one entity.
5.4 Al-Kharraz, a tongue of God
When the Perfect Man realizes the Divine Form, he realizes the station of Allah, the joining of opposite Names (jam' al-addad). Ibn Arabi gave this station to Kharraz. Asked, "Through what do you know Allāh?", Kharraz replied, "Through the fact that He brings together opposites (jamʿ bayna l-aḍdād)," and recited Q. 57:3: "He is the First and the Last, the Manifest and the Non-manifest."
Faces and tongues without unification
To call Kharraz a face or tongue of God is not to affirm oneness in every respect. Each specific face (wajh khass) is the unique face God turns to one creature: "In each existent thing, God has a specific face (wajh khāṣṣ) through which He casts to it from Him what He wills." Scripture shows God speaking through servants: when the prayer leader says, "God hears the one who praises Him!", it is God who speaks on his tongue and hears through the congregation. In the hadith of nearness through required works (qurb al-fara'id), the servant who effaces his attributes becomes God's instrument (ala), as in Q. 8:17, Q. 9:14 and Q. 48:10.
Ibn Arabi explains the throwing verse precisely. Secondary causes are veils that will not be lifted, and the greatest veil is your own entity, which God keeps because knowledge of Him can exist only in it. So He obliterates you from yourself: "You did not throw," He obliterated him; "when you threw," He established the secondary cause; "but God threw." "However, God only threw with the hand of His Messenger."
So there is identity between Kharraz and God, since God is the source of what Kharraz's entity shows, yet Kharraz remains one delimitation and colour within Non-delimited Wujud. Why does Kharraz name God while other things name originated things? Because of his preparedness. Pharaoh too was a name of God, and God acted through his form when he maimed the Magicians, but Pharaoh did not see it; that was the Real acting in a false form. Kharraz saw the Real acting through the creature, so he was called a name of God, "and God was his meaning."
Servant and Lord do not compete
- Excellence belongs to levels, not to those who occupy them; knowing this is the knower's protection against pride.
- Pharaoh's lordship was real in outward form and false in meaning; Moses and the Magicians gave the level its due without mistaking it.
- Kharraz is a "tongue of God" because he witnessed God as the agent in him; Pharaoh was a locus without that witness.
- The Perfect Man's mark is pure servanthood, the "station of no station."
Faces and tongues without erasing servanthood
The school's language of faces and tongues lets God speak through the servant without the servant becoming God as an entity. Servant and Lord do not compete for the same slot. When al-Kharraz speaks, the words are God's in one respect and the servant's in another, which is another instance of He/not He. Nair's balance here matches the balance of earlier chapters: keep both sides, refuse unification as a metaphysical smash-up, and refuse a dry transcendence that never lets God be present in a human form of speech.
Part 6. The Messenger Takes His Knowledge from the Seal of the Saints
Did Ibn Arabi rank saints above prophets, and himself above the Prophet? Chapter 6 takes the two places where the charge was sharpest: Abraham's dream in the Isaac chapter, and the Seth chapter's vision of a wall missing two bricks.
6.1 The charge
Critics accused Ibn Arabi of ranking saints above prophets. He wrote that saints know God without the intermediary of the Angel of Revelation; he said in the Ezra chapter that sainthood, unlike prophethood, "never comes to an end"; he faulted Noah's call, Moses's rebuke of Aaron and Abraham's reading of his dream. Behind this, they feared, lay a loosening of loyalty to the Law, and a theory that bred rival claims to be a "seal," saint worship and shrine visitation. The Seth chapter's line that "the Messengers see [God]…from the niche" of the Seal of the Saints seemed the clearest proof.
Nair first reframes the Fusus itself. It is an epitome of the knowledge or tasting (dhawq) of some two dozen prophets of the Qur'an, received, Ibn Arabi said, in a vision from Muhammad, the fountainhead of their wisdoms. Qunawi called it one of the last and most complete books sent down to the Shaykh, from the Station of Muhammad, and "like the seal of everything comprised within the perfections of each of them." It transmits the prophets' wisdom; it does not slander them.
Saints above prophets? What the critics heard
One worry about the Perfect Man doctrine was that it concentrated on sainthood or friendhood with God (walaya). Critics accused Ibn Arabi of ranking the saints above the prophets. The Shaykh suggested in many places that the saints possess a superior knowledge of God, accessed without the intermediacy (la wasita) of the Angel of Revelation. In the critics' ears, he minimized the legislative (tashri') function of Perfect Man, the authority of prophets and messengers who brought laws. By minimizing the Law and the responsibility (taklif) of believers, he seemed to challenge the moral, social and political order. Those attracted to the knowledge of the saints would, the charge ran, lose loyalty to the Law as they busied themselves with "higher truths."
Proof seemed ready to hand in the Ezra chapter's claim that sainthood, unlike prophethood, never comes to an end (la tanqati'u abadan). Nair's chapter will not deny the texts that worried the critics. It will relocate them: Abraham's dream, the wall missing two bricks, and the four seals will show sainthood as the inner aspect of every prophet, not a rank that cancels prophecy.
6.2 Abraham's dream
Q. 37:101-109 tells of Abraham's dream that he would sacrifice his son, the son's consent, God's call, "Abraham, you have confirmed the vision," and the ransom "with a great sacrifice." (Nair follows the book's reading that the son is Isaac.) Ibn Arabi's comment:
So God ransomed Isaac "from Abraham's imagining (min wahm Ibrāhīm)." Critics read this as God paying for a prophet's mistake.
Two answers
Prophets can err without losing infallibility. Makki and Barzinji cite Q. 9:43, where God rebukes the Prophet for accepting the hypocrites' excuses. If exoteric scholars admit that error without scandal, Ibn Arabi may discuss errors of earlier prophets.
The deeper point. Abraham did verify (saddaqa) the vision, even without interpreting it, because the meaning of Isaac's form in the dream was the realization of annihilation (fana'). God never wanted Isaac's death; He wanted the sacrifice of the souls of both father and son. "The son is identical with his father (al-walad ʿayn abīhi). He did not see that he was sacrificing anything other than himself." God wished to remove from Abraham's heart the portion attached to his son, so that nothing remained but His Bosom Friend. Abraham passed "the manifest trial."
Nair supports this with the Futuhat on revelation: "Revelation (al-waḥy) begins with dream-visions rather than sense perception (al-ruʾyā dūna l-ḥiss) because intelligible meanings (al-maʿānī al-maʿqūla) are closer to imagination than they are to sense perception." Imagination gives sensory form to whatever reaches it; in sleep this is a dream-vision, in waking an "imaginalization." He also quotes Toshihiko Izutsu: the ram was the symbol of a ritual, and the ritual was "ultimately a symbol of man's offering up his own soul in sacrifice." Since Muslims were told to follow the creed of Abraham (Q. 16:123), that Law could not include child sacrifice. Nair concludes that Ibn Arabi held Abraham among the possessors of resoluteness (ulu l-'azm).
6.3 The space for two bricks
Ibn Arabi treats sainthood and prophethood twice in the Seth chapter and once in the Ezra chapter, condensed versions, as Claude Addas observed, of longer discussions in the Futuhat that were just short enough to be misunderstood. The first Seth passage introduces the seals:
The messengers, being also saints, see from the niche of the Seal of the Saints; and the Seal of the Saints, though he follows the Law of the Seal of the Messengers, "is lesser (anzal) from one point of view, just as he is more exalted (aʿlā) from another."
The second passage gives the image. The Prophet likened prophethood to a wall complete but for one brick, and he was that brick. The Seal of the Saints sees a space for two bricks, gold and silver, and sees himself set in both. He fills the silver place because "he follows outwardly the Law of the Seal of the Messengers," and the gold place because he receives inwardly from God the secret of what he follows.
Functions, not persons
Nair's central point: the relation is between functions within one person. The right question is not which person is higher but which function. Sainthood is the higher function because it is general and never ends, and "Friend" (Wali) is a Name of God, while "prophet" is not. Qaysari: "The circle of this station [i.e., sainthood] is more complete (dāʾiratuhu atamm) and greater than the circle of prophethood."
| Rank, after Jami | Levels combined | |
|---|---|---|
| Messengers | Three: messengerhood, prophethood, sainthood | Prophets |
| Two: prophethood, sainthood | Saints | One: sainthood |
Jami adds that when some saints said sainthood is higher, they meant the aspect of sainthood in the prophet, not that the sainthood of a saint who is a follower (tabi') is higher than the prophethood of the prophet he follows. The prophet is nobler than the following saint on both counts. A saint who is not a prophet is not inerrant (ma'sum) but protected (mahfuz). Nair notes that Taftazani took the core of this teaching, without naming its source, into his commentary on Nasafi's creed.
Functions, not a tournament of persons
The wall of bricks in the Seth chapter is easy to misread as a personal boast. Nair, following the book, treats it as a claim about functions. The gap near the Syrian corner in the 599 vision is a figure for a completion of sainthood's work inside the Muhammadan wall, not a claim that a saint outranks the Messenger. Who the seals are remains debated inside the school (Jesus, Ibn Arabi, Ali, the Mahdi appear in different lists), but the structural claim is steadier: prophecy brings Law; sainthood is the inner face that does not end when legislative prophecy is sealed.
6.4 Who are the seals?
Muhammad is the Seal of the Prophets, uncontroversially, and also the book from which every earlier prophet drew, as in "I was a prophet when Adam was between water and clay." Haydar Amuli (d. after 787/1385) said that the Prophet "precedes all the prophets in respect to reality (ḥaqīqa) and follows them in respect to form." Makki and Barzinji called the earlier prophets lamps lit from Muhammad's first lamp.
The hard case is that Ibn Arabi said in the Futuhat that he saw himself in the space of the two bricks. Did the Prophet then take knowledge from Ibn Arabi? The answer: Muhammad himself is the Seal of Muhammadan Sainthood, since sainthood is a level within his own reality, so in taking from the Seal he takes from himself. Ibn Taymiyya objected that Muhammad could not seal sainthood when many saints came after him. The commentators answered with the second meaning of seal, as guardian: a king who takes a treasure from his treasury through the guardian he appointed does not receive it from the guardian.
The four seals
| Seal | Cycle, in the scheme current by Makki's time | |
|---|---|---|
| Ali | The great ( kabir ) seal | Ibn Arabi |
| The lesser ( asghar ) seal: restricted, Muhammadan sainthood | Jesus | The greater ( akbar ) seal: general sainthood, closing the grand cycle from Adam |
Qaysari's scheme gave Jesus general sainthood and Ibn Arabi Muhammadan sainthood; the Shi'ite commentators gave the first to Ali and the second to the Mahdi; Makki's fourfold scheme blended them. Nair also cites the reports "Deputyship to prophethood only lasts thirty years," and "I am the Seal of the Prophets, and you, Oh ʿAlī, are the Seal of the Saints."
Perhaps one of the seals
Ibn Arabi's dream in Mecca in 599, written some thirty years before the Fusus: he saw the Ka'ba built of alternating gold and silver bricks, complete except for a gold and a silver brick missing near the Syrian corner, and saw himself set in their place. "I myself was these two bricks (kuntu anā ʿayn tilka labinatayn) by means of which the wall was completed and the Kaʿba made perfect." Interpreting it, he wrote that "perhaps" ('asa) he was among those by whom God sealed sainthood.
Nair's verdict: Ibn Arabi's theory of sainthood "had far greater explanatory power than any alternative suggested before or after him."
- The Fusus is an anthology of prophetic wisdoms, not a polemic against prophets.
- Abraham verified his dream by sacrificing himself; the uninterpreted image found its meaning in the Ram and in the Hajj rite.
- Sainthood outranks prophethood as an inward function within the same prophet, never as a saint over his prophet.
- Ibn Arabi saw himself as perhaps one of Muhammad's delegated seals, guardian of a treasury that remains the Prophet's.
Part 7. Interpreting the Qur'an
Ibn Arabi wrote no separate commentary, yet Nair says he drew all his teachings from the Qur'an. Critics called his readings ta'wil, interpretation by opinion, and said they distorted revelation. Chapter 7 asks what his method actually was, then tests it on Noah: God's "deception" and the drowning that became knowledge.
7.1 The charge
So saturated with the Qur'an were his books, a 17th-century follower remarked, that critics would have to expunge the Word of God to destroy them by water or fire. Critics nevertheless held that he overturned doctrines such as the threat of hellfire (wa'id) and the falsehood of idol worship, and hid his meaning behind obscure terms. Three examples recur: Noah's people as true knowers whose drowning (Q. 71:25) was their knowledge of God; Aaron's failure with the Calf (Q. 20:90-94) as divine wisdom; and the torments of the Fire turned into winds of comfort (Q. 46:24). Ibn Taymiyya called the Noah reading among the "most ugly alternations and distortions of God's speech."
Allegory, opinion and the fear of distortion
A major dimension of Ibn Arabi's writings was interpretation of the Qur'an, though he wrote no separate commentary. So infused were his books with the Word that a seventeenth-century follower remarked that critics would have to expunge God's Word or make the works unrecognisable to destroy them by water or fire. Critics still condemned him for allegorical interpretation (ta'wil), which they heard as interpretation according to his own opinion (tafsir bi-l-ra'y). The effect, they said, was distortion (tahrif) of form and meaning: overturning the threat of hellfire (wa'id), softening the falsehood of idol worship, and nullifying well-attested senses of stories and words.
Three examples recur in Nair's statement of the charge: Noah's people as knowers whose drowning (Q. 71:25) was knowledge of God; Aaron's failure with the Calf as divine wisdom; and the torments of the Fire turned into winds of comfort (Q. 46:24). Ibn Taymiyya called the Noah reading among the "most ugly alternations and distortions of God's speech." Chapter 7 answers by refusing a single label and by testing the method on Noah without cancelling the Fire for the associators.
7.2 Between ta'wil, ishara and 'ubur
Nair argues that Ibn Arabi endorsed no single method. Qunawi's followers embraced ta'wil, and modern scholars split. A. A. Afifi wrote that Ibn Arabi condemns ta'wil in theory "but in practice he indulges in a far worse method of understanding the Qurʾan than taʾwīl." James Morris and William Chittick insist instead that he honoured the literal sense. Morris calls it "spiritual literalism"; Chittick says that to suggest God's real meaning lies below the surface "amounts to blatant ill manners and discourtesy (sūʾ al-adab). The literal sense of the text must always be honored."
| Approach | What it is | Ibn Arabi's attitude |
|---|---|---|
| Rational ta'wil (ta'wil 'aqli) | Explaining doctrines away as allegory to fit reason | Opposed: faith then rests in one's own interpretation, not the report |
| Ta'wil from God | Being taught by God what the word "goes back" to (Q. 3:7) | Accepted, for the god-fearing (Q. 2:282) |
| Allusion (ishara) | A meaning pointed to beyond the apparent one | Favoured where fitting; modelled on Mary pointing to Jesus (Q. 19:29) |
| Crossing ('ubur) | Passing from the outer expression to the inner meaning; school of Ibn Barrajan (d. 536/1141) | Accepted only if the outer sense is never abandoned |
The god-fearing reader "makes the Book stand up (aqāmū l-kitāb) after it had been lying down": he declares it free of his own interpretation, prays to be told what God meant, and receives untainted knowledge, since "in itself, reflection is not preserved from error for anyone." If we interpret any part of the Qur'an and claim that is what the Speaker really meant, "then the degree of faith (darajat al-īmān) will disappear from us."
Sufis use allusion, Ibn Arabi says, as Mary did, "because of the people of lies and deviation," though their speech is reality and a commentary on the Book's beneficial meanings. Those who cross over and leave the outer sense behind are "rational thinkers," slaves of their reflection.
The shoreless ocean
The one requirement is that the interpreter take his knowledge from God. Ibn Arabi did not require support from earlier exegetes, and he added a safeguard: "no scholar can declare wrong an interpretation that is supported by the words," but no one is obliged to adopt it except the interpreter and those who follow his authority. His discoveries, Nair notes, were therefore not binding on critics, who could hardly quibble with them.
The commentators' line put ta'wil at the centre. Kashani's Ta'wilat al-Qur'an, often copied under Ibn Arabi's name, did most to tie the label to him; Fanari built a hermeneutic on Qunawi's foundation; Makki and Barzinji argued that all authoritative Sufi interpreters, from Sulami to Fanari, kept the outer sense. Ibn Ata Allah al-Iskandari (d. 709/1309) said a Sufi reading is no overturning, "though it would have been if they had said, 'there is no meaning in this verse besides this.'" Barzinji ranked Sulami (d. 412/1021), Ruzbihan Baqli (d. 606/1209), Ibn Barrajan, Ghazali and Ibn Arabi together and held that a legitimate ta'wil cannot break the rules of Arabic.
Nair grants that Ibn Arabi did not always keep to his principle that meanings must come from the words. Sometimes he resembled Ghazali, who read the hadith "Angels do not enter a house in which there is a dog (kalb) or a graven image (ṣūra)" as saying that divine unveilings do not enter a heart holding blameworthy traits and attachment to other than God, where the link between word and meaning is obscure. But on the afterlife Ibn Arabi insisted the descriptions, from the questioning in the grave to Seraphiel's trumpet, are not allegories.
Why no single label covers the practice
Modern scholars split in ways that mirror the medieval quarrel. A. A. Afifi wrote that Ibn Arabi condemns ta'wil in theory "but in practice he indulges in a far worse method of understanding the Qur'an than ta'wil." James Morris and William Chittick insist that he honoured the literal sense: Morris's "spiritual literalism," Chittick's warning that to put God's real meaning below the surface "amounts to blatant ill manners and discourtesy (su' al-adab)." The one requirement that runs through them is that the interpreter take knowledge from God, declare the Book free of private opinion, and never abandon the outer sense when crossing to an inner one.
The commentators' line put ta'wil at the centre. Kashani's Ta'wilat, often copied under Ibn Arabi's name, did most to tie the label to him. Makki and Barzinji argued that authoritative Sufi interpreters from Sulami to Fanari kept the outer sense. Ibn Ata Allah's rule of thumb remains useful: a Sufi reading is no overturning "though it would have been if they had said, 'there is no meaning in this verse besides this.'" Barzinji added that a legitimate ta'wil cannot break the rules of Arabic. Nair grants that Ibn Arabi did not always keep to his own principle that meanings must come from the words, yet on the afterlife he insisted the descriptions are not allegories.
7.3 Deception and drowning in the Noah chapter
Nair reminds us that the Great Sacrifice was primarily, for Ibn Arabi, the sacrifice of Abraham's soul, an additional meaning beside the ram, not a denial of it. The harder case is the Noah chapter's five-page interlaced (mamzuj) commentary on Q. 71:5-12 and 21-28, which, Nair says, inverted the meaning of almost every verse. The Yemeni critic Ibn Ahdal reportedly said, "By God, the very presence of the Fuṣūṣ among the Muslims is a gross injustice to Islam."
| Verse | Exoteric sense the book summarises | Ibn Arabi's reading | |
|---|---|---|---|
| "by night and by day," "openly and in private" (71:5, 8-9) | Noah's persistent preaching | Acknowledging the partial truth of each group's god of belief, praising them while blaming them (al-thana' bi-lisan al-dhamm) | "my calling only increased them in flight" (71:6) |
| Their arrogance | He did not combine incomparability and similarity in one call | "they have devised a mighty device" (71:22) | The people's plots against Noah |
| The call to God is a deception devised by God Himself | "they were drowned, and admitted into a Fire" (71:25) | Punishment here and hereafter | Drowning in the Seas of Knowledge, which is perplexity |
God's devising
"The calling to God is a deception devised by the one called," Ibn Arabi writes, meaning God, not Noah's people. The idolater who thought he had tricked Noah was still inviting to God, through the name Misguider rather than the name Guide, since God is both. Makki and Barzinji note that God calls Himself "the best of devisers" (Q. 3:54) and warns that none feels safe from His devising "but the People of the Lost" (Q. 7:99). The difference: when God deceives, He invites to the truth through a false appearance; when man deceives, he dresses falsehood as truth.
Message, messenger and recipient seem distinct to the ignorant; the knower sees that all point to the one Essence, present in the mosque, the cloister, the tavern and the Ka'ba. "He is with you wherever you are" (Q. 57:4). It is humans who are absent, because animal man covers the fitra. Only one who has actualized it can say, "I did not see a thing, except that I saw God in it."
Drowning as knowledge
For the wayfarers, Noah is the shaykh and his people the travellers on the Path, and the flood is immersion in divine knowledge. For the Muhammadan friends of God, "admitted into a fire" means "a fire in the very entity of water," a knowledge that joins opposites, the non-delimitation in beliefs or station of no station of the Folk of Allah. Nair's balance is clear: Ibn Arabi saw a partial truth in each idol of belief, not the absolute truth of idolatry, and allowed that some of Noah's people may have worshipped God with innate knowledge; the majority, who associated partners with God, went to the Fire.
- Ibn Arabi tied himself to the letter of the Qur'an and rejected rational allegory; new meanings must be given by God and supported by the words.
- No single label (ta'wil, ishara, 'ubur) covers his practice; the commentators chose ta'wil.
- His readings are not binding on those who do not accept his authority.
- The Noah chapter reads God's devising and the drowning as invitation and knowledge, while still sending the associators to the Fire.
Part 8. The Hermeneutics of Mercy
The last core chapter takes the two positions that, with the Oneness of Being, drew the longest debates of all: the faith of Pharaoh (iman Fir'awn) and the end of the Fire's torments (fana' al-nar). Behind both, Nair finds one principle: a good opinion of God, and the precedence of mercy over wrath.
8.1 A good opinion of God
Ibn Arabi held that no scholar can reject an interpretation the words support, and that the interpreter answers for it. What an interpreter knows of the Speaker shows in his reading. He often cited the hadith qudsi, "I am with my servant's opinion of me (anā ʿinda ẓann ʿabdī bī), so let his opinion be good," and took its second half as a command. His own good opinion followed another hadith: "My mercy takes precedence over my wrath." He told of his teacher Abu Ishaq Tarif, who said that whoever praises him "has only described me with his own attribute."
The two issues mattered because they challenged a putative consensus, not merely an esoteric allusion. Ismail al-Muqri (d. 836-837/1433) lampooned the Shaykh for honouring the worst of unbelievers; his followers answered by recalling the vastness of God's mercy to those who had frightened believers into despair. Barzinji's figures show the weight of the debates:
| Topic in al-Jadhib al-ghaybi (2021 edition) | Pages | |
|---|---|---|
| All criticisms answered | 450 | Wahdat al-wujud |
| about 80 | Iman Fir'awn | 50 |
These three issues fill almost half of a text that treats 24 problems. Nair warns that Ibn Arabi's statements on both were not as conclusive as some followers wished.
8.2 The faith of Pharaoh
The core verses are Q. 10:90-92. As the sea overtook him, Pharaoh said, "I believe that there is no god but He in whom the Children of Israel believe; I am of those that surrender." The reply came: "Now? And before you did rebel," and "So, today We shall deliver you in your body (al-yawm nunajjīka bi-badanika), that you may be a sign to those after you." A putative consensus held that he did not die a believer. Ibn Arabi, Nair says, was responsible for the sophistication of the later debate, which came to marshal dozens of verses.
The first passage: a comfort for Pharaoh
Pharaoh's wife Asiya, one of the perfected women, told him that Moses would be "a comfort for me and for you!" (Q. 28:9). Ibn Arabi reads this as speech inspired by God: Moses was a comfort to her through her perfection, and to Pharaoh "by the faith (īmān) that God bestowed upon him at the drowning." God took him "pure and purified," before he could commit any sin, since submission "removes (yajubbu) that which is before it." Pharaoh became a sign of God's solicitude "so that none might despair of the mercy of God," for "none despairs of the Spirit of God except the People of the Unbelievers" (Q. 12:87).
The second passage: certain of salvation
The exoteric reading was that Pharaoh, certain he would die, confessed as a mere performance out of despair, so his faith was refused (Q. 40:85). Ibn Arabi turns the argument.
| Exoteric scholars | Ibn Arabi |
|---|---|
| Certain of death, he confessed in despair (ya's) | He saw the Israelites walking on the dry path and was not certain of death; he was filled with hope (raja') |
| Faith at the sight of God's might is refused (Q. 40:85) | That verse means faith does not prevent seizure in this world; the People of Jonah (Q. 10:98) show it can profit in the next |
| Not the case of one in the presence of death who believes | God responds to "the man in need" (Q. 27:62); "what need of Divine Mercy is greater than Pharaoh's" |
| "We shall deliver you in your body": only his corpse was saved | "salvation was his, both in sense and in meaning": soul spared from punishment, body cast ashore as a sign |
He believed, Ibn Arabi says, certain of salvation, and was saved, "but in a different form from what he desired." God showed his body dead so that his people would not say he had hidden himself. Ibn Arabi adds a rule: God takes no one but as a believer, meaning those in the presence of death, who witness what is there; that is why sudden death and being killed unawares are feared, since such people are taken as they were. A Futuhat passage describes the faith that Moses and Aaron's call left in Pharaoh as a leaven: "That ferment did not cease acting on his interior being" until the drowning ended his ambition and he turned to the poverty hidden within him.
Saved, yet punished
Pharaoh's salvation was secondary for Ibn Arabi; what interested him was the knowledge unbelievers show. Unlike Noah's people, who gained knowledge in drowning, Pharaoh became "one who witnesses the actual situation" before his passing. Yet he still faces punishment and a curse: "He shall go before his people on the Day of Resurrection and lead them to the Fire" (Q. 11:98). Faith restored the rights of God but not the rights of people: the Israelites he wronged, the children he killed, the people he misled.
| Passage | Pharaoh's punishment | |
|---|---|---|
| One Futuhat passage | Limited to the drowning, "the punishment of the Last (ākhira) and of the First (ūlā)" (Q. 79:25); "not more than the trial of salt water" | Another discussion |
| Tied to those he misled; imaginal chastisement in the Barzakh, then sensory chastisement at the Resurrection as he watches his people punished | His people (Q. 40:45-46) | Exposed to the Fire morning and evening in the Barzakh, then the "most intense chastisement" |
Pharaoh and Bilqis
Even sincere faith is ranked. In the Solomon chapter, Ibn Arabi compares Pharaoh's "I believe in the one in whom the Children of Israel believe" with the Queen of Sheba's "My Lord! Surely, I have wronged myself, and I submit with Solomon to God, Lord of the Worlds" (Q. 27:44). She submitted to God, not to Solomon, following Solomon's own submission; Pharaoh specified his Lord, copying the Magicians' "Lord of Moses and Aaron," and spoke "under the property of time." "She was more understanding than Pharaoh," and the interpreters spoke of a great distance between them.
8.3 From torments to sweetness
The critics said Ibn Arabi turned the Fire into a place of bliss. The texts are a few lines in the Ishmael and Job chapters. God is praised for keeping His promise (wa'd), not His threat (wa'id): He said He would not fail His messengers (Q. 14:47), and "We shall pass over their evil deeds" (Q. 46:16). The Ishmael chapter poem says that when the wretched enter their abode, "they have pleasure (ladhdha) and bliss (naʿīm), different from (mubāyan) the enjoyment of the Garden, though the Reality is One."
Wrath ceases with the torments
The Job chapter: those who think God's wrath never ceases hold a poor opinion of Him. "The final outcome (maʾāl) of the People of the Fire is the removal of the torments (izālat al-ālām)." Since "the essence of the torments is the essence of Wrath," wrath ends when the torments end. This does not mean, Nair stresses, that people leave the Fire or that it cools; Ibn Arabi, unlike some theologians, held that the Fire remains as the locus of wrath. Mercy simply has precedence in the final outcome.
The Hud chapter adds: "There is nothing but beliefs (fa-mā thamma illā l-iʿtiqādāt). And all of them are right (al-kull muṣīb)." Every correct person is rewarded and every rewarded person happy, "even though he may suffer for a time in the Abode of the Hereafter." The error of each believer is to bind God to one belief, and that error causes him to suffer.
Three states of the people of the Fire
Pleasure and pain are relative to constitution (mizaj). Some are made so that the Garden could never please them. Ibn Arabi: after mercy embraces them, the people of the Fire "will praise God for their not being in the Garden"; "So, be wherever you are (fa-kun ḥaythu kunta)!" Each abode is made lovable to its people, "from it they were created, and to it they will be returned."
Why mercy wins
- Wrath is a thing. "God says, "My Mercy embraces all things" (Q. 7:156), and His Wrath is a thing (wa ghaḍabuhu shayʾ). Hence His Mercy has embraced It."
- Grammar. The Qur'an calls the people of the Garden perpetual in it, the feminine pronoun pointing to bliss; for the Fire the pronoun points to the Fire (feminine), not to torment (masculine). What lasts is their presence in the Fire, not the torment.
- Essential and accidental. Mercy comes from the side of Being and Necessity; evil and ugliness from the side of possibility and non-existence. Existence is "Sheer Good," evil only accidental, so evil's fruits cannot last.
- First obedience. The possible thing's first act is to hear and obey "Be!"; every disobedience is an accident, "and the end (al-nihāya) and conclusion (al-khātima) always have the property of the precedent."
- The race. "Do they reckon, those who do ugly deeds, that they will precede Us?" (Q. 29:4). The sinners race toward vengeance, but God, as Ever-forgiving and its sister Names, gets there first: "This is the utmost limit of generosity."
- The prodigal verse. If forgiveness were only for the repentant and righteous, God would not have told the prodigal not to despair (Q. 39:53).
The two Abodes are also God's "Two Hands" or "Two Handfuls." One handful lies under the Names of His Affliction, the other under the Names of His Bounty, so bliss and torment are not their only defining marks. Names keep their loci in each abode, but the fruits of human evil, arising from possibility, cannot persist once free choice ends.
The circle closes in mercy
Nair's conclusion is that Ibn Arabi's own words belie the critics. The people of the Garden will see God's face; the people of the Fire will remain veiled from Him, and if the veil were lifted they would feel shame for the disobedience they chose. Each group is pleased with what suits its constitution.
Wrath is an accident, "and accidents disappear." God "embraces all things in mercy and knowledge" (Q. 40:7), and wrath is not named in that embrace. So when the affair returns to its Originator, "in going back, the affair is immersed in mercy."
- Ibn Arabi's readings of Pharaoh and the Fire both flow from a good opinion of God and the precedence of mercy.
- He argued that Pharaoh died a believer but left the final word to God, and kept his punishment for the rights of others.
- The Fire endures and its people stay veiled; what ends is the torment, as wrath gives way to mercy.
- His case rests on scripture and grammar, not on allegory: he took the descriptions of the next world literally.
Conclusion. Interpreting the Shaykh al-Akbar
Nair closes by gathering the threads: the critics' one-eyed reading, the role of imagination, and perplexity as the form knowledge takes when both eyes are open.
Reason, revelation and the rational thinkers
Across the three areas of the study, Nair says, Ibn Arabi and his followers, above all the Ottoman defenders Makki and Barzinji in Qunawi's line, cleared away misunderstandings that critics kept alive. Many scholars admired the Shaykh's sanctity while remaining troubled by his views. Among them were the "rational thinkers" whom Ibn Arabi criticized for trusting their intellects rather than revelation. Of such a thinker he wrote: "If this person who rationally considers the Essence of God were just (law anṣafa hādhā l-nāẓir fī Dhāt Allāh), he would not consider God's Essence and would have faith in what has come from God."
Some of his ideas were absorbed into the wider tradition, most successfully, Nair suggests, by Mulla Sadra (d. 1044/1635-1636), whose works, in Seyyed Hossein Nasr's words, "contain literally hundreds of references to this Andalusian master of Islamic gnosis."
Imagination before and after Ibn Arabi
For Ibn Sina and his followers imagination was a subjective power, strongest in prophets, that dressed philosophical truths in symbols. Nair quotes McGinnis and Acar on the prophets' imaginations turning emanated knowledge into "symbols and images." Philosophers read the scriptural afterlife as allegory: Seraphiel's trumpet as the soul's intellectual awakening. Following Chittick and Corbin, Nair says Ibn Arabi was the first to give imagination an objective and universal function in knowing God and the cosmos.
| Philosophers before Ibn Arabi | Ibn Arabi | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Imagination | A subjective human power | Also an objective world between spirits and bodies | Scriptural imagery of the next world |
| Allegory for rational meanings | Taken literally, perceived by imagination | Its work | Symbolizing truths for the many |
| Corporealizing meanings and subtilizing sensory things | Example | Trumpet = intellectual awakening | Knowledge seen "in the form of milk" |
What the Ottoman line cleared, and what remained hard
Across the three areas of the study, Nair says Ibn Arabi and his followers, above all the Ottoman defenders Makki and Barzinji in Qunawi's line, cleared misunderstandings that critics kept alive. Many scholars admired the Shaykh's sanctity while remaining troubled by his views on the Oneness of Being, the Perfect Man and Qur'anic hermeneutics. Among them were the "rational thinkers" whom Ibn Arabi criticized for trusting their intellects rather than revelation. His path-saying was "Fear God and God will teach you" (Q. 2:282). Of the rational examiner of the Essence he wrote that if that person were just, he would not consider God's Essence and would have faith in what has come from God.
Some of his ideas were absorbed into the wider tradition. Nair points especially to Mulla Sadra, whose works, in Seyyed Hossein Nasr's words, "contain literally hundreds of references to this Andalusian master of Islamic gnosis." Absorption is not the same as domesticating. The Conclusion's claim is that each faculty has a field (maydan) in which it roams and beyond which it should not step. Reason brings half the knowledge of God, incomparability; the Lawgiver brought both halves, "while rational faculties remained perplexed." Imagination is not a decorative extra. It is the second eye without which the first eye's half-truth becomes a whole error.
He/not He revisited: the Possessor of Two Eyes
Those who see with the eye of reason alone grasp half the truth; only the Possessor of Two Eyes reaches the goal. In ontology and theology the two eyes are incomparability and similarity; in anthropology, eschatology and exegesis the same rule of ambiguity returns. Is man created or eternal, free or determined, animal or divine, Pharaoh or Kharraz? Do sinners receive torment or pleasure? Seeing with both eyes leads to perplexity, because what each faculty understands perplexes the other. God addressed the senses and imagination with reason's disengagement, and they said, "We have nothing of that in our hands"; He addressed reason with imagination's similarity, and it said the same.
The Fusus names the Folk of Allah who live in this perplexity three times: in the Noah chapter, where drowning in the seas is their knowledge of God; in the Jesus chapter, where on seeing a mortal man raise the dead they say "It is He, not He"; and in the Aaron chapter, where the worship of the Calf shows that all worship is desire.
"He who does not know the status of imagination has no knowledge"
Ibn Arabi wrote that "the one who does not know the status of imagination (martabat al-khayāl) has no knowledge whatsoever." The Presence of Imagination, which he called the Meeting Place of the Two Seas, "embodies meanings (yujassid al-maʿānī) and subtilizes the sensory thing." Only with its help can one understand how death will be brought "in the form of a salt-colored ram and slaughtered," how Seraphiel wakes the dead with "a horn of light," and how the people of the Fire find pleasure in the Abode of Wrath.
Nair's last words set the task: the challenge of understanding Ibn Arabi comes down to combining the two points of view and walking the two highways, "recognizing that nothing can ever truly be known. All of human discourse pertains to "the middle," language is ambiguous, and knowledge is only of the image, not of the thing itself."
Read backwards from the Conclusion, each chapter becomes a case of the same error and the same remedy. The critic who hears only He in the formula He/not He accuses Ibn Arabi of making God the world; the one who hears only not He cannot see why the Shaykh speaks of God in every form. The same happens with freedom and compulsion, with incomparability and similarity, with man as originated and beginningless, with Pharaoh's claim and al-Kharraz's words, with sainthood and prophethood, with the outward and inward senses of a verse, and with wrath and mercy in the next world. In each case Nair shows that the text says both things at once, and that the defenders' task was to keep both in view. Imagination is the faculty that can do this, because it holds a meaning in a form without confusing the two, as a dream shows milk and means knowledge.
Discourse in the middle, and knowledge of the image
Ibn Arabi's claim that the one who does not know the status of imagination (martabat al-khayal) has no knowledge whatsoever is the Conclusion's last hinge. The Presence of Imagination, the Meeting Place of the Two Seas, "embodies meanings (yujassid al-ma'ani) and subtilizes the sensory thing." Only with its help can one understand how death will be brought "in the form of a salt-colored ram and slaughtered," how Seraphiel wakes the dead with "a horn of light," and how the people of the Fire find pleasure in the Abode of Wrath. The two eyes saying of the Futuhat ("you have two eyes, if you possess knowledge") joins the Qur'anic figure of the two highways (Q. 90:8-10) to the whole book's method.
Nair's last words set the task without promising a system that removes difficulty. The challenge of understanding Ibn Arabi comes down to combining the two points of view and walking the two highways, recognising that nothing can ever truly be known in the way a one-eyed reason wants. All of human discourse pertains to "the middle," language is ambiguous, and knowledge is only of the image, not of the thing itself. Read backwards from that sentence, every chapter of Nair's book is a case of the same error and the same remedy: keep He and not He together, or misread the Shaykh as either pantheist or empty transcendentalist.
Notes on the Text
These are slips that the book itself reveals: typing errors, a word missing, or a reference that disagrees with the same reference elsewhere in the book. Nothing here depends on outside sources; the evidence is always another page of the same book. They do not affect the argument, and readers of the printed volume may simply find this list useful.
Who's Who
People named in the book, with death dates only as the book prints them (hijri/common era). Figures for whom the book gives no date in the passages used here are listed without one. The arrangement is by role in the story rather than by alphabet: the Shaykh and his school, the critics, the philosophers and theologians, and the earlier Sufis.
| Name | Date as printed | Role in the book |
|---|---|---|
| Ibn Arabi | d. 638/1240 | The subject; author of the Fusus al-hikam and the Futuhat al-Makkiyya |
| Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi | d. 673/1273-4 | Ibn Arabi's stepson and chief disciple; head of the line of commentators |
| Mu'ayyid al-Din al-Jandi | d. ca. 691/1291 | Qunawi's student; early commentator on the Fusus |
| 'Afif al-Din al-Tilimsani | d. 690/1291 | Qunawi's student and commentator |
| Fakhr al-Din 'Iraqi | d. 688/1289 | Poet in Qunawi's circle |
| Sa'id al-Din al-Farghani | d. 699/1300 | Qunawi's student |
| 'Abd al-Razzaq al-Kashani | d. 730-736/1329-1335 | Commentator on the Fusus |
| Dawud al-Qaysari | d. 748/1347 | Commentator; his introduction became a standard summary of the school |
| Haydar Amuli | d. after 787/1385 | Shi'i commentator |
| 'Abd al-Karim al-Jili | d. 811/1408 | Author on the Perfect Man |
| Ahmad al-Jabarti | d. 806/1403 | Yemeni defender of Ibn Arabi |
| Shams al-Din al-Fanari | d. 834/1431 | Ottoman scholar in the school's line |
| 'Ali al-Maha'imi | d. 835/1432 | Indian commentator |
| Isma'il al-Muqri | d. 836-837/1433 | Yemeni critic |
| 'Abd al-Rahman Jami | d. 898/1492 | Persian commentator, cited on saints and prophets |
| Muhammad al-Makki | d. 926/1519-1520 | Ottoman defender, writing for Selim I |
| Selim I | r. 918-926/1512-1520 | Ottoman sultan |
| 'Abd al-Wahhab al-Sha'rani | d. 973/1565 | Egyptian Sufi and defender |
| Mulla Sadra (Sadr al-Din Shirazi) | d. 1044/1635-1636 | Philosopher who absorbed much of Ibn Arabi's thought |
| Muhammad al-Barzinji | d. 1103/1691 | Late defender, especially on Pharaoh's faith |
| Ibn Taymiyya | d. 728/1328 | Leading critic of the school |
| Sa'd al-Din al-Taftazani | d. 793/1390 | Theologian and critic |
| 'Ala' al-Din al-Bukhari | d. 841/1438 | Critic |
| Burhan al-Din al-Biqa'i | d. 885/1480 | Critic, author of polemics against the Fusus |
| Ibn Sina | d. 428/1037 | Philosopher; his view of imagination is contrasted with Ibn Arabi's |
| al-Ghazali | 555/1111 as printed | Theologian and Sufi (see Notes on the Text) |
| al-Sharif al-Jurjani | d. 816/1413 | Theologian |
| Jalal al-Din Dawani | d. 907/1501-1502 | Philosopher-theologian |
| al-Hallaj | d. 309/922 | Sufi executed after saying I am the Real |
| Abu Sa'id al-Kharraz | d. ca. 286/899 | Early Sufi; Ibn Arabi's example of a true form of God |
| Abu 'Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami | d. 412/1021 | Author of Sufi Qur'an commentary |
| Ibn Barrajan | d. 536/1141 | Andalusian Qur'an commentator |
| Ruzbihan Baqli | d. 606/1209 | Persian Sufi commentator |
| Ibn al-Farid | d. 632/1235 | Sufi poet |
| Ibn 'Ata' Allah | d. 709/1309 | Shadhili master |
| William Chittick, Henry Corbin, Seyyed Hossein Nasr | Modern scholars Nair cites most on the school and on imagination |
The critics and defenders above did not form two fixed camps. As the Conclusion notes, many scholars admired the Shaykh's sanctity while remaining troubled by his views, and the commentators did not always read a passage the same way. The dates given here are a guide to the order of the debate, which runs from the Shaykh's own circle in the seventh/thirteenth century to the Ottoman scholars of the tenth/sixteenth century and after.
Synthesis
This closing section steps back from the chapters. It collects the book's main lessons, sets out the frameworks that recur from one controversy to the next, weighs the method, and shows how the parts connect. Everything here restates the book; the editor adds arrangement, not facts.
Ten takeaways
- The quarrel is about one book. Most of the debate over Ibn Arabi turns on the Fusus, not on his much larger Futuhat, and Nair reads the first in the light of the second.
- Labels mislead. Oneness of Being is a later name. Judging Ibn Arabi by the label rather than by He/not He produces the charge of pantheism.
- The entities never come into existence. What appears is the Real coloured by the entities, as light is coloured by glass, so the world is neither God nor other than God.
- Knowledge follows the known, but the Essence is free. The distinction between Essence and Divinity lets Ibn Arabi say that God's knowledge is bound by the entities without binding God.
- Incomparability alone is a limit. To say only that God is beyond all forms is to set Him apart from the forms, and so to limit Him. True knowledge joins tanzih and tashbih.
- Every belief is a form of the Divinity. The worshipper worships God in the form he believes; the gnostic sees the One in every form and is bound by none.
- Man is the pupil of the eye. The Perfect Man is the place in which God sees Himself and the cosmos; first in intention, last in existence.
- Level, not essence, separates Pharaoh from al-Kharraz. Both spoke in the first person of God; one usurped a level, the other was a tongue through which God spoke.
- Sainthood is the inner face of prophethood. The Seal of the Saints teaching does not put a saint above a prophet; it names the aspect of every prophet that never ends.
- Mercy has the last word. A good opinion of God supports the faith of Pharaoh and the sweetening of the Fire.
Recurring frameworks
| Framework | First appears | Later uses | |
|---|---|---|---|
| He/not He | Chapter 1, ontology | Freedom (Ch. 2), names (Ch. 3), the Perfect Man (Ch. 4), Conclusion | Two senses of creation |
| Chapter 2, decree | Man's firstness (Ch. 4) | Essence versus Divinity | Chapter 2 |
| Beliefs and idols (Ch. 3), forms of God (Ch. 5) | Levels ( maratib ) | Chapter 5 | Saints and prophets (Ch. 6) |
| Literal sense plus crossing over | Chapter 7 | Pharaoh and the Fire (Ch. 8) | Two eyes: reason and imagination |
A closer look
Limits. The defenders sometimes press the text further than it goes, as Nair himself notes in places such as the Abraham and two-bricks passages. The study also centres on the commentators of Qunawi's line, so other ways of reading the Shaykh receive less attention. Finally, the Conclusion's appeal to perplexity can answer every objection, which is its strength as theology and its weakness as an argument: a critic may reply that a teaching which is always both Yes and No cannot be refuted.
Connections across the book
- The mirror of Chapter 1 returns as the pupil of the eye in Chapter 4: in both, God sees through what reflects Him.
- The god of beliefs in Chapter 3 explains the Calf and the idols of Noah's people in Chapter 7: every worship reaches God, but the gnostic is not bound by the form.
- The levels of Chapter 5 settle the seal question of Chapter 6: a saint and a prophet may share the inner aspect while differing in rank.
- The literal reading defended in Chapter 7 is what lets Ibn Arabi take Pharaoh's words of faith at face value in Chapter 8.
- Imagination, named fully only in the Conclusion, is the faculty behind Abraham's dream, the Cloud and the forms of the next world throughout.
The charges and the replies at a glance
| Charge | Critics' reading | The school's reply as Nair presents it | Part |
|---|---|---|---|
| God and the world are one | If all is He, the Creator is identical with creatures, and the distinction on which worship rests disappears | All is He and all is not He. The entities stay non-existent; only the Real exists, appearing in their forms as a face appears in a mirror without entering it | 1 |
| God is bound by the entities | If God can only know and do what the entities require, He is not free and His power is limited by His objects | The binding concerns the Divinity, God as related to the world through the names. The Essence is independent of the worlds and is bound by nothing | 2 |
| Man is compelled | If each entity's states are fixed in God's knowledge, human acts are not truly human and reward and punishment lose meaning | Yes and No again: acts belong to God in one respect and to the servant in another, and the highest freedom is willing servanthood | 2 |
| God is named by everything, even the vile | Seeing God in every form leads to calling the base and the impure divine | Similarity is always paired with incomparability. Every form reveals a name, but no form contains or exhausts God | 3 |
| Idol worship is approved | Lines on the Calf and on Noah's idols seem to praise the worshippers of false gods | Every worshipper worships God in the form of his belief; the fault is to restrict God to that form, and the gnostic is bound by none | 3, 7 |
| Man is made eternal or divine | The Perfect Man as eternal and first seems to give a creature what belongs to God alone | Man is originated in one respect and beginningless in another, first in intention and last in existence; the two senses of creation keep the levels apart | 4 |
| Anyone may say I am God | If the Perfect Man bears the Divine Form, nothing separates the gnostic from Pharaoh or from al-Hallaj | The difference is one of level. Pharaoh claimed a level he did not hold; al-Kharraz spoke as a tongue through which God spoke | 5 |
| Saints are above prophets | The Seal of the Saints passages and the wall of two bricks appear to rank Ibn Arabi above the Prophet | Sainthood is the inner face of each prophet; the prophet's own sainthood, not a follower's, is higher than his prophethood | 6 |
| The Qur'an is distorted | Readings of Noah and other prophets are interpretation by opinion that empties verses of their sense | The outward sense stands; meanings are drawn by allusion and crossing over, as a dream is crossed to its meaning | 7 |
| Pharaoh died a believer | Declaring Pharaoh's faith accepted contradicts the consensus and the Qur'an's condemnation | The words of faith are taken literally and read through a good opinion of God; Pharaoh believed and was saved | 8 |
| The Fire's torment ends | The end of torment denies the threats of scripture | The people of the Fire remain in it, but its torment turns to sweetness, because mercy precedes wrath | 8 |
Glossary
Terms as the book uses them, written without diacritics. Where the book gives more than one rendering, the main one is listed first. The meanings given are those the book gives or the sense in which it uses the term; they are not wider dictionary definitions, and the list is limited to words that matter for following the argument.
| Term | Meaning in the book |
|---|---|
| wahdat al-wujud | Oneness of Being; a later label for Ibn Arabi's teaching that he did not use himself |
| a'yan thabita | Fixed entities: the things as known to God, non-existent and uncreated |
| huwa la huwa | He/not He: the world is God in one respect and not God in another |
| al-'ama' | The Cloud: the first receptacle of the forms of the cosmos |
| barzakh | Isthmus; the in-between that both joins and separates |
| nafas al-rahman | Breath of the All-Merciful, in which the forms of the world are articulated |
| dhat | The Essence, beyond all relation and name |
| uluhiyya | The Divinity: God as related to the world through the names |
| qada', qadar | Decree and predestination |
| tanzih | Incomparability: declaring God beyond likeness |
| tashbih | Similarity: recognizing God in forms |
| al-ilah al-mu'taqad | The god of beliefs: God as formed in a believer's belief |
| al-insan al-kamil | The Perfect Man, bearer of the Divine Form |
| maratib | Levels; ranks held by a being rather than its essence |
| walaya | Sainthood, the inner aspect that never ends |
| nubuwwat al-tashri' | Legislative prophethood, which ended with Muhammad |
| khatm al-awliya' | Seal of the Saints |
| ta'wil | Interpretation; in the critics' sense, reading by opinion |
| ishara | Allusion: an indication drawn from the verse without denying its outward sense |
| 'ubur | Crossing over from the image to its meaning, as in dream interpretation |
| iman Fir'awn | The faith of Pharaoh |
| fana' al-nar | The end of the Fire's torments |
| khayal | Imagination, both a human faculty and an objective world |
| hayra | Perplexity: the knowledge of one who sees with both eyes |
| dhu l-'aynayn | Possessor of Two Eyes, seeing with reason and imagination together |
About this book
Interpreting Ibn Arabi: Philosophy, Theology, and Exegesis in Later Islam by Arjun Nair, 2026. 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.
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