Insight Editions · No. 147
Mysticism and Philosophy in al-Andalus
Ibn Masarra, Ibn al-'Arabi and the Isma'ili Tradition
Michael Ebstein
Michael Ebstein compares Ibn Masarra and Ibn al-'Arabi with Isma'ili writings, tracing shared Neoplatonic themes in divine will, letters, sainthood, the perfect human, and parallel worlds.
A study guide to Mysticism and Philosophy in al-Andalus by Michael Ebstein. 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
Michael Ebstein's Mysticism and Philosophy in al-Andalus asks why the two great mystical thinkers of Muslim Spain, Ibn Masarra and Ibn al-'Arabi, sound so unlike the classical Sufis of the East, and answers that a large part of the difference comes from the Isma'ili tradition.
The book has an introduction, five thematic chapters and a conclusion. Each chapter takes one theme and follows it through three bodies of writing: Isma'ili literature (the myth of Kuni-Qadar, the Fatimi authors, the eastern Neoplatonists and above all the Epistles of Ikhwan al-Safa'), the surviving works of Ibn Masarra, and the writings of Ibn al-'Arabi. The themes are the word of God and the Divine will, the letters of the alphabet, the friends of God, the perfect man, and parallel worlds.
In one sentence: Ebstein argues that Ibn Masarra and Ibn al-'Arabi represent a theosophical type of Islamic mysticism, centred on God, the universe and man and built on a special form of Neoplatonism, whose closest relatives are Isma'ili, and that the Fatimi presence in North Africa best explains why this type took root in al-Andalus, without making either man an Isma'ili.
The argument in brief
- Classical eastern Sufism is mainly ethical and psychological. Ibn Masarra and Ibn al-'Arabi write a theosophical mysticism about God, cosmogony and cosmology, with letters, numbers and occult interests.
- That combination is largely missing in eastern Sufism and early Twelver Shi'ism, but it is present throughout Isma'ili literature.
- In each of five themes the Andalusian authors share with the Isma'ilis not just ideas but contexts, terms and a particular Neoplatonic scheme in which God's word or command stands above the universal intellect.
- The Fatimi state in North Africa, the Epistles of Ikhwan al-Safa' and contacts through Qayrawan make influence more likely than coincidence.
- Neither Ibn Masarra nor Ibn al-'Arabi recognised 'Ali and the imams as sole leaders. They adapted Isma'ili-type ideas to a Sunni worldview.
Chapter map
| Part | Book chapter (printed pages) | Main question |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction (pp.1-32) | What made al-Andalus different, and how should we study it? |
| 2 | Ch1 The Word of God and the Divine Will (pp.33-76) | What stands between God and the universal intellect? |
| 3 | Ch2 Letters (pp.77-122) | Are letters the building blocks of reality? |
| 4 | Ch3 The Friends of God (pp.123-156) | Where does the hierarchy of the awliya' come from? |
| 5 | Ch4 The Perfect Man (pp.157-188) | Who is the perfect man, and is he only the imam? |
| 6 | Ch5 Parallel Worlds (pp.189-229) | How do man, society, the book and the cosmos mirror one another? |
| 7 | Conclusion (pp.231-238) | Parallel lines or real influence? |
| 8 | The footnotes (pp.1-237) | What do the notes add to the argument? |
| 9-11 | Edition apparatus | Slips, synthesis, connections, glossary |
1. Introduction: A Different Mysticism in the West
The introduction (pp.1-32) poses the book's question, sketches the Isma'ili and Fatimi background, introduces the two Andalusian thinkers, criticises earlier scholarship and sets out a vocabulary for types of Islamic mysticism.
- Ibn Masarra (269/883-319/931) and Ibn al-'Arabi (560/1165-638/1240) mark the beginning and the peak of Andalusian mysticism, and both differ from the eastern Sufis.
- Spain also produced Kabbalah and the Zohar; something about al-Andalus favoured this kind of thought.
- Ebstein's partial answer is the Isma'ili tradition, which preserved Gnostic, Hermetic and Neoplatonic material that eastern Sufis and Twelver Shi'is set aside.
- Five habits in modern scholarship have hidden this link.
- "Islamic mysticism" covers several types, of which Sufism is only one.
The question
Al-Andalus, Ebstein notes, produced two mystics who stand out. Ibn Masarra, born in Cordova in 269/883, is the "first Sunni mystic in al-Andalus known to us". Ibn al-'Arabi, born in Murcia in 560/1165 and dead in Damascus in 638/1240, became known as al-shaykh al-akbar, the Greatest Shaykh. Between them they open and crown a tradition. The same land later produced Kabbalah and the Zohar ("The Book of Splendor") in the 12th-13th centuries. The question is what in al-Andalus made such thought possible.
The contrast with the East is the core of the book. Eastern Sufism (tasawwuf), as it developed from the 9th to the 12th/13th centuries, is chiefly an inner, psychological and ethical discipline. Ibn Masarra and Ibn al-'Arabi write about the Divine world, about how the cosmos came to be and how it is built, and they blend Neoplatonic philosophy with occult interests such as the science of letters and astrology. Ebstein argues that the eastern Sufis of the 10th-12th/13th centuries largely suppressed such material, and so did 10th century Twelver Shi'ism, while the Isma'ilis kept it alive.
The Isma'ili and Fatimi setting
| Date (as printed) | Event |
|---|---|
| 2nd half 9th c. | Isma'ilis emerge as a separate Shi'i faction |
| 297/909 | Isma'ili state founded in North Africa |
| 316/929 | 'Abd al-Rahman III declares himself caliph in Cordova |
| 341/953-365/975 | Reign of the Fatimi caliph al-Mu'izz; Neoplatonism officially adopted |
| 358/969 | Fatimis take Egypt |
| 359/969-970 | Mecca and Medina come under Fatimi rule |
| 567/1171 | Fatimi state ended by Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi |
The Fatimis and the Umayyads of Cordova were rivals. Letters were exchanged, revolts were backed, and Fatimi missionaries (the da'wa) were active. Trade ties continued under the Party Kings of the 11th century, and the Almohads of the 12th-13th centuries were influenced in turn. Ebstein also stresses that Neoplatonism, though officially adopted under al-Mu'izz, circulated earlier among the missionaries.
Ibn Masarra himself stayed in Qayrawan, near the court of the first Fatimi ruler al-Mahdi, whose physician was the Jewish Neoplatonist Isaac Israeli. The Epistles of Ikhwan al-Safa' and the Ghayat al-hakim ("The Goal of the Sage") reached al-Andalus. Yet Ebstein is firm that his two authors were not Isma'ilis. In his words, "they creatively adapted various mystical-philosophical ideas, many of which were of a Shiʿi-Ismāʿīlī provenance, and successfully incorporated them into their own distinctive Sunni worldviews".
Two lives
Ibn Masarra. Muhammad b. 'Abdallah Ibn Masarra al-Jabali (the name means "the mountain dweller") was born in Cordova in 269/883 and died in 319/931. In the 950s and 960s his followers were accused and his books burnt; he was branded a batini, an esotericist. His writings were long thought lost until a manuscript discovered in the 1970s yielded the Risalat al-i'tibar ("The Epistle on Contemplation") and Kitab khawass al-huruf ("The Book on the Properties of Letters, their True Essences and Roots"). He never mentions 'Ali.
Ibn al-'Arabi. Born in Murcia, he left the West and died in Damascus without returning. Already Ibn Khaldun in the 14th century claimed that later Sufis had mingled with the Isma'ilis, sharing ideas of indwelling, union and a hierarchy of saints. Ebstein judges the account "inaccurate and distorted" in its details, since none of the central Shi'i factions taught indwelling, but he thinks Ibn Khaldun's basic intuition right, with one correction: the contacts were formed in the West, not in Iraq.
Earlier scholarship
Asin Palacios (1871-1944) published Abenmasarra y su escuela in 1914 and traced a "School of Almeria" (Ibn al-'Arif, Ibn Barrajan, al-Mayurqi, Ibn Qasi, all d. 536/1141-546/1151). He was wrong, Ebstein says, to make Ibn Masarra a follower of a Pseudo-Empedoclean tradition, but right to see Neoplatonism at work. Ebstein then names five problems in later research.
| Problem | What it does |
|---|---|
| 1. Ahistorical method | Corbin's phenomenology treats Shi'ism as "the sanctuary of Islamic esotericism" but does not ask about channels and dates; Nasr spoke of two branches of one tree |
| 2. Traditionalism | Guenon (1886-1951), Schuon (1907-1998) and Valsan (1907-1974) read all traditions as one perennial truth |
| 3. Sunni-Shi'i bias | Assumes a Sunni mystic cannot owe much to Shi'is |
| 4. Political reading of Shi'ism | After 1979 Shi'ism is seen mainly as politics |
| 5. Split fields | Students of Jewish and of Islamic mysticism rarely talk; Israeli, Ibn Gabirol and Judah Ha-Levi fall between them |
Types of Islamic mysticism
Ebstein keeps the word "mysticism" as "a kind of a coordinate", a working orientation rather than a definition. "Sufi" he reserves for the movement associated with al-Junayd (d. 298/910). He then distinguishes five types: Sufism; Shi'i-Isma'ili mysticism centred on the imam; philosophical mysticism; Isma'ili Neoplatonism; and Sunni Andalusian mysticism. Ibn al-'Arabi added the Sufi heritage to the last type; Ibn Masarra did not, and the words sufi and tasawwuf are absent from his writings.
Esotericism, too, has three sides in his usage: ontological (the hidden and the manifest, batin and zahir), hermeneutical (esoteric interpretation, ta'wil, the elite against the common people, and secrecy) and occult (letters, astrology, magic, alchemy).
The Epistles of Ikhwan al-Safa' have been dated anywhere from 260/873-297/909 (Hamdani) to 418/1027-427/1035 (Casanova); Fierro sets a terminus of 325/936, and Stern and Madelung place them in the mid-10th century. Their arrival in al-Andalus was credited to al-Majriti (d. c.398/1007) or al-Kirmani (d. c.468/1075), but Fierro points to Maslama b. Qasim al-Qurtubi (d. 353/964). The Jabirian corpus, attributed to Jabir b. Hayyan and linked to Ja'far al-Sadiq (d. 148/765), is a further bridge to the Hellenistic heritage.
On p.28 the book says "since these four writings do reflect", but the main text at that point names no list of four writings. It reads like an editing leftover.
Why the Jewish evidence matters
Ebstein's fifth problem, the gap between students of Jewish and Islamic mysticism, is more than a complaint about academic habits. Jewish thinkers in North Africa and al-Andalus, writing in Arabic, show the same Neoplatonic patterns at the same time and in the same places. Isaac Israeli served the first Fatimi ruler; Ibn Gabirol and Judah Ha-Levi used terms that look Isma'ili. If Muslim and Jewish authors in the West both display this type of thought, a shared regional source becomes more likely than independent invention. The book therefore returns to Jewish material at the end of Chapter 1 and again in the Conclusion.
The stance of the book
Ebstein's approach is historical and comparative. He does not ask whether Ibn al-'Arabi was "really" Shi'i at heart, nor whether all mystics share one truth. He asks which texts, terms and contexts are closest, where and when they were available, and what explains the pattern. That is why he rejects both Corbin's timeless phenomenology and the traditionalist reading, while keeping their observation that Shi'ism and esotericism are closely tied.
Key passage
Note. This sentence is the book's guard rail. Everything that follows claims affinity and influence, never conversion. Readers who skip it will misread the whole study.
- Why might eastern Sufis and Twelver Shi'is have set aside cosmological and occult material?
- Is Ebstein's five-type map of Islamic mysticism a description or an argument?
- What would count as evidence for "influence" rather than "shared roots"?
2. The Word of God and the Divine Will
Chapter 1 (pp.33-76) follows a single idea: that between God and the first created intellect stands a creative word, command or will. Ebstein traces it from the Quran and the Arabic Plotinus through Isma'ili myth and philosophy to Ibn Masarra and Ibn al-'Arabi.
- The Quran's "be!" (kun) and command (amr) gave Islam a creative word, with older parallels in Philo's logos.
- The longer version of the Theology of Aristotle inserts a word (kalima) between the One and the intellect.
- Isma'ili authors, from the Kuni-Qadar myth to the Ikhwan, made this hypostasis central.
- Ibn Masarra and Ibn al-'Arabi both place a creative Divine speech above the universal intellect.
- The same command runs through sacred history as support (ta'yid) for prophets and friends of God.
Roots: logos and kun
The idea of a creative word is old: the Hebrew davar and Aramaic memra, Heraclitus, the Stoic logoi, and above all Philo (1st c. B.C.-1st c. A.D.), whose logos is an intermediary. Ebstein quotes the formula: "Unlike man, the logos is not created; unlike God, it is not uncreated." In Christianity the logos becomes Jesus.
The Quran supplies the Islamic version. Q 16:40 reads "If We will something, all We say to it is ‘be!’ and it is". The command (amr) can act almost like an angel, and the spirit (ruh) is linked to Gabriel and to the support (ta'yid) given to Jesus.
The Arabic Plotinus
The Theology of Aristotle is a 9th century Arabic adaptation of Plotinus's Enneads (3rd c. A.D.). It survives in a shorter and a longer version; the longer Arabic text was found by Borisov in 1929. The difference matters for the whole book.
In the longer version the word is identified with God's command, will, power and knowledge, called "the cause of causes", described in terms of non-being, and said to be united with the intellect. Ebstein sees two motives: to reconcile creation from nothing with emanation, and to bridge God's transcendence and the world. Pines (1954) linked the longer version to Isma'ili or proto-Isma'ili circles; Zimmermann argued it was earlier and a source. Within Isma'ilism itself the doctrine was not universal: al-Kirmani (d. after 411/1020) objected to it.
The Isma'ili versions
| Source | What stands above the intellect |
|---|---|
| Kuni-Qadar myth (Abu 'Isa l-Murshid, under al-Mu'izz) | A created light, Kuni, from the letters kaf and nun; Qadar is created from it |
| al-'Alim wa-l-ghulam (prob. Ja'far b. Mansur al-Yaman, d. c.346/957) | Will, command and saying: "irādat amr bi-qawl" |
| Eastern Neoplatonists: al-Nasafi, Abu Hatim al-Razi (d. 322/934), al-Sijistani (d. after 361/971) | The word or command as "the first cause", beyond being and nothingness |
| Ikhwan al-Safa', al-Risala al-jami'a | The word, between the Creator and the universal intellect |
In the Kuni-Qadar myth the first light is created "not knowing whether it is a creator or a created being", and the division of labour is stated plainly: "by means of Kūnī, Allāh brought all things into being, and by means of Qadar, He apportioned to them their lots (qadarahā)".
The Ikhwan describe the word as "the command which is above the [universal] intellect and soul and below the Creator, Glory be to Him". Their image for its dependence on God is speech, not writing: "If the speaker becomes quiet, the speech ceases to be; yet if the writer stops [writing], the existing writing does not cease." The universe is "one body whose spirit is the word of Allāh".
Ibn Masarra and Ibn al-'Arabi
Ibn Masarra calls the universal intellect "the remembrance" (al-dhikr) and sets above it "the place of the 'be!'". "The whole world", declares Ibn Masarra, "is a book; its letters are His speech". Unlike the Ikhwan, he identifies both the pen and the tablet with the intellect.
Ibn al-'Arabi gives the theme its fullest form. In Futuhat ch.198 he writes: "Know that the existent beings are the words of Allāh which do not cease." The breath of the All-Merciful (nafas al-rahman) carries the immutable entities into being, and creation is renewed at every moment, since "every day He is upon a task". Where the Ikhwan keep the word as a single hypostasis, Ibn al-'Arabi identifies the words with the creatures themselves. He also speaks of a Divine "tanaffus raḥmānī", a merciful breathing.
The command in sacred history
For the Isma'ilis the same command descends through the prophets and imams. Kitab al-kashf ("The Book of Unveiling") states the continuity: "Whoever obeys the last one among them, it is as if he obeyed the first one among them". Ibn Masarra says that the remembrance "came down upon four prophets: Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muḥammad".
Ibn al-'Arabi distinguishes the existentiating command, by which things come to be, from the imposing command, which lays duties on people through an intermediary. Messengers and their heirs serve the Divine command as a doctor serves nature; the Ikhwan, too, speak of prophets as doctors of the souls.
Support (ta'yid) is the other half of this picture. In the Quran it is God's backing of Jesus; for the Isma'ilis it becomes a cosmic flow from the intellect to the speaker prophet. The Ikhwan bless their reader with "ayyadaka llāh wa-iyyānā bi-rūḥ minhu", and Ibn al-'Arabi uses similar blessings. He distinguishes two spirits: the spirit that gives life, and the spirit of the command, given to prophets and friends of God as support.
The Jewish parallels
Isaac Israeli, physician to al-Mahdi (who ruled 297/909-322/934), places first matter and form between God and intellect. Judah Ha-Levi (d. 1141) speaks of al-amr al-ilahi, the Divine command, in the Kuzari; Ibn Gabirol (11th c.) gives the will a central place. Ebstein reads these as "variations of one and the same unique type of Neoplatonism".
The seal of the friends of God
Ibn al-'Arabi's chain of the command runs from Adam to the seal of the friends of God, and he writes of three messianic figures who close different cycles. Ebstein sets this beside the Isma'ili seventh speaker prophet, the qa'im, who completes the cycles of prophecy. The structures differ, since Ibn al-'Arabi's seal is not a law-giver, but both see sacred history as an ordered descent of one Divine command through chosen persons, ending in a final figure.
The Isma'ili theory of support also explains how knowledge reaches people. In al-Sijistani's al-Yanabi', in al-Risala l-mudhhiba attributed to al-Nu'man (d. 363/974) and in the Ikhwan, knowledge given through support is nobler than knowledge gained by reasoning. The Ikhwan distinguish speculative knowledge from knowledge by report, and al-Kirmani links support to the second perfection; al-Hamidi (d. 557/1162) carries the idea into the Tayyibi Kanz al-walad. Ibn al-'Arabi's spirit of the command, given to prophets and friends, sits on the same line.
Why a word above the intellect?
The extra level answers two problems at once. Emanation makes the world flow necessarily from the One, while the Quran speaks of a God who wills and creates from nothing; a Divine will or word at the top of the chain lets both stand. And a God beyond all description still needs a point of contact with the world; the word, neither simply God nor simply creature, supplies it. Ebstein notes that later Neoplatonists such as Iamblichus and Proclus had also multiplied levels at the top of the hierarchy, so the move has Greek precedent, but its Arabic form, with will and command, is distinctive.
Key passage
Note. The sentence turns a Quranic image into an ontology. If creatures are words, creation is ongoing speech, which is why Ibn al-'Arabi can speak of renewal at every instant. The Isma'ili parallel gives the frame; the radical identification is his own.
- Why does the speech analogy suit a doctrine of continuous creation better than writing?
- How much weight should rest on the longer Theology, whose origins are disputed?
- What changes when the command moves from cosmology into sacred history?
3. Letters
Chapter 2 (pp.77-122) is the most technical and the most revealing. Eastern Sufis treated the letters of the alphabet as a secret; Ibn Masarra and Ibn al-'Arabi, like the Isma'ilis, made them the stuff of creation.
- Letter speculation has Jewish, Greek, Gnostic and Quranic roots; the fourteen mysterious letters (fawatih) open twenty-nine suras.
- Eastern Sufis kept letters secret but gave them no role in creation; Isma'ili sources did.
- Ibn Masarra reads the fawatih as cosmic principles; Ibn al-'Arabi maps twenty-eight letters onto the levels of being, the Divine names and the lunar mansions.
- Letters also mirror the friends of God and the cycles of prophecy.
- Ibn al-'Arabi borrows from the Jabirian tradition but criticises Jabir and claims unveiling as his own authority.
From secret to cosmogony
Jewish tradition offers the Heichalot texts, Otiyot de-rabbi 'akiva and the Sefer yetsirah; Greek Neopythagoreans, Gnostics and Samaritans add more. In Islam the starting point is the fawatih: fourteen letters at the head of twenty-nine suras. Eastern Sufis kept letters as a secret but, Ebstein argues, without a cosmogonic dimension. Orthodox writers saw letter speculation as "an undesirable and dangerous occupation". Ibn Masarra nevertheless wrote Kitab khawass al-huruf, and Ibn al-'Arabi devoted Futuhat ch.2 to the subject.
The Isma'ili letter theories
| Source | Role of letters |
|---|---|
| Kuni-Qadar | "Allāh brought all things into being by creating them from the kāf and the nūn"; seven letters of kuni-qadar |
| Kitab al-kashf | "twenty-eight letters in seven boundaries"; spelling the names of the first seven gives sixteen letters |
| Abu Hatim al-Razi | "the first cause, which is the word [of God], is the matter (hayūlā) of all the worlds"; kaf and nun as body, vowels as spirit |
| al-Sijistani, Kitab al-yanabi' | Letters are signs, not building blocks; the four letters of Allah match intellect, soul, speaker prophet and his legatee |
Al-Razi also defends a tradition from Kitab al-zina attributed to Ja'far al-Sadiq (d. 148/765), in which imagining, will and volition produce the letters as the root of everything, against the charge of anthropomorphism. Al-Sijistani, who prefers the philosophical reading, still counts the numerical value of kun as seventy and derives seven supreme letters matching the planets, the speaker prophets and the bodily organs.
Ibn Masarra on the fawatih
Ibn Masarra reads alif-lam-mim as three levels: "The alif points to (ishāra ilā) the essence of Allāh"; lam stands for the intellect, the first veil; mim for the universal soul. The kaf of another opening is "the kāf of kun, the word which is the cause of all being". He divides the twenty-eight letters into fourteen manifest and fourteen hidden ones (the fawatih), and calls the fawatih "the root of all things".
He attributes to Sahl al-Tustari (d. 283/896) the view that the letters are the dust (haba'). Ebstein thinks the attribution mistaken: the cosmological haba', matter below the soul and the root of all things, belongs to the Jabirian Kitab al-tasrif.
Ibn al-'Arabi: breath, cloud and twenty-eight levels
Ibn al-'Arabi traces the haba' to a tradition of 'Ali and links it to the breath of the All-Merciful and to the cloud ('ama'). In Futuhat ch.198 he states that "the breath itself is the cloud" and then reads the old myth of winds and thunder through the letters: strong and lax letters are winds, voiced letters thunder, and "So, the emphatic letters in the Divine breath are the existence of the heavens in seven layers".
He then sets twenty-eight levels of being beside the twenty-eight letters, twenty-eight Divine names and the twenty-eight lunar mansions (the book's Table 1, p.95).
Jabir and the balance of letters
The Jabirian "science of the balance" weighs letters against the four natures, a basis for alchemy. Ibn al-'Arabi's letters-and-natures scheme in Futuhat ch.2 echoes it, and he names Jabir as the disciple of Ja'far al-Sadiq. Yet in Futuhat ch.26 he criticises Jabir. Ebstein draws three points: Ibn al-'Arabi claims unveiling rather than an imam as his source; he thereby opens Divine knowledge to anyone, against imam-based authority; and he is careful with magic, for reasons of secrecy, fear of orthodox criticism and proper conduct (adab).
Letters in parallel worlds
Ibn Masarra links the fawatih to the lunar mansions and concludes about the end of the world: "This proves", Ibn Masarra concludes, "that the small world [the microcosm] is part of the big world [the macrocosm]". The Ikhwan match the twenty-eight letters to the twenty-eight joints and vertebrae and treat script as a human invention, inspired by God. Ibn al-'Arabi reverses the order: "it is in accordance with these letters that the number of mansions was determined."
Letters as friends of God
| Letter | Ibn al-'Arabi | Isma'ili parallel |
|---|---|---|
| alif | the pole (qutb) | intellect, the speaker prophet; for the Ikhwan the upright man |
| waw and ya' | the two imams | Kitab al-kashf: letters as prophets and imams |
| four letters | the four pegs (awtad) | four letters of kuni: speaker, legatee, imam, proof |
| seven letters | the seven substitutes (abdal) | seven letters of kuni-qadar = seven speaker prophets |
Ibn al-'Arabi's world of letters has its own hierarchy, with a pole and imams like the human one. The 10th century Kitab al-fatarat assigns the letters of Kuni and Qadar to the seven speaker prophets, from Adam to the qa'im; al-Razi and al-Sijistani give each speaker prophet one letter, culminating in the seventh. In the Fusus, Ibn al-'Arabi presents twenty-seven prophets, each a word; Ebstein suggests that the twenty-eighth, matching the twenty-eighth letter, may be Ibn al-'Arabi himself as "the seal of the Muḥammadan friendship with God".
Two techniques recur: reading the names of letters, and reading their shapes. Ibn Masarra explains the shapes of kaf and nun: "the nūn was the lower one, for it is the end of motion and being, whereas the kāf was the upper one". Ibn al-'Arabi finds alif, zay and lam hidden in the nun, spelling azal, eternity without beginning.
Why the letters matter for the argument
Ebstein closes the chapter by placing Ibn Masarra and Ibn al-'Arabi on the map of letter speculation. The eastern Sufi type keeps letters as a mystery without cosmic work. The Isma'ili type makes letters either the matter of creation (the mythical line of Kuni-Qadar, Kitab al-kashf and al-Razi) or signs of cosmic processes (al-Sijistani). Both Andalusians belong with the second type: letters for them come from the Divine word, build or signal the levels of being, mirror the heavens and the friends of God, and are read through their names, numbers and shapes. The science of letters, he notes, was itself ascribed to Ja'far al-Sadiq, and a related tradition to 'Ali al-Rida in Twelver sources, which shows its Shi'i setting.
This chapter also carries the strongest qualification of the Ikhwan thesis. The Ikhwan, with one exception, do not offer letter speculation of the mythical and Neoplatonic kind. If the Andalusians share it, they must have drawn on other Isma'ili works, or on a milieu that knew them.
Key passage
Note. For the Ikhwan, letters copy the cosmos. For Ibn al-'Arabi the cosmos copies the letters. That reversal is what makes his letter science cosmogonic, and Ebstein's conclusion is that it places him nearer the Isma'ili type than the Sufi one.
- Why would letter speculation seem dangerous to orthodox scholars?
- Does Ibn al-'Arabi's claim of unveiling make him more or less dependent on his sources?
- What is gained by seeing letters as signs (al-Sijistani) rather than as building blocks?
4. The Friends of God
Chapter 3 (pp.123-156) turns to walaya, friendship with God. Ebstein argues that the hierarchy of saints in Ibn al-'Arabi draws on early hadith and on Sufi masters, but that its cosmic, universal and Neoplatonic contexts are Isma'ili.
- Walaya solves a problem: after the seal of the prophets, who mediates between God and man?
- Shi'is answer 'Ali and his descendants; Sunni mystics answer any believer God elects.
- Early hadith already picture a fixed hierarchy of hidden saints.
- Ibn al-'Arabi's hierarchy is set in contexts (parallel worlds, a hierarchical universe, Neoplatonism, letters) found in Isma'ili literature.
- Both traditions root the friends of God in the Divine world: in light, in the Divine names and in the universal intellect.
Heirs of the prophets
Muhammad is "the seal of the prophets", and no new prophet can follow. Walaya fills the gap: the friends of God mediate like prophets without being prophets. A famous hadith says "the learned ones are the heirs of the prophets". Jurists claim the title; Shi'is and Sunni mystics both give it to the friends of God, but disagree about who they are. For Shi'is they are 'Ali and his line, the imams. For Sunni mysticism any believer may become one, "regardless of his physical lineage". Shi'i speculation began in the 2nd/8th century around al-Baqir and Ja'far al-Sadiq; Sunni speculation only in the 3rd/9th, with Sahl al-Tustari (d. 283/896), al-Junayd (d. 298/910) and above all al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi.
The hidden hierarchy in hadith
The introduction to Abu Nu'aym's Hilyat al-awliya' ("The Ornament of the Friends of God") preserves a tradition of 300, 40, 7, 5, 3 and 1, whose hearts are like those of Adam, Moses, Abraham, Gabriel, Michael and Israfil. When one dies, one from below takes his place. Their function is cosmic: "Through them [i.e., as a result of their prayers and supplications], Allāh grants life and brings about death, He makes the rain come down, He causes the plants to grow and averts disasters."
The term abdal, "substitutes", is explained two ways: their number stays fixed because each is replaced, or, more originally perhaps, they substitute for the prophets. One hadith, dated by its chain of transmitters to the first half of the 8th century or earlier, says that when prophecy ceased God replaced the prophets, who were "the pegs of the earth", with forty men.
Many hierarchies
| Source | Shape of the hierarchy |
|---|---|
| Jabirian corpus | Fifty-five figures headed by prophet and imam, with Shi'i titles (preceding and following one, foundation, gate, speaker and silent one) |
| Ikhwan al-Safa' | 4000 believers, 400 ascetics and knowers, 40 righteous, 4 substitutes: the Pythagorean four |
| Isma'ili da'wa | Prophets, legatees, imams and the ranks of the mission |
| Sunni masters | Dhu l-Nun (d. c.246/861), al-Tustari, al-Kattani (d. 322/933), al-Tirmidhi; later al-Hujwiri's Kashf al-mahjub |
| Ibn al-'Arabi, Futuhat ch.73 | Many new categories not found in earlier Sunni works |
Ebstein stresses al-Tirmidhi. Unlike most classical Sufis, he set walaya inside a full theosophy of the Divine world and cosmos, and so is typologically closer to the Isma'ilis. The East largely ignored him from the 9th to the 12th century; it was Ibn al-'Arabi in the West who revived him. On the old debate, Corbin, like Ibn Khaldun before him, saw the saintly hierarchy as Shi'i-Isma'ili, while Chodkiewicz rejected this. Ebstein proposes "a middle way" and calls Ibn al-'Arabi "the climactic point in this process, as the confluence of all these diverse trends and traditions."
Saints and stars
| Friend of God | al-'Alim wa-l-ghulam | Ibn al-'Arabi |
|---|---|---|
| Imam / pole | sun | sun |
| Proof or gate | moon | |
| Seven speaker prophets / seven substitutes | seven heavens | seven climes or seven planets |
| Twelve chiefs (nuqaba') | twelve signs of the zodiac | twelve signs of the zodiac |
| Four pegs | four corners of the Ka'ba | |
| Eight nobles (nujaba') | eight spheres below the ninth |
Ibn al-'Arabi adds that the seven substitutes draw on the seven prophets of the heavens (Adam, Jesus, Joseph, Idris, Aaron, Moses, Abraham), one for each day of the week. The sun's sphere is the "millstone" and pole of the others, "the heart of the world and the heart of the heavens", and the station of Idris, himself a pole. The prophets of the heavens come from the ascension story; the link with climes, planets and weekdays, Ebstein says, is typically Isma'ili, and Idris as Hermes appears in the Ikhwan.
A hierarchical universe
Isma'ilis call every created being a hadd, a "boundary", with its own rank; martaba, "level", is the parallel term in Ibn al-'Arabi. The Ikhwan number the cosmos from God (one) through intellect (two), soul (three) and prime matter (four), and rank minerals, plants, animals, man and angels. Both the Ikhwan and Ibn al-'Arabi trace the hierarchy into the Divine world: for him the Divine names themselves are ranked as lords, gatekeepers and leaders.
Respecting the order is therefore a religious duty. Iblis's refusal to bow to Adam is a rejection of hierarchy; for the Ikhwan Adam's sin was a premature grab at rank. Ibn al-'Arabi says "the whole world", he states, "[comprises of] those who are superior ( fāḍil) and those who are inferior (mafḍūl)", and the perfect mystic is he "who grants everything what it deserves". The Ikhwan apply the same phrase to the Pythagoreans: "The wise Pythagoreans granted everything what it deserves".
Divine roots
Hadith tell of the light of Muhammad, formed before creation and passed from Adam to the Prophet. Shi'i traditions extend this to 'Ali, Fatima and the imams as spirits, shadows and silhouettes of light by the throne. Al-Tustari developed the light of Muhammad and the heart of Muhammad; Ibn al-'Arabi turned it into the reality of Muhammad (al-haqiqa al-muhammadiyya), the first being and the root of the perfect man.
Shi'i tradition also makes the imams God's names. A tradition in Kitab al-kashf derives Muhammad, 'Ali, al-Hasan, al-Husayn and Fatima from Divine names, created from the light of God's face; another calls the imams "His gates and the means by which His created beings [reach] Him." Ja'far al-Sadiq is quoted: "Were it not for Allāh", Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq is reported to have said, "we would not have been known; and were it not for us [the imāms], Allāh would not have been known". Ebstein compares Ibn al-'Arabi's favourite hadith: "I was a hidden and unknown treasure, yet I wished to be known."
The difference is scope. For Ibn al-'Arabi any perfect man, and indeed the whole created world, manifests the names; his outlook is "both universal (all of creation) and humanistic (the perfect man in general)". The Shi'i view is sectarian. The Ikhwan stand between: the names of the speaker prophets are written on the tablet, yet God's attributes are found in all beings.
Finally, the Neoplatonic frame: Ibn al-'Arabi identifies the reality of Muhammad with the universal intellect and the pen. For the Isma'ilis the speaker prophet draws support from the intellect, through the three angelic beings al-Jadd, al-Fath and al-Khayal (named Gabriel, Michael and Israfil); for Ibn al-'Arabi the pole draws his substance (madda) from the intellect: "Man became attached to the [first] intellect, in the same manner as the end of the circle is attached to its beginning; and so, a circle ensued."
The path of blame
Ibn al-'Arabi gives this double vision to the malamiyya, "those who adhere to the path of blame", whom he ranks above the Sufis. They place every matter in its proper place and do not neglect any part of the order God has set among His creatures. The ordinary mystic, carried by passing states, may see hierarchy as illusion; the perfect one sees both the unity and the ranks. Ebstein finds the same phrases, placing things in their places and giving each its due, used by the Ikhwan of the wise man who imitates Divine wisdom, by Kitab al-kashf against Sunnis who misplace the imams, and by al-Sijistani of the speaker prophet and his legatee.
The flow from the intellect
Ja'far b. Mansur al-Yaman's Sara'ir wa-asrar al-nutaqa' ("The Mysteries and Secrets of the Speaker-Prophets") makes the point sharply. Ordinary believers need human guides, but the speaker prophets "did not have any spiritual father or mother": their support came straight from the universal intellect and soul, through the three angelic beings. From the speaker prophet the flow passes to his legatee, the imams, the mission and the believers, each rank receiving from above and passing below. The Ikhwan extend the same relation to the perfect man in general, whose rational soul is part of the universal soul and intellect. Ibn al-'Arabi uses the same pair of terms for the flow among the ranks of saints, and Ibn Masarra says the rational soul draws its power from the light of the intellect.
Key passage
Note. Hierarchy here is not a social prejudice added to mysticism; it is the shape of being itself. The perfect mystic sees both the unity and the ranks. Ebstein's point is that this double vision, with its cosmic scope, is closer to Isma'ili than to classical Sufi writing.
- Why does a tradition with a sealed prophecy need a hierarchy of hidden saints?
- Is Ebstein's "middle way" between Corbin and Chodkiewicz convincing?
- What is lost when the friends of God are open to everyone, and what is gained?
5. The Perfect Man
Chapter 4 (pp.157-188), subtitled "From Shiʿi Sectarianism to Universal Humanism", argues that the perfect man (al-insan al-kamil) was systematically developed by Isma'ili authors, above all the Ikhwan, before Ibn al-'Arabi, and that his version is closer to theirs than to the philosophers' or the Sufis'.
- The term al-insan al-kamil already appears in the Ikhwan; Ibn al-'Arabi did not coin it.
- Philosophers discuss perfection as a quality; Isma'ilis discuss the perfect man as a figure with Divine roots, cosmic scope and a saving role.
- Ibn al-'Arabi's perfect man unites the Divine names and the realities of the world, is made in God's form, and is a microcosm, a bridge and God's vicegerent.
- The Ikhwan move between Shi'i sectarianism and a universal humanism that opens perfection to anyone.
- That humanism is not egalitarian: those who fail are called animals.
Who coined the term?
Ebstein writes that, contrary to a common view, Ibn al-'Arabi "was not the first mystic to coin the term al-insān al-kāmil"; the Isma'ili authors, "above all Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ, should be credited with systematically developing the concept". In al-Kirmani the "second perfection" means realising the rational soul through deeds and knowledge, which requires the guidance of the friends of God. Philosophers from al-Farabi to Ibn Rushd shared the language of perfection. What sets the Isma'ilis apart is the context of walaya and the ontological, cosmological and eschatological weight they give the perfect man.
Ebstein draws the line clearly: "it seems to me inaccurate to characterize Ibn al-ʿArabī’s concept of the perfect man as being simply or essentially a ‘Sufi’ concept." As far as he knows the term is absent from earlier Sufi sources, and it entered Sunni mysticism through Ibn al-'Arabi and later al-Jili (14th-15th c.).
Three men in the Theology
In the Theology the man of the senses is an "image" of the intellectual man, who is "complete and perfect (tāmm kāmil)". The Ikhwan raise their "universal perfect man", "the man of knowledge and the figure of religion", above the intellect, to the threshold of the Divine world. Ibn al-'Arabi likewise identifies the breath of the All-Merciful, above the intellect, with the perfect man.
The perfect man as compendium
| Trait | Ikhwan / Isma'ili | Ibn al-'Arabi |
|---|---|---|
| All-inclusive (root j.m.') | Man is "the whole which encompasses everything (al-kull al-muḥīṭ bi-l-jamīʿ)" | Adam's jam'iyya: all names inside, all realities outside |
| In God's form | Intellect made in God's "form and pattern" | Adam made in the form of the name Allah |
| Microcosm | A compendium so the soul can see a world too big to tour | Same explanation; a "noble compendium" |
| Book | Man is a book written by God | Copy (nuskha) of the Divine |
| Bridge | Borderline between two worlds; the path (sirat) | Isthmus (barzakh); dividing line |
| Vicegerent | The human soul as God's vicegerent | Khalifa with Divine authority |
Ibn al-'Arabi calls man "both a created being and a God". On the hadith that God created Adam in His form, mainstream scholars, Sunni and Shi'i, explained it away to avoid anthropomorphism. Ibn al-'Arabi embraced it: "Thus, Adam emerged according to the form of the name Allāh, for this name contains all the Divine names", and "This is the reason why the wise men call the world ‘a big man’". Al-Shibli (d. 334/945) and al-Ghazali (d. 505/1111) also linked the hadith to the names, but al-Ghazali stressed that the likeness between God's attributes and man's holds only figuratively.
The Ikhwan explain the microcosm with an image: God "made his form a mirror for his soul", because the world is too big to walk around. Shi'i tradition had called the imam "the speaking Quran" and the written text "the silent imām"; the Ikhwan generalise this into man as Divine book.
Bridge between worlds
The Ikhwan describe the human form as the best of this world and the dregs of the next: "the choice part of this world; it is its fruit and its best portion. Yet it is also the turbid part of that world". Man is "like a line bordering each of the two worlds". Ibn al-'Arabi says man is "the last existent in terms of the physical senses, and the first existent in terms of the soul", and "He is like an isthmus (barzakh) between the world and God". Both thus give the perfect man an eschatological role: sirat and barzakh are terms for what lies between this world and the next.
Vicegerent, prophet and king
Ibn al-'Arabi writes: "Know that the required perfection, for which man was created, is none other than khilāfa". A messenger only delivers; a messenger given the sword and authority to judge is a khalifa, manifesting God's merciful and wrathful names. A ruler without prophecy is "a king, not a khalīfa", and "Hence, khilāfa can be acquired, not prophecy." Ebstein maps this onto Isma'ili roles: the prophet-messenger-khalifa corresponds to the speaker prophet, the friend of God to the imam.
Who is the perfect man?
In theory: the prophet and imams for the Isma'ilis, any ideal friend of God for Ibn al-'Arabi. In practice the Ikhwan blur the line. They say "the human form is Allāh’s vicegerent on earth", call the intellect God's hidden vicegerent, and declare that a person "virtuous and good, he is a noble angel and the best among men; but if he is bad, he is an accursed devil (shayṭān) and the worst among men". In one passage they go further: the true knower "does not seek His nearness by means of anyone else save for Allāh Himself."
Against Ian Netton, Ebstein holds that this universalism does not cancel the Ikhwan's Shi'i-Isma'ili identity; the Isma'ili world was a mosaic of Qaramita, Fatimis, eastern missionaries and the Ikhwan. He weighs two ways to reconcile the tension. One limits it to the cycle of concealment, when the imam is hidden and the reader is told "you should appoint your intellect as your own khalīfa". The other reads it as dissimulation (taqiyya). He rejects both as too narrow: "The great accomplishment of the Ikhwān lies in their ability to combine their own Shiʿi-Ismāʿīlī beliefs with a truly universal-humanistic outlook."
Universal access is not equality. Ibn al-'Arabi says that whoever fails to reach perfection "is an animal, whose external form is similar to that of a human being", and ranks "the level of the animal man in relation to the perfect man" like that of semi-human creatures to the animal man. Ebstein links this to the strict Shi'i-Isma'ili division of humanity. The Ikhwan say the unrealised man "is not an actual man, only a potential man".
The intellect as inner imam
Ebstein traces the Ikhwan's humanism to early Shi'i teaching analysed by Amir-Moezzi: the believer sees God in the heart through an intellect linked to the imam, an inner imam. The Ikhwan take this further. Their ninth Epistle speaks of "the absolute universal man", the universal human soul present in every person, who is God's vicegerent and appears wherever someone realises his potential. They read ahl al-dhikr, "the people of remembrance", as the intellect, which reminds the soul of its home, and they call the intellect their leader, a title they normally give to the speaker prophets. Shi'i epithets for the Prophet's family are thus applied to perfect men in general.
Al-Kirmani, on the more sectarian side, calls the prophets, legatees and imams a place where all virtues gather, and says the perfected soul "becomes one form for all the [different] forms". The language of gathering is the same; the range of persons is narrower.
Key passage
Note. Five words close prophecy and open everything else. A friend of God, of any lineage, can reach the highest rank short of prophecy, including authority. This is the humanistic turn Ebstein finds in the Ikhwan, carried into a Sunni frame.
- Is a concept "Sufi" because a Sufi used it, or because of where it came from?
- Can universal access to perfection coexist with calling most people animals?
- Which of the two readings of the Ikhwan (concealment, dissimulation) seems weakest, and why?
6. Parallel Worlds
Chapter 5 (pp.189-229) gathers the earlier themes into one network. Man mirrors the cosmos, the body mirrors society, and man and cosmos are both books to be read; reading them is an ascent that saves.
- The microcosm-macrocosm analogy is ancient and widespread, but Isma'ili authors developed it on an unprecedented scale and tied it to the friends of God.
- Al-Kirmani uses correspondences as philosophical proof; Ibn al-'Arabi's Futuhat ch.6 follows the same pattern.
- The Ikhwan and Ibn al-'Arabi turn the political body into an inner kingdom ruled by the spirit or soul.
- Man, the Quran and the universe are parallel Divine books; reading them (i'tibar) is a religious duty.
- Ibn Masarra's Risalat al-i'tibar, like the Ikhwan and al-Nasafi, makes contemplation a mystical ascent ending in vision.
A network, not a pair
In Isma'ili thought the man-universe analogy is one link in a web that also includes the hierarchy of the friends of God, numbers, letters and the holy book. The believer passes from the manifest (zahir) to the hidden (batin) and so reaches true unity. The analogy itself is old and found in the Theology, al-Kindi, al-Farabi and Ibn Sina; what is new is the scale and the link to walaya. Ebstein suggests the Isma'ili speculations are of "an extent and range that are unprecedented".
| Body (Ikhwan) | World |
|---|---|
| seven inner organs (heart, spleen, liver, gall bladder, stomach, brain, lungs) | seven planets |
| four main parts of the body | four elements |
| bones / marrow | mountains / minerals |
| intestines and arteries / hair | rivers and brooks / plants |
| breath / speech | wind / thunder |
| seven faculties and twelve orifices | seven planets and twelve signs; seven speaker prophets and twelve supporters |
The Ikhwan devote two epistles to the theme (Epistles 26 and 34). Two features mark them as Isma'ili: the "big man" is governed by the Divine command above the intellect, so that the universe is "one body whose spirit is the word of Allāh (kalimat allāh)"; and the analogy includes the hierarchy of the friends of God.
Proof by correspondence
In Rahat al-'aql ("The Repose of the Intellect"), al-Kirmani follows each philosophical argument with correspondences that prove it. Nature lies between the first intellect, "the first extremity", and man, "the second extremity"; in religion the speaker prophet and the qa'im play the same roles. His summary: "All the worlds are held fast to one another. They are linked together like a chain". A short epistle maps the worlds of creation, of the spheres, of man, of the Quran and law, and of esoteric interpretation.
Ibn al-'Arabi's Futuhat ch.6 compares man to four worlds: the upper world, the world of changes, the world of inhabitants and the world of relationships (the ten categories). He matches seven human faculties to seven planets, and the four elements to the four humours.
The kingdom within
Philosophers from Plato to al-Farabi compared man to a city. Isma'ili authors used the comparison to legitimise the imams; the fetus's six stages of growth (Q 23:12-14) mirror six cycles of history, and birth mirrors the coming of the qa'im. The Ikhwan also turn the comparison inward.
| Office | Ikhwan (body as city) | Ibn al-'Arabi, al-Tadbirat al-ilahiyya |
|---|---|---|
| King / khalifa | rational soul | spirit, in the heart |
| Vizier | creative faculty | intellect, in the brain, "the manager of the kingdom" |
| Doorkeeper | speaking faculty | |
| Companions | imagining, thinking, preserving faculties | |
| Spies | five external senses | |
| Enemy | appetite and anger; desire as Iblis's khalifa | desire and its vizier, lust |
Ibn al-'Arabi's Kitab al-tadbirat al-ilahiyya ("The Book of the Divine Management Concerning the Reformation of the Human Kingdom") is, Ebstein says, unprecedented in Sufi and philosophical writing: a whole book on the inner state, with judge, scribe, tax collector and soldiers, nomads, believers and hypocrites. He calls the spirit universal and holy, identifies it with the universal intellect and the throne, and makes the soul the noble wife of the spirit, as Isma'ili Neoplatonists paired intellect and soul. The war between Adam and Iblis becomes the inner, bigger jihad (al-jihad al-akbar).
He wrote it, he says, after reading the pseudo-Aristotelian Sirr al-asrar ("The Secret of Secrets") at the house of al-Mawruri in Moron, near Seville, who invited him to "compare it with the governance of the human kingdom, wherein our [spiritual] happiness lies". Ebstein notes that the Neoplatonic passage in Sirr al-asrar itself derives from the Ikhwan, as Manzalaoui saw.
Man, the book and the universe
Shi'i traditions call the imams God's signs (ayat) and "the most sublime simile". The Ikhwan, Ibn Masarra and Ibn al-'Arabi extend this to the whole of creation, written by the pen that is the universal intellect. The Quran already asks believers to look, reflect and take lessons (i'tibar) from signs; Bahya ibn Paquda, Ibn Rushd and Maimonides made contemplation a duty. The Isma'ilis add three things: the reading leads to the friends of God, it is an ascent, and it saves.
Al-Sijistani reads the shahada against intellect, soul, spheres and body, the horizons and souls of Q 41:53. Abu Hatim al-Razi says "man is the small world, for within him all the evidence (shawāhid) is assembled together", so that man is "an argument against himself". The Ikhwan exhort: "Oh, brother, observe ( fa-nẓur) this temple which is built so wisely".
Ibn Masarra's Risalat al-i'tibar is wholly devoted to this. "The whole world is a book whose letters are His speech; those who are endowed with perceptive vision (al-mustabṣirūn) read it." Prophecy descends from the throne, contemplation climbs to it, and "there is no difference [between the two]".
The ascent
Al-Nasafi retells Abraham's search (Q 6:77-78) as a climb through the Isma'ili cosmos: Abraham takes each level in turn for the Creator, al-Jadd, then the soul, then the intellect, until he sees that all are finite. The Ikhwan describe the journey "from the world of bodies, where the devils reside, to the world of spirits, where the angels live close [to God]", through four kinds of books: those of the philosophers, the prophets, nature and the souls. The climax is vision: the friends of God see the Maker and "He does not conceal Himself from them, not even for a single moment."
Ibn Masarra uses the same terms: concentrated intention (himma) ascends, the inner vision of the heart sees, and those who see are the mustabsirun. The end is meeting: "you will visualize Him with your inner vision (wa-abṣartahu bi-baṣīratika)".
The mainstream and the Ikhwan
Ebstein contrasts two Isma'ili views of where reading leads. In the mainstream, seen in al-'Alim wa-l-ghulam, the Kuni-Qadar myth and al-Razi, the signs of creation point to the friends of God, who are both the hidden truth behind the signs and the guides to salvation. The Ikhwan keep this but add a second goal: knowledge of man's own place in creation and of his relation to God and the universe. Ebstein says the two perspectives coexist in the Epistles and should not be seen as exclusive. Ibn Masarra takes the second path: his inner matters are cosmological, the Neoplatonic ladder of world, soul, intellect and God.
The Ikhwan also make contemplation a ritual with observation of the heavens, ablution and prayer, and promise inner change. Joining their company, the reader's chest will expand and "the eye of inner vision (ʿayn al-baṣīra) will open from within your heart". Where Shi'i tradition put the imam at the centre of this vision, the Ikhwan put man, the Divine book.
Key passage
Note. This sentence of Ibn Masarra joins Chapters 1, 2 and 5: Divine speech, letters and the reading of reality. It also explains why he and the Ikhwan read the Quran's opening letters through cosmology: the Quran and the world are one text in two editions.
- Does the inner kingdom of the Ikhwan and Ibn al-'Arabi depoliticise authority, or relocate it?
- What distinguishes Isma'ili contemplation from Ibn Rushd's philosophical contemplation?
- Why might Abraham be the natural hero of a theology of reading the cosmos?
Looking ahead. With this chapter the five themes are complete. Each has shown the same pattern: a feature found in Ibn Masarra or Ibn al-'Arabi, rare or absent in classical eastern Sufism, and present, often in the same context and terms, in Isma'ili writing. The Conclusion asks what historical story best explains that repeated pattern, and how far it can be pressed.
7. Conclusion: Parallel Lines or Influence?
The conclusion (pp.231-238) restates the findings, weighs two historical explanations, insists that neither thinker was an Isma'ili, and reopens the dating of the Epistles of Ikhwan al-Safa'.
What was found
Across all five themes, Ibn Masarra and Ibn al-'Arabi share with Isma'ili literature a theosophical discourse about God, the universe and man, full of cosmogony and cosmology, letters and parallel worlds, governed by the special Neoplatonism of the longer Theology. That combination is, Ebstein writes, largely absent from classical Sufi works and from Twelver works before Haydar Amuli. His verdict: "The links and affinities between the Ismāʿīlī tradition and the thought of Ibn Masarra and Ibn al-ʿArabī are thus undeniable."
Two explanations
| Explanation 1: parallel lines | Explanation 2: formative influence | |
|---|---|---|
| Claim | Both stem from common roots (Gnostic, Hermetic, Neoplatonic heritage, Quran, hadith, theology, philosophy) | The Isma'ili tradition helped shape the climate from which both thinkers came |
| Contacts | Occasional mutual influences | Fatimi North Africa as channel to al-Andalus |
| Ebstein | Plausible | Plausible and preferred: "I favor the second approach" |
His reasons are chronological and geographical. Why did both currents crystallise in the West between the 10th and 12th centuries? "Why did such a bold and revolutionary thinker like Ibn al-ʿArabī emerge in al-Andalus of all places?" The Fatimi empire next door, and Jewish evidence (the Epistles' influence on Jewish authors, Isaac Israeli in Fatimi Qayrawan, Isma'ili terms in Judah Ha-Levi), suggest historical circumstance rather than coincidence. The Isma'ilis were not mere carriers, he adds: "they skillfully adapted it".
Not Isma'ilis
Ebstein repeats that his conclusions "by no means imply that the latter two were Ismāʿīlīs or Shiʿis in any way." Neither recognises 'Ali and the imams as the only rightful leaders. Instead they "successfully faced the Shiʿi and the Fāṭimī-Ismāʿīlī challenge" to Sunnism by adapting its ideas. Whether they knew where those ideas came from has no simple answer: "Each case must be judged on its own." He also warns against flattening differences, between the Isma'ili factions, between Ibn Masarra and Ibn al-'Arabi, and between all of them and the many other sources they used.
The Epistles and their date
Ibn al-'Arabi probably read the Epistles; the blessing "may Allāh support you" (ayyadaka llah), scattered through his works, points that way. He may also have met their ideas through Ibn al-Sid al-Batalyawsi (444/1052-521/1127). The Epistles are the only Isma'ili text known to have directly influenced al-Andalus, and Ebstein argues that, against a common view, "the Epistles of Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ are not an ‘encyclopedia’" but a path of salvation with occult interests. Their letter speculation is thin, so other Isma'ili works (al-'Alim wa-l-ghulam, Kitab al-kashf, al-Razi, al-Sijistani) must also have played a part.
The chronology is a puzzle. Ibn Masarra died in 931, yet most scholars date the Epistles to the second half of the 10th century. Stroumsa and Sviri suggest a shared milieu; Ebstein prefers an earlier date for at least parts of the Epistles, in the first three decades of the 10th century, citing Fierro on Ghayat al-hakim and Rutbat al-hakim and the Epistles' links to the Jabirian corpus.
On p.237 the book writes "the latters’ relation to the Ikhwān’s Epistles", a plural possessive where the sense is the two works just named.
Where the argument leaves the reader
The conclusion is deliberately open. Ebstein hopes that scholars will try to substantiate either explanation, and says the field will benefit either way. He accepts that the precise historical meaning of the parallels is a matter of interpretation and, most likely, of future dispute. What he does insist on is that the Fatimi and Isma'ili history of North Africa must be part of any account of how Ibn Masarra and Ibn al-'Arabi came to be, and that any future dating of the Epistles must take the links with Ibn Masarra into account.
Key passage
Note. The final claim is about method as much as history. Ebstein writes that "Crude typologies and simplistic definitions of Islamic mysticism, hitherto prevalent in modern scholarship, should be abandoned", and that Shi'i and Isma'ili traditions be seen as central to Islamic esotericism from its formative period.
8. What the Footnotes Add
About a third of the printed words in this book sit in the footnotes. They are mostly references, but they also carry arguments, dates, translations and judgements that the main text leaves out. This part gathers the ones a reader is most likely to want, chapter by chapter. Note numbers are the book's; page numbers are printed pages.
- They sharpen the line between Sufi and Isma'ili vocabulary: the same words (batin, tasawwuf, hujja, walaya) mean different things in each.
- They add the political history of the Fatimi-Umayyad contest in more detail: revolts, missionaries, an execution, letters between caliphs.
- They record Ebstein's own firm positions on disputed questions, such as the author of Ghayat al-hakim and the date of the Epistles.
- They widen the Jewish and Christian comparison: the Talmud, Sefer yetsirah, Judah Ha-Levi, Ibn Gabirol, Maimonides, the Kabbalists of Gerona.
- They show where Ibn al-'Arabi parts company with the Isma'ilis, which the main text states more briefly.
Introduction: words that change meaning
Note 69 (p.22) does the same for tasawwuf. When the Epistles of Ikhwan al-Safa' use tasawwuf and sufi, the words should be read as asceticism and ascetics, as in their phrase "asceticism, austerity and abstinence according to the Christian way". The Ikhwan knew of the Sufis but were not Sufis, and Ebstein judges that Sa'id al-Andalusi (5th/11th century), the first to link Jabir b. Hayyan to the Sufis, was wrong both historically and typologically.
The history comes alive in the notes to pp.4-7. 'Umar b. Hafsun, in revolt against the Umayyads in 267/880-303/916, declared allegiance to the first Fatimi caliph al-Mahdi (ruled 297/909-322/934), who sent him two missionaries, one of them Ibn al-Haytham of Qayrawan, author of Kitab al-munazarat (n.15). A certain Abu l-Khayr was executed in Cordova early in al-Hakam II's reign, perhaps for pro-Fatimi sympathies. The Fatimi caliph al-'Aziz (365/975-386/996) and al-Hakam II (350/961-366/976) exchanged letters (n.14). Ibn Masarra's eastern journey falls somewhere between 300/912 and 317/929, and his father had visited Basra, the city of the Ikhwan (nn.22, 24).
Ebstein quotes Brown (n.56, p.18) against reading Ibn al-'Arabi outside history: "The uniqueness of any great thinker, the singular qualities of their contributions, are utterly opaque to us if the light of history is put out".
Chapter 1: the word and the will
The notes print the Arabic of the Kuni-Qadar myth in full (n.36) and of the Ikhwan's speech-and-writing analogy (n.55). Three further points stand out.
- Ibn al-'Arabi says he took the phrase al-haqq al-makhluq bihi, the truth by which creation was made, from Ibn Barrajan (died 536/1141). Ebstein accepts the report but argues that in this context the idea goes back to the Neoplatonic scheme of the Ikhwan (n.86, p.55).
- Ibn al-'Arabi also states in several places that God is not to be called the cause of creation (n.85), a real difference from the Isma'ili language of a first cause.
- The longer Theology of Aristotle survives only in manuscript, in Hebrew characters (nn.18, 22). Ebstein quotes Zimmermann on its likely route: "Presumably, L [the longer version of the Theology, M.E.] was brought to Egypt, together with the Neoplatonism of the Ismaʿilis of Persia, under the Fatimids." Neoplatonic writings, n.150 adds, circulated among North African Isma'ilis well before al-Mu'izz adopted Neoplatonism officially.
Chapter 2: letters
A tradition on the letters as the root of all things, quoted by the Isma'ili Abu Hatim al-Razi from Ja'far al-Sadiq, appears in Twelver sources under the name of the eighth imam 'Ali l-Rida (died 203/818). There the word tawahhum (God's first imagining) is mostly replaced by the more philosophical ibda'. Ebstein infers that "al-Rāzī’s version is earlier than the Twelver one" (n.26, p.82).
The same tradition (n.27) says that the 28 Arabic letters contain the 22 of Hebrew and Syriac, and that five more stand for all other languages, so that 33 cosmogonic letters underlie every human tongue. Another, ascribed to Muhammad al-Baqir (died c.114/732), makes the letters the first thing God created (n.28). Al-Sijistani, more cautious, stresses that God did not pronounce kaf and nun at creation, since He has no voice (n.29). Al-Kirmani went furthest and stripped the letters of myth altogether, reading the "seven supreme letters" as the lower seven intellects (nn.13, 36).
Two notes widen the frame. Note 24 shows that the comparison of consonants to body and vowels to spirit, found in al-Razi and in Ibn al-'Arabi, also appears in Judah Ha-Levi's Kuzari and in Kabbalah, and was already Hellenistic and Pythagorean. Note 153 explains why letter speculation faded among the Twelvers: under the Buwayhis a rational, legal and anti-esoteric trend arose from the 10th century, and the subject returned only with later figures such as Haydar Amuli (14th century) and the Hurufiyya. Note 151 warns that jafr, divination by letters, is often confused with the cosmogonic letter speculation studied here.
Chapter 3: the friends of God
Note 25 (p.129) sets the competing hierarchies of hidden saints side by side. They are worth seeing together.
| Author | Hierarchy as given in n.25 |
|---|---|
| al-Kattani | 300 nuqaba', 70 nujaba', 40 budala', 7 akhyar, 4 'umud, 1 ghawth |
| al-Hujwiri | 300 akhyar, 40 abdal, 7 abrar, 4 awtad, 3 nuqaba', 1 qutb or ghawth |
| Ibn al-'Arabi | 40 Rajabiyyun, 1 hawari, 8 nujaba', 12 nuqaba' (the book marks this order sic), 7 abdal, 4 awtad, 2 imams, 1 qutb or ghawth |
| Sahl al-Tustari | 1,500 siddiqun, including 40 budala' and 7 awtad |
The notes also show Shi'i terms inside early Sunni mysticism. Dhu l-Nun called the abdal "Allāh’s proofs/arguments against His created beings"; al-Tustari is said to have claimed the title hujjat allah; al-Tirmidhi used hujja and the Shi'i term muhaddathun (n.24). In Shi'i usage, n.6 adds, awliya' can simply mean the believers, and walaya their loyalty to the imams. The idea that the world rests on a fixed number of righteous men is already in the Talmud (n.8). Ebstein quotes Chodkiewicz on the Sufi side: "Sufism and sainthood are inseparable."
Note 52 (p.138) tells the Isma'ili-Tayyibi myth of al-Hamidi: the third intellect refused to acknowledge the rank above it and fell to the tenth place, and the faithful, by acknowledging the ranks on earth, help restore it. Twelver sources, the same note says, read Adam's sin as a refusal of walaya. Note 89 (p.151) gives Ibn al-'Arabi's own equation: what he calls the Muhammadan reality "ʿindanā", others call the first intellect.
Chapter 4: the perfect man
The notes trace the Neoplatonic root of the idea to the shorter Theology, where the sensible man is a mere image (sanam) of the intellectual man (n.15), and to al-'Amiri (died 381/992), who already uses al-insan al-kamil (n.20). Note 74 (p.177) gives Ibn al-'Arabi's view of rule in full: khilafa is higher than mere messengership, a ruler without prophecy is a king and not a caliph, and a true caliph is appointed by God, not by the oath of the people.
Note 78 (p.178) places the Ikhwan's humanism in Kraemer's "renaissance of Islam" under the Shi'i Buwayhis (945-1055). Notes 101 and 104 show its hard edge: for Ibn al-'Arabi a man who fails at perfection is an animal in human shape, and al-Kirmani likens the uninitiated to wolves, apes, pigs, scorpions and dogs. A milder echo is n.90: Ibn al-'Arabi resolves to make his own intellect an imam over himself.
Chapter 5: parallel worlds
Note 14 (pp.190-191) makes a claim about Ibn Sina. His father and brother were Isma'ilis, he knew the Epistles, and the short work al-Risala l-nayruziyya, with its 19 letters (the 14 of the fawatih and five more), shows Isma'ili rather than Sufi influence, against Lory's reading. Note 48 (p.199) shows how far the number nineteen reaches: Ibn al-'Arabi matches nineteen stations to the 12 signs and 7 planets, the 14 fawatih and their 5 levels, the 19 letters of the basmala, and the 12 nuqaba' and 7 abdal; Isma'ili sources match the same 12 plus 7 to the hujaj and the imams.
Note 87 (p.210) tells how al-Tadbirat al-ilahiyya was born. Visiting Abu Muhammad al-Mawruri in Mawrur, Ibn al-'Arabi found the pseudo-Aristotelian Sirr al-asrar, a manual on ruling a kingdom; his host asked him to answer it with the government of the human kingdom, and Ibn al-'Arabi says the sage's book is a quarter or a third the size of his own. Note 131 (p.222) adds al-Nasafi's reading of Abraham's search for God (Q 6:75-79) as an ascent through al-Jadd, the universal soul and the universal intellect, each greeted as "my Lord", a reading al-Razi rejected because no vision of God is possible in this world (n.132).
Conclusion: the open questions
Note 1 (p.230) singles out al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi, whose theosophy, letters and theory of walaya make him neither a classical Sufi nor a Neoplatonist; his links deserve their own study. Note 9 (p.234) states the main difference plainly: Ibn al-'Arabi's monistic vision of existence differs essentially from the Ikhwan's, even where he borrows their scheme. Note 25 (p.237) names the main obstacle to Ebstein's early dating of the Epistles: the report of Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi, who lived from about 310-320/922-932 to 414/1023, which most scholars read as placing the Epistles in the second half of the 10th century. Ebstein notes that the usual reading of that report has been questioned, and asks that the issue be reopened.
- If batini never meant Sufi, how much of the older picture of a "school of Almería" rested on a misread label?
- The hierarchy table shows real variety among Sufi authors. Does Ibn al-'Arabi's version look more like theirs or like the Isma'ili hudud?
- Ibn al-'Arabi rejects calling God a cause and holds a monistic view the Ikhwan lack. How far can borrowing a scheme go before the borrowed scheme changes meaning?
9. Notes on the Text
Page numbers are printed pages; n. marks a footnote.
| Page | As printed | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| 28 | since these four writings do reflect | No list of four writings is named in the main text at this point |
| 88, 118 | Ibn Massara | For Ibn Masarra (used elsewhere throughout) |
| 91 | Jābriain corpus | For Jābirian corpus |
| 121 | cosmognoic | For cosmogonic |
| 128 | the awliyā, who | Final sign of awliyāʾ dropped |
| 140, 141 | principal of tafḍīl; the principal reflected | Principle is meant |
| 153, 165 | Ismāʿilī | One long vowel dropped from the usual Ismāʿīlī |
| 185 | Shiʿi-Ismāʿīli | Final long vowel dropped |
| 186 | Ikhwāns’ writings | Possessive placed after an added s |
| 189 | al-ʿalām al-ṣaghīr | For al-ʿālam |
| 219 | his Lordship and His most beautiful attributes | Pronoun case varies within one phrase |
| 224 | Like a al-Nasafī | Stray article |
| 237 | the latters’ relation | Plural possessive of latter |
| 8 (n.29) | the wide-range of primary sources | Hyphenated adjective used as a noun |
| 50 (n.66) | a book whose shinning lines | For shining |
| 57 (n.92), 138 (n.53) | this fundamental principal; the principal of tafḍīl | Principle is meant, as in the main text slip at pp.140-141 |
| 63 (n.114) | khātam al-awilyāʾ | For awliyāʾ |
| 65 (n.119), 139 (n.58) | ṣāḥīb al-taʾwīl; ṣāḥīb al-ḥāl | Long vowel added to ṣāḥib |
| 71 (n.140) | Khawwāṣ al-ḥurūf | For Khawāṣṣ, the spelling used everywhere else |
| 86 (n.38) | al-Iʿitibār | For al-Iʿtibār |
| 97-100 (nn.73-89) | al-Futūhāt | Dot under the h dropped in a run of notes |
| 106 (n.106) | arabaʿa ʿashar | For arbaʿa, as elsewhere in the same passage |
| 110 (n.118) | Ibn masarra | Lower-case m |
| 99 (n.83), 152 (n.95) | comprising of | Comprising takes no of |
| 152 (n.95) | ittiṣal | Long vowel dropped from ittiṣāl |
| 181 (n.89) | ma-maḥallihā | For wa-maḥallihā |
| 184 (n.95) | ra-rūḥika; dar al-satr | For wa-rūḥika and dār al-satr |
| 184 (n.96) | see Ebstein, 2010 | Reference with no short title, unlike every other citation |
| 191 (n.14) | Grill, Science | For Gril, as cited elsewhere |
| 220 (n.122) | Ismāʿīli Neoplatonists | Final long vowel dropped |
Note. None of these slips affects the argument.
10. Synthesis
Twenty takeaways
- Ibn Masarra and Ibn al-'Arabi write a theosophical mysticism about God, the universe and man, unlike the mainly ethical and psychological Sufism of the East.
- The closest relatives of that mysticism are found in Isma'ili literature.
- The Isma'ilis preserved Gnostic, Hermetic and Neoplatonic material that eastern Sufis and early Twelvers largely set aside.
- The longer Theology of Aristotle places a Divine word between the One and the intellect; this one extra level runs through the whole book.
- Ibn Masarra and Ibn al-'Arabi both place a creative Divine speech above the universal intellect.
- Ibn al-'Arabi identifies the Divine words with creatures themselves, which grounds continuous creation.
- For Ibn al-'Arabi the cosmos follows the letters, not the reverse; this makes his letter science cosmogonic.
- Ibn al-'Arabi borrows from the Jabirian tradition while claiming unveiling as his authority and avoiding its magic.
- Early hadith already describe a fixed hierarchy of hidden saints with cosmic functions.
- Ibn al-'Arabi's hierarchy of saints sits in contexts (parallel worlds, ranked universe, Neoplatonism, letters) that are Isma'ili.
- Al-Tirmidhi is typologically closer to the Isma'ilis than to classical Sufis, and it was Ibn al-'Arabi who revived him.
- Respecting hierarchy is a religious duty in both traditions: giving everything what it deserves.
- The term perfect man appears in the Ikhwan before Ibn al-'Arabi.
- Ibn al-'Arabi's perfect man unites Divine names and worldly realities, is a microcosm, a bridge and a vicegerent.
- Khilafa can be acquired; prophecy cannot. Authority is opened beyond lineage.
- The Ikhwan combine Shi'i-Isma'ili identity with universal humanism; neither cancels the other.
- That humanism is not egalitarian: those who fail at perfection are called animals.
- Man, society, the holy book and the cosmos mirror one another, and reading them is an ascent that saves.
- Ebstein prefers influence to parallel development, because of time, place and Jewish evidence, while denying that either thinker was an Isma'ili.
- Islamic mysticism is wider than Sufism, and Shi'i and Isma'ili traditions belong at its centre.
The book in five paragraphs
The problem. Andalusian mysticism looks different. Its two greatest representatives build cosmologies, read letters as the stuff of creation and speak the language of Neoplatonism. Earlier scholars noticed this but explained it through vague perennialism or Pseudo-Empedocles, or ignored it because of a Sunni-Shi'i divide.
The method. Ebstein compares themes rather than isolated doctrines. For each theme he asks not only whether an idea appears in both traditions but whether it appears in the same context, with the same terms and in the same Neoplatonic frame. Shared contexts are harder to explain by common roots alone.
The evidence. The word above the intellect, letters as cosmogonic, the saints mapped onto the heavens, the perfect man above the intellect and as vicegerent, the inner kingdom, and contemplation as ascent: in each case the strongest parallels lie in Isma'ili sources, especially the Ikhwan.
The explanation. A Fatimi state next door, an Andalusian thinker who stayed in Qayrawan, Epistles that crossed the sea, and Jewish thinkers showing the same pattern make influence the more likely story.
The limit. None of this makes the Andalusians Isma'ilis. They never accept the imams. They adapted, and in adapting they met a Shi'i challenge with Sunni answers.
Five passages to remember
Ibn al-'Arabi, Futuhat ch.198 (Chapter 1): the creative word becomes the very being of creatures.
Ibn al-'Arabi reverses the Ikhwan: the cosmos follows the letters.
Ibn al-'Arabi on the perfect man: the highest rank short of prophecy is open.
Ibn Masarra, Risalat al-i'tibar: reading reality as a Divine text.
Ebstein's closing claim about categories.
What the book does not claim
It does not claim that Ibn Masarra or Ibn al-'Arabi were Isma'ilis or Shi'is, or that they knew the origin of every idea they used. It does not claim that the Isma'ili tradition was their only source; the Quran, hadith, theology, philosophy and, for Ibn al-'Arabi, Sufism all count. It does not claim that the first explanation, parallel development from shared roots, is impossible; it calls it plausible. And it does not claim that the Isma'ili world was uniform; its factions disagreed on doctrine and competed for authority.
The chapters at a glance
| Chapter | Isma'ili side | Andalusian side | Decisive shared feature |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Word and will | Kuni-Qadar; al-'Alim; Razi, Sijistani; Ikhwan | Ibn Masarra's place of the "be!"; Ibn al-'Arabi's breath | A creative word above the intellect |
| 2 Letters | Kuni-Qadar, Kitab al-kashf, Razi, Sijistani, Kitab al-fatarat | Ibn Masarra on the fawatih; Ibn al-'Arabi's twenty-eight | Letters as cosmogonic, and as saints |
| 3 Friends of God | al-'Alim, al-Kirmani, Ikhwan, Kitab al-kashf | Ibn al-'Arabi's hierarchy, Futuhat ch.73 | Saints mapped onto a ranked cosmos |
| 4 Perfect man | Ikhwan, al-Kirmani | Ibn al-'Arabi's compendium and khalifa | The perfect man above the intellect, universalised |
| 5 Parallel worlds | al-Kirmani, Ikhwan, al-Nasafi, al-Hamidi | Futuhat ch.6, al-Tadbirat; Risalat al-i'tibar | Inner kingdom; contemplation as ascent |
Reading paths
For the historical argument: Introduction, then the Conclusion, then Chapter 1 for the Neoplatonic marker.
For Ibn al-'Arabi specialists: Chapters 2, 3 and 4, where his letter science, saintly hierarchy and perfect man are set against Isma'ili sources.
For students of Ibn Masarra: Chapters 1, 2 and 5, which make the fullest use of his two surviving works.
For students of Jewish thought: the end of Chapter 1 and the Conclusion, on Israeli, Ibn Gabirol and Judah Ha-Levi.
How the arguments depend on one another
Chapter 1 supplies the frame: if there is a creative word above the intellect, letters can be its units (Chapter 2), saints can be its human carriers (Chapter 3), the perfect man can be its full embodiment (Chapter 4), and the cosmos can be read as its text (Chapter 5). Weaken the first link, and the others still stand as parallels but lose their common structure. That is why the longer Theology matters so much to the book, and why its contested origin is the point a critic would press first.
Ten questions for discussion
- Is "theosophical" a fair label for Ibn Masarra and Ibn al-'Arabi, and does it fit Isma'ili writing equally well?
- Which of the five themes gives the strongest evidence for influence rather than shared roots?
- How should a historian weigh geography and chronology against textual parallels?
- Does the Fatimi-Umayyad rivalry make borrowing more likely, or less?
- What does Ibn al-'Arabi gain by claiming unveiling rather than a teacher or an imam?
- Can a hierarchy of saints be both open to all and strictly ranked?
- What is the political meaning of turning the city into an inner kingdom?
- If the Epistles are dated later, how much of the argument survives?
- Why might the Ikhwan's universalism have travelled better than other Isma'ili writing?
- What would a history of Islamic mysticism look like if it started from Ebstein's five types?
Key sources named in the book
| Work | Author or setting (as printed) | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Theology of Aristotle (longer version) | 9th c. Arabic adaptation of Plotinus | The word above the intellect |
| Kuni-Qadar myth | Abu 'Isa l-Murshid, under al-Mu'izz | Creation through kaf and nun |
| Kitab al-'alim wa-l-ghulam | Prob. Ja'far b. Mansur al-Yaman | Will, command, saying; saints and stars |
| Kitab al-kashf | Early Isma'ili traditions | Letters, imams as God's names |
| Kitab al-yanabi' | al-Sijistani | Letters as signs; the shahada as map |
| Rasa'il ikhwan al-safa' and al-Risala al-jami'a | Ikhwan al-Safa' | The central comparison text throughout |
| Rahat al-'aql | al-Kirmani | Correspondence as proof |
| Kitab al-fatarat | Mid-4th/10th c. | Letters of the speaker prophets |
| Risalat al-i'tibar; Kitab khawass al-huruf | Ibn Masarra | Contemplation; letters |
| al-Futuhat al-makkiyya; Fusus al-hikam | Ibn al-'Arabi | Breath, letters, saints, perfect man |
| Kitab al-tadbirat al-ilahiyya | Ibn al-'Arabi | The inner kingdom |
| Sirr al-asrar | Attributed to Aristotle | Model for al-Tadbirat |
| Hilyat al-awliya' | Abu Nu'aym al-Isfahani | Early saint hierarchies |
Frameworks table
| Framework | Source in the book | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Five types of Islamic mysticism | Introduction | Separates Sufism from Shi'i-Isma'ili, philosophical, Isma'ili Neoplatonic and Andalusian Sunni mysticism |
| Three sides of esotericism | Introduction | Ontological, hermeneutical, occult |
| Five problems in scholarship | Introduction | Diagnoses why the Isma'ili link was missed |
| Shorter vs longer Theology | Ch1 | Identifies the extra level of the word above the intellect |
| Existentiating vs imposing command | Ch1 | Splits God's command into creation and law |
| Letters as building blocks vs signs | Ch2 | Distinguishes mythical from philosophical letter theory |
| Names and shapes of letters | Ch2 | Two techniques of letter interpretation |
| Saints mapped onto heavens | Ch3 | Links social and cosmic hierarchy |
| Superior and inferior (fadil / mafdul) | Ch3 | Makes rank a feature of being |
| Three men of the Theology | Ch4 | Neoplatonic background of the perfect man |
| Messenger / khalifa / king | Ch4 | Grades authority by its Divine sanction |
| Sectarian vs universal humanism | Ch4 | Reads the Ikhwan's double stance |
| Microcosm and macrocosm | Ch5 | Man as compendium of the world |
| Body as city | Ch5 | Turns political offices into inner faculties |
| Man, book, universe | Ch5 | Three Divine texts read together |
| Parallel lines vs influence | Conclusion | Two historical models for the parallels |
A closer look
Strengths. The method of comparing contexts, not just ideas, is strong, and it is applied evenly across five themes. Ebstein is careful to state the limits of his claim, to name the competing explanation and to call it plausible. The Jewish evidence widens the frame usefully, and the attention to the longer Theology gives a single, testable marker.
Questions. First, much rests on the longer Theology, whose origin is disputed; if it is not Isma'ili, the marker points to a shared Neoplatonic milieu rather than to Isma'ilis. Second, the case for direct influence leans heavily on the Ikhwan, whose date Ebstein himself must move earlier to fit Ibn Masarra. Third, Ebstein concedes that the Ikhwan lack the mythical letter speculation central to both Andalusians, so for that theme a second, unidentified channel is needed. Fourth, a reader may ask how far "classical Sufism" is itself a construct, defined to exclude what it then fails to contain. Fifth, the evidence is mostly from main texts compared side by side; the book admits that whether the Andalusians knew the origin of their ideas cannot be settled.
Who's Who
| Person (dates as printed) | Role in the book |
|---|---|
| Ibn Masarra (269/883-319/931) | First known Sunni mystic of al-Andalus; Risalat al-i'tibar, Kitab khawass al-huruf |
| Ibn al-'Arabi (560/1165-638/1240) | The Greatest Shaykh; Futuhat, Fusus, al-Tadbirat al-ilahiyya |
| Ja'far al-Sadiq (d. 148/765) | Imam to whom letter science and the Jabirian corpus are linked |
| Dhu l-Nun al-Misri (d. c.246/861) | Sufi master who wrote on the saintly hierarchy |
| Sahl al-Tustari (d. 283/896) | Sufi; light of Muhammad; letters as dust attributed to him |
| al-Junayd (d. 298/910) | Defines the Sufi movement in Ebstein's usage |
| al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi | 9th century theorist of walaya, revived by Ibn al-'Arabi |
| al-Hallaj (executed 309/922) | Refers to the primordial being of Muhammad |
| al-Kattani (d. 322/933) | Sufi hierarchy of saints |
| Abu Hatim al-Razi (d. 322/934) | Isma'ili Neoplatonist; letters, man as small world |
| al-Nasafi (executed c.331/942) | Isma'ili Neoplatonist; Abraham's ascent |
| al-Shibli (d. 334/945) | Links the "His form" hadith to the names |
| Ja'far b. Mansur al-Yaman (d. c.346/957) | Probable author of al-'Alim wa-l-ghulam |
| Maslama b. Qasim al-Qurtubi (d. 353/964) | Per Fierro, brought the Epistles to al-Andalus |
| al-Sijistani (d. after 361/971) | Isma'ili Neoplatonist; Kitab al-yanabi' |
| al-Nu'man (d. 363/974) | Fatimi author credited with al-Risala l-mudhhiba |
| al-Mahdi (ruled 297/909-322/934) | First Fatimi ruler; Israeli was his physician |
| 'Abd al-Rahman III (300/912-350/961) | Umayyad ruler who declared himself caliph in 316/929 |
| al-Mu'izz (341/953-365/975) | Fatimi caliph; Neoplatonism adopted officially |
| al-Kirmani (d. after 411/1020) | Isma'ili philosopher; Rahat al-'aql; second perfection |
| Nasir-i Khusraw (d. after 462/1070) | Isma'ili author cited in the debate over the word |
| al-Ghazali (d. 505/1111) | Sufi theologian; figurative reading of the "His form" hadith |
| Ibn al-Sid al-Batalyawsi (444/1052-521/1127) | Possible channel of Ikhwan ideas to Ibn al-'Arabi |
| Judah Ha-Levi (d. 1141) | Jewish thinker; the Divine command in the Kuzari |
| al-Hamidi (d. 557/1162) | Tayyibi author; Kanz al-walad |
| Isaac Israeli | Jewish Neoplatonist in Fatimi Qayrawan |
| Ibn Khaldun (14th c.) | Early claim of a Sufi-Isma'ili link |
| Asin Palacios (1871-1944) | Abenmasarra y su escuela (1914) |
| Guenon (1886-1951), Schuon (1907-1998), Valsan (1907-1974) | Traditionalist school criticised in the introduction |
| Henry Corbin | Phenomenological reader of Shi'i esotericism |
| Michel Chodkiewicz | Rejects a Shi'i origin of the saintly hierarchy |
| Ian Netton | Sees Ikhwan universalism as excluding Isma'ili identity |
| Amir-Moezzi | Imams as names of God; vision in the heart |
| Maribel Fierro | Dating of the Epistles and of Ghayat al-hakim |
11. Glossary
Arabic and technical terms as the book uses them, in simple transliteration.
| Term | Meaning in the book |
|---|---|
| abdal | Substitutes; a rank of hidden saints, kept fixed in number |
| amr | Command; God's creative command, often above the universal intellect |
| asas | Foundation; the legatee of a speaker prophet |
| awliya' (sing. wali) | Friends of God |
| awtad | Pegs; four saints on whom the earth rests |
| barzakh | Isthmus; what both separates and joins two domains |
| batin / zahir | Hidden, inner / manifest, outer |
| da'wa | The Isma'ili mission and its ranks |
| fawatih | The fourteen mysterious letters opening twenty-nine suras |
| haba' | Dust; cosmic matter, linked by Ibn Masarra to letters |
| hadd (pl. hudud) | Boundary; a being's rank in the cosmic hierarchy |
| i'tibar | Contemplation; reading the signs of creation |
| imdad / istimdad | Giving / drawing spiritual substance down the hierarchy |
| al-insan al-kamil | The perfect man |
| kalima | Word; the creative Divine word |
| khalifa / khilafa | Vicegerent / vicegerency |
| kun | "Be!"; the creative imperative of the Quran |
| Kuni-Qadar | The two first created beings of the early Isma'ili myth |
| martaba (pl. maratib) | Level, rank |
| nafas al-rahman | The breath of the All-Merciful |
| natiq (pl. nutaqa') | Speaker prophet, bringer of a law |
| qa'im | The messianic seventh speaker prophet |
| qutb | Pole; the highest friend of God |
| ruhaniyyat | Spiritual powers of the planets |
| ta'wil | Esoteric interpretation |
| ta'yid | Divine support |
| taqiyya | Dissimulation of one's beliefs |
| walaya | Friendship with God; also loyalty to the imams |
About this book
Mysticism and Philosophy in al-Andalus: Ibn Masarra, Ibn al-'Arabi and the Isma'ili Tradition by Michael Ebstein, 2014. This is a chapter-by-chapter study of the book, with summaries, maps, tables and diagrams; short quotations keep their page references. It is shared free for personal study, is not for sale, and is not endorsed by the author or publisher. Please read and buy the original.
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