Ibn 'Arabi PDF
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Ibn ‘Arabi “This is a fine book which will make an excellent addition to the secondary literature on Ibn ‘Arabi currently on the market. Few authors working today can match William Chittick’s knowledge and understanding of Ibn ‘Arabi and it is fortunate that he has written a book that makes Ibn ‘Arabi’s complex worldview available in a relatively short format.” SHAHZAD BASHIR, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF RELIGION, CARLETON COLLEGE, MINNESOTA SELECTION OF TITLES IN THE MAKERS OF THE MUSLIM WORLD SERIES Series editor: Patricia Crone, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton ‘Abd al-Malik, Chase F. Robinson Abd al-Rahman III, Maribel Fierro Abu Nuwas, Philip Kennedy Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Christopher Melchert Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi, Usha Sanyal Al-Ma’mun, Michael Cooperson Al-Mutanabbi, Margaret Larkin Amir Khusraw, Sunil Sharma El Hajj Beshir Agha, Jane Hathaway Fazlallah Astarabadi and the Hurufis, Shazad Bashir Ibn ‘Arabi, William C. Chittick Ibn Fudi, Ahmad Dallal Ikhwan al-Safa, Godefroid de Callatay Shaykh Mufid, Tamima Bayhom-Daou For current information and details of other books in the series, please visit www.oneworld-publications.com IBN ‘ARABI Oneworld Publications 10 Bloomsbury Street London WC1B 3SR England © William C. Chittick 2005 This ebook edition first published 2012 All rights reserved Copyright under Berne Convention A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-85168-511-0 ISBN 978-1-78074-193-2 (ebook) Typeset by Jayvee, India Cover and text design by Design Deluxe Stay up to date with the latest books, special offers, and exclusive content from Oneworld with our monthly newsletter Sign up on our website www.oneworld-publications.com CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Ibn ‘Arabi’s Life Abbreviations Used in the Text 1 THE MUHAMMADAN INHERITANCE Inheritance Opening The Muhammadan Seal Reading the Qur’an Understanding God Knowing Self God’s Wide Earth The Inheritor 2 THE LOVER OF GOD Assuming the Traits of the Names The Divine and Human Form Imperfect Love 3 THE DIVINE ROOTS OF LOVE Wujud The Nonexistent Beloved The Entities The Genesis of Love Love’s Throne Human Love Felicity Poverty Perfection 4 THE COSMOLOGY OF REMEMBRANCE Remembrance Prophecy The Book of the Soul The Breath of the All-Merciful Knowledge of the Names All-Comprehensiveness Achieving the Status of Adam The Perfect Servant The House of God 5 KNOWLEDGE AND REALIZATION Knowledge Benefit The Form of God Reliable Knowledge Following Authority Realization The Ambiguity of Creation Giving Things their Haqq The Rights of God and Man The Soul’s Haqq 6 TIME, SPACE, AND THE OBJECTIVITY OF ETHICAL NORMS The Methodology of Realization Time and Space Location Time Eternity Constant Transformation Ethics Lost in the Cosmos 7 THE IN-BETWEEN Relativity The Worldview of In-Betweenness Cosmic Imagination The Soul The Soul’s Root Controversies The Gods of Belief 8 THE DISCLOSURE OF THE INTERVENING IMAGE Self-Awareness Death Love 9 THE HERMENEUTICS OF MERCY Interpreting the Qur’an Good Opinions of God The Return to the All-Merciful The Mercy of Wujud Mercy’s Precedence Essential Servanthood Primordial Nature Sweet Torment Constitutional Diversity Surrender Resources Index INTRODUCTION B orn in Spain in 1165, Ibn ‘Arabi is at once the most influential and the most controversial Muslim thinker to appear over the past nine hundred years. The Sufi tradition looks back upon him as “the greatest master” (ash-shaykh al- akbar), by which is meant that he was the foremost expositor of its teachings. Modern scholarship is rightly skeptical about grandiose titles, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that this specific title is not out of line. On the quantitative side, Ibn ‘Arabi’s massive al-Futuhat al-makkiyya (“The Meccan Openings”) provides more text than most prolific authors wrote in a lifetime. Manuscripts of several hundred other works are scattered in libraries, and scores of books and treatises have been published. But “greatness” is not to be judged by bigness, so we clearly need to look at the contents of all those pages. Probably no one has ever read everything Ibn ‘Arabi wrote, and few specialists would even claim to have read the whole Futuhat. Even so, “reading” is one thing, “understanding” something else. Ibn ‘Arabi has always been considered one of the most difficult of authors. This is due to many factors, not least extraordinary erudition, consistently high level of discourse, constantly shifting perspectives, and diversity of styles. Thorough analysis and explication of a single page of the Futuhat demands many pages of Arabic text, and the task becomes much more challenging when it is a question of translation into a Western language. One might suspect that Ibn ‘Arabi’s works are difficult because he wrote unnecessarily complicated rehashes of earlier works. In fact, we are dealing with an approach to Islamic learning that is remarkably original, so much so that he has no real predecessor. Certainly, there were important authors during the previous century who also expressed Sufi teachings with theoretical sophistication, but compared even to the greatest of these, such as Ghazali, Ibn ‘Arabi represents a radical break. Ghazali speaks for much of the early Sufi tradition when he tells us that “unveiling” – that is, the unmediated knowledge that God bestows on his special
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