Page Text: Themes in Ibn Arabi’s Writing
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Futuhat Project
On this page, there is a selection of articles from the Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society. Although these do not represent an analytical treatment of Ibn Arabi’s teachings, they do reflect the breadth of subjects in his writing.
In what I have written, I have never had a set purpose, as other writers. Flashes of divine inspiration used to come upon me and almost overwhelm me, so that I could only put them from my mind by committing to paper what they revealed to me. If my works evince any form of composition, that form was unintentional. Some works I wrote at the command of God, sent to me in sleep or through a mystical revelation.
Ibn Arabi’s writings are broadly concerned with divine reality, and the human being’s experience of it. In the quotation above, he stresses that what he wrote was not a personal matter. It can be said that the ideas he communicates do not allow themselves to be reduced to a system, and in this sense there is no one, definitive, way to pick out the themes that run through his works.
One approach has been seen since the time of Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi’s great student, Sadruddin al-Qunawi [/] , who responded to requests from people for help understanding Ibn Arabi’s Fusus al-hikam. A superlative example of this is the introduction to the 18th century Ottoman translation of the Fusus, rendered into English by Bulent Rauf [/] . This introduction has twelve sections, called “origins” (usul). For example, Origin three “explains the Divine Names and Qualities”, Origin four the ayan-i-thabita, Origin ten “is an explanation of the fact that the station of Love is higher than all other stations”.
In the 20th century William Chittick has published two large studies, based on selections from the Futuhat al-Makkiyya, a work which was often quoted by traditional scholars, but did not attract commentaries. These studies are a survey of certain areas or aspects of the Futuhat, and an attempt to convey themes running through the work in Ibn Arabi’s own words. In these books he organized the extracts under six headings: the names of God, existence and non-existence, transcendence and immanence, modes of knowing, human perfection, and the barzakh, the “in-between”.
Perhaps the most important thing to say is that though there are clear, recognizable, themes running through Ibn Arabi’s writings, there is no end to the variety in them, especially if one considers them in depth. On this site, we suggest some thematic groups which may offer an indication of the wonderful breadth of Ibn Arabi’s teachings.
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The Wisdom of Animals
Ibn Arabi devotes Chapter 198 of al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya, one of the longer chapters of the book, to the Breath of the all-Merciful. He takes the Arabic alphabet as representing twenty-eight primordial divine letters. In order to create the cosmos, with all its invisible and visible levels, God composes words and sentences and books employing those twenty-eight letters. The passage on the twenty-fifth cosmic letter bears on Ibn Arabi’s understanding of the role of animals in creation. It is an extraordinary exposition.
Gerald Elmore
Four Texts of Ibn Arabi on the Creative Self-Manifestation of the Divine Names (PDF)
In the Anqa Mughrib Ibn Arabi devoted a chapter to “An Eternal Conference on an Everlasting Figure”. In this he explained the cause of the world’s emergence in an allegory, through the description of a debate between the Divine Names. He referred to and summarised this passage in a another early work (Kitab inshaʼ al-dawaʼir, “Description of the Encompassing Circles”) and subsequently developed the theme in two chapters of the Futuhat. One of these passages provoked a controversy in the Egyptian National Assembly in 1980, but there is obviously much more to this imagery than its capacity to shock.
Denis Gril
Ibn Arabi in Egypt – The Speech of Things
When the Companions of the Prophet heard the rock glorifying God in the Prophet’s hands, it was not the glorification of the rock which was out of the ordinary, but rather the fact that the Companions could hear its glorification. It is not usual for human beings to hear the speech of objects, because hearing and understanding this kind of speech belongs to the conditions of the hereafter, not to the conditions of this world. Indeed, the limbs of a human being have a tongue that cannot be heard except in the hereafter, as is related in the Sura of Ya-Sin (Quran 36:65). A human being may fabricate lies and deny things about God and about himself, but the tongue of things is always truthful, it neither lies nor errs. In this sense, it is closer in degree to its Lord than the speech of most human beings.
Pasha M. Khan
Nothing But Animals – The Hierarchy of Creatures in the Ringstones of Wisdom
One of the concepts that has long filled the imagination of Sufis and academics is the anthropology of Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi. The quest for the perfect human (insan al-kamil) has driven many authors, from ‘Abd al-Karim al-Jili to Masataka Takeshita, and there is little doubt that this concept occupies a central place in Ibn Arabi’s texts. But it is surprising that so few readers of Ibn Arabi have taken seriously his ideas about non-human animals, especially given that they are so arresting and so explicitly bewildering.
Pierre Lory
The Symbolism of Letters and Language in the Work of Ibn Arabi
Ibn Arabi’s conception of language and the mystical science of the letters that is its corollary are certainly one of the central, and at the same time the most synthetic and abstruse, parts of the Shaykh al-Akbar’s work. With a word, God brings into being an indeterminate multitude of creatures and these creatures become “words” in the immense divine discourse that is the universe.
Dialogue and Integration
Interreligious Dialogue: Ibn Arabi and Meister Eckhart
Currently, in the great global village, all religions – and especially the Abrahamic religions – are, on the one hand, facing attacks which are not aimed at any particular religions but at the essence of religiosity and spirituality – among which secularism, modernism and postmodernism are neither the last nor the worst attacks. On the other hand, those religions whose stated purpose is to guide and save humanity, need to find solutions for the moral, psychological and spiritual problems and anomalies with which humanity today is faced. Another problem faced by religions is the issue of religious wars fought to the extremes of savagery. If we were to succeed in discovering a single essence for religions – and particularly for Abrahamic religions – a dialogue between these religions based on that single essence could then be employed, both to strengthen the united front of religions against the attacks made in the modern world and as a step towards cooperation in solving the problems of humanity. This could also act as a background against which religious conflicts could be attenuated.
Stephen Hirtenstein
“O Marvel!” – A Paradigm Shift towards Integration
No-one can deny that human activities leave a great deal to be desired. However, that view alone would ignore the essential capacity we have for self-transcendence, for going beyond apparent limitations, for working in harmony with others and not against them, for assuming the dignity of the complete human being which lies in the potential of each and every one of us.
Cecilia Twinch
The Circle of Inclusion
The Muhammadian vision provided by Ibn Arabi gives an overview which is not tied to any particular belief, or property, or attribute. Essentially the self is unbounded. If we impose our own limitations and constraints on it, we are prevented from fully receiving each new revelation.
God and Man, Lord and Servant
Michel Chodkiewicz
Concerning “You shall not see Me!” (lan tarana), the divine reply to Moses’ request “Let me see, so that I can behold You” (arini unzur ilayka) (Quran 7:143).
Jane Clark
Fulfilling our Potential: Ibn Arabi’s Understanding of Man in a Contemporary Context
The heart is a supra-rational rather than an anti-rational faculty, and in his work, Ibn Arabi gives a comprehensive account of the way in which all the different faculties – dhawq, imagination, reason and sensory perception – operate and inter-relate. This is perhaps especially valuable to us in the present day, when secular rationalism has become so prevalent that it sometimes seems as if our capacity for mystical insight and creative imagination has been forgotten, or if remembered, not afforded validity. He gives us a map to a lost land, which is the complete human potential.
Denis Gril
Adab and Revelation – One of the Foundations of the Hermeneutics of Ibn Arabi
“The adib – the one who knows and respects adab – is the wise man (hakim).” This statement begins Chapter 168 of the Futuhat al-Makkiyya on the maqam of adab, and this article has extended translations from the Futuhat as well as other sources. “The first thing God gave to His servants as an order is the meeting (jam). This is nothing other than adab, a word derived from maduba (banquet) or the act of meeting for a meal (al-ijtima‘ ‘ala ’l-ta‘am), just as adab is the meeting together of all good (jima‘ al-khayr kullihi). The Prophet, upon him grace and peace, said, “God instilled adab in me [i.e. has brought together in me all forms of good] and He made it perfect in me [i.e. has made of me the place of all perfection].” – This article is also available in Swedish.
James Morris
Divine Calling, Human Response – Scripture and Realization in the Meccan Illuminations
This article includes translation from Chapters 519 and 520 of the Futuhat, from the long concluding sixth section which is devoted to “the spiritual mottoes (hijjirat) of the Muhammadan Poles and their spiritual stations.” These two chapters are concerned with calling and response between God and his servants, essential relationship, as encapsulated in the Quranic verse, “And whenever My servants ask you about Me, surely I am near: I respond to the call of the one who is calling, whenever he calls upon Me. So may they respond fully to Me and may they have faith in Me, that they might be guided rightly!” (Quran 2:186).
The second part of the article has as an Appendix a list of verses in the Quran and hadith referring to the Arabic root for answering, responding or replying to a request (j-w-b, in both the IVth and Xth verb forms). The corresponding notions of calling, requesting, pleading, praying for, are expressed in the wider family of Quranic expressions (including the Arabic roots s-’-l, d-‘-w, n-d-w etc.)
Frithiof Rundgren
On the Dignity of Man
Some Aspects of the Unity of Being in Ibn Arabi with reference to Platonic thought. From the viewpoint of the history of ideas, this is a survey of old, mainly Greek elements occurring in the first Chapter of the Fusus. The elements are not only to be found also elsewhere in the writings of the great sheikh but also in those of many of his forerunners. However, the basic elements Greek or Arabic are one thing, their combination into constituents of a system is another. It is in the way he combines the elements into constituents of a system that we find the truly impressive originality of Ibn Arabi.
Mohammed Rustom
Ibn Arabi on Proximity and Distance – Chapters 260 and 261 of the Futuhat
This is a reading of Ibn Arabi’s teachings on the important Sufi concepts of qurb (proximity) and bu‘d (distance), as laid out in chapters 260 and 261 of al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya. In these relatively brief chapters Ibn Arabi engages his predecessors’ meditations upon these concepts, while offering his own unique interpretations of their meaning and significance. The hadith al-nawafil plays a crucial role in Ibn Arabi’s teachings here, as do a number of key Quranic passages.
Journey, Voyage, Pilgrimage, Travel
The Degrees of the Station of No-Station: Regarding the End of the Journey
As a notion, the station of no-station appears very frequently in the writings of the masters under different names (mawqifma wara al-mawaqif, maqam al-maqamat, maqam al-tawhid, maqam al-qurba etc.). But as an expression, it appears very rarely. Ibn Arabi used it in the Futuhat al-Makkiyya in a technical sense, crediting Abu Yazid al-Bistami and others with having attained it, as though he wanted to suggest the rarity and also the measure of it.
William Chittick
Death and the Afterlife (in Arabic, PDF)
This is a translation into Arabic by Mahmud Yunus of Chapter 7 of Imaginal Worlds (State University of New York Press, 1994). Teachings about death and the afterlife pertain to the “return” to God (ma‘ad), the third principle of Islamic faith, after divine unity (tawhid) and prophecy (nubuwwa). In his writings Ibn Arabi dealt with both the “voluntary return” (al-ruju‘ al-ikhtiyari) and the “compulsory return” (al-ruju‘ al-idtirari), and the perspectives he raised had a great influence on subequent treatments by Sufis, philosophers and theologians. Based on extensive passages from the Futuhat al-Makkiyya, this article is concerned with Ibn Arabi’s teachings on the compulsory return.
William Chittick
Presence with God
If we follow Ibn Arabi’s own terminology, we cannot move toward the “Presence of Being” because we are already there. What we are really striving for is presence with specific self-disclosures of God in ourselves, self-disclosures that derive from divine names such as “Guide”, “Compassionate”, “Forgiving” and “Pardoning”. Thus, the goal of the Sufi path cannot be to achieve the “Presence of Being”. It is rather to achieve permanent happiness through following the guidance brought by the prophets.
Michel Chodkiewicz
The Endless Voyage
This starts with the observation that Islam’s religious vocabulary constantly reminds man that he is a traveller, a pilgrim. “In each of the five daily prayers – a total of seventeen times per day – the Muslim asks God to lead him along the straight path (sirat mustaqim); in the Fatiha, the first sura of the Quran, the recitation of which is mandatory, it is as a matter of fact the only request that is made.” This text includes a presentation of Ibn Arabi’s Kitab al-isfar.
Jaume Flaquer
The Akbarian Jesus: The Paradigm of a Pilgrim in God
That Jesus is a spirit and being “the word proceeding from God” makes him the paradigm of another quality: that of the pilgrim of God, of the spiritual traveller who comes from God and returns to God without ever having left the presence of God. This spiritual journey is the reflection of a cosmic movement of a creation which is constantly leaving God and returning to Him. Jesus is the model of both movements because he realises in himself this cosmic journey by being the manifestation of the Word arising from the divine Breath, and by walking through the world in the constant presence of God. – This paper is also available in German: »Der akbarische Jesus: Das Vorbild eines Reisenden in Gott« (PDF).
Souad Hakim
The Paths to God: A Journey through the Spiritual Experience of Ibn Arabi and His Writings
“The paths to God” is a phrase which carries within it a paradox because, firstly, it gives the reader the impression that God (praise be to Him) is far away, absent, or even the expectation that the seeker (salik) travels the path to arrive at the Holy Threshold. However, according to the scriptures, God (praise be to Him) is close to His servants – He is with them wherever they are. In truth, He is the Seeker in the one who reaches out to Him (praise be to Him), and He hastens towards the one who walks towards Him. This begs the question as to why the Sufi seeks a way to reach God (praise be to Him), all the while being certain that God is with him and close to him.
Bahram Jassemi
The Dimensions of the Mystical Journey
“You should know that man has been on the journey ever since God brought him out of non-being into being” – The Shaykh al-Akbar, Ibn Arabi, describes the state of being of the man on the journey in his Risalat al-anwar and points out that it is only possible for man to cease journeying in the fifth abode (mawtin), namely in Paradise or in hell.
Love, Beauty, Perfection
The Experience and Doctrine of Love in Ibn Arabi
Claude Addas is the author of Quest for the Red Sulphur and The Voyage of No Return. Delivered at the 2002 Society Symposium in Oxford, The Service of Love. – The same paper is available in French: «Expérience et doctrine de l’amour chez Ibn Arabi».
Ralph Austin
The Lady Nizam – An Image of Love and Knowledge
Ibn Arabi met in Mecca the young daughter of Abu Shaja Zahir. He says in the introduction to the Tarjuman al-ashwaq, “This shaikh had a virgin daughter, a slender child who captivated one who looked upon her, whose presence gave lustre to gatherings […] her name was Nizam (Hamony) and her surname ‘Ain al-shams (Eye of the Sun). She was religious, learned, ascetic, a sage among the sages of the Holy Places […] I took her as a model for the inspiration of the poems […] although I was unable to express so much as a part of the emotion which my soul experienced and which the company of this young girl awakened in my heart.”
Pablo Beneito
We are going to deal with a mystical conception of Beauty in its ethical and metaphysical forms, that is to say, with the human relationship with the divine attribute of Beauty; an aesthetics of the spirit, an art of contemplation.
Pablo Beneito
In this article there are translations of two passages by Ibn Arabi on the Divine Name al-Wadud. The first is from the treatise entitled Kashf al-ma‘na, and the second is from the second-to-last chapter of The Meccan Illuminations.
William Chittick
The Divine Roots of Human Love
This article reflects the profundity and richness of Ibn Arabi’s writings on the subject of Love (mahabba) in the Futuhat. To mention just one quotation from it, “The divine love derives from God’s names “Beautiful” and “Light”. Light goes forward to the entities of the possible things and dispels from them the darkness of their gaze upon themselves and upon their own possibility. It occasions for them a seeing that is Light’s own seeing, because light alone allows anything to be seen. Then God discloses Himself to the entity through the name “Beautiful”, and it falls in love with Him” (Futuhat II 112.33).
William Chittick
The Religion of Love Revisited
The couplet from Ibn Arabi’s poetic work the Tarjuman al-ashwaq is very well known: “I practice the religion of love, wherever its camels turn their faces. // This religion is my religion and my faith.” William Chittick sets it within a historical context generally and the teachings of Ibn Arabi. That is, he stands in a long line of teachers who spoke in similar terms, and that his “religion of love” is not quite what most people imagine it to be. It certainly implies openness to the beauty of God’s creation along with love and compassion for all of God’s creatures, but more than anything else it is a program of action.
Maurice Gloton
The Quranic Inspiration of Ibn Arabi’s Vocabulary of Love – Etymological Links and Doctrinal Development
Ibn Arabi, at the beginning of Chapter 178 of the Futuhat al-Makkiyya, makes it clear that the Station of Love has four names: hubb, germinal, seminal or original love, whose purity penetrates the heart and whose limpidity is not subject to accidental changes; wadd, affection or the faithful attachment of love, a word to which the Divine Name Wadud is related, the constantly lovable and loving; ‘ishq, the spiralling of love or distraught love, extreme love or overwhelming love; and hawa, the sudden inclination of love or unexpected passion of love.
James Morris
Ibn Arabi’s “Short Course” on Love
Selections from Chapter 73 of the Futuhat (the concluding chapter in the opening Fasl al-Ma‘arif of that work) – comprising Ibn Arabi’s brief response to four successive items in Tirmidhi’s famous “mystical questionnaire” related to the theme of divine Love – provide a concise introduction to virtually all of the ideas and perspectives concerning love that are developed at much greater length in Chapter 178. Moreover, near the very end of the Futuhat (in the penultimate Chapter 559, largely devoted to revealing the “inner meanings” of each of the preceding chapters of that monumental work), Ibn Arabi returns to this theme in a short, but highly challenging and evocative description of the central role in human and divine existence of Love as the all-encompassing force of cosmic “desire” (hawa). His concluding remarks on love there are expressed in ways that will recall both Plato’s Symposium and Phaedrus, as well as some of the most humanly revealing – and often memorably provocative – stories and teachings about the indispensable motivating and revelatory power of love and desire that are scattered throughout Rumi’s spiritual Masnavi.
Theophanies and Lights in the Thought of Ibn Arabi
God is the “Hidden Treasure” which longs to express itself and be known. God/Truth is Beauty and the property of beauty is to shine forth. He is Love whose nature is to give of itself. The divine theophanies are essentially the outpouring of His Beauty, His Perfection and His Love which are expressed in the immense theatre of the universe.
Man and Woman
Ibn Arabi’s Twofold Perception of Woman – Woman as Human Being and Cosmic Principle
“It is astonishing that a colossal Islamic scholar, Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi (560–638 AH), who lived more than eight centuries ago, should have declared that woman and man are absolutely equal in terms of human potentiality.” It is a vision which deals with gender in terms of the essential qualities of humanity, and so provides a foundation for the reassessment of notions and concepts about women in Islam, or without reference to religion at all.
Sachiko Murata
Women of Light in Sufism
According to the Quran, “God is the light of the heavens and the earth.” In this article Sachiko Murata suggests why femininity is essentially luminous, why, in other words, it reflects directly the divine light that fills the universe. She talks about what can be called “the light of woman” and how women – and men as women become “women of light.” She begins by quoting one of the most famous Sufis of history, Rabi‘a. Her sayings are often quoted by the Sufis, and she is respected as one of the greatest spiritual teachers of the early tradition. One of the shortest of the many sayings that have come down from her is this: “Everything has a fruit, and the fruit of recognition is coming forward to God.”
Mercy and Compassion
The Presence of Superlative Compassion
On the Divine Names al-Rahman al-Rahim and other terms with the lexical root r–h–m in the work of Ibn Arabi. On the one hand, in Akbarian thought the term rahma retains the meaning which it has in ordinary language, where it is associated with pity (shafaqa), benevolence (ra’fa) etc. In this sense one could say that God has compassion on the essences (a‘yan) which yearn to be manifested in actual existence. In another sense Ibn Arabi assimilates rahma to its effect, and given that the effect of the compassion of God for the essences is actual existence, rahma is existence (wujud). – This paper is also online in Spanish: «La presencia de la compasión superlativa».
William Chittick
The Anthropology of Compassion
Ibn Arabi has commonly been called al-Shaykh al-Akbar, “the Greatest Teacher”, not least because he explained in unprecedented detail and at the highest level of discourse all the implications of the Islamic worldview. The result was a vast synthesis of the basic fields of learning, including Quran, Hadith, language, law, psychology, cosmology, theology, philosophy, and metaphysics. In delving into these subjects, he wanted to show how each can act as an aid in the actualization of true human nature. But what exactly is true human nature? This is what I am calling “anthropology” – the science of the anthropos – the explication of which lies at the heart of Ibn Arabi’s writings.
James Morris
Opening the Heart: Ibn Arabi on Suffering, Compassion and Atonement
This study carefully follows Ibn Arabi’s own development of a key theme, sadr, through the Fasl al-ma‘arif (on “Forms of Spiritual Knowing/Awareness”) of the Futuhat. This long opening section includes includes the first 73 chapters (roughly one-quarter of the entire book). The Arabic word sadr literally means “chest”, but in almost all contexts more meaningfully translated in English by the word “heart”.
Mohamed Haj Yousef
Ibn Arabi: the Treasury of Absolute Mercy
Ibn Arabi often states that the world was originated from absolute mercy, and to mercy it shall return; any pain or wretchedness is therefore temporal and apparent. We shall discuss in this article the origin of the world and its destiny, and the role of mercy, based on Ibn Arabi’s cosmological model of creation.
Prayer, Praise, Practice
Aspects of Mystical Prayer in Ibn Arabi’s Thought
The prayer rite is at one and the same time the most common and yet the most special of rites, everywhere known and public and yet the occasion of and opportunity for the profoundest communication with God. It is also unique in two other ways. Firstly, it is the only rite which God Himself may be said to perform, since He is said to salla ‘ala (pray over) the Prophet and us. Secondly, alone of all the rites it incorporates the essential spirit of the other four. For example, it is the frequent occasion of the pronouncing of the creed; it is a time of reservation and abstention from unnecessary and superfluous talk and activity, like the fast (Mary in the Quran).
Michel Chodkiewicz
The Banner of Praise
God “began the creation of man from clay […] Then He fashioned him harmoniously and blew into him of His spirit” (Quran 32:7–9). The first man then uttered his first words – those which established human language – by saying: al-hamdu li-llah rabbi l-‘alamin. In following Ibn Arabi’s writings on the superlative station of praise, this essay includes passages from the Futuhat al-Makkiyya in which he replies to the questions posed long before by Hakim Tirmidhi.
Gerald Elmore
This important article contains passages on the subject of praise translated from four works by Ibn Arabi, namely from Chapter 558 of the Futuhat al-Makkiyya, from the Kitab al-‘Abadilah, the Kitab al-Shawahid and the Kitab Taj al-tarajim.
Denis Gril
“There is no Word in the World that does not Indicate His Praise”
This paper begins, “Praise represents both the beginning and the end of existence and the principal reason for the existence of the universe. One begins a meal with bismillah (“in the name of God”) and finishes the meal with al-hamdu li-llah (“praise be to God”). These two formulas hold, just like the meal, our whole existence.” – The same paper is available in French «Il n’est de mot dans l’univers qui n’indique Sa louange».
Souad Hakim
Invocation and Illumination according to Ibn ‘Arabī
Souad Hakim points out that before Ibn ‘Arabi the interest of the Sufi was focused on acquisition through action, which explains their many writings on spiritual exertion and struggle. The stations of the Way increase from seven to a hundred, to a thousand and one. Here she recapitulates with great clarity Ibn ‘Arabi’s writings on a complementary path, that of invocation.
James Morris
Listening for God: Prayer and the Heart in the Futuhat
What is it about the “heart” – or rather, how is it? – that can so miraculously transform perception into contemplation, everyday experience into theophany, the words and movements of ritual into the ineffable reality of prayer? As the Quran repeatedly insists, each of us surely has “had a heart” – but what is it that so rarely and unforgettably makes that heart shahid, actively and consciously contemplating the Truly Real, so that our transient awareness is transformed into true prayer and remembrance of God?
James Morris
Ibn Arabi: Spiritual Practice and Other Translations
This is a collection of eight translations of shorter treatises by Ibn Arabi (such as his “Book of Spiritual Advice”) and partial translations of chapters from the Futuhat al-Makkiyya, e.g. “The Spiritual Ascension: Ibn Arabi and the miraj” [= Chapter 367 of the Futuhat]. The translations have been listed on the page “ Online articles ”: