He was born in Murcia in Spain, and his family moved to Seville when he was eight. He experienced an extraordinary mystical "unveiling" (kashf) or "opening" (fotuh) at about the age of fifteen; this is mentioned in his famous account of his meeting with Averroes (Addas, pp. 53-58; Chittick, 1989, pp. xiii-xiv). Only after this original divine "attraction" (jadhba) did he begin disciplined Sufi practice (soluk), perhaps at the age of twenty (Addas, p. 53; Chittick, 1989, pp. 383-84). He studied the traditional sciences, Hadith in particular, with many masters; he mentions about ninety of these in an autobiographical note (Badawi). In 597/1200 he left Spain for good, with the intention of making the hajj. The following year in Mecca he began writing his monumental al-Fotuhat al-makkiya; the title, "The Meccan Openings," alludes to the inspired nature of the book. In 601/1204 he set off from Mecca on his way to Anatolia with Majd-al-Din Eshaq, whose son Sadr-al-Din Qunawi (606-73/ 1210-74) would be his most influential disciple. After moving about for several years in the central Islamic lands, never going as far as Persia, he settled in Damascus in 620/1223. There he taught and wrote until his death.
Ebn al-'Arabi was an extraordinarily prolific author. Osman Yahia counts 850 works attributed to him, of which 700 are extant and over 450 probably genuine. The second edition of the Fotuhat (Cairo, 1329/1911) covers 2,580 pages, while Yahia's new critical edition is projected to include thirty-seven volumes of about five hundred pages each (vol. 14, Cairo, 1992). By comparison, his most famous work, Fosus al-hekam (Bezels of widsom), is less than 180 pages long. Scores of his books and treatises have been published, mostly in uncritical editions; several have been translated into European languages.
Although Ebn al-'Arabi claims that the Fotuhat is derived from divine "openings"ómystical unveilingsóand that the Fosus was handed to him in a vision by the Prophet, he would certainly admit that he expressed his visions in the language of his intellectual milieu. He cites the Koran and Hadith constantly; it would be no exaggeration to say that most of his works are commentaries on these two sources of the tradition. He sometimes quotes aphorisms from earlier Sufis, but never long passages. There is no evidence that he quotes without ascription, in the accepted style, from other authors. He was thoroughly familiar with the Islamic sciences, especially tafsir, feqh, and kalam. He does not seem to have studied the works of the philosophers, though many of his ideas are prefigured in the works of such authors as the Ekhwan-al-Safa' (q.v.; Rosenthal; Takeshita). He mentions on several occasions having read the Ehya' of GHazali, and he sometimes refers to such well known Sufi authors as Qoshayri.
In short, Ebn al-'Arabi was firmly grounded in the mainstream of the Islamic tradition; the starting points of his discussions would have been familiar to the 'olama' in his environment. At the same time he was enormously original, and he was fully aware of the newness of what he was doing. Most earlier Sufis had spoken about theoretical issues (as opposed to practical teachings) in a brief or allusive fashion. Ebn al-'Arabi breaks the dam with a torrent of exposition on every sort of theoretical issue related to the "divine things" (elahiyat). He maintains a uniformly high level of discourse and, in spite of going over the same basic themes constantly, he offers a different perspective in each fresh look at a question. For example, in the Fosus al-hekam, each of twenty-seven chapters deals with the divine wisdom revealed to a specific divine wordóa particular prophet. In each case, the wisdom is associated with a different divine attribute. Hence, each prophet represents a different mode of knowing and experiencing the reality of God. Most of the 560 chapters of the Fotuhat are rooted in similar principles. Each chapter represents a "standpoint" or "station" (maqam) from which reality, or a specific dimension of reality, can be surveyed and brought into the overarching perspective of the "oneness of all things" (tawhid).
Ebn al-'Arabi assumed and then verified through his own personal experience the validity of the re-velation that was given primarily in the Koran and secondarily in the Hadith. He objected to the limiting approaches of kalam and philosophy, which tied all understanding to reason ('aql), as well as to the approach of those Sufis who appealed only to unveiling (kashf). It may be fair to say that his major methodological contribution was to reject the stance of the kalam authorities, for whom tashbih (declaring God similar to creation) was a heresy, and to make tashbih the necessary complement of tanzih (declaring God incomparable with creation). This perspective leads to an epistemology that harmonizes reason and unveiling.
For Ebn al-'Arabi, reason functions through differentiation and discernment; it knows innately that God is absent from all things (tanzih). In contrast, unveiling functions through imagination, which perceives identity and sameness rather than difference; hence unveiling sees God's presence rather than his absenceótashbih. To maintain that God is either absent or present is, in his terms, to see with only one eye. Perfect knowledge of God involves seeing with both eyes, the eye of reason and the eye of unveiling (or imagination). This is the wisdom of the prophets; it is falsified by those theologians, philosophers, and Sufis who stress either tanzih or tashbih at the expense of the other.
If Ebn al-'Arabi's methodology focuses on harmonizing two modes of knowing, his actual teachings focus more on bringing out the nature of human perfection and the means to achieve it. Although the term al-ensan al-kamel "the perfect human being" can be found in earlier authors, it is Ebn al-'Arabi who makes it a central theme of Sufism. Briefly, perfect human beings are those who live up to the potential that was placed in Adam when God "taught him all the names" (Koran 2:30). These names designate every perfection found in God and the cosmos (al-'alam, defined as "everything other than God"). Ultimately, the names taught to Adam are identical with the divine attributes, such as life, awareness, desire, power, speech, generosity, and justice. By actualizing the names within themselves, human beings become perfect images of God and achieve God's purpose in creating the universe (Chittick, 1989, especially chap. 20).
Even though all perfect human beingsói.e., the prophets and the "friends" (awlia') of Godóare identical in one respect, each of them manifests God's uniqueness in another respect. In effect, each is dominated by one specific divine attributeóthis is the theme of the Fosus. Moreover, the path to human fulfillment is a never-ending progression whereby people come to embody God's infinite attributes successively and with ever-increasing intensity. Most of Ebn al-'Arabi's writings are devoted to explaining the nature of the knowledge that is unveiled to those who travel through the ascending stations or standpoints of human perfection. God's friends are those who inherit their knowledge, stations, and states from the prophets, the last of whom was Mohammad. When Ebn al-'Arabi claimed to be the "seal of the MoHammadan friends" (khatam al-awlia' al-mohammadiya), he was saying that no one after him would inherit fully from the prophet Mohammad. Muslim friends of God would continue to exist until the end of time, but now they would inherit from other prophets inasmuch as those prophets represent certain aspects of Mohammad's all-embracing message (Chodkiewicz, 1986).
The most famous idea attributed to Ebn al-'Arabi is wahdat al-wojud "the oneness of being." Although he never employs the term, the idea is implicit throughout his writings. In the manner of both theologians and philosophers, Ebn al-'Arabi employs the term wojud to refer to God as the Necessary Being. Like them, he also attributes the term to everything other than God, but he insists that wojud does not belong to the things found in the cosmos in any real sense. Rather, the things borrow wojud from God, much as the earth borrows light from the sun. The issue is how wojud can rightfully be attributed to the things, also called "entities" (a'yan). From the perspective of tanzih, Ebn al-'Arabi declares that wojud belongs to God alone, and, in his famous phrase, the things "have never smelt a whiff of wojud." From the point of view of tashbih, he affirms that all things are wojud's self-disclosure (tajalli) or self-manifestation (zohur). In sum, all things are "He/not He" (howa la howa), which is to say that they are both God and other than God, both wojud and other than wojud.
The intermediateness of everything that can be perceived by the senses or the mind brings us back to imagination, a term that Ebn al-'Arabi applies not only to a mode of understanding that grasps identity rather than difference, but also to the World of Imagination, which is situated between the two fundamental worlds that make up the cosmosóthe world of spirits and the world of bodiesóand which brings together the qualities of the two sides. In addition, Ebn al-'Arabi refers to the whole cosmos as imagination, because it combines the attributes of wojud and utter nonexistence (Chittick, 1989).
Influence on Persian Sufis and Philosophers. Tracing Ebn al-'Arabi's influence in any detail must await an enormous amount of research into both his own writings and the works of later authors. Most modern scholars agree that his influence is obvious in much of the theoretical writing of later Sufism and discernible in works by theologians and philosophers.
Wahdat al-wojud, invariably associated with Ebn al-'Arabi's name, is the most famous single theoretical issue in Sufi works of the later period, especially in the area under Persian cultural influence. Not everyone thought it was an appropriate concept, and scholars such as Ebn Taymiya (d. 728/1328) attacked it vehemently. In fact, Ebn Taymiya deserves much of the credit for associating this idea with Ebn al-'Arabi's name and for making it the criterion, as it were, of judging whether an author was for or against Ebn al-'Arabi (on this complex issue, see Chittick, forthcoming).
Although Ebn al-'Arabi's name is typically associated with theoretical issues, this should not suggest that his influence reached only learned Sufis. He was the author of many practical works on Sufism, including collections of prayers, and he transmitted a kherqa that was worn by a number of later shaikhs of various orders. As M. Chodkiewicz (1991) has illustrated, his radiance permeated all levels of Sufi life and practice, from the most elite to the most popular, and this has continued down to modern times. Today, indeed, his influence seems to be on the increase, both in the Islamic world and in the West. The Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, which publishes a journal in Oxford, is only one of many signs of a renewed attention to his teachings.
Ebn al-'Arabi's first important contact with Persian Islam may have come through one of his teachers, Makin-al-Din Abu Shoja' Zaher b. Rostam Esfahani, whom he met in Mecca in 598/1202 and with whom he studied the Sahih of Termedhi. He speaks especially highly of Makin-al-Din's elderly sister, whom he calls Shaykhat-al-Hejaz ("Mistress of Hejaz"), Fakhr-al-Nesa' ("Pride of womankind") bent Rostam, adding that she was also Fakhr-al-Rejal ("Pride of men") and that he had studied Hadith with her. It was Makin-al-Din's daughter, Nezam, who inspired Ebn al-'Arabi to write his famous collection of poetry, Tarjoman al-ashwaq (Nicholson, pp. 3-4; Jahangiri, pp. 59-62).
In 602/1205 Ebn al-'Arabi met the well-known Sufi Awhad-al-Din Kermani (d. 635/1238) in Konya and became his close friend; he mentions him on a number of occasions in the Fotuhat (Chodkiewicz et al., pp. 288, 563; Addas, pp. 269-73). Awhad-al-Din's biographer tells us that Ebn al-'Arabi entrusted his stepson Qunawi to Awhad-al-Din for training (Foruzanfar, pp. 86-87), and Qunawi confirms in a letter that he was Kermani's companion for two years, traveling with him as far as Shiraz (Chittick, 1992b, p. 261 ).
Qunawi is the most important intermediary through which Ebn al-'Arabi's teachings passed into the Persian-speaking world. He taught Hadith for many years in Konya and was on good terms with Jalal-al-Din Rumi, but there is no evidence in Rumi's works to support the oft-repeated assertion that he was influenced by the ideas of Ebn al-'Arabi or Qunawi (Chittick, forthcoming). Nevertheless, Rumi's commentators typically interpreted him in terms of Ebn al-'Arabi's teachings, which had come to define the Sufi intellectual universe.
Qunawi is the author of about fifteen Arabic works, including seven books and a number of relatively short treatises. These works are much more systematic and structured than those of his master. His focus on certain specific issues in Ebn al-'Arabi's writings, such as wojud and the perfect human being (al-ensan al-kamel), helped ensure that these would remain the central concern of the school. Certain terms typically ascribed to Ebn al-'Arabi, such as al-hadarat al-elahiya al-khams, "the five divine presences," seem to be Qunawi's coinages. In al-Fokuk (ed. M. Khúajavi, Tehran, 1371Sh./1992), Qunawi explains the significance of the chapter headings of the Fosus; this work was used directly or indirectly by practically all the Fosus commentators (Chittick, 1984).
Qunawi wrote a few minor Persian works, but probably not Tabserat al-mobtadi or Matale'-e iman, both of which have been printed in his name (Chittick, 1992b, pp. 255-59). However, from at least 643/1245 he taught the Ta'iya of Ebn al-Fared in Persian, and his lectures were put together as a systematic commentary on the poem by his student Sa'id-al-Din Fargani (d. 695/1296) as Mashareq al-darari (ed. S. J. Ashtiani, Mashhad, 1398/1978). This work was extremely popular, but even more so was his much expanded Arabic version of the same work, Montaha'l-madarek (Cairo, 1293/1876).
The most widely read Persian work by Qunawi's students was no doubt the Lama'at of Fakhr-al-Din 'Eraqi (d. 688/1289), which is based on Qunawi's lectures on Ebn al-'Arabi's Fosus (Chittick and Wilson). Mo'ayyed-al-Din Jandi (d. ca. 700/1300), who was initiated into Sufism by Qunawi, wrote in Arabic the first detailed commentary on the Fosus (ed. Ashtiani, Mashhad, 1361 Sh./1982) as well as a number of Persian works, including Nafhat al-ruh (ed. N. Mayel Heravi, Tehran, 1362 Sh./1983; despite the editor's claim of a unique Tehran manuscript, there are at least two other copies in Istanbul [Shehit Ali Pasha 1439, Haci Mahmud Efendi 2447], the first an expanded version).
Jandi taught the Fosus to 'Abd-al-Razzaq Kashani (d. 730/1330), who wrote one of the most widely disseminated commentaries (Cairo, 1386/1966); it often summarizes or paraphrases Jandi's text. Kashani wrote several other important works, both in Arabic and Persian, all of which are rooted in Ebn al-'Arabi's universe of discourse. His Ta'wil al-Qor'an has been published in Ebn al-'Arabi's name (Beirut, 1968; for passages in English, see Murata); although permeated with Ebn al-'Arabi's basic world view, there are important differences of perspective that mark Kashani as an independent thinker (Lory; Morris, 1987, pp. 101-06). A Persian work on fotowwat (fotuwa) has also been published (Tohfat al-ekhwan fi khasa'es al-fetyan, ed. M. Sarraf in Rasa'el-e javanmardan, Tehran, 1973).
Persian commentaries on the Fosus are frequently based on the Arabic commentary of Kashani's student, Dawud Qaysari (d. 751/1350), author of a dozen other Arabic works. His systematic philosophical introduction to Sharh al-Fosus (Tehran, 1299/1882; Bombay, 1300/1883) itself became the object of commentaries (for the latest, see Ashtiani, 1385/1966). Certainly, Qaysari's influence is obvious and acknowledged in the first Persian commentary on the Fosus, Nosus al-khosus (partly edited by R. Mazlumi, Tehran, 1359 Sh./ 1980), written by his student Baba Rokn-al-Din Shirazi (d. 769/1367). The Persian commentary by Taj-al-Din Hosayn b. Hasan Khwarazmi (d. ca. 835/1432; ed. N. Mayel Heravi, Tehran, 1364 Sh./1985) is almost a verbatim translation of Qaysari. Other Persian commentaries include Hall-e Fosus by Sayyed 'Ali Hamadani (d. 786/1385); this work has been wrongly attributed to Khwaja Parsa in its printed edition (ed. J. Mesgarneëad, Tehran, 1366 Sh./1987; see Mayel Heravi, 1988, pp. xxi-xxvii). In his comprehensive list of the more than one hundred commentaries on the Fosus, Osman Yahia mentions ten in Persian, some of which, however, may be repeats (introduction to Amoli, pp. 16-36). Persian commentaries that he does not mention include the following: 1. Khatam al-Fosus, attributed to Shah Ne'mat-Allah Wali (d. 834/1437); this is much longer than any of Shah Ne'mat-Allah's printed rasa'el (manuscripts include Nadwat al-'Olama' 35; Andhra Pradesh State Oriental Manuscript Library, Tasawwof 254, Jadid 715; Khodabakhsh, Farsi 1371). 2. Another long commentary is also attributed to Shah Ne'mat-Allah (Andhra Pradesh, Tasawwof 185). 3. Shaikh Mohebb-Allah Mobarez Elahabadi (d. 1048/1648), Ebn al-'Arabi's most faithful Indian follower, wrote a lengthy Persian commentary and a shorter Arabic commentary. 4. Hafez GHolam-Mostáafa b. Mo-hammad-Akbar from Thaneswar wrote Shokhus al-hemam fi sharh Fosus al-hekam, a commentary of 1024 pages in the Andhra Pradesh copy (Tasawwof 296), apparently in the 11th/18th century. The last Persian commentary on the Fosus in India seems to be al-Ta'wil al-mohkam fi motashabah Fosus al-hekam by Mawlawi Mohammad-Hasan Saheb Amruhawi; he was living in Hyderabad (Deccan) when this 500-page work was published in Lucknow in 1893.
A number of Qunawi's contemporaries not directly connected to his circle were important in making at least some of Ebn al-'Arabi's teachings available to Persian speakers. Sa'd-al-Din Hamuya (d. 649/1252), a Persian disciple of Najm-al-Din Kobra, corresponded with Ebn al-'Arabi and spent several years in Damascus, where he met both Ebn al-'Arabi and Qunawi. He wrote works in both Arabic and Persian; these are often extremely difficult, especially because the author delighted in letter symbolism (for a Persian work, see al-Mesbah fi'l-tasawwof, ed. N. Mayel Heravi, Tehran, 1362 Sh./1983). His disciple 'Aziz-al-Din Nasafi (d. before 700/1300) was responsible for making some of Ebn al-'Arabi's terminology well-known in Persian; his popularizing works can hardly be compared in sophistication to those of 'Eraqi or Fargani (see, e.g., his Ensan-e kamel, ed. M. MoleÇ, Tehran, 1962; an English paraphrase of his Maqsad-e aqsa was published by E. H. Palmer as Oriental Mysticism, London, 1867; see also Morris, pp. 745-51). Shams-al-Din Ebrahim Abarquhi began to write Majma' al-bahrayn (ed. N. Mayel Heravi, Tehran, 1364 Sh./1985) in 714/1314. The work represents an early effort to integrate Ebn al-'Arabi's teachings into Persian Sufism; more sophisticated than Nasafi, the author does not have the strong philosophical orientation typical of Qunawi and his circle.
Among early Persian poets influenced by Ebn al-'Arabi's teachings and terminology were 'Eraqi, Maghrebi, and Mahmud Shabestari (d. ca. 720/1320). Mohammad Lahiji (d. 912/1506) commented on Shabestari's thousand-verse Golshan-e raz in Sharh-e Golshan-e raz, a long Persian work rooted in the writings of Kashani and Qaysari. One of Ebn al-'Arabi's most learned and successful popularizers was the poet 'Abd-al-Rahman Jami (d. 898/1492), especially through his gazals and mathnawis; about 1,000 verses of his Selselat al-dhahab carefully follow the text of Ebn al-'Arabi's Helyat al-abdal (Mayel Heravi, 1988, pp. xxxvii-xl). Jami's Persian prose works dealing with Ebn al-'Arabi's teachingsóthe Lawa'eh, Lawame', Ashe''at al-lama'at, and Naqd al-nosus fi sharh Naqsh al-Fosusóas well as his Arabic commentary on the Fosus, were also widely read (see introduction to Jami, 1977). Jami was especially popular in India, and most of the numerous followers of Ebn al-'Arabi in the subcontinentówho were much more likely to write in Persian than in Arabicóare indebted to his explications of the Shaikh's works (Chittick, 1992d). Mohammad b. Mohammad, who was known as Shaikh-e Makki (d. 926/1020) and considered himself a disciple of Jami, defended Ebn al-'Arabi against attacks by narrow-minded critics in his Persian al-Janeb al-garbi fi hall moshkelat al-shaykh Mohyi-al-Din Ebn 'Arabi (ed. Mayel Heravi, Tehran, 1364 Sh./1985).
The poet and Sufi master Shah Ne'mat-Allah Wali was one of Ebn al-'Arabi's most fervent admirers and followed closely in the tracks of Kashani and Qaysari. He wrote over one hundred rasalas (treatises) on theoretical and practical Sufism that fit squarely into Ebn al-'Arabi's universe; four of these comment on the Fosus or Naqsh al-Fosus, Ebn al-'Arabi's own treatise on the essential ideas of the Fosus. The Perso-Indian poet Mirza 'Abd-al-Qader Bidel (=Be@dil, q.v.; d. 1133/1721) demonstrates an intimate knowledge of Ebn al-'Arabi's school in such mathnawis as 'Erfan.
Even Sufi authors critical of Ebn al-'Arabi's teachings adopted much of his terminology and world view. Thus in Persia 'Ala'-al-Dawla Semnani (d. 736/1337) and in India Shaikh Mohammad Hosayni, known as Gisu-Deraz (d. 825/1422), and Shaikh Ahmad Serhendi (d. 1034/1634) do not diverge markedly from most of the teachings established by him and his immediate followers. Most Sufis did not take the criticisms of these authors too seriously. Typical are the remarks of Sayyed Ashraf Jahangir Semnani (d. probably in 829/1425), who studied with 'Ala'-al-Dawla Semnani but sided with Kashani in his defense of Ebn al-'Arabi against Semnani's criticisms (see Landolt, 1973). After providing the views of the participants in this debate and those of a number of observers, Sayyed Ashraf tells us that Semnani had not understood what Ebn al-'Arabi was saying and that he had retracted his criticisms before the end of his life (Yamani, Latáa'ef-e ashrafi, latáifa 28, pp. 139-45; Mayel Heravi, 1367, pp. xxxi-xxxv). In a similar manner, Shah Wali-Allah Dehlawi (d. 1176/1762) wrote a work showing that there was no fundamental difference between Ebn al-'Arabi's wahdat al-wojud and Serhendi's wahdat al-shohud.
From the 8th/14th century onward Ebn al-'Arabi's influence is clearly present in many works written by authors known primarily as theologians or philosophers. Among Shi'ites, Sayyed Haydar Amoli (d. 787/1385) was especially important in bringing Ebn al-'Arabi into the mainstream of Shi'ite thought. He wrote an enormous commentary on the Fosus, Nass al-nosus, the 500-page introduction of which has been published (representing about 10 percent of the text). Amoli investigates the meaning of the Fosus on three levels: naql (the Koran and Hadith, making special use here of Shi'ite sources), 'aql (meaning kalam and falsafa), and kashf (referring both to his own experience and the writings of major members of Ebn al-'Arabi's school). Amoli also wrote several Arabic works on metaphysics; especially significant is Jame' al-asrar (ed. Corbin and Yahia, Tehran, 1347 Sh./1969; see Morris, 106-08), which was written in his youth during his initial movement into Ebn al-'Arabi's universe.
Sa'en-al-Din 'Ali Torka Esfahani (d. 835/1432) completed a commentary on the Fosus in 831/1427; his treatise on wojud "being," Tamhid al-qawa'ed (ed. S. J. Ashtiani, Tehran, 1396/1976), frequently paraphrases Jandi's Fosus commentary. A number of Torka's Persian treatises (Ùahardah rasa'el, eds. S. 'A. Musawi Behbahani and S. E. Dibaji, Tehran, 1351 Sh./1972) make explicit or implicit reference to Ebn al-'Arabi's teachings. Molla Sadra (d. 1050/1641) frequently quotes at length from the Fotuhat in his Asfar. His student Molla Mohsen Fayd Kashani (d. 1090/1679) wrote an epitome of the Fotuhat and frequently quotes from Ebn al-'Arabi in his works (EI2 V, p. 476). Even Molla Mohammad-Baqer Majlesi (d. 1110/1669), well-known as a critic of Sufis in general and Ebn al-'Arabi in particular, quotes on occasion from Ebn al-'Arabi in his monumental Behar al-anwar (Beirut, 1983; e.g., ba'd ahl al-ma'refa in vol. 67, p. 339, refers to Ebn al-'Arabi in the Fotuhat, Cairo, 1911, vol. 2, p. 328.15). In the modern period, Ayat-Allah Khomeini differentiated himself from many other influential 'olama' by his intense interest in Ebn al-'Arabi (Knysh, 1992b).
The first of Ebn al-'Arabi's works to be translated into Persian was the Fosus, not as an independent work, but rather in the midst of the commentaries by Baba Rokn-al-Din and others. A translation without commentary was made by 'Abd-al-Ghaffar b. Mohammad-'Ali; an autograph version, written in 1008/1685, is found in the Salar Jung Library in Hyderabad (Deccan) (Tasawwof 33; other copies are found in the Andhra Pradesh State Library, Tasawwof 464 and Jadid 4248). Several short works by Ebn al-'Arabi on Sufi practice, including al-Anwar, Asrar al-khalwa, Haqiqat al-haqa'eq, and Helyat al-awlia' were translated in the 8-9th/14-15th centuries (for the Persian text of these and other minor works, see Mayel Heravi, 1988). A manuscript (Andhra Pradesh, Jadid 1461) called Sharh-e Fotuhat, probably by Shaikh Mohebb-Allah Elahabadi, is the second volume (fols. 357-747) of a work that includes translations of and commentary on long passages from the Fotuhat. Several of Elahabadi's long Persian works provide extensive translations from the Fotuhat.
Among Persian Sufis who were especially influential in the Arabic-speaking countries of Islam, one can mention 'Abd-al-Karim Jili (d. 832/1428), author of numerous independently-minded works, who settled in the Yemen and contributed to the widespread interest in Ebn al-'Arabi's writings there (see Knysh, 1992a). Finally, it is worth noting that most followers of Ebn al-'Arabi in Persia wrote their theoretical works in Arabic. In contrast, the Indian subcontinent witnessed an enormous outpouring of Persian writing pertaining to this school of thought, a legacy largely ignored by modern scholars, even in the subcontinent itself (Chittick, 1992d).
Bibliography: (For cited works not given in detail, see "Short References.") The most comprehensive and best documented account of Ebn al-'Arabi's life is C. Addas, Ibn 'Arabi ou La quête du Soufre Rouge, Paris, 1989; tr. as Quest for the Red Sulphur, Cambridge, 1993. N. Z. Abu Zayd, Falsafat al-ta'wil, Cairo, 1983. H. Algar, "Reflections of Ibn 'Arabi in Early Naqshbandi Tradition," Journal of the Muhyiddin ibn 'Arabi Society 10, 1991, pp. 45-66. Sayyed Haydar Amoli, al-Moqaddemat men nass al-nosus, eds. H. Corbin and O. Yahia, Tehran, 1975. M. Asin Palacios, El Islam cristianizado, Madrid, 1931. S. J. Ashtiani, Sharh-e moqaddema-ye Qaysari bar Fosus al-hekam, Mashhad, 1385/1966. Idem, Rasa'el-e Qaysari, Mashhad, 1357 Sh./1978. A. Badawi, "Autobibliografía de Ibn 'Arabi," al-Andalus 20, 1955, pp. 107-28. Awhad-al-Din Balyani, Épître sur l'uniciteÇ absolue, tr. M. Chodkiewicz, Paris, 1982. M. Bayrakdar, La philosophie mystique chez Dawud de Kayseri, Ankara, 1990. W. C. Chittick, "The Last Will and Testament of Ibn 'Arabi's Foremost Disciple and Some Notes on its Author," Sophia Perennis 4/1, 1978, pp. 43-58. Idem, "The Perfect Man as the Prototype of the Self in the Sufism of Jami," Stud. Isl. 49, 1979, pp. 135-57. Idem, "The Five Divine Presences. From al-Qunawi to al-Qaysari," Muslim World 72, 1982a, pp. 107-28. Idem, "Ibn 'Arabi's own Summary of the Fusus. 'The Imprint of the Bezels of Wisdom'," Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society 1, 1982b, pp. 30-93. Idem, "The Chapter Headings of the Fusus," Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society 2, 1984, pp. 41-94. Idem, The Sufi Path of Knowledge. Ibn al-'Arabi's Metaphysics of Imagination, Albany, 1989. Idem, "Ibn al-'Arabi and his School," in Islamic Spirituality. Manifestations, ed. S. H. Nasr, New York, 1991, pp. 49-79. Idem, "The Circle of Spiritual Ascent According to al-Qunawi," Neoplatonism and Islamic Thought, ed. P. Morewedge, Albany, 1992a, pp. 179-209. Idem, Faith and Practice of Islam. Three Thirteenth Century Sufi Texts, Albany, 1992b. Idem, "Spectrums of Islamic Thought. Sa'id al-Din Farghani on the Implications of Oneness and Manyness," in The Legacy of Medieval Persian Sufism, ed. L. Lewisohn, London, 1992c, pp. 203-17. Idem, "Notes on Ibn al-'Arabi's Influence in India," Muslim World 82, 1992d, pp. 218-41. Idem, "Rumi and Wahdat al-Wujud," in The Heritage of Rumi, ed. A. Banani and G. Sabagh, Cambridge, forthcoming. Idem and P. L. Wilson, Fakhruddin 'Iraqi. Divine Flashes, New York, 1982. M. Chodkiewicz, Le sceau des saints. Prophetie et sainteteÇ dans la doctrine d'Ibn Arabi, Paris, 1986; tr. as The Seal of the Saints, Cambridge, 1993. Idem, "The Diffusion of Ibn 'Arabi's Doctrine," Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society 9, 1991a, pp. 36-57. Idem, "The Futuhat Makkiya and its Commentators. Some Unresolved Enigmas," in The Legacy of Medieval Persian Sufism, ed. L. Lewisohn, London, 1991b, pp. 219-32. Idem, Un ocean sans rivage. Ibn 'Arabi, le Livre et la Loi, Paris, 1992; tr. as An Ocean without Shore, Albany, 1993. M. Chodkiewicz et al., Les Illuminations de la Mecque/The Meccan Illuminations. Textes choisis/Selected Texts, Paris, 1988. H. Corbin, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi, Princeton, 1969. Idem, En Islam iranien, III, Paris, 1973. Idem, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, Princeton, 1977. B. Foruzanfar, ed., Manaqeb-e Awhad-al-Din ... Kermani, Tehran, 1347 Sh./1968. Y. Friedmann, Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi. An Outline of His Thought and a Study of His Image in the Eyes of Posterity, Montreal, 1971. S. Hakim, al-Mo'jam al-sufi, Beirut, 1981. N. L. Heer, The Precious Pearl. al-Jami's al-Durrat al-Fakhirah, Albany, 1979. S. Hirtenstein and M. Notcutt, eds., Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi. A Commemorative Volume, Shaftesbury, Dorset, 1993. T. Izutsu, Sufism and Taoism, Los Angeles, 1983. M. Jahangiri, Mohyi-al-Din Ebn al-'Arabi, Tehran, 1361 Sh./1982. 'Abd-al-Rahman Jami, Naqd al-nosus fi sharh Naqsh al-Fosus, ed. W. C. Chittick, Tehran, 1977. Idem, Lawa'eh, text and French tr. Y. Richard, Les jaillissements de lumieàre, Paris, 1982; text and English tr. E. H. Whinfield and M. M. Kazwini, London, 1906. A. Knysh, "Ibn 'Arabi in the Yemen. His Admirers and Detractors," Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society 11, 1992a, pp. 38-63. Idem, "Irfan Revisited. Khomeini and the Legacy of Islamic Mystical Philosophy," Middle East Journal 46, 1992b, pp. 631-53. H. Landolt, "Der Briefwechsel zwischen Kashani und Simnani über Wahdat al-Wugud," Der Islam 50, 1973, pp. 29-81. Idem, "Simnani on Wahdat al-Wojud," in Majmu'a-ye sokhanraniha wa maqalaha, ed. M. Mohaqqeq and H. Landolt, Tehran, 1971, pp. 91-111. L. Lewisohn, A Critical Edition of the Divan of Muhammad Shirin Maghribi, Tehran and London, 1993. P. Lory, Les Commentaires eÇsoteÇriques du Coran d'apreàs 'Abd al-Razzaq al-Qashani, Paris, 1981. N. Mayel Heravi, Rasa'el-e Ebn-e 'Arabi. Dah resala-ye farsi- shoda, Tehran, 1367 Sh./1988. A. Mir-'Abedini, Divan-e kamel-e Shams-e Maghrebi ... be endemam-e Resala-ye jam-e jahannoma, Tehran, 1358 Sh./1979. J. Morris, "Ibn 'Arabi and his Interpreters. Part I: Recent French Translations," JAOS 106, 1986, pp. 539-51; "Part II. Influences and Interpretations," JAOS 106, 1986, pp. 733-56; 107, 1987, pp. 101-19. S. Murata, The Tao of Islam. A Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thought, Albany, 1992. S. 'A. Musawi Behbahani, "Ahwal wa athar-e Sa'en-al-Din Torka Esfahani," in Majmu'a-ye sokhhanraniha wa maqalaha, ed. M. Mohaqqeq and H. Landolt, Tehran, 1971, pp. 97-145. S. Nafisi, Kolliyat-e 'Eraqi, Tehran, 1338 Sh./1959. I. R. Netton, Allah Transcendent. Studies in the Structure and Semiotics of Islamic Philosophy, Theology, and Cosmology, London, 1989. R. A. Nicholson, The tarjuman al-ashwaq. A Collection of Mystical Odes by Muhyi'ddin ibn al-'Arabi, London, 1911. H. S. Nyberg, Kleinere Schriften des Ibn al-'Arabi, Leiden, 1919. F. Rosenthal, "Ibn 'Arabi between 'Philosophy' and 'Mysticism'," Oriens 31, 1988, pp. 1-35. A. Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, Chapel Hill, 1975, pp. 263-86 and passim. M. Takeshita, Ibn 'Arabi's Theory of the Perfect Man and its Place in the History of Islamic Thought, Tokyo, 1987. O. Yahia, Histoire et classification de l' oeuvre d'Ibn 'Arabi, Damascus, 1964. Nezam-al-Din Yamani, Latáa'ef-e ashrafi, Delhi, 1219/1804. 'A. Zarrinkub, Donbala-ye jostoju dar tasawwof-e irani, Tehran, 1362 Sh./1983.
(WILLIAM C. CHITTICK)
Ebn al-'Arabi was an extraordinarily prolific author. Osman Yahia counts 850 works attributed to him, of which 700 are extant and over 450 probably genuine. The second edition of the Fotuhat (Cairo, 1329/1911) covers 2,580 pages, while Yahia's new critical edition is projected to include thirty-seven volumes of about five hundred pages each (vol. 14, Cairo, 1992). By comparison, his most famous work, Fosus al-hekam (Bezels of widsom), is less than 180 pages long. Scores of his books and treatises have been published, mostly in uncritical editions; several have been translated into European languages.
Although Ebn al-'Arabi claims that the Fotuhat is derived from divine "openings"ómystical unveilingsóand that the Fosus was handed to him in a vision by the Prophet, he would certainly admit that he expressed his visions in the language of his intellectual milieu. He cites the Koran and Hadith constantly; it would be no exaggeration to say that most of his works are commentaries on these two sources of the tradition. He sometimes quotes aphorisms from earlier Sufis, but never long passages. There is no evidence that he quotes without ascription, in the accepted style, from other authors. He was thoroughly familiar with the Islamic sciences, especially tafsir, feqh, and kalam. He does not seem to have studied the works of the philosophers, though many of his ideas are prefigured in the works of such authors as the Ekhwan-al-Safa' (q.v.; Rosenthal; Takeshita). He mentions on several occasions having read the Ehya' of GHazali, and he sometimes refers to such well known Sufi authors as Qoshayri.
In short, Ebn al-'Arabi was firmly grounded in the mainstream of the Islamic tradition; the starting points of his discussions would have been familiar to the 'olama' in his environment. At the same time he was enormously original, and he was fully aware of the newness of what he was doing. Most earlier Sufis had spoken about theoretical issues (as opposed to practical teachings) in a brief or allusive fashion. Ebn al-'Arabi breaks the dam with a torrent of exposition on every sort of theoretical issue related to the "divine things" (elahiyat). He maintains a uniformly high level of discourse and, in spite of going over the same basic themes constantly, he offers a different perspective in each fresh look at a question. For example, in the Fosus al-hekam, each of twenty-seven chapters deals with the divine wisdom revealed to a specific divine wordóa particular prophet. In each case, the wisdom is associated with a different divine attribute. Hence, each prophet represents a different mode of knowing and experiencing the reality of God. Most of the 560 chapters of the Fotuhat are rooted in similar principles. Each chapter represents a "standpoint" or "station" (maqam) from which reality, or a specific dimension of reality, can be surveyed and brought into the overarching perspective of the "oneness of all things" (tawhid).
Ebn al-'Arabi assumed and then verified through his own personal experience the validity of the re-velation that was given primarily in the Koran and secondarily in the Hadith. He objected to the limiting approaches of kalam and philosophy, which tied all understanding to reason ('aql), as well as to the approach of those Sufis who appealed only to unveiling (kashf). It may be fair to say that his major methodological contribution was to reject the stance of the kalam authorities, for whom tashbih (declaring God similar to creation) was a heresy, and to make tashbih the necessary complement of tanzih (declaring God incomparable with creation). This perspective leads to an epistemology that harmonizes reason and unveiling.
For Ebn al-'Arabi, reason functions through differentiation and discernment; it knows innately that God is absent from all things (tanzih). In contrast, unveiling functions through imagination, which perceives identity and sameness rather than difference; hence unveiling sees God's presence rather than his absenceótashbih. To maintain that God is either absent or present is, in his terms, to see with only one eye. Perfect knowledge of God involves seeing with both eyes, the eye of reason and the eye of unveiling (or imagination). This is the wisdom of the prophets; it is falsified by those theologians, philosophers, and Sufis who stress either tanzih or tashbih at the expense of the other.
If Ebn al-'Arabi's methodology focuses on harmonizing two modes of knowing, his actual teachings focus more on bringing out the nature of human perfection and the means to achieve it. Although the term al-ensan al-kamel "the perfect human being" can be found in earlier authors, it is Ebn al-'Arabi who makes it a central theme of Sufism. Briefly, perfect human beings are those who live up to the potential that was placed in Adam when God "taught him all the names" (Koran 2:30). These names designate every perfection found in God and the cosmos (al-'alam, defined as "everything other than God"). Ultimately, the names taught to Adam are identical with the divine attributes, such as life, awareness, desire, power, speech, generosity, and justice. By actualizing the names within themselves, human beings become perfect images of God and achieve God's purpose in creating the universe (Chittick, 1989, especially chap. 20).
Even though all perfect human beingsói.e., the prophets and the "friends" (awlia') of Godóare identical in one respect, each of them manifests God's uniqueness in another respect. In effect, each is dominated by one specific divine attributeóthis is the theme of the Fosus. Moreover, the path to human fulfillment is a never-ending progression whereby people come to embody God's infinite attributes successively and with ever-increasing intensity. Most of Ebn al-'Arabi's writings are devoted to explaining the nature of the knowledge that is unveiled to those who travel through the ascending stations or standpoints of human perfection. God's friends are those who inherit their knowledge, stations, and states from the prophets, the last of whom was Mohammad. When Ebn al-'Arabi claimed to be the "seal of the MoHammadan friends" (khatam al-awlia' al-mohammadiya), he was saying that no one after him would inherit fully from the prophet Mohammad. Muslim friends of God would continue to exist until the end of time, but now they would inherit from other prophets inasmuch as those prophets represent certain aspects of Mohammad's all-embracing message (Chodkiewicz, 1986).
The most famous idea attributed to Ebn al-'Arabi is wahdat al-wojud "the oneness of being." Although he never employs the term, the idea is implicit throughout his writings. In the manner of both theologians and philosophers, Ebn al-'Arabi employs the term wojud to refer to God as the Necessary Being. Like them, he also attributes the term to everything other than God, but he insists that wojud does not belong to the things found in the cosmos in any real sense. Rather, the things borrow wojud from God, much as the earth borrows light from the sun. The issue is how wojud can rightfully be attributed to the things, also called "entities" (a'yan). From the perspective of tanzih, Ebn al-'Arabi declares that wojud belongs to God alone, and, in his famous phrase, the things "have never smelt a whiff of wojud." From the point of view of tashbih, he affirms that all things are wojud's self-disclosure (tajalli) or self-manifestation (zohur). In sum, all things are "He/not He" (howa la howa), which is to say that they are both God and other than God, both wojud and other than wojud.
The intermediateness of everything that can be perceived by the senses or the mind brings us back to imagination, a term that Ebn al-'Arabi applies not only to a mode of understanding that grasps identity rather than difference, but also to the World of Imagination, which is situated between the two fundamental worlds that make up the cosmosóthe world of spirits and the world of bodiesóand which brings together the qualities of the two sides. In addition, Ebn al-'Arabi refers to the whole cosmos as imagination, because it combines the attributes of wojud and utter nonexistence (Chittick, 1989).
Influence on Persian Sufis and Philosophers. Tracing Ebn al-'Arabi's influence in any detail must await an enormous amount of research into both his own writings and the works of later authors. Most modern scholars agree that his influence is obvious in much of the theoretical writing of later Sufism and discernible in works by theologians and philosophers.
Wahdat al-wojud, invariably associated with Ebn al-'Arabi's name, is the most famous single theoretical issue in Sufi works of the later period, especially in the area under Persian cultural influence. Not everyone thought it was an appropriate concept, and scholars such as Ebn Taymiya (d. 728/1328) attacked it vehemently. In fact, Ebn Taymiya deserves much of the credit for associating this idea with Ebn al-'Arabi's name and for making it the criterion, as it were, of judging whether an author was for or against Ebn al-'Arabi (on this complex issue, see Chittick, forthcoming).
Although Ebn al-'Arabi's name is typically associated with theoretical issues, this should not suggest that his influence reached only learned Sufis. He was the author of many practical works on Sufism, including collections of prayers, and he transmitted a kherqa that was worn by a number of later shaikhs of various orders. As M. Chodkiewicz (1991) has illustrated, his radiance permeated all levels of Sufi life and practice, from the most elite to the most popular, and this has continued down to modern times. Today, indeed, his influence seems to be on the increase, both in the Islamic world and in the West. The Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, which publishes a journal in Oxford, is only one of many signs of a renewed attention to his teachings.
Ebn al-'Arabi's first important contact with Persian Islam may have come through one of his teachers, Makin-al-Din Abu Shoja' Zaher b. Rostam Esfahani, whom he met in Mecca in 598/1202 and with whom he studied the Sahih of Termedhi. He speaks especially highly of Makin-al-Din's elderly sister, whom he calls Shaykhat-al-Hejaz ("Mistress of Hejaz"), Fakhr-al-Nesa' ("Pride of womankind") bent Rostam, adding that she was also Fakhr-al-Rejal ("Pride of men") and that he had studied Hadith with her. It was Makin-al-Din's daughter, Nezam, who inspired Ebn al-'Arabi to write his famous collection of poetry, Tarjoman al-ashwaq (Nicholson, pp. 3-4; Jahangiri, pp. 59-62).
In 602/1205 Ebn al-'Arabi met the well-known Sufi Awhad-al-Din Kermani (d. 635/1238) in Konya and became his close friend; he mentions him on a number of occasions in the Fotuhat (Chodkiewicz et al., pp. 288, 563; Addas, pp. 269-73). Awhad-al-Din's biographer tells us that Ebn al-'Arabi entrusted his stepson Qunawi to Awhad-al-Din for training (Foruzanfar, pp. 86-87), and Qunawi confirms in a letter that he was Kermani's companion for two years, traveling with him as far as Shiraz (Chittick, 1992b, p. 261 ).
Qunawi is the most important intermediary through which Ebn al-'Arabi's teachings passed into the Persian-speaking world. He taught Hadith for many years in Konya and was on good terms with Jalal-al-Din Rumi, but there is no evidence in Rumi's works to support the oft-repeated assertion that he was influenced by the ideas of Ebn al-'Arabi or Qunawi (Chittick, forthcoming). Nevertheless, Rumi's commentators typically interpreted him in terms of Ebn al-'Arabi's teachings, which had come to define the Sufi intellectual universe.
Qunawi is the author of about fifteen Arabic works, including seven books and a number of relatively short treatises. These works are much more systematic and structured than those of his master. His focus on certain specific issues in Ebn al-'Arabi's writings, such as wojud and the perfect human being (al-ensan al-kamel), helped ensure that these would remain the central concern of the school. Certain terms typically ascribed to Ebn al-'Arabi, such as al-hadarat al-elahiya al-khams, "the five divine presences," seem to be Qunawi's coinages. In al-Fokuk (ed. M. Khúajavi, Tehran, 1371Sh./1992), Qunawi explains the significance of the chapter headings of the Fosus; this work was used directly or indirectly by practically all the Fosus commentators (Chittick, 1984).
Qunawi wrote a few minor Persian works, but probably not Tabserat al-mobtadi or Matale'-e iman, both of which have been printed in his name (Chittick, 1992b, pp. 255-59). However, from at least 643/1245 he taught the Ta'iya of Ebn al-Fared in Persian, and his lectures were put together as a systematic commentary on the poem by his student Sa'id-al-Din Fargani (d. 695/1296) as Mashareq al-darari (ed. S. J. Ashtiani, Mashhad, 1398/1978). This work was extremely popular, but even more so was his much expanded Arabic version of the same work, Montaha'l-madarek (Cairo, 1293/1876).
The most widely read Persian work by Qunawi's students was no doubt the Lama'at of Fakhr-al-Din 'Eraqi (d. 688/1289), which is based on Qunawi's lectures on Ebn al-'Arabi's Fosus (Chittick and Wilson). Mo'ayyed-al-Din Jandi (d. ca. 700/1300), who was initiated into Sufism by Qunawi, wrote in Arabic the first detailed commentary on the Fosus (ed. Ashtiani, Mashhad, 1361 Sh./1982) as well as a number of Persian works, including Nafhat al-ruh (ed. N. Mayel Heravi, Tehran, 1362 Sh./1983; despite the editor's claim of a unique Tehran manuscript, there are at least two other copies in Istanbul [Shehit Ali Pasha 1439, Haci Mahmud Efendi 2447], the first an expanded version).
Jandi taught the Fosus to 'Abd-al-Razzaq Kashani (d. 730/1330), who wrote one of the most widely disseminated commentaries (Cairo, 1386/1966); it often summarizes or paraphrases Jandi's text. Kashani wrote several other important works, both in Arabic and Persian, all of which are rooted in Ebn al-'Arabi's universe of discourse. His Ta'wil al-Qor'an has been published in Ebn al-'Arabi's name (Beirut, 1968; for passages in English, see Murata); although permeated with Ebn al-'Arabi's basic world view, there are important differences of perspective that mark Kashani as an independent thinker (Lory; Morris, 1987, pp. 101-06). A Persian work on fotowwat (fotuwa) has also been published (Tohfat al-ekhwan fi khasa'es al-fetyan, ed. M. Sarraf in Rasa'el-e javanmardan, Tehran, 1973).
Persian commentaries on the Fosus are frequently based on the Arabic commentary of Kashani's student, Dawud Qaysari (d. 751/1350), author of a dozen other Arabic works. His systematic philosophical introduction to Sharh al-Fosus (Tehran, 1299/1882; Bombay, 1300/1883) itself became the object of commentaries (for the latest, see Ashtiani, 1385/1966). Certainly, Qaysari's influence is obvious and acknowledged in the first Persian commentary on the Fosus, Nosus al-khosus (partly edited by R. Mazlumi, Tehran, 1359 Sh./ 1980), written by his student Baba Rokn-al-Din Shirazi (d. 769/1367). The Persian commentary by Taj-al-Din Hosayn b. Hasan Khwarazmi (d. ca. 835/1432; ed. N. Mayel Heravi, Tehran, 1364 Sh./1985) is almost a verbatim translation of Qaysari. Other Persian commentaries include Hall-e Fosus by Sayyed 'Ali Hamadani (d. 786/1385); this work has been wrongly attributed to Khwaja Parsa in its printed edition (ed. J. Mesgarneëad, Tehran, 1366 Sh./1987; see Mayel Heravi, 1988, pp. xxi-xxvii). In his comprehensive list of the more than one hundred commentaries on the Fosus, Osman Yahia mentions ten in Persian, some of which, however, may be repeats (introduction to Amoli, pp. 16-36). Persian commentaries that he does not mention include the following: 1. Khatam al-Fosus, attributed to Shah Ne'mat-Allah Wali (d. 834/1437); this is much longer than any of Shah Ne'mat-Allah's printed rasa'el (manuscripts include Nadwat al-'Olama' 35; Andhra Pradesh State Oriental Manuscript Library, Tasawwof 254, Jadid 715; Khodabakhsh, Farsi 1371). 2. Another long commentary is also attributed to Shah Ne'mat-Allah (Andhra Pradesh, Tasawwof 185). 3. Shaikh Mohebb-Allah Mobarez Elahabadi (d. 1048/1648), Ebn al-'Arabi's most faithful Indian follower, wrote a lengthy Persian commentary and a shorter Arabic commentary. 4. Hafez GHolam-Mostáafa b. Mo-hammad-Akbar from Thaneswar wrote Shokhus al-hemam fi sharh Fosus al-hekam, a commentary of 1024 pages in the Andhra Pradesh copy (Tasawwof 296), apparently in the 11th/18th century. The last Persian commentary on the Fosus in India seems to be al-Ta'wil al-mohkam fi motashabah Fosus al-hekam by Mawlawi Mohammad-Hasan Saheb Amruhawi; he was living in Hyderabad (Deccan) when this 500-page work was published in Lucknow in 1893.
A number of Qunawi's contemporaries not directly connected to his circle were important in making at least some of Ebn al-'Arabi's teachings available to Persian speakers. Sa'd-al-Din Hamuya (d. 649/1252), a Persian disciple of Najm-al-Din Kobra, corresponded with Ebn al-'Arabi and spent several years in Damascus, where he met both Ebn al-'Arabi and Qunawi. He wrote works in both Arabic and Persian; these are often extremely difficult, especially because the author delighted in letter symbolism (for a Persian work, see al-Mesbah fi'l-tasawwof, ed. N. Mayel Heravi, Tehran, 1362 Sh./1983). His disciple 'Aziz-al-Din Nasafi (d. before 700/1300) was responsible for making some of Ebn al-'Arabi's terminology well-known in Persian; his popularizing works can hardly be compared in sophistication to those of 'Eraqi or Fargani (see, e.g., his Ensan-e kamel, ed. M. MoleÇ, Tehran, 1962; an English paraphrase of his Maqsad-e aqsa was published by E. H. Palmer as Oriental Mysticism, London, 1867; see also Morris, pp. 745-51). Shams-al-Din Ebrahim Abarquhi began to write Majma' al-bahrayn (ed. N. Mayel Heravi, Tehran, 1364 Sh./1985) in 714/1314. The work represents an early effort to integrate Ebn al-'Arabi's teachings into Persian Sufism; more sophisticated than Nasafi, the author does not have the strong philosophical orientation typical of Qunawi and his circle.
Among early Persian poets influenced by Ebn al-'Arabi's teachings and terminology were 'Eraqi, Maghrebi, and Mahmud Shabestari (d. ca. 720/1320). Mohammad Lahiji (d. 912/1506) commented on Shabestari's thousand-verse Golshan-e raz in Sharh-e Golshan-e raz, a long Persian work rooted in the writings of Kashani and Qaysari. One of Ebn al-'Arabi's most learned and successful popularizers was the poet 'Abd-al-Rahman Jami (d. 898/1492), especially through his gazals and mathnawis; about 1,000 verses of his Selselat al-dhahab carefully follow the text of Ebn al-'Arabi's Helyat al-abdal (Mayel Heravi, 1988, pp. xxxvii-xl). Jami's Persian prose works dealing with Ebn al-'Arabi's teachingsóthe Lawa'eh, Lawame', Ashe''at al-lama'at, and Naqd al-nosus fi sharh Naqsh al-Fosusóas well as his Arabic commentary on the Fosus, were also widely read (see introduction to Jami, 1977). Jami was especially popular in India, and most of the numerous followers of Ebn al-'Arabi in the subcontinentówho were much more likely to write in Persian than in Arabicóare indebted to his explications of the Shaikh's works (Chittick, 1992d). Mohammad b. Mohammad, who was known as Shaikh-e Makki (d. 926/1020) and considered himself a disciple of Jami, defended Ebn al-'Arabi against attacks by narrow-minded critics in his Persian al-Janeb al-garbi fi hall moshkelat al-shaykh Mohyi-al-Din Ebn 'Arabi (ed. Mayel Heravi, Tehran, 1364 Sh./1985).
The poet and Sufi master Shah Ne'mat-Allah Wali was one of Ebn al-'Arabi's most fervent admirers and followed closely in the tracks of Kashani and Qaysari. He wrote over one hundred rasalas (treatises) on theoretical and practical Sufism that fit squarely into Ebn al-'Arabi's universe; four of these comment on the Fosus or Naqsh al-Fosus, Ebn al-'Arabi's own treatise on the essential ideas of the Fosus. The Perso-Indian poet Mirza 'Abd-al-Qader Bidel (=Be@dil, q.v.; d. 1133/1721) demonstrates an intimate knowledge of Ebn al-'Arabi's school in such mathnawis as 'Erfan.
Even Sufi authors critical of Ebn al-'Arabi's teachings adopted much of his terminology and world view. Thus in Persia 'Ala'-al-Dawla Semnani (d. 736/1337) and in India Shaikh Mohammad Hosayni, known as Gisu-Deraz (d. 825/1422), and Shaikh Ahmad Serhendi (d. 1034/1634) do not diverge markedly from most of the teachings established by him and his immediate followers. Most Sufis did not take the criticisms of these authors too seriously. Typical are the remarks of Sayyed Ashraf Jahangir Semnani (d. probably in 829/1425), who studied with 'Ala'-al-Dawla Semnani but sided with Kashani in his defense of Ebn al-'Arabi against Semnani's criticisms (see Landolt, 1973). After providing the views of the participants in this debate and those of a number of observers, Sayyed Ashraf tells us that Semnani had not understood what Ebn al-'Arabi was saying and that he had retracted his criticisms before the end of his life (Yamani, Latáa'ef-e ashrafi, latáifa 28, pp. 139-45; Mayel Heravi, 1367, pp. xxxi-xxxv). In a similar manner, Shah Wali-Allah Dehlawi (d. 1176/1762) wrote a work showing that there was no fundamental difference between Ebn al-'Arabi's wahdat al-wojud and Serhendi's wahdat al-shohud.
From the 8th/14th century onward Ebn al-'Arabi's influence is clearly present in many works written by authors known primarily as theologians or philosophers. Among Shi'ites, Sayyed Haydar Amoli (d. 787/1385) was especially important in bringing Ebn al-'Arabi into the mainstream of Shi'ite thought. He wrote an enormous commentary on the Fosus, Nass al-nosus, the 500-page introduction of which has been published (representing about 10 percent of the text). Amoli investigates the meaning of the Fosus on three levels: naql (the Koran and Hadith, making special use here of Shi'ite sources), 'aql (meaning kalam and falsafa), and kashf (referring both to his own experience and the writings of major members of Ebn al-'Arabi's school). Amoli also wrote several Arabic works on metaphysics; especially significant is Jame' al-asrar (ed. Corbin and Yahia, Tehran, 1347 Sh./1969; see Morris, 106-08), which was written in his youth during his initial movement into Ebn al-'Arabi's universe.
Sa'en-al-Din 'Ali Torka Esfahani (d. 835/1432) completed a commentary on the Fosus in 831/1427; his treatise on wojud "being," Tamhid al-qawa'ed (ed. S. J. Ashtiani, Tehran, 1396/1976), frequently paraphrases Jandi's Fosus commentary. A number of Torka's Persian treatises (Ùahardah rasa'el, eds. S. 'A. Musawi Behbahani and S. E. Dibaji, Tehran, 1351 Sh./1972) make explicit or implicit reference to Ebn al-'Arabi's teachings. Molla Sadra (d. 1050/1641) frequently quotes at length from the Fotuhat in his Asfar. His student Molla Mohsen Fayd Kashani (d. 1090/1679) wrote an epitome of the Fotuhat and frequently quotes from Ebn al-'Arabi in his works (EI2 V, p. 476). Even Molla Mohammad-Baqer Majlesi (d. 1110/1669), well-known as a critic of Sufis in general and Ebn al-'Arabi in particular, quotes on occasion from Ebn al-'Arabi in his monumental Behar al-anwar (Beirut, 1983; e.g., ba'd ahl al-ma'refa in vol. 67, p. 339, refers to Ebn al-'Arabi in the Fotuhat, Cairo, 1911, vol. 2, p. 328.15). In the modern period, Ayat-Allah Khomeini differentiated himself from many other influential 'olama' by his intense interest in Ebn al-'Arabi (Knysh, 1992b).
The first of Ebn al-'Arabi's works to be translated into Persian was the Fosus, not as an independent work, but rather in the midst of the commentaries by Baba Rokn-al-Din and others. A translation without commentary was made by 'Abd-al-Ghaffar b. Mohammad-'Ali; an autograph version, written in 1008/1685, is found in the Salar Jung Library in Hyderabad (Deccan) (Tasawwof 33; other copies are found in the Andhra Pradesh State Library, Tasawwof 464 and Jadid 4248). Several short works by Ebn al-'Arabi on Sufi practice, including al-Anwar, Asrar al-khalwa, Haqiqat al-haqa'eq, and Helyat al-awlia' were translated in the 8-9th/14-15th centuries (for the Persian text of these and other minor works, see Mayel Heravi, 1988). A manuscript (Andhra Pradesh, Jadid 1461) called Sharh-e Fotuhat, probably by Shaikh Mohebb-Allah Elahabadi, is the second volume (fols. 357-747) of a work that includes translations of and commentary on long passages from the Fotuhat. Several of Elahabadi's long Persian works provide extensive translations from the Fotuhat.
Among Persian Sufis who were especially influential in the Arabic-speaking countries of Islam, one can mention 'Abd-al-Karim Jili (d. 832/1428), author of numerous independently-minded works, who settled in the Yemen and contributed to the widespread interest in Ebn al-'Arabi's writings there (see Knysh, 1992a). Finally, it is worth noting that most followers of Ebn al-'Arabi in Persia wrote their theoretical works in Arabic. In contrast, the Indian subcontinent witnessed an enormous outpouring of Persian writing pertaining to this school of thought, a legacy largely ignored by modern scholars, even in the subcontinent itself (Chittick, 1992d).
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(WILLIAM C. CHITTICK)
