Ibn al-ʿArabi and Iqbal: Between Revival and Re-Formation

Introduction

“God will send to this [Muslim] nation every hundred years someone to revive the affairs of its religion”[1], the Prophet Muhammad said in a ḥadīth that has manifested in various figures and thinkers throughout Islamic history who have had a lasting impact on Muslim thought and society. From the founding generation of ṣaḥāba (prophetic companions) and ahl al-bayt (prophetic household) who learned directly from the Prophet Muhammad to the tābiʿīn (followers) who came after them, there have always been such transformative figures who translated the main Islamic texts (e.g., Quran, Ḥadīth, etc.) to a form and reality relevant in their time and place.

Following the first two generations of Muslims, Islamic thought witnessed a series of developments as a series of responses to this formative generation of the Prophet Muhammad, his companions and prophetic household. We may describe this first generation as the stage of ‘Role Models’, those who embodied the prophetic message of the Quran as enacted by the Prophet Muhammad in his statements and actions. There were no texts of fiqh (jurisprudence), ʿaqīda (dialectical theology) nor ḥadīth (prophetic teachings) during this period. Rather, all the rituals and beliefs of Islam, including the Quran, were transmitted orally and directly from the Prophet Muhammad himself.[2]

These role models thrived in the lands of Islam until approximately the 8th century. They included, alongside the prophetic companions and household, theologians like al-Hasan al-Basri (d. 728), jurists like Malik b. Anas (d. 795) or mystics like Rabiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya (d. 801) and ascetics such as Abdullah b. al-Mubarak (d. 797). The following generation of influential Muslims ushered a new phase of intellectual development, namely ‘Systematization’. During this period, lasting roughly from the 10th – 13th centuries, figures like al-Ghazali (d. 1111), Ibn al-ʿArabi (d. 1240) and Rumi (d. 1273) synthesized the lives and teachings of previous generations of Muslims in a cohesive vision of intellectual and spiritual revival for their milieu.

Ghazali’s project, succinctly outlined in Iḥyāʾ ʿUlūm al-Dīn (Revival of the Religious Sciences) represents a marriage between Islamic jurisprudence and spirituality, the author halts at the boundaries of tazkiya (self-purification), sulūk (self-discipline) and muʿāmala (physical actions), opting not to delve into ʿilm al-mukāshafa (the science of unveiling). On the other hand, Ibn al-ʿArabi begins where al-Ghazali ends and undertakes a journey into Islamic metaphysics unprecedented in Islamic history beforehand. The Andalusian mystic takes his readers in his magnum opus, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya (Meccan Openings) across marātib al-wujūd (levels of being), from the physical to spiritual realms.[3]

Meanwhile, Rumi’s Mathnawi (couplets) of Persian poetry, otherwise known as the ‘Quran in Persian’, delineated an altogether different approach to Islamic spirituality that emphasizes love and poetry as the path to God.  Alongside these approaches, we also have in the life of ʿAbd al-Qadir al-Jilani (d. 1166) the germination of the ṭarīqa (Sufi brotherhood) and the central relationship between the murshid (guide) and murīd (disciple) therein. Even though neither Ghazali or Ibn al-ʿArabi had left behind a ṭarīqa (Sufi brotherhood), their works became foundational to many such institutions in later centuries, as they also synthesized with the teachings of these organizations’ founders.

This seamless transition to the next phase of Islamic thought, the ‘Age of the Ṭuruq [Spiritual Paths]’ where the Muslim world witnessed a proliferation of institutions like the Qādiriyya, Shādhiliyya, Chistiyya, Naqshbandiyya, ʿAlawiyya and others. Each of these structures revolved around the relationship between the murshid (Sufi guide) and his murīds (disciples). The legitimacy of the guide and the entire path depends on the silsila (chain of transmission) that connects to generations of saints back to the Prophet Muhammad, as well as a collection of awrād (litanies) which the disciples practice and recite regularly to grow in their nearness to God.

These ṭuruq flourished socially and politically until the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the beginning of the 20th century and the ‘Modern Era’. Thenceforth, coinciding with the emergence of modernist movements like Wahhabism and Salafism, Sufi paths and practice generally receded to the private recesses of Muslim societies. Despite this setback, various reformers during this period, including Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938), Yusuf al-Nabhani (d. 1932), Muhammad b. al-Habib (d. 1972), Naguib Mahfouz (d. 2006), Nazim al-Qubrusi (d. 2014) and others set out to revive Islamic spirituality and intellectual heritage through various means, methods and objectives.

This essay explores a comparative study between two such figures who come from drastically different times and places: Ibn al-ʿArabi and Muhammad Iqbal. Between 12th century Andalusia and 20th century Pakistan much difference can be surmised between Ibn al-ʿArabi’s and Iqbal’s respective milieus; and yet, many surprising similarities can also be gleaned from their works and motivations. Despite the vast distances in time and space, both figures confronted similar social and political upheavals that catalyzed the developments of their thought.

This will be the first in a series of essays to compare the teachings of Ibn al-ʿArabi and Iqbal. In this first iteration, our focus will be on the social context and epistemological foundations in each figure’s Weltanschauung. Ibn al-ʿArabi’s and Iqbal’s respective focus on kashf (mystical unveiling) and inductive thought yield a fecund contemplation on the richness of Islamic – read Quranic – epistemology and sources of knowledge. In this regard, we will also explore the possible ways in which both thinkers complement and supplements each other’s goals and objectives. In concluding this first essay, we hypothesize that Iqbal’s attempt to synthesize Islam with science and rationalism yields to his predecessor, Ibn al-ʿArabi’s emphasis on kashf (unveiling), khayāl (imagination) and the contemporary relevance of these two epistemes in Islam’s contemporary cultural crisis.

[1] Sunan Abi Dawud, 4291.

[2] This is evidenced in various statements of the Prophet, such as “pray as you have seen me pray” and others. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī.

[3] Marātib al-wujūd was later outlined by students in Ibn al-ʿArabi’s school, specifically Saʿid al-Din Farghani and his introduction to a commentary on ʿUmar b. al-Farid’s Khamriyya (Wine Ode).

Background

As mentioned, Ibn al-ʿArabi’s and Iqbal’s social milieus exhibited many similarities and differences. Internal political upheavals and social instability alongside external threats catalyzed both figures’ intellectual journeys and works, yet in somewhat different directions. The vast distances in geography and centuries molded the respective lens through which each thinker approached the Quran, Ḥadīth and the larger intellectual landscape of their day and age. Investigating this socioreligious and political landscape is necessary to understanding the works and visions of these two thinkers.

Muhammad Ibn al-ʿArabi[1] was born in 1165 in Murcia, a city located in southeastern Spain. His father was a political diplomat in service of Ibn Mardanish, the governor of the city under Almoravid dynasty. During the 1170’s, when Ibn al-ʿArabi was merely 10 years old, the rising Almohad dynasty overthrew the reigning Almoravids, including Ibn Mardanish’s rule whose fortress was the last to fall at the hands of the Almohads. Following this major defeat of Almoravids, Ibn al-ʿArabi’s family fled from Murcia towards Western Spain.

The family found a new home in Seville, where Ibn al-ʿArabi’s father continued his work as a political diplomat for the new Almohad rulers and his son came of age. The Andalusian mystic describes his first years in Seville as a normal experience of any young man at the time, especially one who belonged to a wealthy and influential family like Ibn al-ʿArabi’s. He describes this period as one of enjoyment with friends and heedlessness, until he experienced his first spiritual awakening during a series and visions and seclusions.

To fully appreciate the intellectual richness of this milieu, it is worthwhile noting that Ibn al-ʿArabi’s father was a close friend of the celebrated Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd [Averroes] (d. 1198), to whom he brought his son to validate the spiritual visions the latter was experiencing. In this incident, which Ibn al-ʿArabi describes as happening when he was still a ‘beardless youth’, the famed philosopher asked the young man: “Have you found the experience of reality as we, the philosophers, have verified?” To which Ibn al-ʿArabi responded: “Yes!” Averroes was joyful, but then suddenly Ibn al-ʿArabi continued: “No! Between the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ spirits leave their bodies and heads are separated from their necks.”

Ibn al-ʿArabi then continues that Averroes lowered his head in disbelief and repeated: “There is no power nor means save through God”.[2] Ibn al-ʿArabi describes two more incidents with the Muslim philosopher. The first is during the latter’s funeral which the former attended. He noted that a donkey carried the body while Ibn Rushd’s own books balanced his body’s weight on the two sides of the animal. The second instance is a vision during which Ibn al-ʿArabi states that Averroes sat in front of the Andalusian mystic but could not perceive him due to a veil between them.

These three anecdotes highlight Ibn al-ʿArabi’s critical approach to philosophy and fikr (rationality and reason) as the primary means for comprehending reality, an important facet of his thought that we will discuss shortly. Coinciding with this transformation in his life, Ibn al-ʿArabi began secluding himself in a cemetery in Seville, whence he had a waking vision of Jesus the son of Mary, whom he describes as his first teacher.[3] This became the definitive moment of his peripatetic journey across the Muslim world fī ṭalab al-ʿilm (seeking knowledge).

Ibn al-ʿArabi accompanied various saints and scholars in Iberia (southern Spain) and North Africa. The model of learning in this part of the Muslim world during this period was drastically different than other parts of Islamdom, as highlighted by Yusuf Casewit in Mystics of al-Andalus. The mobile journeys of seekers like Ibn al-ʿArabi, who resided temporarily in homes of teachers like Abu al-ʿAbbas al-ʿUraybi before continuing their learning from other scholars, contrasts with the well-established khāniqahs (Sufi lodges) in the East, where murīds (disciples) spent their entire lives in a single convent, dressing and eating the same as their peers.

Alongside this social dimension, Casewit highlights a central difference in pedagogy. Whereas the Ghazalian model of zuhd (asceticism) dominated the lives of Sufis in the east, the Western school to which Ibn al-ʿArabi belonged followed a different model. This school traces its origins in figures like Ibn Barrajan (d. 1141) and others, all of whom emphasized the importance of mukāshafa (unveiling) as an initiation in sulūk (self-discipline) whereupon seekers can feel motivated and energized to pursue the arduous journey of tazkiya (self-purification).

On the other hand, the Ghazalian model as outlined in Iḥyāʾ ʿUlūm al-Dīn (Revival of the Religious Sciences) emphasized the opposite journey: a focus on zuhd (asceticism) that leads one to mukāshafa (unveiling). Al-Ghazali is so emphatic about this approach that he poignantly states in the introduction of this magnum opus that he will not delve into the latter science, mukāshafa, where Ibn al-ʿArabi begins his discourse in The Meccan Openings. The Andalusian mystic highlights this disparity between Western and Eastern Sufism in two hagiographical works: The Lustrous Pearl and The Holy Spirit, where he mentions the lives of hundreds of saints from the West whom he holds problematize the model for sainthood (i.e., leader of khāniqa) in the East.

More than that, Ibn al-ʿArabi also describes his disenchantment with Eastern Sufism, a crisis of faith that led to him to withdraw from teaching for an extended period after his migration to the East. He undertook this journey towards his mid-thirties, around 1199. The reasons for this journey are unclear, however the Andalusian mystic probably had a premonition of the impending crusades and – eventual – Reconquista that ushered the retaking of Andalusia by the northern Christian kingdoms. Either way, Ibn al-ʿArabi felt as though his purpose and journey of learning in the West had concluded and that he was needed elsewhere, further east.

Coinciding with this arrival in the East, Ibn al-ʿArabi’s two most important works: The Meccan Openings and – later – Bezels of Wisdom were written. The Andalusian complemented his peripatetic career by travelling across the Muslim East, visiting Cairo, Baghdad, Hebron, Anatolia, Mecca and Medina before finally settling in Damascus, where he passed and was buried in 1240. Ibn al-ʿArabi’s stepson and foremost disciple, Sadr al-Din Qunawi (d. 1274) was the only student authorized by his teacher to teach these two works. Alongside his contemporary Rumi (d. 1273), Qunawi was the second patron saint of the city of his namesake, Konya.

Al-Qunawi is credited with ushering a longstanding tradition of commentary on Ibn al-ʿArabi’s works, specifically the Bezels of Wisdom. For many centuries, well into the 17th century, it was a sign of prestige for a Muslim saint to author a commentary on the Bezels. The genealogy of this tradition begins with Qunawi himself who authored an abridged commentary on the chapter titles of this work, thenceforth his student Muʾayyad al-Din Jandi authored the first full commentary on the work. Jandi’s previously mentioned student Saʿid al-Din Farghani also wrote a commentary on the Sufi poet Ibn al-Farid’s famous Khamriyya (Wine Ode).

However, it is to ʿAbd al-Razzaq al-Qashani and Dawud al-Qaysari that we owe the greatest spread of Ibn al-ʿArabi’s teachings. Al-Qashani’s commentary reached as far east as Mughal India, whence Sufi poets like ʿAbd al-Rahman Jami (d. 1492) where also motivated to author a commentary on the Bezels in Farsi. As Sachiko Murata shows in Chinese Gleams of Sufi Light, Jami’s commentary helped Chinese Muslim scholars like Wang Tai-Yu and Liu Chih to introduce Islam in a manner harmonious with Neo-Confucianism. Meanwhile, Qaysari’s commentary on the Bezels was adopted by Ottoman Muslim scholars like Mulla Fanari whence it furnished the pedagogical foundation for the Ottoman educational system.

Across continents and centuries, Muhammad Iqbal’s milieu presents a drastically different world than Ibn al-ʿArabi’s. Born in Punjab around 1876, Iqbal studied in Lahore, present day Pakistan and eventually made the acquaintance of British orientalist and historian, Sir Thomas Arnold. The latter encouraged Iqbal to go to Britain, which he did in 1905. Already an accomplished poet in Urdu, Iqbal studied Hegel under J.M.E McTaggart at Cambridge and later travelled to Germany where completed his PhD with F. Hommel at the University of Munich and published his dissertation titled The Development of Metaphysics in Persia. In this work, Iqbal shows the earliest signs of a critical engagement with Islamic intellectual history, vis a vis a more pantheistic approach.

Upon returning to Lahore in 1908, Iqbal had an intellectual and spiritual crisis among his coreligionists. While teaching philosophy and law, Iqbal – like many others in the Muslim world – felt disheartened by the state of intellectual stagnation in the Muslim community, symbolized poignantly by the later defeat of the Ottomans in the Balkan War of 1912. In works authored during this period, such as his collection Stray Reflections and the more celebrated Shikwā (Complaint) and Jawāb Shikwā (Response to the Complaint), Iqbal expresses his disappointment in Muslim communities who have fallen in the ills of their own stagnation. Specifically, Iqbal was interested in the need to engage Islamic thought with Western thinkers of his time, such as Nietzsche and others, alongside a larger synthesis with modern science and the Enlightenment project.

Iqbal’s criticism was leveled against religious extremism but also a Sufi experience that does not value pave the way to what he regarded as ‘inductive reasoning’. Around the same time, Iqbal also joined the political organization, the Muslim League, founded in 1906, with the singular purpose that Muslims in India should have their own state. Prior to his death, in 1937, Iqbal voiced this wish to Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the ipso facto founder of Pakistan and Iqbal’s friend, who helped fulfill the latter’s wish in 1947 with the founding of Pakistan as a separate state for Indian Muslims. Unfortunately, Iqbal could not witness the materialization of his dream; he died of illness in 1938.

What lingers in the background of Iqbal’s journey is the British colonization of India, which lasted for a little under a century, from 1858 until the founding of Pakistan in 1947. Using the East India Company as an economic front, the British colonized more than just land, but the very cultural and religious sensibility of the people of India. In Perilous Intimacies, SherAli Tareen shows how this imperial project divided Indian Muslims, between those who believed that they should join forces with fellow Hindu Indians, overthrow the British and establish the Khilāfa (Islamic rule) over India, and – on the other hand – those who believed that acquiescing to British rule is more tolerable than joining forces with Hindus whose theology was seen as an affront to Islamic monotheism.

In 1857, both Muslim and Hindu soldiers led what became known as the ‘Sepoy Mutiny’, a revolt that almost ended British colonization of India. As a response, the imperial rulers implemented a new strategy aimed at dividing the collective forces of their subjects. One such tactic was the introduction of religious debates between Hindu and Muslim leaders. This coincided with the ushering of the World Religious Conference in America where various religious leaders from India, both Hindu and Muslim, converged. This was part of the hegemonical reformulation of religion under the auspices of Western Enlightenment.

As Talal Asad shows in Formations of the Secular, the modernist understanding of religion was in response and a mirror image of the ‘secular’. As a ‘system of rituals and beliefs’, the modern religion complements the state and remains a private affair of the individual. Much like civil laws and courts, this repackaged notion of religion also contains its legislations and institutions that do not interfere with the state. Most significantly, the Enlightenment’s religion, constricted much of the experience of daily life away from religion, thereby exiling entire dimensions of pre-modern metaphysics pertaining to paradox and imagination, for instance, and relegated such discourses as either frivolous or within the purview of secular philosophy.

Max Weber’s disenchantment of the universe was in full force and Iqbal must have felt this dissonance in his own life and drastically divergent experiences in India and Europe. However, instead of seeking to revitalize the pre-modern Islamic sensibility, to which Ibn al-ʿArabi belonged, Iqbal instead sought to reform Islamic thought for a new age. He was keenly aware of the widespread rise of nation states, ushered by France in 1789, and perceived this to be the only solution for Muslims in India to cope and survive intellectually in the changing tides of the age. The older spiritual experiences and pedagogies no longer functioned and needed to be replaced with a new vision, albeit one still rooted in the Quran.

Herein lies the main overlap between Iqbal and Ibn al-ʿArabi: their reliance upon the Quran as a necessary and sufficient foundation for a new synthesis and revival of Islamic thought. Both thinkers also traveled extensively across the world. However, whereas Ibn al-ʿArabi left the West for the East, where he underwent a crisis of faith due to his experience of Islam in central Islamdom, Iqbal traveled from the East to the West and upon his return to India, also confronted his inner conflicts regarding the state of Islam in the East. Despite the separation in time and space, we find here a harmony between both thinkers and the unique intersection of intellectual trends, cultures and sensibilities that helped catalyze their respective journeys. This is perhaps what T. S. Eliot meant when he eloquently stated in Dry Salvages: “But the intersection of the timeless with time, that is an occupation for the saint.”

[1] Al-Maqarri states in his hagiographical work, Nafḥ al-Ṭīb (The Breeze of Musk), that Muslims of the east became accustomed to distinguishing between Muhammad Ibn al-ʿArabi and the judge Abu Bakr Ibn al-ʿArabi by removing the definite article al from the former’s name, whereas Muslims in the west continued to use Ibn al-ʿArabi, as opposed to Ibn ʿArabi, to name both thinkers. This is the more historically valid approach especially because the Ibn al-ʿArabi at hand himself wrote his name as such in the extant manuscripts.

[2] Many of these anecdotes are recounted by Claude Addas in her authoritative biography of Ibn al-ʿArabi, The Quest for the Red Sulfur.

[3] Ibn ʿArabi clarifies that this does not mean that he became Christian. Rather, each of the Quranic prophets represent an archetype of sacred inheritance from whom seekers like Ibn al-ʿArabi and others inherit from until they can inherit directly from the spirit of the Prophet Muhammad, a maqām (spiritual station) which Ibn al-ʿArabi describes as maqām al-lā maqām (station of no station).

Epistemology

We can say confidently that the crisis of Islam in modernity is deeper than content or lack thereof. It is more than the mere dearth of engagement with Western thought for the past five centuries, nor is it just the exiling of metaphysics a la Ibn al-ʿArabi or Rumi. Even the political and cultural crises that have befallen the Muslim world, already at the time of Iqbal, transcend these spheres. Rather, the root of the crisis is epistemological and ontological. In other words, it is not a problem of what books Muslims do or do not read, but rather the very art of reading itself has been lost. Thus, to situate Iqbal’s and Ibn al-ʿArabi’s respective visions, it is important to first sojourn at this metaphysical foundation.

My approach here is to begin with Ibn al-ʿArabi’s metaphysics, simply because his is the most outlined and elucidated among premodern Muslim thinkers. It is in this regard that Ibn al-ʿArabi’s brilliance truly shines, for he did not necessarily invent any new concepts, but rather masterfully synthesized many diverse intellectual strands (e.g., Islamic, Neoplatonic, philosophical, theological) into a grand metaphysical performance. Here, Claude Levi-Strauss’ notion of bricolage and the bricoleur comes to mind. Levi-Strauss defines the bricoleur as ‘someone who works with a limited set of tools to create something entirely new’.

This is a perfect description of Ibn al-ʿArabi’s contribution to Islamic thought, and to the same degree Iqbal’s. However, due to Ibn al-ʿArabi’s status as a premodern thinker, it is a true rarity in Islamic heritage to find such a prolific author who elucidated with such clarity and creativity Quranic metaphysics, not only for his age but perhaps even with increasing relevance in our present day and age. Paraphrasing James Morris, almost all Islamic intellectual history after Ibn al-ʿArabi can be considered as an endnote to his thought. And, again, it is not only the content of the Andalusian mystic’s writings that is of importance, but also his epistemology and methodology that demands our attention.

Whilst describing Ibn al-ʿArabi’s magnum opus The Meccan Openings, William Chittick discusses how the author had written this voluminous work over three decades, while traveling across the eastern Islamdom and after receiving its inspiration during his performance of ḥajj (pilgrimage). Ibn al-ʿArabi himself states that he would receive bits and pieces of the book as inspiration and then convey it to his students who would transcribe the lines and sentences, an homage to the revelation of the Quran. Given that the work neither fits the classification of a philosophical treatise, due to its enigmatic chapter headings and topics, nor a chaotic stream of consciousness, since it exhibits a cohesive spirit throughout its pages and chapters, Chittick concludes that it must have been divinely inspired. Indeed, this is a rare admission by an author in an academic work.[1]

And so, it is impossible philosophically classify Ibn al-ʿArabi’s Weltanschauung into any given discipline or classification. Rather, we may describe his vision as an organic exposition on reality, in the highest sense. This vision can be described from different perspectives, including but not limited to epistemology, ontology, saintology, prophetology, humanology, soteriology and eschatology. In the proceeding paragraphs, I will try to expound briefly upon each of these areas and tether each discipline to the other.

Epistemology is the philosophical discipline pertaining to knowledge, what is it, its sources and methodology? For Ibn al-ʿArabi, knowledge is of two types, ʿilm and maʿrifa. In the first, he tethers ʿilm to ʿalāmah (sign), ʿālam (world) and al-ʿAlīm (God the All-Knower). He weaves an etymological narrative that presents the world as a matrix of signs that point to the All-Knower, who is God. As for maʿrifa, Ibn al-ʿArabi – like countless Muslim saints before and after him – emphasizes the ḥadīth qudsi wherein God says: “I was a Hidden Treasure and loved to be known [uʿraf], so I created creation that they may come to know Me [li-yaʿrifūnī].” In turn, whereas ʿilm pertains to knowledge external to us, maʿrifa is inner awareness of oneself.

However, the term maʿrifa in Arabic is also related to ʿurf (custom), as mentioned in the Quran: “Take the path of forgiveness and command ʿurf” (7:199). And so, whereas maʿrifa refers to an individual’s self-knowledge, as a microcosm, ʿurf is the awareness of the collective soul of society, the macrocosm. This mirroring between the human being and society or cosmos is pre-Islamic and has its roots in Greek philosophy but also finds reiteration in Islam, most auspiciously in the diwan of Imam Ali b. Abi Talib: “The sickness and cure is within you. You assume yourself to be something small when the universe is enfolded within.”

One also finds in Ibn al-ʿArabi an exposition on the Quranic verse: “We shall show them Our Signs in the horizons and in their own selves, until it is apparent to them that it is the truth.” (41:53) Highlighting the fact that the term āyah (verse) also means sign, Ibn al-ʿArabi describes three senses of scripture: al-kitāb al-maṣṭūr (the written scripture), al-kitāb al-manẓūr (the witnessed scripture, nature) and al-kitāb al-marqūm (the ciphered scripture, human being). Each verse in written and recited scripture finds a mirror in a sign within the universe and human being. For Ibn al-ʿArabi, this is evidenced by the statement of Aisha, the wife of the Prophet Muhammad, who when asked about his character stated that he was: “A walking Quran.”

This delivers us to Ibn al-ʿArabi’s prophetology and saintology, both of which rest on his vision of the superiority of the Prophet Muhammad, both his historical person and primordial reality: al-ḥaqīqa al-muḥammadiyya (Muhammadan Reality) or al-nūr al-muḥammadī (Muhammadan Light). Ibn al-ʿArabi directly situates this notion in The Meccan Openings to the Logos in Greek philosophy, or the Active Intellect and Higher Pen. In turn, this principle of reason in the universe was adopted by Judaism as the ‘primordial law’, Christianity as the ‘nature of Christ’ and finally in Islamic metaphysics as the primordial light and reality of the Prophet Muhammad.

However, Ibn al-ʿArabi did not invent this notion. On the contrary, we already find mentions of the prophetic light in the earliest Sufi commentaries on the Quran, specifically Sahl al-Tustari’s exposition on the scriptural taʾwīl (interpretation) of the prominent saint and scholar from ahl al-bayt (the prophetic household), Jaʿfar al-Sadiq (d. 765).[2] In the earliest teachings of ahl al-bayt, the daughter of the Prophet, Fatima al-Zahrāʾ, is described as majmaʿ al-nūrayn (the gathering of two lights): walāya (sainthood) through her husband, the Prophet’s cousin ʿAli and nubuwwa (prophethood) from her father the Prophet Muhammad himself.

For Ibn al-ʿArabi, the reality of the Prophet is rooted in Aisha’s description of him as a ‘walking Quran’. In turn, just as the written scripture was revealed in 23 years, during the life of the Prophet, he was also revealed in stages, namely 124,000 prophets, from Adam to Jesus. This is the underlying movement animating Ibn al-ʿArabi’s second most important work, the Bezels of Wisdom. Each of these prophets represents an archetype, or as the Andalusian mystic describes, a mashrab (wellspring). The journey to God progresses through an accumulation of these prophetic inheritances that culminate with the Prophet Muhammad himself.

This is how Ibn al-ʿArabi explains his vision of Jesus in the cemetery of Seville, which he interprets as an indication that he was ʿīsawī al-mashrab (following the Christic archetype) during the beginning of his journey. Thenceforth, he states that inherited from prophets like Hud and Musa until he received knowledge directly from the Prophet Muhammad. Since the prophet of Islam is portrayed here as an embodied revelation that manifested in stages, inheriting from any of the previous prophets does not entail changing one’s religion but rather receiving from the Prophet indirectly through one of his mirrors.

Ibn al-ʿArabi describes the ultimate stage of inheriting from the Prophet Muhammad directly as maqām al-lā maqām (station of no-station), whereupon the seeker is no longer claimed by any previous prophet more than the other. Rather, one becomes a mirror of the Prophet Muhammad as al-insān al-kāmil al-tāmm (the perfect and complete human), who is in perfect balance and harmony with the universe. For the Andalusian mystic, this is the ultimate destination that human beings can achieve: to become mirrors of the Prophet Muhammad as this perfected and completed mirror of God’s Names and Attributes.

Lastly, when it comes to ontology, the philosophical discipline pertaining being and existence, Ibn al-ʿArabi synthesizes his entire Weltanschauung in a unitary vision of reality. Wujūd, which the Andalusian mystic uses almost always to describe being, linguistically pays homage to epistemology, since one of its related terms is the verb wajada (to find), as well as mystical experience as evidenced in wajd (ecstasy) and wijdān (internal being). Ibn al-ʿArabi regards everything other than God as tajalliyyāt (theophanies) and mirrors of His Names and Attributes. As Prof. Naquib al-ʿAttas eloquently expresses this in Prolegomena to Islamic Metaphysics, according to Ibn al-ʿArabi, everything participates in wujūd (being) to varying degrees.

This vision of reality has often been described as waḥdat al-wujūd (the oneness or unity of being), a term misattributed to Ibn al-ʿArabi, who never used the term. Rather, his foremost disciple, Sadr al-Din Qunawi used the term only once in his writings, thenceforth it gained currency in the school of commentators like Farghani, Qashani and others. Ironically, the figure who infamously made the term popular is Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), a conservative Muslim scholar who was a wartime preacher and directed his criticism against Sufism and its propagators, including Ibn al-ʿArabi, proclaiming their teachings as an attempt by the Mongols to destroy Islam from within, after their defeat against the Mamluk army at ʿAyn Jalut in 1260. It is Ibn Taymiyya who granted waḥdat al-wujūd greater currency through his criticism than it had beforehand in the writings of Sufis.

In summary, Ibn al-ʿArabi perceived the project of creation as a fulfillment of the ḥadīth qudsi: “I was a Hidden Treasure and loved to be known. Thus, I created creation that they may come to know me.” All created things are theophanies whereupon God reflects on His Names and Attributes, but it is the human being, and more specifically al-insān al-kāmil al-tāmm (the perfect and complete human), the Prophet Muhammad, who represents the fulfillment and culmination of this project. This is because it is only the human being who has the potential to manifest all of God’s Names and Attributes, whereas all other created beings reflect only one at a time.

The means to perceive and witness this unfolding nature of reality is not through ʿaql (rational faculty), naẓar (rational reflection) or fikr (reason) but rather by relying upon dhikr (divine remembrance) and the qalb (heart).[3] Ibn al-ʿArabi describes this process of witnessing reality as taḥqīq (self-realization), a crucial concept in his writings that also has its own network of related terms, including ḥaqīqa (reality), ḥaqq (truth), al-Ḥaqq (God the Real) and ḥuqūq (rights). In this way, Ibn al-ʿArabi contextualizes concrete Islamic rituals like dhikr (remembrance) in society, highlighting the need to fulfill the needs of khalq (creation), since they are manifestations of al-Ḥaqq (God the Real).

Transitioning to Muhammad Iqbal, one finds a somewhat parallel intellectual journey to Ibn al-ʿArabi’s. Whereas the latter synthesized the Quran, Ḥadīth corpus and prior Islamic intellectual heritage with circulating ideas and themes from other traditions at the time, which Alexander Knysh describes as ‘floating motifs’, such as Neoplatonism, Christianity and Judaism, Iqbal engaged primarily with modern science, modernism and its intellectual custodians such as Friedrich Nietzsche and others. Moreover, whereas Ibn al-ʿArabi’s project was mainly of synthesis based upon kashf (mystical unveiling), Iqbal’s was critique of what he perceived as outdated Muslim mindsets, including kashf, which he believed needed to be reformed considering the Enlightenment and Western hegemony.

Much like Ibn al-ʿArabi, Iqbal also roots his intellectual in the Quran, it is a vision that “aspires to transform life-denying divisions into life-giving relationships.”[4] Modernist bifurcations between modernity/tradition, east/west, religion/science, philosophy/mysticism or human/Divine become harmonious and symbiotic mirrors. Ibn al-ʿArabi agrees with such an approach since for him all such divisions are illusions of kathra (multiplicity) that are inevitable in the universe. However, from the perspective of waḥda (unicity), wherein the entire cosmos, including human action, is perceived as a matrix of tajalliyyāt (theophanies), such rising tidings of intellect and culture must necessarily harmonize, despite the perplexity of their contention.[5]

Javed Majeed regards Iqbal’s engagement with prominent Western thinkers of his time as an instance of ‘cosmopolitan thought zones’ prevalent among Indian thinkers at the time.[6] However, the same can be said about Ibn al-ʿArabi as well. Indeed, Andalusia and the larger Iberian Peninsula was one such premodern cosmopolitan thought zone where Judeo-Christian thought, Neoplatonism, Islamic thought and many other intellectual schools mingled, conversed and even cross-pollinated each other’s worlds. As I show in “The Journey as Destination: Ibn al-ʿArabi, Derrida and Charles Taylor’s Creative Etymology in Contemporary ‘Social Imaginaries’”, the rich milieu during which Ibn al-ʿArabi lived problematizes our modern sensibilities regarding cosmopolitanism and claims that such Convivencia did not exist in premodernity.

Returning to the foundational question of epistemology, much like Ibn al-ʿArabi, Iqbal also destabilizes cultural divisions between intellectual schools, religions, time and place. Whereas most classical Muslim scholars would not engage with Greek philosophy or Christology in their works, both our thinkers perceived these narratives as residing on a continuum of Divine Grace. However, whereas Ibn al-ʿArabi approached such linearity from a unitive metaphysics, Iqbal “presents the encounter as a conversation among intellectual equals, lifting it above the hierarchies of power created by European colonialism … [and] creates a kind of anti-colonial cosmopolitanism in which intellectual self-assertion, grounded in learned reading, is key.”[7]

It is for this same reason that I often describe the very act of reading, learning and spreading Ibn al-ʿArabi’s works as an act of resistance against Western colonialism that has lasted well over a century. Also, like Ibn al-ʿArabi, Iqbal’s engagement with Western thought, especially classical philosophy, involved more than ‘servile imitation’ or merely rendering an original text in a new register, but rather of “merging different conceptual languages and cultures into each other.”[8] For both thinkers, this involved relying upon the Quran as the central reference for deconstructing and re-forming ideas from disparate origins as characters in an overarching intellectual narrative for their own milieu.

Mirroring Ibn al-ʿArabi’s focus on wujūd (being), Iqbal focuses on the notion of khudī (ego). Here, the poet contends that “as human selves approach God, rather than losing their individuality – as is understood by the Sufi notion of fanāʾ (annihilation) – they become more strongly individuated.”[9] Iqbal states unequivocally that “the end of the ego’s quest is not emancipation from the limitations of individuality; it is, on the other hand, a more precise definition of it.”[10] However, this should not be seen as contending with Sufi fanāʾ. Rather, Iqbal is highlighting the necessary return journey following annihilation: baqāʾ (subsistence), whereupon the seeker returns transformed to guide humanity.[11]

Iqbal also engages with the notions of perfection and completion, central to Ibn al-ʿArabi’s al-insān al-kāmil al-tāmm, for “with this prophetic idea of the perfection and thereby the completion of the chain of all Divinely revealed religions in Islam, says Allama: all personal authority, claiming a supernatural origin, has come to an end in the history of man.”[12] And this culmination yields, for Iqbal, the ‘birth of the inductive intellect’, embodied in the Prophet Muhammad, where “life discovers other sources of knowledge suitable to its new direction.”[13] Undoubtedly, Iqbal was aware of Ibn al-ʿArabi’s thought and the latter’s notion of al-insān al-kāmil al-tāmm, but he was most probably also responding to more modern adumbrations, specifically Nietzsche’s Übermenschen.

In certain places, Iqbal seems to agree with Ibn al-ʿArabi in his criticism of ʿaql (rational faculty): “It is the inadequacy of the logical understanding which finds a multiplicity of mutually repellent individualities with no prospect of their ultimate reduction to a unity that makes us skeptical about the conclusiveness of thought.”[14] He also adds that this ‘logical understanding’ issues generalizations that “are only fictitious unities which do not affect the reality of concrete things.” However, “in its deeper movement, thought is capable of reaching an immanent Infinite in whose self-unfolding movement the various finite concepts are merely moments.”[15] Here, we find a very close rendering of Ibn al-ʿArabi’s discourse on wujūd.

The Andalusian mystic also posits the universe as a procession of unfolding theophanies. However, he does not regard them as mere thoughts, but rather forms and images that emanate from the very taʿayyunāt (entifications) and istiʿdādāt (predispositions) inherent in all things, which Ibn al-ʿArabi calls al-aʿyān al-thābita (immutable essences), or the created things as they exist in potential within God’s Knowledge. Since God’s Knowledge is infinite and timeless, the aʿyān al-thābita are also eternally present in God’s Knowledge, but only emerge into actual physical existence once He grants them wujūd (Being). It is this procession of infinite and incessant theophanies and immutable entities that permeate the finite cosmos which Ibn al-ʿArabi describes in almost the exact terms as Iqbal’s ‘an immanent Infinite in whose self-unfolding movement the various finite concepts are merely moments.’

[1] For more on The Meccan Openings’ thoroughly Quranic structure, see Michel Chodkiewicz’ Ocean Without Shore.

[2] For more on this, please see Michael Sells, Early Islamic Mysticism. It is also worthwhile mentioning here that Ibn al-ʿArabi’s thought and works found currency among many Shi’i scholars, most notably Haydar Amuli (d. 1385) who authored a commentary on the Bezels and even as recently as Mulla Sadra (d. 1641) who engaged with Ibn al-ʿArabi’s writings in his various works.

[3] It is worthwhile noting that the term ʿaql as a noun cannot be found in the Quran, but rather only in verbal form: yaʿqilūn (to comprehend) and related terms such as yafqahūn (understand). However, in both instances, the verb is tethered to the qalb (heart). See (7:179) and (22:46).

[4] Muhammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, viii.

[5] As a matter of fact, Ibn al-ʿArabi regards this principle of contention as foundational in dunyā (physical world), as evidenced in the Quranic verse: “Had God not coerced people one against the other, earth would have gone to corruption” (2:251), which the Andalusian mystic also describes eloquently in the Bezels: “Reality is perplexity. Perplexity is anxiety and movement, and movement is life.”

[6] Iqbal, The Reconstruction, xiii.

[7] Ibid, xiii.

[8] Ibid, xv.

[9] Ibid, xxi.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibn al-ʿArabi, and many other Sufis, emphasize that fanāʾ (annihilation) is a temporary state (ḥāl) while baqāʾ (subsistence) is a permanent station (maqām), which the Andalusian mystic describes as the moment when the ‘one returns to two’.

[12] Ibid, xxxvii.

[13] Ibid, xxxviii.

[14] Ibid, 5.

[15] Ibid.

Conclusion

Ibn al-ʿArabi and Iqbal engage across time and space. The vast disparity in centuries and continents betrays some overlap in their methodologies. Both figures begin from the Quran to creatively synthesize Islam with the prevalent intellectual trends during their milieu. Moreover, Iqbal’s discourse on khudī (ego) and ‘inductive reasoning’ bears a striking resemblance to Ibn al-ʿArabi’s notions of al-insān al-kāmil al-tāmm (perfect and complete human being) and al-aʿyān al-thābita (immutable entities), respectively.

Where both thinkers diverge is in their objectives. Ibn al-ʿArabi sought to synthesize Islamic thought through a synthesis with Neoplatonism and the Judeo-Christian tradition based on kashf (unveiling). Iqbal, on the other hand, sought to reform Islam amidst the onslaught of modernity and Western hegemony. In this, Iqbal was critical of the Islamic intellectual tradition during his time, including Sufi practices and methodologies. It is in this area that, I believe, Ibn al-ʿArabi and Iqbal can engage in a meaningful conversation.

In subsequent essays, I explore the importance of both thinkers for our contemporary context. In the next installment specifically, I discuss the importance of Ibn al-ʿArabi for reintegrating the arts as a crucial dimension of the spiritual experience in Islam. Here, I present the arts as the necessary goal for synthesis in our time, not modern science as Iqbal hypothesized. And yet, I also concur that the arts and creativity are a fertile soil in our present day and age for science and faith to converse with one another. All the while, I highlight the importance of Iqbal as a mediator between Ibn al-ʿArabi and modernity, Islam and the West and T. S. Eliot’s proverbial ‘intersection of the timeless with time’, that occupation of saints.