In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

CHAPTER 1 Perception according to Ibn ‘Arabi God in Forms B efore any discussion can take place regarding divine beauty and its expression in amorous poetry, it is necessary to establish the experience of divine beauty. Because the poetry of Ibn ‘Arabi and ‘Iraqi concerns itself with encounters and observations that they refer to as a vision, this segment asks an important preliminary question: What exactly is it that the person accomplished in esoteric knowledge of God, the gnostic (‘arif ), perceives? In the end, since this vision must be directly experienced, it escapes the boundaries of language. Not surprisingly, then, it seems that Ibn ‘Arabi’s efforts to articulate and analyze this unspeakable perceptive experience yielded diverse sets of terms. Each set of terms presents this vision differently, from a certain perspective, and is often described in the language of the Qur’an or prophetic narrations (of course, Ibn ‘Arabi’s use of these terms is also a commentary on their original usage in the revealed sources). An interpreter of Ibn ‘Arabi must acknowledge the varying nuances that these groups of words offer—because the abundance of concepts and terms in the writings of Ibn ‘Arabi is an attempt to achieve some accuracy in articulating that which ultimately must be tasted. What I offer here is not a complete presentation of perception in the thought of Ibn ‘Arabi, which would be a useful undertaking, but one that would require a separate and lengthy study. After all, shuhud—a term referring to “witnessing” in a general sense, the most basic and definitive perceptive experience of the mystic and that most relevant to our discussion—involves the entire experience of the gnostic, including his or her knowledge of the divine attributes, the divine names, the entifications , and practically anything that the privileged insight of the gnostic can assert. Rather, presented here are certain key points, especially those that relate to the experiential visions related to beauty and love and thus often found in Sufi poetry. The Importance of Witnessing to Ibn ‘Arabi’s Thought Traditionally, Ibn ‘Arabi has been classified as the great expositor of Islamic mysticism ’s most famous theory of existence—the Oneness of Being, or wahdat al-wujud. 12 Sufi Aesthetics A number of Ibn ‘Arabi’s statements point to a lack of any concrete distinction between the Creator and creation, such that everything seen is none other than the Real, and that created entities possess their own separate existence in only an illusory way: There is no creation seen by the eye, except that its essence/eye is the Real. Yet he is hidden therein, thus, its [creation’s] forms are [his] receptacles.1 Yet William C. Chittick, among others, has rightly taken great pains to illustrate that not only did the phrase wahdat al-wujud (Oneness of Being) emerge and gain currency after Ibn ‘Arabi’s death but also the terms and technicalities of this theory are often not explicitly found in his writings.2 Ibn ‘Arabi was not primarily concerned with forming an ontological philosophy or with arguments and proofs because the greatest proof for him was that which he acquired through direct witnessing. He was, however, concerned (and, one might say, primarily concerned) with vision, and that which he presents in his writings is— first and foremost—a way of perceiving things, witnessing the Real in both the mundane and the lofty, in the “spiritual” as well as the “worldly” and material. For Ibn ‘Arabi, “everyone in existence is Real / and everyone in witnessing is a creation.”3 That is, in terms of existence, the created things lack self-sufficient being, so that all is God. In terms of witnessing, however, creation and creation alone—on account of having nothing, being in a sense ontologically poor—has the ability to receive wujud/existence and engage in shuhud/witnessing. Creation is receptive and, like an uncluttered mirror, serves as the means for God to witness himself. Throughout this process, creation is both seer and seen, and yet the actual seer and seen are God. Moreover, this “seeing” or “witnessing” is for Ibn ‘Arabi the primary purpose of creation. For Ibn ‘Arabi, the Real created the cosmos in order to see himself.4 In making such a statement, Ibn ‘Arabi alludes to a wellknown prophetic narration, one in which God speaks in the first person: “I was a Treasure—I was Unknown, so I loved to be known. Hence I created the creatures, and made Myself known...

Share