Ibn al-'Arabi's Barzakh: The Concept of the Limit and the Relationship between God and the World

Notes

Introduction 1. This story is brought from Risåle-i Mi >måriyye: An Early 17th Century Ottoman Treatise on Architecture, trans. Howard Crane (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987), 24–26. 2. Ibid., 26. 3. Quoted from Ibn al->Arab•’s Fuß¥ß al-Óikam in Claude Addas, The Quest for the Red Sulphur: The Life of Ibn >Arab•, trans. Peter Kingsley (Cambridge: The Islamic Texts Society, 1993), 74–75. 4. The other version in R¥˙ al-Quds reads, “Next I noticed a man who was tall, with a broad face, white hair and a large beard, and who had his hand on his cheek. I chose to address myself to him and ask him the reason for this gathering. He said to me: ‘They are all the prophets from Adam down to Mu˙ammad; not a single one of them is missing.’ I asked him: ‘And you? Which of them are you?’ He replied: ‘I am H¥d, of the people of >Åd.’ I said: ‘Why have you all come?’ He answered: ‘We have come to visit Ab¥ Mu˙ammad.’ On waking, I inquired about Ab¥ Mu˙ammad Makhl¥f [al-Qabå’il•] and learned that on that very night he had fallen ill. He died a few days later.” Addas, The Quest for the Red Sulphur, 75. 5. Ibid., 76. 6. Michel Chodkiewickz, Seal of the Saints: Prophethood and Sainthood in the Doctrine of Ibn >Arab•, trans. Liadain Sherrad (Cambridge, England: Islamic Texts Society, 1993). 7. Ibid., 77. 8. I provide a discussion of the encounter between Kha∂ir and Moses from Ibn al->Arab•’s perspective in chapter 4. 9. William C. Chittick, The Self-Disclosure of God: Principles of Ibn al->Arab•’s Cosmology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 378 (Hereafter cited as SD); Mu˙yidd•n Ibn al->Arab•, al-Fut¥˙åt al-Makkiyya, 4 vols. (Beir¥t: Dår Íådir, 1968) 2, 90: 30–35 (Hereafter cited as F). Notes 10. SD, 196–197; F, 3, 283: 15–28. 11. According to Lane’s Arabic-English Lexicon, dahr signifies a long unlimited time, or an extended indivisible space of time, or duration without end. Edward William Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon, 8 vols. (Beir¥t, 1968), 3:923. 12. SD, 128–129; F, 3, 546: 34–38. The line has two limits, the limit as its beginning and the limit as its end. In the case of the circle, any limit that we may assume on its circumference signifies both the point of its beginning and its end, that is, the limit as beginning and the limit as end are one. 13. SD, 407, n. 29. 14. William C. Chittick, “Spectrums of Islamic Thought: Sa>•d al-D•n Farghån• on The Implication of Oneness and Manyness,” in The Heritage of Í¥f•sm, ed. Leonard Lewisohn, 3 vols. (Oxford: One World, 1999), 2:203. 15. Sachiko Murata, The Tao of Islam: A Source Book on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 63–64. 16. Dialectic originates from the Greek expression for the art of conversation and as the internal dialogue of the soul with itself. Zeno of Elea (fifth century b.c.) made use of the dialectical arguments (his famous paradoxes) for refuting the hypotheses of opponents by means of indirect logical arguments and through drawing unacceptable consequences from them. The sophists employed this method of argumentation as a mere instrument for winning a dispute. In contrast to the sophists, the use that Socrates made of dialectical argument, a major element in which was the elenchus (cross-examination which refutes the opponent’s argument by drawing a contradiction from it), was professed for seeking the truth. In Plato dialectic became the supreme philosophical method and the highest of human arts, as it consisted of two complementary components: division and synthesis. See Roland Hall, “Dialectic,” in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards, 8 vols. (New York: Macmillan and Free Press, 1967), 2: 385–386.As I am going to show in this work there is much that is common between the dialectical methods of Zeno, the sophists, Socrates, and Plato and the methods of certain Islamic thinkers, especially Ghazål• and Ibn al->Arab• . 17. Similar to Hegel’s “thesis-antithesis-synthesis” principle. The reservation stated here against identifying Ibn al->Arab•’s way of thinking with certain Hegelian principles does not imply dismissal of the remarkable similarity between the two thinkers. For example...