the ship of stone -puisi

8/3/2019 The Ship of Stone -Puisi

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in that world I saw a sea of sand as fluid as water; I saw stones, both large and small, that attracted one

another like iron and a magnet. When they came together, they could not come apart without someone

intervening, just as when one takes the iron away from the magnet without the magnet being able to

hold on. But if one fails to separate them, these stones continue to stick to one another at a set

distance; when they are all joined, they have the form of a ship. I myself saw a small vessel with two

hulls. When a boat is thus constructed, its passengers jump into the sea, and then they embark for

wherever they wish. The deck of the vessel is made of grains of sand or of dust, soldered together in a

special way. I have never seen anything so marvellous as these stone vessels floating on an ocean of

sand! All the boats have the same shape; the vessel has two sides, behind which are raised two

enormous columns higher than a man's head. The rear of the ship is at the same level as the sea, and is

open to the sea without a single grain of sand coming inside

Aku melihat dunia bagaikan lautan pasir yang berbentuk cairan seperti air; aku melihat batu-batu, besar

maupun kecil, saling tarik menarik satu sama lain seperti besi dengan magnet. Ketika mereka bersatu,

mereka tidak terpisahkan lagi hingga seseorang yang memisahkan mereka; hanya dengan cara menarik

besi jauh-jauh dari magnet tanpa magnet sedikitpun harus berpindah tempat. Namun jika seseorang itu

gagal memisahkan mereka, maka batu-batu itu akan berusaha untuk melepaskan dan menjauhkan mereka

satu sama lainnya. Ketika besi dan magnet terus bersatu, maka mereka pun memiliki bentuk sepertisebuah kapal.

Aku melihat dengan mataku sendiri sebuah kapal besar pengangkut barang dengan dua kincir. Ketika

sebuah kapal tengah berlayar, para penumpangnya melompat ke dalam laut, lalu mereka mengambil

apapun yang mereka inginkan. Geladak kapal terbuat dari butiran pasir dan debu, saling mengikat dengan

cara yang luar biasa. Aku tidak pernah melihat sesuatu yang begitu luar biasa seperti batu-batu yang

meloncat-loncat di atas lauitan pasir! Semua kapal memiliki bentuk yang sama; geladak memiliki dua sisi,

bagian belakangnya terdapat dua tiang yang tingginya melebihi manusia.

The Ship of Stone

The last few decades have seen a great increase in publications about Ibn 'Arabi and his school.The Ibn 'Arabi Society's inventory is fitting testimony to the considerable progress made in this

domain [1]: translations and essays are appearing at an ever increasing rate, and Ibn 'Arabi's

teachings have been commentated, analysed, and dissected with greater or lesser degrees ofsuccess, depending on the case. But for reasons that are yet to be explained, this flurry of

scholarly activity stubbornly eschews a huge area of the Shaykh al-Akbar's corpus. It must be

admitted, after all, that no comprehensive study has yet attempted to deal with Ibn 'Arabi's poeticwork as a whole. Of course, Nicholson edited and published a translation of the Tarjumn al-

ashwq in London in 1911, and, more recently, a few scholars have dared to venture into Ibn

'Arabi'sDwn published in Bulaq.[2] But as far as what remains to be reaped is concerned, these

brave forays represent very little indeed. Whatever work has been accomplished has failed tocomprehend the eminent place that poetry occupies in Ibn 'Arabi's work, and it has been even

less successful in understanding the tremendous role that he gives poetry in support of his

teachings. It is certainly not my intention to fill this gaping hole here. My purpose is rather,simply and humbly, to present a brief overview of this terra incognita and of the wealth that it

contains.


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The voyage is a recurrent theme for Muslim mystics, and the great number of terms relating to

this theme in the technical vocabulary oftasawwufgo almost unnoticed: sulk, tarq, mi'rj,

mawqif, etc. These words all denote and describe what is fundamentally the search for God: a

long, albeit circular, peregrination that involves the slik, the viator, in the dark and narrow

labyrinth of his being, ultimately leading him toward the dazzling light of the peerless One. For

Ibn 'Arabi, this idea of the voyage is ubiquitous,[3] and the 560 chapters of the Futhtareactually nothing more than an invitation, repeated page after page, to wholeheartedly undertaketaw'an, which we are already, volens nolens, forced to do:Inn li-Llh wa inn ilayhi rji'n

(We belong to God and it is to Him that we return). Whether they will it or not, all beings are ona path toward their point of origin; but, as Ibn 'Arabi emphasizes on a number of different

occasions, this return has no endpoint, for man is ontologically doomed to travel forever, be it in

this world or in the next.[4] It is a voyage of the body that, from change to change, progressesunremittingly from birth to death; a journey of the heart which, from theophany to theophany,

wanders incessantly toward new territories. Birth, death, resurrection, Judgement, Paradise, and

Hell are never anything more than major steps in a passage that, in the image of Him who is the

leader of the voyage, will never know an end. It is a bitter and painful circuit for the many who

have forgotten the reason for the voyage, and a breathtaking odyssey for those others who, fromone moment of worship to another, let themselves be gently guided by the spiral that carries

them away.

Of the many voyages that Ibn 'Arabi describes, it is on the one to which he invites us in Chapter

eight of the Futhtthat I would like to focus.[5] Chapter eight is dedicated to the ard al-haqqa,the 'World of Reality' that was created with what remained of Adam's clay. It belongs, says Ibn

'Arabi, to the 'lam al-khayl, the Imaginal World, and it is part of the barzakh, the 'isthmus' that

joins all the orders of reality. It is the theatre where the visions of the gnostics are seen, where

dreams take place, where souls reside as they await the Last Judgement. It is a spiritual Worldwhere, contrary to what happens in this one, bodies have a subtle consistency and intelligibles

take on form. This world is penetrated only by the 'spirit', not to be confused with the

imagination, for the imagination is capable of engendering only that which is unreal. Thispreliminary information just outlined is followed by first-hand accounts of spiritual travellers

who, like Dhu-l Nun al-Misri, had the privilege of visiting this marvellous world: cities of gold,

silver, saffron and musk, fruit with unparalleled flavour, oceans of precious metals that touch oneanother without mixing their waters. The 'fantastic' character of these descriptions should not be

misunderstood; the ard al-haqqa is not a mythical kingdom. Despite the fact that it isma'nawiyya, 'spiritual', it is nonetheless no less real than is the ground upon which we tread. It is

first and foremost the World of the purest Adoration offered to God: 'It is God's World', Ibn'Arabi explains elsewhere.

He who inhabits it has realized true servitude before God; God joins him to Himself, for He hassaid: 'O, my servants who believe, My World is vast, so worship Me!' I myself have been

worshipping God in that World since the year 590, and we are now in 635. That World is

immutable and imperishable; that is why God has made it the abode of His servants, and theplacepar excellence of His worship.[6]


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And it is undoubtedly to remind us of this essential truth that Ibn 'Arabi then reports that in that

world he saw a Ka'ba, from which the veil (kiswa) had been removed, speak to those who weremaking the ritual circumambulations, and that it granted them spiritual Knowledge.

But the account that follows plunges us into a strangely phantasmagoric universe reminiscent of

surrealist paintings. He says,

In that world I saw a sea of sand as fluid as water; I saw stones, both large and small, that

attracted one another like iron and a magnet. When they came together, they could not come

apart without someone intervening, just as when one takes the iron away from the magnet

without the magnet being able to hold on. But if one fails to separate them, these stones continueto stick to one another at a set distance; when they are all joined, they have the form of a ship. I

myself saw a small vessel with two hulls. When a boat is thus constructed, its passengers jump

into the sea, and then they embark for wherever they wish. The deck of the vessel is made of

grains of sand or of dust, soldered together in a special way. I have never seen anything somarvellous as these stone vessels floating on an ocean of sand! All the boats have the same

shape; the vessel has two sides, behind which are raised two enormous columns higher than aman's head. The rear of the ship is at the same level as the sea, and is open to the sea without asingle grain of sand coming inside.[7]

At first glance, the reader is tempted to see nothing in this text other than a typical example ofaj'ib, the mirabilia in which Arabic literature abounds. This would be ignoring the fact that,

regardless of his form of discourse, the author of the Futhtnever aims at 'distracting' his reader

but, quite on the contrary, at bringing him around to the essential. It is also a fact that a carefulreading of the vocabulary used by the author in this passage suggests that this strange story is

masking a subtle point in Ibn 'Arabi's teaching. This is not to suggest that the account is a simple

allegory. In theMundus Imaginalis, where a square can be round or something small can contain

something large, Ibn 'Arabi has certainly been the astonished witness to this quite distinctiveocean voyage. But his narration of this experience is, for him, less an occasion to astound us than

it is a means of subtly teaching us a principle of initiation of which the scene he describes is the

concrete expression.[8] It is also true that to structure the story he deliberately borrowed keyterms from a specific lexicon in Arabic linguistics: bahris the word commonly used for the

ocean. But it is also the word that, in the language of Arabic poetry, denotes the meter of a poem;

likewise, ramal, which ordinarily refers to sand, is the name for one of the sixteen meters inclassical Arabic prosody.[9] The use of vocabulary borrowed from the language of Arabic poetry

is obviously not coincidental in the least. From this point of view, the story of the stone vessels

sailing over a sea of sand has nothing to do with the dream state of a delirious mind. The vessel

(safna) represents the qasda, the classical Arabic poem; the inseparable stones are kalmt, thewords that, when joined together, form the verses which, when arranged together make up the

poem; the two sides of the boat are the hemistiches of each line of verse, and the two columns

refer to the two 'pillars', watid, of Arabic meter. Thus, with slightly encrypted language, Ibn

'Arabi points out to us that poetry is the privileged way to 'travel' in the ' lam al-khayl, whosehaq'iq (spiritual realities) it carries, although spiritual realities, by their very nature, are

supraformal.


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Some, rightfully, might not be convinced by the interpretation that I suggest for this strange

episode from the Futht. If such is the case, I invite them to discover - or to rediscover, in casethey know it already - another of Ibn 'Arabi's texts. I refer to the as-yet unedited Dwn al-

ma'rif al-ilhiyya, and, more specifically, to the preface in which Ibn 'Arabi introduces this

'Collection of Divine Knowledge'. I have described thisDwn elsewhere,[10] using the three

manuscripts recorded by Osman Yahia.[11] From the number of conclusions reached by myresearch, I would like simply to point out the following: when he set out to compose the Dwnal-ma'rif, the Shaykh al-Akbar's intention was, according to what he said at the beginning of the

text, to gather together into a Summa Poetica the totality of the verses that he had composed, andhad either written copies of or could remember. However, the completion of this colossal project,

one to which he was unable to devote all of his time, took a number of years.[12] Partial copies

of this Summa began to circulate while the project was still in progress; some of the partialcopies are from the early part of the work, these being what we now know by the title Dwn al-

ma'rif; the others are its continuation, and these are what was printed in Bulaq as Dwn al-Shaykh al-Akbar. The results of my research show these collections, considered to be two

distinct works up to now, to be in reality the two main pieces of the Dwn kabr, the 'Great

Dwn' planned by Ibn 'Arabi.[13]

Hopefully, the analysis I am going to make of the preface of theDwn al-ma'rifwill clearlyshow what interest and importance there is, for both researchers and those who are attached to

Ibn 'Arabi's teachings, in joining their efforts in an attempt to reconstruct this monument of

Arabic mystical poetry.

Praise be to Him Who created man in a manifest manner and who sent down the quantities

(maqdr) and the measures (awzn)...

From the very first lines of this preface,[14 ]the lines that make up the doxological prelude, Ibn

'Arabi sets out to prove that the rules upon which Arabic poetry is based come forth from DivineWisdom, and that they are ubiquitous in Creation for whoever has eyes to see. God constructed

the universe, he emphasizes, according to the same principles as those that form the framework

of the bayt al-shi'r, the verses of a poem.[15] A poem, like the universe, rests upon two cords(sabab, the word for one of the principal elements of Arabic meter); one of them is 'light', and it

is the spiritual world; the other is 'thick', the corporeal world. Likewise, two 'pillars' (watad, the

second principal element in meter) preserve it: one is the constitution and the generation ofthings, while the other is their decomposition and dissolution. In sum, the Shaykh al-Akbar

observes, the world is a work endowed with rhyme and rhythm. Moreover, he adds, God placed

the jewels of spiritual knowledge, and the secrets of the Lord, in language. He then entrusted this

treasure to the 'rifn, the gnostics, who, for fear of it being plundered, hid the secrets under theveil of poetry, disguising them with allusive and symbolic terms. And on top of all that, Ibn

'Arabi observes at the end of this unusual khutba, is the Prophet not referred to as the Master of

language and the holder of the 'sum of words' (jawmi' al-kalim)? Two main ideas stand out in

this passage. First, in words completely devoid of any ambiguity, Ibn 'Arabi is making astatement about poetry's relationship to wisdom and divine providence: that its fundamental

principles are divinely instituted. And second, that the language of poetry is used as the

privileged support of spiritual and divine knowledge, the perpetuity of which it reserves for theexclusive use of gnostics.


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Having thus established not only the legitimacy, but also the necessity, of mystics having

recourse to poetic language, Ibn 'Arabi undertakes the presentation of his ownDwn. He does soglobally at first, affirming that this collection of poems comes entirely out of divine inspiration,

and that speculation has played no role whatsoever; then, in more detail, he lists a long series of

technical terms that relate to different categories of spiritual men, their different kinds of

knowledge, their states, their degrees, and so forth, a list that in a way serves as the Dwn's tableof contents. The Shaykh al-Akbar acknowledges that these terms are recondite; they constitute a

kind of code - each discipline has its own, he reminds us - that the awliy' use deliberately when

they wish to deny the uninitiated access to the kind of knowledge that the code is transmitting.

After these preliminary remarks, Ibn 'Arabi outlines his personal reasons, first for composing thepoetry, and then for gathering together all his murtajalt(his improvised lines of verse), into a

single collection. In reality, this introspection gives us the key - providing we can decipher all the

underlying doctrinal and autobiographical allusions - to how to read the 'Collection of Divine

Knowledge'.

According to what he says, three visions, each separated from the others by a number of years,are at the base of the Shaykh al-Akbar's poetic vocation. The first of these three initiatorydreams[16] deals with a crucial step in the Andalusian mystic's conversion, in the strict sense of

the word. After a period of 'ignorance' - the Futht's author most often uses the expressionfjhiliyyatfor this - in which, he admits, he did not distinguish between what was true knowledgeand what was not, God granted him assistance:

The Most Merciful looked down upon me with a look of Benevolence and sent Muhammad,Jesus, and Moses to me while I slept. Jesus encouraged me toward asceticism and ridding myself

of unnecessary belongings; Moses gave me the 'disk of the sun' and predicted that I would obtain'ilm ladunn[17] from among the sciences of the tawhd; and Muhammad commanded: 'Hang on

to me, you will be safe!'

If, of the dozens of visions that marked his spiritual path, the Shaykh al-Akbar chooses to

mention this triple intervention by prophets here, it is not only because it delineated his first stepson the Path;[18] other visionary encounters were at least as decisive in his spiritual life, most

notably the one that, in 586 in Cordoba, placed him in the presence of all the Prophets that have

arisen since Adam. It would appear to me that it is because this incident sheds light on afundamental aspect of the mission assigned to the Seal of Muhammadan Sainthood that Ibn

'Arabi chose to insert it in the preface to theDwn al-ma'rif. Let it be noted that the three

prophets that come before Ibn 'Arabi - and who give him assistance - are the representatives of

the three main religions that stem from the Abrahamic tradition. Moreover, we know that, fromthe perspective of Ibn 'Arabi's hagiology,[19] the Muhammadan Seal is the inheritorpar

excellence of all the prophets and, therefore, of these three Messengers. It would appear to me

that there is no doubt that this vision refers to the status of the Muhammadan Seal as writh, theinheritor of the prophets, and particularly of Muhammad, Jesus, and Moses. But it also suggests,

albeit discreetly, that the three communities - Muslim, Christian, and Jewish - represented by

these three prophets are more particularly concerned with his ministry. Everything takes place asif, in Ibn 'Arabi's eyes, the Muhammadan Seal's vocation - the counterpart to the support that

these messengers gave to him - was to help their respective communities, most notably by


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preserving, through his teaching, the essential and immutable truths that were the basis of the

traditions to which they were connected.

This triple prophetic intervention occurs, according to what I have shown elsewhere, before 580,

and it leads Ibn 'Arabi, according to what he explains in the following lines, to become involved

in suhba, the companionship of spiritual teachers.

Mentioned quite succinctly here,[20] the second incident takes place nearly twenty years later. In

it, Ibn 'Arabi sees the celebration of his nuptial union with each of the stars in the sky and each of

the letters of the alphabet. In the Kitb al-b, where he deals at greater length with this strange

ceremony,[21] Ibn 'Arabi states that it took place in Bougie, in the month of Ramadan, in 597,and that a dream interpreter to whom he had his dream described said the following: 'That is the

bottomless ocean; he who had this dream will receive a greater portion of the heavenly sciences,

of hidden knowledge, and of the mysteries of heavenly bodies than anyone else in his time has

ever received.'

This event coincides with a pivotal moment in Ibn 'Arabi's destiny: he said goodbye toAndalusia, traveled toward Tunis, and from there to the Orient, where he would spend the rest of

his life. A number of important spiritual events marked this 'western period' that is just about

over for him: in 586 in Cordoba, Ibn 'Arabi is present at a general convocation of prophets who

come to congratulate him - according to Jandi[22] - for having been designated to play the roleof Seal of Muhammadan Sainthood. In 594, in Fez, Ibn 'Arabi has his election confirmed during

a vision that he describes in a long and remarkable poem[23] retracing the important stages in his

spiritual life. And then, a few months before his stopping in Bougie, in the month of Muharram597, he reaches the maqm al-qurba, the Station of Proximity, that which, according to him,

comes just before the Station of Lawgiving Prophecy.[24]

Placed in this context, Ibn 'Arabi's celestial marriage in Bougie takes on the clearest of meanings.The heavenly bodies and the letters around which this account takes place refer expressly to the

esoteric sciences and sacred knowledge that, in Islamic tradition, are referred to as 'ilm al-hurf,

the science of letters, and 'ilm al-nujm, astrology. Let it be remembered that, for Ibn 'Arabi aswell as a number of other sufis, the science of letters is properly speaking the science of thewliy', and it is one of the surest signs of the authenticity of their spiritual realization.[25]

Moreover, Ibn 'Arabi reports in one of his poems that a 'messenger' (rasl) came to see him inSeville to tell him about his quality of 'heir' (wirtha), stating that 'The science of letters is for us

the proof that you are the Imam'.[26] All of this relevant information is evidence that the vision

in Bougie again confirms the divine origin of Ibn 'Arabi's election. It also shows us another facet

of the charge that he is called to assume: the Seal of Muhammadan Sainthood is the repositoryand the guardian of the sacred sciences, whose full and complete transmission he can assure for

the awliy' who will succeed him up until the Last Day.

The following information, which is not present in the other texts relating to the vision in

Bougie, unexpectedly brings us back to the heart of the problem debated in the khutba of theDwn al-ma'rif: During the marriage ceremony, says Ibn 'Arabi,


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God had me hear the screeching of the styluses [that record human actions]; it was a melody in

double or triple time, depending on whether they were adding or taking away. 'What is thatrefrain? ', I asked. 'What you are hearing (al-sam') is poetry' was the reply. 'And what has poetry

to do with me? ' 'It is the origin (asl) of all the following: poetic language is the permanent

principle (al-jawhar al-thbit), while prose is the immutable consequence (al-far' al-thbit)!

This fiery dialogue is used by Ibn 'Arabi to return to a discussion of the universal and

providential character of the poetic art, which is always and everywhere present; he remarks thatthere is no sound in nature that does not have a regular beat, there is no architecture that is not

ingeniously ordered. Certainly. But what does the one have to do with the other: the intrinsic

nature of poetic language and the function of the Muhammadan Seal as it appears, as I see it, inIbn 'Arabi's union with the stars and the letters of the alphabet?

The account of the third and last vision mentioned in the preface to theDwn al-ma'rif[27] is

aimed entirely at clarifying this disconcerting digression. Ibn 'Arabi explains:

The reason which has led me to utter (talaffuz) poetry[28] is that I saw in a dream an angel whowas bringing me a piece of white light; as if it were a piece of the sun's light. 'What is that? ', I

asked. 'It is sura al-shu'ar'' (the sura of the Poets) was the reply. I swallowed it, and felt a hair

(sha'ra) stretching from my chest up to my throat, and then into my mouth. It was an animal with

a head, a tongue, eyes, and lips. It stretched forth until its head reached the two horizons, that ofthe East and that of the West. After that, it shrank back and returned to my chest; at that moment

I realized that my words would reach the East and the West. When I came back to myself, I

uttered verses that came forth from no reflection and no intellectual process whatsoever. Sincethat time, this inspiration has never ceased; and it is because of this sublime contemplation that I

have collected all the poetry that I can remember. But there is much more that I have forgotten!

Everything that this collection contains is thus, thanks be to God, nothing other than [the fruit of]

divine projection, a holy and spiritual inspiration, a splendid, celestial heritage.

For a diligent reader of Ibn 'Arabi, there is a word in this text that immediately catches one's eye,

that ofsha'ra. It is found in one of his most famous passages of the Futht, in the prologue(khutba) to this capital work, and it is where Ibn 'Arabi describes the vision in which, in 598 in

Mecca, the Prophet Muhammad in person ordains him Seal of Muhammadan Sainthood. In the

process of the ceremony, the Prophet states: 'there is within you one of my hairs (sha'ra) that canno longer bear to be far from me; it rules your most inner reality.'[29] Coincidence? One would

happily accept this explanation if this same word did not also appear in another text from theFutht, this one also relating to the Muhammadan Seal: 'His status in relation to God's

Messenger', states Ibn 'Arabi in Chapter 382, 'is that of a hair ( sha'ra) of his body in relation tothe whole body.[30] We should parenthetically add to these two texts mention of Chapter 11 of

the Futht, where Ibn 'Arabi uses the word sha'ra again to illustrate the subtle relationship that

he enjoys with the Prophet.[31]

Thus, on three different occasions, the Shaykh al-Akbar returns to the image of the 'hair' to

symbolize his relationship - or that of the Muhammadan Seal, which amounts to the same thing -to the Prophet. I would not be the least surprised if a detailed examination of Ibn 'Arabi's poetic

language revealed further occurrences of the same word. In any case, it can be legitimately


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deduced that the 'hair' from the vision described that emerges from his chest and becomes a

living being, growing large enough to embrace 'the two horizons'[32] before it returns to hisbody, unquestionably represents the bond between the Muhammadan Seal and theHaqqa

Muhammadiya that is the source of all walya. Furthermore, the animal's expansion presages,

according to Ibn 'Arabi's own remarks, the future of the Shaykh al-Akbar's teachings.[33] This

vision that announces the diffusion of Ibn 'Arabi's work from all appearances falls within thescope of the strictly universal dimension of Ibn 'Arabi's ministry, that is, of the Seal of

Muhammadan Sainthood. In the eyes of Muslims, and especially in Ibn 'Arabi's eyes, this

characteristic of universality is a privilege (scripturally based on Qur'an 34:28) of the risla

muhammadiyya, of the mission of the Prophet.

Nor is this all. It must be clearly stated that there exists a strict relationship between the words

shu'ar', the title of the sura that Ibn 'Arabi 'absorbs', sha'ra, the hair that comes out of this

communion, and shi'r, the poetry that this vision engenders. All these words come from the rootsh'r, which expresses the idea of 'knowing', 'perceiving', in an immediate and global manner. Thevery title of theDwn al-ma'rifis clearly related to this primary meaning.

And even more so, cross-checks of Ibn 'Arabi's different texts show that this morphologicrelationship takes place semantically at the same time, although quite subtly, and is likewise

related to the idea ofkhatm muhammad.

The commentary that follows the assertion in Chapter 382 of the Futhtcited above adds

further information. He says, as he continues to speak about the Seal:

That is why it is perceived (yush'aru) in a global manner without its being known (this time,

yu'lamu) distinctively, with the exception of those to whom God has made it known or those to

whom he discloses his identity, and who believe Him. Subtle perception has also been defined as

'hair', related to shu'r. This perception is analogous to that which allows us, when standingbefore a closed door [. ..] to detect a movement that indicates the presence of an animal in the

house, even though we are not able to know exactly what kind of animal it is, or to tell

('perceive': again,yush'aru) that it is a person, even though we are not in a position to be able toknow his or her identity [...] It is because of this occult characteristic (khaf'), referred to asshu'r), subtle perception (and not as 'ilm).[34]

In other words, the presence in this world of the Muhammadan Seal necessarily remains discreet,

as imperceptible as is a 'hair' between one's fingers.

This veiled, subtle character is equally intrinsic in poetry (shi'r), a claim made by Ibn 'Arabi in

the lines that immediately precede the account of the vision of the sura al-shu'ar': 'The Prophet

was not forbidden from using poetry because of its being contemptible, degrading or in any wayinferior, but rather because of its basis in allusions (ishrt) and symbols (rumz), since poetry

springs forth from subtle knowledge (shu'r). It is incumbent upon the Prophet to be clear for

everyone and to use expressions as straightforward as possible.'[35] It must be emphasized herethat in his endeavour to demonstrate the secret nobility of poetry - something that he really does

continually, beginning with the first line of the preface - Ibn 'Arabi once again runs counter to

the current of common theological opinion, where verse 224 of sura al-shu'ar' - the very verse


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spatio-temporal barriers can obstruct, he expresses himself by allusions and symbols, such that

no impious look can profane the secret message that he has aimed at the awliy' of the 'twohorizons'. Fundamentally ambivalent, poetic discourse offers, more than any other form of

language, the indispensable guarantees of inviolability: only pure souls know how to decipher

successfully the enigmas and symbols that nourish it. But it is because of this same equivocal

characteristic that poetry is open to erroneous, even slanderous interpretations. Ibn 'Arabi is quiteconscious of this, through his own unpleasant experience, and warns his reader not to be

deceived by appearances. At the conclusion of his preface, he writes:

Everything in thisDwn that refers to love poetry, to praise of women [...], to their names (when

I name them), has nothing to do with what poets ordinarily mean to express in their love poetry.Nothing I say relates to anything other than the divine sciences and the secrets of magistracy, just

as I have already explained in theDhakh'ir al-a'lq.[42]

We thus see clearly the subtle logic that connects Ibn 'Arabi's marriage in Bougie, whichestablishes him as 'guardian of the secret sciences' with the mystery of poetic language to which

he was initiated on the same occasion. There is a strict complicity between the Seal of the Saintsand Poetry: both possessed of the same subtle status; both share the same function, since both arecalled to preserve the 'Sacred Repository'.

There are two essential points to bear in mind in the reading that I am proposing for these threeaccounts that appear in the beginning of theDwn al-ma'rif's poetry. The first is that each of

the visionary experiences that they recount sheds light on some particular aspect of the function

of the Muhammadan Seal, at the same time that it corresponds to a precise stage in the odysseythat, from its firstfath in Seville, leads Ibn 'Arabi to the heights of sainthood in Mecca in 598. As

M. Chodkiewicz has pointed out,[43] a distinction must be made between the announcement

made to Ibn 'Arabi regarding his imminent accession to the rank of Muhammadan Seal, his

reaching the spiritual degree that this charge implies, acquisition of knowledge of the spiritualsciences that it entails, and its actual investiture. It is worth pointing out that a number of Ibn

'Arabi's autobiographical texts suggest that, even after this 'investiture in the Supreme Centre' - to

borrow a term from M. Vlsan - in 598, Ibn 'Arabi experienced other visions regarding hisselection.[44] There is complementary information on this subject in theDwn al-ma'rif. On

folio 141b, which comments on the poem that he just cited, Ibn 'Arabi gives the following

details:

Know that the reason for this verse is that when God informed me that I was the Muhammadan

Seal in the city of Fez - I think it was in 594[45 ]- He showed me the mark [of this Seal] between

my shoulders;[46] I could see both it and the angels that came to bring me the news. However,He gave me no knowledge of the Firman by which He invested me with spiritual power over the

world. Nevertheless, Thursday night in the middle of the month ofRab' awwal, 630 in

Damascus, He acquainted me with this Firman, which He had composed for me to that end.

Thus, for thirty years after his 'investiture', Ibn 'Arabi is still the object of 'revelations' regarding

his role and the mission that has been accorded him.[47] If the 598 vision clearly marks theculminating point in Ibn 'Arabi's spiritual ascension, it is still far from being the final point in his

vocation.


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Secondly, this preface, where the Shaykh al-Akbar openly says what he insinuates in veiled

words in Chapter 8 of the Futht, offers us an explanation, at the same time both dense andremarkable, regarding the specifically initiatory function that he assigns to poetry. Throughout

the entirety of this text, sometimes with dogmatic arguments, sometimes via his own spiritual

experience, Ibn 'Arabi persists in showing poetry as the privileged vector of spiritual knowledge,

of which it is both a means of access and a means of expression. Just as the Imaginal Worldprovides the pure intelligibles with a formal consistency, poetry - whose source is in that same

World - manages to capture dazzling haq'iq, to instantaneously inscribe them in both written

and audible form. Of course, Ibn 'Arabi is not the only Muslim mystic to consider poeticlanguage to be the means of discourse best suited for suggesting that which, by nature, is

ineffable, and which, by virtue of its ineffability, escapes intellectual representation. Other

spiritual Muslims, like Ibn al-Farid or Rumi, have understood that the incantatory power ofpoetic rhythm and the trance produced by the resounding echo of rhyme were effective in erasing

the empirical limits of space and time beyond which the haq'iq reside. But it was up to Ibn

'Arabi to emphatically proclaim that poetry is,par excellence, the 'vessel' that contains the

treasure of the bayt al-walya, and which assures its journey over the tumultuous waters of the

centuries.

Notes

1. See the articles by M. Notcutt,JMIAS, III , 1984, 55-64, and IV , 1986, 65-74, as well as his

paper presented at the first international conference on Ibn 'Arabi, Murcia, 1990: 'Ibn 'Arabi inPrint', published inMuhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi.Ed. S. Hirstenstein and M. Tiernan, Shaftesbury,

Dorset, 1993, pp.328-39.

2. See R. Austin, 'Ibn al-'Arabi, Poet of Divine Realities', in Hirtenstein and Tiernan, Muhyiddin

Ibn 'Arabi, pp.181-90; R. Deladrire, 'LeDwn d'Ibn Arabi', inJMIAS, XV , 1994, 50-6; and

Sami-Ali,Le Chant de l'Ardent Dsir, intro. and trans. of selections from the Turjumn al-ashwq, Paris, 1989.

3. On the concept of the voyage in Ibn 'Arabi, see, for example: Fut., II, Chs 189, 190, 191, 380-4, and the K. al-isfr 'annat'ij al-asfr, critical edn. by D. Gril, Combas, 1994.

4. Gril, K. al-isfr, pp.5-6; Fut., II, 383.

5. Fut., I, 126-31.

6. Ibid., III, Ch. 351, 224.

7. Ibid., I, 129.

8. It might be noted in passing that a similar expression to the oneused by Ibn 'Arabi in thispassage, that of the 'sea of sand' or the 'sea of gravel', is found in medieval Christian descriptions

of the 'kingdom of The Priest John', who of course belonged to the 'lam al-khayl. Cf. J.

Delemeau, Une Histoire du Paradis, Paris, 1992, pp.103, 109.


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9. Cf.Encyclopedia of Islam, new edn, Leiden, 1960-, s.v. 'ard.

10. C. Addas, 'A propos duDwn al-ma'arifd'Ibn 'Arabi', in Studia Islamica, 81 , 1995, 187-95.

11.Histoire et Classification de l'Oeuvre d'Ibn 'Arabi, Damascus, 1964, R. G. 101; of these three

manuscripts, that of Paris, BN 2348, which is composed of 239 folios (ff. 35-273), is the mostcomplete; the Turkish manuscript, Fatih 5322, ff.213-214b, reproduces only the preface of theDwn al-ma'rif, while the Berlin manuscript, 7746, spr. 1108, is in reality only a kind of

anthology of Ibn 'Arabi's poems, and was probably composed at a later time.

12. The mention of theDwn al-ma'rifin the Fihrist, written in

AH627, proves that Ibn 'Arabi had already begun his composition by this time; on the other

hand, the references to the second version of the Fut., completed in 636 (f.200), and the dates

AH629 and 630 that Ibn 'Arabi notes regarding certain poems (ff.43, 141b) show that severalyears passed between Ibn 'Arabi's beginning of the 'Great Dwn' and its completion.

13. Let us bear in mind that theDwn al-ma'rifis mentioned in the two autobiographical workscomposed by Ibn 'Arabi: the Fihrist(Ms. Yusuf Aga, 5623, f.383) and theIjza il l-Malik al-Muzaffar(ed. A. Badawi, inAl-Andalus, 1955, XX , fasc.1, 184) where Ibn 'Arabi presents it as

follows: 'Dwn al-ma'rif al ilhiyya wa huwa al-Dwn al-kabr'! Moreover, there aremanuscripts of theDwn printed in Bulaq with the titleDwn kabr; cf. Yahia,Histoire, R. G.

102.

14... Ms. BN.2348, f.35b.

15. In Arabic prosody 'bayt al-shi'r' refers to the verse, properly speaking, analogous to the 'bayt

al-sha'r', which literally refers to the 'house of hair', that is, the tent; similarly, the binary names

of the fundamental elements of Arabic meter are taken from the materials that supply thestructure for a tent: the two 'cords' (sabab), the two pillars (watad), the two partitions (fsila); onthis subject, see Bresnier, Cour de Langue Arabe, Paris, 1855, pp.507-10.

16. Ms. BN, f.36b.

17. The 'Science to be found with Me' is the knowledge possessed by Khadir, Moses' interlocutorin the Qur'anic episode of the sura of the Cave (Q. 18:65), and the exemplar of the afrd. On this

subject, see M. Chodkiewicz,Le Sceau des Saints, Paris, 1986, Ch. 7 (Seal of the Saints,

Cambridge, 1993).

18. On the circumstances and immediate consequences of this vision for Ibn 'Arabi's later life,see C. Addas,Ibn 'Arab ou la Qute du Soufre Rouge, Paris, 1989, pp.61-3 (Quest for the Red

Sulphur, Cambridge, 1993, pp.41-2).

19. This subject is discussed in depth in Chodkiewicz,Le Sceau, a work to which the present

study is greatly indebted; see especially Ch. 9.

20. Ms. BN, f.36b.


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21. K. al-b, Cairo, 1954, pp.10-11. See also the K. al-kutub inRas'il Ibn al-'Arab, Hyderabad,

1948, p.49.

22. Sharh fuss al-hikam, Mashhad, 1982, p.431.

23.Dwn Ibn 'Arabi, Bulaq, 1855, pp.332-7.

24. Fut., II, 261.

25. On this question, see D. Gril, 'La Science des lettres', inLes Illuminations de la Mecque, ed.

M. Chodkiewicz, Paris, 1989, Ch.8, pp.385-487.

26.Dwn Ibn 'Arabi, p.348.

27. Ms. BN, f.37a.

28. It can be seen from this passage, as well as from one other (f.35b) - in which Ibn 'Arabiexplicitly states that prior to this vision he was never devoted to composing poetry - that theevent took place in AH594, at the very latest, for this is the date of the composition of the K. al-

isr, which included a number of poems. Of course, this does not rule out the possibility that Ibn

'Arabi's first poems - and, consequently, the vision that marks the beginning of his poeticvocation - preceded this date.

29. Fut., I, 3.

30. Fut., III, 514.

31. Fut., I, 106.

32. Note the analogy to the 'Blessed Tree' in the Verse of the Light

(Q. 24:35), which 'is neither East nor West'.

33. It is even probable that it is in reference to this vision - which, as we have seen, took place in

AH594 at the latest - that Ibn 'Arabi subsequently uses the term. This all shows to what extent

'the selection of a word is never fortuitous for Ibn 'Arabi, and less so is its repetition', as M.Chodkiewicz has remarked: cf. Un Ocan sans Rivage, Paris, 1992,

p.105 (An Ocean without Shore, Albany, 1993, p.79).

34. Fut., III, 514; on the distinction that Ibn 'Arabi makes between ' ilm and shu'r, see also III,458.

35. Ms. BN, f.37a.

36. On this subject, see the poem that heads Ch.358, Fut., III, 262.


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37. On the correspondence between the 114 chapters of this Fasl and the 114 suras of the Qur'an;

cf. Chodkiewicz, Ocan, Ch.3.

38. Fut., I, 22.

39. The manuscript in question is the Berlin Ms., the second folio of which reproduces, withsupplementary information not found in the other two manuscripts, the account of this vision. Itis notable that this passage is the only one in the preface that the editor of the anthology retained.

40. Let it be remembered that for Ibn 'Arabi the 114 suras of the Qur'an are the same number ofspiritual 'abodes'; cf. Un Ocan, Ch.3.

41. On this subject, see Chodkiewicz,Le Sceau, Ch.9.

42. TheDhakh'ir al-a'lq is the commentary on the Tarjumn that Ibn 'Arabi wrote in reply to

the criticism that his collection of poems stirred up; the Tarjumn is the closing part of the

Dwn al-ma'rif, in which it is accompanied by part of theDhakh'ir(Ms. BN, ff.250-73b).

43... Chodkiewicz,Le Sceau, p.169 (Seal, p.134).

44. This is notably the case for the vision 'of the two bricks' that he had in 599, in Mecca; on this,see Chodkiewicz,Le Sceau, pp.159-61 (Seal, pp.128-9).

45. The restrictive phrase (azunnu) that precedes the mention of 594 confirms Chodkiewicz'shypothesis (Le Sceau, p.158 (Seal, p.126)) according to which the date 595, which appears in the

Fut. (II, 49), is a lapsus calami.

46. The 'sign' in question, mentioned also in a poem from the Dwn Ibn 'Arabi (p.332), is,according to Jandi (Sharh, p.236), a cavity corresponding to an analogous sign that the Prophet

had 'in relief' in the same spot on his back.

47. In this regard, it is interesting to note that Ibn 'Arabi died at the age of 78; this is the same

number as the number of times the 'luminous letters' appear at the beginnings of 29 suras of theQur'an, about which Ibn 'Arabi states in the Fut. (I, 59): 'A servant will not perfectly penetrate

the secrets of the faith as long as he does not know the essential realities of each of the letters in

their respective suras.' See Gril,Les Illuminations, pp.458-60.

This translation first appeared in Volume XIX of the Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi

Society (1996), in the special issue entitled, "The Journey of The Heart".

the ship of stone -puisi

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