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Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Ibn Arabi (1165-1240 C.E.), born to a wealthy family, experienced a deep, mystical "spiritual awakening" when he was 15 years old. He spent the rest of his life refining this original, ecstatic event, ultimately studying with more than 90 different Sufi masters and penning over 850 books! Where al-Ghazali was known as the "Renovator of Islam," Ibn Arabi was the "Distiller," taking 500 fertile years of Sufi thought, borrowing liberally from Jewish antecedents and creating a unified vision of Islamic mysticism, influencing virtually all of Islamic spirituality that postdated his fertile life span - and much of Jewish mysticism, as well. The Sufi Ibn Arabi and the Jew Solomon Ibn Gabirol shared the same mystical heritage, both building their ideas from the earlier Sufi mystic, Ibn Masarra (d. 931 C.E.). As scholar Miguel Asin Palacios stated: "the reality and concept of spiritual matter, which is the true key to the Masarrian system, are presented in the Futuhat(of Ibn Arabi) with the very same outline as that of the Fount of Life (Ibn Gabirol)." Like Ibn Gabirol, Ibn Arabi taught that "all revelations through prophets and lawgivers were revelations of the same Reality; all men worshipped the same God in different forms." Perhaps due to his own open-minded attitude, Ibn Arabi's mystical theology porously veered between Jewish and Muslim antecedents, and slipped easily into the stream of Jewish Kabbalistic learning. Such ideas as his theory of the mystical import of language; the concept that man is a complete microcosm of the macrocosmic God and specific interpretations of grammar and prayer - all of which became central to the Kabbalah - were eagerly ingested from Ibn Arabi by Jewish mystics, translated into Hebrew and recast as specifically Jewish ideas, either "long lost" or recently elucidated. Ibn Arabi's ideas can be traced to Jewish precursors, as well. In addition
to borrowing specific ideas from Moses Maimonides' Guide for the
Perplexed,
he also used Jewish history to justify his own Sufi ideas. When he was called
before the Islamic judicial authorities to defend himself against the charge
of "nonconformity," he turned to the Jewish scriptures, and specifically
Solomon's "erotic" Song of Songs, to prove that his ecstatic
language of mystical love not only had precedent, but also was officially viewed
as metaphor (and thereby non-threatening) by the Jewish authorities of ancient
Israel. All images on this site are copyright ©2008 by Tom Block Arts. Please contact the artist for use of these images. |
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