Abstract
This article presents for the first time the treatise al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya by the Tabrizi Sufi scholar and poet Muḥammad Shīrīn Maghribī (d. 810/1408), hitherto considered lost. The analysis of this Persian cosmology work, the rich graphic materials it contains, and its relationship with some of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s (d. 638/1240) most important cosmological texts including the treatise ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz and Chapter 371 of al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, offers a unique opportunity for shedding new light on Maghribī as an eminent member of the so-called ‘School of Ibn al-ʿArabī’ and on his intellectual activity as a teacher and interpreter of the works and ideas of the Shaykh al-Akbar. At the same time, it explores the use of visual elements, and more specifically of diagrams, in the Sufi literature of the period, and their potential value for codicological and philological purposes.
1 Framework
The findings presented in this article are part of a research project on the Tabrizi Sufi Muḥammad Shīrīn Maghribī (d. 810/1408) that sets two main goals. The first is to provide a revised portrait of Shīrīn Maghribī by addressing unstudied aspects of his activity with the aim of arriving at clearer understanding of his intellectual stature. Shīrīn Maghribī is chiefly known, and has been almost exclusively studied, as a major Persian Sufi Poet profoundly influenced by the teachings of Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 638/1240).1 Nevertheless, alongside his activity as a poet, Maghribī also wrote some prose works in Persian. These works, unlike his poetry, have never been the object of any specific study. Furthermore, they are unpublished, except for the most renowned one, the Jām-i jahān-namā (The World-Showing Cup), the edition of which is however problematic.2 By critically editing and studying these texts, investigating their reception, and collecting and analyzing information on the author that has not been previously noticed or discussed, we can shape a different perception of Maghribī. The main aspect that emerges from this set of data is the dynamic role Shīrīn Maghribī played in the so-called ‘School of Ibn al-ʿArabī’3 through teaching and disseminating of Akbarian4 texts and doctrines, as well as transmitting chains of spiritual descent stemming from Ibn al-ʿArabī in both the Persian and Arabic-speaking worlds.5
My second goal is to explore a neglected aspect of Sufi literature that developed from the thirteenth century onward in particular, which is an increasing presence of visual elements in texts, specifically in the form of diagrams.6 The connection between the larger phenomenon of ‘Visual Sufism’7 and Shīrīn Maghribī’s prose output is that the Tabrizi Sufi scholar employed diagrams in all three of his prose works that have come down to us, showing that the use of diagrams is a main characteristic of his style. Furthermore, on the basis of the analysis of these texts and additional research in manuscript libraries, an interaction emerges between Maghribī’s decision to employ diagrams and the intellectual environment in which he was operating.8
2 al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya
Given these premises, I shall now move on to introduce the main subject of the present study, a treatise by Maghribī long considered lost,9 of which two copies have now been unearthed thanks to new research in manuscript libraries.10 The work is entitled al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya fī maʿrifat badʾ ījād nashʾat al-ʿālam ilā l-ṣūra al-insāniyya, which can be translated Sasan’s Delight in the Knowledge of the Beginning of the Existentiation of the World Culminating in the Human Form. Its subject, as the title suggests, is cosmological. It is also the work by Maghribī containing the largest number of diagrams, twelve in total, of which eleven have survived.11 The abundance of diagrams observed in this treatise is not surprising if we consider that cosmology is one of the main subjects in which diagrams developed and were employed, and not just in Sufi literature.12 al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya is explicitly listed among Maghribī’s works in Ibn Karbalāʾī’s Rawḍāt al-jinān va jannāt al-janān, the main source on the author’s life.13 This fact, together with the original title of the text and the fact that Maghribī does not acknowledge or even mention any source for it, initially led to the assumption that al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya was a completely original work. Careful investigation however reveals that Maghribī’s treatise was actually based on an older, authoritative Akbarian text. The relationship of al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya with its source material will be addressed in these pages, but before moving on to discuss this matter it is worth mentioning the context in which the text was produced since this provides previously unknown information about Maghribī’s biography.
3 Context
The meaning of the first part of the title, translated here as “Sāsān’s delight,” is explained in the dedication of the treatise. In the introduction of the text we read:
Peace from the holy Lord – the One Who is the Peace14 and Who invites to the Abode of Peace – be on the possessor of the Sīn of saʿāda, the Alif of amān, the Sīn of salāma, the Alif of iḥsān and the Nūn of īmān, the Amīr Sāsān, may God make his end good and his afterlife better than the previous one, and strengthen his partisans and multiply his ranks (khatama llāh lahu bi-l-ḥusnā wa-jaʿala ākhiratahu khayran min al-ūlā wa-aʿazza anṣārahu wa-ḍāʿafa aqdārahu).15
This passage merely relates that the text was dedicated to an unspecified Amir Sāsān, but provides no information about the historical identity of this individual. The identification of the dedicatee is relevant if it can provide us with information about Maghribī’s engagement with regional political elites. We can come up with a possible answer to this question by piecing together various bits of information from different sources. The first one is contained in the continuation of the introduction. In explaining the reason for writing the text, Maghribī provides some scanty information about the context. He informs the reader that he had returned to his hometown of Tabriz after a long absence, and that on arrival he found the city in ruins, to the extent that he was tempted to leave again immediately. He was persuaded to stay only by the appeal of his relatives (ahālī), students (ṭullāb) and companions (aṣḥāb).16 Despite these requests, Maghribī continues, he was compelled to leave Tabriz, since it had been agreed (maʿhūd būd) – we do not know with whom – that he would return (rujūʿ uftādan) to Gilan for the winter: he adds that “Gilan’s winter is a rose-garden,” probably alluding to the mildness of the weather in Gilan compared with that of Azerbaijan. It was precisely because of his distance from Tabriz and his friends (dūstān) that Shīrīn Maghribī resolved to establish an epistolary correspondence with them (bi-irsāl-i murāsalāt va iblāgh-i mukātabāt) while in Gilan, so that despite their physical separation (mufāraqat-i jismānī), their spiritual conjunction (muvāṣalat-i rūḥānī) would not be interrupted.17 From this account we can arrive at several conclusions, of which two are particularly relevant to us: that al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya was written in Gilan and that Maghribī repeatedly frequented the Gilan region. Maghribī does not specify where he had been before returning to Tabriz, but the fact he uses the verb ‘to return’ to describe his departure towards Gilan suggests that it was also the place from whence he came. In any case, al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya is not the only primary source establishing a link between the Tabrizi Sufi poet and scholar and Gilan. Another of Maghribī’s unpublished texts, al-Durr al-farīd fī maʿrifat marātib al-tawḥīd, was also initially conceived by the author while on his way from Gilan to Tabriz according to its introduction.18 Gilan at that time, towards the end of the 8th/14th century, was fragmented into many small local kingdoms in permanent conflict with each other. The region was divided into two main areas, west and east of the Sefidrud river, the western side being controlled by Sunni emirs, while the eastern side was governed by Shiite rulers. Another question therefore arises: which Gilani dynasties was Shīrīn Maghribī in contact with? East or West, Shiite or Sunni? Maghribī is known to have been Sunni, but this information is not in itself sufficient to answer our question.19 In this sense, a third source linking Maghribī to Gilan comes into our aid. It is a biographical passage about Maghribī written by his direct disciple ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Bazzāzī (d. unknown) and later incorporated by Ibn Karbalāʾī in his Rawḍāt al-jinān va jannāt al-janān.20 Bazzāzī in fact tells a story about a journey he undertook in the company of his master Shīrīn Maghribī from Sultaniyya in Azerbaijan to the town of Fūman in Gilan between Shawwāl and Dhū l-Qaʿda 795, that is to say, in September 1393.21 It is also interesting to note that according to Bazzāzī the journey took place at the beginning of the cold season (September 1393), since this perfectly corresponds to the idea of wintering in Gilan mentioned in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya. It therefore seems to hint at a regular seasonal sojourn in the Caspian coastal region on the part of Maghribī. Bazzāzī, in recording his journey, provides more information than Maghribī does in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya. He mentions not only a precise date but also a geographical reference: Fūman, a town located to the west of the Sefidrud, which at that time was the capital of one of the most prosperous Sunni emirates of the region. The main studies on the rulers of Gilan were written at the beginning of the twentieth century by Hiacinthe Louis Rabino di Borgomale, while for the period we are interested in, which is the second half of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century, the main primary reference is the Tārīkh-i Gīlān va Daylāmistān (composed between 880/1475 and 894/1488; period addressed in the text 750–894/1349–1488) by Mīr Ẓāhir al-Dīn Marʿashī.22 Looking into these sources we learn that in 795, the year mentioned by Bazzāzī, Fūman was ruled by Amīr Dabbāj,23 the most powerful and longest reigning prince of the region who ruled from 766 (1364–5) to 812 (1409–10). In attempting to identify the figure to whom Maghribī dedicated al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, we find not one, but two emirs called Sāsān living in the Gilan region in the period and in competition with each other. One was Emir Sāsān lord of Gaskar, who was in dispute with Emir Dabbāj lord of Fūman, the town visited by Maghribī together with al-Bazzāzī in 795, while the other is the Emir Sāsān Shaftī. Interestingly enough, this latter Emir Sāsān Shaftī was commander-in-chief of the army of Emir Dabbāj of Fūman, and the sources report that he was killed in battle by his namesake Emir Sāsān lord of Gaskar in 792, which is 1390. The fact that Maghribī was visiting Fūman in 795 (1393), when the city was firmly under control of Emir Dabbāj, combined with the fact that Emir Sāsān Shaftī was commander-in-chief of the armies of Fūman, leads me to suggest that this is probably the Emir Sāsān to whom al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya is dedicated.24 This impression is strengthened by the evidence of open enmity between Emir Dabbāj and the other possible dedicatee Emir Sāsān lord of Gaskar, leading me to discard this second option. If we are correct in identifying Emir Sāsān Shaftī as the man to whom al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya is dedicated, we also have a terminus ante quem for the composition of the treatise, corresponding with the date of death of Emir Sāsān Shaftī which we know took place in 792 (1390). The sum of these various pieces of information highlights a special relationship between Maghribī and the Gilan region, and possibly with some of the political figures active there in the last decades of the eighth century of the hegira, although the nature of these links remains unclear because of the paucity of the sources. The same hypothesis also suggests a possible terminus ante quem for the writing of al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya in 792 (1390), while Maghribī’s repeated visits to Gilan – most probably started before 792 (1390) and lasted at least until 795 (1393) – recorded by three different sources, seem to indicate that the poor conditions in Tabriz mentioned by Maghribī in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya can be attributed either to the effects of the dispute for the control over the city between the Golden Horde, the Jalairids and the Timurids if related to episodes before 786 (1384), or be read as a veiled criticism of the Timurid domination of Tabriz if the text was written between 786 (1384) and 792 (1390).
4 The Contents
An overview of al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya confirms three main features of Maghribī’s literary production in prose: the use of diagrams, Maghribī’s didactic literary style, and the relationship between his writings and those of the School of Ibn al-ʿArabī. Indicative of Maghribī’s didactic style is the introduction to the text, from which it emerges clearly that in going to Gilan, he was leaving behind in Tabriz not only his relatives, but also disciples, fellows and spiritual friends. The stated purpose of writing the text is precisely to stay in touch with them while he was away.25 He also explicitly speaks of a correspondence using terms like murāsalāt and mukātabāt. There is another passage in the introduction that reiterates the same idea while also providing indications about the close relationship between the learning objectives of the text and the use of diagrams in it. Here Maghribī writes:
Therefore, as a result of this idea (i.e. of writing epistles to his friends in Tabriz while he was away), after having asked for authorization from the Lord, and having prayed to the True God for proper guidance, an epistle was compiled that it might be a compendium of the science of “Indeed in the science there is a hidden aspect,”26 and contain a well-protected secret (sirr-i maṣūn) and was then sent; [it is an epistle] concerning the mode of manifestation and arrangement of worlds (kayfiyyat-i ẓuhūr va tartīb-i ʿavālim) and of the coming into view of the [peculiar] shapes of the landmarks by which one guides himself on the way (va burūz-i ashkāl-i maʿālim), starting from the origin of the world up to Adam’s existentiation (min badʾ al-ʿālam ilā ījād Ādam), [clothing these doctrines] in a dress [made] of circles and shapes (dar kisvat-i davāʾir va ashkāl), and archetypal and imaginary forms (va dar ṣūrat-i mithāl va khayāl), in order to help their visualization and facilitate their contemplation (tashīlan li-taṣawwurihā wa-taysīran li-tadabburihā).27
These lines suggest the idea of making up for physical absence by writing and forwarding a textbook to disciples for them to read and study while awaiting the return of the master.28 More importantly, they show that Maghribī was fully aware of the role played by diagrams, to the point of explicitly mentioning them in the introduction, while describing the specific features of the text, providing precise explanations for his decision to insert visual elements into the text as tools for helping the readers/students to understand abstract concepts. This idea is also confirmed in other prose works by Maghribī.29
5 Maghribī’s al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya and Ibn al-ʿArabī’s ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz
While the relationship between Maghribī’s teaching activity and his use of diagrams emerges quite clearly from a reading of the introduction, what is missing is any explicit reference linking Maghribī’s writing to Ibn al-ʿArabī’s teachings. If we take into account Maghribī’s poetry and his other prose works, we can assume a link with Ibn al-ʿArabī as the basic working hypothesis, but we need to supply concrete evidence in that direction. It was precisely in the process of seeking possible links between al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya and the doctrines of Ibn al-ʿArabī that I made an unexpected discovery. In fact al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya is not a completely original work, but rather founded on and inspired by one of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s most important cosmological texts: the treatise entitled ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz (The Bond of the Alert One).30 Although the dependency of Maghribī’s text on ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz is evident, the terms of its dependency are not immediately clear. At first glance al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya might appear to be just a Persian translation (tarjama) of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s work. This would not however explain why numerous passages of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz are absent from Maghribī’s text. For this reason it is more appropriate to define al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya an abridged translation (tarjama-mukhtaṣar) of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s work. Even this definition is imprecise however, since Maghribī’s text also contains some elements that are not found in the original text by Ibn al-ʿArabī. The most appropriate way to describe Maghribī’s text is to consider al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya at one and the same time a translation, an abridgment, and a commentary (tarjama-mukhtaṣar-sharḥ) of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s treatise ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz. The complex relationship linking al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya to its original source, together with the fact that Maghribī never explicitly mentions either Ibn al-ʿArabī or ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz in the entire work, explains the initial difficulty in identifying the connection between these two texts.
The realization that al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya is not an original composition but a multifaceted work based on a text by Ibn al-ʿArabī might appear to diminish Maghribī’s achievement because it almost inevitably leads to an assumption of lack of originality on the part of the Tabrizi Sufi. It might therefore appear surprising that at close examination, Maghribī’s work not only reveals many original features in both form and content, but shows that it is precisely its dependency on Ibn al-ʿArabī’s treatise that is its most relevant and meaningful characteristic. It enables us to undertake a comparative examination, tracing identities, differences and shifts between the two texts that shed light on Maghribī’s place within the Akbarian School and allow us to investigate Maghribī’s thoughts and modes of expression vis-à-vis those of Ibn al-ʿArabī.
The fact that Maghribī did not conceive al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya as a literal word-for-word translation, but rather as a text on which he operated a multitude of editorial choices, manipulating the original material – adding, deleting or changing it depending on the case – is precisely the reason for labeling it a translation-abridgment-commentary. Its being based on a text by Ibn al-ʿArabī but at the same time differing from it, looks promising as a means of highlighting features of Maghribī’s style and patterns of transmission of Akbarian ideas in the Persianate world. An analysis of each of the three genres contemporaneously at work in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya is helpful in bringing different aspects of the issue into focus. The fact that it is a translation from Arabic into Persian raises the questions as to why and for whom Maghribī undertook it. Was this an isolated case or was Maghribī’s venture part of a broader trend within the socio-historical context of the time? Are there other Persian translations of Ibn ʿArabī’s works undertaken in the same period and, if so, how do they relate to Maghribī’s? What can this tell us about the penetration and diffusion of Akbarian doctrines in Persian-speaking areas? What can Maghribī’s work say, if anything, about the circulation of copies of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s works at the time, about his own personal use of them, and about the quality of these Akbarian manuscripts? The fact that it is an abridgment obviously raises the question as to why Maghribī omitted some parts of the original text. The fact that it is a commentary tells us about Maghribī’s personal contribution: what kind of comments does he make and how do they relate to Maghribī’s style as we see it in his other works? Finally, there is a fourth, transversal aspect of the matter that should not be neglected. This is the broad question of how Maghribī and his contemporaries conceived of authorship.31 This question is implicitly raised by the fact that Maghribī does not acknowledge or even mention in any part of al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya either Ibn al-ʿArabī or his ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz as the main source for his own work. Why did Maghribī fail to do so? Was he (or was he not) deliberately hiding his source in order to plagiarize Ibn al-ʿArabī and claim the ownership of the ideas contained within the text? And if so, how would this fit with Maghribī’s proclaimed adhesion to the Akbarian School and his activity as transmitter of Akbarian silsilas and teachings?
6 al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya as a Translation of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz
Maghribī’s text, a Persian translation-abridgment-commentary of a text by Ibn al-ʿArabī, is indicative of a lengthy process of penetration and diffusion of Akbarian ideas in the Persianate World. This process obviously included translations, intended for all those who were unable to read Arabic and were therefore unable to access the original writings of Ibn al-ʿArabī. The only study about pre-modern Persian translations of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s works is, as far as I know, Najīb Māyil Hiravī’s book Dah risāla-yi mutarjam-i Shaykh-i Akbar,32 which includes the critical editions of ten pre-modern Persian translations of works by Ibn al-ʿArabī. The first work to be translated into Persian was his most renowned: the Fuṣūs al-ḥikam. This translation, dating to the first half of the 8th/14th century, was not conceived as an independent work, but rather as part of the first Persian commentary on the Fuṣūs, the Nuṣūṣ al-khuṣūṣ by Bābā Rukn al-Dīn Shīrāzī (d. 769/1367).33 The earliest known translations into Persian of short texts by Ibn al-ʿArabī, similar to ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz translated by Maghribī, are some of those edited by Hiravī dating to the end of the fourteenth century.34 The first issue to consider regarding these translations is that some are anonymous and that we only know the names of the authors of five of them. The earliest is Muḥammad Turka (d. 835/1432), best known as Ibn Turka, a prominent scholar and commentator of the Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam. He was also the author of a translation-commentary (tarjama-yi sharḥ-gūnah according to Hiravī, Dah risāla, Introduction, p. LIII) on ten lines of poetry from a qaṣīda from Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Dīwān al-Akbar.35 This text, however, is somewhat anomalous, since it is not a translation of a treatise by the Shaykh al-Akbar but only a translation of a number of verses drawn from a single poem. The second author we encounter, in chronological order, is another important and renowned figure, Shāh Niʿmat Allāh Valī, a Sufi master, poet and intellectual who died in 834 (1430), who is followed by one of his disciples, Shāh Dāʿī Shīrāzī. The fourth translator is Ḥasan Gīlānī, a disciple of Nūr al-Dīn Ḥamza b. ʿAbd al-Malik Bayhaqī Tūsī (d. 866/1461), who was in his turn a disciple of Shāh Niʿmat Allāh Valī. Finally a fifth individual, who cannot be chronologically located for lack of information, is named Mīrzā Faḍl Allāh Kurdistānī. From this information the first conclusion we can draw is that Maghribī was very timely, or rather he was slightly anticipatory in writing al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, given that he is earlier than all the figures mentioned above in that, as we have already seen, he probably wrote al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya before 792/1390. Maghribī’s compilation of al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya followed the earliest examples of Persian translations of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s most widely circulated work, the Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, which started being included in Persian commentaries during the first half of the 8th/14th century, and on the basis of our present knowledge, appears to be the earliest example of a Persian translation of a short treatise by Ibn al-ʿArabī.
6.1 Some Notes on the Circulation of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz in Iran
The fact that al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya was based on Ibn al-ʿArabī’s ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz necessarily means that the author had access to a copy of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s book while he was in Gilan. Did Maghribī bring a copy with him from Tabriz, or did he find it in Gilan? We do not have any definitive evidence in this respect, but from what we know about Maghribī’s profound acquaintance with Ibn al-ʿArabī’s oeuvre, and basing ourselves on the analysis of a document that will be discussed shortly (§ 7), it would seem plausible that the Sufi shaykh had easy access to the text of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz in his hometown and that he probably owned a personal copy of it. We can ask two questions relating to the evidence that Maghribī owned a copy of this Ibn al-ʿArabī’s cosmological treatise. What do we know about the circulation of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz at the end of the 8th/14th century? And can we say something about the quality of the copy available to Maghribī? To find an answer to the first question, we can turn to the two main reference sources regarding Ibn al-ʿArabī’s work. These are Osman Yahya’s classic study Histoire et Classification de l’ oeuvre d’ Ibn ʿArabi,36 published in 1964 and an ongoing project called The Muhyiddin Ibn ʿArabi Society Archive Project, which is currently in the process of revising and improving Yahya’s pioneering catalogue.37 Looking at these sources, we find that there are six surviving copies dating back to before Maghribī’s death in 810 (1408).38 According to the information recorded in the The Muhyiddin Ibn ʿArabi Society Archive Project, two of them were produced in Syria (MSS Şehit Ali Paşa 1341 and Beyazıt 3750) and a third probably never moved from Konya (MS Yusuf Ağa 4690). Five of them are currently held in Turkey and one is in Germany. Though there is no specific research on the matter, none of them seems to show evidence of having been produced or circulated in Iran. Our perception about the circulation of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz in Iran is reframed on consulting the 12-volume Abridged Catalogue of Iranian Manuscripts edited by Mostafa Derayati (Muṣṭafā Dirāyatī).39 In it we discover the existence of seven more manuscript copies of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s treatise, three of which date back to the 9th/15th century, but are later than to Maghribī’s death.40 To recapitulate, only six copies of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz are known to date back to Maghribī’s lifetime or before. These all appear to have been copied and circulated in Syria and Anatolia and do not show evidence of having circulated in Azerbaijan or Gilan, while Iranian-based copies of the same text all post-date Maghribī’s lifetime. These pieces of information, taken together, create the impression that Maghribī was in an unusual position in having a copy of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz available to him in Gilan in the last decades of the fourteenth century, probably before 792 (1390).
6.2 An Experiment in Visual Philology: A Discussion on the Quality of Maghribī’s Copy of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz
What we can say about the copy of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz Maghribī employed in producing al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya is mostly a matter of philology. A word-for-word comparison of the two texts, apart from requiring a considerable investment of time, would probably not bear much fruit since, as we mentioned before, Maghribī did not prepare a verbatim translation of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s work. Nevertheless, we can try out an experiment in visual philology on these two texts. This is an exciting option since it is directly linked to the theme of the diagrams and Visual Sufism mentioned in the introduction of this article, the matter that stimulated my initial interest in the prose works of Shīrīn Maghribī. As we mentioned before, al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya includes twelve diagrams of which eleven are extant, but nothing has been said, so far, about whether ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz also contains diagrams, and how these might relate to the diagrams found in Maghribī’s work. The answer is both simple and complex: simple because ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz only includes one diagram,41 and complex because this diagram is subject to variations within the manuscript tradition. Because of its subject, I will refer to it as the “Diagram of the Transmutations of the Four Elements.”42 As far as I know, the presence of variations within the transmission of the diagram contained in Ibn al-ʿArabī’s treatise was observed for the first time only very recently by Dr. Gracia López Anguita in her Ph.D. thesis dedicated to Ibn al-ʿArabī’s cosmological doctrine. This focusses specifically on ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, of which she has made a critical Spanish translation. López noticed that the diagram in the oldest manuscript of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz (MS Konya, Yusuf Ağa Kütüphanesi 4690, copied before 673/1274) differs from the diagram contained in the classic edition of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz published by Nyberg in 1919.43
Three characteristics make the MS Yusuf Ağa 4690 a very important copy of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, though unfortunately it is incomplete. The first is that, according to the Ibn ʿArabi Society Archive, it is a holograph in Ibn ʿArabī’s handwriting.44 The second is that it most likely belonged to Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī (d. 673/1274), Ibn ʿArabī’s foremost disciple and son-in-law.45 The third is its antiquity, since it is either before 638 (1240) if it is a holograph by Ibn al-ʿArabī, or before 673 (1274) if belonged to al-Qūnawī’s personal library.
The following illustrations show the diagram as it is found in MS Yusuf Ağa 4690. In the first image the diagram is shown in the context of the entire page (Figure 1); the second image is a zoom on the diagram (Figure 2), while the third is a line drawing (Figure 3).46
Ibn al-ʿArabī, ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, MS Yusuf Ağa 4690, fol. 10b
Citation: Oriens 49, 1-2 (2021) ; 10.1163/18778372-20210001
Ibn al-ʿArabī, ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, MS Yusuf Ağa 4690, fol. 10b, detail of the “Diagram of the Transmutations of the Four Elements
Citation: Oriens 49, 1-2 (2021) ; 10.1163/18778372-20210001
Ibn al-ʿArabī, ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, Drawing of the “Diagram of the Transmutations of the Four Elements” according to MS Yusuf Ağa 4690, fol. 10b
Citation: Oriens 49, 1-2 (2021) ; 10.1163/18778372-20210001
In this manuscript, the diagram is small and is inserted into the right hand margin of the page. These factors give us the idea that the diagram was conceived as a sort of marginal note on the text. This impression is explicitly substantiated by Ibn al-ʿArabī in person, who, referring to it in the written text, describes it not as a “diagram,” but specifically as “a marginal note” (kamā tarāhu fī l-ḥāshiya).47 The author’s invitation to look at the marginal note to see what he is describing in words in the text gives us an indication about the conceptual relationship that existed in Ibn al-ʿArabī’s mind, at least in this case, between text and image. The first is apparently the essential element and the latter, visual part, an accessory.48 Finally this internal reference by Ibn al-ʿArabī to the marginal note/diagram is important from the philological point of view, since it removes all doubts about the authenticity of the diagram, which in absence of this internal reference and precisely because of its marginal placement could also have been a later, apocryphal addition to the text.
This early version of the diagram displays four concentric circles, linked by apparently asymmetrical segments, each circle containing the name of one of the four elements. Starting from the center, these are earth, water, air and fire (arḍ, māʾ, hawāʾ and nār). Another early manuscript examined by López is MS Istanbul, Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, Şehit Ali Paşa 1341, executed in Sivas (Siwas/Sebastopoli) in 715 (1315).49 It is interesting to note that despite being one of the oldest manuscripts of ʿUqlat al-mustawfizMS Şehit Ali Paşa 1341 does not contain any diagram. Şehit Ali Paşa 1341 is not the only manuscript of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz that does not include the diagram. Nyberg in fact, in the critical apparatus, informs his readers that only one out of the four manuscripts he used for his edition contains the diagram, while the other three, that is to say the majority, do not.50 Of the three manuscripts Nyberg used that do not include the diagram, the oldest one is MS Ahlwardt 2923, copied after 750 (1349–50),51 while the only manuscript included in his edition that does contain the diagram is MS Sprenger 854, dated 899 (1494) (Figure 4).52
Ibn al-ʿArabī, ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, drawing of the “Diagram of the Transmutations of Four Elements” as it appears in MS Sprenger 854 according to Nyberg’s critical edition (Kleinere Schriften, 84) On the top: nār = “fire”; in the center, from right to left: mā = “water” and hawā = “air”; below: arḍ = “earth.”
Citation: Oriens 49, 1-2 (2021) ; 10.1163/18778372-20210001
This one, as we can easily see (see Figure 4), differs considerably from the diagram found in MS Yusuf Ağa 4690. It only shows two circles, instead of four, and the disposition of the four elements is also slightly different: the two central elements, water and air, which appear one under the other in the oldest manuscript of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, are here displayed side by side on the same line. Finally, this diagram does not show any segmentation linking the four circles.
To recapitulate: a diagram is found in the oldest copy of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz which is probably a holograph. That diagram is absent from another early copy and in many later ones. Finally, an altered version of the diagram is present in at least one later copy from the sixteenth century.
This description gives us an idea, even if partial and incomplete, of the complex manuscript tradition and unstable transmission of the single diagram contained in Ibn al-ʿArabī’s cosmological treatise ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, though it gives us no clue as to why this should be of interest with regard to Maghribī’s al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya. The interest lies in the fact that Maghribī reproduced that particular diagram in his treatise, and that the way in which he did it tells us something about the quality of his copy of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s text. The last of the eleven surviving diagrams included in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, is, in fact, the single diagram found in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, illustrating the transmutations of the four elements.
The “Diagram of the Transmutations of the Four Elements” in a selection of manuscripts of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz
Citation: Oriens 49, 1-2 (2021) ; 10.1163/18778372-20210001
Before moving forward, I would like to address a philological question in order to overcome any objections regarding this comparative analysis. It might be suggested that any comparison between the “Diagram of the Transmutations of the Four Elements” as it appears in the manuscript tradition of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz and the diagram found in Maghribī’s al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya is partially invalidated by the fact that we do not have a holograph of Maghribī’s treatise, and that of the two copies of it only the older one, i.e. MS Oslo, Schøyen Collection 5350, copied in the first half of the fifteenth century, includes the diagrams. Effectively speaking, the probability that the diagram traced by the copyist of MS Schøyen 5350 is more correct than the original diagram traced by Maghribī in a holograph is so limited that it can be discarded, meaning that the diagram currently available to us is either entirely faithful to the original traced by Maghribī or less correct than that.53 Since our aim is to observe the similarity of the diagram in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya with the one contained in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, we can reasonably assume that if the diagram made by the copyist of al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya in MS Schøyen 5350 is close to the one contained in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz the same is true for the original diagram traced by Maghribī.54
The following images (Figures 5 and 6) show the diagram as it is found in MS Oslo, Schøyen Collection 5350, dating from either before 840/1436 or 890/1485.55 In Figure 5 the diagram is shown in the context of the entire page, while Figure 6 is a drawing of it.
Shīrīn Maghribī, al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, MS Schøyen 5350, fol. 138b
Citation: Oriens 49, 1-2 (2021) ; 10.1163/18778372-20210001
Shīrīn Maghribī, al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, drawing of the “Diagram of the Transmutations of Four Elements” as found in MS Schøyen 5350, fol. 138b
Citation: Oriens 49, 1-2 (2021) ; 10.1163/18778372-20210001
The diagram found in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya (Figures 5 and 6) is not exactly identical with the one found in what is considered the oldest copy of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, i. e. MS Yusuf Ağa 4690 (Figures 1 to 3), but is still very close to it, especially when compared with the diagram found in Nyberg’s edition (Figure 4). In it, the four circles containing the four elements are in the same hierarchical order. The main difference between Ibn al-ʿArabī’s and Maghribī’s diagrams, i.e. between the diagram in MS Yusuf Ağa 4690 and the one in MS Schøyen 5350, is that the segments linking the four circles in the latter have a symmetrical position that is not present in the oldest ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz manuscript. The other difference is in the use of the term athīr, “Ether,” rather than the term nār, “Fire,” found in MS Yusuf Ağa 4690. This is only an apparent variant since Ibn al-ʿArabī explicitly identifies Ether with Fire in the text, making the two terms interchangeable.56 The fact that Maghribī’s diagram adheres with only minor differences to MS Yusuf Ağa 4690, the earliest currently-known copy of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz most probably in Ibn al-ʿArabī’s own hand, is an indication that Maghribī had access to a reliable, high-quality copy of the treatise. Considering that the version of the diagram included by Maghribī in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya is closer to the original than other copies of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, it is reasonable to suppose that Maghribī had access either to MS Yusuf Ağa 4690 or to a copy stemming from it. This is made even more evident by the fact that some of the old copies of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, made before Maghribī’s birth, including Şehit Ali Paşa 1341, copied in 715 (1315), already presented important variations with regard to the transmission of the diagram, to the extent of not including it at all. This means that variations and corruptions in the transmission of the diagram started at an early date, and that already during Maghribī’s lifetime having access to one copy of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz rather than another made a significant difference.57
To sum up, all the clues examined so far indicate that Maghribī had access to a reliable manuscript of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz while he was travelling in Gilan at some point before 792 (1390). The first is that we know of only a few manuscript copies of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s text that are earlier than or contemporary with Maghribī’s time, and it seems that they were neither produced, nor did they circulate in Iran. The second is that the visual manuscript tradition of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz started to alter and modify at a very early stage, already showing changes and omissions in manuscripts dating from before Maghribī’s birth. Maghribī’s reproduction of the diagram contained in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya instead seems to stem from MS Yusuf Ağa 4690, which is the earliest known manuscript of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz and is probably Ibn al-ʿArabī’s holograph, possibly belonging to Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī’s personal library.
7 Shīrīn Maghribī’s Ownership and Teaching of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz
The suggestion that Maghribī had access to high quality copies of the texts of the Shaykh al-Akbar is relevant because it argues in favor of his role as authoritative transmitter and propagator of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s legacy. Such a role is clearly demonstrated by the evidence I have presented in a number of lectures currently in the process of being published.58 The most relevant evidence is Maghribī’s presence in the main Akbarian chains of spiritual descent and the identification of documents that testify to his activity as a recognized commentator and teacher of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s works. A third element is the widespread diffusion and reception the Jām-i jahān-namā, Maghribī’s best-known text, enjoyed and the role the diagrams in it played as a special vehicle for the diffusion of Akbarian doctrine and thought.59 The indirect evidence that emerges from the examination of the “Diagram of the Transmutations of the Four Elements” in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, regarding the quality of the Akbarian manuscript available to Maghribī thus merely adds additional pieces to our puzzle.
Definitive confirmation of Maghribī’s familiarity with Ibn al-ʿArabī’s cosmological treatise ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz comes from a document that is very precious in reconstructing the Sufi scholar’s intellectual activity. A text I was not aware of at the time I first submitted this article, and that I mention here in extremis. It is a later copy of a license (ijāza) conferred by Maghribī on an individual named Kamāl al-Dīn Ismāʿīl.60 In it the Tabrizī Sufi states that he had initiated Kamāl al-Dīn Ismāʿīl into the Sufi way, and he certifies the teaching of a large number of important works on Sufism (more than twenty) after Kamāl al-Dīn Ismāʿīl had recited them in front of him, demonstrating that he had understood their contents. This document deserves to be analyzed in detail but here I will limit myself to mentioning that the first six texts listed in the license are works by Ibn al-ʿArabī, and that they are followed by a series of texts clearly belonging to the School of Ibn al-ʿArabī. They include works by al-Qūnawī, al-Kāshānī (d. between 730–6/1329–35) and al-Farghānī (d. 699/1300) as well as two works by Maghribī himself. For our present scope, however, the main thing to note is that ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz is among the works of the Shaykh al-Akbar that Kamāl al-Dīn Ismāʿīl studied with Maghribī. Although we have no definite proof, all the evidence suggests that the books employed by Kamāl al-Dīn Ismāʿīl during his reading sessions belonged to Maghribī. In any case, this document clearly demonstrates Maghribī’s familiarity with ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, as well as with numerous other texts by Ibn al-ʿArabī, Akbarian masters, and other fundamental Sufi works. Maghribī’s diploma is undated and the fact that al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya is not included among the Maghribī texts Kamāl al-Dīn Ismāʿīl studied with their author could suggest that this document predates the composition of al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya.61 In any case, it is reasonable to suppose that the copy of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz used by Maghribī to write al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya while he was in Gilan was the same one used during these reading sessions, or at least related to it (possibly an apograph of it, or its antigraph). This copy, if we base ourselves on the observations made previously, seems to derive from MS Yusuf Ağa 4690. The fact that the posterior copy of this license is contained in a manuscript copied in Tabriz in 851 (1448),62 that Tabriz was Maghribī’s home and principal residence, and that the Azerbaijan capital had been a center for Akbarian studies from at least the time that al-Jandī (d. 711/1312), al-Kāshānī and his disciple Dāwūd al-Qayṣarī (d. ca. 751/1350) had lived there,63 all leads us to suggest that it was in Tabriz that all the afore mentioned books were located and Kamāl al-Dīn Ismāʿīl’s reading sessions took place. In this context, we also have a plausible response as to whether Maghribī had found a copy of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz in Gilan, or had brought it with him when he left Tabriz.
8 al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya as an Abridgment of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz
As we have already seen, Shīrīn Maghribī’s work should also be regarded as an abridgment of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s treatise. This aspect, like the others, can be addressed at various levels of depth, and can offer us very interesting information about the author, his style and ideas. For reasons of contingency, I will limit myself here to describing and commenting on some major traits. Maghribī’s abridgment of the original Arabic text by the Shaykh al-Akbar can be described as a process of ‘impersonalization,’ systematization, and rationalization of the discourse and of the way in which the information taken from the original text is presented to the reader of al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya. This tendency, also naturally results in a general impression of clarity. By ‘impersonalization’ I mean that Maghribī systematically attempts to eliminate from his Persian rendition of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz the many personal touches Ibn al-ʿArabī put into his cosmological treatise.64 One of the most important characteristics of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s writing style, not only in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, is that he employs several different literary styles and registers contemporaneously. Two of them, and the result of their interaction, seem particularly relevant. One style is what we could label the ‘scientific style,’ aimed at presenting Sufi doctrines in a comprehensive, well-organized and systematic way. The adoption and extensive use of a terminology derived from Philosophy is one of the main literary features of this style.65 The other is the ‘visionary style,’ the repeated outbursts of unveiling and a mystical taste in discourse: the description of meetings and events that do not take place in the common dimension, reports of miracles and personal inspirations, and the employment of an allusive language. This is a style, or rather a mood, to which Ibn al-ʿArabī never renounced because it is essential to the Sufi way of thinking which ultimately aims at something that cannot be grasped by reason alone, but rather through spiritual intuition and savouring. The interaction of these two apparently contradictory registers in Ibn al-ʿArabī’s writings imbues the reader with a special feeling during the learning process, a feeling that we should assume was consciously intended by the author. It is not within my scope here to address this delicate question and these remarks have been made only to give a better explanation of how Maghribī acted in his Persian reworking of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz. Maghribī reduces to the minimum the visionary aspects of the discourse, favouring a scientific style, that is to say, a clean analytical presentation and treatment of the raw cosmological data and information contained in the original text. I believe that it is precisely in this perspective that Maghribī decided, along with other literary choices, to eliminate from his Persian text many of the digressions, anecdotes, and examples contained in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, as well as removing references to spiritual encounters and dialogues included by the Shaykh al-Akbar.
A very good example of this can be found in Maghribī’s rendition of the “Chapter on the Sublunary World.”66 The context is the description of the creation of the four elements (arkān), in the passage describing the terrestrial element (arḍ). Before moving on to discuss the successive element which is Water (māʾ), Ibn al-ʿArabī mentions the creation of mountain ranges and the existence of a mythical green mountain, Mount Qāf, surrounding the entire earth and surrounded in its turn by a gigantic snake. At this point Ibn al-ʿArabī opens up a long parenthesis, made up of three text passages containing three different types of content, two of which Maghribī decided to omit from his Persian abridgment. The first is Ibn al-ʿArabī’s report about his meeting with a man of God who had climbed Mount Qāf and talked with the giant snake: this is very interesting as it is told in the first person and deals with what are, so to speak, personal issues: “I saw someone who climbed this mountain, saw this snake and talked to it; and it said [to him]: ‘Pass my regards to Abū Madyān.’ He was one of the Substitutes (abdāl) […].”67 In reporting this, Ibn al-ʿArabī probably aimed at supporting his cosmological description by producing an eye witness account, to authenticate this information. The fact that Maghribī decided to omit the passage is meaningful, because by omitting the first person, the mention of the conversation, and the name of Abū Madyān, he moves in the direction of impersonalization.
The overall impression is that Maghribī’s Persian text relies not on the direct personal authority of Ibn al-ʿArabī, but rather on that of an entire community to legitimize the doctrine it presents. Ibn al-ʿArabī’s name is never mentioned. In place of the Shaykh al-Akbar, Maghribī evokes the wider community of the “People of Unveiling” (ahl-i kashf), often combined with other adjectival substantives such as the “People of Unveiling and Spiritual Witnessing” (ahl-i kashf va shuhūd), or “People of Unveiling and of Religious Law” (ahl-i kashf va sharīʿat) and the “School of the People of Truth” (madhhab-i ahl-i ḥaqq).68 Such a process of impersonalization suggests that by the time Maghribī was writing, or so he thought, these cosmological doctrines were perceived as shared knowledge in specific intellectual circles.69
The second passage found in this part of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz and omitted by Maghribī is a dialogue between the angels and God about the excellence of the human being compared with other cosmic entities. This passage is followed by a third one, which is a harsh and explicit criticism of the ancient philosophers’ views regarding the sequential order in which the various elements making up the Cosmos were created by God. In this case it is interesting that Maghribī does the exact opposite of what he did regarding reports about non-ordinary dialogues and encounters and includes the attack on philosophers in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya.70 This makes perfect sense if one follows Maghribī’s rationale that favours the scientific over the mystical register: any criticism on a technical cosmological question aimed at philosophers clearly belongs to the former. Among the numerous passages Maghribī omits in his process of impersonalization, we find the following descriptive excerpt containing another comment in the first person by Ibn al-ʿArabī:
He created in it little white snakes, and some birds came to these mountains, and sometimes these snakes are hunted by the Valencian Peregrine Falcons. We saw (raʾaynā) some of the reptiles named Salamander which have the marvellous property of interrupting the growth of hair.71
Another example is how Maghribī omits a passage in which Ibn al-ʿArabī includes a rare explicit reference to one of his sources, in this case Ibn Masarra.72 As a result of this procedure, Maghribī’s treatise appears overall more impersonal and only indirectly reliant on Ibn al-ʿArabī’s direct authority which is seemingly mediated by – or perhaps more properly incorporated into – a spiritual and intellectual milieu.
I would like to mention three more examples of the abridgment process and, at the same time, of Maghribī’s tendency to rationalize and simplify the treatment of the themes contained in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, with the result that his text has a much less poetic and mystical flavour, making al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya feeling much more like a scientific manual than its original source. One evident omission is that of all the several lines of poetry found in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz. We only come across a single verse in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, in the introduction. This verse is not translated from ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz and it has nothing to do with the contents of the treatise, but is quoted in relation to the desolate conditions Maghribī found in Tabriz on his return to the town.
8.1 The Disappearance of the “Supreme Element” (al-ʿunṣur al-aʿẓam)
Another relevant sign of Maghribī’s process of simplification and abridgment is the almost complete omission from al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya of one of the most important and at the same time most enigmatic concepts mentioned by Ibn al-ʿArabī in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz. I am referring to the “Supreme Element” (al-ʿunṣur al-aʿẓam), which plays a primary role in the text and is introduced by the Shaykh al-Akbar at the very beginning of his treatise, in the first lines of the introduction.73 The Supreme Element is then specifically addressed in the chapter entitled “On the Creation of the Angels Enraptured with Love and of the Supreme Element” (Bāb fī khalq al-arwāḥ al-muhayyama wa-l-ʿunṣur al-aʿẓam), and it is mentioned three more times throughout the treatise.74 With regard to this it is interesting to cite here Ibn al-ʿArabī’s own words:
He also created the Supreme Element within the hidden invisible world that cannot be revealed to any creature, and such creation took place in one single instant, without occasional or causal succession.75
Going back [to the previous topic], we say that this Supreme Element concealed within the most invisible of the invisible world (al-makhzūn fī ghayb al-ghayb) has a peculiar inclination towards the “World of archetypal writing and inscription” (ʿālam al-tadwīn wa-l-tasṭīr), a world which does not posses existence as a determined entity. This [Supreme] Element is the most perfect being in the world (akmal mawjūd fī l-ʿālam).76
All reference to this important concept in Ibn al-ʿArabī’s cosmological treatment in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz is reduced by Maghribī to a brief mention within a list of cosmological entities connected with the First Intellect:
Its [scil. “of the First Intellect”] subtle relations (raqāyiq) extend to the Universal Soul, to Universal Nature, to Universal Substance and Body, to the Throne, to the Footstool, to the Sphere of Atlas, to the Sphere of the Mansions [of the Moon],77 to the [four] elements (arkān), to the moving spheres subjected to transmutation (aflāk-i mustaḥīla), to the movements, to generated beings, to the human being and to the Supreme Element, which is the first of beings, while the human being is the last.78
The most interesting thing about this single reference Maghribī makes to the Supreme Element in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya is that the sentence is nothing but a censored translation of a statement made by Ibn al-ʿArabī in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, and that Maghribī’s censorship goes precisely in the direction of reducing the significance of the Supreme Element. This is evident when we compare Maghribī’s words with those of Ibn al-ʿArabī:
Its [sc. “of the First Intellect”] subtle relations (raqāʾiq) extend to the [Universal] Soul, to the Dust [ar. habāʾ, which for Ibn al-ʿArabī is a synonym for Universal Substance], to the [Universal] Body, to the fixed spheres, to the centre, to the [four] elements (al-arkān) by way of elevation [?], to the moving spheres subjected to transmutation (al-aflāk al-mustaḥīla), to the movements, to generated beings, to the human being, and [finally] to their being connected with the Supreme Element, which is their origin (wa-huwa aṣluhā).79
Maghribī’s omission of the Supreme Element cannot therefore be considered casual. On the contrary, the deliberate omission of this concept appears to be an extremely meaningful act embodying Maghribī’s most exemplary characteristics, namely his mastery of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s corpus and his role as its interpreter and transmitter. The most reasonable way to explain the noteworthy absence of the Supreme Element in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya is that Maghribī decided to omit the concept because it was a sensitive matter. It was considered sensitive not just in Maghribī’s own opinion, and this is the important point, but in the both explicit and implicit opinion of Ibn al-ʿArabī. Ibn al-ʿArabī’s opinion which could only be grasped by someone who had a sound knowledge of how such a concept, presented as being the “most perfect being” in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, was treated by the Greatest Master throughout his immense literary corpus. The sensitive nature of the concept of the Supreme Element was explicitly expressed by Ibn al-ʿArabī in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, an early work written while he was still in the West, probably between 590 (1194) and 597 (1201).80 We notice this in the two passages quoted above, but the most explicit statement in this direction is found in the continuation of the second of those passages, where Ibn al-ʿArabī writes:
This [Supreme] Element is the most perfect being in the world (akmal mawjūd fī l-ʿālam). If we had not committed ourselves to a pact of secrecy concerning the explanation of its essential reality (wa-law lā ʿahd al-sitr alladhī akhadhnā ʿalaynā fī bayān ḥaqīqatihi), we would have talked more extensively about it, explaining the way the entire creation [lit. everything except God] is connected with it.81
This is how Ibn al-ʿArabī spoke about the Supreme Element in an early work, but it is useful to understand how the treatment of this concept by the Shaykh al-Akbar evolved over time, since this reinforces the impression of the sensitive nature of the topic explicitly stated in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz. It is in fact surprising to discover that the concept of Supreme Element is apparently not treated by Ibn al-ʿArabī in any of his many other works.
Of all these factors, the most relevant one is certainly that the Supreme Element is not mentioned in al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, particularly in the chapters devoted to cosmology and especially in Chapter 371. There are two possible explanations for Ibn al-ʿArabī’s consistent reticence, throughout his entire literary corpus, regarding a concept he had previously presented as of capital importance. The first one is to give credit to Ibn al-ʿArabī’s words in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, and interpret his later reserve on the topic as the result of the “pact of secrecy” regarding it, offering a tacit and implicit confirmation of its sensitive nature. The second is to suggest a change of thought, some evolution in Ibn al-ʿArabī’s mind and in his cosmology, which lead him to cast a veil of silence over the question. Ibn al-ʿArabī’s single known reference to the Supreme Element outside ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz comes to our aid in suggesting an answer to this dilemma.82 It is to be found in a remarkable passage where the Shaykh al-Akbar deals with the geometrical symbolism of the centre, the point and the circumference. For our present discussion, the relevant aspect is not the topic of the passage, but rather the fact that it contains a mention of the Supreme Element, that it is contained in al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, and that it is none other than a cross-reference to ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz:
If we mentioned the centre in some of our books, indeed we referred to it as an example for the central point of the sphere from which the circumference is generated […]; and we made it – that is the centre – the location of the Supreme Element, to show that the superior rules over the inferior; and we mentioned this, by allusion, in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz.83
The fact Ibn al-ʿArabī mentions the Supreme Element on at least one other occasion, at a distance of many years, and that he did it in his magnus opus, by referring the reader to his early work ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, seems to indicate that he never recanted the idea he presented in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz of the Supreme Element being a key cosmological principle: the “most perfect being in the world.” This suggests that his subsequent silence regarding the Supreme Element was due to that “pact of secrecy” regarding its nature that he mentions in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, resulting from a perception of sensitivity on the matter. In the light of these considerations, if we now go back to Maghribī and look at his apparently stunning decision to omit from al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya a concept that plays a key role in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz and is mentioned several times there, his decision no longer appears odd and hard to explain, but rather the result of a careful process of interpretation of the sources. Ibn al-ʿArabī points to the sensitivity of the topic both explicitly, in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, and implicitly by the consistent veil of secrecy cast upon it in all his later literary production. This is particularly glaring in those chapters of al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya specifically devoted to cosmology, as in Chapter 371. I think the most reasonable way to explain Maghribī’s only apparently surprising decision not to include the Supreme Element in his Persian treatise is to see it as the result of a careful deliberation on the sources and of a conscious act on his part as an interpreter of the Akbarian legacy. It is hardly a casual omission or the result of a personal aversion to this concept since there is no evidence of this. If this interpretation based on inter-textual analysis is correct, the decision to avoid addressing this sensitive concept in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya could also be seen as linked to Maghribī’s educational and teaching objectives, and to a desire not to burden his audience with the difficulty of facing a dilemma like the significance of the Supreme Element. On this point, we should take into account that Ibn al-ʿArabī himself, in omitting it from the cosmological treatment in al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, had tacitly indicated that it was possible to present a coherent cosmology without addressing this concept. This is another clue suggesting that Maghribī’s decision not to include the Supreme Element in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya was the result of his reflection on and interpretation of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s work. This consideration, taken with our hypothesis about why Maghribī decided not to include the Supreme Element in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, imply that while writing this text the Tabrizi scholar not only had an excellent copy of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz at his disposal, but that he also had a precise cognition of the cosmological discussions in Ibn al-ʿArabī’s other works, or at least in al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya. That Maghribī was aware of the contents of al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, and in particular of Chapter 371, while writing his own work, is supported by textual, or rather we should say by visual evidence rather than being a mere supposition. This is evident from the fact that some of the diagrams included by Maghribī in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya are actually based on the cosmological diagrams drawn by Ibn al-ʿArabī in Chapter 371 of al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya. This is obviously a relevant point for the scope of this study and it will be discussed in greater depth in the following pages (see §§ 9 and 9.1).
8.2 How Many Thrones?
Another clear example of simplification in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya is the elimination of the idea of a multiplicity of thrones, definable as a ‘symbolism of thrones,’84 which is instead strongly emphasized by Ibn al-ʿArabī in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz.85 We can immediately grasp the relevance Ibn al-ʿArabī bestowed on this idea within ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz if we read the titles of chapters five to eight.86 In them the Shaykh al-Akbar develops the symbolism of the throne (ar. ʿarsh/pl. ʿurūsh) mentioning the existence of five different thrones that can be identified with a same number of metaphysical and cosmological principles. These, from the most to the least universal, are the (1) “Throne of the Life,” (ʿarsh al-ḥayāt) corresponding with the Throne of the Divine Ipseity (ʿarsh al-huwiyya), also called the Throne of the Divine Will (ʿarsh al-mashīʾa); (2) the “Glorious Throne” (al-ʿarsh al-majīd), corresponding with the First Intellect; (3) the “Supreme Throne” (al-ʿarsh al-ʿaẓīm), corresponding with the Universal Soul; (4) The Throne of Mercy (ʿarsh al-raḥmāniyya), corresponding with the Sphere of the spheres (falak al-aflāk); and finally the “Noble Throne” (al-ʿarsh al-karīm) corresponding with the Footstool (al-kursī). Maghribī’s discussion of this matter follows a more classical pattern, as he only mentions one throne – the Throne of the Merciful (ʿarsh al-Raḥmān) – which he identifies with the first entity created within the Universal Body, having a spherical form and in turn containing within itself the Footstool (al-kursī) and all subsequent cosmological entities. This corresponds with Ibn al-ʿArabī’s description in Chapter 371 of Futūḥāt and in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz when he refers specifically to the Throne of Mercy (ʿarsh al-raḥmāniyya). The ‘Symbolism of the Five Thrones,’ together with the concept of the afore mentioned Supreme Element, are two of the main differences between the cosmological treatment Ibn al-ʿArabī presents in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz and the one he presents in al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya. It is therefore worth noting that these are also two main aspects Maghribī decides to omit from al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya.87 One could see this as an indication that Shīrīn Maghribī had in mind the cosmological discussion contained in al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya while he was compiling his Persian adaptation of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, at least as far as Chapter 371 is concerned. This indication does not stand alone, but seems to be supported by further evidence that will be discussed below. This is not a minor point, since it is another confirmation of how profound Maghribī’s acquaintance with the works of the Shaykh al-Akbar was; an acquaintance and indebtedness that did not however prevent him from remodelling the literary forms in which Akbarian doctrines were transmitted in his own socio-historical context, highlighting his simultaneous role as both a transmitter and adapter of the Akbarian heritage he had received.
9 al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya as a Commentary of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz
In the preceding sections Maghribī’s text has been considered and analyzed as a Persian translation and abridgment of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz. The discussion of these two aspects permitted several comments and observations on both the text and its author, but there is a third feature of this multi-faceted text that still needs to be addressed. This is that Maghribī’s text is also a sort of commentary on Ibn al-ʿArabī’s treatise. The most evident difference that strikes us in comparing al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya with ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, is the visual impact of the large number of diagrams contained in Maghribī’s Persian work. There are twelve, compared with the single diagram included in Ibn al-ʿArabī’s text. It is therefore primarily through the visual elements that Maghribī included in his work that we can see his main efforts at commenting on and clarifying Ibn al-ʿArabī’s original treatise. A discussion of the many diagrams included in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya is also an opportunity for mentioning two other interrelated aspects of the matter, one of which has been already touched upon. Our discussion rotates around the question of the sources for Maghribī’s eleven diagrams, over and above the “Diagram of the Transmutations of the Four Elements” which he took from ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz. A comparison with Chapter 371 of al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, Ibn al-ʿArabī’s cosmological text richest in visual elements, suggests that this was Maghribī’s visual source for at least the first three diagrams contained in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya.
9.1 Breaking Down al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya’s “Diagram of the Primordial Cloud (al-ʿamāʾ)”
As in the case for the written parts of the treatise, the relationship between Maghribī’s diagrams and their source is that he almost never faithfully followed and reproduced the original. In this specific case, Maghribī breaks down a single complex diagram contained in al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya into a number of simple separate diagrams, each containing minor differences with the original and aimed at highlighting specific aspects of the cosmological principles represented in them.88 The realization that certain visual elements in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya depend on another important cosmological text by the Shaykh al-Akbar confirms our observations about the relationship between Maghribī and Ibn al-ʿArabī’s works and intellectual legacy. Firstly he is acquainted with the original texts by the Shaykh al-Akbar. The fact that some diagrams included in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya derive from al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, and that Maghribī omitted from his Persian work two main doctrinal concepts Ibn al-ʿArabī included in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz but omitted in al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, allied to the evidence that Maghribī had a reliable copy of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz available while writing his text, all suggests that during his stay in Gilan Maghribī also had a copy of Futūḥāt in his hands, or at least of Chapter 371. Secondly, we should notice that the tendency to simplify evident in the written parts of Maghribī’s treatise, is also repeated in terms of the visual parts.
Ibn al-ʿArabī decided to group most of the diagrams of Chapter 371 into a single cluster, located between a first preliminary untitled segment of text and the ensuing nine sections (faṣl/fuṣūl) constituting the bulk of the chapter: in doing so he separated the images from the sections to which they respectively relate.89 Maghribī, while breaking down Ibn al-ʿArabī’s second diagram in Chapter 371 of al-Futūḥāt into three simpler ones, instead places each of these three diagrams within the specific section of his Persian text addressing the cosmological principle illustrated in them. Thus the First Intellect, the Universal Soul and Universal Nature, which are represented together with Universal Substance in the second diagram of Chapter 371 of al-Futūḥāt, entitled “The Form of the Cloud and What it Encloses as far as the Throne” (Figure 7), are represented by Maghribī in three separate diagrams, located in three separate chapters each specifically dedicated to one of these three concepts (Figures 8, 9 and 10).
Ibn al-ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, drawing of the “Diagram of the Form of the Cloud and What it Encloses as far as the Throne” as illustrated in Shams’s edition 6:186, based on MS Evkaf Müzesi 1870, fol. 90a
Citation: Oriens 49, 1-2 (2021) ; 10.1163/18778372-20210001
Shīrīn Maghribī, al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, drawing of the “Diagram of the First Intellect” as found in MS Schøyen 5350, fol. 119b
Citation: Oriens 49, 1-2 (2021) ; 10.1163/18778372-20210001
Shīrīn Maghribī, al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, drawing of the “Diagram of the Well-Preserved Tablet [sc. the Universal Soul]” as found in MS Schøyen 5350, fol. 121a
Citation: Oriens 49, 1-2 (2021) ; 10.1163/18778372-20210001
Shīrīn Maghribī, al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, drawing of the “Diagram of Universal Nature” as found in MS Schøyen 5350, fol. 122a
Citation: Oriens 49, 1-2 (2021) ; 10.1163/18778372-20210001
9.2 Ibn al-ʿArabī’s and Maghribī’s Differing Representations of the “Universal Body” (al-jism al-kullī)
Maghribī did not however content himself with remodeling the diagrams drawn by the Shaykh al-Akbar. In other instances he created completely original designs that have no equivalents in his reference texts. These diagrams, while visualizing doctrinal aspects that were already included in Ibn al-ʿArabī’s written treatment of the matter, differ from the Andalusian master’s visual representations of the same concepts. These differences could be the result of diverging opinions on the same concept, and therefore signs of some disagreement between Maghribī and Ibn al-ʿArabī. Another possibility is that they merely highlight different aspects of the same idea, rather than signaling some uncompromising divergence. The best examples of this phenomenon can be seen by comparing the diagrams drawn by Maghribī to illustrate the Universal Body and its relationship with Universal Substance on the one hand, and the Throne on the other, with those dedicated by Ibn al-ʿArabī to the same concepts. The radical difference between the two Sufi scholars’ representations is that Ibn al-ʿArabī represents the Universal Body with a circular form, while Maghribī represents it with a triangle.
In the second diagram in Chapter 371 of al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya (see Figure 7 above), already presented, Universal Substance is represented as a circle. This representation is reiterated in the third diagram of the same chapter (Figure 11), where the Universal Body and the Throne are also represented as concentric circles, the one encompassing the other.
Ibn al-ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, Drawing of the “Diagram of the Throne of sitting down, the Footstool, the two feet, the Water on which is the Throne, and Air which holds Water and Darkness” as illustrated in Shams’ edition 6:187, based on MS Evkaf Müzesi 1870, fol. 90b
Citation: Oriens 49, 1-2 (2021) ; 10.1163/18778372-20210001
On the other hand, Maghribī stresses the triangular nature of the Universal Body in two diagrams: the fourth and fifth included in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya (Figures 12 and 13 respectively).
Shīrīn Maghribī, al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, drawing of the “Diagram of the Form of the Universal Body and of Its Determination” as illustrated in MS Schøyen 5350, fol. 122b
Citation: Oriens 49, 1-2 (2021) ; 10.1163/18778372-20210001
Shīrīn Maghribī, al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, drawing of the “Diagram of the form of the Throne and its realities within the Universal Body” as illustrated in MS Schøyen 5350, fol. 123a
Citation: Oriens 49, 1-2 (2021) ; 10.1163/18778372-20210001
It is worth noting that Maghribī did not deduce this “triple/threefold” (muthallath) conformation of the Universal Body from any external source, but rather from the description of it contained in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, which he paraphrases in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya. These are Ibn al-ʿArabī’s words about the geometrical relationship between Universal Substance (the Dust, al-habāʾ, in this context), the Universal Body, and the Throne:
Then God – be He glorified – gave existence to the Dust (al-habāʾ, i.e. the Universal Substance) and the first form (ṣūra) that it received was the form of the [Universal] Body, which is length (al-ṭūl), width (al-ʿarḍ) and depth (al-ʿumq). In it manifested [Universal] Nature and its length derives from the [First] Intellect (al-ʿaql), its width from the [Universal] Soul and its depth is the vacuum up to the centre (wa-ʿumquhu al-khafāʾ ilā l-markaz).90 For this reason these three realities were in it, and it was threefold (muthallath), and this is the Universal Body. The first shape (shakl) received by this body was the spherical shape (al-shakl al-kurī), therefore it was the Sphere (al-falak), God – be He glorified – named it “Throne” and sat on it with His name “the Merciful” […].91
The following is Maghribī’s Persian treatment of the same issue when introducing the diagram reproduced in Figure 12 above:
Know that […] the philosophers (ḥukamā) call it [Universal] substance (hayūlā) because of the fact that it is the matter of the world of bodies (mādda-yi ʿālam-i ajsām). It does not become manifest except through the bodies (va ū rā ẓuhūr nīst illā bi-l-ajsām), and its extramental manifestation is the very same as the manifestation of bodies (va vujūd-i ū dar khārij ʿayn-i ẓuhūr-i ajsām ast). Since its existence follows that of the Quill [sc. the First Intellect], of the Tablet [sc. the Universal Soul] and of [Universal] Nature, and takes place by means of their intervention, it becomes manifest through the three realities that are Length, Width and Depth; its length deriving from the [First] Intellect, its width from the [Universal] Soul, and its depth from [Universal] Nature.92 It is empty up to the centre, which is filled with the totality of corporeal beings (jamīʿ-i jismāniyyāt), and this is the Mountain of the Universal Body (jabal-i jism-i kull), to which the Quranic expression “By the Mount!” alludes (wa-l-ṭūr, Kor. 52:1). The form and determination (ṣūra va taʿayyun) of the Universal Body is like this: [follow the diagram reproduced in Figure 12 above].93
The above passage and related diagram are followed by these lines, whose content corresponds with the second part of the previous quotation from Ibn al-ʿArabī’s ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz:
Know […] that when [universal] substance (hayūlā) became capable of welcoming forms and shapes (ṣuvar va ashkāl), […] the first form and shape it welcomed (qabūl kard) was the form of roundness (ṣūrat-i istidārat) and the circular shape (shakl-i mustadīr), which is the best among the shapes […], and this circular shape become the very shape of the Throne of the Merciful. This spherical shape (shakl-i kurī) [is] in the middle (dar vasaṭ) of the Universal Body and manifests its realities. The form of the Throne [of the Merciful] within the Universal Body and its realities, is like this: [see the diagram reproduced in Figure 13 above].94
Let us try to clarify what is happening here. Ibn al-ʿArabī calls the Universal Body triple/threefold (muthallath), and represents it as a circle. Maghribī, on the basis of this very same notion, represents it as a triangle (also muthallath). This is the umpteenth example of the twofold relationship linking Maghribī’s intellectual activity to that of Ibn al-ʿArabī: it is one of dependency and at the same time of reworking. It might also suggest an evolution of cosmological doctrine on the part of Ibn al-ʿArabī, given that the concept of the threefold nature of the Universal Body which he enunciated in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz in an early phase of his life is completely absent from al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya,95 where he represents it in a circular form. At the same time, however, it is clearly stated in both ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz and al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, as well as in Maghribī’s al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya (compare the previous citations) that the first form (ṣūra) received by the Universal Body, i.e., the Throne of the Merciful, is circular. Why then does Maghribī choose to stress the triple aspect? And how can the formal discrepancy between Ibn al-ʿArabī’s and Maghribī’s representations of the Universal Body be explained?
9.3 Sufi Diagrams: Symbolic Forms beyond the Form
Any attempt to answer these questions requires us to clarify one of the most important aspects regarding the employment of visualizations in Sufi literature. A distinguished historian of Islamic Philosophy and Intellectual History, during a conversation at an international conference in the United Kingdom where I presented a preliminary version of this research, half seriously and half teasingly, asked me whether it aimed at ascertaining whether such and such a metaphysical or cosmological principle was triangular, square or circular, stressing the lack of objectivity in such visual representations. If however we can easily grasp the usefulness of studying these visual materials from the point of view of the history and circulation of ideas, of codicology, philology and the history of books and thought, regardless of the lack of objectivity of such representations, the provocative question posed above elicits a general question. What does it mean to represent metaphysical and cosmological principles in one or another geometrical form? What does it mean to represent the First Intellect as a circle, or the Universal Soul as a rectangle, as Maghribī does, or to combine many of these forms in a more complex geometrical figure, as Ibn al-ʿArabī sometimes does? The answer lies in the understanding of the special nature of such metaphysical and cosmological principles and objects of knowledge: they are universal and therefore not confined within the limitations of corporeal forms. This means that any representation of such principles is necessarily symbolic, rather than a description of a spatial entity, and that neither the Sufi masters who drew them, nor the original readers to whom the texts and diagrams were addressed, ever thought that they should be considered as forms in the material and concrete sense of the term, or defined representations of objects in space. How can we affirm this? There are at least two arguments that support this statement. If we wish to use the categories employed in Islamicate intellectual discourse, these two arguments could be defined as intellectual (ʿaqlī) and scriptural (naqlī). The intellectual argument is based on the observation that according to the authors under examination most of the concepts and principles represented in the diagrams under discussion, particularly all those which ontologically precede the Universal Body (an incomplete list of these includes Divine Essence, the Aḥadiyya, the Wāḥidiyya, the Cloud, the First Intellect, the Universal Soul, Universal Nature, Universal Substance) not only lie totally beyond the corporeal, but beyond space and time.96 This is why trying to bestow a ‘form’ (as it is commonly understood) on concepts transcending the space-time dimension is just absurd. The textual argument is based on explicit statements by the Sufi masters who drew these symbolic depictions and goes in the same direction. According to them, the diagrams included in their texts are not intended as material forms, but rather as forms belonging to the World of Archetypes. On this point it is helpful to quote a passage from Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Kitāb Inshāʾ al-dawāʾir (The Book of the Production of Circles), or the very passage from al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya in which Maghribī introduces the question of the diagrams:
[Ibn al-ʿArabī, Kitāb Inshāʾ al-dawāʾir97]
Chapter on the Universal Substance Diagram (al-jadwal al-hayūlānī).
Universal Substance is the circle (al-dāʾira) embracing the beings without exception or restriction. […] This would be the representation of its form if it had a form (wa-hādhā mithāl ṣūratihā law kānat lahā ṣūra). In any case [i.e., even though it does not have a form], since Universal Substance is intelligible and knowable to us (maʿqūla maʿlūma ʿindanā), we have been capable of externalizing it in a representation, even if in a synthetic manner (qaddarnā ʿalā ibrāzihā fī l-mithāl, wa-lākin mujmalatan).
[Maghribī, al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya98]
An epistle was compiled […] and was then sent concerning the mode of manifestation and arrangement of worlds (kayfiyyat-i ẓuhūr va tartīb-i ʿavālim) and of the coming into view of the [peculiar] shapes of the landmarks by which one guides himself on the way (va burūz-i ashkāl-i maʿālim), starting from the origin of the world up to Adam’s existentiation (min badʾ al-ʿālam ilā ījād Ādam), [clothing these doctrines] in a dress [made] of circles and shapes (dar kisvat-i davāʾir va ashkāl), and archetypal and imaginary forms (va dar ṣūrat-i mithāl va khayāl), in order to ease their visualization and facilitate their contemplation (tashīlan li-taṣawwurihā wa-taysīran li-tadabburihā)
These diagrams or geometrical shapes should be regarded as eminently symbolic representations. Their objective is not to describe the material form of these principles, which is fundamentally absent, but to allude by means of a symbolic representation to their ontological qualities and when they are combined together in a single representation, to the logical and symbolic relationships and connections between them.
To sum up, it can be said that the form of these metaphysical concepts is not corporeal but symbolic, not three-dimensional but rather multi-dimensional, not static but dynamic. Their multi-dimensionality and dynamism derives from the fact that their form is the result of an attempt to represent in visual terms their qualitative aspects, which are multiple: this can lead to multiple forms of illustration depending on the aspects and qualities taken into account on each occasion.
As for the fact that they are not physical but symbolic forms, the multi-dimensional and dynamic character of the forms employed in Sufi literature can be deduced from both independent reflection on the texts and diagrams, and from explicit statements made by the authors. On this point, it is interesting to mention what we could call the issue of the ‘form(s) of the Throne.’
9.4 The Form(s) of the Throne
The visual representation(s) of the cosmological principle called the “Throne of the Merciful” (ʿarsh al-raḥmān) appears to be the most helpful in clarifying the multi-dimensional and dynamic character shared by many of the visual representations found in Sufi literature. This question is in itself so interesting, as are the other general principles ruling the visual symbolism at work in some Sufi texts, that it is almost a pity to have to address them without placing them at the centre of the discussion and offering a deeper analysis, but merely using them as devices to support some observations about a specific case in Maghribī’s cosmological text as we are doing in these pages. If we keep within the limits of the scope of this article, we can say that Ibn al-ʿArabī refers to the dynamic form of the Throne in Chapter 371 of al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya in two ways: tacitly, by means of the diagrams, and explicitly within the text.99 If we look at the form of the Throne in the third diagram in Chapter 371 of al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya (Figure 11 reproduced above), we notice that it is represented simultaneously as a circle and a square. This phenomenon, which appears to be an allusion to the question of the quadrature of the circle, is also implicitly emphasized if we compare the representation of the Throne in this diagram to Ibn al-ʿArabī’s dynamic representation of the Throne in the Land of Resurrection in another diagram in the same chapter (Figure 14).
Ibn al-ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, Drawing of the portion of the “Diagram of the Form of the Land of Resurrection” representing the “Throne of Decision and Judgment” (ʿarsh al-faṣl wa-l-qaḍāʾ) as illustrated in Shams’s edition 6:190, based on MS Evkaf Müzesi 1870, fol. 92a
Citation: Oriens 49, 1-2 (2021) ; 10.1163/18778372-20210001
Here the Throne is no longer represented as a square inscribed in a circle, but as a magic octagram (a specific type of eight-pointed star) inscribed in a circle, the magic octagram being the geometrical representation of the rotation of the square, or rather, of the transformation of the square into a circle or vice versa of the quadrature of the circle.100 For reasons already mentioned we cannot here address the question as to why Ibn al-ʿArabī chose to represent the Throne in differing forms. If we stick to the geometric description, we can only observe that he represents the single object of knowledge called “the Throne” with three different shapes: the square, the octagram, and the circle. Having said this, it is interesting to look at Maghribī’s opinion on the form(s) of the Throne in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, because it confirms the idea of dynamic form even more explicitly than the Shaykh al-Akbar does. This is true despite the fact that Maghribī, unlike Ibn al-ʿArabī, affirms that the Throne has only one form, and that this form is circular, and that he consistently represents the Throne as circular in his diagrams (cf. Figure 13 above).101 Paradoxical as this might appear, the relevance of Maghribī’s discourse on the various forms of the Throne derives precisely from his coherent opinion that the Throne was especially circular, since the Tabrizi master was perfectly aware that the question of the form(s) of the Throne generated multiple interpretations and representations. This awareness led him to make the issue explicit in writing in a discursive way that also makes it much clearer for the modern reader. The first part of the passage relating to this question has already been translated above:
Know […] that when [universal] substance (hayūlā) became capable of welcoming forms and shapes (ṣuvar va ashkāl), […] the first form and shape it welcomed (qabūl kard) was the form of roundness (ṣūrat-i istidārat) and the circular shape (shakl-i mustadīr), which is the best among the shapes […], and this circular shape become the very shape of the Throne of the Merciful. This spherical shape (shakl-i kurī) [is] in the middle (dar vasaṭ) of the Universal Body and manifests its realities. The form of the Throne [of the Merciful] within the Universal Body and its realities is like this: [see the diagram reproduced in Figure 13 above].
At this point Maghribī includes two diagrams reiterating the circular form of the Throne (one is the diagram in Figure 13 above, the other is not reproduced in this study), and the relevant text continues as follows:
[…] although some amongst the People of Unveiling (aṣḥāb-i kashf) have also seen it [sc. the Throne] as being quadrangular (murabbaʿ) because it came into being from [Universal] Nature that combines the four qualities named heat, cold, humidity and dryness; […] and some even saw it as a triangle (muthallath).102
9.5 Differing Representations of the “Universal Body”: Conclusion
Now let us return to the specific case of the form of the Universal Body according to Ibn al-ʿArabī and Maghribī, which was the departure point for the clarifications made in the preceding two paragraphs. As I understand it, the differing geometrical configurations the two masters gave to the same principle should be seen neither as a contradiction, nor as an indication of doctrinal disagreement, but as the result of the fact that the two scholars wanted to stress different aspects of the cosmological principle named “Universal Body” in their respective diagrams. Ibn al-ʿArabī’s representation is circular because, according to him (and he is followed by Maghribī, see above), the first form admitted and received by the Universal Body must necessarily have been the most perfect of all forms, i.e. the sphere. Instead, Maghribī represents the Universal Body as a triangle-mountain in order to stress different aspects of it. One is the fact that the Universal Body gets manifested through three universal principles that logically precede it, that are the First Intellect, the Universal Soul and Universal Substance, from which it derives its length, its width and its depth. The second aspect is precisely the threefold nature of the Universal Body, corresponding with the three spatial dimensions necessarily inherent in the very concept of body, and therefore eminently suited to describe it (cf. the passage translated above, § 9.2).
9.6 The Missing All-Encompassing Diagram
In the final part of al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya we come across another example of the explanatory nature of the text, typical of a commentary. This example is once again connected with the role of diagrams in Maghribī’s works. Maghribī decided to conclude the treatise (at least in his intentions) not with a written text, but with an image, a diagram presented with a description stressing its explanatory function:
Just as [before] we presented each one [of them] in detail (tafṣīlan), we will now show within a circle the forms of the worlds (ṣuvar-i ʿavālim) up to Adam all together in a comprehensive and summarizing way (ijmālan va jamʿan), in order to facilitate [their] memorization and the accuracy [of their representation] (tashīlan li-l-ḥifẓ va al-ḍabṭ), and I will open this locked door that until now has not been opened in this way before the seekers and the deserving ones, to seek to gain God’s favour. […] The form of the all-encompassing circle (dāʾira-yi kulliyya-yi jāmiʿ) is this, and the praise belongs to God, the Lord of all Being, and the prayer be on Muḥammad and all his family and companions.103
The expectations created within the reader by Maghribī’s high-flown presentation of this all-encompassing diagram, placed at the end of the treatise so as to seal it, are frustrated by the fact that this diagram is missing in MS Schøyen 5350, the only manuscript that preserves the visual elements of al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya.104 Whether this is a chance omission, caused by the vicissitudes the transmission of the text underwent, or whether it is due to some scruple on the part of the copyist in reproducing and disseminating a document presented by its author as somehow exceptional, we do not know. Maghribī’s words in introducing the diagram suggest that it was not in the author’s intentions to conceal it and it was therefore present in the holograph of the work. Maghribī’s description of the diagram again reminds us of a visual device elaborated by Ibn al-ʿArabī. This is the tenth diagram contained in Chapter 371 of al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, described by the Shaykh al-Akbar as being the “form of the whole world and of the order of its spiritual and physical, high and low layers.”105 The emphasis Maghribī places on the originality of his own diagram, together with the fact that another of the diagrams contained in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, the tenth one (fol. 136b, which has not been discussed in this article), also seems to be inspired by the tenth diagram of Chapter 371 of al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, suggests that the now missing last diagram he included in the treatise under examination would have had a fairly original and innovative structure.
10 al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya as a Compendium of Akbarian Cosmology
From our preceding analysis of its composite nature as a translation, abridgment and commentary, what clearly emerges is that al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya despite being based on Ibn al-ʿArabī’s ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz (with some references to al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya), is in fact an independent text. Its degree of discrepancy with its principal source and of the extent to which Maghribī reworked the material it contained can be clearly seen from the comparison of the two passages about the Universal Body translated above, the related diagrams, and the many observations presented in the preceding pages. Such a degree of freedom in manipulating the original text and its contents closely recalls the idea of compendium. The fact that al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya is also partly inspired by al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya strengthens this impression. This sensation is reinforced by the fact that Maghribī uses the term jāmiʿ, which means “compilation,” or “compendium,” in the introduction when describing its contents, saying that “an epistle was compiled that it might be a compendium of the science […] (risāla-yi ka jāmiʿ-i ʿilm […] bāshad […] inshā karda).”106
11 On the Question of Authorship
In our discussion so far some primary characteristics of Maghribī’s text emerge in comparing it with Ibn al-ʿArabī’s ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz. There is a consistent attempt to simplify and present topics in a plain clear prose. There is also a shift from a prose containing a strong mystical dimension to a text more closely reminiscent of a scientific manual, although it is dealing with a special type of science ultimately derived from spiritual inspiration rather than empirical method. Another one of the salient traits of Maghribī’s text is the tendency to impersonalize Ibn al-ʿArabī’s style, and to present the cosmological information included in the treatise not on the basis of a direct personal authority – whether it be his own or that of Ibn al-ʿArabī – but rather through the mediation of a spiritual and intellectual environment whose participants recognized themselves in the teachings of the “Greatest Master,” and in which his authority was so central as to be obvious, to the point of requiring no explicit acknowledgment, especially in study-books aimed at restricted fruition within the group. In the final part of the text, in the lines preceding the mention of the all-encompassing final diagram discussed above, we find a telling reference by Maghribī to such collective authority which, although it could appear almost to replace the personal authority of Ibn al-ʿArabī, was in fact the very mirror of it, reflecting and spreading his aura in the surrounding intellectual environment. Here we read:
As the discourse reached this point, we conclude the book, because divine science is endless while life is short and in the meanwhile something more serious than this happened. The content of this book is in accordance with the School of the People of Truth (madhhab-i ahl-i ḥaqq), who are the People of Unveiling and of Religious Law (ahl-i kashf va sharīʿat), and it is confirmed by the [Holy] Book and the Sunna. According to People of Inspiration (ahl-i kashf) philosophy (ḥikmat) is also mingled in some passages [of the text]; but [in any case] that [part] too is consonant with and in accordance with the [Holy] Book and the Sunna.107
The strong degree of reworking of the main source on which Maghribī based his text, the idea of writing a sort of compendium of Akbarian cosmology, the choice of impersonalizing the text, of conferring a more scientific and manual-like style on it, the intended audience of the treatise which was composed for a restricted circle rather than for public circulation, and finally a tendency to draw on Ibn al-ʿArabī’s authority through the mediation of an intellectual community, all taken together constitute a series of factors that explain the omission of any explicit reference in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya to the Greatest Master. On the basis of our general knowledge about the author, this omission should not be associated with a hypothetic attempt at plagiarism on the part of Maghribī, whose distinctive and most renowned trait was precisely his Akbarian affiliation. This affiliation was so significant that it even determined the pen name (takhalluṣ) with which he signed his poems,108 and that Maghribī indicates Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Tarjumān al-ashwāq as the model for his own poetry in the introduction of his songbook (dīvān).109 This impression is further substantiated by the license Maghribī issued to Kamāl al-Dīn Ismāʿīl, briefly discussed in Section 7 above, from which we learn that Maghribī taught and transmitted numerous Ibn al-ʿArabī works, including ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz. In fact, it is rather difficult to imagine a scholar teaching a text and simultaneously trying to plagiarize it.
12 Conclusions
This study presents a late 8th/14th century treatise on cosmology entitled al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, written by the Tabrizi Sufi scholar and poet Muḥammad Shīrīn Maghribī (d. 810/1408), for the first time to the scholarly community. The analysis of this recently discovered Persian text, thanks to its scope and articulate structure, sheds light on several questions. Its examination provides new clues about the life of its author, suggesting possible links between Maghribī and regional political actors, particularly in the Gilan region (§ 3). Because of its complex relationship with Ibn al-ʿArabī’s ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, of which al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya is, at one and the same time, a Persian translation, compendium and commentary, the comparative analysis of these two texts provides important evidence of Maghribī’s profound knowledge of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s work, and of his cosmological writings in particular, from ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz to the cosmological elaboration contained in the author’s magnum opus, the Meccan Revelations (§§ 4–9). The merging in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya of various cosmological texts by Ibn al-ʿArabī, together with its rich set of diagrams, makes it a compendium of Akbarian cosmology (§ 10). The work shows contemporaneously Maghribī’s command of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s original texts and his personal touch. This is demonstrated by his thoughtful interpretation, translation, adaptation, reworking and commentary on the primary sources. The other features of Maghribī’s authorial intervention are the systematization and impersonalization of the discourse (esp. § 8), the clarity and simplicity of the prose and the fact that the teachings derived from works of Ibn al-ʿArabī are presented as based on the authority of a whole spiritual community rather than on the direct personal authority of the Shaykh al-Akbar (§§ 8, 11). These and other elements which emerge from the analysis of al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya all contribute to situating Muḥammad Shīrīn Maghribī within the School of Ibn al-ʿArabī, and advance our knowledge about the complex process of diffusion and ascendancy of Akbarian texts and doctrines towards the end of the 8th/14th century, with special regard to the Persianate world (esp. §§ 6, 6.1). The presence of a rich set of diagrams in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya offers the opportunity to touch upon one of the main characteristics of Maghribī’s literary production, which is his extensive use of visual elements in his prose works (§§ 1 and passim). There are several reasons for this but two are particularly meaningful. One is that Maghribī understood that diagrams were excellent teaching aids that well suited the didactic style of his writings. The second reason is once more connected with Ibn al-ʿArabī and the Akbarian legacy, given that the famous Andalusian Sufi employed visual elements several times throughout his voluminous literarily production. The question of diagrams is directly connected with the phenomenon of ‘Visual Sufism,’ a trend in Sufi literature that complements the discursive treatment of major doctrinal questions with the use of visual tools, a phenomenon that gained ground especially from the beginning of the 7th/13th century. Ibn al-ʿArabī’s literary corpus, thanks to its exceptional reception, was a main impulse for this tendency, in which Shīrīn Maghribī also played a significant role thanks to his systematic employment of diagrams in his prose works and the way in which they were subsequently received.110 The analysis of similarities and differences between some diagrams included in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya and others used by Ibn al-ʿArabī in his works, in addition to corroborating the evidence already presented about Maghribī’s attitude vis-à-vis Ibn al-ʿArabī’s intellectual legacy, are an opportunity for trying to clarify how Sufi authors and their selected readership conceived the graphic representations included in certain Islamic mystical works. These were understood as symbolic representations (“like vestments clothing them,” this is an image used by Maghribī) of meta-physical principles not subjected to time, space or formal determination. Such symbolic representations were considered to be situated in the intermediary realm of the imagination, lying between the highest ontological levels entirely beyond the form on the one hand, and the physical world on the other. They were conceived by their designers as aids for the novice to help grasp supernal metaphysical realities that are too universal to be limited by any form, even the most perfect one (esp. §§ 9.2–5). The examination of a diagram included by Ibn al-ʿArabī in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz and reproduced by Maghribī in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya offers us the opportunity to suggest the philological potential of the visual elements embedded in this kind of literature. This experiment in visual philology is useful in assessing the quality of the copy of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz Shīrīn Maghribī had at his disposal during the writing of al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya (§ 6.2). This kind of investigation has led us indirectly to observe major variations on this diagram in the manuscript tradition of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s work which were not taken into account in the classical edition of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz undertaken by Nyberg in the early twentieth century and still considered the reference edition today (§ 6.2).
Acknowledgments
The findings presented in this article are one of the results of a research project that has, at different stages, been generously funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Kolleg for Islamicate Intellectual History at the University of Bonn, directed by Prof. Judith Pfeiffer, and by the Gerda Henkel Foundation (research grant no. AZ 40/F/18). I am deeply grateful to these two German institutions and to their scientific and administrative staff for the extensive support and assistance they have provided me.
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Peacock, Andrew C.S. “Two Sufis of Ilkhānid Anatolia and their Patrons: Notes on the Works of Mu’ayyid al-Din Jandi and Da’ud al-Qaysari.” In Cultural Encounters in Anatolia in the Medieval Period: The Ilkhanids in Anatolia. Symposium Proceedings, 21–22 May 2015, Ankara. Ed. by Suzan Yalman and Filiz Yenişehirlioğlu. Ankara: Vehbi Koç Ankara Studies Research Center, 2019, 11–28.
Rabino di Borgomale, Hiacinthe Louis. “Rulers of Lāhijān and Fūman, in Gīlān, Persia.” In Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (Jan. 1918): 85–100.
Rabino di Borgomale, Hiacinthe Louis. “Rulers of Gilan (Rulers of Gaskar, Tul and Naw, Persian Talish, Tulam, Shaft, Kuhdum, Kuchisfahan, Daylaman, Ranikuh, and Ashkawar, in Gilan, Persia).” In Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (Jul. 1920): 277–296.
Shīrāzī, Bābā Rukn al-Dīn. Nuṣūṣ al-khuṣūṣ fī tarjama al-Fuṣūṣ. Ed. by Rajab-ʿAlī Maẓlūmī. Tehran: Muʾassasa-yi muṭālaʿāt-i islāmī-i dānishgāh-i Tihrān, 1359 h.sh./1980.
The Muhyiddin Ibn ʿArabi Society Archive Report: Catalogue of Ibn ʿArabī’s Works. http://archive.ibnarabisociety.org/archive_reports/cover.pdf.
Tyser, Sophie. “Visualizing the Architecture of the Universe: Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Diagrams in Chapter 371 of the Meccan Openings.” Paper presented at the Visualizing Sufism Workshop, hold at the Alexander von Humboldt Kolleg for Islamicate Intellectual History, University of Bonn, on May 14 2018.
Yahya, Osman. Histoire et classification de l’ oeuvre d’ Ibn ʿArabi: Etude critique I–II. Damascus: Institut Français de Damas, 1964.
Yousef, Mohamed Haj. Ibn ʿArabî – Time and Cosmology. Abingdon-New York: Routledge, 2008.
Leonard Lewisohn, A Critical Edition of the Divan of Maghrebi (With an Introduction Into His Life, Literary School, and Mystical Poetry), 2 vols. (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of London, 1988); Idem, “Moḥammad Shirin Maghrebi,” Sufi, A Journal of Sufism 1 (1988–9): 30–37; Idem, “S̲h̲īrīn Magh̲ribī, Muḥammad,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, vol. 9 (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 1997), 484; Idem, A Critical Edition of the Divan of Muhammad Shirin Maghribi (Tehran-London: Institute of Islamic Studies (Tehran University-McGill University)-London School of Oriental and African Studies, 1372 h.sh./1993); Abū Ṭālib Mīr-ʿĀbidīnī, Dīvān-i Shams-i Maghribī: ghazaliyyāt, tarjīʿāt, rubāʿiyyāt, fahlaviyyāt, Risāla-yi Jām-i jahān-namā, 3rd edition (Tehran: Muʾassasa-yi intishārāt-i Amīr Kabīr, 1393 h.sh./2014); Edward G. Browne, “Maghribi (Muhammad Shirin Maghribi of Tabriz),” in A Literary History of Persia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928), 3:330–44.
Mīr-ʿĀbidīnī, Dīvān, 243–56.
William Chittick provided a thoughtful explanation of this expression: “The term ‘school of Ibn Arabī’ was coined by Western scholars to refer to the fact that many Muslim thinkers – most of whom considered themselves Sufis – took seriously Ibn Arabī’s title as the ‘Greatest Master’ (al-shaykh al-akbar) and consciously rooted their perspective in their own understanding of his theoretical framework. They considered their approach as different from that of falsafah and kalām as well as from that of the vast majority of Sufi. […] Ibn Arabī established no specific madhhab or ṭarīqah. He did have spiritual disciples and does seem to have passed on a cloak of investiture […], but there is no recognizable organization that carries his name. No Sufi order has attempted to claim him as its exclusive heritage, and his books were studied and considered authoritative by members of most orders at one time or another. For other reasons also, we have to use caution in talking about Ibn Arabī’s ‘school’. The term may suggest that there is a set of doctrines to which a group of thinkers adhered. In fact, Ibn Arabī’s followers did not accept some common catechism, nor did they all follow the same approach to Islamic thought.” See William Chittick, “The school of Ibn ʿArabī,” in History of Islamic Philosophy, ed. by Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Oliver Leaman (London-New York: Routledge, 1996), 914–5.
The adjective “Akbarian,” or “Akbarī,” derived from the honorific al-shaykh al-akbar, i.e., the “Greatest [Sufi] Master,” Ibn al-ʿArabī is known by. I am not aware of the existence of any specific study on the history of this term. As far as I know, the earliest textual use of the term al-shaykh al-akbar referring to Ibn al-ʿArabī is found in a writing by Saʿīd al-Dīn al-Farghānī (d. 699/1300) dated around 662 (1264) or 665 (1267) discussed by Stephen Hirtenstein in “Malik MS 4263: A manuscript case study,” Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn ʿArabī Society 61 (2017): 126–42, 138–9 and 141–2.
On Maghribī’s activity in transmitting Ibn al-ʿArabī’s silsilas see Giovanni Maria Martini, “Muḥammad Shīrīn Maghribī (d. 810/1408) as a Key Agent in the Transmission of Akbarī Silsilas,” Arabica (accepted for publication, forthcoming in 2021).
Diagrams were already sporadically present in some Sufi texts of the earlier period (e.g. al-Ḥallāj, d. 309/922, Shams al-Dīn al-Daylāmī, d. ca. 593/1197), but from the thirteenth century onwards the use of visual elements in Sufi literature received new impetus and greater diffusion, perhaps also due to their use by very influential authors in Islamic intellectual history, including Ibn al-ʿArabī. This topic was the object of a workshop entitled Visualizing Sufism I organized in 2018 at the Alexander von Humboldt Kolleg for Islamicate Intellectual History at the University of Bonn. The results of the workshop will be the subject of a collective volume.
By this expression I mean the visual elements, mostly symbolic diagrams, which are found in certain Sufi literature. In coining this expression I took inspiration from a study by the Hebraist and Romance Philologist Giulio Busi entitled “Qabbalah visiva,” that is, “Visual Qabbalah,” which addresses the question of visual elements in Kabbalistic literature: Giulio Busi, Qabbalah visiva (Turin: Einaudi, 2005).
I addressed this specific aspect in a paper entitled “Shīrīn Maghribī’s (d. 810/1408) Visual Sufism: Diagrams, Intellectual Networks and the Transmission of Spiritual Knowledge in 14th Century Tabriz and beyond” which I presented at the Visualizing Sufism Workshop. This study will be published in the proceedings of the workshop.
Leonard Lewisohn, Divan of Maghrebi, 1:38; Idem, “S̲h̲īrīn Magh̲ribī, Muḥammad,” 484; al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya is only listed, without any comment, in Mīr-ʿĀbidīnī, Dīvān, 17.
These are MS Oslo, Schøyen Collection 5350 and MS Tehran, Kitābkhāna-yi Majlis 10103. A detailed codicological and philological discussion of these two manuscripts does not fall into the scope of this article, although the ensuing pages include some comments on these matters in relation to the themes addressed in the present study. I prepared a critical edition of the treatise based on these two manuscripts but this being currently unpublished when citing the text in the present article I will refer to the pagination of the MS Schøyen.
In al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya Maghribī makes explicit reference to twelve diagrams, but the only manuscript of the text which includes the visual elements, MS Schøyen 5350, does not include the twelfth and last diagram which, at the present stage of the research, must be considered missing.
On graphic representations of cosmological ideas in Islamic texts, see Ahmet T. Karamustafa, “Cosmographical Diagrams,” in The History of Cartography, Volume 2, Book 1: Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies, ed. by J.B. Harley and David Woodward (Chicago-London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 71–89.
Ḥāfiẓ Ḥusayn Karbalāʾī (known as Ibn Karbalāʾī), Rawḍāt al-jinān va jannāt al-janān, ed. by Jaʿfar Sulṭān al-Qurrāʾī, 2 vols. (Tabriz: Intishārāt-i sutūda, 1383 h.sh./2004), especially 1: 66.
The Peace (al-salām) being one of God’s names.
Maghribī, al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, fol. 116b. The expression wa-aʿazza anṣārahu wa-ḍāʿafa aqdārahu can be compared with a similar formula (aʿazza llāhu anṣārahu wa-ḍāʿafa aqdārahu) used by Ḥasan b. Yūsuf al-Ḥillī, Muntahā l-maṭlab fī taḥqīq al-madhhab, 3rd ed., vol. 3 (Mashhad: Majmaʿ al-buḥūth al-islāmiyya, 1429/1387 h.sh./2008), introduction, 44, l. 9.
Ammā baʿd chunīn gūyad rāqim-i īn marqūm […] al-shaykh […] Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad […] al-Maghribī al-mushtahar bi-Shīrīn […] ka chūn baʿd az muddat-i madīd va ʿahd-i baʿīd bi-Tabrīz-i dilāvīz ʿawd kard, ān maʿmūra rā kharāb yāft va ān daryā rā sarāb dīd, bā dil guft bayt: ‘Ān Miṣr-i mamlakat ka tū dīdī kharāb shud, va ān Nīl-i makramat ka shinīdī sarāb shud!’. Āyat ‘Ka-sarāb biqīʿa yaḥsabuhu al-ẓamʾān māʾan’ (Kor. 24:39) bar khwānad va rākib-i ʿazm rā bar markab-i safar nishānad. Ahālī va ṭullāb va mavālī va aṣḥāb ka sarsāz dāshtand mā rā az safar bāz dāshtand va bi-dil-i navāzī pīsh āmadand tā māniʿ-i safar-i īn faqīr āmadand. See Maghribī, al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, fol. 117a.
Īn maʿnā dar khāṭir-i īn darvīsh āmad ka dar ayyām-i mufāraqat-i jismānī ravābiṭ-i muvāṣalat-i rūḥānī az ān dūstān-i jānī munqaṭaʿ nagardānad va bi-irsāl-i murāsalāt va iblāgh-i mukātabāt sharāyiṭ-i maḥabbat rā muḥkam va rābiṭ-i mavaddat rā marbūṭ dārad. See Maghribī, al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, fol. 117b.
That al-Durr al-farīd was written by Maghribī while in Gilan was already observed by Mīr ʿĀbidīnī, Dīvān, 18. A critical edition of this unpublished treatise has been prepared by the author of this study. The oldest witness employed in my critical edition is MS Istanbul, Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, Şehid Ali Paşa 1373, dated 845 (1442), wherein the relevant passage is on fols. 32b–33a. I am planning to publish a volume containing the critical edition of this and the other prose works of Shīrīn Maghribī.
See Lewisohn, Divan of Maghrebi, vol. 1, chap. XI, “The Poet’s Creed,” pp. 162 ff.
Ibn Karbalāʾī, Rawḍāt al-jinān, 1: 367. This passage was discussed by Lewisohn (Divan of Maghrebi, Appendix I, § 2 “Bezzari’s Account of Maghrebi’s Initiation Ceremony,” 1: 190–2), who focused however on other aspects, rather than addressing the question of Maghribī’s repeated journies to Gilan and his possible links with regional political elites. This aspect could hardly have been considered without having access to the information contained in Maghribī’s prose works like al-Durr al-farīd and especially al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya.
Ibn Karbalāʾī, Rawḍāt al-jinān, 1: 367.
Among Rabino’s various publications on Gilan for the scope of our study the following works are particularly relevant: “Rulers of Lāhijān and Fūman, in Gīlān, Persia,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (Jan. 1918): 85–100 and “Rulers of Gilan (Rulers of Gaskar, Tul and Naw, Persian Talish, Tulam, Shaft, Kuhdum, Kuchisfahan, Daylaman, Ranikuh, and Ashkawar, in Gilan, Persia),” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (Jul. 1920): 277–96. Mīr Ẓāhir al-Dīn Marʿashī, Tārīkh-i Gīlān va Daylāmistān, ed. by Manūchihr Sutūda, 2nd edition (Tehran: Intishārāt-i iṭṭilāʿāt, 1364 h.sh./1985).
Vocalized “Dubbāj” by Rabino.
There is of course the possibility that the dedicatee of al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya was not located in Gilan. Considering that Maghribī wrote the treatise for his disciples and friends who remained in Tabriz, it could also reasonably be suggested that the dedicatee was, and could be sought, among Maghribī’s acquaintances in his hometown. My researches however have not detected the presence of any Amir named Sāsān active in Tabriz at that time, e.g. no Amir Sāsān is mentioned by Muḥammad Javād Mashkūr in his Tārīkh-i Tabrīz tā pāyān-i qarn-i nuhum-i hijrī (Tehran: Intishārāt-i anjuman-i āthār-i millī, 1352 h.sh./1973). What strengthens the hypothesis that the dedicatee was located in Gilan is the fact that Maghribī repeatedly visited the region, that al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya was written in Gilan, and that it is possible to associate it with a specific historical figure.
Maghribī utilizes three different terms to refer to them. These are ṭullāb (“students”), aṣḥāb (“fellows”), and dūstān (“friends”). Cf. notes 16 and 17 above.
This is the beginning of a ḥadīth affirming: “Indeed in the science there is a hidden aspect that is only known by those whose knowledge comes through God; when they talk about it, what they say is not contradicted except by those who are distracted from God.” (inna min al-ʿilm ka-hayʾat al-maknūn lā yaʿrifuhu illā l-ʿulamāʾ bi-llāh fa-idhā naṭaqū bihi lam yunkirhu illā ahl al-ghirra bi-llāh).
Maghribī, al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, fol. 117b.
This idea is restated towards the conclusion of the treatise (Maghribī, al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, fol. 143b).
Explicit references to diagrams and their aim for example are also found in the Jām-i jahān-namā (Mīr-ʿĀbidīnī, Dīvān, 248).
The interpretation and resultant translation of the title of this Ibn al-ʿArabī’s treatise poses several problems. The proposed rendition is only one among the many possible. The most complete and detailed discussion of this question is in Gracia López Anguita, ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz de Muḥyī l-Dīn Ibn al-ʿArabī de Murcia: Traducción crìtica y estudio (Ph.D., Universidad de Sevilla, 2014), 79–90.
For a recent reflection on authorship in the pre-modern Islamic world, focusing on Arabic texts, see Lale Behzadi and Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila (eds.), Concepts of Authorship in Pre-Modern Arabic Texts (Bamberg: University of Bamberg Press, 2015).
Najīb Māyil Hiravī (ed.), Dah risāla-yi mutarjam-i Shaykh-i Akbar Muḥyī al-Dīn Abī ʿAbd Allāh Ḥātimī Ṭāʾī Āndalusī mashhūr ba Ibn ʿArabī (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Mawlā, 1367 h.sh./1988). Cf. also William Chittick, “Ebn al-ʿArabī, Moḥyī-al-Dīn Abū ʿAbd-Allāh Moḥammad Ṭāʾī Ḥātemī,” Encyclopaedia Iranica 7 (1996): 664–70.
Cf. Chittick, “Ebn al-ʿArabī, Moḥyī-al-Dīn.” This treatise was partially edited by Rajab-ʿAlī Maẓlūmī, Bābā Rukn al-Dīn Shīrāzī, Nuṣūṣ al-khuṣūṣ fī tarjama al-Fuṣūṣ (Tehran: Muʾassasa-yi muṭālaʿāt-i islāmī-i dānishgāh-i Tihrān, 1359 h.sh./1980). The fact that the first Persian translation of a work by Ibn al-ʿArabī was generated together with the first Persian commentary on it is not without relevance. This is the best indication that Persian translations of Ibn al-ʿArabī were born not as a literary activity but as part of a process the primary aim of which was the transmission of knowledge and in which multiple instruments, including translations, commentaries, abridgments, compendia, etc., could be simultaneously employed according to circumstances. Likewise Shīrāzī’s Nuṣūṣ al-khuṣūṣ is at the same time the first Persian commentary and first Persian translation of a work by Ibn al-ʿArabī, so Maghribī’s al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya is a heterogeneous combination of the translation, commentary and abridgment of another text of the Shaykh al-Akbar. The stylistic ambiguity sometimes recognizable in these works should therefore be seen as the result of a practical approach, where the structure and style of text were chosen and modelled to serve the final goal, which was to transmit, teach and communicate the spiritual knowledge expounded by Ibn al-ʿArabī in a different language to a new audience in the easiest way possible.
As the discovery of Maghribī’s al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya suggests, it is reasonable to suppose that in addition to those published by Hiravī, other pre-modern Persian translations of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s texts also exist still waiting to be identified.
This commentary had also been published in Sayyid ʿAlī Mūsavī Bihbahānī and Sayyid Ibrāhīm Dībājī (eds.), Chahārda risāla-yi Fārsī az Ṣāʾin al-Dīn ʿAlī b. Muḥammad Turka-yi Iṣfahānī (Tehran: Cāpkhāna-yi Firdawsī, 1351 h.sh./1972), 299–306. On Ṣāʾin al-Dīn Turka see İlker Evrim Binbaş, Intellectual Networks in Timurid Iran: Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī and the Islamicate Republic of Letters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 140–50 and passim, and Matthew S. Melvin-Koushki, The Quest for a Universal Science: The Occult Philosophy of Ṣāʾin al-Dīn Turka Iṣfahānī (1369–1432) and Intellectual Millenarianism in Early Timurid Iran (Ph.D. Dissertation, Yale University, 2012).
Osman Yahya, Histoire et classification de l’ oeuvre d’ Ibn ‘Arabi: Etude critique I–II (Damascus: Institut français de Damas, 1964).
This in-progress digital catalogue is accessible at
Ibid. These are (1) MS Konya, Yusuf Ağa Kütüphanesi 4690; (2 and 3) MSS Istanbul, Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, Şehit Ali Paşa 1375 and 1341; (4) MS Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Berlin, Ahlwardt 2923 (previously Berlin Cod. 119); (5) MS Istanbul, Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, Ayasofya 4875; (6) MS Istanbul, Beyazıt Yazma Eser Kütüphanesi, 3750.
Muṣṭafā Dirāyatī, Fihristvāra-yi dast-nivisht-hā-yi Īrān (DNĀ) (Tehran: Kitābkhāna, mūza va markaz-i asnād-i majlis-i shūrā-yi islāmī, 1389 h.sh./2010), 7:552. Here the treatise is recorded under the title ʿUqlat al-mustawfir instead of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz.
Ibid. These are MS Qom, Kitābkhāna-yi Marʿashī, 13149/2, dated 855 (1451); MS Qom, Kitābkhāna-yi Marʿashī, 7997/1, dated 872 (1467); and MS Mashhad, Kitābkhāna-yi āstān-i qudsī-i Riḍāvī, 11714/2, dated 873 (1468).
This statement needs a clarification. There is an edition of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz (Saʿīd ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ (ed.), Rasāʾil Ibn ʿArabī: al-Quṭb wa-l-nuqabāʾ wa-ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz wa-Risālat al-anwār wa-l-Tadbīrāt al-ilāhiyya wa-rasāʾil ukhrā (Beirut: Muʾassat al-intishār al-ʿArabī/Arab Diffusion Company, 2002), 2: 61–118), which includes a second diagram (p. 2: 118). This edition is, according to the editor (2: 65–7), nothing more than the collation of an unspecified and undated manuscript included in a miscellaneous codex in the Cairo University Library and the classic edition of the text published in 1919: H.S. Nyberg, Kleinere Schriften des Ibn al-ʿArabī: Nach Handschriften in Upsala und Berlin zum ersten mal herausgegeben und mit Einleitung und Kommentar versehen (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1919). Since this second diagram is not included in Nyberg’s edition, we must assume that it is found in the Cairo manuscript. In the absence of information about the quality and age of the manuscript, and considering that the second diagram is placed in a sensitive position on the last page of the treatise and does not appear to be present in early reliable copies of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz (see the following discussion), for the time being it seems reasonable to consider this second diagram a later addition.
Ibn al-ʿArabī does not provide a proper name for this diagram but the subject is clearly the transmutation (istiḥāla) of the four elements one into the other. See Ibn al-ʿArabī, ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, 84. References to ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz in this article refer to Nyberg’s edition unless otherwise specified: Nyberg, Kleinere Schriften. This very same diagram is also found in Maghribī’s al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya (fol. 138b) where is described as the “Form of their [scil. the four elements] transmutation into one another” (ṣūrat-i istiḥālat-i īshān bi-yik-dīgar).
López, ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, 372n1248. I would like to thank Carlos Berbil Ceballos for having put me in touch with Dr. López. It should be mentioned here that in addition to López’s Spanish translation, ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz was also translated in Russian by Alexander Knysh in the volume Ibn al-ʿArabi’s “Meccan Revelations”: Man, Metaphysics and Mysticism (St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg Center for Oriental Studies, 1994), according to
This manuscript of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz is considered a holograph in Ibn al-ʿArabī’s handwriting by the editors and curators of the Ibn ʿArabi Society Archive (Muhyiddin Ibn ʿArabi Society ARCHIVEREPORT – WORKRG 802,
This supposition is based on the fact that this incomplete copy of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz (fols. 1a–11b) is contained in a miscellaneous codex (majmūʿa) belonging to the library of al-Qūnawī’s pious endowment in Konya; that another text contained in the codex shows an ownership note in al-Qunawī’s handwriting; that the codex includes works already recorded in the autograph index (fihrist) al-Qunawī compiled in 665 (1267) of the books he owned in his personal library. al-Qūnawī’s holograph ownership note in MS Yusuf Ağa 4690 is reproduced in Stephen Hirtenstein and Julian Cook, “Malik MS 4263: A Manuscript Case Study. Part 2: The library list of Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī,” Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn ʿArabi Society 67 (2020): 59–112, 68. The works contained in MS Yusuf Ağa 4690 that were already included in al-Qūnawī’s library list and were in all probability his own copies are a copy of the Muqaddima of Ibn Ṣalāḥ and a copy of two books from Ibn Sīnā’s al-Qānūn fī l-ṭibb (cf. Hirtenstein and Cook, “Malik MS 4263,” 84 and 106). A description of MS Yusuf Ağa 4690 is in López, ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, 67.
Depending on the perspective from which the diagrams are discussed, different means of reproduction could be employed. For a study focusing on codicology, art history and the history of the book a life-size colour photograph would be the best solution. For an analysis of the contents and ideas contained in the diagrams a line drawing appears to be extremely helpful since it offers clarity. The use of a drawing, in its turn, raises the question as to whether to reproduce the text contained in the diagram in the original Arabic alphabet, in transliteration, or in translation, so as to allow the readers who do not know Arabic or its alphabet to get as clear as possible an understanding of the diagrams. Including all these options would be the best and most complete solution, but it is hard to systematically put into practice. For the first two diagrams discussed in the present article I have produced both a photograph of the original and a drawing, while for those that follow I opted only for the drawing. Drawings of most of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s diagrams have been taken from published editions. The drawings of the diagrams contained in Shīrīn Maghribī’s al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya and the one found in Ibn al-ʿArabī’s ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz in the MS Yusuf Ağa 4690, were realized by the art director and illustrator Mariano M. Fazzi of Genau (
See Figure 1 above, l. 6, that is, MS Konya, Yusuf Ağa Kütüphanesi 4690, fol. 10b, l. 6. Cf. Ibn al-ʿArabī, ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, 84.
This is interesting as far as regards the question of the perception and role played by visual elements in Sufi texts. At the same time, however, it should be stressed that this was not the only way Ibn al-ʿArabī conceived of diagrams. A good example of a different approach to the matter by the Shaykh al-Akbar is the treatment of diagrams in the holograph of the second recension of al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, 37 vols., MSS Istanbul, Evkaf Müzesi 1845–1881, where some diagrams are drawn full page (e.g. MS 1870, fols. 90a–b, 91a–b and passim) while others are in the margins (e.g. MS 1870, fol. 83b). Ibn al-ʿArabī included diagrams in several of his works. The text that contains the largest number of them is al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya. Diagrams of the Futūḥāt are analysed by Ali Karjoo-Ravary and Sophie Tyser in two papers presented at the previously mentioned Visualizing Sufism Workshop. They are entitled respectively “Illustrating the Forms: Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Images in al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya” and “Visualizing the Architecture of the Universe: Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Diagrams in Chapter 371 of the Meccan Openings.” Both contributions will be published in the workshop proceedings. Karjoo-Ravary has also written another article on the topic: Karjoo-Ravary, “Mapping the Unseen,” in Material Religion, forthcoming. Some very interesting considerations on some of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s diagrams are in Samer Akkach, Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam: An Architectural Reading of Mystical Ideas (Albany: State University of New York Press (SUNY), 2005). Some diagrams from various works of Ibn al-ʿArabī have recently been reproduced in Ali Hussain, The Art of Ibn al-Arabi: A Collection of 19 Drawings from the Greatest Master of Sufism (privately published, 2019).
MS Istanbul, Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, Şehit Ali Paşa 1341. López, ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, 9. A description of the manuscript is provided by López at p. 68, while at pp. 446–7 she reproduces its incipit.
Nyberg, Kleinere Schriften, 84 of the Arabic text.
MS Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Berlin, Ahlwardt 2923 (previously Berlin Cod. 119), fols. 104b– 123b. Nyberg, Kleinere Schriften, 2. This manuscript is not explicitly dated. The suggested dating is the one proposed by López, ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, 69.
MS Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Berlin, Sprenger 854 (corresponding to Ahlwardt 2924, 1), fols. 1a–36b. Nyberg, Kleinere Schriften, 84 of the Arabic text. 899/1494 is the manuscript dating recorded by Ahlwardt in Die Handschriften-Verzeichnisse der Königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin: Verzeichniss der Arabischen Handschriften, 10 vols. (Berlin: A. Asher, 1887–99), 3:56 and Nyberg, while López (ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, 69) says that the manuscript is dated 990/1582–3. I could not personally check this MS.
The only possibility that the diagram drawn by the copyist of MS Schøyen Collection 5350 could be more correct than the original diagram traced by Maghribī in a holograph would imply an extremely improbable case of contamination involving too many coincidences to be coherent, and should therefore be discarded, i.e.: (1) that the copyist knew that Maghribī had based his diagram on the diagram contained in Ibn al-ʿArabī’s ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz and (2) that he decided to improve Maghribī’s original diagram by looking at a fair copy of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s treatise. Apart from the improbable nature of these circumstances, we should also consider the practical difficulty to getting access to a fair copy of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, given the high degree of variability in the manuscript tradition regarding the diagram and the fact that apparently only one copy, MS Yusuf Ağa 4690, displays the original version. Finally, there is also another consideration to be made about the copyist of MS Schøyen 5350, that suggests that he did not proceed in such a complicated and scrupulous way. He was a professional copyist working for a patron and in all probability he was not trained in Akbarian Sufism, since he makes several mistakes in the transcription of the text, most of which can be explained by his lack of understanding of the contents.
This assumption is further supported by what we mentioned at the end of the previous footnote, i.e. that the copyist of MS Schøyen 5350 made several mistakes in transcribing the text.
This terminus ante quem for the production of the manuscript is based on a note on fol. 1a, containing a date whose unclear script allows these two possible interpretations.
al-nār wa-huwa l-athīr, Ibn al-ʿArabī, ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, in Nyberg, Kleinere Schriften, 87. Cf. López, ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, 377. Maghribī in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya is terminologically more consistent preferring not to alternate the two terms and favoring athīr over nār, a trend that is reflected in his employment of this term in the diagram in place of nār.
It is evident that a systematic scrutiny of all old copies of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz would be extremely helpful in clarifying the question.
Martini, “Muḥammad Shīrīn Maghribī.” I addressed other aspects of the same question in the previously mentioned paper titled “Shīrīn Maghribī’s (d. 810/1408) Visual Sufism.”
The reception of this work, widely copied, commented on and quoted in several Sufi texts over the ensuing centuries, in a vast geographical area stretching from Anatolia to the Indian Subcontinent, was one of the main vehicles for Maghribī’s intellectual influence. I presented a first assessment of the reception of the Jām-i jahān-namā in India in Martini, “Shīrīn Maghribī’s (d. 810/1408) Visual Sufism.” Cf. also Adithya Behl, Love’s Subtle Magic: An Indian Islamic Literary Tradition, 1379–1545 (Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 236–39, 240, 251, 261–62.
MS Istanbul, Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, Ragıp Paşa 687, fols. 284b–285a. There is a transcription of it in Maḥmūd al-Sayyid al-Daghīm, Fihris al-makhṭūṭāt al-ʿarabiyya wa-l-turkiyya wa-l-fārisiyya fī maktabat Rāghib Bāshā, 10 vols. (Jeddah: Saqīfat al-ṣafā al-ʿilmiyya, 1437/2016) 6: 146. I would like to thank Cécile Bonmariage for having brought to my attention this document.
This is nothing more than a hypothesis. An alternative plausible explanation for the absence of al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya from the ijāza is that Kamāl al-Dīn Ismāʿīl was clearly proficient in Arabic and already had access to the original, i.e. ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, which he could read and study under Maghribī’s supervision, thus making the study of Maghribī’s Persian text superfluous.
MS Istanbul, Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, Ragıp Paşa 687, fol. 384a (colophon).
All three of these important scholars of the School of Ibn al-ʿArabī spent time in Tabriz, where they taught, wrote or copied some of their works and dedicated them to various chief political figures of the Ilkhanid state. On al-Jandī and al-Qayṣarī see Andrew C.S. Peacock, “Two Sufis of Ilkhānid Anatolia and their Patrons: Notes on the Works of Mu’ayyid al-Din Jandi and Da’ud al-Qaysari,” in Cultural Encounters in Anatolia in the Medieval Period: The Ilkhanids in Anatolia. Symposium Proceedings, 21–22 May 2015, Ankara, ed. by Suzan Yalman and Filiz Yenişehirlioğlu (Ankara: Vehbi Koç Ankara Studies Research Center, 2019), 11–28. al-Qayṣarī’s (and al-Kāshānī’s) physical presence and intellectual activity in Tabriz has been soundly demonstrated by Cécile Bonmariage on the basis of textual manuscript evidence in an unpublished article entitled “Dāʾūd al-Qayṣarī in Ilkhanid Iran: New evidence.” I thank the author for having generously shared the draft of this study with me. The above articles by Bonmariage and Peacock represent significant contributions to the biography of al-Qayṣarī, revising the established, age-old pro-Ottoman narrative that presents Qayṣarī chiefly as an Ottoman scholar. Perhaps even more importantly, they highlight the role played by the Ilkhanid political and cultural elite as the patrons of Sufi scholars of the School of Ibn al-ʿArabī, and contemporaneously the role of Tabriz as a centre of production, study and dissemination of Akbarian Sufi works.
We could also describe this as a process of anonymization should one consider that Maghribī was attempting to appropriate the ideas contained in the text, but this is an idea that I do not subscribe to. I believe that this phenomenon is attributable to completely different reasons, as I will try to show in the present article.
It has been rightly observed that rather than Ibn al-ʿArabī himself, it was his foremost disciple al-Qūnawī and other later Akbarian masters who made widespread use of philosophical terminology in their writings. Nevertheless, in Ibn al-ʿArabī’s style there is already an opening towards the philosophical lexicon, which places his followers’ developments in a trend of continuity with the path initially trodden by the Shaykh al-Akbar.
ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, “bāb khalq al-dunyā,” in Nyberg, Kleinere Schriften, 71–82. The passage at issue is at pp. 75–6. The relevant passage in Maghribī, al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, is on fol. 133a.
Nyberg, Kleinere Schriften, 75, ll. 5–6; Cf. López, ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, 363, section 96; Crescenti, Il nodo del sagace, 163.
These and related expressions are part of a shared terminology. Cf. e.g. Ibn al-ʿArabī’s use of the expression ahl al-kashf wa-l-wujūd in William C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-ʿArabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), s.v. “ahl.”
I discussed Maghribī’s network in the previously mentioned paper “Shīrīn Maghribī’s (d. 810/1408) Visual Sufism.”
Nyberg, Kleinere Schriften, 76; Cf. López, ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, 365; Crescenti, Il nodo del sagace, 163–4; Maghribī, al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, fol. 133a. Ibn al-ʿArabī in referring to philosophers here employs the expression al-qudamāʾ al-falāsifa (“the ancient philosophers”), while Maghribī speaks of qudamā az ḥukamā (the ancients among the sages/philosophers). For a discussion on Ibn al-ʿArabī’s standing with regard to philosophy with a special focus on ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz see López, ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, Chapter II.4 “La filosofia en ʿUqla,” 91–106.
Nyberg, Kleinere Schriften, 93, ll. 9–12; López, ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, 383–4, section 147; Crescenti, Il nodo del sagace, 182. As far as regards the understanding of the meaning of certain terms contained in this passage I am following López’s interpretation.
Nyberg, Kleinere Schriften, 58; López, ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, 341, section 48; Crescenti, Il nodo del sagace, 140. This passage is found in the sixth chapter of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, on “The Throne of the Merciful, Comprehensive of the four existent beings (mawjūdāt), that are [Universal] Nature, the Dust (al-habāʾ; i.e. the Universal Substance) and the [Universal] Body and Sphere.” The contents of this section, omitting, among others, the reference to Ibn Masarra, are included by Maghribī in the ninth chapter of al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, fols. 132b–137a.
The concept of Supreme Element (al-ʿunṣur al-aʿẓam) occupies an important part in the book by Mohamed Haj Yousef, Ibn ʿArabî – Time and Cosmology (Abingdon-New York: Routledge, 2008). See esp. section 6.5 entitled “The Greatest Element” (pp. 149–151). The concept is discussed throughout the entire book. Cf. the Index, s.v. “Greatest Element, the.”
In the tenth chapter, devoted to the creation of the Sublunary world, and in the eleventh chapter.
Nyberg, Kleinere Schriften, 49. Cf. López, ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, 328; Crescenti, Il nodo del sagace, 127.
Nyberg, Kleinere Schriften, 50. Cf. López, ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, 329–30; Crescenti, Il nodo del sagace, 128.
This is synonym of “Sphere of the Fixed Stars” (falak al-kawākib al-thābita). Cf. the fifth diagram of Chapter 371 of al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, MS Evkaf Müzesi 1870, fol. 91b, cf. al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, ed. by Aḥmad Shams al-Dīn (Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmiyya, 1420/1999), 6: 189. Cf. also Samer Akkach, Cosmology, 135. The mention of the Moon should not confuse us in this sense, the present sphere being incorruptible, while the Sphere of the Moon is the lowest of the planetary spheres which, in the present passage by Maghribī, is included in his general reference to “the moving spheres subjected to transmutation” (aflāk-i mustaḥīla), i.e., the spheres subjected to generation and corruption and to a temporal beginning and end.
Maghribī, al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, fol. 118b.
Nyberg, Kleinere Schriften, 52. Cf. López, ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, 332; Crescenti, Il nodo del sagace, 132. Italics added for emphasis.
Cf. Osman Yahya, Histoire, 40–1 and 100–101; López, ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, 77.
Nyberg, Kleinere Schriften, 50; cf. López, ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, 330, sect. 23; Crescenti, Il nodo del sagace, 128.
This is mentioned by López, ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, 73.
al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, ed. by Osman Yahya ([Cairo]: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿāmma li-l-kitāb, 1405–1412/1985–1992), 2: 317. Cf. López, ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, 73.
Crescenti speaks of a “doctrine of thrones” (“dottrina dei troni”), Crescenti, Il nodo del sagace, 68.
The stress placed by Ibn al-ʿArabī on the symbolism of the multiple thrones in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz led both Crescenti and López to devote a section of their studies on this treatise to this theme. Cf. Crescenti, “I cinque troni e la possibilità universale,” in Il nodo del sagace, 69–72; López, “Los cinco tronos,” in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, 179–94.
These are “Chapter on the Thrones” (bāb fī dhikr al-ʿurush), “Chapter on the Supreme Throne which is the Well-Preserved Tablet, which is the Rational Universal Immutable Soul” (bāb fī l-ʿarsh al-ʿaẓīm wa-huwa l-lawḥ al-maḥfūẓ wa-huwa l-nafs al-nāṭiqa al-kulliyya al-thābita), “Chapter on the Merciful Throne Comprehending the Four Existing Beings, that are [Universal] Nature, the Dust, the [Universal] Body and the Sphere” (bāb al-ʿarsh al-raḥmānī al-jāmiʿ li-l-mawjūdāt al-arbaʿa wa-hiya l-ṭabīʿa wa-l-habāʾ wa-l-jism wa-l-falak), and the “Chapter on the Noble Throne which is the Footstool, the location of the Two Feet” (bāb al-ʿarsh al-karīm wa-huwa l-kursī mawḍiʿ al-qadamayn).
A discussion of the five thrones is not included in Chapter 371 of al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, nor does the same idea seem to be developed by Ibn al-ʿArabī in any other of his numerous treatises, although this requires more investigation to be definitively ascertained.
This is particularly true of the first three diagrams contained in Maghribī, al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, illustrating the First Intellect, the Well Preserved Table and Universal Nature respectively, all of which seem to be inspired by the second diagram included by Ibn al-ʿArabī in Chapter 371 of al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, MS Evkaf Müzesi 1870, fol. 90a; cf. Ibn al-ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, ed. by Aḥmad Shams, 6: 186. See here below Figures 7 to 10.
Ibn al-ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, MS Evkaf Müzesi 1870, fols. 90a–94a; cf. Ibn al-ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, ed. by Aḥmad Shams, 6: 186–94. Diagrams in al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya and in Chapter 371 in particular are thoroughly discussed in the previously mentioned papers by Karjoo-Ravary and Tyser, entitled respectively “Illustrating the Forms: Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Images in al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya” and “Visualizing the Architecture of the Universe: Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Diagrams in Chapter 371 of the Meccan Openings.”
The last part of this sentence does not seem to make any sense to me. In trying to explain it Crescenti provided an interesting interpretation, which was followed by López-Anguita (Crescenti, Il nodo del sagace, 139; López, ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, 340). My impression, however, looking at the structure of the sentence, and especially at the Persian version of this passage by Maghribī (for which see the next quotation), is that ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz’s text provided in the Nyberg edition could be corrupt here. Referring back to the holograph manuscript (MS Yusuf Ağa 4690) is no help in this case, since it is an incomplete copy in which the chapter containing this passage is missing. If my impression is right, this is yet another proof that Maghribī had access to an excellent copy of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s text, actually better than the critical edition available to scholars in modern times. We could come up with a possible solution to our doubts about this passage by checking other reliable early manuscripts of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, on which see above §§ 6.1 and 6.2. López for her critical Spanish translation of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz also used MS Istanbul, Şehit Ali Paşa 1341, an early manuscript not included by Nyberg, which in the light of her critical translation, does not seem to contain any variants regarding this specific passage, but instead confirms the text proposed by Nyberg. It is also possible that Maghribī misunderstood the original, or that he was of a different opinion to Ibn al-ʿArabī and purposely proposed a different text that was clearer and more linear than the original. Given these observations on the variants of the diagram included in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, and the consideration that Nyberg’s edition was based on late manuscripts and not on the earliest or most reliable ones, we get the sensation that a new edition of this treatise would be extremely helpful and would demonstrate relevant differences. Without referring to early manuscripts there is a risk of building durable scholarship on the basis of incomplete or imprecise data. A small example of this risk and tendency is that modern translations and studies of ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz (with the exclusion of López) reproduce and discuss the diagram as published by Nyberg, which, as we have seen, is different from the diagram contained in the oldest known manuscript of the work.
Nyberg, Kleinere Schriften, 56–7. Cf. López, ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, 340 and Crescenti, Il nodo del sagace, 139.
Please note the linearity of Maghribī’s treatment of this issue compared with that in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz. According to Maghribī, since the Universal Body comes into existence after three previous principles – the First Intellect and the Universal Soul and Nature – it is from these three that it derives its threefold character, corresponding to the three spatial dimensions. At the center of this three-dimensional space is the Throne, surrounded by void. This difference leads me to suppose that the corresponding text of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz in Nyberg’s edition might be corrupt, as mentioned in note 90 above.
Maghribī, al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, fol. 122b.
Maghribī, al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, fol. 123a.
According to Osman Yahya ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz is an early work written by Ibn al-ʿArabī in the Maghribī Period from 580/1184 to 598/120 (Histoire, 103), while the second redaction of al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya lasted from 632/1234 to 636/1238.
According to Ibn al-ʿArabī’s (and Maghribī’s) cosmology, space becomes determined in a qualitative way through the manifestation of the Universal Body (as the passages translated above imply). As for Time is concerned, commonly intended as duration that depends on the movement of the firmament, according to this cosmology it only becomes manifest after the Throne and the Footstool, with the coming into existence of the Sphere of Atlas, that is the Sphere Without Stars (also called the Sphere of the Constellations). Wa-huwa awwal falak dār bi-l-zamān wa-fīhi ḥadathat al-ayyām dūna l-layl wa-l-nahār, Ibn al-ʿArabī, ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, in Nyberg, Kleinere Schriften, 61; Va īn avval falakī-st ka zamān bi-dū paydā shud, va dawr va ayyām dar-ū ḥādith shud bi-l-layl va al-nahār, Maghribī, al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, fol. 125b; Cf. Akkach, Cosmology, xviii and 130; López, ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz, 218–20.
Ibn al-ʿArabī, Kitāb Inshāʾ al-dawāʾir, ed. by Nyberg, 24–5; cf. Ibn ʿArabî, La production des cercles, translation and presentation by Paul Fenton and Maurice Gloton (Paris: Editions de l’ éclat, 1996), 27–8.
Maghribī, al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, fol. 117b.
Ibn al-ʿArabī’s dynamic representation of the Throne was partly discussed by Akkach in Cosmology, p. 128. I would like to thank Sophie Tyser and Ali Karjoo-Ravari for having brought my attention to this question.
Cf. the drawing of the same diagram by Akkach, Cosmology, 128. The octagram drawn by Ibn al-ʿArabī falls into the class of the so-called magic stars, a specific group of star polygons that possess specific geometric properties.
The Throne is also the subject of two other diagrams included in Maghribī, al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya that are not reproduced in this article (Maghribī, al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, fols. 123b and 124b).
Maghribī, al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, fol. 123a–b.
Maghribī, al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya, fol. 143a–b.
Cf. note 11 above.
ṣūrat al-ʿālam kullihi wa-tartīb ṭabaqātihi rūḥan wa-jisman wa-ʿuluwwan wa-suflan in Ibn al-ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, MS Evkaf Müzesi 1870, fol. 94a; cf. Ibn al-ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, ed. by Aḥmad Shams, 6: 194.
Cf. the translation of the whole passage in § 4 and related notes. It is not by chance that the composite term Jāmiʿ al-ʿulūm, employed in both Arabic and Persian to mean “Encyclopaedia,” contains this word. Cf. the use of the term jāmiʿ also made by Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍl Allāh Hamadānī (d. 718/1318) in the title of his monumental historical work based on information deriving from a multitude of earlier sources and justly named Jāmiʿ al-tavārīkh, that is, “Compendium of chronicles.”
This is an interesting justification by Maghribī for the presence in the text of terminology and concepts associated with the philosophical tradition. We should add here that Ibn al-ʿArabī in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz and other works of his expresses reservations about speculative philosophy, philosophers, their method and their results. At the same time we take note that the passage criticizing philosophers contained in ʿUqlat al-mustawfiz is also paraphrased by Maghribī in al-Nuzha al-Sāsāniyya (cf. above, § 8, note 70).
Provided that the nom de plume “Maghribī” is not considered to refer to the geographic origins of the family but rather to the “western” (maghribī) source of Shīrīn Maghribī’s spiritual taste, identified with Ibn al-ʿArabī. Cf. Lewisohn, Divan of Maghrebi, 1:16–32; idem, “S̲h̲īrīn Magh̲ribī, Muḥammad,” in EI2 9:484; Divan of Muhammad Shirin Maghribi, 10–14.
See Lewisohn, Divan of Muhammad Shirin Maghribi, 4; Mīr-ʿĀbidīnī, Dīvān, 45; Cf. Lewisohn, “S̲h̲īrīn Magh̲ribī, Muḥammad,” in EI2, 9:484.
This question, which was not the focus of the present article, was specifically addressed in the previously mentioned paper “Shīrīn Maghribī’s (d. 810/1408) Visual Sufism: Diagrams, Intellectual Networks and the Transmission of Spiritual Knowledge in 14th Century Tabriz and beyond.”
