Ibn 'Arabi in the Later Islamic Tradition: The Making of a Polemical Image in Medieval Islam (Suny Series in Islam) (Suny Series, Islam) [Paperback]

Alexander D. Knysh (Author)

Book Description

Series: Suny Series, Islam | Publication Date: December 23, 1998

This book examines the fierce theological controversy over the great Muslim mystical thinker Ibn 'Arabi (1165-1242). Even during his lifetime, Ibn 'Arabi's conformity with the letter of the Muslim dogma was called into doubt by many scholars who were suspicious of the monistic (unitive) tendencies of his metaphysical teaching, of his claims to be the Prophet's successor and restorer of the true meaning of the Islamic revelation, and of his allegorical interpretation of the Qur'an.

Following Ibn 'Arabi's death, these misgivings grew into an outright condemnation of his teachings by a number of influential thirteenth through fifteenth century theologians who portrayed him as a dangerous heretic bent on undermining the foundations of Islamic faith and communal life. In response to these grave accusations, Ibn 'Arabi's advocates praised him as the greatest saint of Islam who was unjustly slandered by the bigoted and narrow-minded critics.

As time went on, these conflicting images of the mystical thinker became rallying points for various political and scholarly factions vying for lucrative religious and administrative posts and ideological denomination. In thoroughly analyzing the heated debates around Ibn 'Arabi's ideas throughout the three centuries following his death, this study brings out discursive strategies and arguments employed by the polemicists, the hidden agendas they pursued, and the reasons for the striking longevity of the issue in Islamic literature up to the present day. On the theoretical level, this book reassesses the validity of such common dichotomies as orthodoxy versus heresy, mainstream versus mystical interpretations of Islam, and communalism versus individualism as well as other issues related to the history of Islamic thought.

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About the Author

Alexander D. Knysh is The Sharjah Professor of Islamic Studies, Department of Arabic and Middle East Studies, University of Exeter, United Kingdom.

Product Details

• Paperback: 466 pages
• Publisher: State University of New York Press (December 23, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0791439682
• ISBN-13: 978-0791439685
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,428,369 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Alexander (Sasha) Knysh. I was trained as an Arabist and historian of the Islamic Middle East in the former Soviet Union (at the Lenigrad State University, then the Soviet Academy of Sciences). I combine expertise in Arabic literature (both pre-modern and modern) with the knowledge of the history, religions, and cultures of the Middle East and Eurasia. I have been teaching and conducting research in these fields of academic endeavor over the past thirty years. I came to the US from the former Soviet Union in 1991 on a fellowship of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. In 1992-1993, I was a Rockefeller fellow in the Humanties at the Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1994, I joined the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan as an Assistant Professor. In 1998, I was promoted to the rank of Professor of Islamic Studies at the above university. From 1998 until 2004, I served as chair of the department. In 1997-1998, I held the Sharjah Chair of Islamic Studies at the Department of Arabic and Middle East Studies, University of Exeter, UK. Although this was a permanent academic appointment, I chose to return to Michigan after one year in England.

More recently, I have been working on several academic projects, including the history of Islam in Yemen and a study of the changing representations of Islam and the Muslims in Russian academic and popular discourses and mass media following the collapse of the former Soviet Union. My latest project, "Islam and Empire in the Northern Caucasus," explores the history and ideological underpinnings of Muslim resistance to the Russian conquest and subsequent domination of the Northern Caucasus in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Simultaneously, I continue to pursue my longstanding interest in the history of Sufi movements and thought in Islam. I currently serve as the section editor for "Sufism" on the Editorial Board of the Encyclopedia of Islam (3rd edition), E.J. Brill, Leiden, the Netherlands.

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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Great Sheykh and his detractors, February 14, 2000

By 

Linas Kondratas - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ibn 'Arabi in the Later Islamic Tradition: The Making of a Polemical Image in Medieval Islam (Suny Series in Islam) (Suny Series, Islam) (Paperback)

The book of A.D. Knysh is an excellent reader for those who are interested not only in the personality of Ibn Arabi himself or his ideas, but also in the reception of these ideas by the medieval Muslim society (second half of XIII to XV centuries) in the framework of which Ibn Arabi lived. The author takes completely impartial, scholarly position without leaning for or against the Great Sheykh. The author limits himself to Arab speaking regions (Egypt and Syria, Maghreb and Yemen) This reception as it appears was far from unanimous and produced a heated polemics which started just two decades after Great Sheykh's death. The detractors of Ibn Arabi who were more numerous than supporters subjected Ibn Arabi's work to rigorous criticism and very often outright condemnation. One of the driving forces behind the criticism was the care of the Islamic scholars about the interest of the community and their apprehension that Ibn Arabi's monistic worldview blurring the distinction between God and the world, and the idea about the invisible hierarchy of saints etc. can make prejudice to the beliefs, morality and social order of the Islamic ummah. The struggle for the ideas of Ibn Arabi was not always disinterested struggle on dogmatic matters, it was often related with the vying for quite "earthly" things such as official positions, power and social prestige. Quite often the deabate was quite dangerous and fraught with serious consequences for those involved in it. A.Knysh shows that the detractors of Ibn Arabi were not completely able to comprehend the entire sophistication of Great Sheykh's style and ideas. Yet, to his opinion, they were able comprehend the key issues of his teaching especially those which can ideological or social relevance to broad masses of the believers. However the usual taxonomic schema used by medieval authors to classify the figures of the Islamic thought(specialist of hadith, jurist, theologian, mystic) has appeared inappropriate to fully comprehend the sophisticated teachings of the Great Sheykh which defied all the attempts of classification( extreme literalism and thorough going exotericism both present in the works of Ibn Arabi). Besides that under the main themes in Ibn Arabi's became settled there were little attempt to cast a fresh into the Sheykh's work. The detractors, as well as the supporters, are shown to be not limited to any particular school or sect, rather the line between being pro- or against Ibn Arabi runs across various schools. The author shows that being anti Ibn Arabi by far was not equivalent with being anti Sufi, and that the absolute majority of the detractors were in one or other form affiliated with Sufism or exposed to its ideas. A.Knysh equally questions the usual assumption about the struggle between " "Theologians" with "Sufis" showing that most of the participants of the debate were all the three, and that the debate was the encounter between the various standpoints in both theology and Sufism. A. Knysh also questions the usual assumption when Islam is presented as an "orthoprax" religion where dogmatic difference are not so important when the requirements of ritual decorum are satisfied. The heated debated on the doctrinal issues concerning the "unity of being" clearly show the opposite. While describing the reception of Ibn Arabi's ideas in the Western part of the Islamic world the author shows that differently from the Eastern lands of Islam, Ibn Arabi was not considered here such paramount figure or founder of the monistic school, but rather as a representative of the broader tradition or "plot" of monists, and Ibn Sab`in, another monistic Sufi from Maghreb was considered of equal importance to Ibn Arabi, if not greater. A.Knysh devotes separate chapters or parts of them to some of more known detractors of Ibn Arabi such as Syrian Shafi`i scholar Izz al-Din Abd al-Salam who as the first detractor and contemporary of Ibn Arabi had great importance to later makers of the polemic image, to well-know Hanbali Ibn Taimiyya, and to Hanafite al-Taftazani. In the chapter devoted to Maghreb he analyses three specific personalities, one of them being the famous Ibn Khaldoon. Chapters are also devoted to the reception of Ibn Arabi's ideas in Mamlook kingdom of Egypt and Syria, and in Yemen. Since the Islamic life of Yemen is relatively little known, and A.Knysh is one of the leading experts on Yemeni Islam, this chapter of his book is especially interesting and instructive.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A classic debate in Medieval Islam, July 5, 2011

By 

Rumi Fan (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ibn 'Arabi in the Later Islamic Tradition: The Making of a Polemical Image in Medieval Islam (Suny Series in Islam) (Suny Series, Islam) (Paperback)

This is an incredible piece of scholarship. Professor Knysh, a Russian scholar of Islam, demonstrates his mastery of the vast literature of Islam in various languages including Arabic, Turkish, German, French, and Russian. This is the first major account of the intellectual battles raging on in the Middle East between two opposing giants: the school of Ibn Arabi and the school of Ibn Taymiyya. However, to be fair, it is mostly concerned with the scholarly attacks led by Ibn Taymiyya against the doctrine of wahdat al-wujud of Ibn Arabi. What makes this account so fascinating is the survey of the political and intellectual environment of Medieval Damascus, and Egypt.

It is clear from Professor Knysh's analysis how important the ulama and Islamic religious institutions were for Muslim Sultans, rulers, and princes. In particular, it highlights the intricate, and complex relationship between the Mamluk state and the religious scholars of Islam. The 13th century was a watershed moment in Islamic political history with the Mongol devastation in the central Muslim lands and the continuous Christian Crusades into the Levant. While it seemed that Muslim civilization was on the brink of collapse from these two assaults, along come the Mamluks of Damascus and Egypt who boldly stopped the Mongol advance in Palestine in the famous battle of Ayn Jalut, near present day Galilea. The role of the stalwart Mamluks in well known to peole of the Middle East. However, what is often overlook in the patronage and funding that the Mamluks provided to Islamic learning and to Islamic scholars. This is witnessed by the huge number of sufi lodges and madrasas supported and funded by Mamluk princes and rulers. Scholars such as Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn Arabi, al-Dhahabi, and Ibn Atallah were some of the major scholars who owed their support to the Mamluk rulers of that time, though the relationship with Ibn Taymiyya is complicated by the persecution he faced by his opponents.

Knyshs' contribution to this important time period is to lay out a narrative which demonstrates the critique of some of the theological views of Ibn Arabi by Ibn Taymiyya and his ideological supporters. He traces how the critique developed and who the central partisans were. It is clear from Professor Knysh's analysis that Ibn Taymiyya was not anti-tasawwuf or sufism. Many opponents of tasawwuf today use Ibn Taymiyya as a sword in discrediting sufism and undermining its legitimacy in Islam. However, this view is misplaced given that Ibn Taymiyya commended many aspects of sufi practice and also praised many sufi leaders and thinkers. Ibn Taymiyya's main problem was the central cosmological worldview of Ibn Arabi's wahdat al-wujud which is often referred to Islamic "monism." This view essentially argues that God is the only true reality while everything thing else he creates is temporary and unreal.

The footnotes are useful and comprehensive but often hinder the narrative of the story. But this is to be expected in a scholarly work. This book is not for novices but for those who are acquainted with the Islamic scholarly and intellectual tradition.