News
Ancient mosque an endangered monument
The Al-Azhar mosque in Fez is one of the few places we can point to which has a definite association with Ibn 'Arabi. In the Futuhat Ibn 'Arabi describes how, while leading the prayer here in 1196/593, he reached the Station of Light.
In 2005 a section of wall fell from a neighbouring property through the roof of the mosque. Tragically, ten people were killed during prayers in the collapse. The risk of this happening had long been obvious, but remedial action had been slow in coming.
The Regional Council of Tourism of Fez has succeeded in having the mosque included in a list of one hundred highly-threatened sites known as World Monuments Watch 2008. It has also requested 219,831 Euros of funding from the World Monuments Fund.
David Hornsby writes: On a recent trip to Fez I visited the Al-Azhar mosque, also known as the Ain el Khail after the area in which it lies. The king was very angry about the damage it had suffered, and much wooden scaffolding has since appeared throughout the old medina.
The event has focused the authorities' mind on the need to prop up the walls and secure many of the medina's ancient and ricketily precarious properties so as to avoid further mishaps.
The Al-Azhar mosque dates from the twelfth century and is in the Almohad style. Architecturally it is the only octagonal minaret perched on a flying buttress in the entire Maghreb.
In reaching the Station of Light, Ibn 'Arabi had a vision of himself as one total eye capable of seeing in every direction, and being like a sphere, inheriting from Mohammed this status of being "without a nape".
In The Quest for the Red Sulphur, Claude Addas relates that only those who have reached such a circular vision have the right to perform prayers on horseback, and it is a strange coincidence that the mosque is situated in the district known as the "Source of the horse".
The pool where the horses of the medina still love to come and drink the water is adjacent to the ruined mosque. Plastic rubbish abounds, and yet, apparently, the very large fish which sometimes appears in the pool is still around; we were told that it has been seen quite recently.
Being unable to go inside because of the building's current highly perilous condition, we made a fairly hair-raising ascent onto its roof via a steep unlit stairwell in a neighbouring house. From there we were able to look through the cracked roof onto the floor of the mosque many feet below, to precisely where Ibn 'Arabi was leading the prayer when he had his experience. We leaned over an external wall and gazed into the clear pond which the very large fish inhabits.
The application for funding envisages that the restored building will function not only as a mosque but also as a library concentrating on the works of the Shaykh and their translations, and as a place of meditation open to all.
Those who are leading the restoration project would very much like to see the mosque become a centre for the study of Ibn 'Arabi in Morocco – where his significance, importance and the time he spent in Fez are not well known. They are open to active cooperation with the Society to make use of the restored space, and would very particularly welcome help to establish a library of the Shaykh's works there.
From Newsletter 24, Summer 2007
A remarkable document – the earliest known Ibn 'Arabi manuscript
The Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (the Berlin State Library) houses one of the most important collections of oriental manuscripts in Europe.
During a recent stay in Berlin Stephen Hirtenstein had the opportunity to spend several days going through the manuscripts relating to Ibn 'Arabi and Sadruddin al-Qunawi. In general these are well-known works copied in 9th-13th century Hij-ra, i.e. at least 200 years after Ibn 'Arabi's lifetime, and therefore of less primary interest than some of the manuscripts which have been digitised from Turkish libraries. However, there are also some jewels of the kind that may appear in unexpected places. In the end 19 works were digitised for the Society archive.
Among these was the exceptional text which Gerald Elmore alerted us to in Islamic Sainthood in the Fullness of Time (pp.197-99). It is a precious copy of the 'Anqa' Mughrib, in a beautiful Maghribi hand, apparently written in Fez in 597H/1201 when Ibn 'Arabi was staying in the city. The work itself was composed approximately two years earlier. It is, as Elmore notes, "a truly remarkable document... not only the earliest known text of the 'Anqa' Mughrib but as far as I am aware, the oldest existing copy of any work by Ibn al-'Arabi."
A page of coded letters with explanation in Ibn 'Arabi's own hand, from the Berlin manuscript of the 'Anqa' Mughrib, written in Fez in 597H (1201).
Stephen Hirtenstein writes: I can confirm his findings, and add that the remains of the cover page (only the right-hand bottom corner survives) has some fragmentary lines in Ibn 'Arabi's own distinctive hand, mentioning al-Habashi, his own name, and the town of Fez in the month of Jumada al-Ula [59]7H (= Feb 1201). Below this is a barely legible and rather tantalising sama' certificate in a different hand, mentioning a reading of the whole work in front of at least four people (some of the names are too faint to be identified or are missing).
Two of these, Isma'il b. Muhammad b. Yusuf al-Ansari and 'Abd al-Rahman b. Muhammad al-Lawati, are known to have also been present at the Cairo reading of the Ruh al-quds in 603H, and so could be counted as part of the original group of disciples and companions who came with Ibn 'Arabi from the Maghrib. In both cases the association was close and long-lasting: al-Ansari recited the Taj al-rasa'il in 613H in Ibn 'Arabi's house (probably in Malatya) while al-Lawati heard the K. al-Isra' in the author's house in Damascus in 633H.
The manuscript itself is in amazingly good condition given its age, despite the fragmentary nature of the first two pages. From the handwriting, which is extremely clear and beautiful, it would appear that this is the same scribe who wrote the now famous copy of the Hilyat al-abdal in 602H (which was stolen and then 'found' at Christies some seven years ago, and kick-started the MIAS archiving project). Perhaps it may even be the writing of al-Lawati himself. In addition, there are two pages of cryptic letters in Ibn 'Arabi's own handwriting (see Elmore, pp.580-82), which suggests that this may have been the main source copy of the work brought with him from the West.
It is hard to convey the extraordinary privilege of being able to physically handle such a remarkable work, earlier than any other of Ibn 'Arabi's writings, which has survived down the centuries, conveying to us a flavour of his time and a breath of the Master's presence.
The MIAS archive collection now consists of 898 digital copies (based on 1941 manuscripts inspected). In the next phase a catalogue will be produced, and some of the major findings presented in the Society Journal.
From Newsletter 24, Summer 2007
Books
All issues of the Society Journal are now back in print. Seven volumes of the Journal which have been unavailable for some time have been reprinted, and can be found on the Journals page.
While stocks of all issues are available we are pleased to offer a special price for the supply of whole sets of the Journal from Volume 1 to Volume 42 – £147 + shipping. That is a per copy price of £3.50. If you are interested, please contact the Secretary and ask for a quote for shipping.
Received December 2007: Ibn 'Arabî – Time and Cosomology by Mohamed haj Yousef, Routledge, Abingdon, 2008. ISBN 978-0-415-44499-6 (hardback). James Morris says in his introduction to this work: "this book begins with a helpful survey of the standard theories of cosmology and time found in earlier Hellenistic thinkers, which were largely taken over into the succeeding traditions of Islamic philosophy and science. However, the most creative and unfamiliar aspects of Ibn 'Arabi's cosmological ideas – especially his distinctive conception of the ever-renewed, ongoing and instantaneous nature of the cosmic process of creation (tajdîd al-khalq) – are carefully woven together from what have always been profoundly mysterious, problematic, and complexly interwoven symbolic formulations in the Qur'an. Thus the main focus and novel scholarly contribution of the central chapters of this volume lie in the author's careful unfolding and clarification of the intended meanings and references of this dense Qur'anic cosmological symbolism of time and creation, as that multi-dimensional world-view is systematically expounded in elaborate accounts scattered throughout several of Ibn 'Arabi's major works. Every reader who engages with this demanding discussion will come away, at the very least, with a heightened appreciation of the symbolic richness and challenging intellectual dilemmas posed by this unduly neglected – yet areguably quite central and unavoidable – dimension of the Qur'an and its metaphysical teachings."
Received September 2007: Angels do not dream, by Rachel Gordin. In Hebrew, published 2007. "The challenges of the 21st century require unity. Global warming, pollution of air and water sosources, plagues that don't recognize borders, and exterminations of whole species of animals, are not problems of 'us' and 'them' but of humanity as a whole. According to the sheikh, unity is the most profound certainty, to which are directed all the longings of humanity. Goding beyond the peel of 'Arab', 'Israeli', 'Moslem', 'Jew', 'Christian', 'rich', 'poor', 'religious' or 'secular', will expose an unknown entity which has no colour, gender or religion. " This is the third book by Rachel Gordin, formerly film-critic of the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz. For more information, see rachelgordin.com.
Received July 2007: Kosmologie und Psychologie in Sufismus, by Bahram Jassemi (in German). Cosmos and Psyche, as two facing mirrors, image the Real and thereby find existence. This book lays out the foundations of the cosmology and psychology of sufism following the works of masters such as Ibn 'Arabi, Kashani, Hallaj, Ruzbihan, Ansari, Shabistari and others. Published through Verlag Make A Book. You can read The Dimensions of the Mystical Journey by Bahram Jassemi on this site.
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The Journal, Volume 42
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