Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd on Ibn ʿArabi

and Modernity1

Carl W. Ernst

One of the great cultural achievements of the modern age has

undoubtedly been the vast attempt to recuperate the cultural
and spiritual legacies of earlier civilizations, an investigation car-

Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 58, 2015

ried out by generations of scholars over the past two centuries
or more. No doubt, a part of this enterprise has been the rest-
less desire to compensate for the alienating effects of modernity
and its globalizing sequels. The search for authenticity in the
past includes the fundamentalist quest for the original purity
of religion in the absolute authority of scripture, as one sees in
neo-Salafi movements in Muslim contexts. But there are also
more cosmopolitan attempts to engage with the past, and such
a motive has played an important part in the scholarly study
of the great Andalusian Sufi, Muhyi al-Din Ibn ʿArabi, since the
early 20th century. In this article, I would like to present an
analysis of one of the most original recent interpretations of the
thought of Ibn ʿArabi, proposed by the late Egyptian scholar
Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (d.2010) in his important Arabic study,
Thus Spake Ibn ʿArabi (Hakadha takallama Ibn ʿArabi).2 Abu Zayd
developed a literary interpretation of Ibn ʿArabi that attempts to
deal with some of the key problems of modernity, particularly
in terms of religious pluralism and the relationship between
religion and the intellect. The significance of Abu Zayd’s argu-
ment needs to be appreciated in relation to the persecution that
he himself suffered for his academic writings.

1.  This article is dedicated to the memory of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd. An
earlier version was presented at the conference on ‘The Modern Era and
Ibn ʿArabi,’ Istanbul–Konya–Damascus, May 23–28, 2008.
2.  Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, Hakadha takallama Ibn ʿArabi ([Cairo]:
al-Hayʾah al-Misriyah al-ʿAmmah lil-Kitab, 2002; 2nd edn., Casablanca:
al-Markaz al-Thiqafi al-ʿArabi, 2004). All references are to the second edition.
2 Carl W. Ernst

Abu Zayd’s major scholarly contributions have been in the

realm of the literary interpretation of the Qurʾan, to which he
devoted several major studies in Arabic, including The Critique
of Religious Discourse (Naqd al-khitab al-dini); Text, Authority,
Reality: Religious Thought between the Desire for Knowledge and the
Desire for Hegemony (al-Nass, al-sultah, al-haqiqa: al-fikr al-dini
bayna iradat al-maʿrifa wa-iradat al-haymana); and Understanding
of the Text: a Study on the Sciences of the Qurʾan (Mafhum al-nass;
dirasa fi ʿulum al-Qurʾan). He summarized his work on Qurʾanic
studies in a couple of recent English publications.3 Abu Zayd

Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 58, 2015

has also written on contemporary reformist thought in Islam,
and has authored an autobiographical account as well.4 But Abu
Zayd’s interest in Ibn ʿArabi was nothing new; in fact, his doc-
toral dissertation was written on the topic of Ibn ʿArabi’s mysti-
cal interpretation of the Qurʾan.5 Subsequently, as he himself
documented, Abu Zayd, as professor of Arabic literature at Cairo
University, encountered a concerted campaign of persecution
from Egyptian authorities, on the basis of his scholarly work,
particularly on the Qurʾan. His website briefly summarized
the result as follows: ‘In 1995 a Cairo appeals court ordered

3.  Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, Rethinking the Qurân: towards a humanistic
hermeneutics (Utrecht: University of Humanistics, 2004); Abu Zayd, ‘The
Dilemma of the Literary Approach to the Qurʾan,’ Alif: Journal of Compar-
ative Poetics, Special Issue on Literature and the Sacred, 23 (2003), 8–47.
Abu Zayd has also written the following entries in the Encyclopaedia of the
Qurʾān (Brill, Leiden-Boston-Koln): ‘Arrogance,’ Vol. I (2001), pp. 158–61;
‘Everyday Life: Qurʾan in,’ Vol. II (2002), pp. 80–97; ‘Illness and Health,’ Vol.
II (2002), pp. 501–02; ‘Intention,’ Vol. II (2002), pp. 549–51; ‘Oppression,’
Vol. III (2003), pp. 583–4.
4.  Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, with Katajun Amirpur and Mohamad Nur
Kholis Setiawan, Reformation of Islamic thought: a critical historical analy-
sis (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006); Abu Zayd, Voice of an
exile: reflections on Islam, trans. Esther R. Nelson (Westport, CT: Praeger,
2004). Abu Zayd has also written numerous other studies on issues of
Islamic law and thought.
5.  Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, Falsafat al-taʾwil: dirasah fi taʾwil al-Qurʾan
ʿinda Muhyi al-Din ibn ʿArabi [The Philosophy of Interpretation: A Study of the
Interpretation of the Qurʾan According to Muhyi al-Din ibn ʿArabi] (Beirut:
al-Tanwir, Dar al-Wahdah, 1983).
 Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd on Ibn ʿArabi and Modernity 3

Abu Zaid divorced from his wife on the grounds of his alleged
apostasy. With his wife he has been living in The Netherlands
since.’6 Up to his death, he held the Ibn Rushd Chair of Human-
ism and Islam at the University for Humanistics in Utrecht. By
his own account, he

studies modern Islamic thought by critically approaching classical

and contemporary Islamic discourse in the field of theology, phi-
losophy, law, politics and humanism. The aim of his research is to
suggest a theory of hermeneutics that might enable Muslims to
build a bridge between their own tradition and the modern world

Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 58, 2015

of freedom, equality, human rights, democracy and globalisation.7

Thus Spake Ibn ʿArabi invoked by its title the famous work of
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, as the author has
acknowledged.8 It was in that work that Nietzsche proposed
some of his most characteristic themes, including eternal
recurrence, the doctrine of the ‘overhuman’ who transcends
morality, and the will to power, using a fictionalized Zara-
thustra (based on the ancient Iranian prophet also known as
Zoroaster) as a spokesman for his own critical philosophy. Abu
Zayd did not go further than the title in invoking Nietzsche,
and in truth his book demonstrates a personal engagement
with Islam and the Sufi tradition that is far from the profound
alienation from religion that is articulated by the German phi-
losopher. Nevertheless, the explicit reference to Nietzsche’s
work may indicate that there is a similarity, insofar as Ibn
ʿArabi (like the fictional Zarathustra) stands as the model of
the philosopher who provides a liberating teaching, leaving it
to those who follow to advance to the next level, rather than
staying to assume a position of authority in a traditional sense.

6.  Taken from the website of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd hosted at www.
uvh.nl (consulted March 31, 2008, but since removed). This and other
links on Abu Zayd and his writings are available in the Wikipedia article
about him <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasr_Abu_Zayd> (consulted
March 31, 2008).
7.  Ibid.
8.  Abu Zayd, personal communication, Chapel Hill, NC, October 22,
2007.
4 Carl W. Ernst

Thus Spake Ibn ʿArabi begins with an introduction (muqaddima)

describing Abu Zayd’s personal and academic interest in Ibn
ʿArabi, followed by a preface (tamhid) on Ibn ʿArabi’s relation to
the present day, to religion, and to tradition. The main body of
the text is divided into six chapters:
1. From Ignorance (jahiliyya) to the Seal of Sainthood
2. The Dialectic of Clarification and Obscurity (Sufi Experience
between Unveiling and Concealment)
3. The Links of Space and the Conditions of Time
4. The Encounter with Ibn Rushd

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5. The Source of Existence and the Degrees of Existing Things
6. Interpretation of the Religious Law: the Dialectic of the
External and the Internal

There is no separate conclusion (which may fit in with the anti-

authoritarian model of Nietzsche, suggested by the book’s title).
In offering an account of this book, I will focus on the introduc-
tion and preface, which provide a context and purpose for the
book, and then turn to the expositions of the third and fourth
chapters to investigate the topics of religious pluralism and the
relationship between religion and intellect.
The introduction opens with a vivid description of the ritual
of chanting the recollection of God’s names (dhikr), an essential
Sufi practice. Abu Zayd recalled his Sufi-minded uncle Hasan,
whose dream of the Prophet Muhammad was instrumental in
pointing Abu Zayd towards the study of Sufism. Thus the book
begins with symbolic gestures towards Sufi initiation. From the
beginning, Abu Zayd approached the subject from the perspec-
tive of the problem of intellect and spirit in Islam, which can
be resolved by the category of ‘spiritual experience,’ as we shall
see. Though he wanted to take up the study of Ibn ʿArabi while
in Egypt, Abu Zayd was only able to accomplish this when he
received a fellowship to study at the University of Pennsylvania,
where he was able to devote the serious amount of time needed
to read the works of Ibn ʿArabi. It took him two years to com-
plete the Futuhat, while at the same time he studied works on
philosophy and religion ranging from Origen to Gadamer. Hav-
ing devoted over two decades to the study of Ibn ʿArabi, Abu
 Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd on Ibn ʿArabi and Modernity 5

Zayd asked himself whether the Andalusian master could be

considered modern. A sort of answer came when he discovered,
to his delight, that there were circles of readers in Europe and
America (such as the Muhyiddin Ibn ʿArabi Society) who dem-
onstrated a strong contemporary interest in the Shaykh, even
to the extent of distributing audio recordings of the poetry of
Ibn ʿArabi. At this point, Abu Zayd broke into a citation of the
famous verse by Ibn ʿArabi, ‘my heart has become a receptacle
of every form,’ which concludes with the celebrated couplet, ‘I
follow the religion of love; wherever its camels turn, love is my

Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 58, 2015

religion and my faith.’ Abu Zayd observed that, indeed, love is
the root of religion.
Abu Zayd concluded his introduction with several final com-
ments. First, without alluding to his persecution in Egypt, Abu
Zayd mentioned the publication of the German translation of
his autobiography in 1999, and an invitation extended to him
at a conference by a German publisher, requesting him to write
a new book on Ibn ʿArabi, which would be more suitable for a
general readership than his doctoral thesis. Abu Zayd actually
began to write the book in English for the sake of convenience in
translating it into German, but he quickly realized that it would
be much better to write the book in his native Arabic, some-
what to the discomfiture of the publisher. Second, Abu Zayd was
delighted when Professor Annemarie Schimmel, the celebrated
authority on the study of Sufism, offered to translate the book
from Arabic to German herself, although unfortunately this did
not come about (let me remark parenthetically that this was
a remarkable offer, since ordinarily Professor Schimmel main-
tained that she really did not understand Ibn ʿArabi, but she
liked Abu Zayd’s approach so much that she wanted to assist
anyway). As a third point, Abu Zayd related that he completed
the book in June of 2001, only a short time before the events
of September 11, 2001, which, as he remarks, reverberate in the
preface that follows. While Professor Schimmel was to him an
example of faith in the unity of human civilization from the
perspective of spiritual experience, the contrary and highly ide-
ological notion of a ‘clash of civilizations’ was predominating
at this point in Europe and America. In his only reference to the
6 Carl W. Ernst

book’s title, Abu Zayd stated, ‘Thus Spake Ibn ʿArabi is about civi-
lizations, cultures, and religions; this is the subject of the book
which I was honored to introduce to the Arab reader’ (p. 15).
The book then finally appeared in Arabic in 2002.
In the preface (pp. 17–30), Abu Zayd turned to the question,
why Ibn ʿArabi today? It is here that he presented his brief anal-
ysis of the factors motivating the spiritual quest – particularly
the anxiety, the high technology, and the injustice that are such
prominent features of modernity. He related the Enlightenment
to cultural relativism, the rise of individuality, and capitalism;

Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 58, 2015

and these in turn are linked to the colonial mentality and the
binary opposition between the civilized and the barbaric. He
remarked that the response of the Christian churches to the
Enlightenment was to turn outward in the form of missionary
activity, naturally arousing an anti-colonial feeling. At this time,
Islam became a spiritual capital that supplied the revolution-
ary symbols for the struggle against colonialism, so it became a
kind of local formula seeking justice. Thus arose a case of local
cultures arrayed against the global North, since the global mar-
ket has become the new god. As might be expected, Abu Zayd
cited the writings of Fukuyama on the supposed apocalypse of
capitalism, and the fulminations of Huntington on the clash
of civilizations. Abu Zayd described the current status of Asian
civilizations as in conflict with modernity, although he did
not raise here the general topic of fundamentalism as a revolt
against the ideologies of modernism. He depicted secularism as
a new religion of market and power, which brooks no resist-
ance. For him, the god of secularism is like Dracula, a mighty
idol that is immune to traditional religion.
Here Abu Zayd raised the problem of the return to religion in
today’s environment, but which religion? Religion has taken on
a social dimension of duty, but it also contains the inner aspect
of spiritual experience. He sees Sufism as a revolt against the
religious establishment, as a tendency distinct from the formal
disciplines of theology and law.
Next Abu Zayd sketched out the position of Ibn ʿArabi
between his predecessors and adherents. He noted his connec-
tion to world heritage, and (referring to the studies of Izutsu
 Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd on Ibn ʿArabi and Modernity 7

and Asín Palacios) he commented on the profound impact

of Ibn ʿArabi on other thinkers. Ibn ʿArabi is important both
for preserving his lost predecessors through quotations in his
own writings, and for his impact on the later Sufi tradition.
The appeal of Ibn ʿArabi, like that of other figures of spiritu-
ality in every culture, is the model that he furnishes of spir-
itual experience as an inspiring resource for our world today;
in this respect the arts offer a similar solution as well. Abu Zayd
cautioned, however, that Salafi control poses an obstacle to the
quest for spiritual experience, as likewise the mass media that

Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 58, 2015

represent Islam as anti-modern and terrorist. In this dual attack
from inside and outside, the elements of philosophy, theology,
and literature are excised from Islam, so that only terrorism and
the veil remain. In such a situation, where the clash of civiliza-
tions has become government policy, intellectuals are striving
for dialogue. The two main purposes of studying Ibn ʿArabi are
thus to free the contemporary Muslim intellect, and simultane-
ously to show another face of Islam to non-Muslims.
Let me turn briefly to the category of spiritual experience,
since this forms an important concept in Abu Zayd’s approach
to this topic. In Chapter 1, which is a brief biography, he raised
the question of the beginning point of Ibn ʿArabi’s spiritual
career. Claude Addas, followed by other scholars, has drawn on
passages from Ibn ʿArabi’s writings to suggest that it took place
during a retreat that occurred as early as the year 580/1184,
the same year in which he encountered the philosopher Ibn
Rushd, and also the date of his ‘entry into the path’; this is an
astonishingly early date for his spiritual formation, given that
he would have been approximately 15 years old at the time (or
20 years old, if we follow Osman Yahia’s dating of this meeting
as 585/1190). Many accounts of this early retreat are phrased
in a strongly hagiographical tone, suggesting that Ibn ʿArabi at
this time attained a vast spiritual knowledge through unveil-
ing without the benefit of study, which he would be elaborat-
ing for the rest of his life. While noting this information, Abu
Zayd focused instead on a different autobiographical account,
in which Ibn ʿArabi relates an event from his youth, when he
participated in a hunting expedition seeking wild onagers. He
8 Carl W. Ernst

discovered that he could not take part in harming the animals,

and therefore refused to hunt.9 Abu Zayd observed that this
episode demonstrates the inherent goodness and compassion
of Ibn ʿArabi’s heart, and that this attitude was not depend-
ent upon formal religious faith. Ibn ʿArabi later explained
that it was by adding mystical knowledge to this goodness of
heart that he intuitively recognized the divine secret in all. In
bypassing the hagiographic description of the youthful retreat,
it strikes me that Abu Zayd chose to represent Ibn ʿArabi in a
less esoteric fashion than usual; he depicts the crucial moment

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in Ibn ʿArabi’s development in terms of a universally accessi-
ble moment of compassion, rather than from a mystical gnosis
uniquely granted to Ibn ʿArabi.
From a methodological point of view, it is noteworthy that,
for Abu Zayd as well as many more hagiographical interpret-
ers, the category of spiritual experience is employed to signify
a direct expression of unmediated encounters with divine reali-
ties, without the benefit of any rationalization or translation.
Thus any account considered to be spiritual experience can be
accepted on face value as a literal description of an event that has
taken place in some way or other. There have been a number of
critical studies of mysticism that have strongly objected to this
concept of mystical experience, on epistemological grounds.10
Whether or not one accepts that criticism, it is also worth point-
ing out that the term ‘experience’ has a history going back to
the Renaissance, having been especially important in resistance
against authoritative doctrines, as in the alchemical protest
against Aristotelian physics, or in the Lutheran protest against
papal authority.11 One can work backwards from this European
notion of experience to indigenous Sufi terminology, such as

9.  Ibn ʿArabi, Fut.IV:696, quoted by Abu Zayd, p. 34 (Abu Zayd cites
this text according to the rare 1274/1857 Bulaq edition, which is unfortu-
nately hardly available in the US).
10.  Robert H. Sharf, ‘Experience,’ in Critical Terms for Religious Studies,
ed. Mark Taylor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), pp. 94–116.
11.  Carl W. Ernst, ‘From Philosophy of Religion to History of Religion,’
in Problems in the Philosophy of Religion: Critical Studies of the Work of John
Hick, ed. Harold Hewitt, Jr (London: Macmillan, 1991), pp. 46–50.
 Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd on Ibn ʿArabi and Modernity 9

the term dhawq or ‘tasting,’ which did indeed play a role in the
Sufi contrast between the state of the soul (hal) and mere verbal
expression (qal). Nevertheless, I would observe that we are lim-
ited here to the discussion of texts, and that verbal expression
in texts inevitably employs the tools of rhetoric; particularly in
any description of the attainment of spiritual states, there is a
vocabulary of authority and an element of persuasion in the
verbal account.12 Abu Zayd was well aware of the role of rhetoric
in his discussion of Ibn ʿArabi’s narrative of his encounter with
Ibn Rushd, though at times he was ready to invoke spiritual

Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 58, 2015

experience as beyond question or analysis (Abu Zayd’s appeal to
spiritual experience contains a powerful rhetorical challenge to
the authoritarian ideologies of modernity). Nevertheless, Abu
Zayd’s analysis of the language of Sufism as ‘a dialectic of clarity
and obscurity’ directly acknowledged the rhetorical character of
mystical language.
In addressing the issue of Ibn ʿArabi’s attitude towards reli-
gious pluralism, which is so poignantly evoked by his poem
quoted earlier, Abu Zayd in Chapter 3 in fact argued that our
consideration of Ibn ʿArabi does not place him outside of his-
tory and geography. As a counter-example, he quoted the exam-
ple of Henry Corbin, who maintained that ‘the only means of
understanding him [Ibn ʿArabi] is to become for a moment
his disciple, to approach him as he himself approached many
masters of Sufism.’13 Corbin further maintained that ‘objective’
knowledge of Ibn ʿArabi is impossible, since one knows only
the form that Ibn ʿArabi manifests to the degree of one’s spir-
itual capacity. Abu Zayd agreed up to a point with this reveren-
tial attitude, but he was not willing to suspend any relation to
time and belief; in the end, he felt, Corbin is too close to Ibn
ʿArabi. One must dive in with comprehension, and master Ibn

12.  For the rhetoric of Ibn ʿArabi, in particular ‘the boast that he makes
no boast,’ see my article, ‘The Man without Attributes: Ibn ʿArabi’s Inter-
pretation of Abu Yazid al-Bistami,’ Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn ʿArabi Soci-
ety (JMIAS) XIII (1993), pp. 1–18.
13.  Abu Zayd, p. 123, quoting Henry Corbin, Creative Imagination in
the Sufism of Ibn ʿArabi, trans. Ralph Manheim (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1969), p. 5.
10 Carl W. Ernst

ʿArabi’s language and spiritual experience, but without exces-

sive adoration (p. 124). I would add that, in the academic study
of religion, one should take precisely the same kind of approach
to Ibn ʿArabi as one would to any other religious figure, despite
(or even because of) his reputation as ‘the greatest teacher’ (al-
Shaykh al-Akbar).
The issue of religious pluralism becomes especially acute for
Ibn ʿArabi in the light of his letter written in 609/1212 to the
Seljuk ruler Kaykaʾus I (r.1211–20) on the proper way to treat
his Christian subjects, which included enforcing restrictions on

Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 58, 2015

non-Muslims (dating back to the time of the Caliph (ʿUmar),
such as the prohibition against wearing arms, riding horses,
rebuilding churches, conspiring against Muslims, etc.14 Abu
Zayd (pp. 127–60) went into great detail to provide a political
and historical context for this letter, which seems to go very
much against the spirit of tolerance and pluralism that is associ-
ated with Ibn ʿArabi’s mystical writings. Abu Zayd pointed out
that the departure of Ibn ʿArabi from al-Andalus took place in
the context of major Christian military campaigns against Mus-
lim authorities, that is, the Reconquista in the Iberian Peninsula
and the Crusades in the eastern Mediterranean. Slightly earlier,
Ibn ʿArabi had advised the sultan Kaykhusraw (r.1205–1211) to
watch out for bad government and corruption, another case of
practical political advice. Abu Zayd explored here the meaning
of religion as an ideological weapon that begets fanaticism, so
that a conquest of Muslims by non-Muslims becomes a problem
for a thinker like Ibn ʿArabi (the parallel case of European colo-
nialism in the 19th and 20th centuries is not stated, but irre-
sistibly comes to mind). In a similar fashion, Ibn ʿArabi in the
Futuhat (writing before Saladin’s conquest of Jerusalem) wrote
a testament forbidding the performance of pilgrimage in Jeru-
salem while it was under the domination of non-Muslims. Abu
Zayd remarked that such decisions by Ibn ʿArabi were in a sense
contrary to Sufism, and caused by the pressure of politics. Abu
Zayd further criticized Ibn ʿArabi for indulging in a triumphalist

14.  For details on this letter, see Claude Addas, Ibn ʿArabi ou la Quête du
Soufre Rouge (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1989), pp. 278–9.
 Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd on Ibn ʿArabi and Modernity 11

reading of history, according to which political or military vic-

tory signifies divine approval; after all, God’s promise in the
Qurʾan, that the believers will have victory, is not necessar-
ily directed only to the Muslims, since the promise is given to
those who believe (which includes Jews and Christians) rather
than those who profess the divine unity (that is, Muslims). Ibn
ʿArabi offered no explanation for the defeat of Muslims by non-
Muslims, and he remained impatient in his rebukes to heedless
kings. Thus there remains a tension between spiritual experi-
ence and its historical and political context. Moreover, one

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should not overlook Ibn ʿArabi’s insistence that his own age
was an apocalyptic one, in which the Mahdi and his helpers
were desperately awaited. In his words there is an implicit call
to believers and readers to take on the role of the helpers of the
Mahdi, who are expected to bring down the walls of Constan-
tinople without using a sword, simply by shouting ‘God is great
(allahu akbar)’ three times. Nevertheless, elaborate fantasies of
apocalypse still require explanation, and Abu Zayd remained
unsatisfied with Ibn ʿArabi’s political views on the non-Muslims
of his day.
The last section I would like to comment upon is the fourth
chapter of the book (pp. 163–200), entitled ‘The Encounter with
Ibn Rushd.’ This begins with historical notes on the meeting
between Ibn ʿArabi and Ibn Rushd in Cordoba, shifting to Ibn
ʿArabi’s account of the funeral of the philosopher. Abu Zayd
paused to reflect that the anti-philosophical inquisition of the
Almohad dynasty may have been responsible for the departure
of Ibn ʿArabi to the east, though he acknowledges that there are
many theories about this event. Most importantly, Abu Zayd
observed that a narrative approach to this account must take
account of the distance that separates Ibn ʿArabi, the transmit-
ter, from Ibn ʿArabi, the youthful subject of the narrative, since
they are separated by over 25 years. In elaborating this topic,
Abu Zayd clarified that there are four separate narratives, which
he quotes (pp. 166–7) in the words of Ibn ʿArabi, and which
may be distinguished as follows:
12 Carl W. Ernst

1. The initial meeting between the youthful Ibn ʿArabi and

the philosopher, including a dialogue on the relationship
between ‘unveiling and divine emanation’ on one hand
and ‘theory’ or philosophical reasoning on the other.
2. The response of Ibn Rushd to the father of Ibn ʿArabi after
the original encounter, in which he proclaimed himself for-
tunate to have had the opportunity to see someone who
was illuminated without the benefit of study.
3. A vision in which Ibn ʿArabi saw Ibn Rushd as through a
subtle veil, and reflected on the failure of the philosopher

Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 58, 2015

and his own success.
4. Finally, the funeral of Ibn Rushd in Marrakesh in 595/1198,
where Ibn ʿArabi saw the philosopher’s body carried by a
donkey, balanced on the other side by a container full of
his books, on its way to the burial of Ibn Rushd in Cordoba.
Ibn ʿArabi concludes with a verse wondering whether the
philosopher attained what he hoped for.

Abu Zayd undertook a series of reflections on the negative

portrayal of Ibn Rushd in these accounts, including the inter-
pretations of various modern scholars such as ʿAli Mabruk
and Steffen Stelzer. He observed, regarding the first narrative
(pp. 184–9), that the primary context for this story in the
Futuhat is the comparison between this world and paradise,
which are likened to bricks of clay or gold and silver. Moreo-
ver, this incident was not mentioned at all by Ibn Rushd, and
the dialogue of question and answer between them consists
of single words: yes and no, with the ‘no’ being the nega-
tive response of Ibn ʿArabi to the excessive and hasty joy of
Ibn Rushd to the first ‘yes.’15 In reality, observed Abu Zayd,
the subject is the relationship between philosophy and
inspiration.
At this point Abu Zayd recalled that Ibn Rushd was a disciple
of the philosopher Ibn Tufayl, who had introduced Ibn Rushd
to the Almohad Caliph, Yaʿqub ibn Yusuf – and it was the latter

15.  For a description of this encounter between Ibn ʿArabi and Ibn
Rushd, see Corbin, pp. 41–3.
 Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd on Ibn ʿArabi and Modernity 13

who commissioned Ibn Rushd to write a new interpretation of

Aristotle. Moreover, the very question that supposedly rested in
the air between Ibn ʿArabi and Ibn Rushd, that is, the relation-
ship between ‘unveiling and divine illumination’ and philo-
sophical reasoning, was the primary question that animated the
most famous composition of Ibn Tufayl, the allegorical story
of Hayy ibn Yaqzan. This fable was the history of a man born
on a desert island, who discovers all of the arts and sciences,
including the truths of religion and spirituality, through the
use of his intellect alone; in a different form, it would become

Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 58, 2015

Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Abu Zayd proposed a detailed
analysis of this story, relating it to the three levels of discourse
proposed by Ibn Rushd in his Decisive Treatise on the Difference
between Philosophy and Religion: (1) the people of philosophi-
cal demonstration, that is, the philosophers; (2) the people of
dialectical argument, that is, theologians; and (3) the people of
persuasion, that is, the masses. Abu Zayd observed that in some
ways the hero of this narrative is closer to the mystical con-
cept of humanity than the theological or philosophical view,
although he relies upon philosophical proof as the prerequisite
for mystical gnosis. In Abu Zayd’s opinion, Ibn ʿArabi, the nar-
rator of the story, is so different from Ibn ʿArabi, the hero of the
tale, that the meaning of the dialogue of ‘yes and no’ remains
ambiguous.
In terms of the second narrative, Abu Zayd pointed out
(pp. 189–92) that Ibn Rushd was made to enunciate only an
affirmation, which is metaphysically related to the concept
of similarity, whereas the concept of the bricks of heaven and
earth demonstrate difference, or negation. Here the key concept
is interpretation (taʾwil), as most notably proclaimed by Qurʾan
3:7 in its distinction between the parts of the revelation that are
‘clear command’ (muhkam) and ‘allegorical’ (mutashabih). There
is of course an immense gap between the modes of interpreta-
tion of the philosophers and the theologians; indeed, the phi-
losophers’ interpretation of the afterlife as allegorical was one of
the reasons why al-Ghazali dismissed them as infidels. Yet from
another perspective, perhaps Ibn ʿArabi’s, both the clear com-
mand and the allegorical aspect of the Qurʾan are necessary,
14 Carl W. Ernst

so that yes and no are simultaneously required. All this means

that, in relation to Ibn Rushd, Ibn ʿArabi celebrated his illumi-
nation precisely because it is not based upon learning.
The third narrative about Ibn Rushd (pp. 192–4) is clearly
a vision or a dream, perhaps what Ibn ʿArabi would describe
as taking place in the intermediate realm of the barzakh. Ibn
Rushd was veiled from the perception of Ibn ʿArabi, most likely
because of his position as a judge, an obstacle to spirituality, so
that even his philosophy could not pierce the veil. Yet given
this dismissal of the philosophers who are followers of Aristotle,

Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 58, 2015

and even the dialectical theologians, Abu Zayd wondered why,
in the fourth narrative, Ibn Rushd would have been astonished
at the spectacle of the philosopher’s body, at his funeral, bal-
anced by his books – for (let me suggest) is this not a pictorial
recollection of Qurʾan 62:5? There the Jews who misunderstand
the Law of Moses are described in terms of ‘the likeness of the
donkey carrying books.’
In reflecting on the fourth narrative, the funeral of Ibn
Rushd, Abu Zayd drew back to consider the nature of collec-
tive memory and individual memory in relation to such literary
productions as Ibn Rushd’s celebrated manual of jurisprudence,
The Beginning Point of the Jurisconsult. He paused to reflect on the
anti-philosophical atmosphere that prevailed in al-Andalus at
that time. The identity of the Almohad movement depended
upon religious warfare, and the trial of Ibn Rushd came about
because the Caliph needed to raise new taxes for war. The peo-
ple were on the verge of revolt, and the rulers depended upon
the religious authorities; therefore the persecution of Sufis and
philosophers became unavoidable. Both Ibn ʿArabi and Ibn
Rushd, in reality, were opposed to the domination of the jurists.
In saying farewell to the funeral cortege of Ibn Rushd, Ibn
ʿArabi was seeing his last connection to al-Andalus disappear
before his departure to the east. This is undoubtedly a symbolic
portrait resonant with many possible meanings.
There are those who go further in the critical evaluation of
the narratives of Ibn ʿArabi. Dominique Urvoy, in his intellec-
tual biography of Ibn Rushd, treats Ibn ʿArabi’s account of his
youthful interview with the philosopher as a ‘fiction,’ insofar
 Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd on Ibn ʿArabi and Modernity 15

as it portrays Ibn Rushd as doubting his entire life’s work as

a philosopher in the face of the mystical experiences of the
young Sufi. Urvoy regards this account as ‘totally in contradic-
tion with the psychology’ of Ibn Rushd, so that Ibn ʿArabi in
effect completely misread the encounter; Urvoy does acknowl-
edge that the meeting must have taken place, because of the
close relationship between the families of Ibn ʿArabi and Ibn
Rushd. However, the long interval between the encounter and
the composition of this recollection, many years later in the
East, leaves open the question of how accurate the story is.

Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 58, 2015

Urvoy further suggests that Ibn ʿArabi is not actually criticizing
the philosophical views of Ibn Rushd, which in any case were
poorly known in the Arab East; he observes that the signifi-
cance of the criticism is also political. That is, Ibn Rushd, as the
supreme judge of Cordoba, was a representative of the Almo-
had regime, which had not extended to the Andalusian Sufis
like Ibn ʿArabi the respect that they deserved. Thus Ibn Rushd’s
humble response to Ibn ʿArabi’s question doubtless served as a
vindication of mysticism over rationality, but more importantly
it demonstrated that an Almohad dignitary had recognized
Ibn ʿArabi’s legitimacy.16 Thus one may question Ibn ʿArabi’s
account as altogether too convenient.
As previously remarked, Abu Zayd did not provide a formal
conclusion to his book on Ibn ʿArabi. The fifth and sixth chap-
ters concern the metaphysics of the divine names, and the
inner interpretation of the prescriptions of the law. In a way,
these two chapters project once again the contrast between the
philosopher Ibn Rushd (metaphysics) and the mystic Ibn ʿArabi
(the law) upon a larger screen, so that the problem of the rela-
tionship between the intellect and the spirit is left open for the
reader to reflect upon. I believe that is where Abu Zayd wanted
to leave the reader – in a state of ambiguity. To be sure, his
analysis of the crisis of modernity is cogent, and the dilemmas
of colonialism and its aftermath are still potent. But for Abu
Zayd, the solution is not to be found in authority, and so even

16.  Dominique Urvoy, Averroès: Les ambitions d’un intellectuel musulman

(Paris: Flammarion, 2001), pp. 167–8.
16 Carl W. Ernst

Ibn ʿArabi is not to be elevated to the position of command.

Instead, readers who are capable of picking up the hints will
need to take responsibility on their own, much like the Mahdi’s
helpers, or the disciples of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra.

Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 58, 2015