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Grazing in the Garden of God’s Existence: Spiritual Landscapes in Ibn Sab‘in’s (d. 1270 CE) Risalat al-Nuriyya
Abstract
The Andalusian mystic Abd al-Haqq ibn Sab'in of Ricote (d. 1270 CE) is one of the most enigmatic figures in Islamic intellectual history. Many medieval Muslim writers portrayed him as the epitome of whatever faults they could find in Sufism, esotericism, or mysticism in general. However, he was also the author of works “the likes of which no one has ever seen” and manuscripts of his writings can be found throughout North Africa and the Middle East. Surprisingly, despite the fact that most of Ibn Sab‘in’s surviving works have been edited and published, few scholars have studied them in detail. This paper attempts to rectify this situation by presenting an analysis of the mystical landscapes and mindscapes of Ibn Sab‘in’s treatise Risalat al-Nuriyya (The Epistle of the Illuminative). Despite the fact that it so far has remained unstudied, it is one of the most important works of Ibn Sab‘in because it provides an outline of his spiritual method (tariqa), which the text refers to as al-Sab‘iniyya. This Way proves to have been an eclectic mix of Islamic devotionalism, Sufism, Neo-Pythagorean theosophy, Iamblichan theurgy, Neoplatonic cosmology, Hermetism, and Shi‘ite esoterism, in the context of a radically monistic or even pantheistic theology. A key spiritual landscape of the Way of Ibn Sab‘in was the notion of the world as “The Garden of God’s Existence” (bustan wujud Allah), where everything that exists is a theophany of Absolute Oneness (al-wahda al-mahda). In this sacred garden, even inanimate objects invoke God (dhikr al-jamad), through the “language of existential right” (bi-lisan al-istihqaq). An important link between landscapes and mindscapes in this text is provided by the concept of epistemological stations or “standings” (mawaqif), which was first developed by the Sufi Muhammad al-Niffari (d. 965 CE). These “standings” occur at the final stage of mystical ascent, when the seeker finds his invocation of God “flying by itself” through the eighth and ninth spheres of the Neoplatonic cosmos and reaches the true homeland of the soul, in which one attains to the Divine Intellect. In this state of spiritual unification, the seeker understands that “there is no existent but God” (la mawjuda illa Allah), that “subjectivity is objectivity (al-anniyya hiyya al-huwiyya), the known is the knower, the dead is the living, and the outward is the inward.”
Discipline
Religious Studies/Theology
Geographic Area
Spain
Sub Area
13th-18th Centuries