The Quranic Inspiration of Ibn Arabi's Vocabulary of Love – Etymological Links and Doctrinal Development
By Maurice Gloton
Ibn Arabi (Murcia July 28, 1165 – Damascus November 10, 1240
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The Shaykh
al-Akbar's work has at the same time the density of the metaphysical Point and
its radiance.
What he has
written – in prose or in verse – only portrays dazzling discontinuities which
appear in order to clarify, for the gnostic lover, the dense and impenetrable
continuity of the Divine Essence. He himself has remarked that what he has
transmitted in his work, even though it is immense, concerning the divine
Secrets, only represents very little compared to the exceptional knowledge with
which he has been favoured by Allah, the One who is absolutely Rich, beyond
need of the worlds as well as beyond need of the beings contained in them, and
who possesses infinite Knowledge. We are the ones who make outward, artificial
discontinuities out of the divine Permanence. The very perspective of
"tajdīd" or of constantly renewed creation, proves the permanence of
the Source of everything.
When we
consider Revelation as oral tradition, sound is the principle of every word. It
has this density of the metaphysical Point that we mentioned earlier, which was
described by the Prophet receiving divine Inspiration by way of sound as a
ringing Bell, heard even with his physical hearing – the Word uttered, with a
wounding split, possessing an intensity which he could hardly bear.
On bursting
into hierarchical creation and echoing there indefinitely, this Sound gave
birth to the sublime Letters, which are creative in their turn, being the keys
to the most differentiated names which will progressively give form to all the
realities of the worlds, or the sign-beings synthetically encompassed in the
Divine Foreknowledge.
In this
semantic perspective of the inexhaustible Divine Words,[2] each term which God
utters in His Act of sending down(tanzīl) His Words, cannot be confused with
another. Therefore there are no true synonyms. However, human incapacity, which
conducts itself by means of relationships in a world made up of a unity of
relationships, tends to describe a manifested reality by means of a form of an
approximate word or expression. Translation therefore conveys an initial
powerlessness to discern wholly the Divine Word, followed by a subsequent
inability to reconstruct it in a manner which is contingent on another
language, since the result has to go beyond the expression through an intuitive
grasp of the ineffable underlying reality. This assertion sets forth an aspect
of the incommunicable Secret of Divine Words in their indefinite modalities of
expression.
These
observations should not, however, discourage us from following our stated
intention! How is the Shaykh al-Akbar, who has been nourished by the Quran and
has assimilated innumerable secrets from it, going to reconstruct for us, in
his work in general, and more particularly in his poetry, the fundamental
Quranic themes of Love which we are going to develop in greater detail in the
first part of our paper? For if the roots which give rise to the words used in
the Quran are the expression of "the Divine Love to be known" –
according to the words of a Holy Tradition (hadīth qudsī), in which God speaks
through the mouth of the Prophet in the first person and on which Ibn 'Arabi
has commented numerous times in his work – certain ways of expressing this love
are more immediately accessible to us through their semantic, structural and
intelligible evidence. These terms form by themselves a whole, essential,
coherent, doctrinal perspective, some of them having a real, conceptual breadth
more obvious than others. We are therefore going to tackle first of all those
terms which describe Love in a new way, which is sometimes disconcerting even
for an experienced "Akbarian", and depart, for a moment, from the
conventional framework of habitual interpretations – even though they may also
have their reasons for being – given by orientalists and commentators both
oriental and western. That will allow us to restore to them a meaning both
original and new, an interpretation not deformed or altered by a long tradition
of translations containing resonances often borrowed from a different revealed
perspective, and to try and reinterpret these fundamental notions without
departing from the linguistic framework given by the Islamic Revelation in
clear Arabic language.
In the
second part, we will present some examples of etymological connections
concerning some of the major themes of Akbarian metaphysics and cosmogony which
we have presented briefly in the introduction or notes of some of our
translations.
But how
many obstacles must be overcome, one must admit, to go against the tide of
common usage in translations more than one hundred years old, and against
habits of language which it will be necessary to break, or which must be
rectified or even refuted! The boldness of Ibn 'Arabi's semantic explanations
must not remain his prerogative alone. Sometimes, the freedom of our age
permitting, we must also venture some bold interpretations which, admittedly,
only involve us and that greater or lesser number of people who adhere to his
school and to his implicit or explicit way of treating the sacred Arabic
language in order to extract from it its underlying power.
* * *
The
principle of autogenesis and cosmogenesis is Love. Most masters of Tasawwuf,
and Ibn 'Arabi in particular, develop the inexhaustible richness of a holy
hadīth which they consider authentic. Allah said through the mouth of His
Prophet: "I was a (hidden) treasure: I was not known. Now, I loved [or
according to a variant, I wanted] to be known. So I created the creatures so
that I might be known by them. Then they knew Me." From the lexical
viewpoint which concerns us at the moment, what should we understand by "Love"?
There are many Arabic terms, mainly Quranic, to express it, as we shall soon
see, but it is often represented by the root h-b-b as is the case in the hadīth
which we have just quoted (I loved – ahbabtu). This root connotes two
principal, lexical meanings which ultimately form only one: love(hubb) and
grain or seed (habba). However, the Master makes it clear that love cannot be
defined. Let us quote him on this point:
Definitions
of Love have been proposed, but I do not know anyone who has been able to
define what it is in itself. One cannot even imagine that it is worthwhile
giving them. Whoever might try to define it could only do so by means of the
fruits that it produces, the traces it leaves and the consequences that are
inherent in it since it remains a quality of the perfect and inaccessible Power
which is God Himself... [3]
It is
likely that the Shaykh's assertion regarding the impossibility of defining Love
is rooted in the hadīth that we have just quoted. In fact, one can only define
something according to two perspectives:
1)
According to Aristotelian logic in which things are defined by means of their
class and their specific difference; therefore God, and so also Love, which
cannot be placed in a class nor be subject to a specific difference, cannot accept
definition.
2)
According to another more Semitic logic which puts forward the definition of a
reality by reference to another which allows one to bring them together.
Now, at the
degree of divine Oneness, as at the degree of the essential Unity, a relationship
with Allah does not exist. Such a relationship can only be understood, then, at
the degree of His Presence in the universal Manifestation, but then Love is
envisaged by way of relationship in the effects which it necessarily entails
and which can be discerned and apprehended. Consequently, Love as such can only
be postulated, never defined.
Although
indefinable, according to Ibn 'Arabi, Love can be considered as the internal
movement, the interior attraction which allows a reality – the Divine Being or
any other entity – to exteriorize its possibilities, to open up the seed of
which it consists and to become a fully developed tree capable of reproduction
and bearing fruit in the image of the divine Life to which it is intimately
bound. From this well-founded lexical and Quranic perspective, al-Hubb is the
loving Seed or the seminal and generative development which is inseparable from
divine Life and the voluntary movement which it implies. Al-Mahabba,according
to the pattern on which this term is constructed, is the locus, the support
where this love is actualised.
The term
hubb used to signify Love has a generic meaning and may be applied to the
different nuances which Love takes on. Ibn 'Arabi, at the beginning of Chapter
178 of the Futuhat al-Makkiyya, which we have translated under the title Traité
del'amour[4] makes it clear that the Station of Love has four names:
[1] Hubb,
germinal, seminal or original love, whose purity penetrates the heart and whose
limpidity is not subject to accidental changes.
[2] Wadd,
affection or the faithful attachment of love, a word to which the Divine Name
Wadud is related, the constantly lovable and loving. The faithful attachment of
love is one of the divine characteristics. [According to the dictionary], it is
to remain in something constantly. The noun Wadd, post, permanent tie, has been
given to anything which is fixed in the earth.
[3] 'ishq,
the spiralling of love or distraught love, extreme love or overwhelming love.
This term comes from the same root as 'ashaqa, convolvulus or bindweed [which
winds itself in a spiral round a support which it succeeds in smothering or
causing to disappear; unlike the other three, this term is not Quranic].
[4] Hawa,
the sudden inclination of love or unexpected passion of love.
According
to this quotation, one can easily obtain a thorough understanding of the
meaning in relation to etymology, either by considering a connection in meaning
between two words which derive from the same root:
1) Hubb =
love; Habba = grain or seed (seed of love), the two meanings being
indissociable from one another: love produces the seed and the seed develops
due to the effect of the seed of love which it contains.
2) 'Ashaqa
= convolvulus (which grows in a spiral around a support); 'ishq = growing love,
spiroidal like bindweed. The two senses are still indissociable: 'ishq
represents Love in an ascending, spiroid form like one of the aspects of
movement belonging to the Spirit (ruh) and like convolvulus.
Or by
considering the polysemy of the root of a single word:
1) Wadd =
stake, nail, peg; Wadd = love. The Love designated by the term Wadd is a solid,
rooted and faithful love.
2) Hawd =
passion; Hawd = love. The Love designated by the word hawd is the surge of
love, the passion of loving.
Here we have
four names and so four different connotations of Love, although in the
translations one often finds only this one, same word "love" for all
four aspects.
Furthermore,
we may point out that the third aspect of Love that Ibn 'Arabi qualifies by
'ishq implies an ascending movement whilst the fourth, hawd also signifies, in
the dictionary, "to fall from above to below" and gives rise to the
expression: air, atmosphere. Thus the Blowing of the Divine Breath in its
double movement of expansive and contractive spiralling, circulates or evolves
in the divine Economy or in the creature according to an ascending and
descending movement after the fashion of air heated by the sun or cooled by
night.
It is
evident that in his poetry, the Shaykh often uses the four terms outlined above
and we may therefore observe that attraction (mayl) is the motive of love. On
these occasions, he shows us the multiple relationships that this term mayl has
with our subject. The examples that best illustrate this perspective are to be
found in poems 11, 20 and 25 of the Turjumān al-Ashwāq.[5] Let us quote, for
example, in translation, from poem 25 and the commentary by the Shaykh who
describes this universal tendency which love assumes, by means of a vocabulary
rich in polysemic implications:
Yā bānata
l-wādī arinā fananā
Fī līni a'tāfin lahā aw quduba
Rīhu saban yukhbiru 'an 'asrin
bi Hājir aw bi Minan aw bi Quba
O ban arbre de la vallée, fais-nous voir une branche
ou encore des tiges semblables à la soupless de sa cambrure.
Brise venue d'orient qui parle du temps de la jeunesse
Que l'on passe a Hājir, à Minā ou encore à Qubā.
O ban tree of the valley, show us a branch
or some twigs that can be compared with her tenderness!
The zephyr's breeze tells of the time of youth
spent at Hājir or Minā or Qubā [6]
Oh ban del valle! muéstrame tus ramas
y brotes suaves como las lineas de su cuerpo
Narra la brisa la juventud
pasada en Hājir or Minā or Qubā. [7]
The
Shaykh comments on these two verses as follows:
It is a
matter, here, of the propensity of the created being (mayl al-kawn) to orient
himself towards the Real by saying: Indeed, the attraction (mayl) that I have
for you [my beloved] and the grace that you accord me come from the inclination
(mayl) of the Presence of the Real towards you and the blessing which it
confers and the manifestation of its lights affect you. For your attraction
(mayla-ka) towards her is due to need (iftiqār) and deriving benefit (istifāda),
whilst her attraction (mayla-ha) towards you is due to sufficiency (ghinā') and
bestowing benefit (ifāda). Now, there is no relationship except through
contrast(naqīd).
The mention
of the branch (fanan) is connected to the lexical root f-n-n which also gives
the word fann, pluralfunūn, class, category, species. It is a matter of
different sorts of knowledges. The expression long twigs (qudūb) contains the
meaning of a flexible stick, cane or bow (qadīb). . .
The word
"cambrure"/"curve" [translated by Nicholson as "tenderness";
'atf, pl. a'tāf – side (of the body), curvature, fondness/affection] refers to
the divine inclination or sympathy ('atf ilāhi) implied in the mercy or
irradiating love which is all-encompassing (shāmila)and universal (mutlaqa) which
embraces everything [according to Q.7:156, ". . . and My irradiating Love
embraces everything (or: self-willed reality)"].
In the
commentaries on the Turjumān al-Ashwāq, which all deal with the Love for the
Beloved and where Nizam symbolizes as much the Divine Essence as Its incessant
and always new theophanies, the Master constantly has recourse to the polysemy
of the Arabic roots he uses. We shall therefore limit ourselves to the
quotations we have just used to illustrate this first part of our paper. One
may observe also that Ibn 'Arabi explains divine and created realities by means
of the commentary whilst sometimes avoiding, no doubt for good reason, mention
of the roots although he refers to them implicitly. One of the motives which
seems most obvious to us is the explanation of a root which is rich in lexical
meaning, but whose fundamental and primary significance has been progressively
hidden by common usage and the cultural evolution of the language.
We have
just observed how the translator who is scrupulous and takes pains to render
the interconnected acceptations of the Arabic roots discovers thereby an
astonishing doctrinal richness which he attempts to let his reader share. That
is why we would now like to demonstrate all the benefit we can gain from examining
certain Arabic roots linked to the theme of Love expressed in the hadīth qudsī
quoted above, as well as those of other words lexically connected either to a
particular root or to a group of terms relating to Love. It will be a question
of giving etymological connections coupled with some doctrinal development, as
Pablo Beneito understands this in his study on "Intratextuality in
Akbarian Hermeneutics" which he presented at the Institut du Monde Arabe
in Paris in February 1997, at a conference on the theme of love in the work of
Ibn 'Arabi.
Now, by
applying the procedure which Ibn 'Arabi uses constantly and which we have just
explained, we would like, first, to analyse semantically the following terms:
kalam and kalm, dhikr anddhakar, nafas and nafs, rahma and rahim, hubb and
habba, all linked directly in a complex evolutionary and involutionary process
of Love. Then, secondly, we shall show the connection which exists between the
different divine, essential Names brought into play so that the loving Seed
develops in order to form the macrocosmic and microcosmic Branching in the
divine, totalising Manifestation. This may consist of an illustration of
etymological links accompanied by additional doctrinal information.
Thus the
root k-l-m, which contains the meanings of wounding, and uttering or
articulating, gives rise to the two nouns kalm = wound and kalam = word or
speech, which apparently have no immediate connection. However, the Word, by
being manifested or uttered, entails sacrifice and generation in universal
suffering. Allah exteriorizes His Word by breathing out or uttering the
infinite possibilities contained in His Knowledge just as the blood of life
escapes from the body, wounded by a sharp instrument, for example. However,
unlike the blood of a created being, the words of Allāh are not exhausted as He
says in His Book: "If all the trees on earth were pens (aqlām), and the
sea were swelled by seven seas (of ink) besides, the Words of Allāh would not
be exhausted. Indeed, Allāh (is) Powerful and Wise" (Q.31:27).[8] This is
so because Allah is the One who splits asunder the heavens and the earth
(Q..35:1) and it is through these cracks or wounds that He makes the Words
escape unceasingly. TheQalam (calamus) which is phonetically connected to the
termkalam (word) is the instrument or channel which is going to spill, or
convey into universal Manifestation, the Divine Words articulated by the divine
"Dhikr", the bearer of the loving seeds or semen, the real
"Logos spermaticos". Moreover, one could observe that the Calamus
engraves the letters on a support which it therefore metaphorically wounds.
If we next
analyse the root dh-k-r we see that it has the two following main acceptations:
1) to strike in the male organ, to sharpen to a point, to make masculine, to
give birth to males; 2) to remind, mention, remember, invoke, chant...
The Dhikr,
before being a simple "mention", is the divine, articulated Word
which is conveyed through the channel of the calamus. These are Divine Words or
seeds contained in the divine Consciousness. It has, therefore, an eminently
fecund power, whether it is articulated by God Himself according to an Islamic
perspective, or whether it is formulated by the human being. It is a divine
characteristic, an attribute related to Allah in His Oneness. It expresses the
generative powers of the masculine active Principle (dhakar = male) which
interpenetrates universal Manifestation, the Womb or Matrix of all the forms of
the Universe or the feminine principle (unthā = female), by ordering it through
the action of the seeds of wisdom and love. With its executive power, the
Dhikr, the sharp and illuminating fine point, assails the darkness of the human
constitution which is not yet harmonised and revivifies it with its uterine
seed. Allah speaks of this in the following way in His Holy Scripture, "He
is no other than a Dhikr for the sign-beings [the worlds/creatures] (in Huwa
illa Dhikrun li l-'ālamīn)"(Q..38:87). "We sent down the Dhikr and We
shall certainly preserve it." (Q. 15:9) One can also observe the
complementarity of the two principles in the following verse: "O human
beings! We have created you from a male (dhakar) and a female (unthā)
(Q.49:13)."
The Divine
Words thus spoken by the divine, impregnating Dhikr and conveyed by the divine
Calamus, are brought to life by the All-Radiating Breath of Love (nafas
al-Rahmān). This expression derives from the following hadīth of the Prophet:
"I feel the Breath of the All-Radiating Love coming from the Yemen [or:
from the Right]." His first term nafas (breath) and the term nafs (soul),
both come from the root n-f-s meaning breath, sigh, relaxation, opening out,
soul, precious thing, and also the influence, be it more or less positive,
connected to the look. His second term, that is to say the Divine Name Rahmān
(All-Radiating Love) – which is constructed according to a pattern with an
intensive meaning, reminiscent of the dual form – comes from the root r-h-m
which means to have mercy, to die in childbirth, but whose deeper meaning is
surely "to radiate with love" since one has, elsewhere, deriving from
the same root, the noun rahim (uterus, womb, blood relationship), and the
nounrahma (radiating love, and by extension, mercy of a feminine kind). The
universal Womb/Matrix dilates as far as the infinite confines of divine
Possibilities under the influence of the Seed of Love which is contained in its
most secret centre. The Divine Name ar-Rahmān, by the generative power of
Divine Love which it transports, opens out the possibilities contained in the
Divine Names and immutable essences squeezed into the "metaphysical
Point" of the Divine Oneness and disseminates them in the informal
Substance of universal Existence to form the universal macrocosmic Tree and the
microcosmic branchings which result from it. By this relationship of extension
and development, the Name ar-Rahmān both dilates and manifests all the other
Divine Names and embraces them at the same time, according to this divine
Saying: "Say, Invoke Allāh or invoke ar-rahmān. Whichsoever you invoke, to
Him are the excellent Names (Q. 17:110)." It is this very animated Breath
which carries the inexhaustible Words of God, composed of innumerable cosmic
Letters, through the multiple hierarchical degrees of universal Manifestation.
These
significant examples show to what extent etymological connections and doctrinal
development are intimately linked in order to form, in many cases, an
indissociable whole. We can illustrate this etymological and contextual
perspective with many other examples that have a bearing on essential doctrinal
and spiritual aspects. However, to avoid prolonging this paper, we shall finish
our reflections by briefly studying what the theologians and certain Masters of
the Tasawwuf meant to suggest by the expression as-Sifāt an-nafsiyya or the
(seven) essential (Divine) Qualities.
In the holy
Prophetic news that we quoted at the beginning of our talk, God makes clear the
whole Process of universal Manifestation starting from Love, and the knowledge
of God that results from it for the creatures born of essential Love. God said
through the mouth of His Prophet: "I was a (hidden) Treasure; I was not
known. Now, I loved to be known. So I created the creatures so that I might
make Myself known to them. Then they knew Me." Here, God is expressing
Himself in the first person singular. It is not therefore a question of God,
envisaged as the absolute, unconditioned Essence, to which this other
authentichadīth alludes: "God was and there was not with Him a
thing(shay') ..." By expressing Himself in the first person singular, God
affirms His Oneness, at which degree the Divine Names and Attributes are
already differentiated although not yet manifested, acting through the beings
which they will later qualify or characterize by giving them their existential
norms. This is why we find in this holy hadīth: "I was a Treasure
..." the fundamental Qualities of the Divine "Person", the
essential attributes (as-sifāt an-nafsiyya): those of life, knowledge, ability,
will, speech, hearing and sight.
In the
divine Life, the first internal and continuous ontologi-cal movement of Love,
all the divine possibilities are in an essential equilibrium; they are the
things (ashyā'), that is the divine essential Realities contained in All
Possibility (mashī'a = the place of all divine volitions). They represent the
infinite elements of Divine Knowledge, composed of all these possibilities
which constitute so many signs ('ālamāt), or sign-beings ('ālamīn)identified by
Ibn 'Arabi by means of the technical expression al-a'yān ath-thābita, the
permanent prototypical essences. The Divine Name "the Infinitely Knowing
('ālim)", by this ontological relationship, rules them all. Divine
Knowledge ('ilm) consists therefore of knowing them all ontologically, in
themselves and in the modalities of interconnection and conjunction that God
has placed in them from all eternity. They can only be described by the
intervention of the excellent Divine Names, the universal relational norms
necessary for the identification and characterization of these permanent
prototypical essences which, without them, could never be known. The Divine
Name al-'Alīm,the One who Infinitely Knows the sign-beings, is linked to the
root 'a-l-m: to sign, to give something its distinguishing mark, and secondly
to know by means of signs or symbols.
We can
note, in passing, the following etymological links:
Firstly,
the root 'a-l-m: 'alama = to be the sign of; 'alima = to know; 'alama, pl.
'alamāt = signs; 'ālamūn, regular plural = beings of the world, sign-beings; 'ilm
= knowledge (science), the entirety of interlinked signs; 'alīm = knowing or
more precisely "knowing-known".
Then with
the root sh-y-' = to will synthetically; shay', pl. ashy a'= thing or synthetic
reality which is the object of the divine essential Will; mashī'a =
metaphysical place where these ashya'are, that is the place of the divine
essential volitions.[9]
To continue
our doctrinal study, we may say that the evaluation of these ontologically
permanent sign-beings by God within the divine Life takes place through the
divine Function which is calledQudra, a divine faculty which evaluates or
assesses the value of each thing in itself according to its essential
possibility, and which assigns the measure of things in relation to each other.
This function of determination and evaluation is exercised by the Divine Name
al-Qadīr, the One who has the ability to evaluate everything.
This
interpretation follows directly from the meaning of the rootq-d-r, to appraise,
assess according to its value, that one finds in the word qudra and the Divine
Names al-Qadīr or al-Qādir, which is much more explicit than the meaning of Powerful
which is very often used to translate these two Divine Names.
In the
order of enumeration of the Divine Qualities of the Essence, the Name the
Self-Willed (al-Murīd) is sometimes given after al-Qadir. The root of this term
r-w-d means: to go from here to there, the will (irāda) being the faculty of
the Soul or animated Breath which allows self-determination by going from a
known thing to another which is not actually realised, the movement of
attraction which results from it in order to go towards the object thus desired
is often called love.
Endowed
with these four essential attributes of Life, Knowledge, Ability and Will, the
Divine Being which loves to be known, expresses or utters this Love of being
known, by articulating through His Word (kalam) all the possibilities contained
in the permanent prototypic essences. This divine Function is called
al-Mutakallim, the One who expresses Himself through Himself. The root of this
term k-l-m has the double meaning of to utter and to wound. As we have already
pointed out, the enunciated word, which is an articulation, actualises all the
possibilities of the divine Being. This may provisionally be symbolically
represented by a Point in an interior and spiroidal movement due to the action
of the Movement linked to the Principle of Love, which is the Spirit of this
interior motion in its two principal aspects of attraction and re-absorption.
If we "amplify" this metaphysical Point without dimension, it takes
on a symbolic, spherical form, at the interior and outer borders of which all
the divine possibilities of which we have just spoken are expressed. This
illusory outflow may be depicted as the many wounds by which the sap of Life
produces the metacosmic and cosmic universal Tree.
The last
two attributes of Hearing (Samī') and Seeing (Basīr), or Hearing and Sight –
often deemed to be the two final attributes which constitute the seven
attributes of the Essence – make these principial possibilities radiate
throughout the limitless, divine Sphere, constantly opening up and closing in
on Itself, by the action of the essential Word in the resounding immensity
where it is received. The divine Hearing, ontologically speaking, perceives the
Words and the divine Sight scatters them infinitely in an internal movement of essential
spiralling.
This
ontogenetical outline is clearly not as linear and schematic as this
too-condensed and brief paper might lead one to believe. The seven Qualities of
the Essence, and all the other Attributes or Divine Names, coexist
ontologically and co-operate in the Genesis of universal Existence. They
interact and are incessantly correlative.
Thus, the
meaning of the organization and the correlation of these Divine Qualities,
which are often difficult to explain, becomes more obvious and accessible as
soon as one considers the etymological connections, in a given context of words
stemming from the same root. Moreover, this method very often opens up an
immense intuitive field which seems seldom to have been explored.
Conclusion
The
advantage that can be gained from such a study is that linguistic symbolism and
its numerous implications, which allow one to assimilate the principles of
these etymological links within a specific context, both generally and more
particularly as applied to the technical vocabulary of love used by Ibn 'Arabi
in his prose as well as in his poetry, have an almost inexhaustible richness.
All the expressions of the language reveal traces of the universal Love of
Allah in Himself and in the creation, for they are connected to the production
of the divine possibilities which are manifested by differentiating themselves,
from the informal principal up to the most elaborate and displayed form.
One of the
immediate consequences which ensues from this is that it clearly obliges one to
review, in many cases, both the over-conventional lexical meanings that are
frequently retained and their applications, demonstrating habits of translation
that often succeed in giving a diminished, and sometimes even a distorted,
meaning. Moreover, we might add that it seems totally regrettable that the
current tendency is to favour the edition of Arabic lexicons and dictionaries
by classifying the words according to their alphabetical order, because even if
this method has the advantage of being convenient for students, it rather
quickly risks losing completely the fundamental elements of etymological
science. In fact, if one excludes the richness of meaning of the roots, one
will progressively descend into a vocabulary which only contains words which
offer a precise meaning, without preserving the connection to the different
connotations that their original root contains, and therefore into a
significant lack of comprehension of the founding texts of Islam as well as of
ancient Arabic literature.
To avoid
that, it is necessary that pure Arabic semantics no longer consists of
approaching the Arabic language used by the Quranic Revelation and the
authentic Masters who explain it, as a simple conventional tool which is
definitively fixed, but rather as an ever-new and living means for a profound
and illuminating understanding of the facts of this Revelation. This method
produces a fertile intellectual intuition, which is the source of a marvellous
interior enrichment. May God give us strength, discernment, and serious and
competent people to facilitate and develop the diffusion of this enriching
discipline!
Translated
from French by Cecilia Twinch
Notes
1. An earlier version of this paper was presented at "The Poetry of
Ibn 'Arabi", the fifteenth annual symposium of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi
Society in the UK, held in Oxford on 3-5 April 1998.
2. Cf. Q.I8:109.
3. Traité de l'amour ("Treatise on Love"), translated by M.
Gloton, Paris, 1986, p. 54.
4. See n. 3.
5. Turjumān al-Ashwāq, poems 11, 1.4, 20, 1.1 and 25 1.16 & 17.
(French translation: M. Gloton, L'Interprète des Désirs, Paris, 1996.)
6. English translation: R.A. Nicholson, The Tarjumān al-Ashwaq: A
Collection of Mystical Odes by Muhyi'ddīn ibn al-'Arabī,London, 1978, p. 98.
7. Spanish translation: V. Cantarino, Casidas de amor profano y místico:
Ibn Zaydun, Ibn Arabi, S.A. Mexico, 1988, p. 157.
8. See also Q.I8:109.
9. A more complete commentary on this root is given in n.17, p.5 of the
French version of Ibn 'Arabi's treatise, entitled Inshā ad-Dawā'ir, Paris,
1996, which I translated in collaboration with Paul Fenton.
UK: mias.uk@ibnarabisociety.org P.O. Box 892, Oxford, OX2 7XL, UK +44 1865 511963
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