New evidence on the early life of Ibn al-Arabi.

• Author: Elmore, Gerald

Apart from the many valuable autobiographical notes to be found throughout Ibn al-Arabi's literary corpus, a certain fanciful impression later developed around this textual/factual core, rather like the legenda aurea of the haloed Christian mystics, according to which Ibn al-Arabi's family belonged to the noble ruling class of Andalusian society. This romantic notion apparently first crystallized in the ninth/fifteenth century account of the avidly polemical hagiographer, al-Qari al-Baghdadi, entitled Al-Durr al-thamin fi manaqib Muhyi 'l-Din,(1) in which the young Sufi is presented as "one of the sons of the rulers, notables and chiefs of that time." While it is unlikely that many early Arab readers took the legend very seriously, it was, ironically, with the advent of modern critical studies of Ibn al-Arabi's life that a modified form of the "noble-birth presumption" was promoted by M. Asin Palacios, who described his great countryman's family as "noble, rica, y muy religiosa."(2) This portrayal was implicitly accepted by all later, derivative biographical accounts,(3) and even remained, to a certain extent, intact in the recent landmark biography by Claude Addas, The Quest for the Red Sulphur.(4)

The publication in 1990 of a previously unknown and presumably reliable biographical sketch by the Shaykh al-Akbar in Ibn al-Shaar al-Mawsili's Qalaid al-juman fi faraid shuara hadha 'l-zaman (Necklaces of Pearls: Precious Verses from Poets of the Present Age)(5) calls into question this popular impression, specifically identifying Ibn al-Arabi's social background as the military class (jund) of Almohad Andalusia. The passage, which I translate below, also contains a description of the occasion on which Ibn al-Arabi decisively entered the Sufi path, all the more valuable for having apparently come from the master's own lips:

Muhammad b. Ali b. Muhammad b. Ahmad [Ibn] al-Arabi, Abu Abd Allah, the Gnostic Master [surnamed] al-Hatimi al-Tai, a descendant of Abd Allah, son of Hatim al-Tai:(6) He was born in the town of Murcia in the time of the [independent] Commander, Abu Abd Allah Muhammad b. Sad Ibn Mardanish,(7) in the year 560 [= 1165 A.D.]; and he died on the 22nd day of Rabi al-Akhar in Damascus, and was buried at Jabal Qasiyun in the tomb of the Qadi, Zaki al-Din,(8) in 638 [Nov. 10, 1240].

He studied traditions with Abu Abd Allah Muhammad b. Ubayd Allah al- Hajri,(9) Abu Abd Allah Muhammad b. Said Ibn Zarqun,(10) Abu -l- Husayn Yahy b...