The writings of Ibn al-ʿArabi (d. 1240), one of the most influential Sufi Muslim theoreticians of the medieval period, touched all aspects of knowledge in Asia and Africa in the centuries after his death.
This workshop will take as its objective a global history of translation and language in both the dissemination and reception of Ibn al-'Arabi's writings through discourse, music, and art.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20
OPENING RECEPTION 3:30 - 5:30PM
Rare Book & Manuscript Library
Featuring Exhibit "Light and Beauty" by New York Islamic Arts
(Open to Columbia community only)
QAWWALI CONCERT 6:00 - 8:00PM
Saint Paul's Chapel
Farid Ayaz & Abu Muhammad Qawwal Group
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 21
(Jerome Greene Hall 106)
WELCOME, ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, AND OPENING REMARKS: 9AM
Ali Karjoo-Ravary (Columbia University)
SOURCES: 9:30-11 AM
Kazuyo Murata (King's College London)
Ibn al-ʿArabi on BoredomMaria Dakake (George Mason University)
Ta'wīl and Ishara: The Meaning of these Terms in Ibn al-ʿArabi’s Approach to the Qur’anMohammed Rustom (Carleton University)
Ibn al-ʿArabi on Translation
LEGACIES: 11:15 AM - 12:45 PM
Rosabel Ansari (SUNY Stony Brook)
Ibn al-ʿArabi in Peripatetic guise? From ‘iyan to burhan and the epistemological problematicMarlene Dubois (Suffolk Community College)
The Covenant of Alast: When Love Shared its PromiseAmer Latif (Emerson College)
The Sufi Path of Extraordinary Ordinariness in the Ottoman Novel
The Depths of ImaginationAtif Khalil (University of Lethbridge)
Ibn al-ʿArabi in Japan: The Life and Legacy of Toshihiko Izutsu (1914-1993)
LUNCH BREAK: 1-2 PM
TRANSLATIONS: 2:45-4:15 PM
Oludamini Ogunnaike (University of Virginia)
Philosophical Sufism in the Sokoto Caliphate: Two Poems of Shaykh Dan TafaShankar Nair (University of Virginia)
The Heart as Cosmic Creator: Hindu Scriptures Translated through the Lens of Ibn al-ʿArabiSachiko Murata (SUNY Stony Brook)
Wujudi Metaphysics in Chinese
KEYNOTE: 5-6:30 PM
William C. Chittick (SUNY Stony Brook)
Farghani on Wahdat al-Wujud in the Four Journeys
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SOURCES: 9:30AM-11AM
Kazuyo Murata (King’s College London) - Ibn al-ʿArabi on Boredom
It is not without reason that Ibn al-'Arabi is called "the Greatest Master." One may say one of the many reasons is that for many questions we may intellectually entertain, it is highly likely that he has already dealt with them. Boredom is one such example. It is a common human experience in our world, and if we ask such questions as "Why do we get bored?" "What should we do with it?" he has an answer. This talk explores the cause and the proper handling of boredom according to Ibn al-'Arabi against the backdrop of his grand metaphysical scheme.
Maria Dakake (George Mason University) - Ta’wil and Ishara: The Meaning of these Terms in Ibn al-ʿArabi’s Approach to the Qur’an
The term “ta’wil” is commonly associated with mystical or esoteric interpretation of the Qur’an, and in contemporary Qur’anic studies parlance, it is sometimes translated as “hermeneutics.” Although Ibn al-ʿArabi is commonly described as a “mystic,” and the whole of his work can be described as a de facto commentary on the Qur’an, he was explicitly opposed to the practice of ta’wil as he understood it – that is, as a means of making the words of the Qur’an consistent with human, rational understanding. He preferred, instead, to refer to the inner meanings of a Qur’anic verse that might occur to the sincere listener/reader as “allusions (isharat).” In this presentation, I explore the way in which his use of this Arabic term is fundamentally consistent with his broader metaphysics, and in particular, with his conceptions of the barzakh and the imagination.
Mohammed Rustom (Carleton University) - Ibn al-ʿArabi on Translation
Culling from discussions in several of Ibn al-ʿArabi's major works (i.e., al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya, Taj al-tarajim, etc.), this paper aims to explore what al-Shaykh al-Akbar has to say about the act of translation itself, and how it is that he acts as a translator of divine realities.
LEGACIES: 11:15AM-12:45PM
Rosabel Ansari (SUNY Stony Brook)- Ibn al-ʿArabīiin Peripatetic guise? From ʿiyan to burhan and the epistemological problematic
This talk will discuss the attempt to express the philosophical system of the developed Akbarian school in the Peripatetic language of the philosophers. It will explore both the philosophical question of how (and whether) visionary knowledge (ʿiyan) can be proven apodictically (burhan) and the critiques of this endeavour.
Marlene Dubois (Suffolk Community College)- The Covenant of Alast: When Love Shared its Promise
The Covenant of Alast is one of the most important events mentioned in the Quran. It is the day God makes an agreement with the Children of Adam, that He is their Lord. The early Sufis saw in the Covenant a promise of love. Later works belonging to both Ibn al-ʿArabi and his school affirm this view. However, it can be argued that none seem to orient the discussion of the Covenant more toward love than Ibn al-ʿArabi himself.
Amer Latif (Emerson College) - The Sufi Path of Extraordinary Ordinariness in the Ottoman Novel The Depths of Imagination
Ahmet Hilmi's (d. 1914) Turkish novel, Aʿmak-i Khayal or "The Depths of Imagination", written towards the end of the Ottoman period, is a masterpiece of Sufi literature. The novel details the spiritual transformation of a young man named Raji under the direction of an eccentric Sufi master called Mirror Baba. From the confusion, dispersion, and doubt engendered by his modern education, Raji moves to wholeness, maturity, and wisdom. In this paper I highlight two themes from "The Depths of Imagination" in light of Ibn al-ʿArabi's teachings on "perspectivism" and "ordinariness."
A significant part of Raji's transformation proceeds through dream-visions in which he experiences life from the embodied perspectives of human and non-human others. This "embodied perspectivism" can be seen as Ahmet Hilmi's radical interpretation of the possibilities indicated in Ibn al-ʿArabi's famous line: "My heart has become capable of receiving all forms // A pasture for the gazelles and a cloister for the monks."
Raji's strange and unusual inner experiences culminate towards the end of the novel in an outward ordinariness. The initial agony and anguish in Raji's outer and inner life are transformed into calm and certainty. At the end of the novel Raji has developed the capacity to continue on his path of "embodied perspectivism" through fantastic dream-visions while holding a job and living an ordinary life. This culmination exemplifies the spiritual station of malamiyya, "the path of blame" or a life of extraordinary ordinariness as articulated by Ibn al-ʿArabi.
Atif Khalil (University of Lethbridge) - Ibn al-ʿArabi in Japan: The Life and Legacy of Toshihiko Izutsu (1914-1993)
Toshihiko Izutsu was without question one of the most remarkable scholars of Ibn al-ʿArabi to emerge out of the last century. Like Henry Corbin, however, with whom he forged a close friendship, he saw himself first as foremost as a philosopher, and in his own particular case, as a “metaphysician of the word.” The short paper will explore the Japanese scholar's fascination with Arabic, the Quran, and Islam in the context of pre-WWII Japan, the development of his interest in Islamic philosophy and Ibn al-ʿArabi , and the role that Ibn al-ʿArabi played in his formulation of a meta-philosophical vision that he believed could help unite East and West.
TRANSLATIONS: 2:45PM-4:15PMOludamini Ogunnaike (University of Virginia)- Philosophical Sufism in the Sokoto Caliphate: Two Poems of Shaykh Dan Tafa
Two debunked myths continue to haunt the study of Islam in Africa: the myth of decline—that Islamic intellectual activity, especially philosophy, declined from the golden age of the Abbasids into a period of moribund decadence in the early modern period—and that of Islam noir—that Sub-Saharan African Islam was magical, non-intellectual, and was influenced by, but did not influence, the central Muslim lands. The remarkable figure of Shaykh Dan Tafa (d. 1864) provides an important corrective to these lingering myths. The grandson of Shaykh Usman dan Fodio, a Sufi shaykh and founder of the Sokoto Caliphate (the largest polity in Sub-Saharan Africa in the 19th century), Shaykh Dan Tafa wrote works of Sufism, Islamic philosophy, theology, natural and occult sciences, history, which are still studied in Nigeria today. This paper will provide a brief introduction to Dan Tafa's oeuvre through a presentation of two Arabic poems he wrote: the first, written when he was 17, is a poem on technical Sufi Vocabulary, explaining the difficult terms found in 'Abd al-Karim al-Jili's magnum opus of Akbari Sufism, The Perfect Human, and the second is a unique poem listing the various forms of knowledge Dan Tafa acquired in his life and the means by which he attained them. Together these works vividly illustrate how various forms of knowledge were transmitted and translated in West Africa on the eve of colonial conquest.
Shankar Nair (University of Virginia): The Heart as Cosmic Creator: Hindu Scriptures Translated through the Lens of Ibn al-ʿArabi
During the height of Muslim power in South Asia (16th-17th centuries CE), Muslim nobles of the Mughal Empire facilitated the translation of numerous Hindu Sanskrit texts into the Persian language, including scriptures like the Upanisads, the Ramayaṇa, and the Bhagavad-Gita. These translations were often produced by teams of Hindu and Muslim scholars, brought together to accomplish this challenging task collaboratively. This remarkable meeting of the Hindu and Islamic traditions – so divergent in so many of their basic assumptions, concepts, doctrines, and beliefs – required a language and intellectual framework to mediate their nascent dialogue. It was frequently Ibn al-ʿArabi and his unique “system” of thought to whom the translators resorted in order to provide that crucial intellectual bridge.
This talk aims to provide a glimpse into that fertile cross-civilizational dialogue. More specifically, I will examine a few instances of a Hindu view that doesn’t often find an immediate analogue in Islamic thought: namely, the idea of the individual self as creator of the (macrocosmic) universe – a position most typically reserved for Allah, to Muslim eyes! This Hindu notion finds varied expression in numerous Sanskrit scriptures, such as the Upanisads and the Yoga-vasistha. In analyzing how this Hindu concept was translated into Persian, we can witness the mediating role played by Ibn al-ʿArabi’s thought, wherein his characteristic formulations of the “immutable entities” (al-aʿyan al-thabita) and the “Hadith of the Hidden Treasure” emerge as an especially central conceptual bridge.
Sachiko Murata (SUNY Stony Brook) - Wujudi Metaphysics in ChineseFour Sufi books were translated from Persian into Chinese between 1670 and 1730, and these remained the only translated Islamic texts dealing with theology and metaphysics until the twentieth century. The most technical of these books was Ashiʿʿat al-lamaʿat, “The Rays of the Flashes,” a commentary by ʿAbd al-Rahman Jami on The Flashes, a Persian classic on love. The author of The Flashes, Fakhr al-Din ʿIraqi (d. 1284), wrote the book after attending lectures on Ibn al-ʿArabi’s Fusus al-hikam delivered by Sadr al-Din Qunawi. Jami’s commentary was translated into Chinese by Ponachi 破衲癡, the penname of She Yunshan 舎藴善, who died in 1697. Ponachi was one of the most influential of the early ”Muslim Confucianists” (huiru 回儒), the writings of whom began appearing in 1642. Given Jami’s well-known support for wahdat al- wujud, it is not surprising that his commentary begins with a lengthy explanation of wujud and the various terms used by Ibn al-ʿArabi and his followers to discuss it. The talk will provide a few examples of how Ponachi turned Jami’s book into an exposition of Neo-Confucian thought without ignoring its focus on love and the many citations of poetry.
KEYNOTE: 5PM-6:30PM
William C. Chittick - Farghānī on Wahdat al-Wujūd in the Four Journeys
Saʿid ibn Ahmad Farghani (d. 1300) was one of the foremost students of Sadr al-Din Qunawi, Ibn al-ʿArabi’s stepson and primary propagator. He was the author in two version of the first commentary on Ibn al-Farid’s famous 760-verse qasida, The Poem of the Way. He wrote the first in Persian, basing it on lectures delivered by Qunawi. In the much longer, Arabic version, he added a long introduction and provided relatively systematic expositions of many technical terms that were soon to become commonplace among scholars. Among these terms was wahdat al-wujud, which had barely been mentioned before him. He also seems to be the first person to describe in detail the “Four Journeys” (al-asfar al-arbaʿa), an expression that is famously the short title of Mulla Sadra’s magnum opus. In his understanding, these two— wahdat al-wujud and the Four Journeys—are tightly bound together, so to grasp the meaning of one we need to understand the meaning of the other.
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New York Islamic Arts is an artist collective keeping the traditions of islamic art alive in New York. Founded in 2010 when master artist Mujgan Baskoylu came to the United States from Turkey and settled in Rockland County. A master artist of paper cutting, she has been conducting classes in Turkish Illumination techniques since that time. Her students are from many backgrounds, including American, Turkish and Iranian.
Featured Artists
Mujgan Baskoylu
Zinnur Doganata
Kamile Erdogdular
Elinor Aishah Holland
Behnaz Karjoo
Nurdan Yeneroglu -
The Farid Ayaz and Abu Muhammad Qawwal Group is one of the premier Qawwali groups of Pakistan. Qawwali is a devotional form of Sufi voice and instrumental performance from South Asia. Rich in poetic and mystical symbolism, the performance is led by powerful vocalists who loop through multiple verse-chorus sequences in several languages. The Ayaz ensemble lays claim to a strong musical lineage that stretches back to the Mughal court in Delhi.
Members of the Group:
Fariduddin Ayaz
Abu Muhammad
Ghayoor Ahmed
Moizuddin Haydar
Mubarak Hassan Haris
Zarar Ahmed
Shah Baleeghuddin
Fawwad Tahseen
Ghulam Mustafa
Muhammad Shah -
Keynote:
William C. Chittick - Stony Brook University
William Chittick is currently Distinguished Professor in the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies at Stony Brook University. Chittick is author and translator of thirty books and more than one hundred seventy five articles on Islamic thought, Sufism, Shi’ism, and Persian literature. He is best known for his work on Rumi and Ibn ʿArabī , and has written extensively on the school of Ibn ʿArabīi, Islamic philosophy, and Islamic cosmology.
Speakers:
Sachiko Murata - Stony Brook University
Sachiko Murata is a scholar of comparative philosophy and mysticism and a professor of religion and Asian studies at Stony Brook University. Murata has published many scholarly articles and a number of books which explore the interrelationships between Islamic and East Asian thought, especially in the writings of the Huiru, “the Muslim Confucianists,” who wrote numerous tracts in Chinese from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. Murata has been the director of Japanese Studies at SUNY Stony Brook since its founding in 1990 and regularly teaches Introduction to Japanese Studies, Japanese Buddhism, Feminine Spirituality in World Religions, and Islam and Confucianism.
Rosabel Ansari - Stony Brook University
Rosabel Ansari is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Stony Brook University. She specializes in Graeco-Arabic and Islamic philosophy, with an emphasis on the philosophy of language and metaphysics.
Amer Latif - Emerson College
Amer Latif is Associate Professor of Religion at the Marlboro Institute for Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies at Emerson College. His research areas include Sufism, comparative religion, and translation studies.
Kazuyo Murata - King’s College London
Kazuyo Murata is Senior Lecturer in Islamic Studies at King’s College London. She specializes in pre-modern Sufism in the Persianate world as well as the thematic and conceptual study of Muslim thought.
Shankar Nair - University of Virginia
Shankar Nair is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. His research interests include Sufism and Islamic philosophy; Quranic exegesis; Hindu philosophy and theology; Hindu-Muslim interactions in South Asia; Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit literatures; and the general intellectual history of the Indian subcontinent.
Oludamini Ogunnaike - University of Virginia
Oludamini Ogunnaike is Associate Professor of African Religious Thought and Democracy at the University of Virginia. He specializes in Sufism and Yoruba religious traditions in West Africa, particularly their intellectual and aesthetic dimensions, as well as cross-cultural and decolonial philosophy.
Atif Khalil - University of Lethbridge
Atif Khalil is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Lethbridge. He specializes in Sufism, Islamic philosophy, and Islamic theology.
Maria Dakake - George Mason University
Maria Massi Dakake is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at George Mason University. Her research interests are in the fields of Quranic studies, Shiʿi thought, Sufism, and female approaches to religion.
Mohammed Rustom - Carleton University
Mohammed Rustom is Professor of Islamic Thought at Carleton University and Director of the Carleton Centre for the Study of Islam. He specializes in Islamic philosophy, Sufism, Quranic exegesis, and cross-cultural philosophy.
Marlene Dubois - Suffolk Community College
Marlene DuBois is Professor of English at the State University of New York at Suffolk County Community College. Her research interests are in comparative religion, Sufism, and mythic narratives.