Abstract
The first encounter of Iranian Sufis with the teachings of Muḥy al-Dīn ibn ʿArabī’s (d. 638 H/1240) goes back to the seventh ḥijrī century, with ʿAbdul Razzāq Kāshānī (d. 735 H/ 1335?) as pioneer and forerunner. However, al-Shaykh al-Akbar’s theoretical mysticism (ʿirfān-i naẓarī) continued to capture the attention of subsequent generations of Sufis, jurists, theologians, and laymen who found it convincing for their queries on wujūd (being, existence), tawḥid, wilāya, and alike. In one of the last initiatives of this kind, an unknown jurist, called Muḥsin Bābākhānī (with the penname of Shaykh Qāsim Ṭihrānī), has put together a book, entitled Al-Qawl ul-matīin fī tashayyuʿ al-shaykh al-akbar Muḥya al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī (The Solid Statement in the Shīʿīsm of al-shaykh al-akbar Muḥya al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī), to locate Ibn ʿArabī in the tradition of the Shīʿa mystics, whose Sufism is a successful synthesis between the Sunni juridical inclinations and Shīʿa mystical interests. Ṭihrānī’s endeavor goes above the preceding works that attempted to give a Shīʿa reading of Ibn ʿArabī’s teachings, and concerns itself with his religious affiliations, which, according to Ṭihrānī, was Twelver Sunnism. Ṭihrānī goes as far as to call him a Twelver Sunni, a contradictory title, which is designated to those who submit to the imamate of Ali and his sons, as well as to their infallibility on one hand, and to believe in the khilāfat of the Four Righteous caliphs on the other, and it is due to such a happy marriage that Ibn ʿArabī’s mysticism is so rich, convincing and complete. In the present paper, I will analyse Al-Qawl ul-matīin in light of Ṭihrānī’s cultural background on one hand, and political and ideological developments of the post-revolutionary Iran on the other. My thesis is that, by ‘Twelver Sunnism’, Ṭihrānī manipulates, and even distorts the historical facts to justify the ideological, and at times oppressive apparatus of the Shīʿa seminaries and their political allies in a fervent society.
Keywords: Ibn ʿArabī, theoretical mysticism, Qāsim Ṭihrānī, Al-Qawl ul-matīin fī tashayyuʿ al-shaykh al-akbar Muḥya al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī.
Ibn ʿArabī’s teachings received a whole set of diversified reactions only a few years after the completion of al-Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam and its exposure to Iranian Sufis in the mid-seventh ḥijrī century (12th century). ʿAbdul Razzāq Kāshānī (d. 735), who lived in the mid-eighth century, in his books Collected Treatises and Writings, indicates the first time scholarly circles in Shiraz became familiar with al-Fuṣūṣ, when two of his masters in Sufism had difficulty finding an expert in Shiraz with whom they could discuss tawḥīd, or who could answer their questions regarding the subject. In consideration of the time of the completion of the Fuṣūṣ in the early seventh century (precisely in 627 ḥijrī), it seems that it only took twenty-eight years for the Fuṣūṣ to reach Shiraz and become accessible to Kāshānī’s masters in the Ilkhanid Iran. This encounter, which testifies to the fascinating journey of Ibn ʿArabī to the Muslim East has continued ceaselessly until our time.
Generally speaking, there are three divergent approaches to al-Shaykh al-Akbar’s teachings in Iran: the first one, whose initiation goes back to the Kubrawī Sufis, started with ʿAlāʾ u-Dawla Simnānī (d. 736) and culminated in the writings of the Naqshbandī Sufis, chief among them Shaykh Aḥmad Sirhindī (d. 1624), treated his teachings with misunderstanding and confusion, if not to say denial. The controversy, which was over wujūd, its definition(s) and its understandings by the Iranian Sufis, eventually divided the Sufis of the mid-seventh century and their successors into the followers of the two separate camps of waḥdat al-wujūd and waḥdat al-shuhūd. A controversy that might be the most serious debate in the Akbarīan mystical tradition among his expositors in the eastern frontiers of the Islamic civilization, and as history proves, it has left its imprints on Sufism in both Iran and India indefinitely.
The second approach is that of a number of contemporary writers and scholars, chief among them Muḥammad Riḍā Shafīʿī Kadkanī and ʿAbdul Ḥussayn Zarrīnkūb, who look at Sufism in general and Akbarīan mysticism in particular, from a nationalistic perspective. Kadkanī goes as far as to warn about the consequences of Ibn ʿArabī’s mysticism for “the Iranian race”, as it “will not leave any space for wisdom, free will, and movement” (Kadkanī, 1392 Sh, pp. 99-100). In the following, he calls for a return “to the Sufism of Khorasan, which is [the truthful] Sufism of Iran, and is filled with [the task of] “thinking of the human being”; this simple yet tangible human being that we see every day around us” (Ibid.). His peer, the late Zarrīnkūb, evaluates such scholarship on Sufism done by jurists as biased and prejudiced in the first place, however, like Kadkanī, he eventually adheres to the Sufism of Khorasan. Regarding this, one can say that their approach is that of denial too.
The third approach, which is that of the Suhriwardī Sufis and started with ʿAbdul Razzāq Kāshānī (Simnānī’s peer), defends the integration and amalgamation of Ibn ʿArabī’s teachings into the fabric of the Suhriwardī Sufism. Some of the members of this group took initiative and interpreted Akbarīan mysticism with the help of Shīʿa ḥadīth and the narratives of the īmāms. One can trace this trend back to the abovementioned Kāshānī, and within this tradition, or maybe its culmination is the crypto-Shīʿīsm of Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī, a member of the School of Tehran in philosophy.
Al-Qawl ul-matīin fī tashayyuʿ al-shaykh al-akbar Muḥya al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī القول المتین فی التشیع شیخ الاکبر محیی الدین ابن عربی
of Muḥsin Bābākhānī (with the penname of Shaykh Qāsim Ṭihrānī) should be regarded as one of the most recent examples of the third approach, and his ‘Twelver Sunnism’ is in fact the zenith of a tradition whose seeds were planted by Kāshānī a few centuries ago, although, Kāshānī’s take was totally apolitical. However, Qāsim Ṭihrānī’s book should not be compared to the elaborated writings of Kāshānī and his successors, as he only focuses on Ibn ʿArabī’s connections instead of the analysis of his teachings and that makes the book descriptive rather than analytical. From this perspective, al-Qawl ul-matīin looks like a biography (tadhkira) of a bunch of preceding individuals (mostly mystics) who had Shīʿa interests, and that in fact reduces Ibn ʿArabī into just a narrator of Twelver teachings, or an inheritor of the Shīʿa legacy.
Furthermore, the book is politically-oriented as well, because as we know, the rise to power of the Ṣafawīds in 1501 led in pushing the dominant non-Shīʿa Sufi schools to the frontiers of the empire, to places that make today’s Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. Even the word ‘Sufism’ was replaced by ‘mysticism’, and therefore, we were left with only Shīʿa mysticism as the sole legitimate brand of Sufism. On the other hand, the synthesis of Ṣadrīan ḥikmat with the teachings of Ibn ʿArabī as one of its pillars, borne fruit in their further dissemination within the intellectual elites of Isfahan and Tehran, and it is in this context that Al-Qawl ul-matīin should be understood. The book has two volumes, with the first one consisting of two sections and each section composing of 3 chapters, and the second volume has not been published yet.
There are a number of issues here:
The key term is “Twelver Sunnism” and its relevance to Ibn ʿArabī. Delving into this question, Shaykh Qāsim Ṭihrānī looks at “Twelver Sunnism” from both the historical and doctrinal viewpoints, and mentions famous scholars such as Muḥammad Taqī Dānish Pazhūh and Rasūl Jaʿfarīyān as the forerunners. It was specifically the late Dānish Pazhūh who called Ibn ʿArabī “a Twelver Sunni” (Vol. 1., p. 25). It is to be mentioned that Dānish Pazhūh used “Twelver Sunnism” for the first time in 1965-1966, when discussing the Kubrawī Sufi, ʿAzīz al-Dīn Nasafī’s Kashf ul-ḥaqāiq (the Unveiling of the Truths). Dānish Pazhūh calls Nasafī’s principle master in Sufism, the famous Saʿd al-Dīn Ḥamūyī, a contemporary of Ibn ʿArabī, a Twelver Sunni, who had gained his interest in the Shīʿa culture as well as love for Ali and his sons through the writings of Shaykh Ṭūsī. According to Dānish Pazhūh, Ṭūsī and his peer ʿAllāmah Ḥillī should be regarded as responsible for the conversion of many to Twelver Shīʿīsm (Dānish Pazhūh, 1344 Sh, p. 307). In the following, Dānish Pazhūh brings countless names who should be treated in the same manner.
According to Dānish Pazhūh, who is quoted by Ṭihrānī frequently, due to the fact that one of the formative elements of Shīʿīsm is ʿirfān and because Shīʿīsm interprets life in a mystical manner, Sufism can become a bridge to Shīʿīsm (Vol. 1., p. 26). Echoing this analysis, Ṭihrānī argues that a number of local Shīʿa dynasties were formed by Sunni individuals with Shīʿa inclination in Sufism (Vol. 1., p. 33), and therefore, Twelver Sunnism, as a historical fact, should be regarded as a belief in the Sunni schools of jurisprudence, with multi-layered and complicated connections to Twelver Shīʿīsm as well (Vol. 1., p. 29). Pertinent to this is the topography of “Twelver Sunnism”, which varies from this spot to another, as for instance, it appeared on the intellectual horizon of Iran, particularly Khorasan, in the mid-fifth century, while it took two more centuries for it to show up in Syria and Iraq, when figures like ʿAbdul Razzāq Kāshānī (d. 735 H/ 1335?) lived and wrote.
Qāsim Ṭihrānī mentions the famous ʿAṭṭār Nayshābūrī as another examples of “Twelver Sunnis”, indicating one of his poems in which he praises Ali, his sons and their wilāya, particularly that of the last Imam. ʿAṭṭār goes as far as to call Ali the sealing of wilāya. However, like all, or most of his Sunni peers, the term Mahdi does not necessarily refer to the Shīʿa notion of mahdawīyat, but to the general one (مهدی نوعی), which can be applied to any just savior from the progeny of Ali and therefore the bearer of the wilāya of his fathers (Vol. 1., pp. 70-71). This is the mistake that Shaykh Qāsim Ṭihrānī makes: of course they refer to Mahdi as the savior and the reviver of the sharīʿa of the Prophet, but the personality of Mahdi in these two traditions are different and they should not be taken as identical.
“Twelver Sunnism” has a number of characteristics, including belief in wilāyat takwīnīya of the īmāms and that they are the true spiritual successors of the Prophet, although the first three caliphs are regarded as his political successors. So, Twelver Sunnis do not deny the office of caliphate of the disciples of the Prophet, but they don’t have any problem with the spiritual line of successorship of wilāyat that has been manifested in Ali and his sons. Another feature is the belief in the existence of the Twelfth Imam and his appearance in the future. It is believed that Twelver Sunnism, which was emerged among some groups of Sufis who facilitated the formation of Shīʿa dynasties of Sarbadārān in Sabzawar (736-788) and Mushaʿshaʿīyān (840) in Khuzistan, paved the way for the rise to power of the Safawids as the first Shīʿa national monarchy in Iran. Why? Because Twelver teachings were a part of any intellectual activities, including Sufism then, and because the division between these two branches of Islam had not been so rigid at that time. Also, it indicates the undeniable spiritual importance of Shīʿīsm that had been merged into mainstream Sufism.
Qāsim Ṭihrānī rightly believes that “Twelver Sunnism” has been intertwined into the fabric of Iranian culture since mid-fifth century onwards, and the Ṣafawīds were the products of this heritage (Vol. 1., p. 33). So, here is the course of the developments: there was “Twelver Sunnism” (تسنن اثنی عشری) of the founders of these dynasties, despite the dynasties being Shīʿa themselves, and then Shīʿīsm of the Ilkhanids, which itself prepared the ground for the formation of the Ṣafawīds. According to Qāsim Ṭihrānī and from a historical perspective, Shīʿīsm was the origin of Sufism, and naturally everything goes back to its origin. It seems that the author has taken advantage of (if not to say plagiarized) Kāmil Muṣṭafā Al-Shaybī’s classic, A-Ṣala bayn al-taṣawuf wa tashayuʿ (The correlation Betwix Sufism and Shīʿīsm) and of the concept of Shāmī Shīʿīsm, which is equal to “Twelver Sunnism” (Vol. 1., pp. 34-35). Aleppo was an important city in Shāmī Shīʿīsm, and Ibn ʿArabī not only used to visit it frequently, but also, his book “the Divine Theophanies” (Tajallīyāt Ilāhīya) and its commentary, which were penned down there (Vol.1., p. 77), was a successful combination of the belief in the Sunni jurisdiction and Shīʿa spirituality revolving around the personalities of the īmāms. Holding into a different historiography, Qāsim Ṭihrānī goes as far as to call Shaykh Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār (Vol.1., p. 70) or Rumi a Twelver Sunni, just because they praise Ali and his progeny, particularly the last one. However, as we mentioned earlier, this Mahdi is a typical one and not the Twelfth īmām. Scholars including Ismāʿīl Shafaq categorizes Ḥāfiẓ Shīrāzī as a “Twelver Sunni” as well, which is stronger than the conventional sentiments of a Shāfiʿī Sunni to the household of the Prophet, and in fact shows attachment of a famous poet to Shīʿīsm (Shafaq, 1401, passim).
After all this, why is Shaykh Qāsim Ṭihrānī important and why his book should be taken seriously? The book suffers from over reading and over interpretation of the history and of people to put the teachings of Ibn ʿArabī in line with Twelver Shīʿīsm. In a milieu, where the mainstream Sufi schools are absent from both politics and public life on one hand, and were in fact pushed to the frontiers of the seventeenth-century Persia on the other, of course there only remains ʿirfān-i Shīʿī, with the refined, or maybe better to say distorted version of Akbarīan mysticism as one of its components. And from this perspective, anything is either traceable to the Shīʿa culture, or it has been inspired by it.
But how much Shaykh Qāsim Ṭihrānī is right in his analysis of the Shīʿa colouring of Ibn ʿArabī’s mysticism? The fact is that al-Shaykh al-Akbar had a different opinion than mainstream Shīʿīsm on a number of key issues in Islamic culture, chief among them wilāya and khatm ul-wilāya, and he had in fact recognized himself as the special seal of the wilāya of the prophet (or khatm wilāyat al-khāṣṣat al-Muḥammadīya); an office which is traditionally assigned to Mahdi. Pertinent to this is the office of wilāyat al-ʿāmmah (Universal Sainthood), which again in his writings is assigned to Jesus. However, in the Shīʿa tradition, Ali is regarded as the Universal Saint. On the holder of the status of imamate, he takes a pro-Shīʿa stance and argues that “this most serious status (maqām al-ajsam), will not be effective until khatm al-awlīyā (the seal of the sainthood) from the household of the Prophet and of the lineage of Ali takes the responsibility of it (Ibn ʿArabī, ʿAnqāʾ, n.d., p. 80ff).
Considering the fact that he never hesitates to show his despise of Twelvers; an undeniable fact reflected throughout his books on one hand (https://daralsadegh.ir/%D8%AF%DB%8C%D8%AF%DA%AF%D8%A7%D9%87-%D8%A7%D8%A8%D9%86-%D8%B9%D8%B1%D8%A8%DB%8C-%D8%AF%D8%B1%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%B1%D9%87-%DB%8C-%D8%B4%DB%8C%D8%B9%DB%8C%D8%A7%D9%86-%D8%AD%D8%AC%D8%AA-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A7/ ) and assigning the office of the imamate to someone from the household of the Prophet and the lineage of Ali on the other, one can come to this conclusion that he distinguishes between ahl ul-bayt and their Shīʿī followers. He is at peace with the former, but uncomfortable with the latter, because they do not admit to the caliphate of the first three caliphs, or maybe because they were harmful to the political order of his time.
However, there is another problem with Qāsim Ṭihrānī, that is his unfamiliarity with the worldview of Ibn ʿArabī, because it seems that he has not read his main books including Al-Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam yet. Furthermore, Qāsim Ṭihrānī does not stop here, and goes as further as to take a risky position on one of the most irksome incidents of recent years, when he takes side with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps after the explosion of a civilian airplane resulted in killing many innocent passengers a few years ago in January 2020. Qāsim Ṭihrānī reads:
“Although the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has made an unintentional mistake in targeting the Ukrainian airplane, they should not be blamed for it, as it was just the conduit of the divine punishment to a bunch of world-lover traitors, who turned their back to their country. It is the nature of the military and law enforcement forces of every country … to be fully aligned with the manifestations of the Names of Glory of Allah” (Bābākhānī, 2020).
I am sure neither Ibn ʿArabī nor any of his successors would have imagines such a demonic statement from one of the readers of al-Shaykh al-Akbar. Similarly, one cannot find such level of manipulation in the entire history of Sufism. Given this, is there any guarantee that the so-called “Twelver Sunnism” of Ibn ʿArabī, which is now being used by Qāsim Ṭihrānī to normalize the act of murder and terror, will halt here? Or will it be used again in the future to justify a set of wrong politics? Sadly, as much as Ibn ʿArabī inspires, he can disappoint as well, and that definitely depends upon who advances it and how he/she relates to the mechanisms of power in a specific geography.
Bibliography:
Ṭihrānī, [Shaykh] Qāsim, Al-Qawl ul-matīin fī tashayyuʿ al-shaykh al-akbar Muḥya al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī (The Solid Statement in the Shīʿīsm of al-Shaykh al-Akbar Muḥya al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī), Vol. 1., 1424 ḥijrī, Beirut: Dār ul-maḥajjat ul-bayḍā’.
Dānish Pazhūh, Muḥammad Taqī, Intiqād-i kitāb: Kashf ul-ḥaqāiq (Book Review: The Unveiling of the Truths), Farhang-i Iranzamīn, 1344 Sh, Number 13, pp. 298-310.
Ibn ʿArabī, ʿAnqāʾ, n. d., n. p.
Ṭayyib Nīyā, Muḥsin, Dīdgāh Ibn ʿArabī darbāraya Shīʿayān (Ibn ʿArabī’s Opinion about Shīʿas), n. d. < صفحه اصلی - موسسه فرهنگی مذهبی دارالصادق | نقد فلسفه و عرفان (daralsadegh.ir) >, last accessed 10/5/2024.
https://t.me/bazmeghodsian, July 26, 2020, last accessed 10/5/2024.
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