An Early 19th Century Portrait of Ibn Arabi
“In creating a work of art, the psyche or soul of the artist ascends from the earthly realm into the heavenly; there, free of all images, the soul is fed in contemplation by the essences of the highest realm, knowing the permanent noumena of things; then, satiated with this knowing, it descends again to the earthly realm. And precisely at the boundary between the two worlds, the soul’s spiritual knowledge assumes the shapes of symbolic imagery: and it is these images that make permanent the work of art. Art is thus materialized dream, separated from the ordinary consciousness of waking life.”
With this word of Pavel Florensky, I would like to share an extremely popular depiction of Ibn Arabi [d. 1240] that many of us who are familiar with this celebrated Sufi maestro must have seen it during our countless sojourn through the internet, yet next to nothing is known about its source or provenance. And despite its ubiquity, the ‘photograph’ remains a mystery to this day.
The portrait first appeared on the frontispiece of a book entitled, “Şeyh-i Ekber’i niçin severim” [Why I Love Shaykh al-Akbar] published in 1920 by Mehmet Ali Ayni [d.1945], an Ottoman-Turkish scholar of Sufism who, as evident from the title of his book, was a great admirer of Doctor Maximus. In 1926 this book was translated and published in French as, “La Quintessence de la Philosophie d’IbnʿArabi” by the former interior minister of the Ottoman empire, Ahmet Reşid Bey. Several orientalists, including Max Horten and Henrik Nyberg [German and Swedish professors who had published research on Ibn Arabi], criticized the latter edition for its interpretative fallacy, especially Louis Massignon [a celebrated French Islamicist], whose convoluted and constrictive style of mysticism prevented him from appreciating either Ibn Arabi or the Akbarian school. Massignon’s inquisition of Ibn Arabi’s theological and theosophical doctrine based on Ayni’s original monograph provoked a series of heated correspondences between him and Ayni in which other Turkish Mevlevis eventually got involved.
It is ironic, then, that Massignon despite his intellectual differences with these ‘Akbarian-Mevlevis’ wrote the preface for Ayni’s French edition, which as stated earlier, was published in 1926 in Paris by P. Geuthner, the same publishing company that had previously published five monographs by Massignon [including his magna opera, ‘La Passion de Hallaj’]. All of this indicates that, in spite of their scholarly disagreements over Ibn Arabi, Massignon and his Turkish associates had reached a mutual understanding. This shift in Massignon was visible a few years later in 1928, when he penned the foreword to another book on Ibn Arabi, a synoptic translation of the Fusus al-Hikam by Khaja Khan.
This brief introduction hopefully provided some context to the readers, so let us now turn to the content of the original iconography itself.
“What is wrong with the Islamic world is that it has destroyed its images, and without these images that are so rich in its tradition, they are going crazy because they have no containers for their extraordinary imaginative power.”
— Henry Corbin
The representation of the Sacred and the depiction of Prophets, Imams and Saints in devotional art, as well as the cultus associated with such objects, hold a special place in Islamic visual culture, forming an integral part of both Shi’i and Sunni collective heritage.
Creating any form of art in a religious setting has long been regarded as ritualistic, and Muslims too considered creating such art to be a spiritually fulfilling and rewarding endeavor, and the above portraiture of Ibn Arabi carries the same sacral value. Moreover, it’s also one of the rare depictions of him, done in a very archaic style that bears a strong resemblance to Khidrian iconographies found in Turco-Persian and Mughal art. The face in the portrait exudes a saintly aura. The head is crowned with a princely turban, its gaze is fixed, the torso is regally cloaked and the body gracefully poised. Although in terms of visual aesthetics it may not be considered a great work of art, yet still, it carries sentimental value which is far greater. Besides, an art is supposed to evoke a feeling and stir the spirit of the beholder, and not just look aesthetically pleasing which is secondary.
As the readers may have already noticed, the erased text around the portrait is the only difference between the original and the altered Google image. In the original, the calligraphic inscriptions are written horizontally and diagonally in black Nastaliq script. There are two separate eulogies enclosing the portrait, or rather, as we will see, they are two examples of recurring leitmotifs in Akbarian poetic tradition in which the poet addresses the opposition in order to defend Ibn Arabi against critics. At the top of the effigy is a poem written by the 17th century Syrian mystic Abd al-Ghani Nabulusi [d. 1731], who was an ardent follower and defender of Ibn Arabi. According to legend, he locked himself inside his own house for seven years to study Ibn Arabi’s work, spending last years of his life in the vicinity of the shaykh’s shrine where he was finally interred. The original poem can be read here. Translated as follows:
Muhyi al-din’s scent is musk amidst men
Widespread, yet noses lack acumen
The knowledge that from his mouth appears
Not every mind finds its imports clear
Pray who can cast like his bow’s girth
And hit the bullseye? Oh people come forth!
Another poetical piece written diagonally inside the floral arabesque can be seen in the middle of the image which is attributed to Umar al-Yafi (d.1818), a Sufi-savant of the Khalwati order who championed Nabulusi’s cause. The quatrain can be read here, which can be rendered as follows:
The gnostic — Muhyi al-din — of his age
The fools’ ideas fall short of his writs page
My faith has swelled through his every talk
‘So let he who wills believe it or not’ [Q18:29]
Dividing the two poem is a phrase written horizontally:
“May Allah sanctify his secret” [Qaddas Allahu Sirrahu]
Now the most distinctive feature of this portrait is the index finger of the right-hand that points to the artist’s signature, as though implying that the portrait has been authorized by the Master himself. Underneath the fingertip is a calligraphic monogram that reads:
“Futughraf [photograph] Samir Susi Chelebi, [dated] 1323 [1905].”
Attesting to the fact that the image was created prior to the dissolution of the Ottoman empire. As for Samir Chelebi, his identity is unknown to me. Although it appears that he was a photographer and a miniature artist. Moreover, one could ask, was this ‘photograph’ intended for personal use or was it part of a larger Album? Was the image created from an oral account of one of Samir’s clients [possibly from a dream] or was it based on literary tradition? All such speculations are out of the purview of my current research and cannot be entertained at this time. However, Yousuf Saeed’s study on Indo-Islamic iconography goes over this issue in passing:
“since an artist required a reference for drawing the likeness of a saint, he may have been helped by descriptive details available in popular malfuzat or tazkireh [biographical anecdotes] of how a saint looked, if an image was not found. A popular portrait is also shaped by the spiritual hierarchy, circulating anecdotes and miracles attributed to the saint, some of them described in the tazkireh.”
Lastly, we see the index finger of the left-hand pointing towards the outer rim of the paper-panel, on the bottom of which is inscribed:
“The greatest master, the brilliant luminary, the revivifier of religion, Muhammad son of Ali [who was] son of Ahmad [corr. Muhammad], the Maghrebian [westerner], descendant of Ta’i tribe, hailing from the greater Iberia.”
Line below this reads:
“It is the Icon of his Holiness” [Hazretleri’nin Tesviridir].
As previously noted, despite being the most iconic ‘photograph’ of Ibn Arabi, circulating online since the early 2000s on numerous social media platforms, the origins of this image are still unknown, owing entirely to its distorted condition. So, if it’s not Ayni’s book, as we’ve established, then where did this image come from? I went to the trouble of writing this rather lengthy column with the sole intention of finally answering this conundrum, so without further ado, let’s get right to the source of this online image that has caused so much unnecessary confusion.
The origin of this travesty rests upon Moulvi Saiyid Abdul Qadir Husaini’s book, “The Pantheistic Monism of Ibn al-Arabi,” in which this illustration was reproduced from Ayni’s monograph but with all the texts obliterated. The book was intended to capture some of Ibn Arabi’s philosophical and metaphysical themes, offering selections from passages of the Futuhat and the Fusus in English; and despite the fact that this book was published in 1970, Husaini finished compiling it as early as 1937.
Husaini approached notable european scholars, including Asin Palacios, Reynold Nicholson, Henrik Nyberg, and Louis Massignon, for assistance with his research; the latter [i.e., Massignon] urged him to write to Mehmet Ali Ayni, who sent him three contemporary Turkish researches on Ibn Arabi, that included his own treatise “Seyh-i Ekber’i nicin severim,” along with “Tarjumah-i- Hal wa Fadail-i- Shaykh-i-Akbar” of Tahir Bey and “Wahdatu’l-Wujud wa Ibn Arabi” by Ismail Fini. Husaini also got Ayni’s permission to reproduce Samir Chelebi’s portrait of Ibn Arabi, which can be found on page 28 of his book albeit in altered form [the number 28 could be an allusion to the 28th Fusus, embodied by the Shaykh himself].
One can see how Samir Chelebi’s original art has been tampered by blotting out all the written text around the portrait. I wonder what motivated such impertinence? Perhaps glorifying Ibn Arabi went too far for the author’s liking, necessitating censorship of the lyrics, or was it done solely for aesthetic reasons? I guess one can only speculate on such matter. At any rate, it appears to me that at some point after its publication in 1970, this picture was either photographed or scanned, and then uploaded in cyberspace for wider diffusion; which brings me to the next topic, the afterlife of this portrait, i.e., how the transmission, integration, and perversion of this icon of Ibn Arabi occurred over time within the virtual space of Sufi network. But since my digression at the outset has already made this essay unreasonably long, so I suppose I’ll have to write a separate thread to cover it, hopefully sometime in the future.
Finally, before I conclude this survey with a quote from Husaini’s book, I would like to state that I appreciate any and all suggestions for improving the quality of this article, so please do not hesitate to provide feedback.
“Every manifestation has a light which casts a shadow in the form of Man in the elemental world. This shadow is the representative of the Primordial Man. Such representatives are only a chosen few.”
— Ibn Arabi