Perspectives on Physical Beauty in the Thought of Ibn Arabi and Rumi

Perspectives on Physical Beauty in the Thought of Ibn Arabi and Rumi by Timothy Schum BA in Liberal Arts, May 2013, St. John’s College A Thesis submitted to The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts January 31st, 2016 Thesis Directed By Mohammad H. Faghfoory Professorial Lecturer and Director of Graduate Program in Islamic Studies © Copyright 2016 by Timothy Schum All rights reserved ii Table of Contents Table of Transliterations.................................................................................................................. iv Chapter I: Introduction and Methodology ....................................................................................... 1 Chapter II: The Limitations of Form ............................................................................................... 8 Chapter III. The Transcendent Reality of Form ............................................................................ 17 Chapter IV. Imaginal Perception and the Possessor of Two Eyes................................................. 24 Chapter V: Beauty and Love ......................................................................................................... 38 Chapter VI: Praxis ......................................................................................................................... 47 Chapter VII: Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 78 Chapter Bibliography .................................................................................................................... 81 iii Table of Transliterations Arabic Latin Arabic Latin ‘ ء b Short Vowels ب t َ a ت th َ i ث j َ u ج ḥ ح kh Long Vowels خ ā ا d د ī ي dh ذ ū و r ر z ز a ة s س sh ش ṣ ص ḍ ض ṭ ط p پ ẓ ظ ‘ ع gh غ f ف q ق k ك l ل m م n ن h ه w و y ي (Transliterations found in quotes have been preserved without changes.) iv I: Introduction and Methodology “I speak no more, but for the sake of averting headache, O cup-bearer, make drunken my languishing eye.”1 Individual mystical traditions, so far as they attempt to address fundamental metaphysical, cosmic, and – most critically – human questions, aspire to being comprehensive; i.e. mysticism understands itself as relevant to all aspects of thought and life. Thus a given system of mystical thought – whether it is Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, etc. – possesses an aesthetic relevance, maintaining – either explicitly or implicitly – certain aesthetic positions and perspectives. Though the Islamic mystical tradition – generally referred to as Sufism – did not develop a distinct discipline of aesthetics, a fact it shares in common with the Islamic philosophic tradition, it does indeed have much to say on the theoretical and practical dimensions of aesthetic experience. As a means of approaching this topic, this thesis examines the role of physical beauty in the thought of two major Sufi authors, Ibn ‘Arabī and Mawlānā Jalāluddīn Rūmī,2 who are sufficiently prominent so as to consider their thought typical – if not representative – of aesthetic attitudes in Islamic mysticism. Examining these masters together is promising so far as they exhibit similar perspectives toward physical beauty, while writing in different literary modes, languages (i.e. Arabic and Persian), and with varying degrees of systematization. Hailing from the geographic extremes of the 13th-century Islamic world – one from Arab Spain, the other from Persianate Central Asia – Ibn Arabi (d. 1240) and Rumi (d. 1273) were near- _____________________________________ 1 Rumi, 2004: 13 2 Diacritical marks will henceforth be foregone when referring to our primary authors; their names will thus be transliterated as Ibn Arabi and Jalaluddin Rumi. 1 contemporaries that together represent the coalescence of the Islamic spiritual tradition as it developed before them, and have for over seven centuries held over it unparalleled posthumous influence. Taken together, their thoughts on physical beauty thus serve as a suitable starting point from which to investigate perspectives toward physical beauty in the broader Sufi tradition, both before and after the 13th century. To that end, this this work intends to provide an introductory conceptual overview of the authors’ perspectives on physical beauty, as presented in their writings. This thesis intends to discuss physical – and exclusively visual – beauty, precisely because spiritual or ‘beatific’ vision, including its modes and mechanics of perception, have received greater scholarly attention. Moreover, it is physical beauty specifically that presents a more direct correlate to the work of Western aesthetic studies, both philosophic and religious. This topic is approached conceptually, so far as the present work elucidates common themes and attitudes that run throughout the primary sources while not necessarily being treated in isolation by Ibn Arabi and Rumi themselves. Indeed, Sufi writing – no less so the writing of Ibn Arabi and Rumi – is often syntactically and conceptually polyvalent, thus lending itself to brevity, ease of memorization, and of course prolonged or repetitive contemplation on the part of the audience. This does, however, present difficulties insofar as it does not provide a clear exposition of the authors’ aesthetic views; thus, for an academic paper interested in this specific topic, a conceptual approach is invaluable. Furthermore, the conceptual approach allows for a ‘filling in’ of presuppositions, common notions, and logical steps that for a variety of reasons pass unarticulated in the primary sources, thus hopefully providing the reader with a sense of the coherent logic that underlies somewhat opaque and – quite properly – esoteric ‘speculations.’ This work does not pretend to be a 2 comprehensive exposition of these aesthetic perspectives, a task that exceeds our present scope. It does, however, hopefully provide a sufficient conceptual framework, treating all major attitudes and the majority of technical concepts in connection with physical beauty, with the intention of serving as a starting point for further personal and academic investigations. With this approach and its goals in mind, this thesis is directed at an audience already conversant in the basic doctrinal and historical contours of Islamic religion and civilization, as well as its mystical tradition, i.e. Sufism, in its literary and historical dimensions. Accordingly, there is minimal explanatory and contextual material beyond the limits of the immediate discussion. Nonetheless, certain crucial concepts, in particular certain prophetic aḥadīth (utterances) and Sufi philosophic/mystical doctrines have been briefly outlined given their centrality to the arguments and positions assumed by Ibn Arabi and Rumi. Hopefully these will be sufficient refreshers for those with prior knowledge, as well as adequate provisional introductions for those to whom such concepts are completely new. Quotations and references drawn from other Sufi authors, e.g. Fakhruddīn ‘Irāqī, are included for the purposes of clarifying and expanding upon concepts present in Ibn Arabi and Rumi; for the sake of brevity, information regarding the historical contexts of such authors is left to the prior knowledge or further research of the reader. In keeping with a conceptual approach, the content of Ibn Arabi and Rumi’s thought takes precedence here over historical contextualization, considering their thoughts as well as those of other Sufi authors to be intrinsically conversant and interrelateable. This position is itself historically tenable so far as the pre-modern Islamic world possessed a 3 remarkable degree of intellectual and idiomatic integration, especially among the literate class to which Ibn Arabi and Rumi belonged; in contemporary academic terms, it can be said that Sufi authors possessed historically significant imagined solidarities that contributed to and maintained a common literate culture across vast geographies. This was in large part due to the trans-cultural role of Arabic as a sacred and intellectual lingua franca throughout the Islamic world, as well as the dissemination of a largely uniform intellectual culture that maintained a common hierarchy of intellectual disciplines, linguistic/conceptual symbols, and technical terminology. Of course the ultimate conclusion from this is that beyond the self-evident conceptual commonalities that run throughout Ibn Arabi and Rumi’s writing, as well as the literature of the broader Sufi tradition, there also existed a tangible historical milieu which influenced and was in turn influenced by our authors. The notable exception to this work’s generally ahistorical approach is found in turning from theoretical to practical approaches to physical beauty, where a historical approach is necessitated by the fact that our authors’ comments in this area are themselves contextualized within an established discourse on ritualized gazing (Arabic: naẓar, Persian: shāhidbāzī), and thus cannot be sufficiently interpreted without the aid of historical contextualization. In terms of organization, the earlier chapters of this thesis (II, III, IV) proceed in sequence, detailing two contrary perspectives that consider physical beauty as either intrinsically limited/other-than-God or as divine manifestation/naught-but-God, before turning to a discussion of the metaphysics of perception that

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