Premium
NOTES ON IBN AL‐'ARAB?'S INFLUENCE IN THE SUBCONTINENT
Author(s) -
Chittick William
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
the muslim world
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.106
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1478-1913
pISSN - 0027-4909
DOI - 10.1111/j.1478-1913.1992.tb03554.x
Subject(s) - indian subcontinent , ancient history , history , philosophy
Few Muslim thinkers have been as pervasively influential as Ibn al^Arabi, known among Sufis as the Greatest Master faJ-sAayJcn aJ-aAbar). Michel Chodkiewicz has expressed clearly one of the main reasons for his popularity: "His work, in distinction to all that preceded it... has a distinguishing feature: .. .it has an answer for everything/ Many Muslims in the Indian subcontinent, like other Muslims elsewhere, have continued to seek out these answers down into modern times. The secondary literature on Islam in India attests to the fact that Ibn al-Arabi was widely known and often controversial. But few if any of the modern scholars who have studied Indian Sufism have been familiar with his works or those of his immediate disciples. The judgment that there has been influence has been based largely on the references in the texts both to Ibn al^Arabï and to the well-known teaching usually ascribed to him, wahdat'Wujüd or the 'Oneness of Being." It was with the aim of looking closely at the actual nature of this influence and the routes whereby it became established that I applied to the Indo-American Subcommission on Education for a grant to study the spread of Ibn al-Arabfs teachings in the subcontinent. As a result of having been given the generous support of the subcommission, I was able to spend eight months in India, from May 1988 to January 1989, looking at Persian and Arabic manuscripts. The ten libraries at which I spent significant lengths of time are located in Aligarh, Hyderabad, Lucknow, New Delhi, Patna, and Srinagar.