REVIEWS

Caner K. Dagli. Ibn al-‘Arabī and Islamic Intellectual Culture: From Mysticism to Philo-
sophy. Londra: Routledge, 2016. 158 pages. ISBN: 9781138780019.

Atif Khalil*

While scholarship on Ibn al-‘Arabī (d. 638/1240) has grown by leaps and
bounds in the last few decades, relatively little attention has been given to the
development of the school of al-shaykh al-akbar. Aside from a few articles and
chapters by some of the leading figures in the field, among them William Chit-
tick and the late Toshihiko Izutsu (d. 1993), this pioneering study represents,
along with Richard Todd’s recent book1, one of the first in-depth forays into the
thought of Ibn al-‘Arabī’s successors. In this respect, the monograph contributes
to opening a new vista in Akbarian studies. No future scholar intending to ex-
plore the transmission of his thought to later tradition will be able to ignore it.
Dagli restricts himself to analysing the development of the school from Ibn
al-‘Arabī’s most prominent disciple, §adr al-Dīn al-Qunawī (d. 673/1274), to
Mu’ayyad al-Dīn ibn Mahmūd al-Jandī (d. 691/1292), ‘Abd al-Razzāq al-Kāshānī
(d. 736/1335), and finally Dāwūd al-Qay~arī (d 751/1350). Practical consider-
ations prevent him from integrating the literary output of other key Akbar-
ians, such as ‘Afīf al-Dīn al-Tilimsānī (d. 690/1291) or Fakhr al-Dīn ‘Irāqī (d.
688/1289), into his analysis. Since separate volumes could easily be authored on
each of these figures alone, it was only reasonable to set parameters around the
scope of his study. Why he chose to set them where he did, however, might have
been more fully explained. One of Dagli’s central arguments is that Ibn al-‘Arabī’s
metaphysical vision remains consistent throughout his school. To quote our au-
thor, “in a certain sense, there is no ‘development’ because the fundamental in-
sights are not changing” (2). The development he does focus on – the analysis

* Assoc. Prof., University of Lethbridge, Department of Religious Studies.

1 Richard Todd, The Sufi Doctrine of Man: §adr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī’s Metaphysical Anthropology (Leiden:
Brill, 2014).

DOI dx.doi.org/10.12658/Nazariyat.3.1.D0032
 NAZARİYAT Journal for the History of Islamic Philosophy and Sciences

of “development” being one of the central aims of the book – centers largely on
transformations in the school’s language and its increasing use of the lexicon of
theology and philosophy to systematically articulate its own worldview. In Dag-
li’s words, the goal of the monograph is to “follow a trend and gradual process of
synthesis whereby Sufis, who always possessed a technical vocabulary and style
of their own, increasingly adapted the expression of their view of the world to be
more easily understandable and relatable to the broader Islamic culture, especially
falsafa and kalām” (1). He reiterates this point in his conclusion when he states
that in “ta~awwuf it was the Akbarian strand of metaphysical exposition that, over
time, added a discourse that was ‘analytical’ to a literature that was predominantly
‘poetic’ and didactic” (144).
Since much of the work explores the encounter between falsafa, kalām and
ta~awwuf within the context of the growth and formation of the akbariyya, Dagli
opens the study by outlining the central features of these disciplines in order to
clarify, from the outset, his use of terms. Part of his intention is also to shed
light on some of the errors that have plagued Western scholarship in its taxon-
omization of classical Islamic thought, particularly with respect to how it has
gone about classifying thinkers. For Dagli, each of the above disciplines (1) es-
pouses a distinct metaphysical doctrine, (2) relies on a method of inquiry through
which it obtains the doctrine (an epistemology), (3) has a goal in mind in both
its pursuit and exposition of truth, whether it be social or private, and finally, (4)
relies on specific modes of expression that include an evolving and overlapping
vocabulary. By grasping where the disciplines stand on these and closely related
questions, not only do we form a more accurate conception of falsafa, kalām and
ta~awwuf, we are also better situated to avoid some of the pitfalls created by the
use of their commonly accepted English equivalents of “philosophy,” “theology,”
and “mysticism.” In fact, one of the book’s most illuminating sections centers on
Dagli’s analysis of the misconceptions that arise from imposing ideas associated
with the English terms onto their Arabic counterparts. After all, if ta~awwuf is to
be thought of as what usually goes by the name “mysticism,” then how do we ac-
count for the fact that most of its literature dealt not with flights into the unseen,
encounters with the supernatural, or even oceanic feelings of oneness but rather
straightforward virtue ethics? And if falsafa is the same as “philosophy,” then how
are we to explain that many of the faylasūfs described the act of intellection not
simply as a mental process, but also as the conjunction of the rational soul with
the Agent Intellect, that is to say, in manifestly “mystical” terms? Dagli provides
numerous such examples to illustrate the inherent problems in carelessly using

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English terms without sufficient reflection to describe the Islamic intellectual tra-
dition’s multifaceted complexity. His own suggestion, and one for which he pre-
sents convincing reasons, is not to discard the terms altogether in favor of Arabic
ones or even to create new ones, but to be more conscious of what precisely we
mean when we use such words.
While Dagli is correct to assume that it was within the three broad commu-
nities of kalām, falsafa and ta~awwuf that Muslims in the past sought answers to
questions of ultimate truth and meaning, his analysis would have been enriched by
a greater attention to how these sub-traditions viewed each other, given that they
did not, strictly speaking, see each other as embodying competing or irreconcilable
conceptions of truth. In many ways falsafa and ta~awwuf accepted both the social
and private value of kalām, whereas the latter did not always return the favor. For
an early philosopher such as al-Fārābī (d. 339/950), the theologians held to sym-
bols of truth that were mediated through the highly developed imaginative faculty
of prophets (this being one of the defining characteristics of prophecy). Since the
mutakallimūn were responsible for conveying philosophical ideas in a form that was
intelligible to non-philosophers, they fulfilled an indispensable communal and reli-
gious function. Their only error lay in failing to recognise symbols as symbols – an
error for which they were not entirely responsible because they lacked neither the
aptitude nor vocation to discern truths directly. The implications of such a perspec-
tive would be elaborated in greater detail by Avicenna (d. 428/1037), Ibn Tufayl (d.
581/1185), Averroes (d. 595/1198) and others in the domains of psychology and
political theory. Likewise, Sufi theoreticians also accepted kalām’s relative impor-
tance, especially insofar as it played a role in formulating the basic creeds of faith.
This is why for the Sufis the aspirant’s journey did not begin with acquainting one-
self with the subtleties of wahdat al-wujūd, but rather with elementary creedal texts
often authored by kalām authorities. While ‘aqīda primers presented the relation
between God and the human being as a relation between ontologically separate re-
alities, distinct in every way, many of the Sufis argued that such a distinction would
be recognized as fundamentally illusory once one had crossed a certain threshold
of consciousness. The ontological distinction pressed by the mutakallimūn was nev-
ertheless a necessary upaya in the preliminary stages of the path. This is why an
early Sufi could declare, “Lordship has a secret. If that secret were revealed, lord-
ship would become obsolete […] That secret is you!”
While Dagli may well agree with the reviewer on this particular point, a more
explicit recognition that the philosophers and the Sufis held to a belief in the poly-

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vocality of truth, in its multiple levels, while the theologians did not, might have
allowed for a slightly more nuanced treatment of the subject. It might also have led
the author to reconsider statements suggesting that the akbariyya were writing at
least in part for spiritual travellers, as when he states, “wahdat al-wujūd could be
nothing more to him [Ibn al-‘Arabī] than an intellectual key that might assist some-
one who was treading the spiritual path” (2), or that al-Qay~arī’s aim was “to pro-
vide a teaching that serves as a support for the spiritual way of life so that false or
confusing ideas and thoughts will not be a hindrance to spiritual progress” (142).
When we consider that the perspective they expressed on questions of ontology
was the result of what al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) would have described as the fruits
of al-‘ilm al-mukāshāfa or the “science of unveiling,” it would seem that such con-
cepts were meant not for an audience of simple wayfarers but rather for those who
had advanced beyond a certain terminal point so as to warrant such honorific titles
as ‘ārifūn (gnostics), muhaqqiqūn (verifiers) or arbāb al-tawhīd (lords of tawhīd). If,
however, the culture of later Sufism had been transformed to such an extent that
aspirants were now more openly discussing ideas that in previous periods had been
left aside, then Dagli might have addressed the subject due to its bearing on the in-
tended audience of the Akbarians (a question that he does touch upon with respect
to their engagement with the philosophers and theologians).
In the following chapter Dagli turns to a superb analysis of the ideas of Avi-
cenna, al-Ghazālī, al-Suhrawardī al-Maqtūl (d. 587/1191) and Ibn al-‘Arabī, paying
particular attention to the relation between falsafa and ta~awwuf in their literary
oeuvre, as well as their contributions to the development of the vocabulary of the
intellectual culture of which they were a part. He also engages a wide range of schol-
arly research, from that of Dimitri Gutas to Alexander Treiger, by pointing out many
of the weaknesses that have riddled previous assessments of these central figures.
For Dagli, what made Avicenna important to the school of Ibn al-‘Arabī was not the
extent to which he espoused mystical doctrines, but the lexicon he bequeathed to
later Sufis and philosophers, one which had the kind of “precision, scope and flexi-
bility” to allow it to be easily assimilated by later generations (48). Avicenna, as Dag-
li notes, would begin to introduce Sufi terminology in his own thought near the end
of his life – a foreshadowing, in some ways, of the integration of his ideas into later
mystical discourses. We also learn that before Avicenna, the main concepts used to
discuss God’s essence and qualities were qidam (eternality) and hudūth (temporal-
ity). After him, a shift was introduced that transformed the meta-attribute from
eternality to existence (wujūd) – a move followed by al-Juwaynī (for whom eternali-
ty and existence were co-implied) and made complete by al-Ghazālī (for whom exist-

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ence became prior) – thereby demonstrating how the philosophy-weary theologians

felt increasingly comfortable with the science of their interlocutors. Dagli’s discus-
sion of al-Ghazālī, al-Suhrawardī and Ibn al-‘Arabī is equally insightful, particularly
in how he both challenges and builds upon the findings of earlier scholars.
He then addresses some “metaphysical preliminaries” to clarify the precise
meaning and history of two key terms, the relevance of which for the Akbarian
school is brought out in greater detail in the book’s second half. The first of these
is ‘ayn, which he translates as “identity” because it signifies the essence, quiddity,
or what-it-is-ness of a thing. Its importance in the Akbarian school is underscored
by the fact that the ‘ayn thābita or “immutable/fixed” ‘ayn signifies the reality of
a thing in God’s knowledge before it is brought into existence. As for the second
term, tashkīk, which would come to the forefront of Islamic metaphysics, Dagli re-
traces its origins to logic and early philosophical discussions surrounding predica-
tion. He identifies the emergence of its use in an attempt to qualify or describe an
object neither through simple homonymy (ishtirāk laf∏i) nor univocality (ishtirāk
ma‘nawī). An example of the former would be “bank,” said of the edge of a river
or a place where money is held, and of the latter, “man,” said of both Socrates and
Aristotle. Tashkīk, as Dagli explains, would emerge as an intermediate kind of pred-
ication between homonymity and univocality, an example of which would be to de-
scribe both snow and ivory as white, even though the intensity of their whiteness
may vary. The importance of the use of tashkīk would allow thinkers such as Na~īr
al-Dīn al-Tūsī (d. 672/1274) to employ the idea in metaphysics to differentiate be-
tween the wujūd of God and the world, otherwise (within an Avicennan context)
the wujūd of things would either become necessary in and of itself (as in the case
of God) or the divinity’s wujūd would itself be brought down to the level of things,
thereby stripped of its own necessity. By qualifying both God and things through
a tashkīk of wujūd, that is to say, through a wujūd that is predicated differently of
both, al-Tūsī attempted to safeguard the Avicennian position on the difference be-
tween necessary and contingent existence.
On the whole, Dagli does a fine job of demonstrating how the use of tashkīk was
gradually brought into metaphysics from logic, going back in Islamic philosophy all
the way to al-Fārābī. Had he similarly retraced the use of ‘ayn to early kalām liter-
ature, particularly among the Mu‘tazilites, his otherwise fine analysis might have
been rendered slightly more even. One might also question his use of “identity”
instead of Chittick’s “entity” for ‘ayn while retaining “entification” for ta‘ayyun be-
cause of the linguistic inconsistencies the move creates.

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Following an engaging treatment of the views of al-Qunawī and al-Jandī, Dagli

explores some of the conceptual and categorical differences between the Pahlavi
philosophers and the Akbarians through a critical engagement of Izutsu’s scholar-
ship. He then examines al-Kāshānī’s notion of existence-as-such, or wujūd min hay-
thu huwa al-wujūd, the reality of which (if proven) leads us to a kind of ontological
argument for God through a cosmological one. For al-Kāshānī, existence-as-such
is that reality the non-existence of which cannot be conceived, since the function
of such a reality is by definition to exist, being mawjūd bi dhātihi, or “existent by
virtue of itself.” Such a reality cannot be a substance (jawhar) because a substance,
for al-Kāshānī, “has a quiddity other than existence, by which it is distinct from
other existents.” Nor can it be an accident (‘arad) because accidents need existent
subjects in which to dwell. However, we are led to postulate such a reality because
of the existence of substances and accidents, as well as every other modulation of
being. In other words, the mawjūdāt or existent things lead us, by necessity, to ex-
istence-as-such, a reality that runs through every possible entification of existence
and through which each thing obtains its own being to begin with. The argument is
not, strictly speaking, a cosmological one, since it does not rely on a chain of cause
and effect to take us back to a primary cause. Nor is it exclusively ontological, since
it does not rest strictly on a fleshing out of the logic of terms and concepts related
to God. Instead, it forces one to move from an encounter with modulations of ex-
istence to the concept and reality of existence-as-such, a retracing made necessary
by the presence of the range of existent things that make up our experience of
reality. After all, what is this ‘existence’ that lies behind every existent thing? For
al-Kāshānī as well as other Akbarians, this elusive reality is not only the foundation
on which all mawjūdāt rest and out of which they emerge in an infinite array of
possibilities, but the divine Self itself.
Now if one were to contend that since existence-as-such cannot become noth-
ingness, being, as noted, that which exists by virtue of itself and by its very defi-
nition, then how do we explain the appearance and disappearance of phenomena,
that is to say, the emergence and dissolution of the world’s components? For al-
Kāshānī, the answer rests in grasping the illusory nature of a thing’s appearance.
Nothing exists on its own, through self-subsistence. It is instead a self-disclo-
sure of wujūd. In other words, the “thing” is an appearance or manifestation of
underlying existence, or existence-as-such, whereas this wujūd min haythu huwa
huwa remains in its own reality, from its own side, ultimately immutable and
unchanged (116).

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Another aspect of pure existence or existence-as-such for al-Kāshānī is that

insofar as it is the divine Self or Essence (dhāt), it transcends entification to such
an extent that its nature remains entirely unknown and ineffable. In line with
the general view for which Ibn al-‘Arabī has become famous, the God of religion
or personal belief – including that of the philosophers – is itself an entification of
wujūd, one that stands at the summit of reality as we know it within the parame-
ters of cosmic imagination understood in the broadest sense. The imaginal world
or al-‘ālam al-mithāl, insofar as it is conventionally conceived of as a rung between
the world of senses and pure spirits in the ladder of being, and to which we have
access to through our own faculty of imagination, forms a part of this broader im-
agination. In other words, al-‘ālam al-mithāl is really a “qualified imagination” or
al-khayāl al-muqayyad within an absolute or unqualified imagination, namely, al-
khayāl al-mutlaq. The divine essence, which occupies a position outside the realm
of absolute imagination, imagines or dreams reality as we know it into existence.
While al-Kashānī’s position and that of the Akbarian school in general seems to
mark a departure from the Pahlavi philosophers, who seem to include God-qua-
Himself or the divine ipseity within what the Akbarians would consider the realm
of absolute imagination, their own position, as Dagli notes, is not as different as it
may seem on the surface from that the Akbarians because of the distinction they
draw between the concept (mafhūm) and reality (haqīqa) of existence (110). That is
to say, the discontinuity between the two may very well correspond to the discon-
tinuity the Akbarians identify between the divine Self and absolute imagination.
In the final chapter, Dagli examines the idea of wujūd in greater detail in the Ak-
barian school, this time with a focus on the thought of al-Kāshānī’s student Dāwūd
al-Qay~arī, a figure who exercised a defining influence on such prominent thinkers
as Molla Fanārī (d. 834/1431), Ismā‘īl Hakkī Bursevī (d. 1137/1724) and the broad-
er scholarly climate of the region. At least part of the reason for his wide-ranging
influence was due to his appointment as professor of the first Ottoman madrasa in
1336 by Sultan Orhan Gāzī, a position he held until his death fourteen years later.
As far as specific developments within the school of Ibn al-‘Arabī are concerned,
al-Qay~arī is to be credited with promoting “‘existence’ to a place of centrality and
ubiquity in his expression” and in adopting “modes of expounding metaphysics in
which later devices displace Akbarian terminology” (125). In al-Qay~arī we find a
development in the use of the conceptual lexicon of the philosophers and theologi-
ans to outline features of a uniquely Akbarian ontology. For example, the relation
between the quiddity and existence of a contingent or possible thing is described
as a relation between a receptacle and its content, with the content being exist-

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ence. The content itself does not go out of existence, since existence cannot become
non-existent. Rather, it assumes a form determined by an essence, generating a
specific manifestation in the world, after which it then returns to its origin in exist-
ence-as-such through a self-concealing. The language of māhiyya, mumkin, and wu-
jūd, familiar to those versed in Islamic philosophy and theology, is recast to articu-
late a competing vision of reality centered on notions of divine self-revelation and
concealment. To give another example, the impossible-to-exist (mumtani‘ al-wujūd)
was ordinarily thought of as the “logically absurd,” as in the idea of a square circle.
Al-Qay~arī, following Ibn al-‘Arabī’s lead, broadens its scope to include those real-
ities for which “qualification by concrete existence is impossible,” but which nev-
ertheless abide in the knowledge of God. What he has in mind is a class of divine
Names that remain forever concealed (133).
One aspect of his treatment that might have been explored in greater detail
involves the larger ontological implications of the view that the divine Self re-
mains unconditioned by both entification and non-entification (lā ta‘ayyun) (106,
126). While the rationale behind such an argument is to make it clear that pure
wujūd remains unaffected both by its disclosure in things as well by its essential
freedom from them, the principle appears to have as its logical corollary – given
that it underscores the infinite nature of the Godhead – the idea that the divine
Self is not only unlimited but unlimited by unlimitation. If this is indeed the case,
then we are led to the view that each particular entification of wujūd actually con-
tains, paradoxically, all of pure wujūd and not just an aspect, facet or dimension
of it – a position found in certain formulations of Hindu and Buddhist philosophy
according to which the “part contains the whole.” Hua-yen Buddhism and Kash-
mir Shaivism, for example, both of which bear an uncanny resemblance in their
ontologies to the school of Ibn al-‘Arabī, contend that the ultimate reality is mys-
teriously present in its totality in every single particle of existence. In the case of
Hua-yen, this doctrine is illustrated through the metaphor of the jeweled net of
Indra, each mesh of which contains a diamond that reflects not only every other
diamond but also the reflection in every other jewel, ad infinitum, i.e., all of reality.
Unsurprisingly, this idea seems to be present in the poetry of some medieval Su-
fis as well. To take but one example, in the writings of the Persian poet Mahmūd
Shahbistarī (d. 1340) we read, “In each atom are found a hundred blazing suns. If
you split the center of a single drop of water, A hundred oceans spring forth [...]
everything is brought together at the point of the present.” Keeping in mind the
caution that must be exercised in drawing out metaphysical doctrines from poetic
locutions, the question nevertheless remains whether al-Qunawī, al-Jandī, al-Qa-

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y~arī or al-Kāshānī, who systematically meditated on these questions, would have

gone so far.
Aside from the numerous typos that plague the text, Dagli’s study is well-writ-
ten, comprehensive in its scope, and philosophically engaging. He brings together
a close reading of daunting primary sources with the findings of a wide range of
specialists, demonstrating in the process his own impressive analytic and synthetic
talents. With remarkable lucidity, he chisels away long, drawn out metaphysical
arguments and gets to their heart in a few sentences. While the study is likely to
elicit consternation from at least some quarters for overturning many prevailing
orthodoxies – whether they involve the nature of Islamic philosophy and theolo-
gy or the relation between reason and revelation – Dagli is to be commended for
pushing the field forward in bold and creative ways, all the while remaining closely
rooted in the texts.

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