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Imaginal Worlds: Ibn al-'Arabi and the Problem of Religious Diversity by William C. ChittickReview by: Eric OrmsbyMiddle East Journal, Vol. 50, No. 4 (Autumn, 1996), pp. 618-620Published by: Middle East Institute
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618 * MIDDLEEAST JOURNAL
Reviewedby John Watson
There are very few good books in Englishdealing
with the Coptic OrthodoxRenaissanceof the lastfour decades. The volume under review is an
important ddition o the libraryof modem Coptic
studies. Pietemella van Doom-Harder clearly
knows the world of theCopticnun;her research s
thorough, and the material is generally well-
presented.The social and culturalreportage,how-
ever, is superiorto the historicaland theological
coverage, which is adequate.It is very unlikely
thatin the foreseeable futuretherewill be another
study in the field to compete with this volume.This edition must, therefore,find a place on the
shelves of anyone in the English-speakingworld
claimingto have a general nterest n 20th-century
Egypt or a specialised interest in the Coptic
OrthodoxChurch.
The strongestand most revealing partsof the
text are those that present striking vignettes of
Abuna (Father) Yustus al-Antuni, Ummina
(Mother)Martha,UmminaIrini,and TasuniHan-
nah. Thesereligious figuresguarantee he survival
of the Copts and their unique religious obser-
vance. Van Doom-Harderhas a healthy skepti-
cism when it comes to dealing with the central
church functionaries, and there are occasional
hints of the powerfulcontrolwhich a patriarchal
element in the Churchattemptsto exert with a
barely disguised misogyny.
Another delightful part of the book is the
straightforward eportingof life and ceremonial
within the convents.Thesepassages introduce he
reader into an otherwise closed world. It is a
strange, spirituallypotent, and most politically-
incorrect environment,controlled completely by
non-residentmen-the bishops of the Coptic Or-
thodox Church.Women have a subservient ole in
the Church,and there is an unavoidable sense of
relief when one of the "mothers" scores even
againstthe Patriarch.
The volume has a few problems.First, it is a
very strange eatureof the book that every Coptic
Pope is entitled Patriarch.Whilstit is truethat the
Copts claim to hold the Patriarchateof Saint
Mark,even the youngest Coptologistknows that
all leaders of the Coptic Orthodox Church are
called "Pope"and thatCopts pridethemselves on
havinghad their own pope before there was one in
Rome. The entirely inappropriate se of the title
Patriarch may be the work of a zealous, but
ill-informed, editor. Van Doom-Harder must
know that Pope ShenoudaIII values his title, and
not solely because he "reignsas a shrewdeffectiveautocrat"p. 25), thoughit is impossibleto object
to this description.Second, the date given for the
commencementof the 117thpatriarchate n p. 16
is wrong: His Holiness Pope Shenouda III was
elected on Sunday, 31 October 1971, and en-
throned two weeks later on Sunday, 14 Novem-
ber. The one remainingdifficulty ies in the brief,
but misleading, treatmentof Coptic Christology
on p. 17, and in the accompanying ootnoteon p.
209. The discussionon this topic merely muddies
the waters. W.H.C. Frend is a name to conjure
with in Patristic studies, and it may be that Van
Doom-Harder's apparentdisagreementwith him
is simply a misunderstandingof Frend's inten-
tions. His Coptic Encyclopaediaarticle may be
taken as simplyhistorical,butif he thought hathe
was describingCopticbeliefs thenhe wouldhave
the best informed reasons for doing so. It can be
very misleading to refer, as van Doom-Harder
does, to the "two natures"of Christ in a Coptic
context, even when the writer follows the late
'Aziz 'Atiya, the greatestCoptologist of the 20th
century.Coptslike Pope Shenoudacertainlywish
to affirmthe perfection of Christ's divine and
humannature,but this always takes place within
the contextof Cyril's most quotedform of words:
mia physis tou Theou Logou-one nature of the
God-Logos-sesarkomene-enfleshed. This is far
from clear in van Doom-Harder's reatment.If the other volumes in this series are of
comparablequality,the University of SouthCaro-
lina Press will have cause for great pride. This
volume stands with the best in Coptic studies.
John Watson, of Sutton Valence School in the
UnitedKingdom, s the authorof a series of short
biographies of Pope Shenouda, Pope Kyrillos,
Abuna Marcos al-Eskiti, and Abuna Yustusal-
Antuni,and a regularcontributor o international
Copticjournals.
Imaginal Worlds: Ibn al-'Arabi and theProblem of Religious Diversity, by WilliamC. Chittick. Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1994. vii + 176 pages. Notes to p.186. Bibl. to p. 189. Indices to p. 208. $18.95.
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BOOK REVIEWS* 619
Reviewed by Eric Ormsby
The study of Muhyi al-Din ibn al-'Arabi (1165-
1240 AD) used to be vaguely disreputable.Thisvoluminous and immensely influential thinker,
one of the most original in the history of Islam,
was often suspect not solely to certain traditional
Muslims, but to many orientalistsas well. Some
25 years ago, in a graduatecourse on Sufism, I
heard a very distinguished scholar dismiss Ibn
al-'Arabi as a mere "pantheist,"and, therefore,
undeservingof closer study. Happily,this attitude
haschanged,and the authorof the presentwork isone of a small but dedicatedgroup of scholars,
inspiredby the late Henry Corbin,who are work-
ing to accomplish this long-overdue change.
Imaginal Worlds, thoughnot an easy book, is
probably the clearest introduction o the thought
of al-Shaykh al-Akbar in English. William C.
Chittickappears o have a complete masteryof an
astonishingly vast oeuvre. Al-Futuhat al-Mak-
kiyya, Ibn al-'Arabi's magnum opus, will, as
Chitticknotes, occupy some 15,000 printedpageswhen the full text has been published,andthis is
only one of al-'Arabi's key works. The huge
extent of the corpusis one problem; erminology
is another.Earlier translators,such as Reynold
Alleyne Nicholson, grappledwith the texts but all
too often succeeded only in finding vague or
misleading equivalents.By contrast,Chittickelu-
cidates characteristic erms with great care and
attention. For example, in discussing the termal-manazir al-'ula, which Nicholson had incor-
rectlyrenderedas "the divine ideas,"Chitticknot
only explainsthat the termcorrectlydenotes"the
higher oci of vision,"butplacesthis moreprecise
rendering n its proper ntellectual context:
As a technicalterm in cosmology, "higher"
is contrastedwith "lower"(asfal). The "higher
world" is the invisible realm, inhabited by
angels and spirits. The "lower world" is the
visible realm, inhabitedby bodies. Hence the
"lower loci of vision" would be the thingsthat
we perceive with our sensory eyes, or our
"sight" (basar), while the "higherloci of vi-
sion" are the things we perceive throughthe
inward, spiritualfaculty called by such names
as "insight" (basira), "unveiling"(kashf), and
"tasting" dhawq) (pp. 68-9).
Virtually every page of Imaginal Worldscon-
tains useful expositions or insights of this sort.
Unlike too manyother studies of esotericthought,
this work is invariably ucid, and the translations
of selected passages are exemplary. The book
contains ten chapters arranged in three broad
sections: HumanPerfection;Worlds of Imagina-
tion; and Religious Diversity. Though each chap-
ter was originally prepared for presentationat
conferencesor in other contexts, the book reads
smoothlyanddoes not seem a mere compilation.
Certainoverridingthemes, such as the pre-emi-
nence of the imaginationor the key concept of thebarzakh, he Quranic sthmus (the full panoplyof
whose meaningsChittickmasterfullyelaborates),
unify the separateessays. Thediscussion of imag-
ination, in Chittick's exposition, is one of the
richest I have encounteredand does justice, for
perhapsthe first time, to the profundityof Ibn
al-'Arabi's thought.
I have two reservationsabout this otherwise
excellent study. First, the author writes from a
virtuallyahistoricalviewpoint. True, he occasion-ally mentions importantpredecessors, such as
al-Ghazali,but in generalone could assume from
his treatment hat Ibn al-'Arabithoughtand wrote
and taught within a completely timeless world;
indeed,he is generally nvokedin thepresent.We
have had far too many scholarly works which
have soughtto reduce intellectualsystemsto their
historicalbases, as though dynasticor economic
or social forces explainedall. Still, it would have
addeddepthandperspective o thepresentworkif
Chittickhad situatedIbn al-'Arabimoreprecisely
in his time and place.
Second, thereis a tacit assumption hroughout
Chittick's book that Ibn al-'Arabi is to be seen as
an ultimateauthority,almost as a sort of oracle.
The author refers to him deferentially as "the
Shaykh"on almostevery page.This is a welcome
corrective o the prejudicewhich used to surround
the subject, but there is at times a whiff of
discipleshipwhich disturbs he reader.Theempa-
thy with which Chittickapproaches"theShaykh"
is achieved at the price of critical perspective.Often this is a matter of tone and hard to docu-
ment, but it permeatesthe book and undermines
its potential value. No uninitiatedreader would
guess, for example, that Ibn al-'Arabi had at-
tractednumerousdetractors monghis coreligion-
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620 * MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL
ists, not only in his own time but for centuries
afterward.
Eric Ormsby,McGill University
Islam:The View from the Edge,by Richard
W. Bulliet. New York: Columbia University
Press, 1994. 207 pages. Notes to p. 228. Index to
p. 236. $16 paper.
Reviewedby Douglas E. Streusand
Over thepasttwo decades,RichardW. Bulliethasproduceda series of innovative and provocative
monographs on the middle periods of Islamic
history.Islam:The View rom theEdge is thus not
unexpected.Like Bulliet's first book, The Patri-
cians of Nishapur,1and his later Conversion to
Islam in the Medieval Period,2this volume rests
on Bulliet's extensive and intensive research in
medievalbiographicaldictionaries.On that foun-
dation,Bulliet erects a new interpretiveparadigm
for Islamic history, relevant to the interpretation
of Islam and Islamic societies from the 7th to the
21st centuries.The book is anessay, not a detailed
history. It seeks to open vistas for future study,
not to presenta completeand final interpretation.
Islam: The View rom the Edge is comparable o
Hamilton A.R. Gibb's "An Interpretation f Is-
lamicHistory,"3 ut Bulliet challenges the incum-
bent interpretation which Gibb's article
epitomizes.Gibb identifiesthe struggleof the Sunni 'ulama
(scholars),whom he calls "orthodox,"o maintain
universalism hroughout he Islamic world as the
fundamental heme of medieval Islamic history.
Bulliet contends thatwhat Gibb mistakenly callsorthodox Islam is really recenteredSunnism, and
that it did not develop until the 11th century.
Bulliet sees its formulation and spread as the
definingtheme of this era of Islamic history.
1. (Cambridge:Harvard University Press,1972).
2. Conversiono Islam n theMedieval eriod:An Essayin Quantitative istory Cambridge: Cam-bridgeUniversity Press, 1979).
3. In Journal f WorldHistory1939) pp. 39-62; reprint n idem.,Studies n theCivilizationf Islam,ed. Stanford J. Shaw and William R. Polk (Boston:Beacon, 1962), pp. 3-33.
Bulliet's interpretation egins with a complex
conception of the "edge." It has a geographic
component, he frontiersof the Islamicworld,and
a social and culturalone, the edge of Islam. Theconcept stems from Bulliet's effortto understand
the developmentof Islamicsociety in the cities of
Khurasan n northwestIran.The view from the
center,as Bulliet calls it, places Khurasan nside
the frontier of Islamic society from the late-
seventh-centuryArab conquest on. Most of its
inhabitants,however, remainedoutside the edge,
since they were non-Muslims for many decades
after the conquest. Bulliet's inquiry begins with
the internaledge: How did the populationof Iran
become Muslim, and how did they learn what
being a Muslim meant? The availablesources do
not answer these questions directly. Bulliet syn-
thesizes answers through close analysis of the
information in biographical dictionaries and by
using reasonable imagination to fill the gaps.
Much of Bulliet's work thusrests within the realm
of surmise. Such questionscan be answeredonly
by surmise; the alternative to speculation is si-
lence. If one acceptsthe premisethatspeculation
is necessary, Bulliet's appears reasonable and
prudent.
Bulliet asserts that the spreadof Islam to Iran
came, at first, from the Companions of the
Prophet Muhammad,who could personally de-
scribe the Prophet's words and actions. Bulliet
argues that personal knowledge of the Prophet,
orally transmitted,carried greater weight than
knowledgeof the Quran.The directchain of oral
transmission, which is recorded as the isnad
(attribution)of hadith (the sayings of the Proph-
et), definedan individual'sabilityto explain what
Islam meant. On the edge, this process involvedtheencounterbetween Islamand a varietyof localcustoms andpractices.This encounterdefined theMuslim way of life on the edge. It produced,
according o Bulliet,both the hadith iteratureandthe focus on the learningandteachingof hadith.Italso produced highly localized, differentiated s-lamic societies. Bulliet does not make extensiveuse of recentliteratureon the developmentof thehadithcorpus,and his findings differ from thoseof otherwriters.
At the center, the early centuries of Islamic
historywere a time of political unity and cultural
uniformity.On theedge, it was an era of diversity,producedby the processof reconciliationof local
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