The encounter in Cordoba
The article begins with the contrast between Ibn Rushd’s philosophical inquiry and Ibn al-Arabi’s experiential knowledge. It asks whether their different approaches might be brought into a more comprehensive account of existence, encompassing both the natural and spiritual worlds.
Ibn al-Arabi recounts that his father, a friend of Ibn Rushd, sent him to the philosopher while he was still a youth. Ibn Rushd rose, embraced him and said, “Yes.” Ibn al-Arabi answered, “Yes,” then, perceiving the reason for the philosopher’s joy, added, “No.” Asked whether unveiling and divine effusion yielded what rational reflection had yielded, he replied: “Yes … no. Between yes and no, spirits fly from their matter and necks from their bodies.” The account describes Ibn Rushd trembling and recognising the allusion. [1]
For the article’s author, the exchange is more than a disagreement between two methods. Its compressed language points towards the difficulty of relating the multiplicity of the world to the unity of its source. The author reads yes and no through the paired terms existence and nonexistence.
Two modes of knowing
The article contrasts observation and reasoning with tasting and unveiling. It explains Ibn al-Arabi’s position that, when the receiving heart is sound, error may lie in interpreting the disclosed image rather than in the disclosure itself. This is a claim within his account of spiritual knowledge, not a replacement here for the evaluation of evidence. [2]
The author acknowledges that a report of unveiling may not provide a demonstration persuasive to someone who has not shared the experience. Symbolic expression can therefore convey something while also leaving the reader with a problem of interpretation.
The discussion distinguishes the intellect as an active thinker from its capacity to receive knowledge. It also reads Ibn al-Arabi’s cosmology as serving knowledge of God, rather than making a description of the physical universe his final aim. [3–4]
The point and the circumference
The encounter appears in a passage associated with the spiritual pole whom Ibn al-Arabi calls the healer of wounds. The article quotes the image of a world situated between a point and a circumference, with different spheres and levels. [5]
The author interprets the point through the Single Monad, the circumference through the totality of created forms, and what lies beyond through impossibility and nonexistence. The diagram on the Arabic page is adapted from Futuhat, chapter 360, volume III, page 275. This English selection describes that figure without reproducing or replacing it. [6]
The interpretation depends on renewed creation: a form does not remain self-sufficiently in existence, but depends at every instant on divine bestowal. The article links this account to the need of both substances and accidents for their Creator. [7]
Renewed creation and the experience of continuity
The author brings together Qur’an 50:15, on a new creation; 55:29, on God being upon a task each day; and 18:51, on human beings not having witnessed the creation of the heavens, earth or themselves. He reads them alongside Ibn al-Arabi’s descriptions of the continual renewal of the world.
In the article’s model, successive forms produce our impression of uninterrupted existence. Its interpretation of six days as six directions, and of the ordering of space and time, belongs to the author’s metaphysical reconstruction. It is not presented here as an experimentally established physical mechanism.
The article also distinguishes this reading of substance and accident from the terminology of Ashari theology. It relates the absence of mere repetition to the divine name al-Wasi, the All-Encompassing, and cites the opening of the Futuhat in discussing dependence and origination. [8]
Bringing reason and the heart into relation
The proposed reconciliation is perspectival. Reason studies the world as it appears: bodies, properties and relations. The purified heart, in the author’s reading, sees the dependence and passing-away of those forms. The same world can therefore elicit both yes and no.
The article ends by questioning whether the practical or mathematical success of a model establishes its ultimate metaphysical truth. It invokes historical astronomy as an analogy and extends its challenge to modern cosmology. These are the author’s philosophical arguments; this abridgment does not treat them as scientific findings or as a refutation of contemporary physics. [9]
Its closing question invites the reader to consider how descriptions of observable regularities relate to claims about the ground of existence. The Arabic original includes a poem and a more extensive discussion of this argument.
References retained from the Arabic article
[1] Al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya, I, p. 153, line 33. [2] I, p. 307, line 12; III, p. 7, line 21; and Ma la Yuawwal Alayh, in Rasail Ibn al-Arabi, Dar Sadir, treatise 16, p. 2.
[3] Futuhat, II, p. 677, line 1. [4] I, p. 288, line 27. [5] I, p. 154, line 22. [6] III, p. 275. [7] II, p. 208, line 27. [8] I, p. 39, line 7. [9] II, p. 670, line 7.
The numbering follows the Arabic article. Page and line references are carried over from that source and have not been collated against a new edition.