Quest for the Red Sulphur: The Life of Ibn 'Arabi

‘Sultan of Gnostics, Shaykh al-Akbar’: for the past eight centuries the profound spiritual influence of Ibn ‘Arabī has been a major point of reference in Sufism. Yet apart from a handful of specialised studies little has been written in the English language about this visionary metaphysician—known as ‘the supreme Master’. His writings are inseparable from his life. They cannot be isolated from the various stages of his inner experience or from his lengthy wanderings from West to East, across the Muslim world, which was menaced on the one hand by the Reconquista and on the other by the Crusades. In the drama of both his inner and outer life his companions and his contemporaries were far from being mere onlookers. The places where he stayed, and the events he lived through. represent a great deal more than so many anecdotal details providing the background for his spiritual quest. Until the publication of this book, anyone who wanted to learn about the life of Ibn ‘Arabī has had little choice of materials to work from. This major study by Claude Addas is based on a detailed analysis of the whole range of Ibn ‘Arabī's own writings as well as a vast amount of secondary literature in both Arabic and Persian. The result is the first-ever attempt to reconstruct what proves to have been a double itinerary: on the one hand the journey that took Ibn ‘Arabī from his native Andalusia to Damascus—and on the other, the ‘Night Journey’ which carried him along the paths of asceticism and prayer to the ultimate stage of revelation of his mystic quest. Quest for the Red Sulphur is undoubtedly a landmark in Ibn ‘Arabī studies, and its author's gift of narrative allied to a consummate understanding of the subject should make this volume compulsory reading for anyone interested in Islamic mysticism. Translated from the original French by Peter Kingsley