Glimpses of Ibn 'Arabi's youth (2): Averroes

By Henry Corbin · March 14, 2024 · 8 min read

Contents

Part two: the encounter with Averroes

By the time he can attest to himself that his entry into the spiritual path is definitive, and that he has been initiated into the secrets of mystical life, Ibn ’Arabi is nearing his twentieth year. We now come to the episode that appears to us as invested with an inestimable symbolic function. In reality, the episode in its entirety falls into two moments, separated by an interval of several years. Between the meeting of his youth and the day of the funeral, Ibn ’Arabi was never again to see, at least in the world of the senses, Averroes, the great philosopher of Cordova. Ibn ’Arabi himself tells us that his own father, still living, was an intimate friend of the philosopher. This is what facilitated the interview the latter desired, whose memory ought to have remained memorable for our history of philosophy and spirituality. Under some pretext or other, his father sends him to the philosopher, curious to know the adolescent about whom so many things were being said. For the account of the relations between the Aristotelian master and the young man who was to be called ‘the son of Plato’, we must let the latter speak¹.

‘Yes and no’

’So one fine day I went, in Cordova, to the house of Abu’l-Walid Ibn Rushd (better known as Averroes). He had expressed the wish to meet me in person, because he had heard tell of the revelations God had granted me in the course of my spiritual retreat, and he had not concealed his astonishment at what he had been told. That is why my father, who was one of his intimate friends, one day sent me to him on the pretext of some errand, in reality to allow Averroes to have a conversation with me. At that time I was still a beardless adolescent. On my entrance, the philosopher rose from his seat, came to meet me with demonstrative marks of friendship and regard, and finally embraced me. Then he said to me: “Yes.” And I in turn said to him: “Yes.” Then his joy increased as he realised I had understood him. But next, becoming aware myself of what had provoked his joy, I added: “No.” At once Averroes stiffened, the colour of his features changed, he seemed to doubt what he had thought. He put this question to me: “What sort of solution have you found through illumination and divine inspiration? Is it identical to what speculative reflection dispenses to us?” I answered him: “Yes and no. Between the yes and the no, spirits take flight out of their matter, and necks part from their bodies.” Averroes paled; I saw him tremble; he murmured the ritual phrase: there is no strength except in God, for he had understood what I was alluding to.

‘Later, after our interview, he questioned my father about me, in order to compare the opinion he had formed of me and to know whether it coincided with my father’s or, on the contrary, differed from it. For Averroes was a great master of philosophical reflection and meditation. He gave thanks to God, I was told, for having let him live at a time when he could see someone who had entered the spiritual retreat ignorant and had come out of it as I had come out of it. “This,” he said, “is a case whose possibility I had myself affirmed, though without having yet met anyone who had actually experienced it. Glory to God, who has let me live at a time when one of the masters of this experience exists, one of those who open the locks of its doors! Glory to God, who has done me the personal favour of seeing one of them with my own eyes!”’

The veil and the counterweight

’I wanted on another occasion to have a fresh interview with Averroes. Divine mercy made him appear to me in an ecstasy, in a form such that between his person and myself there was a light veil. I could see him through this veil, without his seeing me or knowing that I was there. He was in fact too absorbed in his meditation to notice me. Then I said to myself: his purpose does not lead him to where I myself have come.

‘I had no further opportunity to meet him until his death, which occurred in the year 595 of the Hegira (1198) at Marrakech. His remains were transferred to Cordova, where his tomb lies. When the coffin containing his ashes had been loaded on the flank of a beast of burden, his works were placed on the other side as a counterweight. I stood there watching; with me were the jurist and man of letters Ibn Jubayr, secretary to the Almohad prince Abu Sa’id, and my companion Abu’l-Hakam, the copyist. Then Abu’l-Hakam turned to us and said: “Do you not observe what serves as counterweight to the master Averroes on his mount? On one side the master, on the other his works, the books he composed.” Then Ibn Jubayr answered him: “You say I do not observe, my child? But indeed I do. Blessed be your tongue!” Then I gathered up Abu’l-Hakam’s phrase within me, that it might be a theme of meditation and remembrance for me. I am now the sole survivor of that little group of friends (may God hold them in His mercy), and I say to myself on the subject: “On one side the master, on the other his works. Ah! How I should like to know whether his hopes have been granted!”’

Is not the whole of Ibn ’Arabi already present in this extraordinary episode, this threefold encounter with Averroes? On the first occasion it is already ‘the disciple of Khadir’² who bears witness, the one who owes his knowledge of spiritual experience to no human teaching. On the second, it is already the author of the Book of Theophanies³ speaking, he to whom the suprasensible intermediate world, ’alam al-mithal, stands wide open, where the active imagination directly perceives, without the aid of the senses, events, figures, presences. And finally, heart-rending in its simplicity, endowed with the mute eloquence of symbols, the scene of the return of the mortal remains to Cordova. To the master whose essential purpose had been to restore integral Aristotelianism in its purity, a last homage is rendered by the ‘son of Plato’, contemporary of the Platonists of Persia (the Ishraqiyyun of Sohrawardi⁴) who together, without the West’s foreknowledge, inaugurated in Islam something that anticipates and overflows the projects of a Gemistus Pletho or a Marsilio Ficino. And before the scene with its unpremeditated symbolism, the weight of the books balancing that of a corpse, the melancholy question: ‘Ah! How I should like to know whether his wishes have been granted!’

‘How I should like to know’

It is the same wish, ‘How I should like to know…’, that would rise to the lips of ‘the interpreter of ardent desires’⁵ when, some years later, on a night of pensive melancholy, he performed the circumambulations around the Ka’ba. Rite physically accomplished or mental vision? The distinction is henceforth superfluous. It was on that very night that he would receive the answer, through the lips of the One who would from then on remain for him, in this world, the theophanic figure of the Sophia aeterna. That answer would declare to him the secret on which it depends that the wishes of the man of desire be fulfilled, because he is himself the respondent for that God who shares his destiny as soon as he consents to his God; and on this secret it depends that the dawn of resurrection risen upon the mystical soul is not reversed into the lugubrious twilight of doubts, into the cynical joy of the ignorant at the idea of a ‘superexistence’ at last defeated. For then, yes, the temporary survivors would have no more than this derisory spectacle: a bundle of books balancing a corpse.

But that triumph, Ibn ’Arabi knows, is obtained neither by the effort of rational philosophy nor by rallying to what his lexicon will designate as a ‘God created in dogmas’. It depends on a certain decisive encounter, wholly personal, irreplaceable, barely communicable even to the most fraternal soul, still less translatable into any change of outward obedience, of social qualification. Fruit of a long quest, the work of a whole life; the whole life of Ibn ’Arabi was that long quest. The decisive encounter took place, and was renewed for him, under figures whose variants never fail to refer back to the same person. He read masses of books, we know. That is even why the inventory of his ‘sources’ will perhaps remain a hopeless undertaking, especially if one persists in speaking of syncretism, in failing to take the true measure of this spiritual genius who receives only what measures up to his inner heaven, and who is above all his own ‘explanation’.

Henry Corbin

This article was published in June 1958 in issue no. 126 of the journal “La Table Ronde” (Plon), under the title “Ibn ’Arabi et les funérailles d’Averroès”.

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