An early encounter with al-Qushayri’s Risala

Ibn al-Arabi most probably received private instruction; there is no indication that he attended the schools known at that time. This would be natural, given his family’s wealth and closeness to the ruler, as mentioned above. It also seems that initially he was not accomplished in the branches of learning and literature taught in his day. Indeed, he could not read well in front of the teachers, because he felt awe and trembled before them. Perhaps this reflected his intense courtesy towards them and awareness of their elevated stations. Recounting an incident with his teacher Abu Yaqub Yusuf ibn Yakhlaf al-Kumi, whom we shall discuss shortly, at the beginning of his entry into Sufism or perhaps just before it, he said:

“… I had never seen al-Qushayri’s Risala, or any other such work, and did not know what the word Sufism referred to! One day [Shaykh Yusuf] mounted his horse and ordered me and another companion to go to al-Muntyar, a high mountain one parasang from Seville. My companion and I left when the city gate opened. He was carrying al-Qushayri’s Risala, while I knew neither al-Qushayri nor his treatise. We climbed the mountain and found that the shaykh had arrived before us, with his servant holding his horse. We entered a mosque on the summit and prayed. He turned his back to the direction of prayer, handed me the treatise and said, ‘Read!’ I could not join one word to another, and the book fell from my hands out of awe. He told my companion to read. My companion took it and read, while the shaykh commented on it. We continued like this until we prayed the afternoon prayer.” [89]