5.4.6.2 - =\%The year 617 years sadness for Shaykh Muhyiddin Ibn al-Arabi, where he died dearest companions glory of religion Yitzhak Ismail Ibn Mohammed Al Rumi student’s father issued religion Alqonoa which will also be adopted after the death of his father, as we said before.

One day, the master of the perfect and seal of the saints [Ibn al-Arabi] – may God be pleased with him – was outside the gates of Damascus when it occurred to him that he should like to perform the circumambulations (tawaf) around the Ka’ba, whereupon he immediately found himself at the gates of Mecca and set forth at once to perform the tawaf.

When it was time for the midday rest he went to the house of a friend of his in Mecca and slept there awhile. Then he renewed his ablutions and went out barefoot to continue his tawaf. After performing the circumambulations and praying in the Sacred Mosque it occurred to him that he ought to return to his companions and disciples in Damascus, and attend to the needs of his family, whereupon he found himself outside the gates of Damascus once again. Arriving home, he was met by our Shaykh, the teacher of truth and the proof of the way, Sadr al-Din Muhammad ibn Ishaq ibn Yusuf – may God be pleased with him – who asked him: ’Master, where are your shoes?’

’I left them at a friend’s house in Mecca.’ replied the Shaykh – may God be pleased with him.

’In the less than three hours that you’ve been gone, you’ve been to Mecca and back?’ asked our master.

So far no record of the date of Majd al-Din’s death has come to light. However, it seems likey to have occurred some time between 611/1214 and 618/1220. See Addas, Quest for the Red Sulphur, p. 228.

For example, ’Ali b. Ibrahim b. ’Abd Allah al-Qari al-Baghdadi (fl. 784/1382) – the author of the earliest hagiography, or manaqib, of Ibn al-Arabi, entitled al-Durr al-thamin fi manaqib al-shaykh Muhyi-l-Din – writes: “He [the Shaykh al-Akbar] entered the lands of Rum, and there he married the mother of the Pole of the times, Shaykh Sadr al-Din Muhammad ibn Ishaq al-Qunawi – may God be pleased with him – who thus graduated under his guidance”. (Manaqib Ibn al-Arabi, p. 23). Moreover, in the colophon of a transcript of Ibn al-Arabi’s ’Anqa’ Mughrib, recited before the author in Rabi’ I 629 (January 1232), Qunawi describes himself as the Shaykh’s servant (khadim) and stepson (rabib). (See Elmore, ’Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi’s personal study-list’, p. 178, note 125).

’Yes’ replied the Shaykh, who then told him what had happened, explaining how it is possible to gather one’s corporeality back into its spiritual principle and then cast it forth at will somewhere else. Shaykh Sadr al-Din kept a note of the day, time and hour [that this had happened]. After a long period had elapsed, they came from Mecca and brought the Shaykh al-Akbar’s shoes with them – may God be pleased with him. They too had made a note of the day and hour in which the Shaykh had appeared in Mecca, explaining that ’after a midday nap at our house the Shaykh went out barefoot to perform the tawaf, as is his wont – may God be pleased with him. When the people of the Sacred Precinct and its environs heard [that the Shaykh was there] they all thronged to see him. Suddenly the Shaykh disappeared from their very midst, leaving his shoes at our house. Wherefore, we were sent forth [to deliver them] and to learn how all this had come to pass.’ [Jandi, Nafhat al-ruh wa tuhfat al-futuh, p. 124–125.]

But whether Sadr al-Din moved to Damascus at the same time as his master – in 620/1223, when he would have been around fifteen – or joined him there at some later date cannot be established with any certainty. [Indeed, of his childhood in general little is known besides brief mentions in hagiographies and Seljuq chronicles.]

Of Qunawi’s education we know that he specialised in the science of hadith11 and was granted an ijaza, or license, authorising him to transmit Majd al-Din ibn al-Athir’s (d. 606/1210) famous compendium, the Jami’ al-usul.12 And it seems likely Qunawi’s personal copy of the Jami’ al-usul contains a list of the many students who read this work under him, including the celebrated polymath Qutb al-Din Shirazi (d. 710/1310).

that he was initiated into Sufism at an early age by the well-known Iranian mystic, Awhad al-Din al-Kirmani (d. 636/1238),13 whom he would refer to throughout his career as his “other master”.14 We know too that in Damascus he studied Ibn al-Arabi’s works under the Shaykh al-Akbar’s close guidance – a course of reading that has been carefully documented elsewhere.15 Notably, this included all twenty volumes of the first redaction of al-Futuhat al-makkiya – Ibn al-Arabi’s monumental summa of esoteric knowledge, consisting of 560 chapters – “recited to me”, as his master confirms, “from beginning to end”.16

Returning to Aleppo (617/1221)

=\%Seems that Shaykh Muhyiddin has returned to Aleppo in the same year after the death of his companion glory religion, Vengda in the same year in Aleppo cast lessons on some of his disciples; Among the books he read them in Aleppo book bagpipes and book M and book greatness.