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Imaginal Worlds: Ibn al-'Arabi and the Problem of Religious Diversity by William C. ChittickReview by: Eric OrmsbyMiddle East Journal, Vol. 50, No. 4 (Autumn, 1996), pp. 618-620Published by: Middle East Institute

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618 * MIDDLEEAST JOURNAL

Reviewedby John Watson

There are very few good books in Englishdealing

with the Coptic OrthodoxRenaissanceof the lastfour decades. The volume under review is an

important ddition o the libraryof modem Coptic

studies. Pietemella van Doom-Harder clearly

knows the world of theCopticnun;her research s

thorough, and the material is generally well-

presented.The social and culturalreportage,how-

ever, is superiorto the historicaland theological

coverage, which is adequate.It is very unlikely

thatin the foreseeable futuretherewill be another

study in the field to compete with this volume.This edition must, therefore,find a place on the

shelves of anyone in the English-speakingworld

claimingto have a general nterest n 20th-century

Egypt or a specialised interest in the Coptic

OrthodoxChurch.

The strongestand most revealing partsof the

text are those that present striking vignettes of

Abuna (Father) Yustus al-Antuni, Ummina

(Mother)Martha,UmminaIrini,and TasuniHan-

nah. Thesereligious figuresguarantee he survival

of the Copts and their unique religious obser-

vance. Van Doom-Harderhas a healthy skepti-

cism when it comes to dealing with the central

church functionaries, and there are occasional

hints of the powerfulcontrolwhich a patriarchal

element in the Churchattemptsto exert with a

barely disguised misogyny.

Another delightful part of the book is the

straightforward eportingof life and ceremonial

within the convents.Thesepassages introduce he

reader into an otherwise closed world. It is a

strange, spirituallypotent, and most politically-

incorrect environment,controlled completely by

non-residentmen-the bishops of the Coptic Or-

thodox Church.Women have a subservient ole in

the Church,and there is an unavoidable sense of

relief when one of the "mothers" scores even

againstthe Patriarch.

The volume has a few problems.First, it is a

very strange eatureof the book that every Coptic

Pope is entitled Patriarch.Whilstit is truethat the

Copts claim to hold the Patriarchateof Saint

Mark,even the youngest Coptologistknows that

all leaders of the Coptic Orthodox Church are

called "Pope"and thatCopts pridethemselves on

havinghad their own pope before there was one in

Rome. The entirely inappropriate se of the title

Patriarch may be the work of a zealous, but

ill-informed, editor. Van Doom-Harder must

know that Pope ShenoudaIII values his title, and

not solely because he "reignsas a shrewdeffectiveautocrat"p. 25), thoughit is impossibleto object

to this description.Second, the date given for the

commencementof the 117thpatriarchate n p. 16

is wrong: His Holiness Pope Shenouda III was

elected on Sunday, 31 October 1971, and en-

throned two weeks later on Sunday, 14 Novem-

ber. The one remainingdifficulty ies in the brief,

but misleading, treatmentof Coptic Christology

on p. 17, and in the accompanying ootnoteon p.

209. The discussionon this topic merely muddies

the waters. W.H.C. Frend is a name to conjure

with in Patristic studies, and it may be that Van

Doom-Harder's apparentdisagreementwith him

is simply a misunderstandingof Frend's inten-

tions. His Coptic Encyclopaediaarticle may be

taken as simplyhistorical,butif he thought hathe

was describingCopticbeliefs thenhe wouldhave

the best informed reasons for doing so. It can be

very misleading to refer, as van Doom-Harder

does, to the "two natures"of Christ in a Coptic

context, even when the writer follows the late

'Aziz 'Atiya, the greatestCoptologist of the 20th

century.Coptslike Pope Shenoudacertainlywish

to affirmthe perfection of Christ's divine and

humannature,but this always takes place within

the contextof Cyril's most quotedform of words:

mia physis tou Theou Logou-one nature of the

God-Logos-sesarkomene-enfleshed. This is far

from clear in van Doom-Harder's reatment.If the other volumes in this series are of

comparablequality,the University of SouthCaro-

lina Press will have cause for great pride. This

volume stands with the best in Coptic studies.

John Watson, of Sutton Valence School in the

UnitedKingdom, s the authorof a series of short

biographies of Pope Shenouda, Pope Kyrillos,

Abuna Marcos al-Eskiti, and Abuna Yustusal-

Antuni,and a regularcontributor o international

Copticjournals.

Imaginal Worlds: Ibn al-'Arabi and theProblem of Religious Diversity, by WilliamC. Chittick. Albany: State University of New

York Press, 1994. vii + 176 pages. Notes to p.186. Bibl. to p. 189. Indices to p. 208. $18.95.

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BOOK REVIEWS* 619

Reviewed by Eric Ormsby

The study of Muhyi al-Din ibn al-'Arabi (1165-

1240 AD) used to be vaguely disreputable.Thisvoluminous and immensely influential thinker,

one of the most original in the history of Islam,

was often suspect not solely to certain traditional

Muslims, but to many orientalistsas well. Some

25 years ago, in a graduatecourse on Sufism, I

heard a very distinguished scholar dismiss Ibn

al-'Arabi as a mere "pantheist,"and, therefore,

undeservingof closer study. Happily,this attitude

haschanged,and the authorof the presentwork isone of a small but dedicatedgroup of scholars,

inspiredby the late Henry Corbin,who are work-

ing to accomplish this long-overdue change.

Imaginal Worlds, thoughnot an easy book, is

probably the clearest introduction o the thought

of al-Shaykh al-Akbar in English. William C.

Chittickappears o have a complete masteryof an

astonishingly vast oeuvre. Al-Futuhat al-Mak-

kiyya, Ibn al-'Arabi's magnum opus, will, as

Chitticknotes, occupy some 15,000 printedpageswhen the full text has been published,andthis is

only one of al-'Arabi's key works. The huge

extent of the corpusis one problem; erminology

is another.Earlier translators,such as Reynold

Alleyne Nicholson, grappledwith the texts but all

too often succeeded only in finding vague or

misleading equivalents.By contrast,Chittickelu-

cidates characteristic erms with great care and

attention. For example, in discussing the termal-manazir al-'ula, which Nicholson had incor-

rectlyrenderedas "the divine ideas,"Chitticknot

only explainsthat the termcorrectlydenotes"the

higher oci of vision,"butplacesthis moreprecise

rendering n its proper ntellectual context:

As a technicalterm in cosmology, "higher"

is contrastedwith "lower"(asfal). The "higher

world" is the invisible realm, inhabited by

angels and spirits. The "lower world" is the

visible realm, inhabitedby bodies. Hence the

"lower loci of vision" would be the thingsthat

we perceive with our sensory eyes, or our

"sight" (basar), while the "higherloci of vi-

sion" are the things we perceive throughthe

inward, spiritualfaculty called by such names

as "insight" (basira), "unveiling"(kashf), and

"tasting" dhawq) (pp. 68-9).

Virtually every page of Imaginal Worldscon-

tains useful expositions or insights of this sort.

Unlike too manyother studies of esotericthought,

this work is invariably ucid, and the translations

of selected passages are exemplary. The book

contains ten chapters arranged in three broad

sections: HumanPerfection;Worlds of Imagina-

tion; and Religious Diversity. Though each chap-

ter was originally prepared for presentationat

conferencesor in other contexts, the book reads

smoothlyanddoes not seem a mere compilation.

Certainoverridingthemes, such as the pre-emi-

nence of the imaginationor the key concept of thebarzakh, he Quranic sthmus (the full panoplyof

whose meaningsChittickmasterfullyelaborates),

unify the separateessays. Thediscussion of imag-

ination, in Chittick's exposition, is one of the

richest I have encounteredand does justice, for

perhapsthe first time, to the profundityof Ibn

al-'Arabi's thought.

I have two reservationsabout this otherwise

excellent study. First, the author writes from a

virtuallyahistoricalviewpoint. True, he occasion-ally mentions importantpredecessors, such as

al-Ghazali,but in generalone could assume from

his treatment hat Ibn al-'Arabithoughtand wrote

and taught within a completely timeless world;

indeed,he is generally nvokedin thepresent.We

have had far too many scholarly works which

have soughtto reduce intellectualsystemsto their

historicalbases, as though dynasticor economic

or social forces explainedall. Still, it would have

addeddepthandperspective o thepresentworkif

Chittickhad situatedIbn al-'Arabimoreprecisely

in his time and place.

Second, thereis a tacit assumption hroughout

Chittick's book that Ibn al-'Arabi is to be seen as

an ultimateauthority,almost as a sort of oracle.

The author refers to him deferentially as "the

Shaykh"on almostevery page.This is a welcome

corrective o the prejudicewhich used to surround

the subject, but there is at times a whiff of

discipleshipwhich disturbs he reader.Theempa-

thy with which Chittickapproaches"theShaykh"

is achieved at the price of critical perspective.Often this is a matter of tone and hard to docu-

ment, but it permeatesthe book and undermines

its potential value. No uninitiatedreader would

guess, for example, that Ibn al-'Arabi had at-

tractednumerousdetractors monghis coreligion-

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620 * MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL

ists, not only in his own time but for centuries

afterward.

Eric Ormsby,McGill University

Islam:The View from the Edge,by Richard

W. Bulliet. New York: Columbia University

Press, 1994. 207 pages. Notes to p. 228. Index to

p. 236. $16 paper.

Reviewedby Douglas E. Streusand

Over thepasttwo decades,RichardW. Bulliethasproduceda series of innovative and provocative

monographs on the middle periods of Islamic

history.Islam:The View rom theEdge is thus not

unexpected.Like Bulliet's first book, The Patri-

cians of Nishapur,1and his later Conversion to

Islam in the Medieval Period,2this volume rests

on Bulliet's extensive and intensive research in

medievalbiographicaldictionaries.On that foun-

dation,Bulliet erects a new interpretiveparadigm

for Islamic history, relevant to the interpretation

of Islam and Islamic societies from the 7th to the

21st centuries.The book is anessay, not a detailed

history. It seeks to open vistas for future study,

not to presenta completeand final interpretation.

Islam: The View rom the Edge is comparable o

Hamilton A.R. Gibb's "An Interpretation f Is-

lamicHistory,"3 ut Bulliet challenges the incum-

bent interpretation which Gibb's article

epitomizes.Gibb identifiesthe struggleof the Sunni 'ulama

(scholars),whom he calls "orthodox,"o maintain

universalism hroughout he Islamic world as the

fundamental heme of medieval Islamic history.

Bulliet contends thatwhat Gibb mistakenly callsorthodox Islam is really recenteredSunnism, and

that it did not develop until the 11th century.

Bulliet sees its formulation and spread as the

definingtheme of this era of Islamic history.

1. (Cambridge:Harvard University Press,1972).

2. Conversiono Islam n theMedieval eriod:An Essayin Quantitative istory Cambridge: Cam-bridgeUniversity Press, 1979).

3. In Journal f WorldHistory1939) pp. 39-62; reprint n idem.,Studies n theCivilizationf Islam,ed. Stanford J. Shaw and William R. Polk (Boston:Beacon, 1962), pp. 3-33.

Bulliet's interpretation egins with a complex

conception of the "edge." It has a geographic

component, he frontiersof the Islamicworld,and

a social and culturalone, the edge of Islam. Theconcept stems from Bulliet's effortto understand

the developmentof Islamicsociety in the cities of

Khurasan n northwestIran.The view from the

center,as Bulliet calls it, places Khurasan nside

the frontier of Islamic society from the late-

seventh-centuryArab conquest on. Most of its

inhabitants,however, remainedoutside the edge,

since they were non-Muslims for many decades

after the conquest. Bulliet's inquiry begins with

the internaledge: How did the populationof Iran

become Muslim, and how did they learn what

being a Muslim meant? The availablesources do

not answer these questions directly. Bulliet syn-

thesizes answers through close analysis of the

information in biographical dictionaries and by

using reasonable imagination to fill the gaps.

Much of Bulliet's work thusrests within the realm

of surmise. Such questionscan be answeredonly

by surmise; the alternative to speculation is si-

lence. If one acceptsthe premisethatspeculation

is necessary, Bulliet's appears reasonable and

prudent.

Bulliet asserts that the spreadof Islam to Iran

came, at first, from the Companions of the

Prophet Muhammad,who could personally de-

scribe the Prophet's words and actions. Bulliet

argues that personal knowledge of the Prophet,

orally transmitted,carried greater weight than

knowledgeof the Quran.The directchain of oral

transmission, which is recorded as the isnad

(attribution)of hadith (the sayings of the Proph-

et), definedan individual'sabilityto explain what

Islam meant. On the edge, this process involvedtheencounterbetween Islamand a varietyof localcustoms andpractices.This encounterdefined theMuslim way of life on the edge. It produced,

according o Bulliet,both the hadith iteratureandthe focus on the learningandteachingof hadith.Italso produced highly localized, differentiated s-lamic societies. Bulliet does not make extensiveuse of recentliteratureon the developmentof thehadithcorpus,and his findings differ from thoseof otherwriters.

At the center, the early centuries of Islamic

historywere a time of political unity and cultural

uniformity.On theedge, it was an era of diversity,producedby the processof reconciliationof local

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