Meccan Revelations


The Meccan Revelations is the major work of the philosopher and Sufi Ibn Arabi, written between 1203 and 1240.
in 2011, a major place of pilgrimage for the Muslim people.
The Andalusi thinker exposes his spiritual journey, his theology, his metaphysics and his mysticism, using sometimes prose, sometimes poetry. The book contains autobiographical elements: encounters, events, and spiritual illuminations.

Structure

The Revelations is a book of 37 volumes, divided into 560 chapters.

Content

The book takes its title from the holy city of Mecca, to which Ibn Arabi travelled on pilgrimage in 1202, and in which he received a number of revelations of divine origin.
In the Illuminations Ibn Arabi develops a theory of the imagination and the imaginary world explained by Henry Corbin. There is also a psychological and religious description of the effects of Allah's Love.
According to Michel Chodkiewicz, this book occupies a particularly important place in Ibn Arabi's work because it represents "the ultimate state of his teaching in its most complete form".

Women, poetry, religious love

Women are prominently featured in the book, particularly in Chapter 178 on love. Ibn Arabi is initiated into religious experience by a spiritual woman called Nizham, a young Iranian woman whose name means "Harmony". He quotes the poems of the writer Rabia of Basra, who according to him is "the most prestigious interpreter" of love. Ibn Arabi also recounts his encounter and service to mystic, with whom he recites Al Fātiḥah and whose degree of spiritual elevation he admires.

Legacy

The Illuminations are a classic of Sufism, theology and Islamic philosophy. They influenced the "Spiritual Writings" of the emir Abd el-Kader, who published the book in 1857, and perhaps Dante.. Henry Corbin compared Dante's Béatrice, which leads the poet to paradise in the Divine Comedy and awakens him to love in the Vita Nuova, to Ibn Arabi's Nizhâm, a mystical woman who initiates the Andalusian philosopher to the experience of God's love.