El último de los sufíes-filósofos de al-AndalusIbn Sabʿīn y su Daraŷ al-faḍāʾil wa-daraŷ al-wasāʾil

Abstract

Ibn Sabʿīn (1217 Ricote, Murcia - 1271 Mecca) was one of the most prolific Andalusi authors. He was also the last Andalusi-born representative of «Philosophical Sufism». As far as Andalusi authors go, the first representative of Philosophical Sufism is usually considered to be Ibn Masarra (d. 931) and the most influential Ibn ʿArabī (d. 1240). In general, Ibn Sabʿīn generated strong reactions throughout his life, both positive and negative. As was the case with several representatives of Philosophical Sufism, his works and his figure were heavily criticized over the years, not always from a reasonable or founded standpoint. Moreover, Ibn Sabʿīn's literary style has been generally considered cryptic and obscure. It is perhaps for this reason that a considerable amount of his works remain unpublished, lost or without a clear authorship identification. During the study of academic literature written about Ibn Sabʿīn it has also been possible to conclude that this is the first PhD thesis dedicated to this author in Spanish. The main hypothesis consists in considering that there is unpublished material authored by Ibn Sabʿīn that can supply new and relevant information about his thought, doctrine and spiritual experience, as well as clarify aspects of his role and legacy in Islamicate Intellectual History. We are additionally considering as a hypothesis the idea that until now only partial aspects of the thought and the works of this author have been explored, which has contributed to forge the still confusing image by which this historical figure is still known today. As a result, the main goal of this thesis is to search for and examine unpublished works by Ibn Sabʿīn in order to detect if there are works that contain relevant information for its edition, translation and study. An additional goal is to perform an extensive search of academic literature written about the author in order to assess the current available knowledge about him as well as the historical progression of said knowledge. Work has been developed in three areas which are now briefly introduced. The first two constitute a State of the Art about the author, and consist respectively in a global overview of the academic literature written about him and a revision and update of the manuscript corpus containing his works. This way it is shown that the studies and interpretations of the author performed until now are quite limited and there are important possibilities of improvement, as well as abundant unpublished works. The third area is the description, full edition and partial translation of an unpublished work of Ibn Sabʿīn titled Daraj al-Faḍāʾil wa-Daraŷ al-Wasāʾil («The Scale of Virtues and the Scale of Mediations»). It is possibly the last work he wrote, and he reveals in it his consideration of Ibn ʿArabī, a matter that specialists had been wondering about for a long time. Among other clues, Ibn Sabʿīn subtly introduces Ibn ʿArabī using the number seventy, which shows obvious implications considering that Ibn Sabʿīn means «Son of Seventy».