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THE POLITICAL CONTROVERSY OVER GRAECO-ARABIC PHILOSOPHY AND SUFISM IN NASRID GOVERNMENT: THE CASE OF IBN AL-KHATIB IN AL-ANDALUS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2015

Ali Humayun Akhtar
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Abstract

During the reign of the Nasrid sultan Muhammad V in 14th-century Granada, the renowned literary figure Lisan al-Din ibn al-Khatib rose to the office of vizier and chief dignitary. A text on Graeco-Arabic philosophy and Sufism that he wrote under court patronage, Rawdat al-Taʿrif fi al-Hubb al-Sharif (The Garden of Knowledge of Noble Love), became the centerpiece of a famous court case against him that led to his downfall. Historians have had difficulty interpreting the case because of its political context. Was Ibn al-Khatib's demise really about his philosophical and mystical ideas given his entanglement in power rivalries at the court? Scholars have suggested that Ibn al-Khatib's text was used merely as a pretext to remove him from power. In contrast, I argue that the specific power rivalry between the chief qadi and Ibn al-Khatib only escalated into a court case because, at a time when Sufis were controversial, the qadi read Ibn al-Khatib's Sufi-inspired doctrines as a claim on his religious authority. Ibn al-Khatib's ideas, rather than a pretext for prosecution, were the necessary condition for the power rivalry to erupt into a court case. This reading of the case highlights the way intellectual debates shaped contingent political processes in the medieval Islamic world.

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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , May 2015, pp. 323 - 342
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Lisan al-Din ibn al-Khatib (d. 1374) was one of the most important poets and historians of Granada in Islamic Spain (al-Andalus).Footnote 1 He was also a powerful politician in the court of the Nasrid dynasty at the Alhambra, and his untimely death in exile remains one of the most famous and mysterious examples of court intrigue in medieval history. During the long reign of the Nasrid sultan Muhammad V in the mid-1300s, Ibn al-Khatib rose to the office of vizier and chief dignitary. During his time in office, he was commissioned by the sultan to write a text projecting a favorable opinion of Sufism. Ibn al-Khatib wrote the text, entitled Rawdat al-Taʿrif fi al-Hubb al-Sharif (The Garden of Knowledge of Noble Love), which argued that Greek philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato, Sufis of al-Andalus such as Ibn ʿArabi, and early Sufis of Iraq such as al-Junayd and al-Muhasibi, all used different intellectual paths to pursue the same goal: love of God.

Rawdat al-Taʿrif's philosophical and Sufi doctrines became the centerpiece of a political court case against Ibn al-Khatib that led to his death. However, the case remains difficult to interpret. The nature of the accusations in the trial suggests that the fall of Ibn al-Khatib is the story of a theologically conservative qadi taking political power. However, Emilio García Gómez has argued that Ibn al-Khatib’s demise was actually about political court rivalries and court intrigues.Footnote 2 Drawing on the work of Emilio de Santiago Simón on Ibn al-Khatib's mystical thought, María Isabel Calero Secall has argued similarly that the chief qadi ʿAli b. ʿAbd Allah al-Nubahi (or al-Bunnahi) was determined to pursue a court case against Ibn al-Khatib and needed a convenient pretext for prosecution, a pretext available in Ibn al-Khatib's philosophical and mystical doctrines.Footnote 3 One of the key contributions of this reading has been to help historians break down the image of al-Andalus as a place of conservative Malikism resistant to new intellectual movements. However, this reading has simultaneously diminished the clear role of Ibn al-Khatib's philosophical ideas in escalating the rivalry between him and the chief qadi. Evidence preserved by the chronicler Ahmed b. Muhammad al-Maqqari of Tlemcen suggests that the chief qadi read Ibn al-Khatib's text as a challenge to the qadi's own aspirations to shape the contours of Islamic theology and jurisprudence. Given that the chief qadi's religious authority was already contested by a range of scholars outside of administrative circles, and that the scholars’ religious authority was contested by the rise of Sufi movements, the chief qadi may have found Ibn al-Khatib's Sufi-inspired philosophical writings particularly unwelcome. What remains to be investigated, then, is how Ibn al-Khatib's philosophical writings, laden with claims about the nature of scholarly and Sufi religious authority, may have propelled a mere rivalry between the qadi and the vizier into a court case.

In dialogue with the work of both Maribel Fierro and Vincent Cornell on Andalusian and Maghribi Sufism,Footnote 4 Alexander Knysh has taken the critical step of locating the case within the history of Andalusian debates over saintly authority associated with philosophical and mystical knowledge following the rise of the Sufi Ibn ʿArabi (d. 1240).Footnote 5 This political contextualization provides a clue to the important implications that Ibn al-Khatib's philosophical and mystical doctrines had for debates over Islamic religious authority in an era when Sufi saints constituted an alternative model of religious authority to the Islamic scholars. Knysh's findings point to an important avenue of investigation that I pursue in this article. Did Ibn al-Khatib's writings, which were commissioned by the sultan to offer a positive image of Sufism, bolster the sultan's political legitimacy by showing him to be in support of Sufism and in opposition to the chief qadi's own critical view of Sufis?

Using evidence connected to the case, this article reconsiders Ibn al-Khatib's trial, analyzing it as a window into the contested place of Graeco-Arabic philosophy and Sufism in models of political and religious authority in al-Andalus. Specifically, it asks two questions. First, in the era before the final collapse of al-Andalus in 1492, how could philosophical doctrines become the center of controversy in Nasrid ruling circles when two earlier caliphates in al-Andalus—the Andalusian Umayyads and the Almohads—had been patrons of philosophy? Second, why were abstract intellectual doctrines so central to a high-profile political trial that appears to have been more about ruling power rivalries than doctrinal issues? Drawing on the Rawdat al-Taʿrif, as well as the chief qadi ʿAli b. ʿAbd Allah al-Nubahi's accusations against Ibn al-Khatib preserved in the work of al-Maqqari, I argue that while there were indeed a number of power rivalries among Ibn al-Khatib's colleagues at the Nasrid court, the rivalry between the chief qadi and Ibn al-Khatib was the one to escalate into a court case because, at a time when Sufis were controversial, the chief qadi read Ibn al-Khatib's philosophical ideas as a challenge to his religious authority. This reading of the case highlights the contingency of the chief qadi's prosecution of Ibn al-Khatib, where Ibn al-Khatib's politically commissioned writings were the necessary condition for a power rivalry to erupt into a court case.

The first section of this article contextualizes the trial of Ibn al-Khatib within the history of political and scholarly debates in al-Andalus over theological epistemology and religious authority, with a particular focus on how some scholars saw Sufism as a challenge to scholarly authority. The second section examines specific passages in Ibn al-Khatib's work in the context of these debates to answer why the chief qadi may have read them as a serious challenge to his authority. The third section looks at the chief qadi's letters to Ibn al-Khatib, analyzing the multiple ways al-Nubahi identified this challenge to his authority in the period immediately before the trial. Taken together, the evidence analyzed here suggests that the philosophical disagreement between Ibn al-Khatib and al-Nubahi was neither the sole determining cause of Ibn al-Khatib's prosecution nor simply a pretext for an inevitable power clash. Rather, in what highlights an important intersection of knowledge, authority, and administrative power in Nasrid government, Ibn al-Khatib's philosophical ideas had specific implications in a contemporary scholarly debate about Sufi religious authority, with his position in favor of Sufis propelling the power rivalry between him and the chief qadi into the court case that led to his demise. That the powerful sultan at the Alhambra commissioned Ibn al-Khatib's work before turning against both the text and its author seems to reflect the extent to which the authority of the seemingly powerful sultan was contested at the highest ranks of courtly administration.

THE POLITICAL CONTROVERSY OVER RAWDAT AL-TAʿRIF IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Ibn al-Khatib's Rawdat al-Taʿrif, the text at the center of the court case against him, argued that pre-Islamic Greek philosophers, Graeco-Arabic philosophers (falāsifa), and Sufis all pursued a kind of gnostic love of God, but that the Sufis’ path of love was the noblest. In the text, Ibn al-Khatib also voiced reservations about philosophy and Sufism. He argued that these modes of knowledge were only acceptable if their doctrines and practices remained within the bounds of Islamic legal, creedal, and ritual principles. Moreover, he cautioned that Sufism in particular, which he described as being in conversation with the ancient and contemporary philosophers’ doctrines, ought not to clash with ruling political authority. In this context, Ibn al-Khatib criticized Ibn Qasi (d. 1151), a Sufi who earlier had rebelled against the Almoravids and founded a separate polity in the city of Mertola (in modern-day southern Portugal), eventually minting his own coins.Footnote 6 For Ibn al-Khatib, Ibn Qasi's political activities made him a quintessentially problematic Sufi.Footnote 7 It is unsurprising that Ibn al-Khatib made this distinction between politically quietist sound Sufism and politically activist unsound Sufism in his text given that it was politically commissioned. Ibn al-Khatib's colleague at the Nasrid court, Ibn Khaldun, seemed to articulate this very same distinction in a fatwa he issued upon being hired as one of four chief qadis in Mamluk Cairo years after leaving Granada.

The great paradox of Ibn al-Khatib's political fallout is that despite the sultan's commissioning of his writings, which outline a politically nuanced approach to Sufism, Granada's chief qadi al-Nubahi was able to use the text to prosecute him following a series of mysterious court intrigues involving the sultan himself. Ibn al-Khatib and al-Nubahi shared a former colleague in Ibn Khaldun, which makes his knowledge of the case one of the chief pieces of evidence for understanding it.Footnote 8 Ibn Khaldun tells us that Ibn al-Khatib fell afoul with two Nasrid dignitaries, Ibn al-Khatib's former protégé Ibn Zamrak and the chief qadi al-Nubahi. Fearing court intrigues against him, Ibn al-Khatib left Granada secretly and headed south for Tlemcan to the court of the Marinid sultan, who offered him protection. The court intrigues that he feared back in Granada turned out to be very real. In fact, the chief qadi al-Nubahi and the new vizier Ibn Zamrak apparently instigated Muhammad V to appeal to the Marinids for Ibn al-Khatib’s extradition back to Granada to face trial. Al-Nubahi's central accusation against Ibn al-Khatib was zandaqa (heretical teachings) and promoting the problematic opinions of the Graeco-Arabic philosophers (falāsifa). The Marinid sultan refused to extradite Ibn al-Khatib, so his accusers waited until the sultan's death, after which they colluded with Ibn al-Khatib's enemies in the Maghrib to have him imprisoned in Marinid Fez. He was then put on trial in Fez by a delegation from Granada. That trial did not conclude his guilt, but he died in prison soon after in mysterious circumstances.

The general contours of the immediate political context of the controversy over the text are known and scholars have written about them. However, a nuanced and multifaceted interpretation remains elusive. As mentioned, García Gómez and Calero Secall have each suggested that the fall of Ibn al-Khatib was essentially about court rivalries and court intrigues, an argument that implies that the intellectual side of the controversy is not as significant.Footnote 9 The counterargument, that the fall of Ibn al-Khatib is the story of a theologically conservative qadi taking power in al-Andalus, is problematic in that it echoes common medieval misconceptions of al-Andalus as a place of conservative Malikism functioning almost like an orthodoxy.Footnote 10 One of the methodological questions that looms large in García Gómez's and Calero Secall's efforts to interpret Ibn al-Khatib's fall is the following: should an intellectual controversy that erupts into a political clash be understood simply as a pretext for an underlying power rivalry, or can an intellectual controversy actually cause a political clash because of the way certain ideas are entangled with contemporary modes of power and authority? The former position implies that religion is simply a veil for politics, while the latter position suggests that premodern politics is fundamentally ideological and oriented around contested creeds, as might occur under a powerful orthodoxy. In interpreting the political fallout of Ibn al-Khatib, I maintain that simultaneous debates about religious authority and political power appear to have been at work. In other words, both the doctrinal controversy and the political rivalry shaped the course of events leading to Ibn al-Khatib's prosecution.

The importance of the works of Fierro, Cornell, and Knysh for the current study is in the new frameworks they provide for understanding the intersection of politics and religion in al-Andalus, frameworks that make a new and more thorough interpretation of Ibn al-Khatib's case possible. These scholars have shown how a long history of intellectual controversies in al-Andalus bore upon questions of political and religious authority, particularly controversies associated with philosophy and Sufism.Footnote 11

At the heart of the Islamic scholars’ debate about Graeco-Arabic philosophy and Sufism was a question of authority and epistemology, specifically the scholars’ authority to define the Islamic sciences and their legal and ritual principles. At what point did the doctrines of the philosophers and Sufis, which in the case of philosophical Sufis such as Ibn Barrajan and the more famous Ibn Qasi sometimes overlapped, challenge the authority and knowledge of the scholars? This question was important precisely because the philosophers and Sufis often numbered among the scholars, which meant that philosopher scholars such as Averroes and Sufi scholars such as al-Ghazali could be seen as pushing the boundaries of the Islamic sciences by including methods and doctrines drawing on Aristotelian logic, Neoplatonic cosmology, or the inspired knowledge of Sufism.Footnote 12 If the scholars’ Islamic sciences in 12th-century al-Andalus and Iraq included Qurʾanic scriptural hermeneutics, hadith science, Islamic legal theory, and Ashʿarite theological methods, where specifically did the philosophers’ Aristotelian logic fit?Footnote 13 What did doctrines in Neoplatonic cosmology, found in the writings of the philosophers and the Sufis, play?Footnote 14 What was the place of the Sufis’ inspired mystical gnosis (maʿrifa) in the Islamic sciences, particularly given that the scholarly tradition was characterized by written and aural modes of knowledge passed between scholarly teachers and students?Footnote 15

As Vincent Cornell, Kenneth Garden, and Delfina Serrano have all shown, these kinds of questions were particularly complex for scholars trying to assess the work of Sufi scholars such as al-Ghazali, whose work was transmitted by Maliki followers in al-Andalus.Footnote 16 For many of these latter Ghazalian scholars, doctrines and methods in both Graeco-Arabic philosophy and Sufism had a place in the traditional Islamic sciences, such that the ideal scholar would be a logic-oriented scholar, a saintly Sufi scholar, or both. Al-Ghazali appears to have been both, since even his Sufi mysticism was in conversation with specific Neoplatonic doctrines in cosmology.Footnote 17 That political rulers and a group of scholars in the Almoravid period ordered al-Ghazali's books to be burned highlights how debates about epistemology and religious authority could become entangled with debates about political authority.

From a specifically political perspective, it is important that medieval Islamic scholars debated the philosophical and mystical doctrines of politically controversial Sufis such as the Almoravid-era rebel Ibn Qasi and the more influential Almohad-era Sufi Ibn ʿArabi. As Knysh has shown, the scholars’ criticisms suggest that many scholars explicitly explained problematic notions of religious authority in terms of contested theories of knowledge, such as philosophical theories of cosmology that were widespread among political movements including that of the Fatimids. Ibn Khaldun, who was a colleague of Ibn al-Khatib's at the Nasrid court, claimed somewhat polemically that the Sufis derived cosmological doctrines from the philosophers and developed a questionable model of religious authority comparable to the Fatimid Ismaʿilis’ notion of a messianic mahdī.Footnote 18 Ibn Khaldun probably had Ibn Qasi in mind when he made this critique, and in fact, upon becoming one of four chief judges in Mamluk Cairo, he issued a fatwa calling for the burning of Ibn Qasi's books. In a similarly polemical manner, the Hanbali scholar Ibn Taymiyya lumped philosophers, Sufis, and Fatimid Ismaʿilis together under the old anti-Fatimid epithet “esotericists” (bāṭiniyya), echoing Ibn Khaldun's claim that the Sufis’ understanding of knowledge and authority was comparable to the Fatimid Ismaʿilis’ notions of epistemology and religious authority.Footnote 19

Against this background, Ibn al-Khatib's cautionary comments on certain philosophical and mystical doctrines and on Sufism's controversial notions of religious authority should come as no surprise. Like Ibn Khaldun, Ibn al-Khatib (who lived in the 14th century) criticized 12th-century Almoravid- and Almohad-era Sufis for what appeared to him as their problematic intersecting of saintly religious authority, reformist political activity, and cosmological doctrines. But while Ibn Khaldun took an unyielding position against these Sufis’ legacies in the form of a fatwa in Cairo, Ibn al-Khatib took a nuanced and flexible position back in Granada by defending the merits of Andalusian Sufism and its philosophical and mystical doctrines. The result, his Nasrid court-sponsored Rawdat al-Taʿrif, echoed the earlier Almohad administrator Ibn Tufayl's Hayy ibn Yaqzan (Alive, the Son of Awake), the widely translated novel that sets out to harmonize Avicenna's philosophical legacy with al-Ghazali's Sufi legacy through an allegorical story. The political connection between the 12th-century Almohads as patrons of Ibn Tufayl's philosophical-mystical Hayy ibn Yaqzan and the 14th-century Nasrids as patrons of Ibn al-Khatib's philosophical-mystical Rawdat al-Taʿrif is the following: in the process of centralizing ruling political authority, the Almohad and Nasrid courts both appear to have participated in an ongoing scholarly debate about philosophical knowledge, Sufi knowledge, and the scholars’ religious authority.Footnote 20 Like the Almohads, the Nasrid rulers sought to appropriate philosophical and Sufi knowledge in order to bolster their legitimacy.Footnote 21 In this light, Ibn al-Khatib appears as a kind of court philosopher following the legacy of the philosopher and judge Averroes under the Almohads. Both Averroes and Ibn al-Khatib wrote under court patronage, but whereas Averroes advanced many of his doctrines while serving as chief judge, Ibn al-Khatib advanced his doctrines while serving as chief minister, with the chief judge al-Nubahi emerging as his biggest critic and rival. Given this historical context, the clash between Ibn al-Khatib and al-Nubahi can be read as the story of how Ibn al-Khatib's ideas about philosophical and mystical doctrines clashed with the chief judge's very different ideas about philosophy, Sufism, and Sufi religious authority. With an administrative power rivalry already in place, this disagreement about knowledge and authority became the vehicle through which their rivalry erupted into a court case.

In the next section, I turn to an examination of specific passages of the Rawdat al-Taʿrif in order to explore what aspects of the chief minister's text could have been read as a challenge to the authority of the chief judge.

IDENTIFYING CONTESTED PHILOSOPHICAL DOCTRINES IN THE RAWDAT AL-TAʿRIF

Ibn al-Khatib's Rawdat al-Taʿrif provides critical insight into the way that Greek philosophy and Sufism were tied up with questions of political and religious authority in al-Andalus. Between Muhammad V's commissioning of the text and Ibn al-Khatib's writing of it, the Rawdat al-Taʿrif was the project of two of the most powerful people in the Nasrid court. Critically, the powerful chief qadi does not appear to have been connected to the sultan's commissioning of the work.Footnote 22 In this way, the Rawdat al-Taʿrif perhaps can be interpreted as part of the construction of Nasrid political legitimacy by one of several factions at the court. Given that the text was used by the chief qadi to prosecute Ibn al-Khatib in exile, what specifically did Ibn al-Khatib say about Greek philosophy that incriminated him in the eyes of the chief qadi?

Several aspects of the text related to Ibn al-Khatib's integration of Greek philosophy into Sufism have important implications for questions of religious authority. The most important of these aspects is the representation of ancient Greek philosophers and medieval Graeco-Arabic philosophers (falāsifa) such as Avicenna as Sufis or proto-Sufis. Ibn al-Khatib brings together Greek philosophy with Sufism using the concept ḥikma (philosophy or, literally, wisdom), a term that both Graeco-Arabic philosophers and Sufis used differently to describe their respective logic-oriented and mystical knowledge.Footnote 23 Ibn al-Khatib says that the knowledge of the ḥukamāʾ (philosophers or, literally, sages) and the knowledge of the prophets are “in agreement.”Footnote 24 In presenting the ḥukamāʾ, he appears to group together the ancient philosophers and the Sufis, describing them both as muḥibbūn (those who love God). He suggests that these muḥibbūn love God in a way that takes them beyond the five senses and into the realm of incorporeal things such that their souls can witness God and experience the permanence of the afterlife.Footnote 25

In his presentation of the ancient Greek philosophers, for example, Ibn al-Khatib takes their philosophical comments on ethics as a basis for what he ultimately presents as a proto-Sufi mystical method:

The following was transmitted on the authority of Socrates the Sage (ḥakīm) among the metaphysicians (ilāhiyyūn): love (maḥabba) is the most virtuous of the exercises of the soul, and through it comes the lucidity of intellects and the polishing of minds. Plato, the teacher of good, said: exercise your soul with love, as it is among the special qualities of living things insofar as they are living. That is, it [the soul] is not something the inanimate are characterized by, as the soul is the sea of the essence of the living, its form. Love is likewise [the essence of the living], as it is among the appendages [of the soul]…Aristotle said: if there were nothing in love except that it encourages the heart of the cowardly or brings generosity to the palm of the miserly, refines the mind of the fool, transmits [and brings forth] the resoluteness of the heedless, and if kings submit to it, and the mightiest of the courageous yield in humility to it, and every obstinate individual submits to it, then [all of] this would suffice for [identifying] its honorability.Footnote 26

In this passage, Ibn al-Khatib presents the notion of love, which he ultimately describes as a central Sufi virtue and discipline, as an ancient and fundamentally philosophical ethic. Love is an exercise of the soul that diminishes vice and engenders virtue, from courage and generosity to humility and intellectual refinement. Ibn al-Khatib presents the ancient Greek philosophers as authorities on this subject.Footnote 27 Part of his approach to connecting ancient Greek philosophy to Sufism appears to be his engagement with Plato's Symposium, where Plato makes a connection between mystical love and the truest form of knowing.Footnote 28 In the passage above, Ibn al-Khatib says that Socrates the Sage argued that love is the most virtuous of the disciplines of the soul, and it raises the level of intellects and minds. Plato, Ibn al-Khatib continues, called for the exercising of the soul through love, because both love and the soul represent the state of the living as opposed to the state of something lifeless, inanimate, and without love. Ibn al-Khatib quotes Aristotle similarly.

Taken in isolation, these doctrines would not necessarily engender controversy among medieval scholarly critics of Greek philosophical doctrines, but what would be theologically and even politically problematic to them is the way these philosophical doctrines sometimes fit into larger frameworks of eschatology and epistemology. For example, Ibn al-Khatib quotes other Greek philosophers in this section of the text who indicate that the soul only has permanence after death if the soul has love and knowledge, an eschatological claim that certainly would have attracted criticism from critics of Greek philosophy because of the way it clashes with key aspects of Islamic scriptural eschatology.Footnote 29 Ibn al-Khatib similarly makes reference to the pre-Socratic philosopher Anaxagoras’ philosophical notion of the soul, quoting him as saying that “love is a light from the lights of the universal soul, and it illuminates the world of the elements (khalīṭ). If it diminishes, the world of the elements goes dark and existence decays.”Footnote 30 Like his reference to philosophical understandings of the soul's eschatology, his reference to philosophical notions of the universal soul could have attracted criticism, for it connects to metaphysical doctrines that scholarly critics of Greek philosophy saw as compromising a proper theological understanding of God as the omnipresent governor of the world's order and resurrector of man in both soul and body.

Even more problematic for potential critics, Ibn al-Khatib bridges this discussion of love and soul in Greek philosophy's cosmology and ethics with love and soul in Sufi ontology and epistemology. He does so in a presentation of epistemology and psychology that champions the supersensory abilities of the gnostic Sufi elect.

It is unimaginable that a lover who does not have knowledge [actually] loves. We discussed acquired knowledge and the like, and in the end [it follows from that discussion that] love is among the special qualities of the gnostic souls, as the inanimate and the lifeless are not characterized by love. Given that love is among the special qualities of the loving gnostic souls who perceive and are aware, we should speak [in this context of love] about perception and awareness [or knowledge of something] (idrāk). There are three levels of perception and awareness. First is the sense-oriented [level]. This [level] is, for example, the grasping of the form by the sense of the eye without its formation in the imaginative faculty. This is the lowest of perception and awareness, and the furthest from the true enjoyment of it. The second [level] is the imaginative [level]. It is the existence of the form of something firmly in the imaginative faculty. Third is the rational [level]. This is the movement [and transformation] of a form of something to the self upon being unsheathed from its accidents. This is true perception and awareness, the total connection and the most honorable of what is sought. This [true perception] is as permanent as the permanence of the self. Indeed, the five senses do not know beauty nor [other] spiritual matters (al-umūr al-rūḥāniyya) except after they are extracted from their sensible manifestations in hearing, seeing, smelling, touching, and tasting.Footnote 31

Ibn al-Khatib explains that love is central to the machinery of “perception and awareness” (idrāk), which is a kind of process of realization and consciousness of an object that operates on three levels: the sense-oriented or sensitive, the imaginative, and the rational. On the one hand, this epistemology resembles what Graeco-Arabic philosophers describe as the intellect's grasp of the forms of a sensible object as it progresses toward closer intellectual union with the Active Intellect, the giver of forms.Footnote 32 On the other hand, it emphasizes a kind of supersensory perception of the sensible world and identification with some aspect of it. Rather than simply the transfer of the form of a sensible object to the mind, which is the second level of perception and awareness, true perception and awareness at the third level involves the mystical aspirant's intellect contacting and even identifying with the sensible object's nonsensible “spiritual” properties. In other words, the essential distinction underlying true perception and awareness is not the philosophical distinction between informed matter and form extracted from matter, but rather the more mystical distinction between sensible objects and nonsensory spiritual objects. What makes this latter distinction mystical is the knowing subject's ability to achieve a certain supersensory perception and “witnessing” of the sensory world's nonsensible “spiritual” realities. The mystical emphasis on supersensory perception, which Ibn al-Khatib ultimately describes as a kind of “witnessing” of God's agency, destabilizes ontological boundaries separating the cognitive subject and spiritual objects toward a transformation and even diminishing of the self through union.

Taken together with the earlier philosophical ethic characterizing love as a virtue-oriented exercise, this description of “true” awareness as a process ultimately oriented around supersensory perception suggests the following: through mystical perception, the truly aware and loving gnostic can distinguish between good virtuous spiritual objects and other spiritual objects associated with vice in a way that transcends the philosophical notion of the intellect as simply a storehouse of knowledge about virtue and vice. Indeed, Ibn al-Khatib describes in his text how the gnostic's true awareness leads to the total transcendence of sense-oriented epistemology and imaginative epistemology. This transcendence leads to the achievement of a constantly heightened level of supersensory perception of and identification with good virtuous spiritual objects, such as beauty, as they are manifested in the sensory objects of the phenomenal world.

So he for whom most of his perception and awareness comes from the senses, or rather only knows through sense, only knows beauty of the apparent (ẓāhir). But he for whom intellectual awareness is dominant, most of his knowledge is oriented around spiritual matters (al-umūr al-rūḥāniyya).Footnote 33

The love that Ibn al-Khatib described as being the key characteristic of the gnostic knowing souls emerges here as that element which allows the gnostic souls to perceive at the highest levels of perception. This level transcends the corporeal perception of the fives senses, such that the gnostic souls are no longer constricted by the phenomenal ẓāhir, or the apparent level of reality, and can perceive and even mystically identify with hidden spiritual matters. His distinction between the apparent and the spiritual closely echoes the Sufi distinction of apparent realities (ẓāhir) and hidden realities (bāṭin), a fact that underlines the extent to which Ibn al-Khatib sought to lay out a theory of knowledge oriented fundamentally around notions of both knowledge and perception.Footnote 34 The loving gnostic souls transcend the phenomenal ẓāhir, and they do so not necessarily in pursuit of some intellectual contact or union with the philosophical active intellect, but rather in pursuit of mystical witnessing of the ultimate love that lies hidden behind all of the apparent (ẓāhir) realities in the world. Ibn al-Khatib explains that as much as the Greek philosophers understood this connection between love, existence, incorporeal perception, and the ascension and permanence of the soul after death, it is the Sufis—both early ones such as al-Shibli and Junayd and more recent ones such as Ibn al-ʿArif of Almeria—who perfected this knowledge of mystical witnessing.

Ibn al-ʿArif said that love does not appear in the lover through his words, but rather through his [good] qualities and through the way he observes and perceives the world … it is said [among the Sufis] that Love is the constant state of remembrance (dhikr) of the lover in spite of the various states of the desired. It is said [among the Sufis] that love is [the state of] being consumed in joy and the witnessing in absence. It is said that love is remembrance of the beloved capturing the entire heart of the lover, and it is said that love is the perpetual state of remembrance (dhikr).Footnote 35

Ibn al-Khatib understands Ibn al-ʿArif's synthesis of love and knowledge of the world's true spiritual realities as a mystical experience of witnessing and self-diminishing in the presence of the beloved. The object of this cognition and mystical union is, among other mystical objects, beauty manifested in the sensory world, which the loving gnostic perceives, assimilates, and ultimately manifests through the faculties of taste, touch, and most importantly, observation and perception. This witnessing leads the mystical aspirant to a certain oneness with the world, wherein both the knowing subject and the known object manifest simultaneously as beauty.Footnote 36 Mystical experience presented in this way, as a process captured by the Sufis who continue the legacy of proto-Sufi philosophers, can perhaps be read as Ibn al-Khatib mysticizing the ancient philosophers’ notions of psychology, or at least emphasizing the ancient philosophers’ mystical ideas. However, Ibn al-Khatib equally philosophizes the Sufis, which would not have been an unusual feat given the extent to which the Sufis of al-Andalus were engaged in Graeco-Arabic philosophical doctrines. What shows that Ibn al-Khatib thought of Sufism less as the next step of Greek philosophy than as a mode of knowledge and piety to be integrated with Greek philosophy is how he uses philosophical doctrines to distinguish loving gnostic souls from other souls, ultimately characterizing gnostic souls as those of the philosophically minded Sufi elect.

As for individuals for whom the Moon, Venus, or Saturn captures [the timing of] their birth, the faculty of the appetitive soul is dominant in their souls and natures, inclining them towards eating, drinking, amassing, and hoarding … Individuals for whom the sun and Mercury capture [the timing of] their birth have natures with a predisposition for the appetites of their rational soul, including knowledge, good judgment, justice, and virtue.Footnote 37

Paralleling the work of important Sufis in al-Andalus, Ibn al-Khatib's representation of the gnostic mystical elect integrates certain astrological notions in Greek philosophy into Sufism in order to develop a typology. Drawing on Greek and Graeco-Arabic philosophy, he indicates that certain people are inclined toward this kind of gnostic mystical knowledge depending on celestial patterns determined by God's decree, and that these celestial patterns make particular characteristics predominant in these people. This notion of the elect would have been controversial for potential critics of the text, such as the chief qadi al-Nubahi.

We have already seen that Ibn al-Khatib integrated into his work controversial notions of cosmology that medieval critics of philosophy often criticized for challenging scriptural notions of God's omnipotence and judgment. Ibn al-Khatib's overall philosophical characterization of a gnostic elect poses even bigger problems by stirring the perennial debate about what constitutes the nature of the scholars’ religious authority and who among nonscholars can also claim religious authority.Footnote 38 In particular, his discussion takes positions on the following questions for which the chief qadi would have very different answers: How does the philosophical and mystical theory of knowledge and cognition elaborated in the Rawdat al-Taʿrif, which is essentially a theory of philosophical mysticism subsumed into the category of ḥikma (philosophy as Sufi “wisdom”), compare with the scholars’ Islamic sciences? And how does the authority of scholar Sufis such as Ibn al-ʿArif, whom Ibn al-Khatib presents as philosophical sages (ḥukamā’) and inheritors of ancient philosophy, compare with the authority of other scholars who were not Sufis?

These contentious questions about the religious authority of philosophically minded Sufis are at the heart of what could have been deemed controversial by the chief qadi in an era when scholars continued to debate the place of Sufism in the Islamic sciences. Ibn al-Khatib's discussion of philosophy or “wisdom” (ḥikma) as a type of philosophizing Sufism could have been a theologically and politically incriminating aspect of his text. His understanding of Sufi religious authority clashed with other notions of religious authority at a time when some scholars, likely including al-Nubahi, were still resistant to Sufism despite widespread scholarly acceptance of it and the ruling Nasrids’ and earlier Almohads’ overtures to Sufis.Footnote 39 Many Sufis in Andalusian Spain, including those among the scholars, were interested in philosophical doctrines. As mentioned, Ibn al-Khatib's colleague Ibn Khaldun faulted some of these Sufis, including the philosophical Sufis in the generation before Ibn ʿArabi, for misusing Graeco-Arabic philosophical doctrines.Footnote 40 What is notable is that Ibn al-Khatib's work anticipates the criticisms that Ibn Khaldun levels against philosophically oriented Sufis, as Ibn al-Khatib maintains a safe distance from controversy by criticizing politically problematic aspects of the Andalusian Sufis’ epistemology. Ibn al-Khatib identifies Ibn al-Qasi specifically as an example of the kind of Sufi whose religious authority clashes with acceptable models of religious authority in Islam, anticipating Ibn Khaldun's fatwa against Ibn al-Qasi. Still, in the eyes of the chief qadi, Ibn al-Khatib perhaps did not go far enough in distancing himself from the tradition. In this regard, it is important that the Sufi Ibn al-ʿArif, whom Ibn al-Khatib quotes in his text, was criticized by Ibn Khaldun in that same fatwa for being one of the problematic philosophically minded Sufis associated with the legacy of the Almoravid- and Almohad-era Sufis Ibn Barrajan, Ibn Qasi, and Ibn ʿArabi.

In other words, Ibn al-Khatib's references to scholarly Sufis and his overall anticipation of criticism against his politically commissioned sanctioning of both philosophy and Sufism may not have been enough to deflect criticism of the text. It is possible that the chief qadi al-Nubahi understood the vizier Ibn al-Khatib's doctrinal claims as simultaneously overstepping the administrative authority of his position as vizier and intruding into a scholarly debate that al-Nubahi understood to be within the domain of his own religious authority as chief judge.

From another angle, one could say that even if Ibn al-Khatib's entry into this debate as vizier was commissioned by the sultan and was part of the bolstering of the Nasrids’ increasingly Sufi-oriented political legitimacy in continuity with Almohad political culture, the chief qadi al-Nubahi may not have been ready to allow this kind of intervention into scholarly affairs. The qadi may have used philosophical and mystical doctrines that incriminate Ibn al-Khatib to condemn him specifically in order to ensure that the Nasrid court neither sanctioned further political overtures to Sufism nor further entrenched Sufism within the scholars’ model of religious authority. The intellectual and political clash between the qadi and the vizier, therefore, may have erupted because the qadi sought to defend his own administrative claim to overseeing scholarly religious authority in the face of the sultan's and chief minister's attempt to further the scholars’ absorption of Sufism.

To investigate this hypothesis, the next section draws on evidence beyond the Rawdat al-Taʿrif, examining in particular al-Maqqari's textual evidence on the case, which includes Ibn Khaldun's reports as well as letters exchanged between the qadi al-Nubahi and the vizier Ibn al-Khatib.

IBN KHALDUN’S REPORTS, AL-NUBAHI’S LETTER TO IBN AL-KHATIB, AND THE DEBATE OVER RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY IN NASRID SPAIN

Drawing on Ibn Khaldun, al-Maqqari tells us that Ibn al-Khatib's enemies in al-Andalus accused him of promoting certain ideas that they characterized as zandaqa, and that the qadi al-Nubahi pursued this accusation to the point of requesting from the Marinid sultan Ibn al-Khatib's extradition. The sultan, after questioning why the Nasrids did not pursue this accusation while Ibn al-Khatib was in al-Andalus, refused this request.Footnote 41

Al-Maqqari tells us that the accusations were specifically connected to Ibn al-Khatib's statements in his “book on love,” that is, the Rawdat al-Taʿrif examined above, and that Ibn al-Khatib was accused of following “the philosophers’ schools of thought in creed.”Footnote 42 That a qadi could make this accusation against Ibn al-Khatib based specifically on the latter's Sufi doctrines is clear both from my previous examination of the text's potentially incriminating philosophical and mystical aspects and from the way Ibn Khaldun in his Cairo fatwa was able to level very similar accusations against Andalusian Sufis. In the absence of more illustrative court records, however, how do we know for sure which doctrines were at the center of the case, and whether the case was ultimately about the implications of those doctrines for religious authority, as suggested in the previous section?

One of two critical windows into those exact controversial philosophical doctrines is al-Maqqari's account suggesting that Ibn al-Khatib was accused specifically of making statements in favor of ḥulūl (divine indwelling in man, incarnation, immanentism) and ittiḥād (union). This is an accusation that the qadi could indeed have leveled against Ibn al-Khatib, albeit polemically, based on some of the doctrines of mystical witnessing explored in the previous section. Adherence to notions of ḥulūl and ittiḥād was an accusation commonly laid against philosophically minded Sufis in al-Andalus as well as philosophical and Sufi groups more broadly, including specific Andalusian Sufis whom we already saw Ibn al-Khatib quoting.Footnote 43 This accusation is echoed in Ibn Khaldun's contemporary representation of Andalusian Sufis as aṣḥāb al-tajallī (people of theophany) who follow unsound monist doctrines.Footnote 44 That al-Maqqari's reports identify this specific accusation as the one that was laid against Ibn al-Khatib in the case indicates the extent to which the mix of philosophical doctrines and mysticism did indeed incriminate Ibn al-Khatib in the eyes of his adversary, the qadi al-Nubahi.

Excerpts of al-Nubahi's letter to Ibn al-Khatib, which were preserved by al-Maqqari, offer a second closely related window into the various doctrines that Ibn al-Khatib's detractors likely found problematic specifically because of the way they bore on politically contentious questions of religious authority. The qadi's letter to Ibn al-Khatib was written in the period between Ibn al-Khatib's sudden and unexplained departure from al-Andalus and his trial in exile following the death of his Marinid patron. The nature of the qadi's overall censure of Ibn al-Khatib, which should be read as a condemnation of the challenges to his religious authority, is best captured by two passages. The first states that

I told you more than once about your writings, blackened by what you call for of innovations and playing with the law. They deserve to be torn and burned, and he who extols them to you has fooled both himself and you. God is a witness that I counseled you [fairly] and have not been dishonest with you.Footnote 45

This discussion frames a broader accusation in the letter of legal and theological errors on the part of Ibn al-Khatib. Al-Nubahi seems to take issue specifically with the implications of Ibn al-Khatib's theological doctrines for questions of scholarly religious authority. Unsurprisingly, the qadi explicitly condemns Ibn al-Khatib's interference in scholarly affairs. In the rest of the discussion that follows this passage, al-Nubahi criticizes Ibn al-Khatib's “disdain for the legal precepts of the law, and negligence toward religious affairs.”Footnote 46 Among the specific examples of this clash of authority is what the qadi describes as Ibn al-Khatib's opposition to or interference with several legal cases in which particular individuals were condemned to either prison or death. The qadi accuses Ibn al-Khatib of going out of his way to interfere with these cases, in one instance by sending someone to remove a condemned individual from prison surreptitiously.Footnote 47

According to this letter from the qadi, Ibn al-Khatib's interference in scholarly affairs involved theological questions, such as elaborating heretical notions in his writings, specifically the rejection of ruqya (scriptural recitation or incantation with medicinal value) and the disparagement of those who use it. Footnote 48 Given what we know of Ibn al-Khatib's writings, the qadi seems to have been taking issue with Ibn al-Khatib's philosophical representation of God's agency, which potentially challenges scriptural notions of God's omnipotence in the particulars of the world. And indeed, at the end of this accusation, the qadi al-Nubahi sums up his theological criticisms with the following statement:

Indeed I fear for you because of your speaking openly in disparagement of the Law, and belittling its scholars (ʿulamāʾ) because of this habit of yours as well as [the habit] of your teacher Ibn Hudhayl—the one who denies [God’s] knowledge of the particulars, who speaks of the lack of agency of God, Exalted be His Name over all possibilities [in agency].Footnote 49

This passage, which appears at the end of an accusation that Ibn al-Khatib rejects ruqya, is important because it highlights how al-Nubahi integrates criticism of particular philosophical doctrines into a broader condemnation of Ibn al-Khatib's interference in scholarly affairs. Al-Nubahi accuses Ibn al-Khatib of promoting the doctrine that God is knowledgeable of the universals and not the particulars, and of denying God's efficient and omnipresent agency. While these accusations may not be accurate, as Ibn al-Khatib's Rawdat al-Taʿrif is not a strictly philosophical text with clear opinions on metaphysical questions, they recall similar accusations over questions of cosmology and God's agency leveled most famously by al-Ghazali against the philosophers and Fatimid Ismaʿilis.Footnote 50 That is, al-Nubahi's criticisms of Ibn al-Khatib in the letter are specific about the philosophical doctrines with which he has a problem in Ibn al-Khatib's philosophically oriented Sufism. This echoes al-Ghazali's criticism of the philosophers in his Tahafut al-Falasifa (Incoherence of the Philosophers) and of the Fatimids in his Fadaʾih al-Batiniyya (Scandals of the Esotericists). Critically, both al-Nubahi's theological criticisms above, which make reference to the Islamic scholars, and al-Ghazali's criticisms in Tahafut al-Falasifa and Fadaʾih al-Batiniyya, which also defend the scholars’ sciences and authority, deal with what appear to the modern eye as philosophical and theological minutiae that actually bore upon politically charged questions about the scholars’ religious authority.

Thus far, the evidence suggests that there was a significant intellectual disagreement over doctrine between the chief minister and the chief qadi, and that this disagreement was tied up with issues of scholarly religious authority and the authority of the chief qadi in particular. We are still left, however, with a major question: what explains the timing and magnitude of al-Nubahi's concern, especially given that Ibn al-Khatib appears to have been, according to the qadi's letter, interfering in religious affairs from an early period back in Granada?

There is evidence that al-Nubahi was not only concerned with defending the religious authority of the scholars and his own authority as chief qadi. His accusations may have been entrenched in a broader defense of the political power that came with being a high level administrator, which al-Nubahi felt had been encroached upon by chief ministers overstepping their boundaries. That is, their clash of ideas was entangled with the defense of his administrative power as a chief qadi seeking to shape Islamic religious authority without interference by either the Nasrid sultan or chief vizier. The chief qadi's rather aggressive escalation of a commonplace disagreement about knowledge and authority into a high stakes court case appears to reflect, in part, his aspirations for the kind of political-religious power associated with orthodoxy. This power would have come at the exclusion of the sultan, the vizier, and the wider nonadministrative scholarly circles.

The evidence for this scenario is an informative statement that Ibn al-Khatib apparently made in exile. According to al-Maqqari, Ibn al-Khatib took great pains in exile to defend the power of the office of the vizier in Marinid territory against criticisms coming from al-Andalus during a crisis of Marinid succession. Al-Maqqari writes that following the death in Tlemcen of Abu Faris ʿAbd al-ʿAziz, the sultan who protected Ibn al-Khatib from the Nasrids, the Marinid's chief vizier Abu Bakr b. Ghazi took power and pledged political allegiance to a child son of the late Marinid sultan. Criticizing the Marinid vizier's seemingly disingenuous allegiance to a child sultan and assumption of de facto power, the neighboring Nasrids wrote that pledging allegiance to a child ruler was legally unacceptable.Footnote 51 Al-Maqqari reports that Ibn al-Khatib, whom the late sultan had protected until the transition of power, decided to write a book that legitimized the situation of sultanates or emirates functioning in practice as a vizierate (dawlat al-wazīr).

Among all of what Ibn al-Khatib says in this book is the following: when the people of al-Andalus continued rejecting [the political notion of] allegiance to a youth, or the authorization of a high-ranking official or vizier as proxy representative (niyābat saḥib aw wazīr), the [people of al-Andalus] went blind and deaf and risked shattering [the fundamental notion of] fairness (inṣāf). They turned away from it without comprehension, repudiating [for themselves] what they accepted as a practice for others.Footnote 52

The context for understanding these comments is that the Nasrid emirate and the Castilian kingdom, both based in the north of the Iberian peninsula, historically played a role in shaping politics and succession in the Marinid empire, based in the south, during the 13th and 14th centuries. Pedro of Castile, for example, supported the Marinid viziers’ choice of Abu Salim Ibrahim as Marinid sultan just ten years prior to Ibn al-Khatib's trial.Footnote 53 In the case of the succession about which Ibn al-Khatib wrote, the Nasrids sought to bring to power those who would serve their interests. Ibn al-Khatib, in the passage above, reaffirms the notion of the ascendancy of the vizier in terms of guarding the sovereignty of the dynasty and preventing the empowerment of the Nasrids over Marinid affairs. Much to his misfortune, however, the Nasrids ultimately succeeded in interfering after the unexpected early death of the child sultan. The Nasrids acted swiftly and were able to bring to power the Marinid Abu al-ʿAbbas Ahmad, under whose rule Ibn al-Khatib finally lost his protection.Footnote 54 Within a year, Ibn al-Khatib was locked into a Nasrid-backed trial brought about through the Nasrids’ collusion with Ibn al-Khatib's local competitor, a vizier named Sulayman b. Dawud.

We can read Ibn al-Khatib's defense of sultanates as vizierates as part of what must have been his longstanding championing of the political office of the vizier stretching back to his days at the Nasrid court. Indeed, al-Maqqari's biography indicates that Ibn al-Khatib was criticized for the overwhelming, multifaceted power he exercised in al-Andalus. Ibn al-Khatib's comments above, combined with al-Maqqari's reports, suggest that there were major power rivalries back in Granada between Ibn al-Khatib and other court figures over general influence in government administration. There is indeed evidence that Ibn al-Khatib had several rivalries, including one with his own close associate Ibn Khaldun prior to the latter's departure to Mamluk Cairo. The specific power rivalry between Ibn al-Khatib and al-Nubahi appears to have manifested and erupted through competing claims over authority in religious affairs, specifically the authority to publicly sanction or reject philosophical and Sufi knowledge along with the saintly Sufi authority undergirded by it.

What is important here is that any of Ibn al-Khatib's various rivalries could have erupted, for any number of reasons and in any number of ways, into a more serious situation leading to his downfall. The rivalry that did ultimately lead to his political demise had to do with philosophical doctrines because of the modes of authority implied by those doctrines at that time and place, namely, religious authority that al-Nubahi, as a scholar and chief qadi, claimed as rightfully his. That al-Nubahi was already resistant to Ibn al-Khatib's involvement in the qadi's jurisprudential affairs likely made Ibn al-Khatib's doctrines especially troublesome in his eyes. In short, that there was a preexisting administrative power rivalry between Ibn al-Khatib's and al-Nubahi's offices, one entangled with political administration of religious affairs, meant that historically contingent ingredients were in place for a philosophical disagreement to erupt into a major political court case rather than simply dissolve as an intellectual disagreement.

Therefore, bringing all of the evidence together, one can read the chief qadi's accusations against Ibn al-Khatib of teaching philosophical doctrines and promoting zandaqa as an otherwise forgettable doctrinal disagreement that only erupted into a memorable political court case about philosophy because of the specific religious and political context in which Ibn al-Khatib's doctrines were written and read. In sum, the theological controversy over Ibn al-Khatib's philosophical doctrines, studied in the specific political and religious context of 14th-century Nasrid Granada, tell a two-part story. First, Ibn al-Khatib's philosophical and mystical doctrines were entangled with a contemporary scholarly religious debate in al-Andalus about philosophy and Sufism, a debate in which Sufis were seen as contesting scholarly religious authority. Second, among the scholars, the chief qadi read Ibn al-Khatib's doctrines through the additional lens of a closely related political debate within the Nasrid administration about the political authority of the vizier and the chief qadi. In this debate, the chief qadi apparently read the minister's philosophical claims as a heavy-handed political claim over his ability to shape and define the scholars’ religious knowledge and authority in a way akin to orthodoxy. In the end, the chief qadi's aspirations were unfulfilled, as many of the scholars who directed the trial disagreed with his reasoning and found Ibn al-Khatib innocent. In its contemporary context, therefore, the seemingly peripheral doctrinal debate at the heart of Ibn al-Khatib's court case was far more than a pretext for a power rivalry. Reading the theological debate between al-Nubahi and Ibn al-Khatib in a political context reveals not only the complex implications of philosophical knowledge for questions of religious authority among Maliki scholars, but also the intersection of ruling political authority among the Nasrid sultans with political power among the administrators of 14th-century Nasrid government.

CONCLUSION

In a sense, Ibn al-Khatib's philosophical disagreement with the chief judge did lead to his demise, but not because of an imagined conservative orthodoxy's resistance to Greek philosophy. Rather, this philosophical disagreement carried specific implications in a particular time and place for a debate about religious authority, political authority, and administrative power. That there was a longstanding power rivalry between the vizier and chief judge, with both working under the patronage of Nasrid rulers seeking to integrate philosophy and Sufism into the ruling political culture, rendered philosophy's and Sufism's implications for religious authority particularly acute. In the end, their competing philosophical positions, both of which had implications for questions of religious authority, were the catalyst for their power rivalry to erupt into a court case. Ibn al-Khatib fell from power not simply because he took an intellectual position, but also because his position on knowledge took form in the context of a historically specific, and in his case, inopportune intersection of philosophical knowledge, religious authority, and political power in 14th-century Granada.

The fact that the sultan seems to disappear in the sources is particularly interesting in this regard. At the beginning of our story, the sultan could be seen working with the vizier to bolster one dimension of Nasrid political legitimacy, the dimension that connected Nasrid political culture with popular Sufi modes of knowledge, Sufi models of authority, and even Sufi visual culture in court ceremonial. By the end, however, the same sultan had abandoned the vizier, siding with the chief qadi. Al-Nubahi's power over both the sultan and the vizier in this case is surprising, given that Muhammad V is supposed to have been the most powerful sultan in the Nasrid period, presiding over an apparently centralized administration at the palace city of the Alhambra. The sultan's close relationship with his chief qadi was supposed to have allowed him control over the Maliki ʿulamaʾ's scholarly affairs, but it appears that it was al-Nubahi who controlled significant aspects of this relationship. This example suggests that as much as sultan-ʿulamaʾ relations generally can be viewed as a kind of dialectic of authority and power, one should not assume that a medieval ruler's hiring or patronage of a chief qadi represents the co-opting of the ʿulamaʾ's authority. In some cases, rulers may have hired a particular chief qadi in attempt to empower one specific group of ʿulamaʾ while leaving other groups of ʿulamaʾ outside the administration to continue exercising considerable religious authority and influence on a local level. In the context of Andalusian political history, the case of Ibn al-Khatib sheds light not only on the diverse political dimensions of philosophical and Sufi knowledge in the medieval world, but also on the decentralized nature of power in al-Andalus, much of which lay outside the person of the sultan and, ironically, outside the walls of the magnificent palace city of the Alhambra.

Footnotes

Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.

References

NOTES

Author's note: I thank Dr. Everett K. Rowson for his feedback on an earlier version of this article and Dr. Cynthia Robinson for inviting me to participate in the Cornell-CSIC conference in Madrid, “Constructions of Devotion: The Religious Life of the Nasrids,” where I presented a paper that was the basis of this article. I also thank the four anonymous IJMES reviewers and the IJMES editors for their thoughtful and valuable feedback.

1 For an overview of Ibn al-Khatib's work and political career, see al-Maqqari, , Nafh al-Tib min Ghusn al-Andalus al-Ratib, vol. 5, ed. Abbas, Ihsan (Beirut: Dar al-Sadir, 1988), 75–112Google Scholar.

2 Gómez, Emilio García, Foco de Antigua luz sobre la Alhambra: Desde un texto de Ibn al-Jatib em 1362 (Madrid: Instituto Egipcio de Estudios Islamicos en Madrid, 1988)Google Scholar.

3 Secall, María Isabel Calero, “El proceso de Ibn al-Jatib,” al-Qantara 22 (2001): 421–61Google Scholar; Simón, Emilio de Santiago, El polígrafo Granadino Ibn al-Jatib y el sufismo: aportaciones para su estudio (Granada: Disputación Provincial y Departamento de Historia del Islam de la Universidad, 1983)Google Scholar. See also Delgado, Jorge Lirola, “Ibn al-Jatib,” in Diccionario de autores y obras andalusíes, ed. Delgado, Jorge Lirola and Vilchez, José Miguel Puerta (Granada: El Legado Andalusí, 2002), 643–98Google Scholar. Muhammad Bencherifa has argued that the nisba of the author typically referred to as al-Nubahi is actually al-Bunnahi, “al-Bunnahi la al-Nubahi,” Académia: Revue de l’académie du Royaume du Maroc 8 (1998), 17–89.

4 Key works by Maribel Fierro and Vincent Cornell on Maghribi and Andalusian Sufism in a political context include Fierro, Maribel, La heterodoxia en Andalusian Spain durante el periodo omaya (Madrid: Instituto Hispano-Arabe de Cultura, 1987)Google Scholar; Fierro, , “The Polemic about the karamat al-awliyaʾ and the Development of Sufism in Andalusian Spain Fourth/Tenth—Fifth/Eleventh Centuries,” Bulletin of the School of African and Oriental Studies 2 (1992): 236–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fierro, , “Opposition to Sufism in Andalusian Spain,” in Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen Centuries of Controversy and Polemics, ed. De Jong, Frederick and Radtke, Bernd (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 174–206Google Scholar; Cornell, Vincent, “Faqih Versus Faqir in Marinid Morocco: Epistemological Dimensions of a Polemic,” in Islamic Mysticism Contested, 207–24Google Scholar; and Cornell, , Realm of the Saint (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

5 Alexander Knysh analyzes some of the text's key arguments and demonstrates its connection to a larger controversy over Ibn ʿArabi in al-Andalus in Ibn ʿArabi in the Later Islamic Tradition: The Making of a Polemical Image (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1999), 172–96.

6 On Qasi, Ibn, see Mahdisme et millenarisme en islam, ed. García-Arenal, Mercedes (Aix-en-Provence: Édisud, 2001)Google Scholar; D. R. Goodrich, “A Sufi Revolt in Portugal: Ibn Qasi and his Kitab Khalʿ al-Naʿlayn” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1978); Qasi, Ibn, Kitab Khalʿ al-Naʿlayn, ed. al-Amrani, M. (Safi: IMBH, 1997)Google Scholar; and Josef Dreher, “Das Imamat des islamischen Mystikers Abulqasim Ahmad b. al-Husain b. Qasi” (PhD diss., Universität Bonn, 1985).

7 Knysh explores important parallels between the legacies of Ibn al-Khatib and Ibn Khaldun as two statesmen responding to Ibn Qasi's tumultuous Sufi rebellion during the Almoravid period in Ibn ʿArabi in the Later Islamic Tradition, 172–96.

8 Ibn Khaldun's overview of these events is summarized in al-Maqqari, Nafh al-Tib, 5:75–112.

9 Delgado, “Ibn al-Jatib,” 643–98.

10 Secall, “El proceso de Ibn al-Jatib,” 421–61.

11 Fierro, “Opposition to Sufism in al-Andalus,” 174–206; Vincent Cornell, “Faqih versus Faqir in Marinid Morocco,” 207–24; Knysh, Alexander, “Ibn al-Khatib,” in The Literature of al-Andalus, ed. Menocal, María Rosa, Scheindlin, Raymond P., and Sells, Michael (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 358–72Google Scholar.

12 Averroes’ arguments that scholars should scale back use of Ashʿarite theological methods in the Islamic sciences in favor of Aristotelian logic and Aristotelian-Neoplatonic cosmological doctrines appear to have attracted enough scholarly criticism to cause his dismissal as chief judge. Likewise, despite al-Ghazali's public criticism of the philosophers’ doctrines about nonbodily resurrection, God's knowledge of the universals rather than the particulars, and the eternity of the world, al-Ghazali faced scholarly accusations that his works were steeped in problematic doctrines drawn from the philosophers’ and Sufis’ cosmological theories. On the controversy over Averroes’ philosophical doctrines, see the analysis offered by Albert Hourani and Charles Butterworth in Averroes, On the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy (Fasl al-Maqal), trans. George F. Hourani (London: Luzac, 1961); Averroes, , Decisive Treatise and Epistle Dedicatory (Fasl al-Maqal), trans. Butterworth, Charles. E. (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

13 On al-Ghazali's encouragement of integrating the logical sciences into a more philosophical form of Ashʿarite theology, and on the transmitters of al-Ghazali's work in al-Andalus, see Griffel, Frank, al-Ghazali's Philosophical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Cornell, Realm of the Saint, 3–31.

14 Scholars in al-Andalus were asking this question as far back as the 10th century during the scholarly controversy over the Maliki scholar Ibn Masarra of Cordoba. His theological treatises, which were officially condemned by the caliph and a group of fellow scholars in the mid-10th century, integrated doctrines on the soul and intellect in Neoplatonic cosmology into an esoteric reading of the Qurʾan that drew for methodological inspiration on the Sufi Sahl al-Tustari's work. See Hernandez, Miguel Cruz, “La persecucion anti-massari durante el reinado de ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Nasrid li-Din Allah segun Ibn Hayyan,” al-Qantara 2 (1981): 51–67Google Scholar; and Fierro, La heterodoxia, Section 9.

15 Alexander Treiger and Vincent Cornell have shown that Sufi debates about knowledge, ritual, and authority were fundamentally scholarly debates given how much of the Ghazalian Sufi tradition was transmitted by scholars. Treiger, Alexander, Inspired Knowledge in Islamic Thought (New York: Routledge, 2011), 48–80Google Scholar; Cornell, “Faqih Versus Faqir in Marinid Morocco,” 207–24; Cornell, Realm of the Saint, 93–154.

16 Kenneth Garden, Vincent Cornell, and Delfina Serrano have traced the development of this controversy among the scholars and political rulers, highlighting its political implications. Kenneth Garden, “al-Ghazali's Contested Ihya’ ʿUlum al-Din and Its Critics in Khorasan and the Maghrib” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2005), 166–79; Serrano, Delfina, “Why Did the Scholars of Andalusian Spain Distrust al-Ghazali: Ibn Rushd al-Jadd's Fatwa on Awliyaʾ Allah,” Der Islam 83 (2006): 137–56Google Scholar; Cornell, Realm of the Saint, 1–33.

17 Treiger, Inspired Knowledge in Islamic Thought, 48–80.

18 Knysh has shown how Ibn al-Khatib and Ibn Khaldun overlap significantly in their representations of Andalusian Sufis as very philosophical, for they both indicate that the Sufis mixed philosophical and theological notions in cosmology with unique claims of religious authority. See Knysh, Ibn ʿArabi in the Later Islamic Tradition, 167–200. An important question in this context is whether Ibn al-Khatib was deliberately appropriating aspects of Andalusian Sufism's philosophical and mystical doctrines to bolster the political legitimacy of the Nasrids, who already integrated Sufism into Nasrid political ceremonial. See n. 21 on Sufism in Nasrid ceremonial.

19 On the connections between Graeco-Arabic cosmological doctrines, esoteric scriptural hermeneutics, and Fatimid Ismaʿili religious authority, see Walker, Paul, Early Philosophical Shiism: The Ismaʿili Falsafa of Abu Yaʿqub al-Sijistani (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 3–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Maribel Fierro highlights how in addition to incorporating Graeco-Arabic philosophy and Sufism into their political culture, the Almohads sidelined the Maliki scholars’ religious authority by hiring a new rank of scholars known as the ṭalaba. Fierro's work also suggests that Averroes, though Maliki in jurisprudence, may have been one of these ṭalaba. See Fierro, Maribel, “Le Mahdi Ibn Tumart et al-Andalus: l’elaboration de la legitimite Almohade,” in Mahdisme et Millenarisme en Islam, 107–24Google Scholar; and Fricaud, E., “Les ṭalaba dans la société almohade,” al-Qantara 18 (1997): 331–88Google Scholar.

21 On Nasrid patronage of Sufism and the early connections between Nasrid political legitimacy and Sufi religious authority, including the dynasty's presentation of the founder as a Sufi saint, see Boloix-Gallardo, Bárbara, De la Taifa de Arjona al Reino Nazarí de Granada (1232–1246): en torno a los orígenes de un estado y de una dinastía (Jaen: Instituto de Estudios Giennenses, 2005), 58–76Google Scholar.

22 On this text as one written under court patronage, see al-Maqqari, Nafh al-Tib, 7:100.

23 The term ḥikma (philosophy, wisdom) is a somewhat elusive term that from al-Andalus to Iraq overlapped with the term falsafa (Graeco-Arabic philosophy), the former term covering a broader semantic range. The term ḥikma covers a wide variety of movements and figures integrating theological and philosophical knowledge through methods often involving “manifest-hidden” (bāṭin-ẓāhir) scriptural esotericism. The metaphysics historically associated with ḥikma is found in a mix of fields such as mysticism, astrology, alchemy, and the elaboration of scriptural cosmology that was often presented according to this bāṭin-ẓāhir hermeneutical paradigm. Beyond the better known channels of the schools of al-Kindi, al-ʿAmiri, al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, and the rest of the classical Graeco-Arabic philosophers (falāsifa), the broader philosophers or “sages” (ḥukamāʾ) seem to include figures such as al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi of Iraq, Ibn Masarra of al-Andalus, and the Ikhwan al-Safaʾ. For discussion of this term, see Van Bladel, Kevin, The Arabic Hermes: From Pagan Sage to Prophet of Science (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Karamustafa, Ahmet, Sufism: The Formative Period (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 44–51Google Scholar; and Sands, Kristen, Sufi Commentaries on the Qurʾan in Classical Islam (New York: Routledge, 2006), 35–64Google Scholar.

24 al-Khatib, Ibn, Rawdat al-Taʿrif bi-l-Hubb al-Sharif, ed. ʿAtaʾ, ʿAbd al-Qadir Ahmad (Cairo: Dar al-Fikr al-ʿArabi, 1968), 299Google Scholar.

25 Examples of Andalusi predecessors of this kind of understanding of ḥikma and the ḥukamāʾ include the philosopher Ibn Masarra and the Sufi Ibn Barrajan, both of whom numbered among the Islamic scholars. Ibn Masarra's 10th-century work integrates cosmological doctrines into a bāṭin-ẓāhir esoteric paradigm and attributes this knowledge to the ḥukamāʾ and ʿulamaʾ as two overlapping categories. He also points out that the philosophers (falāsifa) agree with his results despite their neglect of the “language of prophecy,” which Ibn Masarra says is “clearer” and more sound. Similarly, Ibn Barrajan's 12th-century Sufi work alludes to philosophers as “those who misunderstood ḥikma,” echoing Ibn Masarra's distinction between the philosophers and the ḥukamāʾ. Both figures characterize the philosophers as individuals whose cosmology neglected the language of prophecy regarding divine agency while correctly understanding much of the world's phenomena in their cosmology. On Ibn Masarra, see n. 14.

26 Ibn al-Khatib, Rawdat al-Taʿrif, 355.

27 On the use of Neoplatonic notions of love in Sufi soteriology both in al-Andalus and in centers to the east, see Rizvi, Sajjad, “Mysticism and Philosophy: Ibn ʿArabi and Mulla Sadra,” in The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy, ed. Adamson, Peter and Taylor, Richard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 224–46Google Scholar.

28 Chen, Ludwig C. H., “Knowledge of Beauty in Plato's Symposium,” Classic Quarterly 33 (1983): 66–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reeve, C. D. C., “Telling the Truth About Love: Plato's Symposium,” The Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 8 (1992): 89–114CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 This eschatology problem moves beyond the already contested issue of the Greek philosophers’ notion of incorporeal soteriology, and this case echoes al-Farabi's eschatology excluding ignorant souls. See David Reisman, “Farabi,” 52–71.

30 Ibn al-Khatib, Rawdat al-Taʿrif, 356.

31 Ibid., 383.

32 Al-Farabi's Aristotelian taxonomy of the appetitive, sensitive, imaginative, and rational, all of which are integrated into a larger pursuit of contact with the Active Intellect, is analogous to Ibn al-Khatib's presentation of philosophical cognition. See Reisman, “Farabi,” 52–71.

33 Ibn al-Khatib, Rawdat al-Taʿrif, 384.

34 Many of these elements echo doctrines of Andalusi Sufis whom Ibn al-Khatib references. For example, in the 12th century Ibn Barrajan distinguished between corporeal realities and spiritual realities and presented the goal of the Sufis as transcending perception of corporeality in the world's ẓāhir in order to grasp the level of spiritual realities in the bāṭin—the level at which God's agency is manifest (ẓāhir). He also suggests a kind of identification with that agency in the context of a microcosm-macrocosm relationship in which individuals like prophets become similar to angels in the latter's perfect obedience to God. In some ways, this conception of agency, and this notion of mystical identification with aspects of the world, parallels al-Ghazali's discussion of the Beautiful Names as they are recognized in the created world.

35 Ibn al-Khatib, Rawdat al-Taʿrif, 379–80.

36 Perhaps what most clearly marks this as Sufi is the ritual element of dhikr as a key vehicle for the philosophical pursuit of love and manifestation of beauty. In a similar context, Rizvi discusses Ibn ʿArabi's and Mullah Sadra's integration of Neoplatonic soteriology into their mysticism. Rizvi, Sajjad, “Mysticism and Philosophy: Ibn ʿArabi and Mulla Sadra,” in Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy, 224–46Google Scholar.

37 al-Khatib, Ibn, Rawdat al-Taʿrif, 384Google Scholar.

38 This debate was a contentious issue in al-Andalus and is most centrally identifiable in the controversy over saint miracles in the 11th century. Scholars appear to have assimilated notions of saintly miracles into biographical dictionaries by the 12th and 13th centuries, perhaps reflecting the growing overlap of Sufi and scholarly circles. That some political figures in the Ottoman era presented themselves as both Sufi and scholarly reflects the simultaneous importance of saintly and scholarly religious authority in Islamic history. See Fierro, “The Polemic about the Karamat al-Awliyaʾ,” 236–49; Fierro, , “La religion,” in Los Reinos de Taifas en el Siglo XI (Historia de Espana Menendez Pidal vol. 8:1), ed. Molins, M. Viguera (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1994), 437–550Google Scholar.

39 The hagiographical text of Tahir al-Sadafi is of particular interest. See Ferhat, Halima, “As-Sirr al-Masun de Tahir as-Sadafi: Un itineraire mystique au xiie siècle,” al-Qantara 16 (1995): 237–88Google Scholar; Fierro, “The Polemic about the Karamat al-Awliyaʾ,” 236–49.

40 Ibn Sabʿin, like Ibn ʿArabi, is an important example in this context. Even among Sufis interested in philosophical doctrines, there were debates about where those doctrines fit within the various modes of knowledge that were part of Sufism. Vincent Cornell has traced ways that individual Sufis such as Ibn Sabʿin worked out these epistemic debates, as well as how different notions of epistemology were tied up with different models of authority. Vincent Cornell, “The Circle of Knowledge (al-Ihata): Soul, Intellect, and the Oneness of Existence in the Doctrine of Ibn Sabʿin,” 31–48; Cornell, “The Way of the Axial Intellect: The Islamic Hermetism of Ibn Sabʿin,” 41–79; Cornell, “Faqih Versus Faqir in Marinid Morocco: Epistemological Dimensions of a Polemic,” 207–24.

41 Al-Maqqari, , Nafh al-Tib, 103Google Scholar.

42 Ibid., 111, 118.

43 Various philosophers and philosophical Sufis, especially in al-Andalus, were accused of ḥulūl. Ibn Sabʿin and his student al-Shushtari, both Sufis who integrated Greek philosophy and Sufism, were accused of ḥulūl. Ibn Taymiyya associated waḥdat al-wujūd with Ibn ʿArabi and accused the doctrine of promoting a kind of ḥulūl. In the form of intellectual ittiṣāl and ittiḥād, philosophers were also accused of ḥulūl. Ismaʿili Shiʿism during the Fatimid era was likewise subjected to these accusations. See Alvarez, Lourdes M., Abu al-Hasan al-Shushtari: Songs of Love and Devotion (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 2009), 15–20Google Scholar; William Chittick, “Waḥdat al-Wujūd/Waḥdat al-Shuhūd,” EI2; and Marshall G. S. Hodgson, “Ghulāt,” EI2. See also Calero Sacall's discussion of this accusation in Calero Secall, “El proceso de Ibn al-Jatib,” 421–61.

44 Knysh, Ibn ʿArabi in the Later Islamic Tradition, 172–96.

45 Al-Maqqari, Nafh al-Tib, 123.

46 Ibid., 126.

47 Ibid.

48 On the widespread use of ruqya, or medicinal recitation, and the simultaneous prohibition of magic, see Toufic Fahd “Rukya,” EI2.

49 Al-Maqqari, Nafh al-Tib, 127.

50 Despite al-Ghazali's criticisms of the philosophers and Fatimid Ismaʿilis, his own philosophical theology and Sufism ironically became the object of the same kinds of accusations from critics such as Ibn Taymiyya. On al-Ghazali's accusations against philosophers over these three issues, see Marmura, Michael, “The Logical Role of the Argument from Time in the Tahafut's Second Proof for the World's Pre-Eternity,” The Muslim World 49 (1959): 306–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marmura, , “al-Ghazali on Bodily Resurrection and Causality in the Tahafut and Iqtisad,” Aligarh Journal of Islamic Thought 2 (1989): 46–58Google Scholar; Marmura, , “Some Aspects of Avicenna's Theory of God's Knowledge of Particulars,” JAOS 83 (1962): 299–312Google Scholar; Griffel, al-Ghazali's Philosophical Theology.

51 Al-Maqqari, Nafh al-Tib, 180.

52 Ibid., 181.

53 Fromherz, Alan, Ibn Khaldun: Life and Times (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 60–97Google Scholar.

54 Al-Maqqari, Nafh al-Tib, 110.