In 1911, R.A. Nicholson published an edition and translation of Tarjumān al-ashwāq, a collection of 61 love poems composed by the famous Sufi metaphysician of al-Andalus Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240) in Mecca in late 1214/early 1215. As Martin Lings recalled over half a century later, the publication of Nicholson's translation “was something of an event”, the Tarjumān being the first work of Ibn ʿArabī to appear in English translation. Since that time, the work has continued to garner considerable attention. In a helpful appendix to this new edition and English translation of the Tarjumān, Michael Sells lists no fewer than 14 partial or complete translations of the collection – into English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, and Turkish, and targeted at various kinds of reader – since Nicholson's seminal effort. Of these, the French translation by Maurice Gloton (1996) and the extensively annotated two-volume German translation by Wolfgang Hermann (2013) are especially notable contributions to Ibn ʿArabī scholarship.

Even with this abundance of existing translations, there are reasons to welcome Sells's new version. First, although Nicholson's translation remains an admirable work of scholarship, the Cambridge scholar was himself acutely aware that his work on Ibn ʿArabian Sufism was necessarily provisional. Since his time, of course, Ibn ʿArabī's work has received considerable scholarly attention, making the task of interpreting his poetry that much easier. Second, Nicholson's version was explicitly presented as a “literal” rendering of the Tarjumān. For this reason, his translations struggle to capture the lyricism of the Arabic originals and are unlikely to appeal to readers whose primary interest is not Sufi metaphysics. By contrast, Sells has striven for – and achieved – translations that read well as English poetry. Compare, for instance, their respective versions of the first verse of poem 55:

Even if one prefers Nicholson's more literal rendering of the key technical terms ghayba, nafs, and fanā’ here, there is still evident value in translating lyric poetry as lyric poetry. Third, Sells is perhaps uniquely qualified to undertake this project. A professor in the Departments of Divinity and Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago, his previous work has included translations of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, early Sufi literature, and selected poems from the Tarjumān, while two chapters of his magisterial Mystical Languages of Unsaying are devoted to Ibn ʿArabī's use of “apophatic discourse”.

The translations do not disappoint. Though eschewing rhyme and metre, Sells has successfully captured the power and lyricism of the Arabic originals:

runs the last verse of his version of poem 23. Occasionally, there are enjoyable resonances of the canon of English literature, as in poem 17:

Sometimes, it is true, Sells slips into an overly colloquial register – for instance, when he translates the phrase “maraḍī marīḍat al-…” as “I'm in a bad way” – yet such instances are few and far between. Other notable features of the translations include the addition of titles to the poems, the use of translation as well as transliteration for rendering Arabic names (for instance, “harmony” for Ibn ʿArabī's beloved Niẓām), and the use of the Arabic names of Biblical/Quranic figures, which helps to underline the fact that the Tarjumān, like the Fuṣūṣ, is immersed in the prophet-stories of the Quran.

While the translations can enjoyably be read on their own, readers seeking a deeper understanding of the poems and their literary and intellectual context will want to turn to Sells's introduction and notes. The introduction offers an engaging survey of the composition of the Tarjumān and the debates over the true meaning of the poems. We learn of the role played by the beautiful Niẓām in inspiring the poems (what Sells calls “the romance of the Tarjumān”), the allegation of an Aleppan jurist that the poems were works of purely secular eroticism (“the trial of the Tarjumān”), and Ibn ʿArabī's explanation of the inner, Sufi metaphysical meaning of the poems in his own commentary on the collection (“the allegory of the Tarjumān”). Sells's discussion here is full of insightful observations: for instance, that Ibn ʿArabī's celebration of Niẓām's Persian descent “may reflect the wider cultural symbiosis within thirteenth-century Islamic civilization”, or that the poems of the Tarjumān are not “versified philosophy” but are actually “generative of Ibn ʿArabī's vision of existence”.

Sells's notes on the poems, meanwhile, are full of useful information for readers unfamiliar with Islamic tradition or the conventions of Classical Arabic poetry: the Quranic background to the poems, the rituals of the Ḥajj, Ibn ʿArabī's use of jinās and the rajaz metre, and the flora and fauna of Arabia are all explained in helpful detail. Nevertheless, readers hoping for the kind of conceptual analysis found in Sells's study of poem 11 of the Tarjumān – the famous verses on “the religion of love” – in Mystical Languages of Unsaying are likely to be disappointed. The notes contain relatively little for students of Ibn ʿArabī's Sufi thought. While this reflects Sells's perfectly valid view that our interpretation of the poems should not be constrained by the Sufi metaphysical meanings that Ibn ʿArabī affixes to them in his commentary, many readers will still be curious to learn how Ibn ʿArabī interprets his poems allegorically. For that, Nicholson's notes – and Hermann's German edition – remain the more useful. That said, Sells's work remains an impressive achievement, and one that ought to be celebrated by anyone interested in Ibn ʿArabī or Classical Arabic poetry.