Ibn 'Arabi Society

Angela writes: Overshadowed by his younger brother Moses, known primarily for his negative role in the Golden Calf saga, the Prophet Aaron’s importance may seem to some negligible, his status auxiliary, his effect doubtful. A close reading of the Shaykh al-Akbar’s various treatments of this seemingly minor prophet, however, allows us to take a second look at this paradoxical prophet and the complex nature of his leadership and cosmic significance, as themes as perplexing as transcendental and immanental worship, mercy and severity, beauty and majesty come to the fore. This presentation will examine a number of texts where Aaron’s role is singled out in a significant way. In addition to the more familiar Futūḥāt chapters (primarily: "Alchemy of Human Happiness," and "Breath") and the Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam’s "Chapter on the Religious Leadership in the Word of Aaron,"" we will also take a look at various other sources, including the Prayers of the Week, the Mosul Revelations, the Night Journey, and the Voyages of the Prophets. Angela Jaffray is an independent scholar specialising in the translation of and commentary on the short works of Ibn ‘Arabī. Her translation of Ibn ‘Arabī’s al-Ittiḥād al-kawnī (The Universal Tree and the Four Birds) was published by Anqa Publications in 2007, and her translation and commentary on Ibn ‘Arabī’s Isfār ‘an natā’ij al-asfār (The Secrets of Voyaging) was published by Anqa Publications in 2015, reprinted in 2016. She is currently working on a revised translation and commentary on al-Niffarī’s Mawāqif and Mukhaṭabāt.

William C. Chittick is an internationally renowned scholar on Islamic civilization as well as Comparative Philosophy and Religious Studies. He is author, editor and translator of 30 books and monographs, and nearly 200 articles on Islamic thought, Shi’ism and Sufism. His works have been translated into a dozen languages used in the Middle East, East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Europe. His writings have influenced all students of Islamic thought and have played an important role in changing the content and contour of philosophy education by breaking the hegemony of Western philosophy. Dr. Chittick is the recipient of three National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships, a Fulbright Fellowship, and most recently, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. He won the World Prize for the Book of the Year twice, conferred by the Islamic Republic of Iran. His fierce dedication to the pursuit of knowledge has been an inspiration for all his colleagues in the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies, where he has mentored students and scholars of Islamic studies from all over the world.

Dr Sachiko Murata’s research has included the interrelationships between Islamic and Far Eastern thought, especially in the writings of the Huiru, “the Muslim Confucianists,” who wrote numerous tracts in Chinese from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. She has published many scholarly articles and a number of books. These include Isuramu Horiron Josetsu (Iwanami, 1985), the translation of a major text on the principles of Islamic jurisprudence from Arabic into Japanese; The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thought (SUNY Press, 1992); Chinese Gleams of Sufi Light: Wang Tai-yu’s Great Learning of the Pure and Real and Liu Chih’s Displayig the Concealment of the Real Realm (SUNY Press, 2000); and with the collaboration of William C. Chittick and Tu Weiming, The Sage Learning of Liu Zhi: Islamic Thought in Confucian Terms (Harvard University Press, 2009).

Shankar Nair specializes in Muslim-Hindu interactions in South Asia, Sufism and Islamic philosophy, Qur'anic exegesis, Hindu philosophy and theology, and South Asian religious literatures, primarily in the context of the early modern period, but also including the medieval period

Oludamini Ogunnaike is an assistant professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. He teaches courses on African and African Diasporic Religions as well as Islam, Islamic Philosophy, Spirituality, and Art. He holds a PhD in African Studies and the Study of Religion from Harvard University, and spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University's Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies. Professor Ogunnaike's research examines the philosophical dimensions of postcolonial, colonial, and pre-colonial Islamic and indigenous religious traditions of West and North Africa, especially Sufism and Ifa. He is currently working on a book entitled, Sufism and Ifa: Ways of Knowing in Two West African Intellectual Traditions and maintains a digital archive of West African Sufi poetry.

Atif Khalil is on the faculty of Religious Studies at the University of Lethbridge. Khalil's primary area of research lies in Sufism, with secondary interests in Islamic philosophy and theology, comparative mysticism, interfaith relations, Jewish-Muslim relations, medieval philosophy, non-duality, and more recently, mysticism and the Near Death Experience. At present, he is writing a monograph on dhikr, tentatively entitled The Wine of Divine Remembrance: Meditation in Classical Sufism.

Dr. Amer Latif is an interdisciplinary scholar specializing in comparative religion and Islamic studies. Broadly speaking, his research revolves around issues involved in the translation of cultures. Having grown up in Pakistan and with an undergraduate degree in Physics, Dr. Latif thrives on studying and creating containers that are capacious enough to hold seeming contradictions such as science and religion, East and West. Dr. Latif joins Emerson after having taught for many years at Marlboro College.

Rosabel Ansari's areas of Specialization include Classical and post-classical Islamic philosophy; Graeco-Arabic Studies.Her research involves the transmission of Ancient Greek philosophy into Arabic, Arabic and Islamic metaphysics in both the classical and post-classical periods, the philosophy of language, and the relationship between rational and supra-rational forms of knowledge in Islamic philosophy. Her forthcoming monograph is on metaphysics and the philosophy of language in the philosophy of al-Fārābī.

Pablo writes: This presentation analyses the content of Ibn ʻArabī’s lesser-known work, Kitāb Manzil al-manāzil al-fahwāniyya (“The Mansion that Gathers [the Keys to All] the Mansions in Which Direct Speech Descends”), which is devoted to Quranic hermeneutics and structured on symbolic principles derived from the science of numbers and the abjad alphanumeric system. It explores the author's unique correlation between the 114 ‘mansions’ or ‘stations’ and the 114 suras of the Quran, classifying them into 19 major mansions based on the introductory text of each sura. Conceived as a journey of ascension (miʻrāj) through the Quran's 'citadels', this book is intimately related to chapter 22 of Ibn ʻArabī’s major work, al-Futūḥāt al-makkiyya. In this presentation, I intend to address some of the implicit, yet unexplored, questions raised in this book. I propose that Ibn ʻArabī employed strategic ambiguity in his writing, using misleading elements and deliberate omissions to avoid undue attention. Pablo Beneito is a Professor of Translation and Interpretation at the University of Murcia. He has served as an Invited Professor at institutions such as the École Pratique des Hautes Études (Sorbonne) and the University of Kyoto (ASAFAS), among others. In his study of Ibn Arabi’s thought, Pablo has extensively researched, edited, and translated several of his works and other texts related to him. His English-language publications include Contemplation of the Holy Mysteries (co-authored with Cecilia Twinch); Kashf al-ma‘nâ, The Secret of God’s Most Beautiful Names (forthcoming with Anqa Publishing), and both The Seven Days of the Heart and Patterns of Contemplation (co-authored with Stephen Hirtenstein). Since 2011, he has been coordinating the activities of MIAS-Latina. Starting in 2014, he took on the role of Editor for El Azufre Rojo: Revista de Estudios sobre Ibn Arabi published by EDITUM at the University of Murcia, and he curated the "Jayal: Creative Imagination" exhibition at Casa Árabe in Madrid and Córdoba from 2016 to 2017.

Mohammed Rustom is Associate Professor of Islamic Studies at Carleton University. He is the author of the award-winning book The Triumph of Mercy: Philosophy and Scripture in Mulla Sadra and Assistant Editor of The Study Quran: A New Translation with Notes and Commentary (Editor-in-Chief, Seyyed Hossein Nasr)

Marlene DuBois is Professor of English at the State University of New York at Suffolk County Community College. Her research interests are in comparative religion, Sufism, and mythic narratives.

Dr. Dakake researches and publishes on Islamic intellectual history, Quranic studies, Shi`ite and Sufi traditions, and women's spirituality and religious experience. She is one of the general editors and contributing authors of the The Study Quran (HarperOne, 2015), which comprises a translation and verse-by-verse commentary on the Qur'anic text that draws upon the rich and varied tradition of Muslim commentary on their own scripture. Her most recent publication, The Routledge Companion to the Qur'an (September 2021), is a co-edited volume with 40 articles on the Qur'an's history, content, style, and interpretation written by leading contemporary scholars working from different methodological perspectives. She is currently completing a monograph, Toward an Islamic Theory of Religion, and has begun work on a partial translation of a Persian Qur'an commentary written by the 20th century Iranian female scholar, Nusrat Amin.

The philosophical concepts at the heart of this presentation include Wujud, the Plural, and Ambiguity. I begin by examining Ibn Arabi's notion of belief as 'tying knots in the heart,' parallel to his understanding of the nature of Wujud and Barzakh. The aim is a fresh thinking about pluralism, grounded in Sufi metaphysics — a metaphysics focused on what Shahab Ahmed elsewhere describes as 'the multivalent experiential condition of hayra [paradoxical perplexity].' Without hastily asserting Ibn Arabi's pluralistic views of other traditions or religions, I dwell on what we today can learn from Ibn Arabi’s nuanced understanding of Being. This insight could offer us new perspectives for addressing the global rise of exclusivism and rigid, unambiguous identifications. The approach involves the philosophical application of Ibn Arabi's teachings on the essential delimitation of all doctrinal positions to current issues. Situated in the cultural and social realities of the subcontinent, I also highlight the historical application of these core Akbarian concepts in the diverse religious and spiritual expressions of subcontinental Sufis. Bharatwaj Iyer is a PhD student and a Senior Research Fellow at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay focusing on Heidegger and the phenomenological tradition. He is on the education team at MIAS, where he has served for over two years. He recently published "The Transimmanence of the Real: Ontological Pluralism in the School of Ibn ʻArabī" edited by Pablo Benito in Religions. A forthcoming article, "You are a Puzzle-lock: A Phenomenological Analysis of Perplexity," in Philosophy East and West examines the Urdu poem Tum ek Gorakh Dhanda ho from a Heideggerian perspective. His academic and activist interests are political pluralism and rising extremism.

Although Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240) is known as “the greatest master” (al-shaykh al-akbar), little is known about his practical teachings and his approach to the master-disciple relationship. Apart from scattered accounts of his own companionship with various masters, Ibn ʿArabī dedicates very few books or chapters to the rules of spiritual education. Therefore, the Shaykh al-akbar’s views on the matter remain largely to be determined. An understudied work could contribute to fill this gap: the K. al-Ajwiba al-ʿarabiyya fī sharḥ al-naṣāʾiḥ al-yusūfiyya. It contains a detailed expression of Ibn ʿArabī’s conception of spiritual education, illustrated by numerous details and anecdotes that bring into light the practical and pedagogical implications of his doctrines. This talk will propose a brief overview of the treatise, its originality, and the principles of spiritual education that are defined in it. A particular focus will be given to the notion of “imaginary master”, central to both the pedagogical doctrine of Ibn ʿArabī and the nature of the K. al-Ajwiba al-ʿarabiyya. The talk will delve into how the imaginary master is presented as the necessary interface between the disciple and the master, and how it shapes the whole process of spiritual education.

Love is mysterious and many splendored—the source of our greatest joys and deepest sorrows; easy to talk and sing about, but impossible to define. "One who defines love has not known it, and one who has not tasted it by drinking it down, has not known it," writes Ibn al-'Arabi. While Rumi is more associated with love in the contemporary imagination, love is equally central to the writings and tradition of the great Andalusian writer, thinker, and spiritual teacher, Ibn Al-'Arabi (d. 1240), known as al-Shaykh al-Akbar (The Greatest Master). Through an examination of his commentaries on two verses of the Qur'an (2:165 and 45:23), and exploration of the paradoxes and seeming contradictions therein, this workshop will explore how love is key to understanding Ibn Al-'Arabi’s vast and kaleidoscopic oeuvre, and how these writings and perspectives can, in turn, help us better understand the undefinable nature of love and longing. For Ibn Al-'Arabi, love is more than a feeling, it is the fundamental nature of consciousness, God, and reality itself.

Love is mysterious and many splendored—the source of our greatest joys and deepest sorrows; easy to talk and sing about, but impossible to define. "One who defines love has not known it, and one who has not tasted it by drinking it down, has not known it," writes Ibn al-'Arabi. While Rumi is more associated with love in the contemporary imagination, love is equally central to the writings and tradition of the great Andalusian writer, thinker, and spiritual teacher, Ibn Al-'Arabi (d. 1240), known as al-Shaykh al-Akbar (The Greatest Master). Through an examination of his commentaries on two verses of the Qur'an (2:165 and 45:23), and exploration of the paradoxes and seeming contradictions therein, this workshop will explore how love is key to understanding Ibn Al-'Arabi’s vast and kaleidoscopic oeuvre, and how these writings and perspectives can, in turn, help us better understand the undefinable nature of love and longing. For Ibn Al-'Arabi, love is more than a feeling, it is the fundamental nature of consciousness, God, and reality itself.

"Ghouls, ifrits and a panoply of other jinn have long haunted Muslim cultures and societies. These also include demonic doubles (qarīn, pl. quranā'): the little-studied and much-feared denizens of the hearts and blood of humans. Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn 'Arabī (d. 1240) wrote on jinn in substantial detail, uncovering the physiognomy, culture and behaviour of this unseen species. Akbarians believed that the good God assigned each human with an evil double. Ibn 'Arabī’s reasoning as to why this was the case mirrors his attempts to expound the problem of evil in Islamic religious philosophy. No other Sufi, Ibn 'Arabī claimed, has ever managed to get to the heart of this matter before him. As well as offering the reader knowledge and safety from evil, Ibn 'Arabī’s writings on jinnealogy tackle the even larger issues of spiritual ascension, predestination and the human relationship to the Divine." Dunja Rašić earned her Ph.D in Islamic Studies at the Free University Berlin. Her primary research field is medieval intellectual history, with a focus on Akbarian cosmology, philosophical Sufism and the Islamic philosophy of language.

Mahmud Erol Kılıç is a Professor of Sufi Studies. His numerous books, articles and translations have focused on Ibn 'Arabi and the Ibn 'Arabi school of thought as well as Sufism in Anatolia. He has been the ambassador of the Republic of Turkey to the Republic of Indonesia, and was the Secretary General of the Parliamentary Union of the OIC Member States (PUIC) based in Tehran. Prof. Kılıç currently serves as the Director General of the Research Center for Islamic History, Art and Culture. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society.

Laila Khalifa (Ph.D) began her studies in social sciences and history at the University of Jordan in Amman. Later she pursued postgraduate research in Social Psychology at the University of Nottingham, UK in 1985. She was awarded her MA in Classical and Modern Islamic Thought at the Sorbonne in 1988. She has subsequently dedicated her research to the study of Ibn 'Arabi's doctrine and received her Ph.D. in 2000, in History and Civilisation at the L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Here, under the supervision of Prof. Michel Chodkiewicz, she completed her dissertation: "Conqurtes, Illuminations, Tassawuf et Prophetie: La Futuwwa chez le Sheikh al- Akbar Muhammad Muhyi a-Din Ibn 'Arabi (1165-1240)". (Conquest, Illumination, Sufism and Prophecy: The Futuwwa in Ibn 'Arabi (1165-1240.) She continues her research into Ibn 'Arabi's metaphysical doctrine and participates in international symposiums. Laila Khalifa has published books and articles.

Mukhtar Ali (Ph.D) (2007) University of California, Berkeley, is a Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He specializes in Sufism, Islamic philosophy and ethics, but his areas of interest also include Arabic and Persian literature, Qur'anic studies and comparative religion. He is the author of Philosophical Sufism: An Introduction to the School of Ibn al-'Arabi (Routledge, 2021) and The Horizons of Being: The Metaphysics of Ibn al 'Arabi in the Muqaddimat al-Qaysari (Brill, 2020). He has translated some contemporary metaphysical texts, The New Creation (Sage Press, 2018) and The Law of Correspondence (Sage Press, 2021).

Jane Clark is a Senior Research Fellow of the Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society and has worked particularly on the Society's Archiving Project as well as looking after the library. She has been studying Ibn Arabi for more than forty years, and is engaged in teaching courses and lecturing on his thought both in the UK (including Oxford University and Temenos Academy) and abroad (including Egypt, Australia and the USA), and in research and translation of the Akbarian heritage. She has a particular interest in the correlation of Ibn Arabi's thought with contemporary issues. She organises the MIAS Young Writers Award. Jane Clark was a co-founder of The Journal of Consciousness Studies and is currently editor of the Beshara Magazine. She has presented many courses as part of the program of the University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education.

Gracia Lopez Anguita obtained her degree in Arabic Philosophy at the University of Cordoba. In 2005 she joined the Department of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Seville, where she is currently Assistant Professor. Among other publications, her book Ibn 'Arabi y su epoca was published in 2018.

At Haverford College (BA), then the University of Pennsylvania (MA), then the University of South Carolina (PhD), Eric Winkel undertook eclectic studies, mostly religion at first, focusing on spiritual matters, then later including political science, and numerous languages to enable study of religious and spiritual texts (Sanskrit, Greek, Coptic, Tamil, Arabic, others, besides French and German). His book "Mysteries of Purity, Ibn al-'Arabî's asrar al-taharah" (Notre Dame, 1995) was Chapter 68 of the Futuhat al-Makkiyya. While Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies in Malaysia, he explored how the concepts of the "new sciences" opened obscure and difficult passages of the Futuhat. Shu'ayb Eric Winkel explains: ‘with Ibn Arabi, if one hasn't visualised or seen a picture, imaged in the imagination, of what he is talking about, one hasn't yet understood him. In my work translating and elucidating The Openings Revealed in Makkah, I depend entirely on Divine grace. In this talk we will look at a double door of a temple, or home, and follow Ibn Arabi's insights into and behind the half-door. We will then consider Salma's house and the walls of Salma's house, in a poem, and Ibn Arabi's own poetry around the imagery. We then connect these images to the all-important hadith qudsi: ‘The heavens and the Earth are not vastly spacious enough for Me, but the heart of My slave who is someone faithful is.' We contemplate the vista of the heart to prepare ourselves for our own view of the architecture of love, insha'Allah.' Since 2012, Shu'ayb has been translating The Opening Revealed in Makkah, the first continuous translation of and commentary on the Futuhat, envisioned as 19 volumes, published by Pir Press. Parallel to this work, Shu'ayb is collaborating with communities to expand into new directions, including translations of An Illustrated Guide to Ibn Arabi, children's books, poetry, grammars and glossaries for Ibn Arabi, and visual and creative artworks conveying the message of the Futuhat.

Cecilia Twinch is a Senior Research Fellow of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Oxford. Besides working as a teacher, translator and editor, she has written numerous articles and has lectured on Ibn 'Arabi and mysticism worldwide. She has studied at Cambridge University and the Beshara School. Her publications include an English translation of Ibn 'Arabi's Contemplation of the Holy Mysteries and a new translation of Know yourself: An explanation of the oneness of being by Ibn 'Arabi/Balyani

Hany Talaat Ibrahim completed his PhD in Religious Studies at the University of Calgary. He is currently teaching at the University of Calgary and Mount Royal University, Canada. He specializes in pre-modern Islamic thought, Arabic Sufi literature, and Islamic art & architecture.

Ibn Arabi's Creative Imagination: Crossing Borders to Discover the Meaning of Being Human. Collaborative presentation between Language Acts and Worldmaking and the Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society. This event, originally an online seminar via Zoom, explores how Ibn Arabi's creative imagination crosses philosophical, poetic, linguistic and artistic borders, and how his ideas continue to inspire contemporary poetry, film, and artistic expression to this day. Introduction: David Torollo The Meeting of the Two Seas – Ibn Arabi & Contemporary Literature: Rim Feriani Round Table Introduction: Bharatwaj Iyer (Chair) Artwork: Antonella Leoni Poetry: Nükhet Kardam Poetry Reading: David Torollo

Ibn Arabi's Creative Imagination: Crossing Borders to Discover the Meaning of Being Human. Collaborative presentation between Language Acts and Worldmaking and the Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society. This event, originally an online seminar via Zoom, explores how Ibn Arabi's creative imagination crosses philosophical, poetic, linguistic and artistic borders, and how his ideas continue to inspire contemporary poetry, film, and artistic expression to this day. Chair Dr David Torollo : Lecturer in Medieval & Early Modern Spanish Studies, King's College London. Catherine Boyle: Professor of Latin American Cultural Studies and Director of Centre for Language Acts and Worldmaking. Cecilia Twinch: Senior Research Fellow of the Ibn Arabi Society, Oxford.

Yousef is Chair of Islamic Studies at the University of Chicago Divinity School. He received his Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from Yale University in 2014. He was formerly a Humanities Research Fellow at New York University, Abu Dhabi, where he completed his award-winning book, The Mystics of al-Andalus. He is currently completing an Arabic edition and full English translation of  ‘Afif al-Din al-Tilimsani's (d. 1291) commentary on the divine names for the Library of Arabic Literature, NYU Press. Born in Egypt and raised in Morocco, Yousef has traveled throughout the Islamic world, and has studied with Muslim scholars in Morocco, Syria, and Mauritania.

Hina Khalid has completed an MPhil in Theology at the University of Cambridge. Her work has previously examined the theological discourse of the Muslim mystic and philosopher ‘Ibn Arabi, in dialogue with selected aspects of the Buddhist philosophical tradition. Her current research centres on Sufism in the subcontinent, and the distinctive and multi-faceted patterns of Islamic practices as they have been shaped by indigenous cultural and religious forces therein.

Todd Lawson is Associate Professor, University of Toronto, Dept. of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations. He has published widely on Quran commentary (tafsir), the Quran as literature, Sufism, Shi'i Islam and the Babi and Bahai traditions. His book Jesus in Islamic thought, The Crucifixion and the Quran was published in 2009 (Oneworld), his Gnostic Apocalypse and Islam in 2011 (Routledge). This and other of his publications are listed at www.toddlawson.ca

Stephen Hirtenstein has been editor of the Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society since its inception in 1982, and is a co-founder of Anqa Publishing. He read History at King's College, Cambridge, and then studied at the Beshara School of Intensive Esoteric Education in Gloucestershire and Scotland. After a teaching career, he began writing and giving talks on Ibn Arabi's thought at conferences across the world. In addition to lecturing and writing, he organises and leads tours "in the footsteps of Ibn Arabi". He currently works as a Senior Editor for the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London, and lives near Oxford.

Dunja Rašić (PhD Free University Berlin) is a lecturer at the University of Belgrade. Her academic interests include philosophy of language, Akbarian cosmology and the philosophical and theological thought of the early Islamic Middle Ages. She is currently working on several book projects, including The Devil Within: Jinn Doppelgangers, Mages and the Sages and a critical edition and translation of al-Bosnevī's commentary on pseudo-Ibn ʿArabī's al-Qaṣīda al- tāʾiyya.

Luca Patrizi is part of the University of Turin, Italy, and research fellow at Exeter University, UK.

Carlos Berbil is the Alexander von Humboldt Kolleg for Islamicate Intellectual History at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn.

Cyrus Ali Zargar is Al-Ghazali Distinguished Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Central Florida. His first book, Sufi Aesthetics: Beauty, Love, and the Human Form in Ibn ʿArabi and ʿIraqi, was published in 2011 by the University of South Carolina Press. His most recent book, The Polished Mirror: Storytelling and the Pursuit of Virtue in Islamic Philosophy and Sufism, was published in 2017 by Oneworld Press. Zargar's research interests focus on the literature of medieval Sufism in Arabic and Persian. This includes metaphysical, aesthetic, and ethical intersections between Sufism and Islamic philosophy, as well as Sufi ethical treatises, the writings of Ibn Arabi and early adherents to his worldview, Sufism in contemporary cinema, and satire in medieval and modern literature. He is the author of articles in The Muslim World, The Journal of Arabic Literature, and Encyclopædia Iranica. Currently, he is completing a manuscript on the corpus of the 13th-century Persian poet, Farid al-Din Attar, and the manner in which Attar's vision for humanity might comment on contemporary questions in religion. It is titled Religion of Love: Farid al-Din Attar and the Sufi Tradition, to be published by the Islamic Texts Society (Cambridge, UK).

Gracia Lopez Anguita obtained her degree in Arabic Philosophy at the University of Cordoba. In 2005 she joined the Department of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Seville, where she is currently Assistant Professor. Among other publications, her book Ibn 'Arabi y su epoca was published in 2018.

Alexander Knysh is professor of Islamic Studies and former chair (1998–2004) of the Department of Near Eastern Studies, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He obtained his doctoral degree from the Institute for Oriental Studies (Leningrad Branch) of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1986. Since 1991 he has lived and worked in the United States of America and England. His research interests include Islamic mysticism and Islamic theological thought in historical perspective as well as Islam and Islamic movements in local contexts (especially Yemen and the Northern Caucasus). He has numerous publications on these subjects, including Ibn 'Arabi in the Later Islamic Tradition: The Making of a Polemical Image in Medieval Islam (1998).

Michele Petrone is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Universite catholique de Louvain

Rim Feriani is Educational Director at The Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society, UK. She had previously lectured in Arabic language at King's College, London and taught Arabic language and cultural studies in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Westminster, London. Prior to her lecturing position, Rim worked as Director of Languages securing a governmental funding for improving the profile of languages at De Le Salle School and Language College. Additionally, from 2014 to 2016, Rim headed the Arabic department at the British School Al Khubairat, in Abu Dhabi.

Gregory Vandamme is a PhD candidate (FNRS-FRESH) working on classical Sufism, with a particular interest in the works of Ibn 'Arabi and his school. His research pays attention on transmission and transformation of doctrines from Early Sufism to Akbarian thought. He is a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Louvain, Belgium

Dr Samer Akkach is Associate Professor of Architecture and Founding Director of the Centre for Asian and Middle Eastern Architecture (CAMEA) at the University of Adelaide, Australia. He was born and educated in Damascus before moving to Australia to complete his PhD at Sydney University. As an intellectual historian, Samer has devoted over twenty years to the study of Ibn 'Arabi's mystical thought and intellectual legacy, and especially to their later revival by Abd al-Ghana al-Nabulusi. His book Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam: an Architectural Reading of Mystical Ideas (SUNY 2005), traces the influence of Ibn 'Arabi's thought on the spatial sensibility of premodern Muslim architects. His further titles Abd al-Ghan al-Nabulusi: Islam and the Enlightenment (Oneworld 2007) and Letters of a Sufi Scholar: The Correspondence of Abd al-Ghana al-Nabulusi (Brill 2010) examine the intellectual contributions of this influential and prolific Sufi master who considered Ibn 'Arabi to be his spiritual master and source of inspiration.

Paolo Urizzi is the director of Perennia Verba, Italy. The interest in Perennial Wisdom has led him to deepen the metaphysical doctrines of Vedanta and Sufism, and his research has focused in particular on the notion of the "Seal of Saints".

At Haverford College (BA), then the University of Pennsylvania (MA), then the University of South Carolina (PhD), Eric Winkel undertook eclectic studies, mostly religion at first, focusing on spiritual matters, then later including political science, and numerous languages to enable study of religious and spiritual texts (Sanskrit, Greek, Coptic, Tamil, Arabic, others, besides French and German). His book "Mysteries of Purity, Ibn al-'Arabî's asrar al-taharah" (Notre Dame, 1995) was Chapter 68 of the Futuhat al-Makkiyya. While Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies in Malaysia, he explored how the concepts of the "new sciences" opened obscure and difficult passages of the Futuhat. Having studied Ibn Arabi's Futuhat al-Makkiyya for over twenty-five years, Eric Winkel is now in the midst of an eleven-year project to produce the first complete translation of this work.

Jane Clark is a Senior Research Fellow of the Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society and has worked particularly on the Society's Archiving Project as well as looking after the library. She has been studying Ibn Arabi for more than forty years, and is engaged in teaching courses and lecturing on his thought both in the UK (including Oxford University and Temenos Academy) and abroad (including Egypt, Australia and the USA), and in research and translation of the Akbarian heritage. She has a particular interest in the correlation of Ibn Arabi's thought with contemporary issues. She organises the MIAS Young Writers Award. Jane Clark was a co-founder of The Journal of Consciousness Studies and is currently editor of the Beshara Magazine. She has presented many courses as part of the program of the University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education.

Jane Carroll is a Senior Research Fellow of the Ibn Arabi Society and is Secretary of the Society in the US. She first studied the works of Ibn Arabi at the Beshara School in Scotland in the 1970s while concurrently studying at the Architectural Association in London with a specific interest in traditional geometry and Islamic architecture. She currently has a design practice in Ojai, California.

Pablo Beneito is currently Professor at the Department of Translation and Interpreting in the Faculty of Letters, University of Murcia, Spain. He has been studying the works of Ibn Arabi since he chose to do his doctorate in Arabic philology at the Complutense University of Madrid, after which he spent nine years teaching at the University of Seville in the Department of Arab and Islamic Studies. He has also been a visiting professor at the Sorbonne in Paris (Ecole Pratique des Hauts Etudes), in Kyoto University (ASAFAS) and in Toledo (Escuela de Traductores). As a specialist in Sufi thought, he has given courses throughout the world, and helped organise more than 14 international conferences. He heads MIAS Latina, an independent organisation affiliated to the Ibn Arabi Society, for speakers of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. He has edited and translated (into Spanish) Ibn Arabi's Mashahid al-asrar and Kashf al-ma'na. He is currently working on several of Ibn Arabi's shorter treatises, including Kitab al-Abadilah. Together with Stephen Hirtenstein he translated The Seven Days of the Heart - Ibn ʿArabi's Awrad al-usbu (Wird), and togther with Cecilia Twinch, Contemplation of the Holy Mysteries - Mashahid al-asrar al-qudsiyya.

Stephen Hirtenstein has been editor of the Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society since its inception in 1982, and is a co-founder of Anqa Publishing. He read History at King's College, Cambridge, and then studied at the Beshara School of Intensive Esoteric Education in Gloucestershire and Scotland. After a teaching career, he began writing and giving talks on Ibn 'Arabi's thought at conferences across the world. In addition to lecturing and writing, he organises and leads tours in the footsteps of Ibn 'Arabi. He currently works as a Senior Editor for the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London, and is a Short courses tutor in the Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford. His publications include The Unlimited Mercifier – The spiritual life and thought of Ibn 'Arabi (1999), The Seven Days of the Heart Prayers for the nights and days of the week – Ibn 'Arabi's Awrad al-usbu (2000), Divine Sayings – 101 Hadith Qudsi – The Mishkat al-Anwar of Ibn 'Arabi (2004), and most recently The Alchemy of Human Happiness – Chapter 167 of Ibn 'Arabi's Meccan Illuminations – Fi ma'rifat kimiya' al-sa'ada (2017)

Pablo Beneito is currently Professor of the Translation and Interpretation Department in the Faculty of Letters at the University of Murcia. He has published editions and translations of several works of Ibn 'Arabi including Mashahid al-Asrar - Las contemplaciones de los misterios (with S. Hakim), which was translated into English as Contemplation of the Holy Mysteries together with Cecilia Twinch. He edited and translated into Spanish the Kashf al-ma'na - El secreto de los nombres de Dios, which has also appeared in French. In collaboration with Stephen Hirtenstein he edited and translated Ibn 'Arabi's Awrad al-usbu (Wird) - The Seven Days of the Heart. He is the editor of El Azufre Rojo (Red Sulfur: Journal of Studies on Ibn 'Arabi, which first appeared in 2014). He is a founder member and President of Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society-Latina (MIAS- Latina), established in 2011

Eric Winkel is working full-time on a translation of the entire al-Futuhat al-Makkiyah (The Openings Revealed in Makkah) based on the 2011 critical edition of Dr. Abd al-Aziz al-Mansoub, published in the Yemen. While at the Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies, in Malaysia, he combined his interest in mathematics and classical Islamic thought to explore the 'new sciences', finding 'unlocking keys' for some of the most obscure concepts in Ibn 'Arabi's work. In 2019 the Pir Press published Volume 1 of the translation (Books 1 and 2). Chapter One of the Futuhat translation can be downloaded in PDF form from the Futuhat Project website http://thefutuhat.com/

Jane Clark is a Senior Research Fellow of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, and has workedparticularly on the Society's Archiving Project as well looking after the library. She has been studying Ibn 'Arabi for more than forty years, and is engaged in teaching courses and lecturing on his thought both in the UK (including Oxford University, Temenos Academy) and abroad (including Egypt, Australia, USA), and in research and translation of the akbarian heritage. She has a particular interest in the correlation of Ibn 'Arabī's thought with contemporary issues; she was a co-founder of The Journal of Consciousness Studies, and is currently editor of Beshara Magazine. She organises the MIAS Young Writers Award.

James Morris (Boston College) has taught and published widely on Islamic and religious studies over the past 40 years at the Universities of Exeter, Princeton, Oberlin, and the Institute of Ismaili Studies in Paris and London, serving recently as visiting professor in Istanbul, Paris, and Jogjakarta. He has lived and studied in regions from Morocco to Indonesia, and he lectures and leads workshops in many countries on Islamic philosophy and theology, Sufism, the Islamic humanities (poetry, music, and visual arts), the Qur'an and hadith, and esoteric Shiism. Recently he has led interfaith study-abroad programs centering on sacred sites, pilgrimage, sainthood, and related arts and architecture in Turkey and France. His forthcoming books include Openings: From the Qur'an to the Islamic Humanities; Approaching Ibn 'Arabi: Foundations, Contexts, Interpretations; Ostad Elahi's "Demonstration of the Truth"; and "Servants of the All-Merciful": Ibn 'Arabi on Spiritual Practice and Realization.

Angela Jaffray (PhD Harvard University) is an independent scholar, specializing in the translation of and commentary on the short works of Ibn 'Arabi. Her translation of Ibn 'Arabi's al-Ittihad al-kawni (The Universal Tree and the Four Birds) was published by Anqa Publications in 2007 and her article “Watered with One Water: Ibn 'Arabi on the One and the Many” appeared in the Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society in 2008. Her most recent translation and commentary of Ibn 'Arabi's Isfar 'an nata'ij al-asfar (The Secrets of Voyaging), was published by Anqa Publications in 2015, reprinted in 2016. She divides her time between Jerusalem and Chicago.

Oludamini Ogunnaike is an assistant professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. He teaches courses on African and African Diasporic Religions as well as Islam, Islamic Philosophy, Spirituality, and Art. He holds a PhD in African Studies and the Study of Religion from Harvard University, and spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University's Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies. Professor Ogunnaike's research examines the philosophical dimensions of postcolonial, colonial, and pre-colonial Islamic and indigenous religious traditions of West and North Africa, especially Sufism and Ifa. He is currently working on a book entitled, Sufism and Ifa: Ways of Knowing in Two West African Intellectual Traditions and maintains a digital archive of West African Sufi poetry.

Stefan Sperl is Professor of Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, at SOAS University of London. He was born in Stuttgart and brought up in Luxembourg. He studied Arabic at Oxford and the American University in Cairo and did his postgraduate research at SOAS, London. In 1978 he joined UNHCR and held several assignments in the Middle East and Geneva. He returned to SOAS 1988. His publications include Mannerism in Arabic Poetry (1989), Qasida Poetry in Islamic Asia and Africa (1996, with Christopher Shackle), as well as numerous articles on Arabic, Islamic and Refugee Studies. In 2005 he embarked on a research project with Ahmed Moustafa which resulted in their joint publication The Cosmic Script: Sacred Geometry and the Science of Arabic Penmanship (2014). It won the Iran World Award for the Book of the Year in 2016. He was co-organiser of the 2017 MIAS symposium 'Ibn Arabi and the Philosophers' at SOAS and in November 2017 organiser of the conference 'Faces of the Infinite, Neoplatonism and Poetics at the Confluence of Africa, Asia and Europe' at the British Academy and SOAS.

Michael Sells is the professor of Islamic Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago. His publications on Arabic poetry, Sufism, and mystical language include Desert Tracings: Six Classic Arabian Odes (1989); Mystical Languages of Unsaying (1994); Stations of Desire: Love Elegies from Ibn ʿArabī and New Poems (2000); Early Islamic Mysticism (1996); and the Cambridge History of Arabic Literature, al-Andalus (2000, which he coedited with Maria Rosa Menocal and Raymond Scheindlin). His essay "Love", which compares differing configurations of the "religion of love" in Arabic love poetry and his translation of the Nuniyya, a poem by the Andalusian poet of courtly love Ibn Zaydun, appear in the same al-Andalus volume. Qur'anic Studies Today, which he coedited with Angelika Neuwirth and to which he contributed an essay on the Moses story in Sura 20, appeared in 2015. He is currently working on a complete bi-lingual edition and translation of Ibn 'Arabi's Tarjuman al-Ashwaq.

Stephen Hirtenstein has been editor of the Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society since its inception in 1982, and is a co-founder of Anqa Publishing. He read History at King's College, Cambridge, and then studied at the Beshara School of Intensive Esoteric Education in Gloucestershire and Scotland. After a teaching career, he began writing and giving talks on Ibn 'Arabi's thought at conferences across the world. In addition to lecturing and writing, he organises and leads tours in the footsteps of Ibn 'Arabi. He currently works as a Senior Editor for the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London, and is a Short courses tutor in the Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford. His publications include The Unlimited Mercifier – The spiritual life and thought of Ibn 'Arabi (1999), The Seven Days of the Heart Prayers for the nights and days of the week – Ibn 'Arabi's Awrad al-usbu (2000), Divine Sayings – 101 Hadith Qudsi – The Mishkat al-Anwar of Ibn 'Arabi (2004), and most recently The Alchemy of Human Happiness – Chapter 167 of Ibn 'Arabi's Meccan Illuminations – Fi ma'rifat kimiya' al-sa'ada (2017)

Todd Lawson is emeritus professor of Islamic Thought at the University of Toronto where he taught for 25 years. He has published widely on Qur'an commentary (tafsir) the Qur'an as literature, Sufism, Shi'i Islam and the Babi and Bahai traditions. His book on Jesus in Islamic thought, The Crucifixion and the Qur'an was published in 2009 (Oneworld), his Gnostic Apocalypse and Islam in 2011 (Routledge). He is now writing a book on the Qur'an as sacred epic. He lives in Montreal.

Heba Youssry is currently the Director of Manor House International School in Egypt. She holds a double BA in the fields of Business Administration and Philosophy and a double MA in Arabic Literature and Philosophy all of which were attained from the American University in Cairo. She formerly held the position of Country Director for an NGO called Seeds of Peace, where she worked on establishing communication links between teenagers in countries impacted by the Middle Eastern conflict. Also, she worked as a freelance literary critic for Egypt Independent, an English language newspaper.

Hany Ibrahim is a PhD candidate and teaching assistant at the University of Calgary. His teaching and research interests include Quranic exegesis, hadith, Sufism, Islamic art and architecture. His academic research is on Ibn 'Arabi and the metaphysics of love in The Meccan Openings. He is currently authoring a book entitled, Hallaj: In the Ocean of Oneness (forthcoming, Fall 2018)

Angela Jaffray is an independent scholar, specializing in the translation of and commentary on the short works of Ibn 'Arabi. Her translation of Ibn 'Arabi's al-Ittiad al-kawni (The Universal Tree and the Four Birds) was published by Anqa Publications in 2007. Her most recent translation and commentary of Ibn 'Arabī's Isfar 'an nata'ij al-asfār (The Secrets of Voyaging), was published by Anqa Publications in 2015

Eric Winkel has studied Ibn 'Arabi's Futuhat al-Makkiyah for twenty-five years and is now in the midst of an eleven-year project to produce the first complete translation of this work. While Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies in Malaysia, Dr. Winkel explored how the concepts of the "new sciences" opened obscure and difficult passages of the Futuhat al-Makkiyah

Atif Khalil is an Associate Professor at the University of Lethbridge's Department of Religious Studies where he teaches courses on Islamic theology, mysticism, art and world religions. He is the author of the forthcoming book, Repentance and the Return to God in Early Sufism (SUNY, 2018). Last year, he was the Ken'an Rifai Distinguished Professorship of Islamic Studies at the Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies at Peking University in China

Dr Husam al-Mallak is a Senior Teaching Fellow at SOAS where he lectures on 'Modern Trends in Islam'. He completed his PhD thesis in January 2016, under Dr Cosimo Zene, Dr J.P. Hartung and Dr Nasr Abu Zayd (d. 2010), on how the mystical thought of Ibn al-‘Arabi can be considered as an Islamic overcoming of Nietzschean nihilism. His MA dissertation at Birkbeck was 'Beyond Postmodernism and the Crisis of Truth: Re-Reading Ibn Al-'Arabi's Qur'anic Hermeneutics' and he has given public lectures on this subject at The Islamic College, the Royal Asiatic Society and the Oriental Institute in Oxford. He has published book reviews in the Journal for Shi'a Islamic Studies and has forthcoming articles in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies.

Professor Eric Geoffroy is an expert in Islamic thought and spirituality, he teaches Islamic studies at the University of Strasbourg, and other centres. He is specialist of Sufism and also works on issues of spirituality in the modern world (globalization, ecology). He is president of the International Foundation 'Sufi Consciousness'. He is a member of several international research groups, such as Kalam Research and Media (KRM), and acts as scientific advisor and editorial on Islam (Fondapol, The notebooks of Islam, Religions / Adyan ...). He is a columnist in the magazine Ultreia, and writes regularly for 'Le Monde des Religions'. He wrote twenty articles in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2 and 3, and is the author of over a dozen books

Dr. Maria De Cillis is a Research Associate and the Managing Editor of the Shi'i Heritage Series at the Institute of Ismaili Studies, London. She received an MA degree in Islamic Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London in 2004. She continued her PhD studies at the same University, completing it in October 2010. She is the author of 'Free Will and Predestination in Islamic Thought. Theoretical Compromises in the Works of Avicenna, al-Ghazali and Ibn 'Arabi' (London/New York, 2014). She is among the editors of 'L'esoterisme shi'ite, ses racines et ses prolongements / Shi'i Esotericism: Roots and Developments' (Turnhout, 2016), and her ongoing projects include the monograph 'Decree and Salvation: al-Kirmani's Ismaili Perspective' (forthcoming, 2017).

Dr. Salman Bashier is an independent researcher who obtained his doctorate from the University of Utah. His PhD was published in 2004 under the title 'Ibn al-'Arabi's Barzakh: the Concept of the Limit and the Relationship between God and the World'. He was formerly a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin and a Polonsky Fellow. He is the author of several articles on Islamic mystical and philosophical thought in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. His book, 'The Story of Islamic Philosophy: Ibn Tufayl, Ibn al-'Arabi, and Others on the Limit between Naturalism and Traditionalism' was published in 2012, and his book (in Arabic) 'A Window On the Unseen: Between Ibn al-'Arabi and Averroes, On Imagination, Conjunction, and Knowledge of the Self' was published in December 2016.

Dr Eric Winkel (Shu'ayb) has studied Ibn 'Arabi for three decades and has spent the last four years dedicated to producing the first translation of the 10,000 page Futuhat al-Makkiyah of Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi. The first two of the six sections have been published as pre-prints for feedback and correction, covering the sixteen journeys (books) in 4,448 pages. The work is based on the critical edition of Abd al-Aziz Sultan Mansoub, in Sana'a, who has generously guided this translator.

Ahmad Sukkar has recently completed the Imam Bukhari Visiting Research Fellowship at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies with a project about the intellectual history of Islam, focusing on the relationship between Islamic philosophy and mysticism. He holds a PhD from Birkbeck College, University of London. He is currently preparing his doctoral thesis for publication as a monograph on architectural humanities, along with another monograph on human reality. In collaboration with Professor Samer Akkach (University of Adelaide), he is working towards publishing a critical edition of early modern Arabic text on human reality upon which his doctorate was based. His publications in English include 'Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi of Damascus (d. 1143/1731) and the Mawlawi Sufi Tradition which appears in the Mawlana Rumi Review (2014) and can be downloaded from www.academia.edu/6413580.

Sara Sviri has since 2002 been a distinguished visiting professor in the Department of Arabic and the Department of Comparative Religions at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Previously she taught at the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College London and at the University of Oxford. She retired from academic teaching in 2012 and has since been engaged in lecturing and teaching on Sufism outside of academia, in Israel and elsewhere. Her fields of study are Islamic mysticism, mystical philosophy and psychology, comparative and phenomenological aspects of Islam, the formative period of Islamic mysticism, and related topics. Papers on these topics have been published in many academic publications and can be viewed on www.academia.edu. Her book The Taste of Hidden Things: Images on the Sufi Path was published in 1997 in the USA. In 2008, Tel-Aviv University Press published her extensive Sufi Anthology in Hebrew.

Sa'diyya Shaikh teaches at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She has an interest in Sufism and its implications for Islamic feminism and feminist theory. She teaches courses in religion, gender, Islamic mysticism and the psychology of religion. Her book "Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn 'Arabi, Gender and Sexuality" is published by the UNC.

Pierre Lory pursued his studies in political science and in Arabic literature in Paris. He moved to the Middle East, where he lived in Lebanon and Syria while completing advanced coursework in Arabic. He decided to focus his research on the history of Islamic spirituality and Sufism. He earned a Masters on mystical exegesis in the Koran, and a PhD on Arabic alchemical texts (1981). He then pursued further post-graduate work in Islamic Studies, receiving a "Doctorat d'état". He became Professor at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Sorbonne) in 1991. His participation in international conferences, panels, and research groups frequently takes him to the Middle East, North Africa, Iran. He was also director of the department of Arabic studies at the Institut Français du Proche-Orient, in Damascus, from 2007 to 2011. He has published several books and many articles on Sufism, Arabic alchemy, Islamic esotericism.

Todd Lawson is emeritus professor of Islamic Thought at the University of Toronto where he taught for 25 years. He has published widely on Qur'an commentary (tafsir) the Qur'an as literature, Sufism, Shi'i Islam and the Babi and Bahai traditions. His book on Jesus in Islamic thought, The Crucifixion and the Qur'an was published in 2009 (Oneworld), his Gnostic Apocalypse and Islam in 2011 (Routledge). The article, "Qur'an and Epic" appeared recently in The Journal of Qur'anic Studies (2014: 16.1). This and other of his publications are available at www.toddlawson.ca. He is now writing a book on the Qur'an as sacred epic. He lives in Montreal

Zahra' Langhi is a researcher in Islamic history, Sufism, metaphysics, and female spirituality in comparative religions. She has an MA from the American University in Cairo on Sitt 'Ajam's Commentary of Ibn Arabi's Contemplation of the Holy Mysteries and the Rising of the Divine Lights. She is also the co-founder of of the Libyan Women's Platform for Peace, a socio-political movement which aims at peace building, inclusivity and gender equality. She is a member of the Libyan National Dialogue and has taken part in the peace talks. Her MA thesis on Sitt 'Ajam, A Muslim Woman Gnostic of the Middle Ages, is to be published by Fons Vitae.

James W. Morris, Ph.D., currently teaches Islamic studies at Boston College; he lectures widely on Sufism, the Islamic humanities, Islamic philosophy, the Qur'an, Shiite thought, and cinema and spiritual teaching. His many books include: The Reflective Heart: Discovering Spiritual Intelligence in Ibn 'Arabi's 'Meccan Illuminations'; and the forthcoming Approaching Ibn 'Arabi: Foundations, Contexts, Interpretations

Zahra' Langhi is a researcher in Islamic history, Sufism, metaphysics, and female spirituality in comparative religions. She is also the co-founder of of the Libyan Women's Platform for Peace, and is a member of the Libyan National Dialogue. Todd Lawson has published widely on Qur'an commentary, the Qur'an as literature, Sufism, Shi'i Islam and the Babi and Bahai traditions. His book on Jesus in Islamic thought, The Crucifixion and the Qur'an was published in 2009, his Gnostic Apocalypse and Islam in 2011

Michael Sells, Ph.D. (University of Chicago), is a John Henry Barrows Professor of Islamic History and Literature in the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. Michael Sells studies and teaches in the areas of qur'anic studies; Sufism; Arabic and Islamic love poetry; mysticism (Greek, Islamic, Christian, and Jewish); and religion and violence. He is currently completing a new and expanded edition of his 1999 book Approaching the Qur'an: the Early Revelations. He has published three volumes on Arabic poetry: Desert Tracings: Six Classic Arabian Odes; which focuses upon the pre-Islamic period; Stations of Desire, which focuses upon the love poetry of Ibn al-'Arabi; and The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature, Al-Andalus which he co-edited and to which he contributed. His books on mysticism include Early Islamic Mysticism, translations and commentaries on influential mystical passages from the Qur'an, hadith, Arabic poetry, and early Sufi writings; and Mystical Languages of Unsaying, an examination of apophatic language, with special attention to Plotinus, John the Scot, Ibn al-'Arabi, Meister Eckhart, and Marguerite Porete. His work on religion and violence includes: The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia; and The New Crusades: Constructing the Muslim Enemy which he co-edited and to which he contributed. He teaches courses on the topics of the Qur'an, Islamic love poetry, comparative mystical literature, Arabic Sufi poetry, and Ibn al-'Arabi.

Caner Dagli is currently a professor in the Religion and Philosophy department at Roanoke College in Salem, VA. Dagli earned a B.A. from Cornell University, an M.A. from George Washington University and a Ph.D. from Princeton University. His dissertation is titled "From Mysticism to Philosophy and Back." He specializes in Islamic philosophy, mysticism in world religions and Sufism. He recently published a translation and study of the Fusus al-hikam, entitled "The Ringstones of Wisdom".

Cecilia Twinch read Modern and Medieval Languages at Cambridge University. She has studied Ibn 'Arabi's work for many years and is actively involved with the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society based in Oxford, being Reviews Editor of the Journal. She has also studied at the Beshara School in Scotland. Besides working as a teacher, translator and editor, she has written numerous articles and has lectured on Ibn 'Arabi in Europe, America, North Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Publications include "Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi and the Interior Wisdom" in Los Dos Horizontes (The Two Horizons), "Julian of Norwich: 'All shall be well'" in Mujeres de Luz (Women of Light) and an English translation, with Pablo Beneito, of one of Ibn 'Arabi's earliest works, "Contemplation of the Holy Mysteries" (Mashahid al-asrar).

Stephen Hirtenstein is editor of the Ibn 'Arabi Society Journal. He studied at the Beshara School in Scotland, and is co-founder of Anqa Publishing. His publications include a biography of Ibn 'Arabi, "The Unlimited Mercifier: The Spiritual Life and Thought of Ibn 'Arabi" (1999), a translation with Pablo Beneito of Ibn 'Arabi's Awrad as "The Seven Days of the Heart" (2000) and with Martin Notcutt of Ibn 'Arabi's Mishkat al-anwar as "Divine Sayings" (2005). He is currently working on a translation of some of Ibn 'Arabi's shorter texts.

James W. Morris is professor in Theology at Boston College. He has written and taught in many areas of spirituality and religious thought, including the Islamic humanities, Islamic philosophy, Sufism, and cinema in spiritual teaching. His recent books include The Reflective Heart: Discovering Spiritual Intelligence in Ibn 'Arabi's 'Meccan Illuminations' (2005); Orientations: Islamic Thought in a World Civilisation (2004); Knowing the Spirit (2006); and Ibn 'Arabi: The Meccan Revelations (2002).

Dr. Pablo Beneito is Professor at the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Faculty of Philology, University of Seville. He has edited and translated several of Ibn 'Arabi's works: the Mashahid al-asrar (with Souad al-Hakim, Spanish and Arabic edn.; with Cecilia Twinch, English version); the Kashf al-ma'na (El secreto de los Nombres de Dios) on the Divine Names; and, with Stephen Hirtenstein, Ibn 'Arabi's Awrad, translated into English as The Seven Days of the Heart. Among other works, recently he has published the anthology La taberna de las luces on Sufi poetry and the book El lenguaje de las alusiones on Ibn Arabi's doctrines of love, beauty and compassion. He is the Director of the collection Alquitara (devoted to Oriental literature) in Ediciones Mandala (Madrid).

Born in Lancashire, UK. Married with two grown up children. Read Philosophy and Religious Studies at Lancaster University and postgraduate research at Keble College, University of Oxford. Formerly Senior Lecturer at University of Lincoln, Department of Psychology specialising in courses on the Philosophy of the Self and Philosophy of Science. Retired in 2003. Student of Ibn 'Arabi form very many years. Co-director of the Chisholme Institute, Scotland which runs courses on behalf of the Beshara Trust in Intensive Esoteric Education. Published "Ibn 'Arabi and Modern Thought" (Anqa Publishing, Oxford, 2002).

Vincent J. Cornell is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Middle East and Islamic Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. From 2000-2006, he was Professor of History and Director of the King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies at the University of Arkansas. From 1991-2000, he taught at Duke University. His published works include over twenty articles and three books, including The Way of Abu Madyan (Cambridge: The Islamic Texts Society, 1996) and Realm of the Saint: Power and Authority in Moroccan Sufism (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1998). His most recent publication is Voices of Islam, Vincent J. Cornell General Editor (Westport, Connecticut and London: Praeger, 2007), 5 volumes. This comprehensive introduction to Islamic religion, thought, life, and civilization includes chapters by 50 Muslim authors, including many of the premier scholars of Islamic Studies. Volume titles and editors: Volume 1 Voices of Tradition (Vincent J. Cornell); Volume 2 Voices of the Spirit (Vincent J. Cornell); Volume 3, Voices of Life: Family, Home, and Society (Virginia Gray Henry Blakemore); Volume 4 Voices of Art, Beauty, and Science (Vincent J. Cornell); Volume 5 Voices of Change (Omid Safi). Dr. Cornell's interests cover the entire spectrum of Islamic thought from Sufism to theology and Islamic law. He has lived and worked in Morocco for nearly six years, and has spent considerable time both teaching and doing research in Egypt, Tunisia, Malaysia, and Indonesia. He is currently working on projects on Islamic ethics and moral theology in conjunction with the Shalom Hartmann Institute in Jerusalem and the Elijah Interfaith Institute. For the past six years, he has been a key participant the Building Bridges Seminars hosted by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Jane Clark is a teacher who lives in Oxford. She has been studying Ibn 'Arabi's thought for nearly thirty years as a student of the Beshara School, and in 2000 took a degree at Oxford in order to read him in the original Arabic. She is particularly interested in the way that his ideas have spread throughout the world, and as Society Librarian has done research work on the early manuscripts. She has written and lectured on Ibn 'Arabi's thought and is most concerned with the universal appeal of his writings, especially as revealed in Fusus al-hikam.

Elias Amidon is the spiritual director of the Sufi Way International, a western Sufi Order in the lineage of Hazrat Inayat Khan. He has worked as an architect and urban planning consultant. For a number of years he worked with indigenous tribes in northern Thailand and Burma on land rights issues, and has led citizen-to-citizen delegations to Burma, Thailand, Iraq, Syria, and Palestine. He is currently a director of the Abraham Path Initiative. He is co-editor of the books Earth Prayers, Life Prayers, and Prayers for a Thousand Years

Salman Bashier graduated from The University of Utah in August 2000. Since then he has been working as a visiting lecturer at Haifa University in the departments of Philosophy and Arabic Language and Literature. He is the author of "Ibn al-Arabi's Barzakh: The Concept of the Limit and the Relationship between God and the World". He is now completing a second book on the linkage between mystical and philosophical thought. His interests extend to Greek and Islamic philosophy and mysticism, Islamic theology, law, and Arabic literature and poetry.

Ibrahim Kalin is an assistant professor of Islamic studies at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA. He received his B.A. in history from the University of Istanbul, Turkey, M.A. in Islamic thought from the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC), Malaysia, and Ph.D. from the George Washington University, Washington DC. He is the recipient of the CTNS Religion and Science Course Award, 2002 for his seminar "Religion and Science: Traditional and Modern Encounters". His book on Mulla Sadra's theory of knowledge entitled Knowledge in Later Islamic Philosophy: Mulla Sadra on the Unification of the Intellect and the Intelligible will appear among Oxford titles in 2006.

Olga Louchakova, M.D., Ph.D., is the core faculty professor at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, and the director of Transpersonal Education and Research Specialization. An acknowledged teacher of Advaita Vedanta, Kundalini Yoga and Prayer of the Heart, Olga received her teaching mandate in the Russian spiritual underground. She published many articles in neuroscience, spirituality and transpersonal psychology, and is currently working on the book-project dedicated to the Prayer of the Heart. She maintains private practice consulting on psychospiritual transformation in Bay Area, California.

Samer is an intellectual historian and architectural theoretician with expertise in Islamic philosophy and mysticism. He has studied extensively the works of Ibn 'Arabi and his later follower 'Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (d. 1731). His Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam: An Architectural Reading of Mystical Ideas (SUNY 2005) focuses on the influence of Ibn 'Arabi's teachings on architectural thinking, while his forthcoming book on Islam and the Enlightenment (Oneworld 2007) traces the development of Ibn 'Arabi's ideas through al-Nabulusi's life and works.

Niels Detert has been a long-time student of Ibn 'Arabi under the umbrella of the Beshara School. He works as a Clinical Psychologist at the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford, specialising in Neuropsychology. His work is mainly clinical in the cognitive assessment and psychological therapy of people with neurological disorders. He lives in Oxford with his partner and young son.

Suleyman Derin teaches at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Marmara in Istanbul. He obtained a Ph.D. from Leeds University, with a thesis titled Towards Some Paradigms on the Sufi Conception of Love: from Rabia to Ibn al-Farid, including a chapter on Ibn 'Arabi. His most recent work was on the subject of Ibn Arabi's approach to the verses of qisas "retaliation" titled "The Tradition of Sulh among the Sufis with Special Reference to Ibn 'Arabi and Yunus Emre"

Jane Carroll is a founding member of the Muyhiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society and is Chairperson on the board of the Society in America. She works as an architect in Ojai, California.

Angela Jaffray received her PhD from Harvard University's Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations in 2000. Her translations of Lorca's Sonnets of Dark Love were published in Collected Poems of Federico Garcia Lorca. Since graduating, she has dedicated herself to translating and commenting on various texts of Ibn 'Arabi, including The Universal Tree and the Four Birds: Ibn 'Arabi's Treatise on Unification, recently published by Anqa Publishing, and Unveiling from the Effects of the Voyages. She lives in Chicago.

Peter Yiangou is currently the senior partner of an architectural practice based in the Cotswolds in the UK. His interest in Ibn 'Arabi started in 1972 when he met Bulent Rauf, the founder member of the MIAS. His interest in Ibn 'Arabi has continued since then through the activities of the Beshara School, also founded by Bulent Rauf. He spent time as head of the first Beshara Centre at Swyre Farm in the UK in 1975, and a period as Chairman of the Beshara Trust in the early 90's. He has attended 6 month and short courses at the Beshara School where Ibn 'Arabi is part of the core curriculum. In recent years he has been involved in running 10 Beshara School courses in Australia and Indonesia.

Th. Emil Homerin is Professor of Religion in the Department of Religion and Classics at the University of Rochester, where he teaches courses on Islam, classical Arabic literature, and mysticism. Homerin completed his Ph.D. with honors at the University of Chicago ('87), and has lived and worked in Egypt for a number of years. Among his many publications are From Arab Poet to Muslim Saint (2nd revised edition, Cairo: American University Press, 2001), his anthology of translations, Ibn al-Farid: Sufi Verse & Saintly Life (Paulist Press, 2001), The Wine of Love and Life (Chicago, 2005) and several chapters on Islam in the volume The Religious Foundations of Western Civilization (Abingdon Press, 2006). Homerin has been the recipient of grants from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation, the American Research Center in Egypt, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has also won a number of awards including the American Association of Teachers of Arabic Translation Prize, the Golden Key Honor Society's recognition for his contributions to undergraduate education, University of Rochester's Teacher of the Year in the Humanities (2002), and the University of Rochester's Goergen Award for Distinguished Achievement and Artistry in Undergraduate Education (2005).

Alexander Knysh is professor of Islamic Studies and former chair (1998-2004) of the Department of Near Eastern Studies, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He obtained his doctoral degree from the Institute for Oriental Studies (Leningrad Branch) of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1986. Since 1991 he has lived and worked in the United States of America and England. His research interests include Islamic mysticism and Islamic theological thought in historical perspective as well as Islam and Islamic movements in local contexts (especially Yemen and the Northern Caucasus). He has numerous publications on these subjects, including five books.

Ian Almond is Associate Professor of Postcolonial Literature at Georgia State University, Atlanta. He is the author of four books, mostly on Islam and its representation in the Western tradition. He lived for six years in Turkey, where he taught for the most part at Kayseri and Istanbul.

After receiving his Ph.D. degree in International Studies, Eric Winkel taught at the International Islamic University, Malaysia. He has been a Fulbright scholar in Pakistan. From 2001-2008 he taught at a small school he co-founded in New Mexico based on constructivist learning strategies and learning teams. Currently, he is joining the National College of Arts, Lahore. He has written numerous articles and monographs on religion and sacred law. His latest work is a novel, Damascus Steel. Eric Winkel's other published works include Mysteries of Purity: Ibn al-'Arabi's asrar al-taharah (1995) and Islam and the Living Law: The Ibn al-'Arabi Approach (1997). Current research interest is "The Openings Project," a digital dars which is an effort to assist searchers to gain access to the Futuhat in their own ways. He and Ely have two children, Aman (6) and Amnah (5 months).

Jane Clark is a teacher who lives in Oxford. She has been studying Ibn 'Arabi's thought for nearly thirty years as a student of the Beshara School, and in 2000 took a degree at Oxford in order to read him in the original Arabic. She is particularly interested in the way that his ideas have spread throughout the world, and as Society Librarian has done research work on the early manuscripts. She has written and lectured on Ibn 'Arabi's thought and is most concerned with the universal appeal of his writings, especially as revealed in Fusus al-hikam.