The Book of Meccan Inspirations
كِتَابُ الفُتُوحَاتِ المَكِّيَّة
Dear Ibn Arabi Seminar Participants,
Welcome! The seminar is open to anyone interested in studying Ibn ‘Arabi, with or without full proficiency in Arabic. The seminar may be taken for credit by special arrangement but most of our participants come simply to learn from Ibn Arabi and each other. In Autumn 2024 and Spring 2025, we will meet weekly from 6:30-8:30 pm on Wednesdays at Harvard’s CGIS South building, seminar room S450 (4th floor).
Recordings of each week’s sessions (and recent years’ discussions around the long chapter on Love in the Futuhat) can be found in the section below on this website. This autumn, we will NOT have sessions on Sept. 25, October 2 [due to Prof. Morris traveling for lectures], and the day before Thanksgiving.
Later in Fall 2024 (hopefully by the end of October), we will be beginning a more open Zoom session devoted to close study of the Arabic text and comparative translations of the Fusus al-Hikam. We'll also use the Arabic of the selected chapters (the Affifi edition is available to download from the “Resources” section below), but people can more easily participate using the English translations. Our focus from the start will be on the meanings of each Fass in today’s contexts. We’ll announce the initial chapters we’ll start with after the September 11 session; two participants will start off the discussion each time of a single chapter that they have selected. The discussions of each chapter will likely take several sessions in each case.
At some point in late October or November, we plan to move into a Zoom format that will allow interested parties from elsewhere to participate in the weekly discussions.
Photo below is of participants at our final Spring 2023 session.
Every Wednesday, we record the seminar and post it here:
Readings can be found below
2024-2025 Readings: Affifi Arabic edition of Fusus al-Hikam. English translations by J.L. Austin, C. Dagli, and A. Bewley.
Primary Texts for 2022-2024 (Spring session)
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Mansub Edition Volume 5
Fall 2022: This is the first half of Ibn Arabi’s chapter 178 of the Futuhat. We began the year (starting in fall 2022) using this text. In the Spring semester, we completed this volume and moved on to Volume 6.
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Mansub Edition Volume 6
Spring 2023 through Spring 2024: This is the text we are currently using. This volume contains the second half of Ibn Arabi’s chapter 178 of the Futuhat.
Further Resources
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Interview with Prof. Morris
Here is the link to a recent long interview that takes up a whole range of practical spiritual topics related to our Futuhat chapter 178 on Love (mahabba):
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Sirr of Chapter 178
Below is a translation of Ibn Arabi’s Sirr (or “innermost heart”) of chapter 178. This Sirr was discussed in the 2021-2022 sessions and is the highly condensed explication of the much longer chapter that we are dealing with in this year’s sessions.
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Short Course on Love
This introduction to Ibn Arabi on the subject of love. This introduction includes a translation of the fascinating chapter 73 of the Futuhat al-Makkiyya (also on Love), as well as shorter related translations from chapter 559.
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Al-Qushayri's Epistle on Sufism
This famous epistle on Sufism may be of particular interest to students of this section of the Futuhat. Ibn Arabi's chapters in this second section (Fasl al-Maqamat) of the Futuhat follow the same order of topics as in Qushayri, with some important additions. It is often helpful to compare Futuhat chapters with corresponding discussions of Qushayri, or with A. Knysh’s excellent translation of Q's Risala.
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Bulaq Edition
Some advanced students may prefer to use this edition of the Arabic text for their study of Ibn Arabi’s chapter 178 of the Futuhat, especially in checking problematic textual readings in tho Mansub edition. The website www.onetradition.org includes Ibn Arabi's entire autograph manuscript of the final recension of the Futuhat, the Bulaq edition, and a searchable Arabic text of that entire edition—the edition that is usually cited by virtually all Western-language studies of Ibn Arabi ad the Futuhat.
E-mail Address Updates and Current Seminar Recordings
Please email jwinstonmorris@hotmail.com directly to be added to our mailing list.
Thank you!