Ibn Arabi On Gratitude
Ibn Arabi On Gratitude
Ibn Arabi On Gratitude
MUHYIDDIN IBN
ʿARABI SOCIETY
VOLUME 64 2018
The Dialectic of Gratitude (Shukr) in
the Non-dualism of Ibn al-ʿArabī1
Atif Khalil
15. Q.34:13.
16. Izutsu, Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qurʾān, 2nd edn. (Montreal:
McGill-Queen University Press, 2002), 18.
17. Cited in Michel Chodkiewicz, An Ocean without Shore: Ibn al-ʿArabī,
the Book and the Law, trans. David Streight (Albany: SUNY, 1993), 20.
Gratitude in the Non-dualism of Ibn al-ʿArabī 33
21. Qushayrī, Risāla, 333. My use of the Risāla in this article has been
aided by the translations of Rabia T. Harris and Alexander Knysh.
22. Also known as lām al-taʾkīd.
23. Makkī highlights the unique power of gratitude by noting that
God does not make an unqualified promise to respond to petitions for
(1) forgiveness (maghfira) (Q.5:40), (2) an increase in wealth or prosper-
ity (Q.9:28), (3) sustenance (rizq) (Q.2:212), (4) an acceptance of the
human’s being tawba (Q.9:27), or (5) the removal of an ill (Q.6:41). For
each of these the divine gift is qualified by ‘if He wills’ or ‘on whom He
wills.’ But this is not so with gratitude, since He promises, without quali-
fication, to give the shākir a ziyāda or mazīd. See Qūt al-qulūb, 1:411–2.
Ghazālī, clearly under the influence of Makkī, also draws attention to this
unique feature of the virtue in his treatment of the subject. See Ihyāʾʿulūm
al-dīn (Aleppo: Dār al-Waʿī, 1998), 4:125. Along similar lines, Muḥāsibī
states that the mark of being genuinely grateful to God is that one receives
more from God in its wake. See Kitāb al-qaṣd wa al-rujūʿ, in al-Waṣāya
aw al-naṣāʾiḥ al-dīniyya wa nafaḥāt al-qudṣiyya, ed. ʿAbd al-Qādir Aḥmad
ʿAṭāʾ (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2003), 170.
Gratitude in the Non-dualism of Ibn al-ʿArabī 35
What can the human being possibly give God? The answer, as
the passage makes clear, is simply a ziyāda of that which elicited
divine shukr to begin with, that is to say, more of virtue, good-
ness and piety in conformity to the dictates of prophecy. At the
heart of this idea, as we have already seen, lies the Qurʾanic
model in which human ethics (to return again to Izutsu) stands
as a ‘pale reflection…of the divine nature itself.’ We learn how
to express gratitude to God by observing how it is that He
expresses gratitude towards us. Since He gives us more of what
we are thankful for, we too are obliged to give Him more of that
for which He is thankful to us.
But there is more to the emphasis Ibn al-ʿArabī places on
the necessity of giving more to God in response to His grati-
tude than simply a theological anthropology centered on the
notion of the human being as an imago dei. The idea, as we saw
earlier, is also found in at least one of the meanings of shukr.
Abū Khalaf al-Ṭabarī (d.1077) considers the particular semantic
relation between ‘gratitude’ and ‘increase’ to be of such conse-
quence that he opens his chapter on the subject in the Comfort
of the Enlightened Ones by drawing attention to it. ‘The meaning
of gratitude in the (Arabic) language,’ he writes, ‘is ziyāda.’25
When we call to mind the extent to which the unique features
of the Arabic language determine the contours of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s
own line of thinking26 we can see why he considers the two
24. Fut.2:202.
25. maʿnā al-shukr fī al-lugha al-ziyāda. Ṭabarī, Salwat al-ʿārifīn, 164.
26. Chodkiewicz’s Ocean without Shore offers an unsurpassed analysis
of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s understanding of the relation between language and
revelation.
36 Atif Khalil
Patrick Fitzgerald, ‘Gratitude and Justice,’ Ethics 109, no. 1 (1998): 119–
53; and A.D.M. Walker, ‘Gratefulness and Gratitude,’ Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society, New Series 81 (1980–81): 39–55. For a more theo-
logical reflection, see Joseph Lombardi, ‘Filial Gratitude and God’s Right
to Command,’ The Journal of Religious Ethics 19, no. 1 (1991): 93–118. On
gratitude in Buddhist philosophy, see Malcolm D. Eckel, ‘Gratitude to an
Empty Savior: A Study of the Concept of Gratitude in Mahāyāna Buddhist
Philosophy,’ History of Religions, 25, no. 1 (1985): 57–75, although very
little of the article is devoted to gratitude per se.
30. Q.35:30; 35:34; 42:23. Curiously, even in the one instance where
shakūr does not appear alongside ghafūr (Q.64:17), the verse is still pre-
ceded by mention of divine maghfira, as if to reiterate the close Qurʾanic
relation between divine gratitude and forgiveness. The relation is itself
quite a logical one considering that through the former God rewards
human piety and through the latter He forgives human wrongdoing.
31. Bayhaqī (d.1066), for example, notes that when shākir is used
of God it refers to His praise and reward for human devotion, and when
shakūr is used it refers to the continuation and perpetuity of that shukr.
See Kitāb al-asmāʾ wa al-ṣifāt, ed. ʿImād al-Dīn Aḥmad Ḥaydar (Beirut: Dār
al-Kutub al-ʿArabī, 2002), 1:128.
38 Atif Khalil
32. As Ibn al-ʿArabī states in his two chapters on the station of riḍā
(128–9), everyone will eventually experience the mercy of God after death
because of an essential servitude to which each soul is bound and which
it cannot, through its own will, escape. Divine mercy, and by extension
divine shukr, will respond to the soul’s essential servitude by granting it
everlasting felicity; see Fut.2:212–3. For a general treatment of the role
of mercy in Akbarian soteriology, see William Chittick, Imaginal Worlds:
Ibn al-ʿArabī and the Problem of Religious Diversity (Albany: SUNY, 1995),
97–119. See also Mohammed Rustom’s discussion of Mullā ̣Ṣadrā’s views
on this subject in The Triumph of Mercy (Albany: SUNY, 2012), 99–116.
33. Fut.2:202.
34. Ibid. We are reminded of an episode from the life of the caliph ʿUmar
b. al-Khaṭṭāb, who once heard a man pray, ‘My Lord, make me of the “few!”’.
The supplication led the caliph to retort, ‘What kind of prayer is this?’ to which
he replied, ‘I heard the words of God, “and few of My bondsmen are shakūr.”
This is why I now pray that He include me among those “few.”’ Zamakhsharī,
al-Kashshāf (Riyadh: Maktabat al-ʿAbīkān, 1998), 5:112 (Q.34:13).
Gratitude in the Non-dualism of Ibn al-ʿArabī 39
35. Fut.2:202.
36. Fut.2:343.
37. The ‘it is said’ which precedes the citation of course implies that
Qushayrī does not himself necessarily hold this position. Risāla, 334.
38. Ṭabarī, Salwat al-ʿārifīn, 166–7. See also Abū l-Ḥasan al-Sīrjānī
(d.1077), Kitāb al-bayāḍ wa al-sawād, eds. Bilal Orfali and Nada Saab
(Leiden: Brill, 2012), 301–2.
40 Atif Khalil
42. Fut.2:343.
43. Kharkūshī (also = Khargūshī, d.1015 or 1016), Tahdhīb al-asrār,
ed. Syed Muhammad ʿAlī (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya), 108. Arberry’s
assessment of this little-known work was that while it should not be
assigned the same degree of importance as the better-known contri-
butions of Sarrāj, Makkī, Kalābādhī and Qushayrī, ‘it is a source by no
means to be disregarded; and no complete history of Ṣūfism will ever be
written that does not take [it] into account…’ See ‘Khargūshī’s Manual
of Sufism,’ Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, 9, no. 2 (1938): 349.
For more on Khargūshī, see Ahmet T. Karamustafa, Sufism: The Formative
Period (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007),
65; Hassan Ansari and Sabine Schmidtke, ‘Abū Saʿd al-Khargūshī and
his Kitāb al-Lawāmiʿ: A Sufi Guide Book for Preachers from 4th/10th cen-
tury Nīshāpūr,’ Arabica 58 (2011): 503–6. See also Christopher Melchert,
‘Khargūshī, Tahdhīb al-asrār,’ Bulletin of the SOAS 73, no. 1 (2010): 29–44.
44. Makkī, Qūt al-qulūb, 1:416–17.
42 Atif Khalil
45. Even though Makkī, as we have just seen, states rather explicitly
that one must see the blessing within the trial, he does not develop the
idea in the Nourishment in a way that would make it clear to the reader
that thankfulness must be directed only towards the good within the afflic-
tion. On the pedagogical use of aphorisms in early Sufi literature, see Atif
Khalil, Repentance and the Return to God: Tawba in Early Sufism (Albany:
SUNY, 2018), 83–5.
Gratitude in the Non-dualism of Ibn al-ʿArabī 43
among those who occupy such a lofty rank, since ‘few,’ after all,
‘are shakūr.’
47. Fut.2:203. For our mystic’s use of Makkī, see Saeko Yazaki, Islamic
Mysticism and Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī: The Role of the Heart (London: Routledge,
2013), 99–100; William Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge (Albany: SUNY,
1989), 103.
48. Q.39:7.
Gratitude in the Non-dualism of Ibn al-ʿArabī 45
49. Fut.2:213. For more on riḍā, see Atif Khalil, ‘Contentment, Satisfac-
tion, and Good-Pleasure (Riḍā) in Early Sufi Moral Psychology,’ Studies in
Religion 43, no. 3 (2014): 1–19.
50. The saying is attributed to Ibn Mubārak (Qushayrī, Risāla, 292), but
also has its basis in a prophetic tradition.
51. Matthew 5: 5, 5: 39, 21: 12.
46 Atif Khalil
is the case of one who does not witness the divinity within the
means through which he receives the gift. It is permissible for
him not to express gratitude to God, because such shukr, after
all, requires a cognizance or awareness of divine benefaction.
‘Abandoning gratitude,’ he states, ‘because of seeing the act
of benefaction from the human being alone is a sound aban-
donment (tark ṣaḥīḥ). This is the station of the common folk
(maqām al-ʿumūm). It is a sound abandonment for the common
folk from among the people of God.’52 While imperfect, this
tark is nevertheless acceptable for our mystic considering the
abandoner’s state. While Ibn al-ʿArabī does not address whether
or not such a one thanks the human means through whom he
receives the gift, there is no reason to presume he does not when
we recall that he is of ‘the folk of God.’ It is unlikely anyone
who stands in this rank would, in our mystic’s eyes, fail to fulfill
so basic a moral obligation as thanking others according to
the measure of their right. As he states in the previous chapter,
‘gratitude towards the benefactor is obligatory on the basis of
both rational proofs and revelation (ʿaqlan wa sharʿan).’53 The
inability of the recipient of the gift to recognize the divine self-
disclosure or tajallī, however, is another matter, and one that is
excusable since he is of the ʿumūm, and not of the elect.
The mystic then proceeds to describe the gratitude of the
perfect ones (al-kummal min al-nās [sing. kāmil]). Their perfec-
tion with respect to shukr is the result of the two-pronged or
dual nature of their gratitude, which leads them to thank both
God and people, or in more theological terms, both the Causer
of causes (musabbib al-asbāb) and the secondary causes (asbāb).
Unlike those who stand at the level below them, they are not
veiled by the means through which divine gifts come their way,
and therefore fulfill – as far as the obligations of gratitude are
concerned – both the rights of God and His servants. They are
thankful to God because they see Him as the Ultimate Bene-
factor, thereby fulfilling the ‘right of gratitude’ (ḥaqq al-shukr)
which, as Ibn al-ʿArabī makes clear in the previous chapter,
52. Fut.2:203.
53. Fut.2:202.
Gratitude in the Non-dualism of Ibn al-ʿArabī 47
54. It has at least part of its basis in a famous ḥadīth in which God says
to Moses, ‘Be grateful to Me with true gratitude (ḥaqq al-shukr).’ On hear-
ing this the Israelite prophet asks, ‘O Lord, and who is capable of such a
thing?’ to which God replies, ‘if you see that the blessing is from Me, then
you have shown gratitude to Me with true gratitude.’ Fut.2:202; cf. Makkī,
Qūt al-qulūb, 1:413; Qushayrī, Risāla, 335; Sīrjānī, Bayāḍ, 302.
55. Q.31:14.
56. Fut.2:204.
57. This possibility is embodied in the person who, through his absorp-
tion in the contemplation of the One, becomes unconsciousness of the
world of multiplicity, and therefore witnesses and thanks none but the
divinity alone. The idea is reflected in a saying attributed to Shiblī, that
‘gratitude is the vision of the Benefactor, not the gift (al-shukr ruʾyat
al-munʿim lā al-niʿma).’ Qushayrī, Risāla, 335. The idea of thanking God
but not the means also appears within formulations of gratitude that
reflect lower stages of the path, and which encourage the wayfarer to turn
away from the world altogether, along with the conventional responsibili-
ties that accompany it, so as to fix one’s attention entirely on the Absolute.
An example of this may be found in a saying ascribed to Abū ʿUthmān
al-Ḥīrī, that ‘the truthfulness of gratitude is that you do not praise anyone
other than the Benefactor (ghayr al-munʿim), and the reality of gratitude
is that you do not show gratitude for the gift because it is a veil over the
Gift-giver.’ Ṭabarī, Salwat al-ʿārifīn, 165. For a similar saying attributed to
Dhū al-Nūn, see Qushayrī, Risāla, 341 (chap. on yaqīn), and Kharkūshī,
Tahdhīb al-asrār, 71. See also Helmut Ritter, Ocean of the Soul: Men, the
World and God in the Stories of Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār, trans. John O’Kane with
the editorial assistance of Bernd Radtke (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 219. For Ibn
al-ʿArabī, naturally, both of these perspectives remain, at face value, defi-
cient for reasons already explained.
48 Atif Khalil
the perfect ones abandoned? For Ibn al-ʿArabī, they have aban-
doned what he calls, somewhat provocatively, the tawḥīd of
gratitude – the reason being their introduction of a partner in
their gratitude to God. But since this association is itself the
result of a divine commandment, it is a praiseworthy form
of ‘sharing’ or ‘co-partnering,’ without which the obligations
of shukr imposed on them would remain unrealized.58 In the
words of our mystic, ‘this is the station of abandoning grati-
tude, that is, abandoning the tawḥīd of gratitude towards the
root Benefactor, for he has made his gratitude to Him share (cf.
shirk) between the Benefactor at root and the secondary cause,
out of the command of God.’59 Ibn al-ʿArabī’s use of language
here should not be glossed over, since by transforming the shirk
of gratitude into the ideal (because it involves introducing a
partner in one’s gratitude to God), and relegating the tawḥīd
of gratitude to a lower level (because it entails an infringe-
ment of an explicit divine command), he overturns the usual
associations of these terms (where tawḥīd is praiseworthy and
shirk blameworthy). The provocatory nature of his language, it
seems, is not just for the sake of provocation, but to loosen,
instead, our rigid, formulaic and reifying ways of thinking about
God – a hallmark not just of Ibn al-ʿArabī, but of mystics across
traditions (as Sells has so ably shown60). In a strange way, the
strategy is also more faithful to those aspects of the Qurʾanic
text that emphasize the total otherness of God, along with the
inability of the human mind to enclose Him, than approaches
typically found in rational theology and philosophy.
Ibn al-ʿArabī’s description of the tark al-shukr of the kummal
does not end here. He goes on to explain how the full perfection
of their gratitude is only obtained when God is realized as the
supreme agent. This in turn can be viewed from two perspec-
tives. (1) The servant may be marked by gratitude to the extent
58. Fut.2:204.
59. Fut.2:204. Translated differently it may also read, ‘he partnered in
his gratitude (sharraka fī shukrihi) the Benefactor at root with the second-
ary cause, out of the command of God.’
60. See Michael Sells, Mystical Languages of Unsaying (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1994), particularly his introduction and epilogue.
Gratitude in the Non-dualism of Ibn al-ʿArabī 49
The divine state is like the state of existence, because He is its very
being. There is none other than Him. Thus, He did not express
gratitude to anyone except Himself, since He did not confer a
gift except upon Himself. No one received and accepted it except
61. Fut.2:204.
62. Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ, 4:133; cf. the saying attributed to Ibrāhīm
al-Khawwās in Sīrjānī, Bayāḍ, 302.
63. Fut.2:204.
50 Atif Khalil
64. Fut.4:242–3. Note the end of the passage, where God seeks an
increase from the servant for His own gratitude to him.
65. Fut.4:242–3.
Gratitude in the Non-dualism of Ibn al-ʿArabī 51
And to think that one can thank any other than God is to fail to
realize that ‘the Real is a veiled form over the servant.’
Earlier we saw how for Izutsu human ethics in the Qurʾan
stands as a pale reflection of divine ethics. From our treatment
of the subject, we now see how Ibn al-ʿArabī carries out this
Scriptural model to its end. The paradox of monotheism – alluded
to by the contrasting quotations drawn from the medieval
Dominican mystic Meister Eckhart with which we opened the
essay – is resolved in a non-dual ontology that leaves room for
none other than God.