Being and Time

This article explores the relationship between power, politics, and metaphysics in the work of Ibn Qasī (d. 546/1151), a medieval mystic and revolutionary. In 539/1144, Ibn Qasī led a group of mystical aspirants in revolt against the Almoravids in al-Andalus, establishing an independent state in the southwest where he ruled as a messiah. After a series of shifting alliances with the invading Almohad armies and the Christian king of a newly-independent Portugal, his followers mutinied and executed him in protest. While contemporary accounts read Ibn Qasī’s abstract metaphysics and revolutionary political activism as antipodes to be reconciled, this article reframes the problem. Deconstructing such binaries as “mystical vs. political,” “metaphysical vs. material,” and “spiritual vs. legal,” the article maps a sixth/twelfth century Andalusī landscape in which mystics, philosophers, jurisprudents, and governors articulated power through a shared set of authorizing discourses. For Andalusī mystics and their Mālikī jurist rivals, mastery of the Qurʾan and hadith ( uṣūlī methodologies), defense of public morality ( ḥisba ), and ascetic renunciation ( zuhd ) conferred a degree of social, religious, and political authority that cut across confessional identities. Ibn Qasī’s Doffing Sandals ( Khalʿ al-naʿlayn ) draws from these techniques to articulate a vertiginous system of mystical inspiration, ontogenesis, and prophetic time. Here, metaphysical principles are inextricable from material substrates and human actors, and must thus be analyzed as such. Positioning his own historical era as the climax of a cyclical cosmic drama, Ibn Qasī frames himself as the Mahdī and his own politico-spiritual struggle as the apocalyptic moment ushering in the eschaton

Asceticism · Confessional · Metaphysics · Mysticism · Politics · Renunciation · Islamic Studies and History · Islamic Thought and Society Studies · Medieval History and Crusades