Sufism and the Perfect Human

Reviewed by: Sufism and the Perfect Human: From Ibn ʿArabī to al-Jīlī by Fitzroy Morrissey Michael Ebstein (bio) Sufism and the Perfect Human: From Ibn ʿArabī to al-Jīlī Fitzroy Morrissey Abingdon, New York: Routledge, 2020. 170 Pages. This well-written book is a most important and welcome contribution to the history of ideas in Islam, and it will be of interest not only to those who study Islamic mysticism, but also to scholars of political thought in Islam. This book is dedicated to the teachings of the Muslim Sunnī mystic ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Jīlī (ca. 767/1365–811/1408), who lived and was active mainly in Zabīd (Yemen), a thriving center at the time of Islamic learning and Sufi activity. It focuses specifically on his theory of al-insān al-kāmil, "the perfect human being." It is well known that the concept of al-insān al-kāmil was first elaborated in a Sunnī-mystical context by the great Muḥyī l-Dīn Ibn al-ʿArabī (560/1165–638/1240), and was further developed later on by al-Jīlī, especially in his famous and popular work al-Insān al-kāmil fī maʿrifat al-awākhir wa-l-awāʾil ("The Perfect Human in the Knowledge of the Last and First Things," according to the author's translation). However, since Reynold A. Nicholson's 1921 Studies in Islamic Mysticism, al-Jīlī's theory of the perfect human being and his teachings in general have been relatively neglected in modern scholarship. Overall and as the author explains in the Introduction to his book, "little attention has in fact been given to the precise nature and specific qualities of al-Jīlī's treatment of the idea" (p. 1); al-Jīlī's thought "has instead been blurred into a common "Ibn ʿArabian" or "'Akbarian' tradition" the prevalent scholarly misconception being that al-Jīlī [End Page 145] merely "repackaged" Ibn al-ʿArabī's teachings on the perfect human being "in systematic form" (p. 158). Accordingly, the author attempts in his book to correct this situation by providing a detailed account of "al-Jīlī's treatment of the idea of the Perfect Human ... to tell the history of the idea of the Perfect Human" (p. 1). This history includes not only Ibn al-ʿArabī and al-Jīlī, but also key members of the "Qūnawī tradition," who lived in between these two great masters and whose intellectual endeavors ultimately go back to the interpretative project of Sadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī (d. 673/1274), Ibn al-ʿArabī's most important disciple. Among the followers of this tradition, the author pays particular attention to Saʿīd al-Dīn al-Farghānī (d. ca. 699/1300), ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Kāshānī (d. between 730–6/1329–35), and Dāwūd al-Qaysarī (d. 751/1350), in addition to al-Qūnawī himself. The book is written in a very clear and unassuming style which is a pleasure to read. It is divided into two parts: the first is dedicated to al-Jīlī's life and thought (chapters 1–2), and the second addresses the concept of the perfect human being (chapters 3–6). In the first chapter, the author outlines al-Jīlī's life, works, and the general intellectual-religious as well as political trends that were current in the period in which he was active. This is a well-written and captivating chapter, although a descriptive and detailed-comprehensive list of the different works by al-Jīlī would have surely benefited scholars who are not directly acquainted with his oeuvre. The second chapter provides the reader with a concise summary of al-Jīlī's main metaphysical and cosmological teachings, which neatly serves as a basis for the main discussion in part two of the book. Chapter 3 focuses on the notion according to which the perfect human is a "synthetic" (jāmiʿ) being or entity, that is, a microcosm that comprises within itself all the elements or realities of the universe at large and

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