The aim of this meeting is to bring together confirmed and emerging specialists in order to gain some perspective on the current academic research on Ibn ʿArabī and “Akbarī” thought and to discuss research directions for the future. It will also bring to light questions arising from the reading and use of Ibn ʿArabī’s ideas today, taking into account the new approaches and better access to the texts provided by recent tools for textual analysis, and evaluating how our present-day situation shapes our understanding of his works, and conversely, what an informed reading can bring to current re-appropriations and (mis)use.

Presentation

The fact that the thought of Ibn ʿArabī (560-638/1165-1240) is at the same time intensely innovative and deeply rooted in the tradition may explain in part why it had such a lasting influence both among followers and detractors. His ideas, as understood by the first generations of those who claimed his heritage, shaped the development of Islamic thought and religious experience in following centuries.

The aim of this meeting is to bring together confirmed and emerging specialists in order to gain some perspective on the current academic research on Ibn ʿArabī and “Akbarī” thought and to discuss research directions for the future. It will also bring to light questions arising from the reading and use of Ibn ʿArabī’s ideas today, taking into account the new approaches and better access to the texts provided by recent tools for textual analysis, and evaluating how our present-day situation shapes our understanding of his works, and conversely, what an informed reading can bring to current re-appropriations and (mis)use.

Programme

Day I — Monday June 24, 2019

(9:30 - Welcome)

10:00 - Introduction

10:15 - Keynote 1 — Denis Gril: Unité et dualité dans le commentaire de la Fātiḥa (Futūḥāt, chap. 5)

(11:15 - Coffee Break)

11:30 - Panel 1 — Reading Ibn ʿArabī today: Ongoing issues and new approaches (I) (Chair: C. Bonmariage)

• Ali Reza Pharaa (Stony Brook): Realization without Intention, witnessing beyond understanding: the work of beauty and Ibn ʿArabī’s ‘Station of no Station’
• Gregory Vandamme (FNRS-UCLouvain): ‘The most perfect knowledge’: Ibn ʿArabī’s epistemology of Perplexity (ḥayra)

(13:00 - Lunch Break)

14:30 - Panel 2 — Ibn ʿArabī and his milieu: Between continuities and ruptures (Chair: Luca Patrizi)

• José Bellver (UCLouvain): Iʿtibārism and Early Shūdhiyya: Two Intellectual Sufi Trends in al-Andalus and the Maghrib on the Eve of Ibn ʿArabī
• Sophie Tyser (EPHE/UniBonn): Between Revealed and Non-Revealed Knowledge: Ibn ʿArabī’s Representation of Man as a Microcosm in the Light of its Intellectual Context
• Michele Petrone (UCLouvain): Saturn in Ibn ʻArabī's Cosmological views. A Preliminary Inquiry

(16:45 - Coffee Break)

17:00 - General Discussion (I)

(17:45 - End of Day I)

Day II — Tuesday June 25, 2019

(9:30 - Welcome)

10:00 - Keynote 2 — Claude Addas: La ‘voie radieuse’ : Ibn ʿArabī, la Loi et son interprétation

(11:00 - Coffee Break)

11:15 - Panel 3 — The transmission and reception of Ibn ʿArabī’s thought in the “Akbarī school” (Chair: Gregory Vandamme)

• Nicholas Boylston (Harvard): Quranic Exegesis at the Meeting Between Twelver Shi’ism and Akbarian Thought: Sayyid Ḥaydar Āmuli’s Tafsīr al-Muḥīṭ al-Aʿẓam
• Giovanni Martini (L’Orientale): Muḥammad Shīrīn Maghribī (d. 810/1407) as a Key Agent in the Transmission of Akbarian Silsilas

(12:45 - Lunch Break)

14:15 - Panel 4 — Reading Ibn ʿArabī today: Ongoing issues and new approaches (II) (Chair: Sophie Tyser)

• Cornelis van Lit (Utrecht): Reading the Commentary Tradition on Fuṣūs al-ḥikam Digitally: Preliminary Results, Desired Prospects
• Stephen Hirtenstein (MIAS): Views from the Home Front: manuscript preservation and the MIAS archiving project

(15:45 - Coffee Break)

16:00 - Keynote 3 — James W. Morris> Taḥqīq ('Realization') and the Formation of a Global Civilization

17:00 - General discussion (II)

(17:45 - End of the Conference)

Organisers

• Cécile Bonmariage | Gregory Vandamme (FRS-FNRS | UCLouvain / Institut supérieur de philosophie / Centre De Wulf-Mansion

Scientific Commitee

• Nicholas Boylston
• Raphaël Gély
• Michele Petrone
• Sophie Tyser

Partners

• FRS-FNRS 
• ISP
• RSCS
• INCAL
• Ecole des Sciences philosophiques et religieuses (USL-B)