2023 Volume 65 Issue 2 Pages 129-140
This paper aims to contribute to the development of the study on the school of Ibn ʿArabī in South Asia. As Chittick points out, many thinkers who belonged to the school of Ibn ʿArabīin South Asia did not read his works like Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam per se, but were indirectly influenced by his disciples, such as Farghānī and Jāmī. Ashraf ʿAlī Thānavī, one of the most influential thinkers in 20th-century South Asia, is different from other thinkers in that he was directly exposed to the worldview of Ibn ʿArabī through his writings. He left a commentary on Fuṣūṣ and a book in defense of Ibn ʿArabī, both of which were written in Urdu, the lingua franca of South Asian Muslims. Thus, Thānavī deserves to be called the heir of Ibn ʿArabī in South Asia. However, because previous studies on Thānavī have focused on him as a Deobandī scholar, his aspect of the school of Ibn ʿArabī remains unexplored. Therefore, this paper illuminates the influence of Ibn ʿArabī on Thānavī, mainly how Thānavī understood the cosmology based on the concept of tajallī (self-disclosure of God), a keyword in Ibn ʿArabī’s philosophy. Thānavī explains that God’s self-disclosure is permanent and omnipresent and that created things play an ontologically important role as the place of His manifestations. This view aligns with Ibn ʿArabī’s understanding of God’s self-disclosure. Thānavī rarely shows his origi nal interpretation of Ibn ʿArabī’s philosophy and seems to avoid an esoteric discussion. Nevertheless, Thānavī’s attempt to disseminate Ibn ʿArabī’s idea to a more popular level by articulating his world view in plain Urdu and with a lucid argument is unique to the intellectual milieu of modern South Asia. In this sense, we can conclude that Thānavī created a modern form of the school of Ibn ʿArabī.
