Mysticism and Philosophy in al-Andalus: Ibn Masarra, Ibn al-ʿArabi and the Ismaʿili Tradition

Brian A. Catlos

doi:10.1080/09503110.2018.1426648

Catlos, Brian A.

2018-01-02 00:00:00

AL-MASĀQ 119 Mysticism and Philosophy in al-Andalus: Ibn Masarra, Ibn al-ʿArabi and the Ismaʿili Tradition, Michael Ebstein, 2014, [Islamic History and Civilization, Studies and Texts, 1103], Leiden: E.J. Brill, xiv + 276 pp., €126.00/US$151.00 (hardback), ISBN The general view of religiosity in Islamic Spain is that it was dry and legalistic, monopolised effectively by ʿulamāʾ’ of the “conservative” Mālikī school, until disrupted by the emergence of mysticism and Sūfism, beginning with the fourth/tenth-century mystic Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muhammad ibn Masarra, and culminating in the figure of the Murcian sufi master Abū ʿAbd AllāhMuhammad ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 638/1240). Ibn Musarra and the mystics of al- Andalus were first studied in detail by the early-twentieth-century scholar Miguel Asín Pala- cios, but his work is now regarded as being heavily burdened by bias, and rather obsolete. In recent years, scholars, particularly in Spain, have been turning once again to the subject to Andalusī mysticism, and have been investigating the infiltration of Shīʿī thought in the Iberian Peninsula. ʿ ʿ In Mysticism and Philosophy in al-Andalus: Ibn Masarra, Ibn al- Arabi and the Isma ili Tra- dition, Michael Ebstein brings his impressive linguistic and analytical skills to bear on this history, in a

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