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powerless owned, who would not shy away on most occasions from using guile and deception in
order to achieve personal gain.
In spite of the appearance of a breach in the life of men’s and women’s societies, sufi circles
remained, for the most part, open to both genders, looking upon woman as a human being and not
as a female, as a person with exactly the same aptitude for divine closeness and gnosis as a man.
Ibn ‘Arabî further developed the vision of the sufis who preceded him, with regard to women
being people of knowledge and gnosis. Woman manifested in his works in two aspects: the sufi
and the fiqh fields.
Woman as spiritual teacher, guiding shaykh, and divine mother
This characterisation was personified by a woman of gnosis from Seville, Fatima bint al-Muthanna
of Cordoba. In his youth, Ibn ‘Arabî served her, himself, for about two years. This is longer than
any period of time he spent in the “company” of a sufi gnostic, inasmuch as the words “serve” and
“company” denote in sufi terminology, taking and learning from, being polished by association
and company and service, all of which is unveiled by sufis in an educational method quite
different from that of the faqih who requires intellectual force-feeding. When Ibn ‘Arabî says “I
served”, it means he took the person served as a shaykh, a guide, and a spiritual teacher.
Therefore, Fatima bint al-Muthanna was for Ibn ‘Arabî all that a shaykh is to a murid.
Ibn ‘Arabî, the murid, acknowledged the role of the Sevillean gnostic in his rebirth, and accepted
his spiritual descent from her, which he never did with any of the shaykhs he accompanied and
served during his lifetime. She was the only one he called “my mother”. And she used to tell him:
“I am your divine mother, and the light of your earthly mother.”
The influence of this gnostic lady on the rebirth of Ibn ‘Arabî appears in the few passages he
relates in the Futuhat which include her contemplations and the gifts of sainthood that were
granted to her. She used to say to Ibn ‘Arabî for example, “I wonder at him who says he loves God
and yet is not rejoiced by Him, for He is the one witnessed by him, His eye observes him in every
eye, and He is not hidden from him, not for one moment.”
Therefore, the Sevillean gnostic manifested in the life of Ibn ‘Arabî in the position of guiding saint
and spiritual teacher, and he was not embarrassed to learn from her, or to surrender to her
leadership, or to stand as a murid before her knowledge. This is practical proof of Ibn ‘Arabî’s
declaration that a woman can be a shaykh and a spiritual guide, and that men are allowed to be
among her disciples. So let no attention be paid to those who do not see that a man can be the
disciple of a woman on the pretext of the mixing of the sexes, because historically and to this day,
women have been numbered among the disciples of male shaykhs. The issue here is the aptitude
for knowledge and learning, which allows a woman to take on her rightful role in the life of a
disciple.
Woman as endowed with direct understanding (faqiha) and prayer leader (imam)
Ibn ‘Arabî bestows upon Bilqis (Queen of Sheba) the rank of Faqiha. When she surrendered to
Islam, she did not become a follower of Solomon, nor did she submit to his guidance. Rather, she
remained free in her belief from following an envoy or an imam, free from intermediaries. She
revealed that she possessed direct belief in God, exactly like that of the Envoys, when she said: “I
submit with Solomon to Allah, Lord of the universes,” in contrast to the Pharaoh who said: “the
Lord of Moses and Aaron”.
By examining Ibn ‘Arabî’s life, we can say that he is a man of knowledge and experience, not a
man of theory who speaks about woman as an invisible/hidden being. This means that when he
described woman’s aptitude and acknowledged her abilities and her equality to man, he was
thinking of those women he knew and not theorizing on the “issue of women”. Ibn ‘Arabî’s
statements on women are based on a broad experience of life, in which women revealed to him
their powers and aptitudes. As regards equality between the sexes in the field of their competency
in knowledge, he held the view that a woman could be imam, leading both men and women in