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with man, and that man is favoured by superlative perfection: envoyship and prophetic mission. In
that sense, she is equal to all muslim men after prophethood and envoyship has been sealed by the
person of Muhammad, peace be upon him.
Female as Cosmic Principle
We move now from the concept of woman (marîa) as an independent individualized human being,
to the concept of the female (untha) which thrusts her into a duo, a couple, a relationship with the
other, “the male”. And it is here, on the level of femaleness, that differences in the roles and the
cosmic degrees emerge. Ibn ‘Arabî says regarding the two aspects of equality and discrimination:
“Whoever regards humanity equates women to men, and whoever regards maleness and
femaleness, and God’s words: -Men have a degree over them [women],’ and made the actor
prevail over the acted-upon, discriminates between men and women.”
We would like to point out here that femaleness is an ontological degree, a quality, position and
role, not a specific being. This means that there is no ontological impediment preventing a male
being in the degree of femaleness (a female male) or a female being in the degree of maleness (a
male female), or for the same person to be in one place a female and in another a male. And what
is meant by that will be clear when dealing with the subject in the following two subsections.
Female woman: completing being and gnosis for a male man
The first manifestation of female woman and male man appeared in the creation of Eve and Adam
and in the consummation of their ontological marriage. We may observe that there is a strong
presence of Adam and Eve in every male man/female woman relationship, according to Ibn
‘Arabî. It is as if the beginning of creation is the archetype for every true conjugal relationship that
ever occurs in human history.
Ibn ‘Arabî relates his vision of the beginning of man, the first relationship between the two sexes
and the quiddity of love of women to Divine Love, in a symbolic manner open to interpretation.
We will attempt to summarize these comprehensive and complex perceptions as much as possible
in the next two paragraphs.
Female woman: completing being for a male man
Ibn ‘Arabî considers the first human body as that of Adam, and in its origin - in so far as we
imagine it - it resembles a sculpture that a potter would create out of clay and then fire in a kiln.
From Adam’s rib, God created the body of Eve, so it resembles in its origin a sculpture that a
carpenter would chisel out of wood or stave. Ibn ‘Arabî describes the ontological yearning
between Adam and Eve, something which spread from them to every human couple in being,
saying: “- and God filled the place from which Eve was created with a hunger for her, for there
cannot remain any void in being. When He filled it with air, he felt towards her a yearning as
towards himself because she is a part of him, and she felt a yearning towards him because he is her
homeland, from which she originated. So Eve’s love is love of homeland, and Adam’s love is love
of himself.”
Therefore, the male man does not feel satiation in being except by uniting with the female woman,
she who is created from him and is in his own image.
This brings us to opening a window from which we can view Ibn ‘Arabî’s perception of female
beauty, as far as we are able to tell. We say that the desired woman for whom Ibn ‘Arabî yearns is
the woman created in his image. And by looking into his private life, we discover that Nizam bint
Makinuddin is the only woman who was capable of becoming to him the “Eve” who came out of
the body of “Adam”, and with whom he yearned to unite to achieve his satiation in being. He
describes her at the beginning of his Diwan by qualities that serve to confirm what we have
mentioned. He says:
She is] the incomparable one of her era. Her home is the pupil in the eye, and the heart in the
chest. She is of long experience-