The Tarjumán al-Ashwáq

Ibn al-'Arabí met Niẓám while on pilgrimage to Mecca: the daughter of a Persian shaykh, learned, devout, and by his own account beautiful. The odes he wrote for her were read as erotic verse dressed in mystical language, and the charge followed him for years. His answer was to write a commentary on his own poems and read it aloud before the man who had accused him. Both are in this volume.

About this edition

This Hidden Lantern edition presents Nicholson's English unaltered: the sixty-one odes, his abridgement of Ibn al-'Arabí's own commentary, his footnotes and his index. No Arabic script appears; his own transliterations are retained.

The text was collated against the original 1911 printing. Thirteen errors in the digital source were found and corrected, among them a verse reading “They die; not complain of the anguish of love” where the original reads “They did not complain” — a change that reversed the poem’s argument. Every correction, and everything that could not be recovered, is recorded in A Note on the Text.

Nicholson also translated the Kashf al-Maḥjúb, and cites it in his notes here; both are on this site. His Studies in Islamic Mysticism treats several of the same figures.

Contents

All sixty-one odes are free to read online, in full, with no signup.

1. A Note on the Text
2. Translator's Preface
3. Introduction
4. Odes I–V
5. Odes VI–X
6. Odes XI–XV
7. Odes XVI–XX
8. Odes XXI–XXV
9. Odes XXVI–XXX
10. Odes XXXI–XXXV
11. Odes XXXVI–XL
12. Odes XLI–XLV
13. Odes XLVI–L
14. Odes LI–LV
15. Odes LVI–LXI
16. Index

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