Todd Lawson: "Ibn ‘Arabi’s alphabet of prophets: the spirit and form of the Fuṣūṣ"

Third talk in the Spring 2021 on-line series  “Word and Letter, Book and Speech”

Todd Lawson is Professor Emeritus of Islamic Thought (University of Toronto). He began the formal study of Islam in 1973 at the University of British Columbia with Hanna Kassis who ignited in him a deep and abiding interest in and love for the Quran. He continued Islamic Studies at McGill’s Institute of Islamic Studies where he worked with Charles Adams, Issa J. Boullata and Wadiʿ Haddad during the early years. For the PhD, he worked under the supervision of Professor Hermann Landolt, who had studied with Henry Corbin and Fritz Meier. Todd has published numerous books and articles, usually to do with the Quran and its interpretation. His most recent book is Intimacy and Ecstasy in Quran Commentary (Brill 2018) a study of the first major work by Sayyid Ali Muhammad Shirazi, known most widely as The Báb (1819-1850). He has been a member of the Bahai Community since 1968 and lives in Montreal with his wife Barbara.

Todd writes: 'Ibn Arabi's Fușūṣ al-ḥikam frequently speaks to us through metaphor with highly imaginative readings of the Quran and Hadith. In this talk, we are taking a cue from the structure of the book - a mystical and philosophical Tales of the Prophets (Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ) - to consider it, in the spirit of experimentation, as a language primer in which the alphabet being taught is composed not of letters as usually construed but as words. In this light, the basic elements of the new language are now marvellously and richly charged "integers of meaning" with a vastly expanded semantic horizon: A is for Adam. Rather than thinking of our alphabet as a collection of single tones of speech and meaning, i.e. letters (sing. ḥarf), Ibn ‘Arabi teaches us to think in chords of meaning (kalima), to offer another metaphor, as the figures of the new, and as it happens, simultaneously, pre-eternal alphabet. The language is the language of the covenant, that long remembered day of absolute unity of humanity and “religion” in the presence of the Lord (Q 7:172), towards which we are all returning.'