Mashrabaمشربة

The fall and the return of the soul

The descent into the body and the way back, told by Ibn Sīnā as an ode and a recital and answered by Suhrawardī's exile, with the Syriac Hymn of the Pearl as its older kin.

هبوط · رجوعἐπιστροφήhubūṭ · rujūʿ · epistrophē: descent; return

I

Ibn Sīnā, al-ʿAyniyya ¶ 1

هبطتhabaṭatshe came down

The dove comes down 'from the loftiest station', proud and reluctant: the soul's descent in the ode's first word.

Read it in the reader →On: al-Qaṣīda al-ʿayniyya, verse 1.

II

Ibn Sīnā, al-ʿAyniyya ¶ 15

Why was she cast down from the height to the lowest pit? The ode asks the question the recitals try to answer.

Read it in the reader →On: al-Qaṣīda al-ʿayniyya, verse 15.

III

Ibn Sīnā, Risālat al-Ṭayr ¶ 7

The caged bird sees others fly out of the net with the cords still on their feet, and remembers what it had been made to forget.

Read it in the reader →On: Risālat al-ṭayr ¶7–8.

IV

Ḥayy (Ibn Sīnā) ¶ 13

The sage maps the far West: a muddy sea where the sun sets and darkness clings; matter as a land of strangers.

Read it in the reader →On: Risālat Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān (Ibn Sīnā) ¶12–13, citing Q 18:86.

V

Anonymous, in the Acts of Thomas, Hymn of the Pearl v. 33

ṭʿēt d-bar malkē ʾenāI forgot that I was a son of kings

In Syriac, the Hymn of the Pearl: the prince sent down to Egypt eats its food, forgets he is a king's son and sleeps, until a letter from his father, flying like an eagle, wakes him. Corbin read Suhrawardī's exile beside it, as kin rather than source.

Read it in the reader →On: Hymn of the Pearl (Acts of Thomas), vv. 32–35 (Bevan 1897); Corbin, Avicenna and the Visionary Recital (1960), pp. 157–58.

VI

Suhrawardī, al-Ghurba al-gharbiyya ¶ 44

Suhrawardī falls 'from the heights into the abyss', back in the prison of the West, yet a delight remains that he cannot describe.

Read it in the reader →On: Qiṣṣat al-ghurba al-gharbiyya ¶44–45.

VII

Ibn ʿArabī, Awrād: Sunday ¶ 9

راجعونrājiʿūnreturning

The Sunday litany says 'to God we belong and to Him we are returning' in every state and station, making the return a daily word.

The Qurʾān here: 2:156

﴿ٱلَّذِينَ إِذَآ أَصَـٰبَتْهُم مُّصِيبَةٌ قَالُوٓا۟ إِنَّا لِلَّهِ وَإِنَّآ إِلَيْهِ رَٰجِعُونَ﴾

Who say, when a misfortune striketh them: Lo! we are Allah's and lo! unto Him we are returning.

Q 2:156 ↗TanzilPickthall (1930)

Read it in the reader →On: Awrād, Sunday ¶9, quoting Q 2:156.

VIII

Lyrics of Ascent: Ibn Sīnā, Ode to the Soul

The same ode in the anthology, with its introduction on the campsite motif and the question of authorship.

Read it at the source ↗On: lyrics-of-ascent.net (ed. Sperl and Dedes); translation © its publisher, so linked, not shown.