The half-door and Salma's house: the architecture of love

Ibn 'Arabi Society

At Haverford College (BA), then the University of Pennsylvania (MA), then the University of South Carolina (PhD), Eric Winkel undertook eclectic studies, mostly religion at first, focusing on spiritual matters, then later including political science, and numerous languages to enable study of religious and spiritual texts (Sanskrit, Greek, Coptic, Tamil, Arabic, others, besides French and German). His book "Mysteries of Purity, Ibn al-'Arabî's asrar al-taharah" (Notre Dame, 1995) was Chapter 68 of the Futuhat al-Makkiyya. While Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies in Malaysia, he explored how the concepts of the "new sciences" opened obscure and difficult passages of the Futuhat. Shu'ayb Eric Winkel explains: ‘with Ibn Arabi, if one hasn't visualised or seen a picture, imaged in the imagination, of what he is talking about, one hasn't yet understood him. In my work translating and elucidating The Openings Revealed in Makkah, I depend entirely on Divine grace. In this talk we will look at a double door of a temple, or home, and follow Ibn Arabi's insights into and behind the half-door. We will then consider Salma's house and the walls of Salma's house, in a poem, and Ibn Arabi's own poetry around the imagery. We then connect these images to the all-important hadith qudsi: ‘The heavens and the Earth are not vastly spacious enough for Me, but the heart of My slave who is someone faithful is.' We contemplate the vista of the heart to prepare ourselves for our own view of the architecture of love, insha'Allah.' Since 2012, Shu'ayb has been translating The Opening Revealed in Makkah, the first continuous translation of and commentary on the Futuhat, envisioned as 19 volumes, published by Pir Press. Parallel to this work, Shu'ayb is collaborating with communities to expand into new directions, including translations of An Illustrated Guide to Ibn Arabi, children's books, poetry, grammars and glossaries for Ibn Arabi, and visual and creative artworks conveying the message of the Futuhat.