Abd al-Karim al-Jili

'Abd al-Karim al-Jili was a Muslim mystic, a descendant of the Sufi 'Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani. He was born in 767/1365 and died about 832/1428. The biographical works say little about him, so most of what is known comes from his own statements. ¹

In his al-Insan al-Kamil he says that he lived from 796/1393 to 805/1402-3 in Zabid in Yemen with his shaykh, Sharaf al-Din Isma'il al-Jabarti, and that in 790/1387 he was in India. He wrote about thirty books and treatises. The best known is al-Insan al-Kamil fi Ma'rifat al-Awakhir wa'l-Awa'il, which was printed several times in Cairo. ¹

The article, signed by Mohammad Shafi, presents al-Jili as an adherent of Ibn 'Arabi, to whose Futuhat he wrote a commentary and whose doctrines he developed and modified. In the article's account, Absolute Being unfolds through a scale of stages (maratib), including the level of unity (wahidiyya), the divine level (ilahiyya) and the level of mercy (rahmaniyya). The Perfect Man (al-insan al-kamil) is the place where God becomes visible, and in al-Jili's account the Prophet ﷺ Muhammad may take the form of any holy man. ¹

The article says that al-Jili's cosmology differs widely from orthodox views on several points. Its examples include that Adam ate the forbidden fruit because his soul showed an aspect of divine lordship, that Hell will at last be extinguished, and that all who worship God according to their essential natures will be saved. The encyclopaedia reports these as al-Jili's teachings and calls Ibn 'Arabi a pantheistic mystic. These are the encyclopaedia's descriptions, not this museum's view. ¹

Al-Jili described many visions and auditions, including conversations with angels and cosmic beings, and a journey through Heaven and Hell in which he met Plato. The encyclopaedia notes that his other books had not been studied by European scholars, and refers readers to Brockelmann's list of his works. R. A. Nicholson analysed al-Insan al-Kamil in The Perfect Man in Islamic Mysticism (Cambridge, 1921). ¹