The Life, Works and Place of Muayyad al-Jandī in Akbarī Tradition

The life and works of Muayyad al-Jandī, who wrote the first complete commentary on Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn al-‘Arabī’s Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, contain incompleteness and some inaccuracies due to the fact that it was prepared based on his work is titled Nafḥa al-Rūḥ and Tuḥfe al-Futūḥ in which he gave information about his biography. The author’s views on metaphysical issues have not been mentioned, except for the short work, which was written by Abdullaḥ al-Bosnawī upon a question asked to him, named Sharḥ li ba‘ḍi kelām al-Shaykh Muayyad al-Jandī fī Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam. However, Jandī’s being the first Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam commentator and writing this commentory with the help and signs of Qūnawī made him an important name in the determination of how Ibn al-‘Arabī’s views must be understood and made him an important person that later commentators could not remain unaware of. And also almost all of commentators sometimes made quotations from the his works explicitly and sometimes without naming them. Jandī was born in Jand, which is a historical city located in the north east of the Aral Lake, possibly in the second quarter of the seventh century (hijri). When he wanted to take the path of Sūfism, his friends and relatives, including his father, opposed him and nevertheless he went to the pilgrimage with a spiritual sign he received, and then joined Ṣadr al-Dīn Qūnawī, whom he described as “the perfect human of his century” to completed his spiritual journey. During the time the author was in Konya, there were many important sūfīs and scholars in the city such as Mawlānā D̲j̲alāl al-Dīn al-Rūmī. Jandī stayed here until 674, the year his shaykh died; he then visit Baghdad, Sinop, Kenger and Tabriz and died in Tabriz in 711 according to Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam’s copying record in Lāleli /1417. Jandī has eight works that have survived until today. While some of these deal with only metaphysical subjects, some of them are works aiming at moral maturation. One of the most important works on metaphysics is Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam. According to author’s statement in this work, he wrote a “big commentary” before this commentary. Although there is no clear explanation as to the relation of this “big commentary” to the present-day commentary, it is possible that some chapters may be named by the author with different names, since the writing of the work was spread over thirty years. Since this important work of Jandī is the first complete commentary of Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, it has been a model and source for the next commentaries, both with its prelude and with the commentary of the main parts. For this reason, this commentary was described as the source of the later commentaries by ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Jāmī. There are other works which Jandī mentions their titles but have not survived to the present day, as well as works that are attributed to him but authenticity is doubtful. Jandī's place in Ibn al-‘Arabī’s school is related to his commentary of Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, but the comments to be made based on this work only on certain subjects of the school are incomplete. In this context, we discussed three important issues of the school. These are his view about the relationship between existence and essence in God, rank classifications, and the relationship between knowledge and known things. Jandī does not find it right to make any interpretation about divine essence (dhat) other than what He declared, and he refers to the hadith that the Prophet (Pbuh) forbade to think about essence of God. As it is known, this hadith is a hadith that Ibn al-‘Arabī opponents also use to refuse the views of Shaykh. The fact that Jandī refers to this hadith is very important in terms of understanding the views of an important name from the first followers of Ibn al-‘Arabī on the relationship between existence and essence. This issue is also related to whether God can be qualified as existence at the level of la-ta‘ayyun (indeterminacy) or not. Considering that Jandī interprets the level of la-taayyun as the level of silence, his thoughts on the relationship between existence and essence become clear. Considering that the level of la-taayyun is mentioned as the absolute degree of wujūd in the studies on the Akbarī school, it is not possible to urge that the whole school is in agreement on this issue, and aslo it should be stated here that it would not be right to characterize the names (such as ‘Abd al-Karīm al-Jīlī) that do not mention existence as out of Akbarī school. The rank classifications made by Jandī from various angles and his views on the relation of knowledge with known things are other issues discussed in the study