Bensalem Himmich - A Muslim Suicide

Ibn Sabin was a person with a strong ancestral link to his home town. He grew up in great luxury and in a prestigious environment, the spirit of which never left him. He was handsome, attractive, and open-hearted, with a princely guise to him.

— Lisan al-din ibn al-Khatib, Al-Ihata fi Akhbar Gharnata [A History of Granada]

When it comes to books that contain these erroneous beliefs and copies of them that may be currently available to people-such as Fusus al-Hikam [Bezels of Wisdom] and Al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya [The Meccan Conquests] by Ibn al-'Arabi, Budd al-Arif [Escape of the Gnostic] by Ibn Sabin, and Khal` al-na`layn [Removal of Shoes] by Ibn Qasi, the decision regarding such works and their ilk should involve taking all copies and putting them in the fire, then washing one's hands so that all traces of their contents are erased. It is, of course, in the general interest of the community of the faithful that all bogus beliefs should be eliminated. It is the obligation of those in authority to burn such books as a precaution against corruption of the public mind and likewise to remove all copies that people may own so they can be burned.

— Ibn Khaldun, Fatwa fi Shifa' al-Sa'il Li-Tahdhib al-Masa'il [A Legal Decision Regarding the Cure of the Questioner with a View to Instruction Regarding Questions]

Concerning Ibn Sabin I heard that he slit his wrists and allowed the blood to flow until he died.

— Ibn Shakir al-Kutubi, Fawat al-Wafayat [Record of Deaths]

I heard Shaykh al-Abili talking about Qutb al-din. He said that, in the seventh century, three great scourges occurred within Islam: the school of Ibn Sabin; the Tatar conquest of Iraq; and the practices of the Assassins.

— Ahmad ibn al-Maqarri, Nafh al-Tib `an Ghusn al-Andalus al-Ratib [Waft of Scent Concerning the Lush Branches of Andalus].

THIS MARKS THE THIRD TIME that I have embarked upon the difficult task of translating into English a novel by the Moroccan writer Bensalem Himmich, currently the minister of culture in Morocco (2009). The first two novels were both prizewinners in their Arabic form: the first (in order of publication in Arabic) was Majnun al-Hukm (1989; translated as The Theocrat, 2005), winner of the London-based Al-Naqid prize for fiction-an account of the reign of the controversial (and probably schizophrenic) Fatimi caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah (d. 1021); the second, winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Prize for fiction, was AlAllamah (1997; translated as The Polymath, 2004), an account of the latter years in Cairo of the great Arab historian and historiographer Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406). More recently still, Himmich has been awarded a second Naguib Mahfouz Prize, this one awarded in Cairo by the University of Cairo (2009).

In using the adjective "difficult" to describe the process of translating Himmich's novels into English, I am not specifically referring to the admittedly complex interpretive task associated with the transfer of any literary text from one cultural environment to another; that much is a given. What I am referring to is the fact that many of Himmich's novels are rich and carefully constructed investigations in fictional form of an entire period within the premodern history of the Islamic world writ large and of its intellectual and textual heritage. The creation of the appropriate fictional context for such investigations involves, it goes without saying, a number of factors: first, a profound knowledge of the repertoire of relevant historical and literary sources in Arabic and their replication-either directly or via imitation-in the novelistic text itself; then a series of narrative strategies in order to provide a variation on the normal demands of a chronological presentation of events and characters; and a style that is replete with the complex lexicon of the various spheres of knowledge and research that are involved. In every case, the detailed descriptions of particular events and personalities and often extensive discussions of their implications also allow the reader to gain insights into other issues with much broader ramifications. In the case of the novel about Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, for example, we are dealing with the issue of contacts and conflicts between the Shi'i and Sunni communities of Islam during the tenth century CE and the origins of the Druze sect. With the novel about Ibn Khaldun, we are invited to listen in on a series of discussions between the theoretician of history and his amanuensis regarding his earlier work on the cyclical nature of events, the Muqaddima (Introduction) to his work of history, Kitab al (Book of Exemplary Lessons), and to consider various adjustments to the theory in the light of the chaotic events in Northern Africa and Spain during the course of the fourteenth century, to which Ibn Khaldun himself had been a witness and occasional participant. And, behind and beyond all these events and personalities, there lies the implicit topic that, in one way or another, can be seen as subsuming them all: the nature and legitimacy of authority, its use and abuse-that indeed being a topic the relevance of which is by no means a matter of interest in the context of the premodern history of the Arab-Islamic world alone.

In the current novel, the "hero" is Ibn al-Dara from Murcia in Al-Andalus-Islamic Spain-or, as he becomes known (and/or notorious), Ibn Sabin (1217–1269 CE). As shown above regarding the other novels of Himmich that I have already translated, the confrontation in this novel between Sufi mysticism and philosophy on the one hand and literalist Islamic orthodoxy (and fundamentalism perhaps) on the other is once again not merely a topic for historians concerned with the premodern ages of Islam. Throughout his career, Ibn Sabin finds himself surrounded by admiring students and challenged by literalist theologians and jurists who regularly incite the local political authorities against him. All of which turns Ibn Sab'in's life story into a lengthy travel narrative, one that, like many others, involves the Muslim obligation of the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca in the Arabian Peninsula, but in his case also a journey that is the direct consequence of political pressures, however much it may also represent a primary goal of his aspirations as a devout Muslim.

His life story begins in Spain, in the southern coastal city of Murcia (also the birthplace of another renowned Sufi figure in Islamic history-indeed perhaps the most renowned of all, Ibn al [d. 124 °CE]). Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula as a whole, nominally under the distant suzerainty of the Almohad dynasty in their Moroccan capital city of Marrakesh but actually controlled by a number of local client (petty) dynasties, is in the gradual but inexorable process of collapse in the face of the ever-encroaching forces of the Christian "reconquista." That is the historical backdrop against which the novel's events as a whole are set, as the puritanical instincts of the Almohad dynasty's founders and propagators have gradually given way to a widespread quest for luxury, to rampant corruption, and-most directly relevant to the case of this novel's primary character, Ibn Sabin-to an intolerance of radical thought and heterodox views, particularly those involving philosophy and Sufi ideas and their combination. In other words, we are here presented with a direct illustration of (and perhaps an inspiration for) the theories concerning the cyclical nature of tribal hegemony that were later developed by Ibn Khaldun and discussed (as noted earlier) in Himmich's earlier novel Al-Allamah (The Polymath).

The character of Ibn Sabin, as developed in this novel, is to rue the fate of his native "Al-Andalus" throughout its narrative, but his initial preoccupation is with something else that is close to his heart, a manuscript in which he has elaborated his early ideas but which has been lost. His desperate search for it, in its physical form and within his own memory, provides a wonderful novelistic device, one that demands reflection on his current thinking and an elaborate process of considering who might have stolen it. Bearing in mind the quotation cited at the conclusion of the novel from the later scholar and statesman Lisan al-din ibn al-Khatib (d. 1374 CE) in his history of the city of Granada, namely that Ibn Sabin was "handsome, attractive, and open-hearted, with a princely guise to him," it is not surprising perhaps that the people whom he suspects as possible thieves are mostly women that he has known in his younger days, indeed women of a wide variety in terms of origins and religious affiliations (or lack thereof)-that being, of course, an apt reflection of the diversity of Andalusian society in the thirteenth century. However, it is not only women that Ibn Sabin attracts with his "princely guise," but also an increasingly large group of disciples and students. As word of his preaching spreads, with its vigorous advocacy of the need to incorporate into Islamic beliefs and practices independent thinking that is based on the study of philosophy and a quest for the transcendent, so do the local authorities-with Ibn Sab'in's own brother as their emissary-become sufficiently alarmed to demand that he either recant or move elsewhere. Reluctantly leaving his loyal disciples (and women friends) in Murcia behind, he begins what are to become his lifelong travels, by way of a short stay in Granada, to North Africa and the city of Sabta (often now written as Ceuta) and its most characteristic geological feature, Jabal Musa (Moses's Mountain), from the heights of which one can stare across the straits at that other rocky outcrop, Gibraltar (Jabal Tariq, named after the Amazigh general who led the Muslim forces across the straits in 71 °CE). Indeed, Ibn Sabin spends many hours staring wistfully across the water at his beloved Al-Andalus, which is being relentlessly lost to Islam thanks to the incompetence, corruption, and sheer venality of its Muslim rulers.