3.6.4 - Meeting with the Caliph Yaqoub al-Mansour (Seville, 592/1196)

After the victory of the Muslims in the battle of Ark, led by their prince Yaqoub al-Mansour, the Caliph stayed in Seville the rest of the year 591 AH, before he continued the invasion in the following year to capture the city of Toledo, and then returned in the third year to penetrate north until he reached places not reached by the Muslims before. When he returned to Seville after all these victories, Alfonso VIII sent to him asking to appease him for ten years. Only after that, and after rearranging the political situation in Andalusia and appointing the appropriate rulers and leaders to protect it, the Caliph then crossed the strait again back to the city of Marrakesh in the year 594 AH.

In these busy circumstances, when the Caliph was preparing his army in the second conquest in 592 AH, he asked to bring all the righteous people to his palace and he addressed them saying: these are the actual soldiers!

It seems that the Caliph tried to have Shaykh Muhyiddin Ibn al-Arabi to work with him and offer him some position as his father, but Shaykh Muhyiddin refused. As we have seen in section

ef(al-adawi of Chapter II, in his book al-Durrah al-Fakhirah, while speaking about Shaykh Salih al-Adawi al-Barbariy who had previously advised him not to heed the calls of his family and people to let him leave the path of asceticism and work for his personal life and settle down and secure living for his parents and his two orphan sisters, whose father left them for him after his death. In this book Shaykh Muhyiddin says that the Emir of the Believers, Sultan Yaqoub al-Mansour, sent for him Judge Abu al-Qasim Ahmed Ibn Muhammad Ibn Baqiy to persuade him to work with him, but he refused. It seems that the Caliph expected this because he ordered the judge to present the matter to him gently and without forcing him.

Shaykh Muhyiddin then said that he then met the Caliph, who asked him about his two sisters who needed protection and care after the death of his father. He also offered him to find them suitable husbands, but Shaykh Muhyiddin thanked him and told him that he would do so. Yet the Caliph insisted and told him that they had a big status with him, due to their father.

Therefore, after this meeting, the Caliph sent him a messenger renewing his offer, but the shaykh says that shortly after this meeting he left Seville heading for Fez with his family and cousin.