2.2.8 - Receiving Knowledge and Learning the Holy Quran
Ibn al-Arabi is most likely to have received private education There is no indication that he was going to the well-known schools at the time, which is normal given his wealthy family and their being close to the sultan as mentioned above. It also seemed that at first he was not proficient in any of the sciences and literature that were taught at the time. He was not confident at reading with the Shaykhs, because he was afraid and trembling between their hands. This is perhaps due to his fine disciplines added to his inherited knowledge of the height of their status. He told a story that happened with him when his teacher Shaykh Abu Yaqoub Yusuf Ibn Yakhluf al-Kumi, whom we will talk about shortly, and that was at the beginning when he entered the Way of Sufism or perhaps before, that:
... I have never seen the Epistle of al-Qushairi, nor any other, and I did not know what is the word Sufism and it means! Shaykh Yusuf once rode his horse and ordered me and another of his students to go out to the Montiar - a high mountain near Seville (maybe: Montegil) - so my companion and I went out at the time when they open the door of the city, and he was holding in his hands the treatise of al-Qushayri, while I do not know who is Qushairi nor his treatise. We climbed the mountain and we found the Shaykh and his boy holding his horse. We entered a mosque at the top of that mountain and we prayed, then he faced us and gave me the treatise and told me to read! I could not add a word to another, and the book falls from my hands due to his high prestige. Thus, he said to my companion to read, which he did, and the Shaykh commented. We spend all the afternoon reading.
[Quds: pp. 49-50].
However, Ibn al-Arabi soon began to attend regular education sessions and lessons with the Shaykhs and scholars of his time, such as Shaykh Abu Bakr Ibn Khalaf, who taught him the Quran according to the seven readings, using the book of al-Kafi, which he narrated after the son of its author, who narrated after his father Muhammad Ibn Shureih (392 / 1001 - 476 / 1083)footnote(Muhammad Ibn Shrayh Ibn Ahmad Ibn Muhammad Ibn Shrayh is Abu Abdullah al-Ra’ini al-Ishbayli al-Ishbaili, classified as al-Kafi, the book of reminders, and the preacher of Seville. He left and pilgrimage, and heard from Abu Dhar herawi, and authorized him Makki Qaisi, and heard in Egypt from: Abu Abbas Ibn Nafis, Abu al-Qasim Kahhal; and in Seville: Osman Ibn Ahmed Qishtali. He read the novels in Mecca on Kantari, and in Egypt on Ibn Nafis. Narrated by: His son Khatib Abu Hasan slice. See: History of Islam and Celebrity and Media Deaths, by Hafiz Shamsuddin Muhammad Ibn Ahmed Ibn Othman al-Dhahabi, Achievement of Omar Abd al-Salam Tadmuri, Dar al-Kitab al-Arabi, Beirut, 1989, Accidents and Deaths 471-480, p. 179. See also: Golden, the biography of the nobility flags: c 18 p 554., and Abu al-Qasim al-Sharrat al-Qurtubi (died 586/1190). This was stated by Ahmad Ibn Muhammad al-Muqri al-Maliki in his book “Naf al-Teib from al-Andalus al-Rutib” in his translation of Ibn al-Arabi’s translation, who adds that he read on Abu Bakr Muhammad Ibn Abi Jamra, in the book of “al-Tayseer (facilitation)” for al-Dani, and he read on Ibn Zarkoun and Abu Muhammad Abdul al-Haq al-Ishbili al-Azdi, in addition to many shaykhs in the west and in the east [Nafih al-Teib: c 2 pp. 161-162].
Ibn al-Arabi also studied Hadith and literature on famous scholars and writers as we will mention some of them shortly.