the Shariah.’ I said to him, ‘Yet in your lands there is the doctrine of those who advocate the union of Creator and creation, which is worse than the doctrine of the philosophers?’ He replied, ‘No rational person would maintain what these people say. Indeed, every rational person recognizes the falsity of their doctrine.’ He meant that its falsity is evident, so it is not counted among matters that can confuse rational people, unlike the philosophers’ doctrine, which contains something rational, even though it is false.”

Tāj al-Dīn al-Anbārī, the distinguished Egyptian jurist, related to me that he heard Shaykh Ibrāhīm al-Ja‘barī say:

“I saw Ibn Arabī as an old man with a dyed beard. He is a filthy shaykh who disbelieves in every Book Allah has revealed and every prophet Allah has sent.”

Shaykh Rashīd al-Dīn Ibn al-Mu‘allim related to me:

“When I was a young man in Damascus, I used to hear people say of Ibn Arabī and al-Khusrawshāhī that both professed Islam while concealing unbelief”—or words to that effect.

He also related to me, on the authority of Shaykh Ibrāhīm al-Ja‘barī, that he was present with Ibn al-Fārid at his death, when he was reciting:

“If what I have met with marks my standing with you in love,
Then I have wasted my days.
A hope my soul attained for a time—
Today I deem it a tangle of dreams.”

The distinguished jurist Tāj al-Dīn al-Anbārī related to me that he heard Shaykh Ibrāhīm al-Ja‘barī say:

“I saw Ibn Arabī and Ibn al-Fārid in a dream as two blind old men, walking and stumbling, saying, ‘How do we find the way? Where is the way?’”