Ibn Sab'in

Ibn Sab'īn (محمدبن عبدالحق بن سبعين ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq b. Sabʿīn al-Mursī) was an Arab Sufi philosopher, the last philosopher of the Andalus in the west land of Islamic world. He was born in 1217 in Spain and lived in Ceuta. It has been suggested that he was a Neoplatonic philosopher, a Peripatetic philosopher, a Pythagorean philosopher, a Hermeticist, an alchemist, a heterodox Sufi, a pantheist, though none of these adequately characterise Ibn Sab'in. He was also known for his knowledge of esotericism and was well versed in the knowledge of Islam and of other religions.

From his time and continuing through to today, Ibn Sabʿīn has been criticized for his views, though often by detractors who did so without an in-depth knowledge of his works, as many of the accusations against Ibn Sabʿīn are invalidated by Ibn Sabʿīn’s own writings, and suggest that some of our author’s critics were not even familiar with his works.

The Sicilian Questions
Ibn Sabʿīn is most famously remembered for his replies to the questions sent to him by Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor and published as الكلام على المسائل الصقلية al-Kalam 'ala al-Masa'il as-Siqiliya (Discourse on the Sicilian Questions) which were first popularised in the West in 1853 by Sicilian Orientalist Michele Amari who recognised Ibn Sab'in as the author, among others, of the responses to the Sicilian Questions.

Works
In addition to the Sicilian Question, his other major work and longest is بد العارف Budd al-Arif (The Essential of the Gnostic), which is extant in manuscript and an edited version. His writing style has been described as composite and cryptic, which some of the modern publishers had difficulty understanding. He authored a number of epistles and books, some of which have been published by Abderrahman Badawi among others.

Criticism of Averroes
In his work Bud al-'Arif (The Essential of the Gnostic), Ibn Sab'in virulently criticized Averroes and considered him a fanatic Aristotelian who always sought to validate Aristotle's ideas even when they were absurd. In this work, Ibn Sab'in states:

Death
In approximately 668/1270 Ibn Sabʿīn died in Mecca, under suspicious circumstances. There are two descriptions of his death, one that states that he was poisoned and another that reports that he committed suicide. However there is evidence indicating that the story of Ibn Sabʿīn’s suicide was fabricated. Casewit states that “his alleged suicide seems untenable firstly because it was related by one of Ibn Sabʿīn’s foes, and secondly because suicide is wholly contrary to both Islamic law and Ibn Sabʿīn’s philosophical beliefs.” Despite the mutually exclusive versions, it is the more controversial suicide adopted by Massignon and Corbin that is repeatedly stated, and even fictionalised by Bensalem Himmich in A Muslim Suicide.