Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 Associate Professor Department of Teaching Arabic Language and literature, Farhangian University, Tehran, Iran.
2 Assistant Professor, Department of Teaching Arabic Language and literature, Farhangian University, Tehran, Iran.
3 Assistant Professor, Department of Arabic Language and Literature, Payam-e-Noor University, Tehran, Iran.
Abstract
The novels of the Moroccan novelist Abd elah Ben Arafa are distinguished by the frequent symbolic use of letters, numbers and shapes. His novelistic experience is a luminous study of understanding the relationships between words and shapes and their corresponding numbers in the abjad system as Sufi philosophical symbols. In all of this, he is influenced by Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi in his book Al-Futuhat Al-Makkiyya according to his Sufi vision of the world. Among the twelve mystical novels that ibn Arafa has produced since the beginning of the third millennium, his trilogy, Jabal Qaf, Bahr Nun, and Bilad Sad, is distinguished by absorbing its intellectual reference from the Sufi heritage and its figures, especially Ibn Arabi, in the essence of human existence and the absolute divine self, and re-broadcasting it in a new narrative position, as it is full of letters, numbers, and shapes with mystical and Sufi connotations that come in continuous interaction with the previous idea. This study, with its descriptive and analytical approach, seeks to trace the symbolism of numbers, letters and shapes and decipher their codes according to the views of the Sufis, especially the idea of Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi in the unity of being, which is considered the first influence on the thinking of Abd elah Ibn Arafa. The study concluded that the letters, shapes and numbers in Ibn Arafa’s trilogy have transcended their lexical meanings and the novelist has given them a spiritual glow that is consistent with the Sufi idea. Ibn Arafa quoted the titles of his three novels about the separate letters of the Qur’an to demonstrate the Sufi idea of letters as a divine secret that aims to know and witness God. In his three novels, the novelist repeated some numbers such as seven, twelve, four, and forty in more than one narrative situation to correspond with the Qur’anic verses that speak about creation. He also repeated the shapes of the square and the circle many times to symbolize the four directions and the circular conception of existence from Ibn Arabi’s perspective
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