«Better than One Thousand Months» Qurʾān 97:3 :

Awaiting the Mahdī in VI/XII Century al-Andalus

José Bellver
University of Barcelona

IMC 2014 Leeds

Session 337
Monday 7 July 2014: 16.30-18.00

At some point around the year 580/1185, the famous Andalusian Sufi I n Ara ī (d. 638/1240),
known as the Greatest Master (al-Shaykh al-akbar), while still in his youth, held a discussion
with his first living master, the illiterate Sufi A ū l- A ās al- Ur a ī, himself a disciple of Ibn al-
Arīf (d. 536/1141), about a topic widely debated at their time: the identity of the person whose
appearance at the end of the times i.e., the Mahdī was foretold by the Prophet and whether
he was already born at their time and his foretold appearance was imminent. This discussion led
to Ibn Ara ī’s famous first encounter with Khiḍr, the pre-Islamic, yet still alive Green Prophet.
These debates were held shortly before a period of major eruption of Mahdism in the Islamic
West, what shows that the imminence of the end of the times was a major concern over the end
of VI/XII Century in al-Andalus and the Maghreb.
The present contribution will examine these concerns arisen at the end of VI/XII Century al-
Andalus in the light of I n Barrajān’s (d. 536/1141) interpretation of the Qur āni verse The
Night of the Determination (qadr) is better than one thousand months Qur ān 97:3 , an echo
of which can also be found in Ibn al- Arīf’s orresponden e.
José Bellver
Ramon y Cajal Assistant Research Professor
Dept. for the History of Philosophy, Aesthetics and Philosophy of Culture
University of Barcelona
josepbellver@gmail.com
jbellver@gmail.com

BEng Telecommunications (Ramon Llull University, Barcelona, 1993), MEng Electronics (Ramon
Llull University, Barcelona, 2000), BA Arabic Philology (University of Barcelona, 2000), DEA (MA)
History of Islamic Science (University of Barcelona, 2002), PhD Arabic Philology (University of
Barcelona, 2007).

He is Ramón y Cajal research Professor at the Department for the History of Philosophy,
Aesthetics and Philosophy of Culture at the University of Barcelona. He has been FPI
postgraduate research fellow at the Dept. of Semitics at the University of Barcelona and Beatriu
de Pinós postdoctoral research fellow at the Theology Department of Boston College (2008-
2010). He has held visiting fellowships at the Real Colegio Complutense en Harvard (2011), at
the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization, Harvard University (2012), and at
the Research Unit Intellectual History of the Islamicate World, Institut für Islamwissenschaft,
Freie Universität Berlin (2013).

His primary research interests lay within the intellectual history of Islam with a particular focus
on the interaction of Islamic mysticism and philosophy. He has extensively published on History
of Islamic Astronomy at academic journals such as Suhayl: Journal for the History of the Exact
and Natural Sciences in Islamic Civilization; Ar hi es I ter atio ales d’Histoire des S ie es;
Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften; Sciamvs: Sources and
Commentaries in Exact Sciences; and al-Qantara among others. He has papers on Sufism at the
Journal of the American Oriental Society and at Arabica; and on Islamic philosophy at Anales del
Seminario de Historia de la Filosofía.

He has been awarded with the International Award for young scholars in Islamic Science (2009)
from the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science; and the Ihsanogly Gold
Medal (2009) named after Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Secretary General of the Organization of the
Islamic Conference (OIC).

He is urrentl preparing editions of “ufi te ts su h as I n Ara ī’s Kitā al- a ādi a-l-ghāyāt,
translations of philosophi al te ts su h as I n “īnā’s Uyū al-ḥikma and Kitā al- ajāt, and a
monograph tracing the debate on the primacy of essence vs. existence in Islamic philosophy.