Ivan Aguéli

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ivan Aguéli (Johan Gustaf Agelii or Sheikh Abd Al-Hadi Aqhili), (Sala, Sweden May 24, 1869 - Barcelona, Spain October 1, 1917) was a Swedish-born Impressionist painter and Sufi scholar.

Contents 1 Early youth 2 Paris 3 Cairo, Sufism and Guénon 4 Spain 5 First World War and Spain 6 "If a Sufi Shaykh one day would pick up a brush..." 7 Trivia 8 See also 9 External links

[edit] Early youth

Growing up as the son of a veterinary in the Swedish small-town of Sala, Aguéli began showing a keen interest in Islam and Swedenborgian Christianity in his early teenage years.

According to the records kept at the Swedish Royal Library in Stockholm, the first books he came to borrow there was the Holy Qur'an, followed by the works of the French poet Charles Baudelaire.

[edit] Paris

Becoming a promising painter, Aguéli moved to Paris in 1890 where he became the student of the Impressionist painter Émile Bernard and also got to know Cézanne, Gauguin and van Gogh. While in France he studied the Koran and Oriental languages and also developed a keen interest in political anarchism and animal-rights.

[edit] Cairo, Sufism and Guénon

Aguéli converted to Islam sometime in the late 19th century. Later on Aguéli moved to Cairo, Egypt where he lived a poverty-stricken life. Aguéli was initiated into the Shadhiliyya Sufi order by the great Egyptian Shaykh Abder Rahman Elish El-Kabir. Aguéli was also one of the first Europeans to study Arabic and Islamic philosophy at the Al-Azhar University in Cairo. After being given the title Muqaddim (representative) of the Shadiliyya Sufi order in Europe, he travelled extensively in Egypt, Spain, France and Sweden. It was during a stay in Paris that he in 1912 introduced the French philosopher René Guénon to Islam and initiated him into Sufi studies.

Aguéli wrote many articles for René Guénon's metaphysical magazine "La Gnose" under the pseudonyms of "Abd Al Hadi". One of Aguéli's most important articles concerns the metaphysical relation between Islam and Taoism. Many of Aguéli's ideas came to play an important role for the later crystallisation of the perennial philosophy by scholars such as René Guénon and later on Frithjof Schuon. It has been reported that apart from Aguéli's metaphysics, Frithjof Schuon also appreciated Aguéli's art.

Shaykh Elish (see above) always used to address Aguéli by the name of "Muhyeddin" because of Aguéli's devotion for the great Sufi Ibn Al-Arabi. Aguéli claimed that in his early youth, Ibn Al-Arabi had come to him in a dream and thus invited him to Islam and the Sufi path. Hence, regarding Ibn Al-Arabi, Aguéli once wrote "I had read his books before I knew Arabic, I had seen his face before I knew his name...".

[edit] Spain

Together with the Italian doctor and fellow-convert Enrico Insabato he founded and contributed to an Italian magazine published in Cairo (1904-1913) named "Il Convito/An-Nadi". As a protest to the French rule in Algeria and Sudan, the magazine was written in Italian. The aim of this publication was to help bridge the cultural gap between Christian Europe and the Islamic world. However, as Il Convito argued that the two civilisations should meet as equals it was considered as anti-colonial and subsequently closed down by the British administration.

[edit] First World War and Spain

During the First World War Aguéli kept on living in Cairo. As Aguéli dressed in Arab clothing and only mixed in Arab circles, Lord Cromer came to suspect that he was an Ottoman spy and in 1916 expelled him from Egypt to Spain. Stranded in Spain he lacked the funds to continue back to Sweden. Finally, on October 3, 1917 his friend and mentor Prince Eugén of Sweden sent a cheque of 1,000 Spanish pesetas to the Swedish consulate in order to help him back, but it was too late, on October 1 1917 Aguéli had died in a tram accident on the outskirts of Barcelona.

Prince Eugén hence ordered the cheque to be given to Aguéli's impoverished mother, who had spent all her savings supporting her son. The Prince also commanded the repatriation and preservation of all of Aguéli's belongings left behind in Barcelona, Cairo and Paris. The belongings are now kept at the archives of the Swedish National Museum of Fine arts in Stockholm.

[edit] "If a Sufi Shaykh one day would pick up a brush..."

Aguéli was of the belief that an artefact made by an artist had the ability of transferring the spiritual state of the artist to the spectator. In an article written in 1912 he states "...that is why no one in the West is considered cultured unless he knows the paintings of the greatest masters...". In the same article Aguéli also states that "...if a Sufi Shaykh one day would pick up a brush and paint a painting, one would merely have to view his painting in order to have a glimpse of his spiritual state of realisation...".

[edit] Trivia

• During his lifetime Aguéli proved to be a linguistic genius who learnt to speak and write fluent Arabic, and he was said to have known up to 16 languages.

• Aguéli had a very sincere love for animals and while living in France he also participated in active protests. In one famous incident, in a bull-fighting arena in Southern France, he shot and wounded two matadors. Rallying the entire French anti-bullfighting lobby he was only given a suspended sentence.

• During his lifetime he developed a close friendship with the French journalist and animal-rights activist Marie Huot (1846 - 1930).

• Aguéli was once badly beaten by a French mob for defending the Ottoman cause in the midst of an anti-Ottoman rally.

• A Swedish friend once heard him say "He has not lived, who has not slept in the desert and heard the camels grunting..."

• One of his favourite cats was an adopted Cairo street-cat called "Mabruka".

• Aguéli also lived for some time in Sri Lanka amongst its Malay community. He contrasted the architectural beauty of Egypt to the natural beauty of Sri Lanka.

• Aguéli began showing Oriental character traits very early in his youth. At one famous occasion when visiting a rather exclusive café in central Stockholm he persuaded all his friends to settle down on the floor, naturally this “Turkish” behaviour was rather out of place in the late 19th century Stockholm and did cause quite a stir amongst the waiters.

• Swedish genealogists have in recent years managed to trace Aguéli‘s ancestry (through his mother's side) to the Swedish Bishop Jesper Swedberg who also was the father of the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. It is presumed that Aguéli himself was unaware of this connection when as a teenager he began to show an interest in Swedenborg’s teachings.

• In Sweden, Aguéli is admired as one of its most prominent modern painters and his paintings are considered to be national treasures. Most of his paintings are found at the Swedish National Museum of Fine arts (Stockholm), the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm and the Aguéli Museum in Sala.

• Many of Aguéli's later Egyptian paintings are very small since he, due to poverty, could not afford to purchase paint in Cairo.

• In 1969, at the centenary of his birth, six of his paintings were printed as stamps by the Swedish Postal Service.

• Aguéli's remains were kept in Spain until 1982, when he was brought back to Sweden and re-buried with Islamic rites in his hometown of Sala. In Sala there is a museum and a park dedicated to his memory.

[edit] See also

• René Guénon
• Frithjof Schuon
• Martin Lings
• Titus Burckhardt
• Seyyed Hossein Nasr
• Shadhili

[edit] External links

• Aguéli Museum