Tarjumān al-Ashwāq

Tarjumān al-Ashwāq ('the interpreter/translator/guide/biographer of longings/desires')^[1] is a collection of 61 self-standing nasībs by the Andalusian Sufi mystic Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn al-ʿArabī (1165–1240).

Editions and translations

Arabic

• Ibn al-ʿArabī, Dhakhāʾir al-Aʿlāq: Sharḥ. Turjumān al-Ashwāq, ed. Muḥ ammad Abd al-Raḥ mān al-Kurdī (Cairo, 1968) [includes both poems and Ibn al-ʿArabī's commentary].
• Ibn al-ʿArabī, Turjumān al-Ashwāq (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1966) [includes both poems and Ibn al-ʿArabī's commentary].

English

• Reynold Nicholson, The Tarjumán al-Ashwáq: A Collection of Mystical Odes by Muhyiddīn Ibn al-ʿArabī (London: Royal Asiatic Society, Oriental Translation Series, New Series xx, reprinted in 1981 by the Theosophical Publishing House, Wheaton, Illinois).
• Sells, Michael, 'Return to the Flash Rock Plain of Thahmad: Two Nasībs by Ibn al-ʿArabī', Journal of Arabic Literature, 39 (2008), 3–13 (p. 4); DOI: 10.1163/157006408X310825 [translates poems 22 and 26].
• Sells, M., ‘ “You’d Have Seen What Melts the Mind”: Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Poem #20 from the Turjumān al-Ashwāq’, in Jonathan P. Decter and Michael Rand, eds., Studies in Arabic and Hebrew Letters in Honor of Raymond P. Scheindlin (Gorgias Press, 2007).
• Sells, Michael, Stations of Desire: Love Elegies from Ibn al-ʿArabī and New Poems (Jerusalem: Ibis Editions, 2001) [translates 24 of the poems into English].
• Sells, Michael, 'Ibn 'Arabi's "Gentle Now, Doves of the Thornberry and Moringa Thicket" (ālā yā hamāmāti l-arākati wa l-bāni)', The Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, 10 (1991), http://www.ibnarabisociety.org/articles/poemtarjuman11.html [translates poem 11].

Romance

• Maurice Gloton (trans.), L’Interprète des Désires, Turjumān al-Ashwāq, Traduit de l’arabe (Paris: Albin Michel, 1997) [complete French translation of both the poems and their author's commentary upon them].
• Vincente Cantorino (trans)., Casidas de amor profano y místico: Ibn Zaydun e Ibn ʿArabi (Mexico City: Porrua, 1988) [Spanish translation].
• Ibn Arabi, El Intérprete de los Deseos (Tarŷumān al-Ašwāq), trans. by Carlos Varona Narvión (Murcia: Editora Regional de Murcia, Colección Ibn Arabi, 2002) [Spanish translation].

References