A Mughal Treatise on Essence and Existence

This article presents an annotated translation of The Equivalence between Giving and Receiving (al-Taswiya bayna al-ifāda wa-l-qabūl), a short Arabic treatise on essence (dhāt) and existence (wujūd) composed by the South Asian philosopher-Sufi Shaykh Muḥibb Allāh Ilāhābādī (996–1058/1587–1648). Although modern scholarship has habitually referred to Muḥibb Allāh as an ardent defender of the doctrine of waḥdat al-wujūd (“unity of existence”) associated with the figure of Ibn al-ʿArabī, such generalized formulations fail to do justice to the uniqueness of Muḥibb Allāh’s intellectual contributions. Most authors who had set out to provide a philosophical defense of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s teachings – including the well-known likes of Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī, ʿAfīf al-Dīn al-Tilimsānī, ʿAbd al-Razzāq Kāshānī, Dāwud al-Qayṣarī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī, Mullā Ṣadrā, and so on – had tended to prioritize a philosophically utilizable formulation of wujūd or “existence.” Muḥibb Allāh, in notable contrast, favors a presentation of the divine Reality in terms of “pure essence/quiddity” (dhāt/māhiyya maḥḍa), at times going to considerable lengths to uphold his alternative formulation. Such a strategy of argumentation is uncommon amongst philosophical defenders of Ibn al-ʿArabī, the distinctiveness of which is further enhanced by Muḥibb Allāh’s peculiar mode of disputation, which straddles the line between metaphysics and natural philosophy/physics. The Taswiya occasioned at least sixteen commentaries and refutations; this translation benefits from consulting the earliest of these, composed by Mullā Maḥmūd al-Jawnpūrī (d. 1062/1652) and Khwāja Khwurd (d. 1073/1663), as well as three later commentaries by Ḥabīb Allāh Paṭnaʾī (d. 1140/1728). Most significantly, this translation makes extensive use of Muḥibb Allāh’s own Persian auto-commentary, the Sharḥ-i taswiya, which is a critical aid for deciphering the author’s at times opaque manner of expression and argumentation.