Les enseignements mystiques de la nature dans le Kašf al-asrār ‘an ḥikam al-ṭuyūr wa al-azhār (Le Dévoilement des mystères que recèlent les sages paroles des oiseaux et des fleurs) d’Ibn Ġānim al-Maqdisī (m. 1279)

Abstract

The Kašf al-asrār is a mystical literature work of the Mamluk author Ibn Ġānim al-Maqdisī (d. 1279). It consists of an introduction and thirty-seven chapters, called išārāt, in which flowers and animals present mystical teachings to the narrator. Building on the analysis of the introduction and some chapters of the work, this study aims to show the formal characteristics of the text, its relations with the munāẓara genre, as well as the mystical meanings it contains and the particular role that nature occupies within the work. Nature, indeed, is not here the symbol of a theophany rather it shares the same condition of pain of the human being due to separation from God. Throughout the different chapters, flowers’ and animals’ role is to reveal to the narrator some virtues that he will have to acquire along the often arduous and painful path of the ṭarīqa, in the hope of reuniting with God.