In my reading of these celebrated verses, Ibn ʿArabī describes a heart made spacious by love: a heart able to receive many forms without mistaking any single form for the whole of the Divine Reality. It is not emptied of conviction. It is freed from confusing the form it knows with the fullness of God.
These are verses 13–15 of Ode XI in Ibn ʿArabī’s Tarjumān al-Ashwāq, not a separate poem. Michael Sells shows how the full ode moves through longing, pilgrimage, the Kaʿba, and the transformation of the lover’s heart. In Ibn ʿArabī’s own commentary, the heart receives different forms because divine self-disclosures vary. He then explains the “religion of Love” through Qurʾān 3:31, joining love to the path of following the Prophet ﷺ.
The Poem
Below I give a fully vocalized Arabic text, a readable transliteration, and my own translation. I retain the attested reading فَالْحُبُّ دِينِي وَإِيمَانِي. One printed base text reads فَالدِّينُ and records فَالْحُبُّ as the reading of another copy.
In the transliteration, ā and ī mark long vowels, ṣ is an emphatic s, ḥ is a deeper h, and ʿ and ʾ represent ʿayn and hamzah. The standard readings are ghizlān and muṣḥaf.
Video/Audio
Words and Meanings
| Expression | Meaning and significance |
|---|---|
|
qābilan kulla ṣūrah
قَابِلًا كُلَّ صُورَةٍ
|
“Receptive to every form.” Ibn ʿArabī connects qalb, heart, with taqallub, continual turning: the heart changes as divine self-disclosures come to it in differing forms. |
|
marʿan… dayrun… baytun… Kaʿbah
مَرْعًى… دَيْرٌ… بَيْتٌ… كَعْبَةٌ
|
The heart becomes landscape, monastery, shrine, and place of pilgrimage. The deliberately contrasting images express its breadth, not the disappearance of every distinction. |
|
alwāḥu Tawrātin wa-muṣḥafu Qurʾān
أَلْوَاحُ تَوْرَاةٍ وَمُصْحَفُ قُرْآنِ
|
“Tablets of the Torah and a codex of the Qurʾān.” In his commentary, Ibn ʿArabī associates them respectively with Mosaic knowledge and the complete Muhammadan inheritance received by the heart. |
|
dīn al-ḥubb… rakāʾibuhu
دِينُ الْحُبِّ… رَكَائِبُهُ
|
The “religion of Love” and “its mounts.” The literal image is of riding animals changing direction. Ibn ʿArabī reads it as receiving the Beloved’s commands with acceptance, contentment, and love. |
The Heart Made Spacious by Love
The imagery expands in stages. The heart becomes a landscape, then a sacred building, then a book. Gazelles may roam within it; monks may dwell in it; pilgrims may circle it; revelations may be inscribed upon it. Love does not make the heart blank. It enlarges its capacity to receive.
This is why I would not reduce these verses to the claim that all religions or beliefs are interchangeable. Ibn ʿArabī’s own explanation is more demanding. The heart must not imprison the Divine within a single “god of belief,” yet the religion of Love remains grounded in divine unity and Prophetic guidance. As William Chittick explains, it is a path to be practiced, not permission to follow every personal preference.
A spacious heart does not abandon conviction. It abandons the desire to make its own understanding the measure of God. It learns to recognize a divine sign without claiming that any one sign exhausts the One to whom it points. The heart receives every form, while Love keeps it turned toward God.
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