The Heart Made Capable by Love

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.

لَقَدْ صَارَ قَلْبِي قَابِلًا كُلَّ صُورَةٍ فَمَرْعًى لِغِزْلَانٍ وَدَيْرٌ لِرُهْبَانِ

وَبَيْتٌ لِأَوْثَانٍ وَكَعْبَةُ طَائِفٍ وَأَلْوَاحُ تَوْرَاةٍ وَمُصْحَفُ قُرْآنِ

أَدِينُ بِدِينِ الْحُبِّ أَنَّى تَوَجَّهَتْ رَكَائِبُهُ، فَالْحُبُّ دِينِي وَإِيمَانِي

La-qad ṣāra qalbī qābilan kulla ṣūratin Fa-marʿan li-ghizlānin wa-dayrun li-ruhbāni

Wa-baytun li-awthānin wa-Kaʿbatu ṭāʾifin Wa-alwāḥu Tawrātin wa-muṣḥafu Qurʾāni

Adīnu bi-dīni l-ḥubbi annā tawajjahat Rakāʾibuhu fa-l-ḥubbu dīnī wa-īmānī

My heart has become receptive to every form: a pasture for gazelles and a monastery for monks; a house for idols and a Kaʿba for the circling pilgrim, tablets of the Torah and a codex of the Qurʾān. I follow the religion of Love: wherever its mounts turn, Love is my religion and my faith.

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.

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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.

The One Who Dwelt There

In these Arabic couplets, Majnūn does not love the walls merely as walls. The dwellings have become dear through their association with Laylā: the place is precious because it carries the trace of the one he loves.

These famous lines are conventionally attributed to Qays ibn al-Mulawwaḥ, remembered as Majnūn Laylā. The attribution should remain cautious. Al-Jāḥiẓ observed that verse of unknown authorship mentioning Laylā was attributed to Majnūn. By al-Ghazālī’s time, the lines were already in circulation; in the Iḥyāʾ, he quotes them as the words of “Majnūn Banī ʿĀmir.”

The Poem

Below, I give a normalized Arabic text, a readable transliteration, and my own translation. I retain the wording used in the Iḥyāʾ:

وَمَا حُبُّ الدِّيَارِ

Wa-mā ḥubbu l-diyāri

Another version in al-Ghazālī’s al-Mustaṣfā reads:

وَمَا تِلْكَ الدِّيَارُ

Wa-mā tilka l-diyāru

أَمُرُّ عَلَى الدِّيَارِ، دِيَارِ لَيْلَى أُقَبِّلُ ذَا الْجِدَارَ وَذَا الْجِدَارَا

وَمَا حُبُّ الدِّيَارِ شَغَفْنَ قَلْبِي وَلَكِنْ حُبُّ مَنْ سَكَنَ الدِّيَارَا

Amurru ʿalā l-diyāri, diyāri Laylā Uqabbilu dhā l-jidāra wa-dhā l-jidārā

Wa-mā ḥubbu l-diyāri shaghafna qalbī Wa-lākin ḥubbu man sakana l-diyārā

I pass by the dwellings—the dwellings of Laylā— and kiss this wall and that wall.

It is not love of the dwellings that has taken hold of my heart, but love of the one who dwelt there.

Conventionally attributed to Qays ibn al-Mulawwaḥ, known as Majnūn Laylā. Translation by the author.

In the transliteration, ā and ī mark long vowels, ḥ is a deeper h, and ʿ marks ʿayn. The final -ā of jidārā and diyārā sustains the rhyme.

Words and Meanings

Key expressions in the Arabic poem

Expression	Meaning and significance
al-diyār الدِّيَارُ	The plural of dār: dwellings, habitations, or an encampment. It evokes more than buildings; it holds the life and memory once present there.
dhā al-jidār wa-dhā al-jidār ذَا الْجِدَارَ وَذَا الْجِدَارَ	Literally, “this wall and this wall.” The repetition makes each wall immediate; “this wall and that wall” is the natural English idiom.
shaghafna qalbī شَغَفْنَ قَلْبِي	“Have taken hold of my heart.” The same root describes love penetrating the heart in Qurʾān 12:30. Grammarians cite the line because the masculine head noun ḥubb takes feminine-plural agreement from its genitive complement al-diyār.
man sakana al-diyār مَنْ سَكَنَ الدِّيَارَ	“The one who dwelt there.” The perfect verb recalls Laylā’s dwelling there; set against Majnūn’s continuing “I pass” and “I kiss,” it deepens the sense of absence.

The Trace and the Beloved

The second verse does not undo the first; it explains it. Majnūn kisses the walls, then names the true cause of the kiss. Laylā is absent, yet her absence fills the poem with place. The dwellings become particular because she inhabited them.

Al-Ghazālī’s Spiritual Analogy

Al-Ghazālī reads this relational logic as a sign of overpowering love: affection extends from the beloved to clothing, home, neighborhood, and whatever is connected with the beloved. He then applies the principle to love of God, which should awaken love for what bears relation to Him. Yet the poem itself is human love poetry, not an explicitly Sufi composition. Its spiritual meaning is an analogical reading, and that distinction matters.

The Wall as a Trace, Not a Destination

For a spiritual reader, then, the wall may become a trace, not a destination. This does not mean that a created thing contains the Divine or possesses holiness of its own. Its value lies in remembrance: it points beyond itself. That is the lesson I take from Majnūn’s distinction—the walls are dear, but the true love belongs to the one who gave them meaning.