While Ibn Arabi was considered heterodox and even heretical by contemporaries and later Islamic scholars, such as conservative theologian Ibn Taymiyyah, he continues to exert a strong influence on Sufi thought. Having knowledge of worlds outside of Earth, the spirit teaches the mystic about other civilisations and their “vast cities, possessing technologies far superior than ours”.Īnother point of interest within the Futuhat is mention of a quote attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, in which he is purported to have said that there were 100,000 "Adams" before the Adam who gave rise to humanity. The spirit introduces Ibn Arabi to the secrets of existence and the true nature of God and the universe, but also reveals tidbits that will be of interest to those interested in the extra-terrestrial. With 560 chapters, Ibn Arabi's work starts with the 12th-century mystic meeting an ancestral spirit while performing a tawaaf (circumambulation) of the Kaaba at Mecca's Grand Mosque, Islam's holiest site. The Andalusian Sufi and philosopher Ibn Arabi wrote his magnum opus over a period of 30 years, collecting his poetry, philosophical prose and narrative fables into one work. The Meccan Revelations (Futuhat al-Makkiyya) by Ibn Arabi While Lucian's descriptions were only ever meant to carry comic value, they do demonstrate that the idea of life outside of Earth was firmly rooted in ancient minds. With names such as Hippomyrmicks, Psyllotoxotans and Scorodomachians, it is possible that Lucian's fantastical descriptions of races were the inspiration for those Jonathan Swift's Gulliver encounters during his journeys. The races Lucian encounters can remove their eyes on a whim and only put them back in when needed there are others who have the bodies of men with the faces of dogs and giant versions of creatures on Earth, such as spiders and fleas, which serve as cavalry during battle. Though satirical, the novella contains some of the earliest imaginings of what life outside of Earth would look like, and has been referred to as the first known work of science fiction. Storm winds carry Lucian to the moon, where he encounters a race of human-like aliens who are at war with inhabitants of the Sun over the right to colonise the Morning Star (Venus). The work he is best remembered for is his True Story, in which a fictionalised version of himself narrates an epic modelled on Homer's Odyssey. True Story (Vera Historia) by Lucianīorn in the second century CE in what is now Samsat in Turkey but was then Roman Syria, Lucian was a Greek satirist who enjoyed a productive career creating parodies of antiquity's greatest epics. In the list below, which is inspired by Determann's research, Middle East Eye looks at some of the oldest mentions of extra-terrestrial life in Middle Eastern literature. This regional interest in space and the secrets it contains is recorded in literature many hundreds of years old. The details of what these worlds contain are left a mystery. In Judaism too, there are mentions in the Talmud of God roaming over "18,000 worlds". "For example, the Quran repeatedly refers to God as ‘Lord of the Worlds’, and Muslims have combined such notions with global astrobiological research and science fiction." "Islamic tradition has been generally supportive of conceptions of extraterrestrial life," says Jorg Matthias Determann in his recent book Islam, Science Fiction and Extraterrestrial Life. Interest in alien beings goes at least as far back to the second century Greek satirist Lucian, and existed among Islamic scholars.Ĭonventional thinking may hold that the possibility of life outside of Earth undermines religious beliefs, but a number of academics argue the opposite. While you were sleeping: The importance of dreams in Middle Eastern culture Read More » Like elsewhere in the world, the Middle East has reported a number of unidentified flying object (UFO) sightings, including in Iran (1976), Syria (2012) and Kuwait (2017). While there is no evidence that Egypt’s famed pyramids or the Mayan city of Chichen Itza were made by aliens or to communicate with them, the question of life outside our planet still consumes contemporary astrophysicists and ordinary people alike. Chief among the mysteries of the cosmos is that eternal question: is there life out there?Įarly humans projected their own mythologies onto the stars, giving constellations their own names and back stories, many of which remain with us today.įor the speculative and mystically-inspired, humanity's greatest achievements, be they the technologies of the modern world or the structures built by the Ancient Egyptians or Mayans, were the result not of human ingenuity but of help from the great beyond. The endless expanse of space has fascinated human beings from the start of recorded history.
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