Two complete translations of the Tarjuman al-Ashwaq into German have appeared in 2016. A review of Weidner’s translation – Der Übersetzer der Sehnsüchte: Gedichte – appeared on August 23, 2016 in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Germany’s largest newspaper. The subtitle for the review was, “A book of longing and rapture : Stefan Weidner has transposed the poems of the mystic Ibn ‘Arabi into a very contemporary German, bringing out their startling closeness to the modern Lyric.”

Stefan Weidner read Islamic Studies, German and Philosophy at the Universities of Göttingen, Damascus, Berkeley and Bonn. He is a writer, translator and literary critic, and since 2001 has been editor of Fikrun wa Fann(Thought & Art), published by the Goethe Institute. This journal was founded in 1963 by Annemarie Schimmel and Albert Theile, to contribute to dialogue between Western and Islamic culture. Weidner has translated the works of a number of poets from Arabic, including Adonis and Mahmoud Darwish.

The first part of Wolfgang Herrmann’s translation of the Tarjuman – Deuter der Sehnsüchte – was published in 2013. This presented poems 1-20, together with an Introduction by the translator, and a translation of Ibn ‘Arabi’s Istilahat al-sufiyya, short definitions of many terms used by the sufis. The poems are accompanied by the translation of Ibn ‘Arabi’s own commentary. Poems 21-61 appeared in April 2016 in Volume 2 of Herrmann’s translation.

To paraphrase a comment made by Herrmann: The translations by Weidner and Herrmann have different objectives: Stefan Weidner’s translation provides Ibn ‘Arabi’s love poetry as autonomous poems (understandable without any prior knowledge) in a modern poetic space, where they stand without Ibn ‘Arabi’s commentary or prologue. By contrast, Wolfgang Herrmann’s translation places Ibn ‘Arabi’s theological-metaphysical commentary beside the poetic text, with the aim of opening a window onto the breadth of Ibn ‘Arabi’s thought.

Wolfgang Herrmann has previously made a number of other works by and related to Ibn ‘Arabi available in German, several of them translations of well-known publications in French and English. These include Die Weisheit der Propheten (Titus Burkhardt’s translation of twelve chapters from the Fusus al-Hikam, 2005), Der grenzenlos Barmherzige (Stephen Hirtenstein’s biographical study, The Unlimited Mercifier, 2008), and Der Sagenhafte Greif des Westens: Anqa Mughrib(2012).