Departures of note

In 1911, Ivan Aguéli founded Al Akbariyya, a secret Sufi society in Paris, to promote the teachings of the medieval mystic Ibn Arabi among the scholarly and freethinking classes through the practice of the Shadhili and Malamati paths. Among its first members was René Guénon, whom Aguéli had initiated into Sufism. The society is known only from a letter Aguéli wrote in September 1911 to an address in Cairo; little else about its activities survives.

Born John Gustaf Agelii in Sala, Sweden, in 1869, Aguéli showed early talent in art and an interest in religious mysticism. He adopted the name Ivan Aguéli in 1889 and moved to Paris, where he studied under the Symbolist painter Émile Bernard. After a brief return to Sweden, he went back to Paris in 1892, became active in anarchist circles, and was arrested in 1894 during the Trial of the Thirty. Released in 1895, he traveled to Egypt and later to Colombo, returning to France in 1900.

In 1902, Aguéli settled in Cairo and became one of the first Western Europeans enrolled at Al-Azhar University, studying Arabic and Islamic philosophy. That year he was initiated into the Shadhiliyya Sufi order by Shaykh 'Abd al-Rahman Ilaysh al-Kabir. With the Italian journalist Enrico Insabato, he co-founded the magazine Il Convito (Arabic: An-Nadi), published in Cairo from 1904 to 1913, which promoted Islam in Italian and a favorable view of Italy in Arabic. His writings for the journal included the first known use of the term 'Islamophobia'.

Aguéli also wrote articles on Islamic topics for La Gnose, an esoteric journal edited by Guénon. Suspected of being an Ottoman spy, he was expelled to Spain in 1916. Stranded without money to return to Sweden, he was killed by a train at a rail crossing in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat on October 1, 1917. His remains were kept in Barcelona until 1981, when they were reburied with Islamic rites in Sala. His paintings are held in Swedish museums, and in 1969 six of his works were printed as stamps by the Swedish Postal Service.