Who Is Ibn ʿArabi

Muhyi al-Din Ibn ʿArabi (1165–1240), known in the Islamic tradition as al-Shaykh al-Akbar ("the Greatest Master"), was an Andalusian-born Sufi mystic, philosopher, poet, and prolific author whose writings constitute one of the most ambitious and complex spiritual systems in world literature. Born in Murcia in Islamic Spain, Ibn ʿArabi traveled extensively across the Islamic world—North Africa, the Hijaz, Anatolia, and the Levant—before settling in Damascus, where he spent his final years and was buried. He is traditionally credited with authoring over 350 works, though some scholars estimate the number at closer to 700, ranging from brief treatises to his monumental al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya (The Meccan Revelations), which runs to over 17,000 pages in Arabic.

Ibn ʿArabi's central philosophical contribution is the doctrine of wahdat al-wujud (the Unity of Being or Oneness of Existence)—the idea that all reality is a single divine reality manifesting in infinite forms, and that the multiplicity we perceive is not separate from but an expression of the One. This teaching, while enormously influential, has been debated and sometimes condemned within Islamic theology for centuries; critics charge it with pantheism, while defenders insist it preserves the transcendence of God while affirming God's immanence in creation. His influence extends far beyond Sufism: he shaped Ottoman intellectual culture, Persian poetry (Rumi was a near-contemporary), Kabbalistic thought (scholars have identified parallel structures with the Zohar), and modern Western engagement with Islamic mysticism through translators like William Chittick and Henry Corbin. For IMHU's purposes, Ibn ʿArabi represents one of the most sophisticated attempts in any tradition to articulate how the Absolute relates to the human soul, to imagination, and to the multiplicity of spiritual paths.

Core Concepts

1. Wahdat al-wujud (Unity of Being)
   • Ibn ʿArabi's signature teaching holds that existence is one: there is only God, and everything that appears to exist does so as a manifestation or "self-disclosure" (tajalli) of the divine reality. The world is not an illusion, but neither is it separate from God—it is the place where the divine names and attributes become visible. This framework parallels (though is not identical to) Advaita Vedanta's non-duality and has made Ibn ʿArabi a key figure in comparative mysticism. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
2. The Perfect Human (al-Insan al-Kamil)
   • Ibn ʿArabi teaches that the human being occupies a unique position in the cosmos: the human is the microcosm that mirrors the macrocosm, the being in whom all the divine names are gathered. The "Perfect Human"—embodied most fully by the prophets—is the being who consciously realizes this fullness and becomes a mirror in which God contemplates the totality of divine attributes. This concept was further developed by his student ʿAbd al-Karim al-Jili and remains central to Sufi anthropology.
3. Creative imagination (al-khayal) as a spiritual organ
   • For Ibn ʿArabi, imagination is not fantasy—it is a real ontological realm (ʿalam al-mithal, the "world of images") that mediates between the purely spiritual and the purely material. Visionary experience, dreams, and theophanic encounters take place in this intermediate world, and the capacity to navigate it is a mark of spiritual maturity. Henry Corbin's term "mundus imaginalis" draws directly on this concept. (Wikipedia)
4. The multiplicity of valid spiritual paths
   • Ibn ʿArabi's famous poem—"My heart has become capable of every form"—expresses his conviction that the divine manifests through every authentic religious form, and that the mystic who has realized the Unity of Being recognizes God in the temple, the mosque, the church, and the Torah scroll alike. This is not relativism; it is the claim that the Absolute exceeds any single formulation, and that each tradition captures a genuine aspect of the divine self-disclosure.

Essential Writings

• The Bezels of Wisdom (Fusus al-Hikam) (trans. R.W.J. Austin)
  • Ibn ʿArabi's most concentrated and influential work: twenty-seven chapters, each associated with a prophet from Adam to Muhammad, exploring how divine wisdom manifests through different prophetic archetypes. Dense but luminous, it is the single text most studied in the Akbarian tradition.
  • Best use: the essential text, but demanding—pair it with a commentary (Chittick or Izutsu) for first reading.
• The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-ʿArabi's Metaphysics of Imagination (William C. Chittick)
  • The best scholarly introduction in English: Chittick systematically presents Ibn ʿArabi's cosmology, ontology, and spiritual psychology through carefully selected and translated passages from the Futuhat. It makes an extraordinarily complex thinker accessible without oversimplifying.
  • Best use: the best starting point for serious readers—read this before (or instead of) attempting the primary texts directly.
• Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn ʿArabi (Henry Corbin)
  • Corbin's landmark study introduced Ibn ʿArabi to Western philosophy and established the concept of the mundus imaginalis—the ontologically real world of images that mediates between spirit and matter. It is simultaneously a work of scholarship and a philosophical argument for the reality of visionary experience.
  • Best use: for readers interested in imagination, visionary experience, or the dialogue between Islamic and Western philosophy.
• Sufism and Taoism (Toshihiko Izutsu)
  • A groundbreaking comparative study that places Ibn ʿArabi's metaphysics alongside Laozi and Zhuangzi, revealing deep structural parallels between Sufi and Taoist visions of the Absolute, the cosmos, and the human being. It remains one of the finest works in comparative mysticism.
  • Best use: essential for readers interested in cross-tradition comparison, especially those drawn to both Islamic and East Asian contemplative thought.