Ibn ʿArabī

The Greatest Master, Still Contested

First attested
1165The biographical record of his birth at Murcia on 17 Ramaḍān 560 (28 July 1165), reconstructed by Addas (1993); of the writings themselves, the second recension of al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, finished in 636 AH (1238), survives largely in his own hand as the Konya manuscript.

Waḥdat al-wujūd, the phrase Ibn ʿArabī is universally labelled with, is one specialists find nowhere in his writings: on Chittick's reading Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) made it the name of a doctrine in order to condemn it, and only with Jāmī (d. 1492) did admirers take it up approvingly.

Readers found a God disclosed through every form yet confined to none, and their experience as knowledge.

Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn al-ʿArabī was born at Murcia in 1165 and died at Damascus in 1240. Al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, begun at Mecca in 1202, runs to 560 chapters; he was still rewriting it in his own hand in 1238, and that manuscript largely survives. The Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam, which he said the Prophet handed him in a vision at Damascus in 1229, treats wisdom through twenty-seven prophets. He is known everywhere by waḥdat al-wujūd, the oneness of being — an expression specialists find nowhere in his own writings. His closest disciple Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī (d. 1274) shaped the commentary tradition through which he was read; William Chittick credits Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) with making the phrase the name of a doctrine, in order to condemn it.

Light

Readers found a God disclosed through every form yet confined to none, and their own experience admitted as knowledge. The Ottoman chief muftis Ibn Kemal (d. 1534) and Ebussuud (d. 1574) defended him in fatwas; Selim I raised a mosque over his Damascus grave.

Shadow

Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) read him as collapsing God into creation — unbelief. Two sixteenth-century Ottoman chief muftis, Sadi Çelebi (d. 1539) and Çivizade (d. 1547), condemned him from the office that twice defended him; Egypt's parliament moved to ban the Futūḥāt in 1979.

Sources and verification9 sources · 2 links

Primary source

  • Ibn ʿArabī, Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam (Bezels of Wisdom), 1229, prologue; 27 chaptersIbn ʿArabī states in the prologue that he received the book from the Prophet in a vision at Damascus in the last days of Muḥarram 627 AH; it is arranged as twenty-seven chapters, each named for a prophet from Adam to Muḥammad.
  • Ibn ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya (The Meccan Openings), 1238, second recension, 560 chapters; Konya manuscriptThe work was begun at Mecca in 598/1202 and rewritten by the author between 632 and 636 AH; the second recension survives largely in his own hand, and runs to 560 chapters.

Scholarship

  • Toshihiko Izutsu, Sufism and Taoism: A Comparative Study of Key Philosophical Concepts, 1983, University of California Press; first published in two parts by the Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies, Tokyo, 1966-67, as A Comparative Study of the Key Philosophical Concepts in Sufism and TaoismIzutsu set Ibn ʿArabī's metaphysics beside the Daoism of Laozi and Zhuangzi as an explicitly comparative exercise of his own devising, not as a claim of historical contact.
  • Th. Emil Homerin, Ibn Arabi in the People's Assembly: Religion, Press, and Politics in Sadat's Egypt, 1986, Middle East Journal, vol. 40, no. 3, pp. 462-77Egypt's People's Assembly moved in 1979 to halt publication of the remaining parts of al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya and of Ibn ʿArabī's other works, and to withdraw copies already in circulation.
  • William C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-ʿArabī's Metaphysics of Imagination, 1989, State University of New York PressIbn ʿArabī's own technical vocabulary is built on wujūd, but he never uses the expression waḥdat al-wujūd; there is broad agreement among specialists that the phrase does not appear in his writings, and that calling him the founder of the doctrine is therefore misleading.
  • Alexander D. Knysh, Ibn al-ʿArabī in the Later Islamic Tradition: The Making of a Polemical Image in Medieval Islam, 1999, State University of New York PressAfter his death Ibn ʿArabī was portrayed by some theologians as a heretic and by others as Islam's greatest saint, and these rival images became rallying points for competing political and scholarly factions.
  • William C. Chittick, The Central Point: Qūnawī's Role in the School of Ibn ʿArabī, 2004, Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn ʿArabi Society, vol. 35, pp. 25-45Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) deserves the most credit for turning waḥdat al-wujūd into the designation for a doctrine; al-Qūnawī (d. 1274) was Ibn ʿArabī's close disciple, was licensed to teach all his works, and founded the commentary tradition through which he was read; ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī in the fifteenth century was among the first to apply the label approvingly.
  • Ahmed Zildžić, Friend and Foe: The Early Ottoman Reception of Ibn ʿArabī, 2012, PhD dissertation, University of California, BerkeleyBetween Selim I's Syrian campaign and the tenure of Ebussuud Efendi, four Ottoman chief muftis issued fatwas on Ibn ʿArabī: Ibn Kemal (d. 1534) and Ebussuud (d. 1574) defended him, while Sadi Çelebi (d. 1539) and Çivizade (d. 1547) refuted him.

Further reading

  • Claude Addas, Quest for the Red Sulphur: The Life of Ibn ʿArabī, 1993, Islamic Texts Society; translated by Peter Kingsley from the French of 1989The standard modern biography, on which the dates and itinerary given here depend: birth at Murcia in 1165, departure from al-Andalus around 1200, the pilgrimage to Mecca of 1202, and death at Damascus in 1240.

Linked entries

  • Set againstThe DaodejingA modern connection

    Toshihiko Izutsu's Sufism and Taoism (Keio Institute, 1966-67; University of California Press, 1983) reads Ibn ʿArabī alongside Laozi and Zhuangzi — a twentieth-century comparison Izutsu openly framed as his own, with no historical contact claimed between the two.

  • Set againstRūmīAttested

    Ibn ʿArabī's foremost pupil Ṣadr al-Dīn Qūnawī lived in Konya and kept company with Rumi — Mevlevi tradition has him appointed to lead the funeral prayer in 1273 and overcome before he could, Ḥusām al-Dīn Chalabī taking his place — but the systematic metaphysics and the teaching in story and verse are different instruments, and popular writing merges them.

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