THE LIFE of Ibn ARABI

“It is He who is revealed in every face, sought in every sign, gazed upon by every eye,
worshipped in every object of worship, and pursued in the unseen and the visible. Not a single
one of His creatures can fail to find Him in its primordial and original nature.”
Ibn ‘Arabi, Futûhât al-Makkiyya
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Ibn al-‘Arabi ((born Abū `Abd-Allah Muḥammad ibn Ali ibn Muḥammad ibn al-`Arabi al-Ḥātimī al-
Ṭā’ī) .) was a Muslim mystic, philosopher, poet, and writer who came to be acknowledged as one
of the world’s most important spiritual teachers. He became known as Muhyiddin (the Revivifier
of Religion) and the Shaykh al-Akbar (the Greatest Master).
His life can be divided into three periods: his time in the Maghrib (Andalusia and North Africa);
time in the Hijaz (Mecca and Medina); and his time in the Mashriq (Anatolia and Syria).
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Ibn al-ʿArabī was born in Murcia, southeast Spain, in 1165 AD into the Moorish culture, to the
family of a minor official . He was of pure Arab blood whose ancestry went back to the prominent
Arabian tribe of Ṭāʾī.
He lived at a time when Andalusian Spain was the centre of an extraordinary cultural flourishing
in the West, and at a time of cross-fertilisation of Jewish, Christian and Islamic thoughts.
His contemporaries included Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Abu Madyan, ʿUmar al-Suhrawardi, Ibn al-
Farid, Moses Maimonides, and St Francis of Assisi.
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There is a recorded story about Ibn Arabi’s birth. The story goes like this:
His father, Shaykh Ali ibn Muhammad ibn Arabi of Spain had no children and he wished to have
a son. At the advice of his Wali he approached Hazrat Ghaus E Azam, to ask for his blessings
and prayers to be granted a son.

Hazrat Ghaus E Azam said to him: “I have one more son yet unborn, that is written in my destiny.
I will give him to you. So, now rub your back against mine and when the child is born name him
Muhammad Muhyiddin. He would grow up to be a Qutb (a spiritual leader) of his time.”
The child was eventually born, as Hazrat Ghaus E Azam has predicted, and was named
Muhammad Muhyiddin. He became a great philosopher and a great spiritual leader, as well as
the greatest and most important Sufi figures in the Islamic tradition. He gained the title of Shaykh
al-Akbar and is commonly known as Ibn al-Arabi.

When Ibn Arabi was 8 years old, his family moved to Seville, which was then an outstanding
centre of Islamic culture and learning.
He spent 30 years of his youth and early adulthood gaining knowledge in sciences, mathematics,
cosmology, linguistics, and theology. He studied the traditional Islamic sciences, Hadith in
particular, with a great number of scholars and mystics.
He also travelled a lot, visiting various regions of Spain and North Africa in his quest for
knowledge.
During one of these travels, he found himself in Cordoba with his father, who then took him to
meet his friend Averroes. The meeting between young Ibn Arabi and the great Aristotelian
philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroës, 1126–98) was quiet dramatic.
It was recorded that after a long discussion in which young Ibn Arabi explained to the philosopher
“the limits of rational perception”, the great philosopher was so taken by the mystical depth and a
profound visionary capacity as well as a remarkable intellectual insight of the still beardless
young lad, that he “became pale and, dumbfounded, began trembling.”
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When Ibn Arabi was about 15 yo, he experienced a sudden mystical “unveiling” (kashf) or
“opening” (fotuh) of his soul toward the divine realm, by which he was shaken from his carefree
existence.
**In the middle of one of these nightly parties in Seville he heard a voice calling to him, “O
Muhammed (Ibn Arabi), it was not for this that you were created.” In consternation he fled and
went into retreat for several days in a cemetery. It was here that he had his seminal triple vision
in which he met, and received instruction from, Jesus, Moses, and Muhammed—an illumination
that simultaneously started him upon the spiritual way and established him as a master of it.
**
After yet another vision in which he felt he had been ordered to leave Spain Ibn ‘Arabî departed
for the Orient in 1200 AD, never to return to his homeland again. He left Spain for good, with the
intention of making the hajj. He passed through Tunis and Cairo and made his pilgrimage to
Mecca. He settled in Mecca for the next three years, after he “received a divine commandment”
to begin work on his monumental book “Al-Fotuhat al-makkiya” (“The Meccan Illuminations”).
During that Meccan period he wrote several more books and essays.

But his major work on “The Meccan Illimination” will last for many years, and that enormous
book, a personal Encyclopedia, of 560 chapters and several thousand of pages, was finally
completed in Damascus, late in his life.
After this period of contemplation in Mecca , Ibn Arabi travelled around Levant and Anatolia for
several years, but never went as far as Persia.
Somewhere along his way, he married a widow whose son Sadr-al-Din Qunawi would become
his most influential disciple, and to whom he would bequeath his collection of books.
Finally, in 1223. AD he settled down in Damascus, raised his family, educated numerous
students, acted as adviser to Sultans and other rulers and wrote a great number of books, till the
end of his life.
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Ibn ‘Arabi was and still is one of the most inventive and prolific writers of the Islamic tradition,
with as many as 300+ books and treatises attributed to him. However, some 110 works were
proved to be genuine works by him. The rest of it still needs further consideration. And the most
of all, the small work entitled al-Shajara al-Nu’mâniyya fî al-Dawla al-‘Uthmaniyy, the subject of
which is prediction concerning the Ottomans (Uthmans)

His works range from short essays to the long thesis, collection of poetry (Tarjuman al-ashwaq ,
spanning 5 volumes), collections of Prayers, collection of 101 Hadith Qudsi, … to the
Encyclopedic “Al-Fotuhat al-makkiya” ( “The Meccan Illuminations”), and a controversial work
that is considered his masterpiece: Fusus al-Hikam (The Seals of Wisdom)

Ibn Arabi was firmly grounded in the mainstream of the Islamic tradition. He cited the Qur’an and
Hadith constantly and most of his works are firmly rooted in the Qur’an and represent
commentaries on these two sources of the tradition.

He was thoroughly familiar with the Islamic sciences, especially tafsir, feqh, and kalām (Islamic
theology) and Greco-Roman philosophy (falsafah)]. And he has profoundly influenced the
development of Islam since his time onward.
After his death in 1240, Ibn ‘Arabi’s writings (and teachings) quickly spread throughout the
Islamic world within a century, and more slowly throughout Western and Christian world.
Ibn Arabi was buried in Damascus, his resting place can be seen in one of the pictures.
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One of Ibn Arabie’s poems for the end:
“A garden among the flames”
O Marvel,
a garden among the flames!
My heart can take on
any form:
a meadow for gazelles,
a cloister for monks,
For the idols, sacred ground,
Ka’ba for the circling pilgrim,
the tables of the Torah,
the scrolls of the Qur’án.
I profess the religion of love;
wherever its caravan turns along the way,
that is the belief,
the faith I keep.
*****
By Melisa Dirilish