Ibn Arabi

Ibn 'Arabī, a Sunni Muslim scholar, mystic, poet, and philosopher from al-Andalus, lived from July 1165 to November 1240. He is credited as the first thinker to clearly articulate *wahdat al-wujūd*, or the unity of existence—a monist view holding that everything in the universe manifests a single reality, which he called "the Absolute" (*al-wujūd al-muṭlaq*). His cosmological ideas became a dominant intellectual framework across much of the Muslim world. Of the 850 works attributed to him, only 700 are considered authentic, and just 400 survive today. Known traditionally as Muḥyiddīn ("The Reviver of Religion"), after his death Sufi practitioners gave him the honorific Shaykh al-Akbar ("The Greatest Shaykh"), from which the term Akbarism derives. Some scholars and Muslim communities regard him as a *walī* (saint).

Born in the Taifa of Murcia (present-day southeastern Spain) on 17 Ramaḍān 560 AH (28 July 1165), though some sources give 27 Ramaḍān (6 August 1165), his first name was Muhammad. After his son’s birth, he became known as Abū ʿAbdullāh. In his works, he sometimes used the fuller name Abū ʻAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn ʻArabī al-Ṭāʼī al-Ḥātimī, indicating his noble lineage from Arabian tribes. His relative Ḥātim aṭ-Ṭāʼiyy was a famous pre-Islamic poet from the Qahtanite tribe of Ṭayyi’.

His family had a mixed background. His father descended from Arab emigrants who arrived in al-Andalus during the early Muslim conquest of Iberia; his mother was likely of Berber descent. In his *Futūḥāt al-Makkīyah*, Ibn 'Arabī mentions a maternal uncle, a prince of Tlemcen who abandoned wealth for an ascetic life after meeting a Sufi mystic. His paternal ancestry traces to Yemen, among the oldest Arab groups in al-Andalus, possibly migrating during the second wave of the Muslim conquest. His father, ʿAli ibn Muḥammad, served in the army of Ibn Mardanīsh, ruler of the Taifa of Murcia. When Murcia fell to the Almohad Caliphate in 1172, Ibn Mardanīsh was killed, and his father pledged allegiance to the Almohad caliph Abū Ya'qūb Yūsuf I. At age seven, Ibn 'Arabī’s family moved from Murcia to Seville to serve the new ruler.

Ibn 'Arabī had three wives. While still a young adult in Andalusia, he married Maryam, from an influential family, who shared his Sufi aspirations. She recounted a vision in which a spiritual figure told her the path to the Way required trust, certainty, patience, resolution, and veracity—a method Ibn 'Arabī confirmed as that of the Sufis. During his long stay in Anatolia, according to Arabic and Persian sources, he married the widow of Majd al-Dīn and took responsibility for educating her young son, Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi. His third wife, mentioned in his writings, was the mother of his son Imāduddin, to whom he bequeathed the first copy of *Futūḥāt al-Makkīyah*.

He studied under many scholars, listed in the *ijāza* (teaching license) he wrote for al-Muzaffar Ghazi, the Ayyubid ruler of Damascus. Among them were Ibn 'Asakir and his son al-Qasim; Abu Tahir al-Silafi; Ibn Bashkuwal; 'Abd al-Haqq al-Ishbili (under whom he read all of Ibn Hazm’s books); Abu Zayd al-Suhayli; Ibn Zarqun; Ibn al-Jadd; Abu Madyan; Ibn Rushd (Averroes); Ibn al-Jawzi; Ibn Abi Jamra; Abu Shuja' Zahir ibn Rustam al-Isfahani (Imam of the Holy Shrine in Mecca); Jamal al-Din b. al-Harastani; and Ibn Malik.

His most prominent students included Badr al-Din al-Habashi; Ibn al-Farid (considered by 'Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi to be among Ibn 'Arabī’s students); al-Muzaffar Baha' al-Din Ghazi (son of al-'Adil I); Zakiy al-Din al-Birzali; Shams al-Din al-Khuwayyi; Ibn al-Dubaythi; Ibn al-Najjar; Diya' al-Din al-Maqdisi; Isma'il ibn Sawdakin; Sa'd al-Din al-Hamawi; and Muhyi al-Din Yahya ibn al-Zaki, who patronized Ibn 'Arabī in Damascus and arranged his burial in the Banu al-Zaki family cemetery. Ibn al-Zaki was a descendant of Zaki al-Din 'Ali b. Muhammad b. al-Zaki, a Shafi'i chief qadi of Damascus who allied politically with the Banu 'Asakir family, whose members held high judicial and scholarly positions in the Shafi'i school of Sunni law.