RELIGION 920S

Ibn Arabi’s Sufism: Islamic Theoretical Mysticism

Mohsen Kadivar, Ph.D.

Fall 2024

Wednesdays, 4:40-7:10 pm

Course Description

Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Arabi (1165 Andalusia -1240 Damascus), one of the world’s great spiritual teachers, was a prominent mystic and visionary who enriched the Sufi tradition of Islam with his numerous and profound spiritual writings. Known as Muhyiddin (the “revivifier of religion”) and the shaykh al-akbar (the “greatest master”), was a Muslim mystic-philosopher who gave the esoteric, mystical dimension of Islamic thought its first full-fledged philosophical expression. Ibn ‘Arabi is known for being the first person to explicitly delineate the concept of “Wahdat ul-Wujud” (“Unity of Being”), a monist doctrine that claimed that all things in the universe are manifestations of a singular “reality”. Ibn ‘Arabi equated this “reality” with the entity he described as “the Absolute Being” (“al-wujud al-mutlaq“). Ibn Arabi shows how Man, in perfection, is the complete image of this reality and how those who truly know their essential self, know God.

Firmly rooted in the Quran, his work is universal, accepting that each person has a unique path to the truth, which unites all paths in itself. He has profoundly influenced the development of Islamic sciences since his time, as well as significant aspects of the philosophy and literature of the West. His wisdom has much to offer us in the modern world in terms of understanding what it means to be human.

He wrote over 350 works. His major works are the monumental Al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyyah (“The Meccan Revelations”) and Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam (“The Bezels of Wisdom”). He composed the former in Mecca in 560 chapters. It is a work of tremendous size, a personal encyclopedia extending over all the esoteric sciences in Islam as he understood and experienced them, together with valuable information about his own inner life. The latter was composed in 1229 in Damascus, about 10 years before his death. It is one of the most important works in mystical philosophy in Islam, consisting only of 27 chapters, the book is incomparably smaller than Al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyyah, but its importance as an expression of Ibn ʿArabī’s mystical thought in its most mature form cannot be overemphasized.

There have been many commentaries on Ibn ‘Arabī’s Fuṣūṣ al-hikam. The first one was written by Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qunawī (1207-1274), his most important follower and successor, who had studied the book with Ibn ‘Arabī. The other prominent figures of Ibn Arabi’s school as well as the most distinguished commentators of Fuṣūṣ al-hikam are Qunawī’s student, Mu’ayyad al-Dīn al-Jandi; Sa’d al-Dīn Sa’īd Farganī, ‘Abd al-Razzaq al-Kāshānī, and Jandī’s student, Dawūd Ibn Mahmud al-Qaysarī. Mulla Sadra (1571-1636) the founder of Transcendental Philosophy was under big influence of Ibn ‘Arabi’s mysticism.

This course explores Ibn ‘Arabi’s methodology (divine speech, deiformity, and names & relations), ontology (wahdat al-wujud, non-delimitation, imagination, and the barzakh), things and realities (fixed entities, the reality of realities, and entification [ta‘ayyun]), the return (the circle of existence, stages of ascent, and the two commands), and human perfection (the station of no station, perfect man, and divine presences). It is an advanced discussion of Ibn ‘Arabi’s major teachings and analysis of Fusus al-Hikam (“The Bezels of the Wisdoms”) through its best English translation and the English translation of the introduction of the commentary of al-Qayṣarī.