Medieval alchemy, Kabbalah and Islamic esotericism
Ibn ʿArabī
The most influential metaphysician of Sufism: divine self-disclosure, the imagination as a real faculty, and the unity underlying existence.
- Dates
- 1165 – November 1240
- Dating
- documented dates
- Born
- Murcia, al-Andalus
- Died
- Damascus
The life
A youthful religious transformation was followed by extensive travel through Iberia, North Africa and the eastern Islamic world. He reached Mecca in 1201 and settled in Damascus in 1223, remaining until his death.
Place in the tradition
His account of imagination as an ontological realm — not a synonym for fantasy — reaches Western esotericism repeatedly, and usually without attribution.
a note on the record
History and later legend
He wrote hundreds of works. Anything like a complete bibliography is impractical, here or anywhere.
the written record
Principal works
-
composed and revised over decades
The Meccan Openings
al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya
A gigantic encyclopedic treatment of cosmology, spiritual practice, mystical states, prophecy, imagination and metaphysics.
-
c. 1230
The Ringstones of Wisdom
Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam
A concentrated presentation of divine wisdom through a sequence of prophets.