Ibn Arabi 1165 – 1240
Muhyi al-Din Ibn Arabi was an Andalusian Sufi philosopher, mystic, and poet, often called the Greatest Master. Born in Murcia, he traveled extensively through North Africa and the Near East, settling at last in Damascus. His Meccan Revelations and Bezels of Wisdom develop a vast metaphysical system organized around the doctrine of the unity of being, the perfect human, and the imaginal world that mediates between the divine and the sensible. His thought has shaped Sufi philosophy, Islamic theology, and Persian and Ottoman literature down to the present day.
Key facts
- Nationality
- Andalusian
- Era
- Medieval
- Movements
- Islamic, Medieval
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Ibn Arabi:
“My heart can take on any form: a meadow for gazelles, a cloister for monks, a temple for idols, the Kaaba of the pilgrim, the tablets of the Torah, the scrolls of the Quran. My creed is Love; wherever its caravan turns along the way, that is my belief.”
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Attributed to Ibn Arabi:
“He who knows himself knows his Lord.”
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Attributed to Ibn Arabi:
“When my Beloved appears, with what eye do I see Him? With His eye, not with mine, for none sees Him except Himself.”
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Attributed to Ibn Arabi:
“There is no being but God.”
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Attributed to Ibn Arabi:
“The Real is the inward of every outward and the outward of every inward.”