Until 1198 Ibn `Arabi spent his life in Andalusia and North Africa meeting other Sufis and scholars and occasionally engaging in debates. All this time he had been having various mystical visions. In that year he had a vision ordering him to depart from the East where he would spend the rest of his days.
After some years of traveling through Arabia, Egypt, Asia Minor, and elsewhere, and by now a teacher of great renown, in 621 he finally settled in Damascus where he spent the remainder of his life. During this period he completed his magnum opus, the twelve volume al-Futuhat al-Makkiyah ("Meccan Revelations"), which was not only an extensive encyclopaedia of Sufi beliefs and doctrines, but also a thirty-year diary of his own spiritual experiences; a compendium of the esoteric sciences in Islam which surpasses anything of its kind written before or since [Nasr, Three Muslim Sages, pp.92-98].
Ibn `Arabi's output was prodigious. He is reported to have written 289 works, of which some 150 still exist. With Ibn `Arabi we have for the first time a complete exposition of Sufi doctrine; a monumental synthesis encompassing theology, metaphysics, cosmology, psychology, spiritual practice and more.
And although earlier Sufi writers discussed metaphysical questions or cosmological doctrines, this was never on the same scale. For the most part the earlier Sufi writings are either practical guides or ecstatic expressions of transcendent or mystical states of consciousness. It was upto Ibn `Arabi then to explicitly formulate what was only implicitly contained in the teachings of earlier Sufi masters. Through him the esoteric dimension of Islam was for the first time expressed openly. [Nasr, Three Muslim Sages, p.90]
Sufism
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Ibn
Arabi's Logos Doctrine
Ibn
Arabi's Conception of Archetypes
The
Divine Self In Ibn Arabi's Philosophy
The
Planes of Existence in Ibn Arabi's Cosmology
Creative
Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn `Arabi - on-line quotes from the book-
at the Mysticism in World Religions
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page uploaded 26 June 1998