Ibn 'Arabī (July 1165–November 1240) was a Sunni Muslim Arab scholar, Sufi mystic, poet, and Muslim philosopher from al-Andalus, who exercised notable influence within Sufi metaphysics and Islamic thought in general. There are 850 works attributed to Ibn 'Arabi, though only 700 of these are considered authentic, and only 400 are extant. His cosmological teachings became a dominant intellectual framework in many regions of the Muslim world.
His traditional title was Muḥyiddīn (Arabic: محيي الدين, lit. 'The Reviver of Religion'). After his death, practitioners of Sufism began referring to him by the honorific title Shaykh al-Akbar (Arabic: الشيخ الأكبر, lit. 'The Greatest Shaykh'), from which the term Akbarism is derived.
Ibn ʿArabī is considered a wali (saint) by some scholars and Muslim communities.
Ibn 'Arabī is known for being the first person to explicitly delineate the concept of wahdat al-wujūd (unity of existence), a monist doctrine that claimed that all things in the universe are manifestations of a singular reality. Ibn 'Arabī equated this reality with the entity he called "the Absolute" (al-wujūd al-muṭlaq, "the Absolute Existence").
Ibn 'Arabī was born in the Taifa of Murcia, in present-day southeastern Spain, on the 17th of Ramaḍān 560 AH (28 July 1165), although other sources suggest the 27th of Ramaḍān 560 AH (6 August 1165 AD) as an alternative birthdate. His first name was Muhammad. After the birth of his son, he was known as Abū ʿAbdullāh (the father of Abdullāh), as is common practice for Arabic names. In some of his works, ibn 'Arabī referred to himself with fuller versions of his name, Abū ʻAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn ʻArabī al-Ṭāʼī al-Ḥātimī, where the last three names indicate his noble lineage from the tribes of Arabia. His relative Ḥātim aṭ-Ṭāʼiyy was well-known as a poet of pre-Islamic Arabia of the Qahtanite (South Arabian) tribe of Ṭayyi’.
Ibn 'Arabī came from a mixed background. His father descended from Arab emigrants to al-Andalus in the early years of the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. His mother was presumably of Berber descent. In his Futūḥāt al-Makkīyah, ibn 'Arabī writes of a deceased maternal uncle, a prince of Tlemcen who abandoned wealth for an ascetic life after encountering a Sufi mystic.
His paternal ancestry came from Yemen and belongs to one of the oldest Arab groups in al-Andalus. They may have migrated during the second wave of the Muslim conquest of Iberia.
His father, ʿAli ibn Muḥammad, served in the Army of Ibn Mardanīsh, the ruler of the Taifa of Murcia. When Murcia fell to the Almohad Caliphate in 1172, Ibn Mardanīsh did not survive the defeat and was killed in battle, leading to his father pledging allegiance to the Almohad caliph Abū Ya'qūb Yūsuf I. At the time, ibn Arabi was only 7 years old, and his family relocated from Murcia to Seville to serve the new ruler.
Ibn Arabi had three wives. He married Maryam, a woman from an influential family, when he was still a young adult and lived in Andalusia. Maryam shared his aspiration to follow the Sufi path, as quoted by Austin in Sufis of Andalusia: My saintly wife, Maryam bint Muhammad binti Abdun, said, 'I have seen in my sleep someone whom I have never seen in the flesh, but who appears to me in my moments of (spiritual) ecstasy. He asked me whether I was aspiring to the Way, to which I replied that I was, but that I did not know by what means to arrive at it. He then told me that I would come to it through five things: trust, certainty, patience, resolution, and veracity.' Thus, she offered her vision to me (for my consideration), and I told her that was indeed the method of the Folk (Sufis). I myself have never seen one with that degree of mystical experience.
During his long stay in Anatolia, according to Arabic and Persian sources, ibn Arabi married Majd al-Dīn's widow and assumed responsibility for the education of her young son, Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi. Ibn Arabi also mentioned his third wife in his writings, the mother of his son Imāduddin, to whom he bequeathed the first copy of Futūḥāt al-Makkīyah.
Ibn Arabi studied under many scholars who were mentioned in the ijaza (permission to teach and transmit) written to al-Muzaffar Ghazi, the ruler of Damascus and son of Al-Adil I. Some of these most prominent scholars of the time were:
Ibn 'Asakir (d. 571/1176), and his son al-Qasim b. 'Ali b. 'Asakir (d. 600/1203)
Abu Tahir al-Silafi (d. 576/1180)
'Abd al-Haqq al-Ishbili (d. 581/1185) the student of Ibn Hazm. Ibn Arabi read all of Ibn Hazm's books while studying under him.
Abu Zayd al-Suhayli (d. 581/1185)
Ibn Rushd (Averroes) (d. 595/1198)
Abu Shuja' Zahir ibn Rustam al-Isfahani (d. 609/1212) Imam of the Holy Shrine in the Great Mosque of Mecca.
Jamal al-Din b. al-Harastani (d. 614/1217)