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Ibn Arabi
Shaykh Akbar Mohyuddin Ibn Arabi was born in Murcia in southern Spain on 27 July 1165, at a time when Spain was under Muslim rule. Later on his family moved to Seville when he was eight. He experienced an extraordinary mystical transformation at about the age of fifteen. When he was about 16, he experienced a strong calling to turn to God and entered into a retreat.
He studied the traditional sciences, Hadith in particular, with many masters; he mentions about ninety of these in an autobiographical note. In 1197 he experienced a dramatic spiritual ascension in the city of Fez, at the end of which he wrote in his Kitab al-Isra (Book of the Night-Journey): "I gained in this night-journey the true meanings of all the Divine Names, and I saw that they all referred to One Named and One essential Reality. This Named was my very object of contemplation; that Reality was my own being."
In 1200 A.D, he left Spain for good, with the intention of making the Hajj. The following year in Makkah he began writing his monumental al-Fotuhat al-Makkiya(the Makkan Revelations). In that book, he wrote his story about his meeting with the Khidr:
"A group of wandering pilgrims who seclude themselves arrived at the mosque, intending to perform the prayer. Among them was the one who had talked to me on the sea (in Tunis), who I had been told was Khidr. Among them also was a man of great worth, who was greater than him in rank. I had met him before and made friends with him. I rose and greeted him; he greeted me and was pleased to see me. Then he went forward to perform the prayer. At the end of the prayer, I stood talking with him at the door to the mosque, when the man I said was Khidr took a prayer-rug from the mihrab of the mosque, stretched it out seven cubits [10 feet] above the ground, and got onto it to do his supererogatory prayers. I asked my friend, "Have you seen this man and what he is doing?" He told me to go and ask him about it. So I left my friend and went over to see him. When Khidr had finished his prayers, I greeted him. He told me, "I only did what you saw for the sake of that denier over there", pointing to my travelling-companion who had denied miracles and who was sitting, watching him, "so that he might know that God does whatsoever He wishes with whomsoever He wishes." I turned back to the denier and asked him what he had to say. He replied: "What is there to say after seeing that?"
After pilgrimage, Ibne Arabi moved about for several years in the central Islamic lands, going as far as Persia, he settled in Damascus in 1223 A.D. There he taught and wrote until his death. He is reported to have written 289 works, of which some 150 still exist.
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 not until Ibn Arabi who explicitly formulated what was only inexplicitly contained in the teachings of earlier Sufi masters. Through him, the esoteric dimension of Islam was for the first time expressed openly.
In his famous book "Fusus-ul-Hukm" Ibn Arabi says, "Those who have come to know Allah, through His own self-disclosure to them, they did not come to know Him via their minds, have known him with the light which Allah imparted to their hearts and minds. This light then reflected itself upon all things. Then they saw that all things subsist in Allah, and they witnessed the Oneness of Allah in all those created aspects despite their multiplicity. For these aspects have no autonomy of existence. Their subsistence is only through the Divine and their affirmation is through the support of Allah." Shaykh Akbar Ibn Arabi's words jolted the minds of many Muslim clerics who openly turned against him. Ibn Arabi's theory is known as the doctrine of Wahdat-ul-Wajud (Unity of Being).
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