Plumbing the Depths of Existence: Ibn Arabi on Human and Divine Being

The influence of the great medieval mystic Ibn ‘Arabi is immeasurable, reaching from his home city of Murcia in Andalusia to Aceh in Indonesia and just about everywhere in between. His teachings similarly try to encompass, or at least articulate, the unfathomable depths of being, both human and divine, together with the links between God’s ultimate being and our own contingent existence. Whereas Ibn ‘Arabi’s terrestrial life played out between Seville and Tunis in his early career and Mecca and Damascus in his later years, his spiritual life unfolded through encounters with saints and prophets in the ‘imaginal world’ (or ‘alam al-mithal) that was central to his cosmology. In this episode, we trace this double life and summarize his doctrines at large. We then turn to his two most famous works, the Futuhat al-Makiyya (‘Meccan Revelations’) and Fusus al-Hikam (‘Ringstones of Wisdom’), to unravel the key concept of huwiyya (literally ‘He-ness’). Nile Green talks to Ismail Lala, author of Knowing God: Ibn ‘Arabi and ‘Abd al-Razzaq al-Qashani’s Metaphysics of the Divine (Brill, 2020).