The Andalusian mystic Ibn ʿArabi is widely recognized to be the most prolific
and, in many estimations, the most influential Sufi author of the Islamic tradition.
Despite his seminal importance, a large percentage of his literary corpus
remains unstudied, and existing scholarship on his works tends to suffer both
from an overly decontextualized approach and an overemphasis upon these
works’ supposed intractability to analysis. Using Ibn ʿArabi’s most important
precursor, al‑Ghazali, and an especially representative text, the long
introduction to Ibn ʿArabi’s magnum opus, as examples, this talk argues that his
views are not so allusive as to be inscrutable but rather become fully intelligible
once set within the combined contexts of his oeuvre as a whole and
contemporaneous discussions in philosophy, theology, and Sufism.
