Life
Born in Murcia in 1165, Ibn Arabi traveled across the Islamic world — Andalusia, North Africa, Mecca, Anatolia — as a Sufi teacher and prolific author, settling finally in Damascus, where he died in 1240. His Meccan Revelations (al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya) and Bezels of Wisdom (Fusus al-Hikam) are monuments of mystical thought.
The Struggle
His was the inner struggle of the mystic and the outer one of a controversial teacher whose difficult, daring ideas drew both devoted disciples and fierce opponents across the centuries.
Teachings & Morals
Ibn Arabi is associated with the doctrine later termed wahdat al-wujud ("the unity of being") — that all existence is a manifestation of the one divine reality — and with a rich symbolic cosmology, the "perfect human," and the imaginal realm, expressed in dense, poetic prose.
Wars & Conflicts
A mystic and scholar, Ibn Arabi took no part in war; his life was one of travel, teaching, and voluminous writing across the Muslim world.
The Debates
Historical figures are debated. What follows records the major questions raised by historians and within the traditions themselves — presented for study, not verdict.
His orthodoxy is one of the great debates of Islam: revered by many Sufis as the supreme expositor of divine reality, he has been condemned by others (notably Ibn Taymiyyah and later literalists) as a pantheist or heretic. Both the veneration and the condemnation are long-standing; the perspectives are presented without verdict.
Legacy
Ibn Arabi shaped the entire later tradition of Islamic mysticism and philosophy, from Persia to the Ottoman lands to Southeast Asia; his ideas remain central to Sufi thought and a live subject of both devotion and controversy in the Muslim world.