Ibn ‘Arabî First published Tue Aug 5, 2008; substantive revision Fri Aug 2, 2019 Ibn ‘Arabî (1165–1240) can be considered the greatest of all Muslim philosophers, provided we understand philosophy in the broad, modern sense and not simply as the discipline of falsafa, whose outstanding representatives are Avicenna and, many would say, Mullâ Sadrâ. Salman Bashier (2012) has even argued that “the story of Islamic philosophy” depicts an initial rationalistic phase and culminates with an “illuminative phase” best represented by Ibn ‘Arabî. Most Western scholarship and much of the later Islamic tradition have classified Ibn ‘Arabî as a “Sufi”, though he … Continue reading Who is Ibn Arabi?