He dreamed about a bird flying around a great throne carried on pillars of flame. The bird approached him and whispered in his ear: “Go east and I will be your heavenly guide, while a human companion will wait for you from the city of Fez.” Because of this vision, Muhyiddin Bin Arabi moved from his city Murcia traveled in the countries of the East for 23 years and became one of the great Sufis and Muslim philosophers throughout the ages.
Ibn Arabi, the elder Sheikh, and Sultan of knowledgeable
For the Sufis, Ibn Arabi is not just a poet and philosopher. Rather, his followers consider him among the saints and named him “the great sheik” and “the Sultan of the knowledgeable,” and they attribute to him the great Sufi order.
Ibn Arabi was born in the Andalusian city of Murcia in 1164, to an Arab father who was from the famous Tayy tribe, and a Berber mother from North Africa.
He grew up in a religious, Sufi family. His father, Ali bin Muhammad, was one of the imams of jurisprudence and hadith, and one of the flags of asceticism, piety, and mysticism in Andalusia, and he was eager to teach his son the science of religion from a young age. And he studied jurisprudence and hadith at the hands of the most well-known jurists of his time.
When Ali bin Muhammad began working in the service of the Sultan of the Almohads, Abu Ya`qub Yusuf I, he moved with his family to Seville, where Ibn Arabi was brought up in the court of government and received military training, and as soon as he reached adulthood, he assumed the position of deputy governor of Seville and married a woman belonging to the most popular Seville families called Mariam.
Ibn Arabi’s life in Andalusia seemed to be perfect, as he was a religious person who enjoyed the respect of those around him, who had a leading position, and the head of a respectable family. Nevertheless, there was a reason for him to leave.
Visions of Ibn Arabi
The story of Sufi is hardly left without a vision or dream that led to the entry of the Sufi into the world of spirituality, and Ibn Arabi is not an exception.
It is said that he had a severe illness in his youth, and while he was in a severe case because of a fever, he saw in his dream that he was surrounded by a huge number of armed evil forces who wanted to eliminate him, and suddenly a strong, bright-faced man appeared, attacking those souls and leaving no trace of them, and when a son asked him Arabic: Who are you? The man said: I am Surat Yassin.
After that, Ibn Arabi woke up to find his father sitting near him reciting Surah Yassin to him, and he was cured of his illness soon after that.
Ibn Arabi considered that this was an indication of his readiness to enter the world of mysticism, and he did not complete his second decade without being immersed in the books of mystics, sages, scholars and philosophers, and ready to walk on the path of spiritual life to the end.
“Travel east and I will be your heavenly guide.”
It is said that Ibn Arabi appeared – in a state of awakeness, an exquisitely made bird flying around a great throne carried on pillars of flame. The bird approached him and whispered in his ear: “Travel east and I will be your heavenly guide, while a human companion will wait for you from Fez.”
And that vision was the reason for Ibn Arabi’s desertion of his stable life in Andalusia and the start of his long journeys in the countries of the East, so he visited Mecca, Taif, Mosul, Cairo, Aleppo, Armenia, and Baghdad, where he met the well-known Sufi Shihab al-Din Omar al-Suhrawardi.
He also visited the turkish Konya, where its Seljuk prince welcomed him with a huge ceremony, and there he married the mother of Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi, one of his Sufi students.
After nearly 23 years of travel, he finally settled in Damascus and carried in his heart nothing but Nizam, his sweetheart, and muse, who wrote in praise of “Tarjuman Al-Ashwaq”.
Tarjman Al-Ashwaq in praise of the Persian “Nizam”
When Ibn Arabi visited Mecca in the year 1201, he was welcomed by a great Persian sheik named Abu Shuja bin Rustam al-Isfahani. Al-Isfahani had a daughter who was endowed by God with a good face, a shining spirit, and a bright mind named “Nizam”.
800 books on poetry, jurisprudence, and philosophy
Ibn Arabi’s books exceed 800 volumes on poetry, philosophy and jurisprudence, and today we have no more than 100 volumes left.
It should be noted that there are some of Imam Ibn Arabi’s writings in which it was inscribed with blasphemous phrases of which he was innocent. To read more about this matter click here
The influence of this Sufi poet’s teachings was not limited to the Arab world, but his writings spread around the world and were translated into Persian, Turkish and Urdu languages.
Ibn Arabi’s books were not exclusive to the Muslim elite, but also found their way to all classes of Islamic society, as a result of the spread of the Sufi tide and the consideration of Ibn Arabi as an inspiration to many Sufis who belong to different classes of society.
Among his most prominent works are “Tarjuman al-Ashwaq”, a poetry collection he wrote in praise of the Persian “Nizam”, and “Meccan Futures,” a book that included Ibn Arabi’s Sufi views and spiritual principles, and was said to have been written at the request of his heavenly guide who visited him again in one of his meditations.
He also wrote, “The Interpretation of Ibn Arabi” which includes an interpretation of the Qur’an and an explanation of its meanings. He also has a book “The convenience and Informing the Signs of the People of Inspiration” and “The Tree of the Universe” and many others.
Damascus is the end of the story
After more than two decades of travel, Ibn Arabi finally landed in Damascus in 1223, and settled there for the rest of his life, and its prince was one of his students who believed in his knowledge and followed his teachings.
Ibn Arabi lived the rest of his life as a teacher and jurist in Damascus, where he had a council of scholarship and mysticism intended by many students seeking knowledge from all around the world, and the most famous of whom was his student is Sufi Sheikh Jalal al-Din al-Rumi known in Turkey as “Mawlana”.
Ibn Arabi remained in this ailment until he died in 1240 and was buried at the foot of Mount Passion.
