“There is no eminence higher than the eminence
of knowledge, and there is no state above the
state of understanding [fahm] from God.”
–Ibn-al-Arabi
Osman Soykut, Turkish actor, played the character of Ibn-al-Arabi in Dirilis Ertugrul
Ibn-al-Arabi, arguably the greatest Sufi scholar and philosopher of the Muslim world, was born around 1165 in Murcia, Spain. Interestingly, most Western scholarship and much of the later Islamic tradition classified Ibn-al-Arabî as a “Sufi.” However, he himself did not. And the former assertion about him stands wrong if we look at the broad range of his works. Ibn-al-Arabi covers the whole gamut of Islamic sciences, not least Koran commentary, Hadith (sayings of Muhammad), jurisprudence, principles of jurisprudence, theology, philosophy, and mysticism.
Ibn-al-Arabî studied the Islamic sciences with numerous teachers in Andalus and North Africa. In 1201 he left the Muslim West to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca and did not return. He travelled extensively in Iraq and Anatolia, finally settling down in Damascus in 1223, where he trained disciples and wrote prolifically until his death in November 1240. Today, many people want to learn more about this man of scholarship, thanks to the Turkish series Dirilis Ertugrul. For those who want to learn more about Sheikh-al-Akbar, Quest for Red Sulphur written by Claude Addas is the book to read.