Ibn ‘Arabi was a very prolific writer and his main works are:
Futuhat al
Makkiyah
(‘The Makkah Revelations’),
Fusus al-Hikam
(‘The Bezels of
Wisdom),
Risalat al-Khalwah
(‘A Treatise on Spiritual Retreat’). As far as
mystical philosophy is concerned, out of all these,
Fusus al-Hikam
is probably
his most important work. Once we approach Ibn ‘Arabi’s philosophical and
mystical writings, we can see that there are certain ideas that play a central
role. These are
wujud
or existence, God’s self-disclosure, or
tajalli
and
imagination, or
khayal
. However, the most fundamental is the concept of the
perfect human being, or
al-insan al-kamil
.This perfect man is the origin and
the goal of the universe, as well as the guide on the path to God. All works
of Ibn ‘Arabi especially
Futuhat al Makkiya
and
Fusus al Hikam
centre on this
idea of the perfect man.
At the same time, Ibn ‘Arabi’s teachings are tied to the Qur’an and try
to show how the Qur’an manifests the reality of God in every chapter,
verse, word and letter.The governing idea is the oneness of God, or
tawhid
.
But while God is one through His essence (
dhat
), He is “many” through our
different ways of knowing Him or His many ways of showing Himself to us.
His oneness refers to
wujud
, and his “manyness” to the things that have no
wujud
. The unifying principles of the many things are known as the “divine
names”.Thus Ibn ‘Arabi says that God is the One/Many (
al wahid al kathir
)
– He is one through His essence and many through His names.
Ibn ‘Arabi never employed the term
wahadat al wujud;
it was used only
by his followers, Said al Din Farghani (d.1296) being the first to use that
term to describe the phenomenon of God being present in everything. In
later Islamic history, especially in the debates over Ibn al ‘Arabi on the
Indian subcontinent, the view of
wahdat al wujud
was said to stress that “All
is He” (
hamah ust
), while the opposing view, expressed as
wahdat al shuhud
