ABSTRACT
Muḥyī ʾ l-Dīn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-ʿArabī is perhaps the most influential Ṣūfī of the medieval period and continues to inspire Ṣūfī movements in the contemporary world as well as institutions devoted to him such as the Muhyiddin Ibn ʿArabi Society in Oxford. Popularly known as Ibn ʿArabī, he is often also given the honorific of al-Shaykh al-Akbar (The Greatest Ṣūfī Master) because of his influence, his writings and spiritual authority for Ṣūfīs throughout the ages. His impact on Islamic intellectual history has been such that one might appropriately paraphrase A. N. Whitehead’s famous saying about Plato and argue that the subsequent history of thought, metaphysics, and self-realization in Islam is a series of footnotes to Ibn ʿArabī.
