ABSTRACT
Abū ‘Abdallāh Muḥammad ibn al-‘Arabī al-Tā’ī al-Ḥātimī is usually referred to as Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ‘Arabī. He was born in Murcia in al-Andalūs on 17 Ramadan 560/28 July 1165 and died in Damascus on 22 Rabī‘ II 638/10 November 1240. 1 Known by the Sufis as al-Shaykh al-Akbar, “The Greatest Master”, he wrote voluminously at an exceedingly high level of discourse, making him one of the most difficult of all Muslim authors. His al-Futūḥāt al-makkiyyah, which will fill a projected thirty-seven volumes of five hundred pages each, is only one of several hundred books and treatises.
