The Islamic world · 9th c. – present
Sufi metaphysics
The deepest knowledge of God comes by tasting and unveiling, not by argument; for Ibn ʿArabī, God alone truly is, and creatures are God’s self-disclosures.
Can God be known directly, beyond reason?
Sufism began as an ascetic and devotional movement seeking closeness to God. As it matured, thinkers set out the theory behind the practice: how the self is purified, and what the world must be if a mystic can find God in it.
Reason works by concepts that divide and limit, so it cannot grasp an infinite God; only a purified heart can receive that knowledge. And if God is the only true being, everything else exists only as a mirror in which God’s names are shown.
- Direct experiential knowledge surpasses rational proof.
- The self must die to itself to find God.
- Creation is God’s self-disclosure in many forms.
It shaped Persian, Turkish and Urdu poetry and the later Islamic philosophy of Mullā Ṣadrā; the term “unity of being” (waḥdat al-wujūd) was attached to Ibn ʿArabī’s thought by later followers and critics.
Thinkers
1165–1240Ibn ʿArabīAndalusian mystic, called “the Greatest Master” by followers1207–1273Jalāl al-Dīn RūmīPersian poet and Sufi teacher in Konyac. 1058–1111Al-GhazālīAshʿarite theologian who left his Baghdad chair for SufismKey texts
Where it came from
Borrowed fromNeoplatonismSufi metaphysics of a world flowing from and returning to the One parallels Neoplatonism; scholars debate how direct the borrowing was.Borrowed from
Kalām (Muʿtazila & Ashʿarism)Al-Ghazālī, a leading Ashʿarite, made Sufi practice respectable within Sunni orthodoxy, joining theology to experiential knowledge.
What it led to
Borrowed byIlluminationism & Transcendent TheosophyMullā Ṣadrā drew on Ibn ʿArabī’s vision of one reality appearing in many forms to build his doctrine of the gradation of existence.