Rethinking Ibn 'arabi

The thirteenth century mystic Ibn 'Arabi was the foremost Sufi theorist of the premodern era. For more than a century, Western scholars and esotericists have heralded his universalism, arguing that he saw all contemporaneous religions as equally valid. In Rethinking Ibn 'Arabi, Gregory Lipton calls this image into question and throws into relief how Ibn 'Arabi's discourse is inseparably intertwined with the absolutist vision of his own religious milieu—that is, the triumphant claim tha…