The Sufi Path of Knowledge

Ibn al-Arabi is still known as "the Great Sheik among the surviving Sufi orders. Born in Muslim Spain, he has become famous in the West as the greatest mystical thinker of Islamic civilisation. He was a great Philosopher, theologian, and poet. William Chittick takes a major step towards exposing the breadth and depth of Ibn al-Arabi's vision. The book offers his view of spiritual perfection and explains his theology, ontology, epistemology, hermeneutics, and soteriology. The clear language, unencumbered by methodological jargon, makes it accessible to those familiars with other spiritual traditions, while its scholarly precision will appeal to specialists.
Beginning with a survey of Ibn al-Arabi's major teaching, the book gradually introduced the most important facets of his thought, devoting attention to definitions of his basic terminology His teachings are illustrated with many translated passages introducing readers to fascinating byways of spiritual life that would not ordinarily be encountered in an account of a thinker's ideas. Ibn al-'Arabi is allowed to describe in details the visionary world from which his knowledge derives and to express his teaching in his own words.
More than 600 passages from his major work, Al-futahat al-Makkiyah, are translated here, practically for the first time. These alone provide twice the text of the Fusus al Hikam. The exhaustive indexes make the work an invaluable reference tool for research in Sufism and Islamic thought in general.

William C. Chittick received his education in the US. He holds a PhD in Persian language and literature from the University of Tehran. An Associate and later on Assistant Professor at the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy 1976-79, he became the Assistant Editor of the Encyclopedia Iranica at the Colombia University in 1983. He worked as the Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the State University of New York, Stony Brook from 1983-1991 where he presently holds the post of the Professor of Comparative Studies. He has published numerous books, among them. A Shi 'ite Anthology; Imaginal Worlds; Faith and Practice of Islam; The Self-Disclosures of God: Principles of Ibn al-'Arabi's Cosmology; The Sufi Path of knowledge: Ibn al-Arabi's Metaphysics of Imagination; The Vision of Islam and Sufism -A Short Introduction.