“ Ibn Arabi’s Treatment of theTime in Al-Futuhat al-Makkyya”

Abstract

Time as a concept despite its simplicity and clarity seems to be one of the most complicated and controversial categories in intellectual area. Whether it is only due to the presence of human being that time turns questionable and thus it only exists in human mind? Given the existence of time in the outside world does it have an independent existence of other creature or should be understood as their features? Given the aforementioned point is time related to certain cosmological levels or it embraces the whole hierarchy? Questions like these have been answered in various ways by philosophers, theologians and mystics. Time as conceived by the greatest Muslim mystic Muhy al-Din Ibn Arabi is of different depiction. According to his own particular method of discovery of truth and relying on certain ontological hypotheses and grounding his arguments on a number of verses of Quran and prophetic traditions, Ibn Arabi seeks to demonstrate that time or Dahr (eternity) is the endless manifestation of God through Divine Names that are continuously revealed in a hierarchical fashion. The chief goal of current essay is providing a “descriptive-analytic narrative” of Ibn Arabi’s view focusing on what has been presented through Al-Futuhat al-Makkyya.