Self-Disclosure of God: Principles of Ibn Al-'Arabi's Cosmology

William C. Chittick

Paperback, 524 pages

9780791434048

The Self-Disclosure of God continues the author’s investigations of the world view of Ibn al-Arabi, the greatest theoretician of Sufism and the “seal of the Muhammadan saints.” The book is divided into three parts, dealing with the relation between God and the cosmos, the structure of the cosmos, and the nature of the human soul. A long introduction orients the reader and discusses a few of the difficulties faced by Ibn al-Arabi’s interpreters. Like Chittick’s earlier work, The Sufi Path of Knowledge, this book is based primarily on Ibn al-Arabi’s monumental work, al-Futuhat al-makkiyya “The Meccan Openings.” More than one hundred complete chapters and subsections are translated, not to mention shorter passages that help put the longer discussions in context. There are detailed indices of sources, Quranic verses and hadiths. The book’s index of technical terminology will be an indispensable reference for all those wishing to delve more deeply into the use of language in Islamic thought in general and Sufism in particular.

Contents

I. God and the Cosmos

1. Wujud and the Entities

2. Perpetual Self-Disclosure

3. The Face of God

4. Veils of Light

II. The Order of the Worlds

5. The Roots of Order

6. Divine and Cosmic Relations

7. The Worlds of the Cosmos

III. The Structure of the Mocrocosm

8. Spirits and Bodies

9. The Natural Constitution

10. The Imaginal Barzakh