Ibn Arahbi: A Sufi Master

Ibn Arahbi was a Sufi master in Damascus. His writings are packed with technical terms borrowed from the philosophical tradition. He uses vivid imagery to represent concepts familiar to us from philosophers, especially Avicenna. But it would be reductive and misleading to see Ibn Arahbi as an Avicenna and philosopher with an unusual flair for metaphor. For one thing, he does not yet present Sufism as an explicit philosophical system.