Some of his immediate students...

Some of his immediate students, who were particularly drawn to pure metaphysics and gnosis, with a number also having had training in Islamic philosophy, began to interpret the master’s teachings and especially his Fusūs in a more systematic and philosophical fashion thereby laying the ground for the systematic formulation of that Supreme Science of the Real with which the tradition of theoretical gnosis is concerned.

The first commentator upon the Fusūs was Ibn ‘Arabī’s immediate student and Qūnawī’s close companion, ‘Afīf al-Dīn al-Tilimsānī (690/1291) who commented upon the whole text but in summary fashion.9 But the most influential propagator of the master’s teachings in the domain of gnosis and metaphysics and the person who gave the systematic exposition that characterizes later expressions of theoretical gnosis is Sadr al-Dīn Qūnawī (d.

673/1274).10 This most important student of Ibn ‘Arabī did not write a commentary on the text of the Fusūs, but he did write a work entitled al-Fukūk which explains the titles of the chapters of the Fusūs and was considered by many a later Sufi and gnostic as a key for the understanding of the mysteries of Ibn ‘Arabī’s text.11 Qūnawī is also the author of a number of other works of a gnostic (‘irfānī) nature, chief among them the Miftāh al-ghayb, a monumental work of theoretical gnosis which, along with its commentary by Shams al-Dīn Fanārī known as Misbāh al-uns, became one of the premier texts for the teaching of theoretical gnosis especially in Turkey and Persia.12 Qūnawī trained a number of students who themselves became major figures in the tradition of theoretical gnosis.

But before turning to them it is necessary to mention a poet who was a contemporary of Ibn ‘Arabī and who was to play an exceptional role in the later history of this tradition. This poet is ‘Umar ibn al-Fārid (d.

632/1235), perhaps the greatest Sufi poet of the Arabic language, whose al- Tā’iyyah is considered as a complete exposition of the doctrines of ‘irfān expressed in sublime poetry, and the subject of several commentaries which are themselves seminal texts of ‘irfān.13 There were also many important Persian poets such as Fakhr al-Dīn ‘Irāqī (d. 688/1289), Awhad al-Dīn Kirmānī (d. 635/1238), Shams al-Dīn Maghribī (d. 809/1406-07), Mahmūd Shabistarī (d. circa 718/1318), and ‘Abd al-Rahmān Jāmī (d.