Sufi Text Readings Training Program

Technical Details

• The program lasts 8 weeks.
• It runs from November 6, 2026 to January 8, 2027. 
• Fridays, 10.00 – 11.30
• Program fee: 17,500 TL
• Fee for Participants from Abroad:  270.00 EURO

*** Lessons are recorded simultaneously and uploaded to the system. Lesson videos remain accessible to participants for 6 months.

Participants who have completed their payment are kindly requested to send their payment details to tasavvuf@uskudar.edu.tr . 

Scope

Ibn Arabi (1165-1240), also known by the epithets Muhyiddin (the reviver of religion) and Shaykh al-Akbar (the greatest Shaykh), is a Sufi who, in his outward and inward journey stretching from Andalusia to Damascus, united East and West in his works, and who embraced, interpreted and integrated into his own knowledge different disciplines and philosophical and Sufi views without excluding any of them. Just as no other scholar in the Islamic world has left such a dominant and profound influence, very few Muslim scholars are as well known in the West as he is.

Osman Yahya mentions some 550 works written by Ibn Arabi in various lengths, ranging from two pages to the 37-volume al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya; most of his more than 300 works that have survived to the present day still exist in manuscript form.

Although he is sometimes unjustly referred to as a theoretician because he systematized many Sufi ideas and concepts, in his works, as he repeatedly emphasized, he conveyed the knowledge he himself had experienced and tasted; in the words of his students, theory and practice are inseparably intertwined in his works.

Despite the large number of his works, two in particular, al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya and Fusus al-Hikam, have had a great impact as the two works that best reflect Ibn Arabi's legacy. In contrast to al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya, which addresses a wide variety of subjects in detail, Fusus al-Hikam, which he wrote in Damascus in 1229, is regarded as the quintessence of his works owing to its depth and density. For this reason, around 120 commentaries have been written on the work, the first of them by Ibn Arabi himself; initially read in small circles, the work gradually became known in ever wider circles and has remained a focus of interest to this day.

The title of the work also reflects its content. In the work, which consists of 27 chapters (fass), each chapter is devoted to a prophet mentioned in the Holy Quran and describes a divine wisdom manifested in him. As expressed in the hadith qudsi as the "Hidden Treasure," although the Real (al-Haqq) is unknowable and incomprehensible in His essence, the universe is the place of the Real's manifestation and self-disclosure, and the perfect human being, the vicegerent of the Real, is the perfection of this manifestation and the purpose of creation. By comprehending the wisdom manifested in the word, that is, the reality, of each prophet, a new door opens for the human being in knowing the Real. The Prophet Muhammad, in turn, is khatam al-anbiya, the Seal of the Prophets, because he is the last of the prophets; as the one who confirms, completes, gathers and unites all the prophets, he constitutes the totality of the words (jawami' al-kalim), and as the perfect manifestation of the Muhammadan Reality (al-Haqiqa al-Muhammadiyya), he is the one who unites the beginning and the end of creation. For this reason, understanding the other prophets and their wisdoms has served as a means of understanding and knowing the Muhammadan Reality and the Prophet Muhammad.

Agenda