Ibn al-Arabi spent periods in Anatolia and eventually settled in Damascus in 1223. His later years saw sustained writing, teaching and contact with disciples, including Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi. The surviving transmission of his works is inseparable from these intellectual relationships and the manuscript culture of the region.
How to study this subject
Biographical traditions combine the author’s own testimony, observations by people close to him, and later accounts shaped by literary and devotional conventions. A chronology is therefore an interpretation of evidence, not a seamless eyewitness record. Dates and itineraries should be labeled according to confidence and source type.
For a working timeline, record the event, its Hijri date when available, any Gregorian conversion, the cited source, and a confidence level. When biographies conflict, keep the disagreement visible instead of silently choosing the more attractive story. Maps, manuscript colophons and references within the works can be valuable, but none should be treated as a complete travel diary.
The final decades are particularly important for distinguishing revised authorial texts from later copies. Scholars should record whether a claim refers to a work’s composition, a specific recension or a manuscript witness.
Primary sources and further reading
These are contextual reading links, not exact passage-level citations.