Was Ibn Arabi a Sufi metaphysician or a metaphysician Sufi? Even though it is known that he adopted Sufi practices, his criticism towards the Sufi method and his approach to Sufism as a metaphysician allows us to position him as a metaphysician in the intellectual history. However, it is not possible to claim that he inquired into Being in the classical sense as a result of an intellectual pursuit or questioning the reality. It can be said that the religiousness required by Islam in general and Sufism in particular resulted in a grasp of exclusive knowledge, and he developed his theory by interpreting this knowledge with a particular method. In this article, we follow the steps he took as a Sufi in the path passed over by his predecessors who were the pioneers in turning the Sufi way into a religious science and try to show the similarities of practices and thoughts shared by both. While we encounter the thoughts which were later theorized by Ibn Arabi in the early Sufi text, they were never interpreted philosophically which may be the result of Sufis’ practice-oriented doctrine or the fact that some of the earlier Sufis abstained from learning any science that could be a trap for their inner state. Even if some Sufis are known to utter sentences which needed to be interpreted, their interpretation did not go beyond a moral lesson or ignored at all for being said under the state of ecstasy (shaṭaḥāt). However, Ibn Arabi, besides having his own experiences, used the practices, thoughts, utterances of his predecessors while constructing his unique theory. “The universe is an imagination” is one of the most significant statements of his theory of wahdat al-wujud and it means that the possible realities are dependent on God’s Being for their existence and they never leave their state of possibility even after they come into existence. This statement does not question the reality but gives the reality an explanation as how the things are as they are. According to this idea, everything is possible except for God, who is the necessary being, and their being created does not end this state as they continue to be created for each moment by God, who is giving them being incessantly on which Ibn Arabi comments that if the manifestation of Being stopped, the whole existents would turn back to their original state of nothingness which is the status of possibility. This means all possible beings are dependent on God and God is all-generous. In Sunni Sufism, this is stated as that human beings are poor and only God is rich that is why the practices revolved around ascetism and faith in God. This idea only convinces the wayfarers to set on the journey with fear and hope on their hearts. The realization reached at the end of the journey, which is called kashf (uncovering) was considered to be a divine gift to the wayfarer which makes it a personal understanding or an experience that could not be expressed most of the time. In this respect, Ibn Arabi can be called a Sufi because of the method he followed and the reality he reached at the end of his journey and a metaphysician, as he tried to express this reality and constructed a unique thought based on both the Sufi method, doctrine and terms, and the knowledge presented in the Holy book and the tradition through interpreting them. In this article, it will be examined how Sufi practices such as hunger, isolation, journey etc. which were explained in detail in the early Sufi texts evolved in the metaphysics of Ibn Arabi and how he developed a hermeneutics of his own on the basis of the whole tradition. While earlier Sufis experienced extreme cases of hunger, Ibn Arabi focused on the Being sustaining them. The isolation performed by Sufis is both proved and unproved by Ibn Arabi, claiming that there cannot be true isolation as the isolated will be alone with God. Ibn Arabi not only performed those Sufi practices but also built an ontology and an epistemology accordingly. While the actual motive of Sufi journey was rooted in religious devotion, not an intellectual inquiry on how things were and were known, the path itself led to knowledge which made the wayfarer to question the reality and with his own experiences and the accumulated knowledge of centuries, Ibn Arabi found a ground to explain the reality.
İbnü’l-Arabî, sûfî bir metafizikçi midir yoksa metafizikçi bir sûfî midir? Onun tasavvufî yöntemi uyguladığına dair bilgiler bulunmasına rağmen tasavvufun yöntemine dair eleştirileri ve sûfîlerin pratiklerini metafizik açıdan ele alması onu düşünce tarihinde bir metafizikçi olarak konumlandırmamıza olanak sağlamaktadır. Ancak onun ne bir kuşku ne de entelektüel bir arayış amacıyla klasik anlamda varlığa dair bir araştırmaya girdiğini söylemek mümkün değildir. Onun içerisinde bulunduğu genelde İslam özelde tasavvuf geleneğinin iktiza ettiği dindarlığın neticesinde ulaştığı birtakım özel bilgileri yine özel bir yöntemle yorumlayarak teorisini oluşturduğunu söyleyebiliriz. Kurucu düşünürü olduğu vahdet-i vücûd teorisinin âleme dair ileri sürdüğü en önemli önermelerden biri olan “Âlem bir hayal”dir cümlesi, Hakk’ın Varlığı karşısında imkân halinde bulunan hakikatlerin bu imkân halinden hiç çıkmadıkları ve sürekli olarak Varlığın tecellisine muhtaç oldukları anlamına gelmektedir. Sünni tasavvufta insanın fakir Allah’ın zengin olduğu şeklinde yorumlanan bu hakikat, sûfîleri korku ve ümit ile yola çıkmaya ikna etmiştir. Yolculuğun sonunda varılan idrak -keşf- bütün yolculuğun yeniden yorumlanmasına kapı aralamıştır. Bu itibarla İbnü’l-Arabî’yi, kendi yolculuğunun nihayetinde vakıf olduğu hakikat nedeniyle bir kâşif, düşüncesini hem tasavvufun yöntem, doktrin ve ıstılahlarıyla hem de kitap ve sünnette geçen bilgiler ışığında yorumlayarak anlatmasından dolayı bir tâbirci olarak adlandırabiliriz. Bu çalışmada, ilk dönem tasavvuf eserlerinde yöntem olarak ileri sürülen açlık, halvet, yolculuk gibi birtakım sûfî pratiklerin İbnü’l-Arabî metafiziğinde nasıl bir anlama evrildiği ve İbnü’l-Arabî’nin bütün bir gelenek üzerinden nasıl bir yorum yöntemi geliştirdiği incelenecektir.
