From Egypt to Damascus
The source gives his birth in Tanta, Egypt, in 1922. He grew up in a scholarly household; his father held judicial and religious offices. It describes his military education and service, his departure from Egypt and subsequent journeys through Saudi Arabia and Beirut before settling in Damascus in 1955.
In Damascus he became closely associated with Ahmad al-Harun. According to the biography, al-Harun directed him to read the Futuhat, a formative instruction behind his later work of collecting, arranging and interpreting Ibn al-Arabi’s writings. The source also names Muhammad Sadiq al-Adawi and Muhammad al-Mukhtar al-Shinqiti among his earlier teachers.
A programme of thematic reading
Al-Ghurab’s books bring passages from Ibn al-Arabi into thematic collections. The biography presents them as a sustained defence of the religious coherence of the Shaykh’s thought, beginning with his treatment of Islamic jurisprudence.
Other early volumes concern the perfect human, the spiritual pole, Sufi expressions, divine love, imagination and the intermediate realm, and dreams and glad tidings. His biography of Ibn al-Arabi is assembled from autobiographical material in the latter’s own writings.
This arrangement helps readers find discussions scattered through a large corpus. It also requires care: the selection, grouping and explanatory argument belong to the compiler and should remain distinguishable from the passages he quotes.
Texts, attribution and disagreement
The Arabic profile gives particular attention to his commentary on the Fusus al-Hikam. It reports his challenges to the transmitted text and to the reliability of documents used in attributing works, including the Fihrist and the ijaza. It also reports a list of seventy-four works he accepted.
These are al-Ghurab’s positions as described by the biographer. They are not presented here as a settled verdict on the authorship of the Fusus or as a general consensus. Readers should compare the specific arguments, manuscripts and editions before adopting an attribution claim. Other pages on this site may represent different judgments.
Further collections
The source describes his commentary on Ruh al-Quds and a collection on the spiritual path, the teacher and the disciple. The latter brings together discussions from the Futuhat and a range of shorter works, including Hilyat al-Abdal, Mawaqi al-Nujum and Ma la Yuawwal Alayh.
Rahma min al-Rahman fi Tafsir wa-Isharat al-Quran is described as a four-volume arrangement of Ibn al-Arabi’s Qur’anic interpretations and allusions, developed over twenty-five years. The profile distinguishes outward explanation, legal and linguistic discussion, and spiritual interpretation.
It also describes a two-volume collection of explanations of hadith, issued in February 2007. In the biographer’s account, this work responds to claims that Ibn al-Arabi disregarded transmitted hadith in favour of unveiling. The numerical totals and polemical conclusions in the original should be checked against the volumes before citation.
Teaching and reception
The biography recalls an open study gathering at his home in the Muhajirin district of Damascus, assistance to postgraduate researchers, lectures, correspondence and participation in conferences. It records an English contribution to a Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society commemorative volume in 1990 and other exchanges with researchers.
The Arabic text was written during his lifetime and uses expressions such as “to this day.” This translation treats those statements as part of that historical document. It does not convert them into claims about his present residence or current activity.