Family and early education
Abd al-Ghani ibn Ismail al-Nabulsi was born in Damascus in 1050 AH / 1641 CE. The source traces his family’s scholarly activity across several generations, including teaching and oversight of the endowment of the Darwish Pasha mosque.
It reports his claim to descent from Umar ibn al-Khattab, but expressly notes a missing link between the genealogical lists available to the biographer. That uncertainty should remain visible. His father was his first teacher. As a child he studied the Qur’an, grammar, law and recitation, and attended hadith lessons with Najm al-Din al-Ghazzi in the Umayyad Mosque.
His father died when he was twelve. His mother supervised his continuing education. The family library was sold, and he later recovered some of its books.
Teaching, writing and withdrawal
Around the age of twenty he began teaching in the Umayyad Mosque. Following travel to Edirne and Istanbul, he obtained a judicial appointment in the Maydan district of Damascus, but resigned to concentrate on teaching and writing. The account credits him with about fifty works by 1090 AH.
It describes a difficult period around the age of forty, followed by seven years of withdrawal at home. He continued to receive students, write and correspond. The biographer connects the hostility he faced with his support for Ibn al-Arabi’s Sufi thought and disputes with some jurists. These descriptions belong to the historical account; they are not a modern clinical assessment.
Travel and the later Damascus years
After that period he travelled in Lebanon, the Syrian region, Egypt and the Hijaz. He eventually moved to al-Salihiyya, where he continued to teach al-Baydawi’s Qur’anic commentary and Ibn al-Arabi’s Futuhat. He died in 1143 AH / 1731 CE and was buried in the domed space he had built at his home.
The account also describes a brief appointment as mufti of Damascus, followed by the appointment of his student Khalil ibn Asad al-Bakri. It reports that al-Nabulsi kept a register of legal opinions during those months.
A wide-ranging body of work
The Arabic biography counts more than three hundred books, treatises, commentaries, poetry collections and travel accounts. Their subjects include Sufism, law, hadith and Qur’anic interpretation, as well as dreams, agriculture and questions of everyday social life.
It highlights his interventions concerning Mevlevi devotional practice, music, love, coffee and tobacco, and his opposition to accusations of unbelief without clear grounds. His legal learning and Sufi commitments are presented as mutually informing parts of his work.
Why he belongs in this collection
Al-Nabulsi lived centuries after Ibn al-Arabi. His place here is therefore among later readers and interpreters, rather than the masters who personally taught Ibn al-Arabi. His teaching of the Futuhat and his defence of Sufi thought make him important to the history of its reception.
The final section of the source distinguishes learned jurists from those whom al-Nabulsi criticised for issuing judgments without sufficient knowledge. It describes his search for generosity in interpretation and his defence of love in Ghayat al-Matlub fi Mahabbat al-Mahbub.