Intellectual Life in the Hijaz before Wahhabism: Ibrahim al-Kurani’s (d. 1101/1690) Theology of Sufism

In Intellectual Life in the Hijaz before Wahhabism, Naser Dumairieh argues that, as a result of changing global conditions facilitating the movement of scholars and texts, the seventeenth-century Hijaz was one of the most important intellectual centers of the Islamic world, acting as a hub between its different parts.

Positioning Ibrahim al-Kurani (d. 1101/1690) as representative of the intellectual activities of the pre-Wahhabism Hijaz, Dumairieh argues that his coherent philosophical system represents a synthesis of several major post-classical traditions of Islamic thought, namely kalam and Akbarian appropriations of Avicennian metaphysics. Al-Kurani’s work is the culmination of the philosophized Akbarian tradition; with his reconciliation of Ibn ‘Arabi’s ideas with Ash'ari theology, Ibn 'Arabi’s ideas became Islamic theology.