Abstract
The ḥadīth qudsī, which reports God’s sayings in the first person through Prophet Muhammad, is said to be in deep relationship with the formation of Islamic mystical thoughts. Ibn ‘Arabī (d. 1240), the greatest mystic of Islam, often cites the ḥadīth qudsī as stating “My earth and heaven do not contain Me, but My faithful servant’s heart contains Me,” and tells that the heart of the mystic contains the God. Previous studies of this doctrine have not directed enough attention to his interpretation of this divine saying. I clarify the relationship of this doctrine to his famous theory of “self-disclosure of God” (tajallī) and “perfect man” (insān kāmil) based on the investigation into his interpretation of this ḥadīth in his magnum opus, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkīya.
According to Ibn ‘Arabī, this ḥadīth means that the heart of a perfect man, the knot between God and the cosmos, contains the whole cosmos as God’s self-disclosure. In this interpretation, the concept of the heart, which belongs to the doctrine of the human soul, is tightly connected to the ontological and metaphysical doctrine in his system. This connection is not seen in the previous Sufi thought and appears to be one aspect of his historical role in constructing Islamic mystical philosophy.
