Abd al-Karim al-Jili

Abd al-Karim al-Jili (c. 767/1366 – c. 826/1424) was a Muslim mystic and writer of the Sufi tradition, the strand of Islam centred on the inner, contemplative path to God. He is remembered above all as the leading systematizer of the ideas of the Andalusian thinker Ibn al-Arabi (d. 1240). Reliable details of his life are sparse; modern accounts lean on scattered hints in his own writings and on later biographers, so much remains uncertain.

He is generally said to have been born around Baghdad. His nisba (the place-name attached to a person) "al-Jili" is linked both to a quarter of Baghdad and to his reported descent from the famous saint Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, whose family came from Gilan in northern Iran. By report he travelled to India and then settled for years in the Yemen, where he studied under the Sufi master Sharaf al-Din al-Jabarti (d. c. 806/1403) in the city of Zabid, then under Rasulid rule.

His major book, al-Insan al-kamil ("The Perfect Human"), develops the idea that a fully realized human being mirrors the divine names and serves as a link between God and creation. Whether such teaching is sound mysticism or oversteps into pantheism has been debated within Islam; the site presents this as a contested judgement, not a settled one. His death date is disputed: 826/1424 is commonly cited, but some sources give 832/1428.