Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi

Sadr al-Din Muhammad ibn Ishaq al-Qunawi (died 673 AH / 1274 CE) was the foremost student and intellectual heir of the great mystic Ibn Arabi (al-Shaykh al-Akbar, "the Greatest Master"). His father, Majd al-Din Ishaq, was a close companion of Ibn Arabi; after his father died, the young Sadr al-Din came under Ibn Arabi's guardianship, and several biographers (including the later poet-scholar Jami) report that Ibn Arabi married his widowed mother, which is why tradition often calls him Ibn Arabi's stepson. His birth year and birthplace are uncertain: sources give dates between 604 and 608 AH (1207–1211 CE), and disagree over whether he was born in Malatya (in Anatolia) or in Konya, which became his home.

In the 620s AH he studied intensively under Ibn Arabi in Damascus, reading dozens of his master's works, and he also learned from other teachers including Awhad al-Din Kirmani. Settling in Konya, then a flourishing city under the Seljuks of Rum, he became a celebrated teacher of hadith (Prophetic reports) and of mysticism. He was a friend of the poet Rumi and is reported to have led the prayer at Rumi's funeral, though he was not Rumi's pupil.

His lasting importance is as a systematizer: where Ibn Arabi wrote in a sprawling, poetic style, al-Qunawi recast his ideas—including wahdat al-wujud ("the oneness of being")—into ordered, philosophically argued form. His students carried this "school of Ibn Arabi" across the Islamic world. He also exchanged a famous philosophical correspondence with the polymath Nasir al-Din al-Tusi.