Akbarism

In Islamic philosophy, Sufi metaphysics is centered on the concept of وحدة, waḥdah, 'unity' or توحيد, tawhid. Two main Sufi philosophies prevail on this topic. Waḥdat al-wujūd literally means "the Unity of Existence" or "the Unity of Being." Wujūd, meaning "existence" or "presence", here refers to God. On the other hand, waḥdat ash-shuhūd, meaning "Apparentism" or "Monotheism of Witness", holds that God and his creation are entirely separate.

The universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the universe. According to this theory, space and time emerged together 13.787±0.020 billion years ago, and the universe has been expanding ever since the Big Bang. While the spatial size of the entire universe is unknown, it is possible to measure the size of the observable universe, which is approximately 93 billion light-years in diameter at the present day.

Ibn ʿArabī, nicknamed al-Qushayrī and Sulṭān al-ʿĀrifīn, was an Arab Andalusian Muslim scholar, mystic, poet, and philosopher, extremely influential within Islamic thought. Out of the 850 works attributed to him, some 700 are authentic while over 400 are still extant. His cosmological teachings became the dominant worldview in many parts of the Muslim world.

Ṣadr al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq ibn Muḥammad ibn Yūnus Qūnawī [alternatively, Qūnavī, Qūnyawī],, was a Persian philosopher, and one of the most influential thinkers in mystical or Sufi philosophy. He played a pivotal role in the study of knowledge—or epistemology, which in his context referred specifically to the theoretical elaboration of mystical/intellectual insight. He combined a highly original mystic-thinker, Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn 'Arabī, whose arcane teachings Qūnavī codified and helped incorporate into the burgeoning pre-Ottoman intellectual tradition, on the one hand, with the logical/philosophical innovations of Ibn Sīnā, on the other. Though relatively unfamiliar to Westerners, the spiritual and systematic character of Qūnawī's approach to reasoning, in the broadest sense of the term, has found fertile soil in modern-day Turkey, North Africa and Iran not to mention India, China, the Balkans and elsewhere over the centuries.

Louis Massignon was a French Catholic scholar of Islam and a pioneer of Catholic-Muslim mutual understanding. He was an influential figure in the twentieth century with regard to the Catholic church's relationship with Islam. He focused increasingly on the work of Mahatma Gandhi, whom he considered a saint. He also played a role in Islam being accepted as an Abrahamic Faith among Catholics. Some scholars maintain that his research, esteem for Islam and Muslims, and cultivation of key students in Islamic studies largely prepared the way for the positive vision of Islam articulated in the Lumen gentium and the Nostra aetate at the Second Vatican Council. Although a Catholic himself, he tried to understand Islam from within and thus had a great influence on the way Islam was seen in the West; among other things, he paved the way for a greater openness to dialogue inside the Catholic Church towards Islam as it was documented in the pastoral Vatican II declaration Nostra aetate.

The Divine Comedy is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun c. 1308 and completed around 1321, shortly before the author's death. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature and one of the greatest works of world literature. The poem's imaginative vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval worldview as it existed in the Western Church by the 14th century. It helped establish the Tuscan language, in which it is written, as the standardized Italian language. It is divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.

Al-Hallaj or Mansour Hallaj was a Persian mystic, poet, and teacher of Sufism. He is best known for his saying: "I am the Truth" (Ana'l-Ḥaqq), which many saw as a claim to divinity, while others interpreted it as an instance of annihilation of the ego, allowing God to speak through him. Al-Hallaj gained a wide following as a preacher before he became implicated in power struggles of the Abbasid court and was executed after a long period of confinement on religious and political charges. Although most of his Sufi contemporaries disapproved of his actions, Hallaj later became a major figure in the Sufi tradition.

Seyyed Hossein Nasr is an Iranian philosopher and University Professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University.

Frithjof Schuon was a Swiss metaphysician of German descent, belonging to the Perennialist or Traditionalist School of thought. He was the author of more than twenty works in French on metaphysics, spirituality, the religious phenomenon, anthropology and art, which have been translated into English and many other languages. He was also a painter and a poet.

Martin Lings, also known as Abū Bakr Sirāj ad-Dīn, was an English writer, Islamic scholar, and philosopher. A student of the Swiss metaphysician Frithjof Schuon and an authority on the work of William Shakespeare, he is best known as the author of Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources, first published in 1983 and still in print.

Sachiko Murata is Japanese scholar of comparative philosophy and mysticism and a professor of religion and Asian studies at Stony Brook University.

Ṣadr al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq ibn Muḥammad ibn Yūnus Qūnawī [alternatively, Qūnavī, Qūnyawī],, was a Persian philosopher, and one of the most influential thinkers in mystical or Sufi philosophy. He played a pivotal role in the study of knowledge—or epistemology, which in his context referred specifically to the theoretical elaboration of mystical/intellectual insight. He combined a highly original mystic-thinker, Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn 'Arabī, whose arcane teachings Qūnavī codified and helped incorporate into the burgeoning pre-Ottoman intellectual tradition, on the one hand, with the logical/philosophical innovations of Ibn Sīnā, on the other. Though relatively unfamiliar to Westerners, the spiritual and systematic character of Qūnawī's approach to reasoning, in the broadest sense of the term, has found fertile soil in modern-day Turkey, North Africa and Iran not to mention India, China, the Balkans and elsewhere over the centuries.

Marmara University is a public university in Istanbul, Turkey.

Ṣadr al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq ibn Muḥammad ibn Yūnus Qūnawī [alternatively, Qūnavī, Qūnyawī],, was a Persian philosopher, and one of the most influential thinkers in mystical or Sufi philosophy. He played a pivotal role in the study of knowledge—or epistemology, which in his context referred specifically to the theoretical elaboration of mystical/intellectual insight. He combined a highly original mystic-thinker, Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn 'Arabī, whose arcane teachings Qūnavī codified and helped incorporate into the burgeoning pre-Ottoman intellectual tradition, on the one hand, with the logical/philosophical innovations of Ibn Sīnā, on the other. Though relatively unfamiliar to Westerners, the spiritual and systematic character of Qūnawī's approach to reasoning, in the broadest sense of the term, has found fertile soil in modern-day Turkey, North Africa and Iran not to mention India, China, the Balkans and elsewhere over the centuries.

Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, also known as Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī, Mevlânâ/Mawlānā and Mevlevî/Mawlawī, but more popularly known simply as Rumi, was a 13th-century Persian poet, Hanafi faqih, Islamic scholar, Maturidi theologian and Sufi mystic originally from Greater Khorasan in Greater Iran. Rumi's influence transcends national borders and ethnic divisions: Iranians, Kurds, Tajiks, Turks, Greeks, Pashtuns, other Central Asian Muslims, as well as Muslims of the Indian subcontinent have greatly appreciated his spiritual legacy for the past seven centuries. His poems have been widely translated into many of the world's languages and transposed into various formats. Rumi has been described as the "most popular poet" and the "best selling poet" in the United States.

Fakhr al-Din Iraqi was a Persian Sufi poet of the 13th-century. He is principally known for his mixed prose and poetry work, the Lama'at, as well as his divan, most of which were written in the form of a ghazal.

Sayyid Baha al-Din Haydar, Haydar al-'Obaidi al-Hossayni Amuli, or Sayyed Haydar Amoli or Mir Haydar Amoli a Shi'ite mystic and a Sufi philosopher, was an early representative of Persian mystic philosophy and one of the most distinguished commentators of the mystic philosopher Ibn Arabi, during the 14th century.

Nūr ad-Dīn 'Abd ar-Rahmān Jāmī, also known as Mawlanā Nūr al-Dīn 'Abd al-Rahmān or Abd-Al-Rahmān Nur-Al-Din Muhammad Dashti, or simply as Jami or Djāmī and in Turkey as Molla Cami, was a Persian Sunni poet who is known for his achievements as a prolific scholar and writer of mystical Sufi literature. He was primarily a prominent poet-theologian of the school of Ibn Arabi and a Khwājagānī Sũfī, recognized for his eloquence and for his analysis of the metaphysics of mercy. His most famous poetic works are Haft Awrang, Tuhfat al-Ahrar, Layla wa Majnun, Fatihat al-Shabab, Lawa'ih, Al-Durrah al-Fakhirah. Jami belonged to the Naqshbandi Sufi order.

Idris Bitlisi, sometimes spelled Idris Bidlisi, Idris-i Bitlisi, or Idris-i Bidlisi, and fully Mevlana Hakimeddin İdris Mevlana Hüsameddin Ali-ül Bitlisi, was an Ottoman Kurdish religious scholar and administrator.

Ṣadr ad-Dīn Muḥammad Shīrāzī, more commonly known as Mullā Ṣadrā, was a Persian Twelver Shi'i Islamic mystic, philosopher, theologian, and ‘Ālim who led the Iranian cultural renaissance in the 17th century. According to Oliver Leaman, Mulla Sadra is arguably the single most important and influential philosopher in the Muslim world in the last four hundred years.

Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAjība al-Ḥasanī was an influential 18th-century Moroccan scholar and poet in the Darqawa Sufi Sunni Islamic lineage.

Ahmad al-Alawi, in full Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn Muṣṭafā ibn ʿAlīwa, known as al-ʿAlāwī al-Mustaghānimī, was an Algerian Sufi Sheikh who founded his own Sufi order, called the Alawiyya.