The Mythic Substrate of Ibn al-ʿArabī's Immutable Entities (al-aʿyān al-thābita)

Abstract

The Quran’s sacred myth of the primordial covenant recounted at Q 7:172, it is suggested here, is the most immediate source for the distinctive and sometimes otherwise puzzling technical term al-aʿyān al-thābita (“Immutable Entities”) in the ontological discourse of Muḥyī l-Dīn Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 1240), al-shaykh al-akbar.