The Mundus Imaginalis

( Part 4, I ) | The Lost Language of the Imagination in Medieval Islamic Mysticism

This is Part 4 of the essay series on the Imagination within different cultures and schools of thought.

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It’s not very well known that there was once a golden age in the Islamic world of the Middle Ages. Between the eighth and fourteenth centuries, Islamic Mystics developed a highly sophisticated worldview that became one of the foundations of western thought.

When we think about Europe’s cultural inheritance, the mind hearkens back to ancient Greece. But Islamic contributions to the West were just as important and are often overlooked. During the Middle Ages, the Islamic world was far more advanced than medieval Europe, contributing major advancements in philosophy, architecture, navigation, irrigation, poetry, art, mathematics and technology, to name a few.

‘Ibn Arabi, Arab Andalusian mystic, scholar and poet, 1165-1240 AD