The femininity in Ibn Arabi's cosmology

Many scholars and researchers have studied about the importance and status of woman in the mystical system of Ibn Arabi so far. Many of them claim that ibn Arabi considers the femininity as the fixed and permanent determination of gender. But studying Ibn Arabi's works, notably al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya and Fusus al-hikam, shows that Ibn Arabi doesn’t look at femininity only as a form and determination of femininity in contrast to masculinity, but employs it widely to explain his mystical understanding of God, universe, and human to the extent that he considers the Divine essence and some of His attributes, like power and will, to be feminine, and sometimes give it superior position in comparison to masculinity. This study shows that femininity is used in Ibn Arabi's mystical ontology in the meanings of passivity, receptivity, and motherhood. Each usage manifests an aspect of various aspects of the being. Femininity is so woven in the warp and woof of the mystical ontology of Ibn Arabi that without it, his system of thought seems to lack the necessary coherence. This understanding is also possible that Ibn Arabi deems the gender to be a relative affair and maintains that the beings have both aspects of femininity and masculinity which in different situations they display one of these aspects of gernder.