Abdul Karim Jili

Who was Abdul Karim Jili?

Abd al-Karīm al-Jīlī, or Abdul Karim Jili, was a Muslim sufi saint and mystic who was born in 1366 at Jil in Baghdad. He is famous in Muslim mysticism as the author of Universal Man.

Jili was a descendant of Saint Gilani, the founder of the Qadiriyya dervish order. Although little is known about his life, historians have noted that Jili travelled in India and lived in Yemen from 1393 to 1403. He wrote more than twenty books, of which Universal Man is the best known.

Jili was the foremost systematizer and one of the greatest exponents of the work of Ibn Arabi. Universal Man is an explanation of Ibn Arabi’s teachings on the structure of reality and human perfection. Since it was written, it has been held up as one of the masterpieces of Sufi literature. Jili conceived of the Absolute Being as a Self, a line of thinking which later influenced the 20th century Indian Muslim philosopher and poet Allama Iqbal.