Ibn ʿArabī (Arabic: ابن عربي‎) (Murcia July 28, 1165 – Damascus November 10, 1240) was an Arab Andalusian Sufi mystic and philosopher.

He was sometimes referred to as "the Son of Plato" (Ibn Aflatun) for his devotion to Plato.

'Abū 'Abdillāh Muḥammad ibn 'Alī ibn Muḥammad ibn `Arabī (أبو عبد الله محمد ابن علي ابن محمد ابن عربي ) was born into a respectable family in Murcia, Taifa of Murcia on the 17th of Ramaḍān 561 AH (27th or 28 July 1165 AD). Muḥyiddin Muḥammad ibn ‘Alī ibn Muḥammad ibn ‘Arabī was widely known as al-Shaykh al-Akbar; in medieval Europe he was called Doctor Maximus.

His father, ‘Ali ibn Muḥammad, served in the Army of ibn Mardanīsh. When ibn Mardanīsh died in 1172 AD, ‘Ali ibn Muḥammad swiftly shifted his allegiance to the Almohad Sultan, Abū Ya’qūb Yūsuf I, and became one of his military advisers. His family then relocated from Murcia to Seville.

ibn ‘Arabī’s dogmatic and intellectual training began in Seville, then the cultural and civilized center of Muslim Iberia, in 578 AH. Most of his teachers were the clergy of the Almohad era and some of them also held the official posts of Qadi or Khatib. He was a young boy when his father sent him to the renowned jurist Abū Bakr ibn Khalaf to study the Qur'an. ibn ‘Arabī learned the recitation of the Qur'an from the book of Al-Kafi in the seven different Qira'at. The same work was also transmitted to him by another ‘Abd al-Raḥmān ibn Ghālib ibn al-Sharrāt. At the age of ten, he was well-versed in the Qira’āt; afterwards he learned the sciences of Hadith, Fiqh and Sirah from the famous scholars of the time such as Al-Suhayli.

Hamza Yusuf Hanson is an American Islamic scholar, and (with Zaid Shakir and Hatem Bazian) is co-founder of Zaytuna College in Berkeley, California, United States. He is a convert to Islam, and is one of the signatories of A Common Word Between Us and You, an open letter by Islamic scholars to Christian leaders, calling for peace and understanding. He has described the 9/11 attacks as "an act of 'mass murder, pure and simple'". Condemning the attacks, he has also stated "Islam was hijacked ... on that plane as an innocent victim".The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom reported that he "is arguably the west's most influential Islamic scholar" and added that "many Muslims find his views hard to stomach."

Hamza Yusuf was born to two academics in Washington State and raised in Northern California. In 1977, he became Muslim and subsequently traveled to the Muslim world and studied for ten years in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, as well as North and West Africa. Hamza Yusuf spent four years studying in the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere in the Middle East. Later he traveled to West Africa and studied in Mauritania, Medina, Algeria, and Morocco under such scholars as Murabit al Haaj; Baya bin Salik, head of the Islamic court in Al-'Ain, United Arab Emirates; Muhammad Shaybani, Mufti of Abu Dhabi; Hamad al-Wali; and Muhammad al-Fatrati of Al Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt.^{[citation needed]} After more than a decade abroad, he returned to the United States and earned degrees in nursing from Imperial Valley College and religious studies at San José State University.^{[citation needed]}