Dāwūd al-Qayṣarī’s Exposition of Being (wujūd): Philosophical and Theological Debates in al-Muqaddimat al-Qayṣarī

This paper examines the fourteenth-century thinker Dāwūd al-Qayṣarī’s engagement with philosophical and theological debates about the nature of Being (wujūd) through a close reading of his Muqaddimah, the prolegomena to his influential commentary on Ibn ʿArabī’s Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam. Qayṣarī’s work offers a crucial vantage point for understanding and contextualizing several centuries of philosophical and theological debates on the nature of Being. As a pivotal figure in the Akbarian tradition of Ibn ʿArabī, Qayṣarī challenges and refines the positions of his intellectual predecessors, such as Nasīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī, Suhrawardī and Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī, bringing Sufi terminology and ideas into direct conversation with philosophical concepts such as the gradation of existence (tashkīk al-wujūd). In addition to bringing an unprecedented level of clarity and systematic exposition to Ibn ʿArabī’s often impenetrable ideas, Qayṣarī’s Muqaddimah serves as an important window to broader discourses about the nature of Being in the Islamic intellectual tradition.