Rereading the Sufi Thoughts of Ibn Arabi in the Novel A Small Death by Mohammad Hassan Alwan

Sufism is one of the valuable foundations of Islamic legacy that have been reflected in various ways in Islamic poetry and literature.Many poets and scholars have been influenced by sufi ideas and they have incorporated the legacy of Sufism into their works.In addition to poetry, the legacy of Sufism in contemporary Arabic literature has been widely reflected in fiction and especially in novel.One of the novelists who has paid special attention to the legacy of Sufism and the rereading of Sufi characters is Mohammad Hassan Alwan, who has reread the character and thoughts of Ibn Arabi, the prominent mystic and Sufi of the Muslim world, in his novel A Small Death.The significance of the novel A Small Death is that in addition to rereading the Sufi Thoughts of Ibn Arabi as one of the prominent figures in Islamic history and one of the greatest theoreticians of Mysticism and Sufism, it presents a picture of the state of the Islamic world and the Arab world at a critical juncture in history.The novel also provides the reader with many historical, philosophical, political, social, and mystical perspectives using a literary language.This study attempts to study the Sufi thoughts of Ibn Arabi in Mohammad Hassan Alwan's novel A Small Death through the descriptive method and content analysis method.The results show that the author rereads the different stages of Ibn Arabi's life and his thoughts using authentic historical sources and Ibn Arabi's own works, however, he narrates the accounts of birth and death in his own language in an utterly fictional and supernatural setting.