NORMATİF GELENEĞE KARŞI SEMBOLİK ANLATİM: İBNÜ'L-'ARABÎ'DE HARF SEMBOLİZMİ

Muslim Sufis had developed a symbolic method of expression to avoid a direct conflict with the authorities of normative tradition represented by the scholars of Islamic Legal-Theological Sciences. In this way, they were aiming to reduce the intensity of reactions and charges against them while expressing their highly sophisticated thoughts metaphorically and figuratively by pushing the limits of language. After a series of progressive changes in Sufi thinking, the issue acquired a new dimension, and this metaphoric and figurative language became a part of a general conceptual basis of explanation of all beings' relationship to each other. This symbolic language, especially with the intellectual perspective and prospects provided by the doctrine of wahdut cd-wtijfld, facilitated a way to express the most abstract and transcendental mystic thoughts. Ibn al-'Arabî's theory of letter-symbolism was one of the best examples of this symbolic idiom where he used to explain all beings. In his theory Ibn al-'Arabî adapts number-symbolism which has been known since the classical times by converting it to a letter-symbol ism. When we think the close relationship between numbers and letters wc can consider his theory as a number-symbolism.