Ibn Sīnā was one of the most influential thinkers of the Middle Ages in the history of Islamic philosophy. His great art was to make the “existent” or “existence” the subject of philosophy, and thereby he established a solid geometric system in philosophy. In the Muslim world, not only did the Maššāʼi (peripatetic) philosophers call him “Šeikh ar-reʼīs” and follow him, but in theology, Khāje Nasīr ad-dīn Ṭusī followed him. Khāje established Kalām (Islamic scholastic theology) with the arguments of existence and existent, so that the later theologians all followed him. The students of Ibn ´Arabi's school also welcomed Ibn Sīnā's method in establishing a theoretical mysticism, something that had never been experienced in mysticism before. This article shows that Ibn Sīnā's influence in the Christian world is also evident. After translating Ibn Sīnā's works into Latin, great philosophers and theologians such as Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas turned their attention to Ibn Sīnā. The focus of the present study is on Ibn Sīnā's influence on Meister Eckhart. Unlike his earlier philosophers and even some Muslim scholars, Eckhart presents a mystical reading of Ibn Sīnā. In deriving many of his views about the existence in mysticism, he mentions Ibn Sīnā’s works.
