Shaykh Ahmad's attitude towards Ibn Arabi and Mulla Sadra

The radical aspect of Shaykh Ahmad's thought is apparent in its revisionism and its dynamism. On the one hand, he clearly was motivated by what Harold Bloom called the "anxiety of influence", the desire of creative thinkers to somehow escape the conceptual and literary structures erected by their forebears where these are perceived as limiting. Shaykh Ahmad's acceptance of much in Ibn 'Arabi's metaphysics while sharply criticizing the Andalusian Sufi himself, and his love-hate relationship with previous Shi'ite theosophers such as Mulla Sadra and Mulla Muhsin Fayz Kashani demonstrate this anxiety no less than do his doctrinal innovativeness and his idiosyncratic scripture commentary.

(Juan R. I. Cole, The World as Text: Cosmologies of Shaykh Ahmad al-Ahsa'i, Studia Islamica No. 80 (1994), pp. 145-163 Published By Brill)