This paper investigates the meaning, background, and later interpretation of a digression on the nature of universals in the first chapter of Ibn Arabi’s “Fusus al-Hikam.” The chapter as a whole deals with God’s reason for the creation of the universe and the role of human beings in it. The digression, identified as a return to the topic of the chapter, immediately follows a section on the difference between humans and angels. The problem of universals is fundamental in philosophy, with the key question being whether they exist independently of the mind—realism—or are simply mental constructs—nominalism. It was a central debate in medieval European philosophy and was taken up in earnest in Islamic philosophy a century or so after Ibn Arabi. What is striking and incongruous is that Ibn Arabi is addressing this issue in uncharacteristically philosophical terms and touches on the key philosophical issue involved: the reality of the universal as separate from its instances. The passage raises several issues. First, what exactly is Ibn Arabi saying? The passage is not particularly clear, nor is its relation to its context, which is God’s teaching Adam the names of things. Second, although Ibn Arabi’s knowledge is remarkably broad, he seems to have known little of philosophy or philosophical logic and to have had no interest in knowing more, so where does this come from? Third, what do the commentators make of this passage? Among them were men who did know a great about philosophy, so how do they understand it? To return to Ibn Arabi’s own system, obviously it has something to do with the names and attributes of God and to Ibn Arabi’s famous a’yan thabita, “fixed essences.” Apart from the text itself, the sources will be earlier and later Islamic philosophical texts on natural universals, the commentaries of Qunawi, Qaysari, and Kashani, and parallel European primary and secondary sources on the problem of universals.