Insight Editions · No. 121
Ibn 'Ajiba: Wakening Aspiration, the Divine Names and Ya Sin
A Moroccan Sufi on the Heart, the Names of God and the Heart of the Qur'an
Ahmad ibn 'Ajiba · Translated by Aisha Bewley, Abdul Aziz Suraqah, and Abdullah bin Hamid Ali
Ahmad ibn 'Ajiba comments on Sufi aphorisms, the Divine Names, and Sura Ya Sin, relating spiritual discipline and inward realization to Islamic law.
A study guide to Ibn 'Ajiba: Wakening Aspiration, the Divine Names and Ya Sin by Ahmad ibn 'Ajiba, translated by Aisha Bewley, Abdul Aziz Suraqah, and Abdullah bin Hamid Ali. Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the authors or publishers. Please read and buy the original.
Overview
Ahmad ibn 'Ajiba was a Moroccan scholar of the late eighteenth century who left a career of formal learning to join the Darqawi Sufi order. Read together, they show one teacher working in three genres (aphorism, catalogue and scripture) and repeating one message: stop managing your own life, keep the Shari'a, take a living guide, and let the heart be filled with God.
Book One: Iqadh al-Himam, translated by Aisha Bewley, covering the aphorisms of Ibn 'Ata'illah through Chapter Eight [H].
Book Two: The Divine Names, translated by Abdul Aziz Suraqah [N].
Book Three: Sura Ya Sin from al-Bahr al-Madid, translated by Abdullah bin Hamid Ali [Y].
Method: every text is read twice, for its outward sense and its inward allusion.
Tone: warm, practical and at times sharply polemical toward scholars who deny the shaykhs.
The Collection on One Page
- Stop managing. Self-planning (tadbir) is the one habit Ibn 'Ajiba attacks in all three books. Choosing against the decree is the root of anxiety; satisfaction (rida) is its cure [H; N; Y 19, 31].
- Two eyes, one ship. The Haqiqa (inner reality) without the Shari'a (outer law) drowns; the law without the reality is dry. The Ya Sin commentary pictures the law as the ship that crosses the sea of oneness [Y 17].
- Connect, cultivate, realize. Each Divine Name is approached three ways: depend on it, take on its trait in human measure, and finally witness it as the only real actor [N].
- The heart has signs of life. Sorrow over missed obedience and no regret for slips are marks of a dead heart; waridat (sudden inner gifts) bring it back [H].
- Greed is abasement. Freedom means having no need of what is in people's hands [H Ch.7].
- Test what comes to you. An inner prompting confirmed three times in a purified heart may be acted on [Y 10].
- Take a living guide. Every age has its shaykhs; denying them is the modern form of belying the messengers [Y 6, 12].
- Rely on nothing but God. Knowledge, a spiritual state, even one's own poverty can become an idol [N 188; Y 28].
Figure A. Argument map: three practices feed three books, all aiming at one goal.
How the Three Books Fit
| Hikam chapter | Opens on | Subject | Part |
|---|---|---|---|
| One | H 10 | Reliance on deeds, tajrid, aspiration, tadbir, delayed answers, and the ten proofs that nothing veils God | A, end in B |
| Two | H 56 | The eight courtesies of the presence | B |
| Three | H 77 | Relinquishment and adornment; looking at one's own defects | C |
| Four | H 85 | Aiming aspiration only at the Ever-Generous | C |
| Five | H 92 | Company, its preconditions and its adab | C |
| Six | H 102 | Signs of a dead heart; waridat; joy in obedience | D |
| Seven | H 115 | Greed as the seed of abasement; gentleness or chains; adab | D |
| Eight | H 138 | Divine warids that come in a sudden flash; secrets | D |
Table B. The Hikam chapters as covered in Parts A to D, checked against the chapter headings of the translation.
Reading Notes
Citations use [H n] for Wakening Aspiration, [N n] for The Divine Names and [Y n] for Ya Sin, with the printed page numbers. Quotations follow the translations exactly. Where the scanned text is damaged, the passage is paraphrased and not set in quotation marks. One section of the Divine Names scan belongs to an unrelated booklet and is excluded, as Book Two explains. Dates appear only as the translations print them.
Book One. Wakening Aspiration (Iqadh al-Himam), Part A
The first and largest text in this collection is Ibn 'Ajiba's commentary on the Hikam, the book of aphorisms by Ibn 'Ata'llah. Aisha Bewley's translation gives the bare aphorisms first [H 1 to 10] and then the commentary, titled Wakening Aspiration [H 11]. This first part covers the opening aphorisms and the commentary through the long passage on how the Real is veiled only by His own manifestation [H 11 to 50].
The Aphorisms on Their Own
Before any commentary, the translation lets Ibn 'Ata'llah speak for ten pages. The lines are compressed and paradoxical. A few set the agenda for everything that follows:
- On deeds: "A feeling of discouragement when you slip up / is a sure sign that you put your faith in deeds" [H 1].
- On control: "Give yourself a rest from managing! / When Someone Else is doing it for you, / don't you start doing it for yourself!" [H 1].
- On form and spirit: "Actions are merely propped-up shapes. / Their life-breath is the presence of the secret of sincerity in them" [H 2].
- On fame: "Bury your existence in the earth of obscurity. / If something sprouts before it is buried, / its fruits will never ripen" [H 2].
- On the world: "Phenomenal being is utter and total darkness. / It is only the manifestation of the Real in it that gives it light" [H 2].
- On travel: "Do not travel from phenomenal being to phenomenal being. / You will be like the donkey going around at the mill" [H 6].
- On sin and mercy: "There is no minor wrong action when you face His justice. / There is no major wrong action when you experience His bounty" [H 7].
- On practice and grace: "No warid, no wird" [H 9]. A warid is an "arriving thing", an experience that overwhelms the heart; a wird is a regular litany [H 10]. Without the gift, no practice.
The aphorisms on remembrance give one of the clearest ladders in the book. Do not give up invocation because you are absent in it: "It is worse to forget to invoke Him / than to be inattentive while invoking Him." God may raise you from invocation with heedlessness, to wakeful attention, to presence, to "withdrawal from all that is other than the Invoked" [H 7].
Figure 1. The aphorist's ladder of remembrance [H 7]. The first step counts: forgetting is worse than inattention.
Three Kinds of Action
The commentary opens with a map. "The people of this science divide actions into three categories: actions of the Shari'a, actions of the Tariqa, and actions of Reality" [H 11]. Ibn 'Ajiba gives the same triad in several vocabularies at once, and the table below lines them up.
| Level | Shari'a | Tariqa | Haqiqa (Reality) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Religion's three dimensions | Islam | Faith (iman) | Ihsan |
| Aim | "that you worship Him" | "that You aim for Him" | "that you witness Him" |
| What is put right | The outward, the limbs | The conscience, the heart | The secret, the spirit |
| Means | Tawba, taqwa, rectitude | Sincerity, truthfulness, being at peace | Watchful fear, witnessing, gnosis |
| Stage of the traveller | Beginning | Middle | End |
Table 1. The triad that structures the whole commentary [H 11].
Two rules come with the map. First, order matters: "Moving to a station is not valid until one has mastered what is before it" [H 11]. Second, no stage is a ground for confidence. The murid "should not put his faith in himself nor on his actions, state, and strength" [H 12]. Ibn 'Ajiba cites the hadith that none enters the Garden by his actions, "Not even me, unless Allah envelops me in his mercy" [H 12].
The sign of real reliance on God is steadiness: "your hopes are not lessened when you slip into disobedience nor are they increased when you do good" [H 12]. Fear and hope stay in balance because fear comes from witnessing majesty and hope from witnessing beauty, and neither majesty nor beauty rises or falls with our performance.
Figure 2. Fear and hope stay in balance, since neither majesty nor beauty rises or falls with performance [H 12].
How can the Qur'an say "Enter the Garden for what you did" (16:32) while the Prophet says no one enters by deeds? Ibn 'Ajiba's answer is a principle he uses throughout: scripture alternates between prescription and realisation. One verse legislates for "the people of wisdom", another states the reality for "the people of power". So "a person is obliged to have two eyes: one looks at the reality while the other looks at the Shari'a" [H 14]. There is no contradiction, only two angles.
Figure 3. Prescription and realisation: "a person is obliged to have two eyes" [H 14].
He also quotes a work called Solving the Riddles on "six steep slopes": the limbs abstain from disobedience, the self from familiar customs, the heart from flippancy, the self from natural impurities, the spirit from sensory favours, and the intellect from "illusory imaginations". After the sixth comes the Holiest Presence and a drink that "will increase your thirst" [H 13 to 14].
Figure 4. The "six steep slopes", before the Holiest Presence [H 13 to 14].
Tajrid: Stripping Away
The second aphorism warns against wanting to withdraw when God has placed you among means, and against wanting means when God has withdrawn you. Tajrid "linguistically means 'taking off and removing'" [H 15]. Ibn 'Ajiba sorts it into outward, inward and both.
| Who strips away | Ibn 'Ajiba's image [H 15] |
|---|---|
| Outward only | "a liar, like someone who calls copper silver" |
| Inward only | Like calling silver copper; rare, since outward involvement usually drags the inward along |
| Both | "the perfect truthful one", "the pure gold which is proper for the treasuries of kings" |
Table 2. Three forms of tajrid.
Why is the wish to leave the world of means "a hidden appetite"? Because the self wants rest and honour while displaying asceticism, and it lacks the certainty to endure poverty [H 15 to 16]. The rule is to wait for permission. A line from at-Tanwir sums it up: "It is not your concern to abandon means. Your concern is that the means abandon you" [H 16]. And the formula Ibn 'Ajiba closes with turns the whole question inside out: "tajrid without permission is a means, and means with permission is tajrid" [H 17].
Figure 5. The formula that closes the section on tajrid [H 17].
Aspiration, Management and the Inner Eye
, aspiration, "is the power the heart sends forth in seeking a thing" [H 17]. Strong aspiration in a gnostic can seem to make things happen at once. But the aphorism sets the limit: "Aspiration which rushes on ahead / cannot break through the walls of destiny." When it meets the wall, it "shows adab and reverts to its attribute, which is slavedom. It is not grieved or sad" [H 18].
Figure 6. Aspiration meets the wall of destiny [H 17 to 18].
From this follows the teaching on tadbir, management or planning. Following Zarruq, Ibn 'Ajiba defines it as deciding future matters "which are feared or hoped for" [H 19] and splits it into three kinds.
| Kind | What it is | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Blameworthy | Planning "accompanied by resolve and tenacity", for religion or the world | Lacks adab; "hastens fatigue" |
| Desirable | Planning your obligations and recommended acts while leaving the outcome to destiny | A "righteous intention" |
| Permissible | Worldly planning without relying on it | Fine if it "passes through the heart like the wind" |
Table 3. The three kinds of management [H 19 to 20].
Shadhili's advice is the memorable one: "If you must manage, then manage to not manage" [H 20]. The test of managing "by Allah" is simple: when the opposite of your plan happens, "he is neither constricted nor upset" [H 20].
Figure 7. The test of managing "by Allah" [H 20].
The next aphorism names the symptom of a dull inner eye: striving for what is guaranteed (provision) while neglecting what is required (obligations). The inner eye "only sees meanings and the sight only sees sensory things" [H 20]. When service and love grow, the inner eye overpowers sight; when the heart serves things, the reverse happens until "dullness becomes blindness" [H 21]. The world is "like the river of Goliath": safe only for the one who "scoops up a handful" [H 21].
Figure 8. The inner eye and the sight [H 20 to 21].
Delayed Answers and Unkept Promises
Supplication is guaranteed an answer, "but in the way He chooses, / not the way you choose" [H 1]. A hadith gives three outcomes: the request is hastened, its reward is stored, or an equal evil is turned away [H 22]. Ibn 'Ajiba advises praying "for slavedom, not to seek your portion. If you leave portions, they will come to you" [H 22].
Figure 9. Three outcomes of a supplication, from a hadith [H 22].
When a promise with a set time does not arrive, do not doubt it. The prophets show why. Musa's prayer against Pharaoh took forty years [H 23]. Yunus's warning was lifted when his people believed. Nuh read "your family" as general; God meant the righteous [H 23]. At Badr the Prophet prayed until his mantle fell, while Abu Bakr said God would keep His word: "Each was correct. The Prophet had a wider view" [H 24]. At Hudaybiyya, when 'Umar asked about entering Makka, the Prophet answered, "Did I tell you it would be this year?" [H 24].
Figure 10. Promises with a set time, shown by the prophets [H 23].
Hardship as an Opening
When God "opens a way" by His majestic Names, through illness, poverty or harm, do not mourn missed deeds. These blows are "great blessings and ample gifts" which measure your truthfulness [H 26]. Like silver and gold, the seeker is purified "by fire so that they are fit for the king's treasury" [H 26]. 'Ali al-'Imrani called confinement "the Night of Power which is better than a thousand months" [H 26], and Ibn 'Ajiba wrote his own couplet greeting need: "Your time with me is more beneficial than the Night of Power!" [H 26].
Al-Buzidi sorted these trials into three: punishment and expulsion for the one with bad adab who rages and denies; discipline for the one with bad adab who wakes up; and increase and ascension for the one tested "without reason" who rises to stability [H 26 to 27].
States, Stations and the Shape of a Life
Ibn 'Ajiba gives a compact vocabulary of the heart. While light and dark thoughts both arise, what occurs is a passing thought (khatir). When the dark ones leave, it is a warid or state (hal). When a state lasts, it is a station (maqam) [H 27]. Limbs follow hearts: contraction shows as stillness, expansion as lightness, love and yearning as "ecstasy and dancing", gnosis as "rest and stillness" [H 27 to 28].
Zarruq's rule explains why Sufis look so different. Some are dominated by action (worshippers), some by abandonment (ascetics), some by watching how God disposes of things (gnostics). Yet each needs the others: "the gnostic must have worship or there is no point to his gnosis". His verdict: "All is Sufism" [H 28].
Sincerity and Obscurity
Actions are "forms and bodies. Their life-breath is the existence of sincerity in them" [H 29]. The enemy is "hidden shirk", showing off, which "creeps like an ant" [H 29]. Sincerity has three levels.
| Level | What is removed from the act [H 29 to 30] |
|---|---|
| Common | Creation, while still seeking portions of both worlds (health, wealth, "castles and houris") |
| Elite | Portions of this world, while still seeking the Next |
| Elite of the elite | All portions; worship as pure slavehood or love: "I only desire to see You" (Ibn al-Farid) |
Table 4. The three levels of sincerity.
Ibn 'Ajiba's own shaykh is blunt: "Your watching Allah will never be combined with watching creation" [H 30]. And: "Whenever you fall in people's eyes, you become great in Allah's eyes" [H 30].
Hence obscurity. 'Isa asked where grain grows; in the earth, they said. "It is the same for wisdom. It only grows in the heart which is like the earth" [H 30]. The Prophet, comparing an ignored poor man with a respected rich one, said the poor man "is better than what the earth contains and better than this one" [H 31].
What follows will surprise modern readers. For someone "tested by rank and leadership", Ibn 'Ajiba recommends acts that lower one's standing, provided they are disliked and not unlawful: begging in shops, eating in markets, "carrying rubbish on his head, walking barefooted" [H 31]. He tells the stories. Ash-Shushtari, a minister and an amir's son, sold his goods, took a banner into the market and called "I begin by mentioning the Beloved" for three days "and the veils were rent" [H 32]. Abu Yazid told a proud disciple of thirty years to shave, hang a bag of walnuts round his neck and offer children a nut for every slap; the man refused and stayed veiled [H 32 to 33]. Ibn 'Ajiba's own teachers did similar things, several of them in Fes [H 33].
Obscurity, then, "is not what the common people understand it to be: staying inside houses and fleeing to mountains" [H 33]. For Zarruq it is for the self "to fully realise its lowest description and be constantly aware of it" [H 33]. Once cured, the matter ends: "The slave of Allah is the same whether he is public or concealed" (al-Mursi) [H 34].
Retreat and Reflection
"Withdraw the heart into the arena of reflection / - nothing helps the heart more than that!" Retreat (khalwa) and reflection work as a pair: "withdrawal is like the fever and reflection is the remedy" [H 34]. Neither works alone. The goal is "the sound heart" of 26:89.
| # | Ten benefits of khalwa [H 35 to 37] |
|---|---|
| 1 | Safety from the tongue |
| 2 | Guarding the eye from envy of the world's "flower" |
| 3 | Protecting the heart from flattery and showing off |
| 4 | Asceticism and contentment |
| 5 | Safety from bad company ("the bellows") |
| 6 | Devotion to worship and dhikr |
| 7 | Tasting the sweetness of obedience |
| 8 | Rest for heart and body |
| 9 | Protection from quarrels and worldly rivalry |
| 10 | Firmness in reflection, "the greatest goal of khalwa" |
Table 5. Why withdraw.
Sidi 'Ali judged disciples by a fruit test: one who prefers retreat, silence and fasting has a sweet melon; one who prefers company, talk and fullness has a hollow one [H 35]. Yet retreat is for beginners. For "the people of the end, their retreat is always with them, even if they are in the midst of people" (Ibn 'Abbad) [H 38].
The Mirror, the Fetters and the Water of the Unseen
The heart is "like a polished mirror" with "only one direction" [H 38]. Turned to God it fills with "the moons of tawhid and suns of gnosis"; turned to things it rusts. A hadith: every sin leaves a black spot; repentance polishes it; repetition spreads it until it is "the rust" of 83:14 [H 39]. Since "Allah has not allotted a man two hearts in his breast" (33:4), turning to creatures is turning from the Real [H 39].
Travel to God is movement "from the Mulk to the Malakut, or from stopping at secondary causes to seeing the Causer of causes ... or from the knowledge of certainty to the source of certainty, or from the source of certainty to the truth of certainty" [H 39 to 40]. Fetters are any appetite, even a lawful one, that the heart still leans on. "The faqir is like water. When it remains for a long time in the same place, it changes" [H 40].
Figure 11. The three worlds the heart crosses and the three presences that match them.
The great impurity of the heart is heedlessness, and only the pure enter the Presence. Ibn 'Ajiba reads 4:43 inwardly: do not approach the prayer of presence "drunk with the love of this world" [H 41]. A poem by al-Hatimi gives the key image: "Do wudu' with the water of the unseen if you have a secret. / Otherwise do tayammum with good earth or stone" [H 41]. Real purification is withdrawal from others by witnessing God. Outward worship (prayer, fasting) is tayammum with earth; inward virtues are tayammum with stone; both are dispensations "for weakness" [H 42].
But the gnostic does not drop the law. "Go forward if you are an imam" means combine reality with the Shari'a, so that "your outward will be wayfaring (suluk) and your inward attraction (jadhb)" [H 43]. The end returns to the beginning: "The end of the perfect is the beginning of the Shari'a" [H 43]. And the closing line, "sprinkle the land with the sea", means soak your Shari'a in your reality until each is the other [H 44]. Al-Qarafi, on finding a shaykh, said: "I did tayammum with earth for a time, and now I have found water" [H 43].
Veiled by Manifestation
Now the commentary reaches its metaphysical centre. Phenomenal being is darkness only for "the people of the veil". For the gnostic, "Being is all light" [H 45]. People divide into three by how they see God in things.
| Group | How they see [H 46 to 47] |
|---|---|
| People of baqa' (subsistence) | See the Real at once in, with, before and after things, and still affirm means |
| Travellers looking upward | See things, then the Maker by His effects, until things are effaced |
| People of annihilation | See God before creation; "Effects are obliterated for them" |
| People of the veil | See things and infer God by proofs; the common believers |
Table 6. Degrees of witnessing.
Ibn Mashish told Shadhili: "Sharpen the sight of faith and you will find Allah in everything, with everything, at everything, before everything, after everything" [H 46].
Book One, Part B. Ten Proofs and Eight Courtesies
The end of Chapter One argues, in ten steps, that nothing can veil God. Chapter Two then turns from metaphysics to manners: eight kinds of adab for the one who has entered the Presence, and four signs of the gnostic [H 50 to 77].
The Ten Proofs That Nothing Veils Him
Ibn 'Ajiba reads the aphorist's eight-fold refrain, plus two further lines, as ten proofs "marvelling at the manifestation of each of them while He is concealed" [H 49]. Each step closes a door that a veil might slip through.
| # | He is the One who... | Commentary in brief |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | has manifested everything | "The water which flows penetrates the roots of the branches: you find it to be one water while there are a multitude of flowers" [H 50] |
| 2 | is manifest by everything | Nothing exists alongside Him, so nothing is left to veil [H 50] |
| 3 | is manifest in everything | "Power is hidden and wisdom is manifest. All existence is between power and wisdom" [H 51] |
| 4 | is manifest to everything | "There is nothing which does not glorify Him with praise" (17:44) [H 51] |
| 5 | was manifest before anything | Manifest to Himself by Himself, needing no other to be known [H 51] |
| 6 | is more manifest than anything | The veiled man thinks his self necessary and God theoretical; the gnostic reverses this [H 52] |
| 7 | has nothing with Him | "Allah was and nothing was with Him and He is now as He was" [H 52] |
| 8 | is nearer than anything | Nearness "of knowledge, encompassment and witnessing, not the nearness of distance" [H 53] |
| 9 | is the reason anything exists | Things are "pure non-existence" in themselves (25:2, 54:49) [H 53 to 54] |
| 10 | holds the in-time beside the eternal | "Falsehood does not veil the truth" (10:32) [H 54] |
Table 7. The ten proofs against a veil.
Two of these steps carry important guard rails. The eighth quotes 'Ali on God's placelessness: "Your words, 'Where was Allah'? is a question of place and Allah had no place. Then He created time and place and He is now as He was, without place or time" [H 53]. The tenth rules out the two heresies that a doctrine of sole existence invites. Incarnation (hulul) needs a real "other" for God to enter; but the other is "pure non-existence and thus hulul is inconceivable" [H 54]. Union (ittihad) needs two things to merge; that too "is also based on otherness" [H 54]. Al-Junayd's reply to a man who said "Praise be to Allah" and omitted "Lord of the worlds" makes the same point: "when the in-time is joined to the timeless, the in-time vanishes and the Timeless remains" [H 54].
Figure 12. Why Ibn 'Ajiba says his teaching is neither incarnation nor union: both presuppose an "other" that has real existence [H 54].
The chapter ends with the inquisition of the Sufis, where an-Nuri, asked by a qadi why God created the world and why sects differ, answered that He desires "to convey His power, clarify His wisdom, oblige His kindness, and manifest His justice and kindness" [H 55]. Ibn 'Ajiba draws a threefold scheme from it: God shows generosity to the obedient, pardon to sinning believers, and vengeance to the defiant [H 55 to 56].
Figure 13. The threefold scheme drawn from an-Nuri's answer [H 55 to 56].
Chapter Two: The Eight Courtesies of the Presence
Chapter Two is organised as a numbered list, which makes it the easiest part of the commentary to use. Each courtesy (adab) answers one aphorism.
| # | Courtesy | Aphorism |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Accept each moment as God makes it | "You have not abandoned ignorance at all / if you want something to take place in any moment / other than what Allah has manifested in it" |
| 2 | Do not postpone action | "You put off action until you have nothing else to do? / That comes from the foolishness of the lower self" |
| 3 | Stay where you are placed | "Don't ask Him to remove you from one state / in order to use you in another" |
| 4 | Never halt at a station | "What you're looking for is still in front of you!" |
| 5 | Give up seeking and demanding | "If you make demands on Him, you doubt Him" |
| 6 | Contentment with decree | "Every breath you breathe emerges according to a preordained decree" |
| 7 | Watchfulness inside work | "Don't look forward to being quit of others" |
| 8 | Act by Allah, not by self | "A goal you seek by your Lord: / no delay here" |
Table 8. The eight courtesies of Chapter Two [H 57 to 71].
Figure 14. Seeking by God and seeking by self [H 69 to 70].
1. Accept the moment
Ignorance is "simple" when you know you are ignorant and "complex" when you do not. The worst is "ignorance and denial of Allah after seeking to recognise Him" [H 57]. The gnostic affirms things "where they are". Inwardly he excuses people; outwardly he still applies the law: "It is mandatory to deal with them by the Shari'a outwardly and to remind them, and by the reality in the inward and so he excuses them" [H 57].
Figure 15. How the gnostic who accepts the moment deals with people [H 57].
Ibn 'Ajiba uses this to explain why the hadith seem to contradict each other. Read the hadith on dhikr and nothing seems better; the same for jihad, knowledge, asceticism and earning for one's family. The Prophet "encouraged the wisdom in each" so that every kind of person would be at rest: "Indeed, there is nothing better than it for its people" [H 58].
2. Do not postpone
"There are two blessings in which many people are deceived: health and free time" [H 59]. The Scrolls of Ibrahim, as quoted, give the intelligent person four hours: conversing with his Lord, taking account of himself, reflecting on God's handiwork, and attending to his bodily needs [H 59]. "The faqir is the child of the moment" [H 59].
Figure 16. The four hours of the intelligent person, from the Scrolls of Ibrahim as quoted [H 59].
3. Stay where you are placed
The gnostic who is single does not wish to marry; married, he does not wish for divorce; poor, he does not wish for wealth; ill, he does not wish for health. He is "like the corpse in the hands of the washer or like a pen in the fingers" [H 60]. A report to Da'ud states the logic: "If you surrender to Me what I will, I will bring you what you will" [H 60]. Two limits follow. Move only with a clear sign of permission, and all this holds only "when the state in which you are is in keeping with the Shari'a. Otherwise, seek to leave it however possible" [H 61].
Figure 17. Staying where one is placed, "like a pen in the fingers" [H 60].
4. Never halt
The traveller passes through annihilation in the Actions, in the Attributes and in the Essence, then "annihilation in annihilation, which is the station of baqa'. Then there is rising which has no end" [H 62]. At each stop a voice says "That which you seek is still ahead of you!" Even at baqa' the call becomes "My Lord, increase me in knowledge" (20:114) [H 62]. Miracles are a trap of the same kind: walking on water and flying are "a trial" asking whether you will rest in them or "pass to the light of their meanings" [H 62 to 63].
Figure 18. The stations of annihilation, and the call that refuses rest.
As-Sahili's parable gives the picture: a king sends messengers with a letter; some refuse, some believe but stay home, and some travel. At each fine station the messengers say "What you seek is still ahead of you", until at last: "Here you are with your Lord" [H 63].
5. Give up demanding
The aphorism has four parts and Ibn 'Ajiba maps each to a fault: demanding of God implies doubt; seeking Him implies absence; seeking other-than-Him is shamelessness; demanding of others is distance [H 64 to 66]. "If anyone is distracted by My dhikr from asking Me, I will give him more than I give to those who ask" [H 64]. Yet he reports a real disagreement among Sufis on silence versus supplication and settles it by the seeker's state: "one must look at what is manifested to him and that to which his breast is expanded" [H 64].
6. Contentment
"The reality of rida (contentment) is to meet destructive matters with a smiling face. The reality of submission is that vengeance and blessing are the same" [H 66].
7. Watchfulness inside work
Do not wait to finish worldly work before turning your heart to God. Moulay al-'Arabi would shout "You! You!" at disciples working in the fields to wake them from the sensory [H 67]. Ibn 'Ajiba adds that this is not a repeat of courtesy 2: that was about limbs, this is about hearts [H 67].
The same courtesy covers suffering. This world "only brings forth what its attribute and quality demand" [H 4]. "The faqir must be like the rush plant. When the attack of the flash flood comes, it bows its head, and when it goes, it lifts its head" [H 69]. Al-Junayd kept a simple principle: the world is "the abode of worry, sorrow, affliction and trial ... If it brings me with what I love, it is bounty" [H 68]. The contrast of Maryam, called siddiqa, and Sarah, who said "This is something extraordinary!", illustrates the siddiq who is never surprised and the sadiq who is [H 69].
8. By Allah, not by self
"A goal you seek by your Lord: / no delay here. / A goal you seek by yourself: / not easy" [H 69 to 70]. The sign of seeking by God is detachment from the outcome; the sign of seeking by self is "avarice and striving". Ibn 'Ajiba adds a striking reversal: a need sought by God "is fulfilled in meaning, even if it is not satisfied physically", while a need sought by self is a loss "even if his desire and need are satisfied" [H 70]. Sidi 'Ali: "The difference between action by Allah and action for Allah is the difference between the dinar and the dirham" [H 71].
Inward Stores, Outward Signs
"Everything that is stored away in the warehouse of invisible secrets / has to appear in the visible world of outward manifestation" [H 72]. Whatever the heart holds shows on the limbs: "Every vessel leaks that which is in it" [H 73].
The greatest store is gnosis, and it comes in two kinds: by proof and by eye-witnessing. "One group is singled out for His power", shown the secrets of the Essence; another is "allotted for His service", made "the people of His wisdom", and they stop at the shells [H 74]. A gnostic's saying captures the difference: "Allah Almighty affirmed the creature for common people and so by it they affirmed the Creator. He affirmed Himself to the elite and by Him they affirmed creation" [H 74].
| Those who have arrived | Those travelling | |
|---|---|---|
| Knowledge | "He who has plenty should spend out from his plenty" | "it is he whose provision is restricted" |
| Lights | "the lights of face-to-face encounter" (ihsan) | "the light of turning their faces toward Him" (Islam, faith) |
| Relation to lights | "the lights belong to the latter" | "The former belong to lights" |
| Outward and inward | "His outward is slavedom and his inward is freedom" | Busy with "the jihad of themselves" |
Table 9. Travellers and arrivers [H 75 to 77].
Chapter Two closes with the verse "Say: 'Allah' then leave them plunging in their games", read by "the people of indication" as an instruction to say God's name with the heart and withdraw from all else. An outward commentator objected; Ibn 'Ajiba answers with Ibn 'Abbad: "Do not make the people of the outward an argument against the people of the inward" [H 77].
2. Rely on God, not on deeds; fear and hope stay balanced.
3. Means and withdrawal both need permission.
4. Plan your duties, hold outcomes loosely.
5. Sincerity grows in obscurity and is tested in retreat.
6. Nothing veils God except illusion, which does not exist.
7. Sole existence rules out both incarnation and union.
8. The eight courtesies turn metaphysics into daily conduct.
Book One, Part C. Defects, Aspiration and Company
Chapters Three to Five move from manners to repair. Chapter Three is about "relinquishment and adornment": stripping off the qualities that block slavehood and putting on their opposites. Chapter Four aims aspiration at God alone. Chapter Five sets the rules of company, the qualifications of a shaykh, and closes on dhikr [H 77 to 102].
Look at Your Own Defects
"Better to look at the defects hidden within you / than to look for the unseen worlds that are veiled from you" [H 5]. Curiosity about people's secrets or future events feeds the ego; searching one's own faults gives the heart life [H 78]. Ibn 'Ajiba sorts defects into three layers.
| Layer | Defects: attachment to... [H 78] |
|---|---|
| Self (nafs) | Physical appetites: food, drink, clothes, mounts, houses, wives |
| Heart | Rank, leadership, pride, envy, rancour, love of position |
| Spirit (ruh) | "Inward portions, like seeking karamat, stations, castles, houris" |
Table 10. Three layers of defect.
The third row is the sharp one: even the wish for miracles and paradise is a defect of the spirit, because it is still a portion sought for oneself.
"The Real is not veiled / - it is you that are veiled from seeing Him" [H 79]. If anything veiled Him, it would contain Him, and what contains overpowers; "But He is the Conqueror". His "aboveness" is "the elevation of majesty and position, not place, as one says, 'The sultan is above the wazir'" [H 80].
Figure 19. The argument that the Real is not veiled [H 79 to 80].
Two families of bad qualities
The "qualities of humanness" that block slavehood come from two sources: animal qualities (the appetites of belly and genitals and the love of the world that follows), and satanic ones (pride, envy, rancour, love of praise, "respecting the wealthy and debasing the poor", fear of poverty, showing off) [H 80]. Each has a replacement.
| Leave | Take on [H 80 to 81] |
|---|---|
| Qualities of animals | Qualities of the spirituals: asceticism, scrupulousness, contentment, chastity, intimacy with God |
| Qualities of shaytans | Qualities of believers and angels: humility, forbearance, gentleness, obscurity, mercy, esteem for the poor, generosity, sincerity, truthfulness |
Table 11. Relinquishment and adornment.
When God says "My slave" and the man answers "O Lord", he tells the truth only if he is free of appetites; otherwise "he lies since whoever loves a thing is its slave" [H 81].
Hence the startling aphorism: "Better to keep the company of an ignorant man / who is not satisfied with himself / than a man of knowledge who is satisfied with himself" [H 82]. One gnostic ranks the most veiled as "the scholars, then the worshippers, then the ascetics since they stop with their knowledge, worship and asceticism" [H 82]. Abu Hafs al-Haddad: "Anyone who does not suspect himself at all times ... is deluded" [H 82].
Figure 20. One gnostic's ranking of the most veiled, most veiled first [H 82].
Five Kinds of Inner Sight
The chapter's closing aphorism describes three grades of the inner eye: its light shows His nearness, its source shows your non-existence, its truth shows only His existence [H 83]. Ibn 'Ajiba widens this to five types of sight and links them to the three degrees of certainty.
Figure 21. Three grades of the inner eye [H 83].
| Inner sight | Who | Certainty |
|---|---|---|
| Blind, denies the light | Unbelievers (22:46) | None |
| Sound but weak; affirms light, cannot bear it | Common Muslims | Belief |
| "The rays of the inner eye" | Common travellers | Knowledge of certainty |
| "The eye/source of the inner eye" | Elite travellers, who vanish in the light | Source (eye) of certainty |
| "The truth of the inner eye" | The firm, who see only the root light | Truth of certainty |
Table 12. Grades of inner sight [H 83 to 85].
Figure 22. The Makka analogy for the three degrees of certainty [H 84].
Ibn 'Ajiba is candid about a text he uses. The phrase "He is now as He was", he notes, "even if it is not in the hadith, has a sound meaning since change is impossible for Him" [H 85]. He quotes Ibn al-'Arabi al-Hatimi: "Whoever witnesses that creatures have no action has won. Whoever witnesses them has having no life has won. Whoever witnesses them as nonexistence itself has arrived" [H 85].
Figure 23. Ibn al-'Arabi al-Hatimi on what the witness sees [H 85].
Chapter Four: Aim Only at the Generous
"Do not let the intention of your aspiration veer to other-than-Him. / Hopes can go no further than the Ever-Generous" [H 86]. The Ever-Generous is "the one who gives when asked and does not care how much He gives nor to whom He gives" [H 86]. Asking other people is both useless ("How can someone who is unable to relieve his own need relieve someone else's?") and immodest [H 87 to 88]. Musa, who asked to see God, also asked for bread: "My Lord, I am truly in need of any good You have in store for me" (28:24) [H 87].
Figure 24. Where aspiration should be aimed [H 86 to 88].
Two grounds for thinking well of God
| The elite | The common | |
|---|---|---|
| Ground | Witnessing His beauty and perfection (His attribute) | Remembering His past kindness (His action) |
| Under hardship | See mercy inside the majesty | Compare the new hardship with past favours |
| Stability | Does not change, since "the attribute does not alter" | Rises and falls, since action "can vary" |
Table 13. Two kinds of good opinion of God [H 88].
Shadhili, told that "Hearts are disposed to love the one who is good to them", replied: "Since we do not see any good-doer other than Allah, we do not love other than Him" [H 89]. He also warned of the whisperer who reminds you of your sins to turn you "to a bad opinion of Allah": "This door ... had captured many worshippers, ascetics and people of obedience" [H 89].
The donkey at the mill
"How utterly amazing is someone who flees from something he cannot escape / to seek something that will not last!" [H 89]. What cannot be escaped is God and His decree; what will not last is the world. Shadhili named three causes of inner blindness: "allowing the limbs to disobey Allah, desire for the creation of Allah and artifice in obeying Allah" [H 90].
The donkey image then lands hard on religious people. Being ascetic so that the world will come to you, or for prestige, or for miracles, or for "castles and houris" is all "travelling from one phenomenal being to another" [H 90]. Shadhili's counsel: "Stand at one door, not to have doors opened to you, and the doors will open to you" [H 91]. Travel to the Maker takes three things: confining aspiration to Him, returning to Him to fulfil rights while fleeing portions, and constant reliance and submission [H 91].
The hadith of emigration closes the chapter, read on three levels: from disobedience to obedience, from heedlessness to wakefulness, from forms to spirits [H 92]. Ibn 'Ajiba's shaykh al-Yazidi gives a practical test: present to the self, one by one, the things it desires; if love of them has left the heart, "Your spirit has indeed travelled to the world of the Malakut" [H 92 to 93].
Chapter Five: Company
"If someone's state does not lift you up, / and his words do not lead you to Allah / - then do not keep his company!" [H 93]. The right companion is one who, when you see him, "you remember Allah". Such company "is an elixir which transforms the sources" [H 93]. "The one who has no shaykh has shaytan for his shaykh" [H 93].
| A shaykh must have [H 94] | A shaykh is disqualified by (Usul at-Tariqa) [H 94] |
|---|---|
| Sound knowledge (of the law, the stations, the tricks of the self) | Ignorance of the deen |
| Clear tasting (direct experience, "not imitation") | Failing to respect the Muslims |
| High aspiration connected to God | Involvement in what does not concern him |
| A pleasing state, going straight | Following passion; bad character |
Table 14. The qualified and the disqualified guide.
He must also combine attraction (jadhb) and wayfaring (suluk). The pure wayfarer stays outward; the pure majdhub "does not travel nor arrive", and "The corruption of his company is greater than its benefit" [H 94].
Company with someone worse than you is harmful because it "lets you see good in yourself" [H 94]. With brothers, keep the middle way. With a shaykh, obey at once: the true faqir, told "to enter the eye of the needle, does not hesitate" [H 95]. Sidi 'Ali gives a ranking: sitting with a gnostic is better than retreat; retreat is better than sitting with heedless common people; and the heedless common person is better company than "the ignorant faqir", who is "a thousand times worse" [H 95].
Small acts, detached hearts
"No action from a heart without attachment is insignificant. / No action from a heart full of desires is great" [H 96]. Asceticism (zuhd) works on three levels.
| Zuhd in | Sign: these are the same to him [H 96] |
|---|---|
| Property | Gold and dust, wealth and poverty, giving and denying |
| Rank | Might and abasement, praise and blame, display and obscurity |
| Stations and miracles | Hope and fear, strength and weakness, expansion and contraction |
Table 15. Three levels of asceticism.
The parable: one man gives a king a small pure ruby worth sixty qintars; another gives "60 empty boxes" [H 97]. 'Isa found a man sleeping while others worshipped; the man said, "I left this world to its people." 'Isa: "Sleep. This is an excellent worship!" [H 97]. Ibn 'Ajiba's own shaykh: the worldly man "is heedless, even if he says, 'Allah, Allah' with his tongue constantly" [H 97].
States, stations and how they form
"Good actions are the results of good states. / Good states come from grasping the reality / of the stations where you alight" [H 98]. A station such as asceticism begins as action (striving to leave the world), becomes a state through constancy, and becomes a station when the heart is still in it and tastes it [H 98]. "So the states are gifts and stations are acquisitions" [H 98]. A dream saying of Abu Bakr to Shadhili gives three signs: of love of the world leaving, "spending it when it exists and rest from it when it does not"; of trust, "stillness and tranquillity at the changes of means"; of gnosis, "adab outwardly and inwardly, and good character with every creature" [H 99].
Figure 25. How a station is built.
Dhikr returns
The chapter ends where the aphorisms began, with the ladder of invocation (Figure 1). Ibn 'Abbas notes that every obligation has a set time except dhikr [H 100]. Ibn 'Ajiba traces the transmission of "There is no god but Allah" from the Prophet to 'Ali, then through al-Hasan al-Basri, Habib al-'Ajami, Da'ud at-Ta'i, Ma'ruf al-Karkhi and as-Sari to al-Junayd [H 100]. "So no one reaches Allah except by way of dhikr" [H 100].
Keep the tongue going even when the heart is absent: "Thank Allah for the success of the dhikr of the tongue. If it had been busy with absence, what would you do?" [H 101]. At the top of the ladder the relation flips, and "the one doing the dhikr becomes remembered and the seeker becomes the sought" [H 101]. Al-Wasiti's paradox belongs to that summit only: "Those who remember are more heedless in His dhikr than those who forget His dhikr because His dhikr is other than Him" [H 101 to 102]. Al-Qushayri: "Dhikr is the gradual entry of the one doing the dhikr into the One Invoked" [H 102].
Book One, Part D. The Living Heart, Freedom from Greed, and Gifts that Arrive Unannounced
The last three chapters of Bewley's partial translation turn from the method of the path to its inner weather. Chapter Six is a diagnosis of the heart: how to tell if it is dead or alive, and how light reinforces it. Chapter Seven locates human abasement in one root, greed, and offers its cure, "scrupulousness" in a special sense. Chapter Eight explains why the deepest gifts come suddenly, why they must be kept secret, and how to read one's own standing with God [H 102 to 148].
Signs of a Dead Heart
Chapter Six opens with a medical test: "A sign of the death of the heart: / lack of sadness about beneficial actions you have missed, / and lack of regret about your mistakes" [H 102]. Ibn 'Ajiba turns the aphorism into a short clinical chart.
| Kills the heart [H 102] | Revives the heart [H 102] | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Love of this world | Asceticism in this world |
| 2 | Heedlessness of dhikru'llah | Occupation with dhikru'llah |
| 3 | Letting the limbs disobey | Company of the awliya' of Allah |
Table 16. What kills and what revives the heart.
The logic is simple and sharp. A living body feels; a corpse does not. "The living heart feels what pleases his Master and rejoices, and feels what angers Him and sorrows. The dead heart does not feel anything" [H 103]. The test is not whether you sin, but whether you notice. Ibn Mas'ud's image fixes it: the believer sees his wrong actions "as if they were the foot of a mountain which he fears will fall on him"; the impious sees them "as flies which land on his nose" and swats them away [H 103].
Figure 26. Ibn Mas'ud's image of the living and the dead heart [H 103].
But do not let guilt kill hope
The next aphorism pulls the reader back from the opposite cliff: "Do not become so overwhelmed by your wrong action / that it stops you thinking well of Allah" [H 103]. Ibn 'Ajiba sets fear and hope on a curve that moves with the seeker's stage.
| Stage | Balance [H 103 to 104] | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Beginning | Dominated by fear | Fear drives effort and keeps them from mistakes |
| Middle | Fear and hope balanced | Their work is now inward; too much fear would send them back to the limbs |
| End | Dominated by hope | They see no action of their own; they meet the Decree with acceptance and expect His forbearance more than His force |
Table 17. Fear and hope across the path.
Stories carry the argument. The man who killed ninety-nine, was told by a monk he could not repent, killed the hundredth, then set out toward a town of worshippers and died halfway: God moved the towns so that he was "found to be nearer the town to which he was going and the angels of mercy took him" [H 104]. Al-Mursi adds an inversion that recurs throughout the book: "When the common people are frightened, they fear. When they are made hopeful, they hope. When the elite are frightened, they hope, and when they are given hope, they fear" [H 104]. The elite look past the surface of the message to the One behind it.
Figure 27. Al-Mursi's inversion [H 104].
Al-Junayd and as-Sari disagree on repentance. As-Sari: repentance is "That you do not forget your wrong action." A young man: "Rather repentance is that you forget your wrong action." Junayd sides with the young man, but Ibn 'Ajiba refuses to choose: "As-Sari looked at the people of the beginning while al-Junayd looked at the people of the end. Each is correct" [H 104 to 105]. This stage-relative answer is his habit everywhere.
Figure 28. Two definitions of repentance: "Each is correct" [H 104 to 105].
Disobedience that calls to obedience
Al-Mursi's prayer from his Hizb is the most paradoxical passage of the chapter: "My God, disobeying You calls me to Your obedience, and obeying You calls me to Your disobedience" [H 105]. Ibn 'Ajiba unpacks it. In sin a person sees God's might and his own weakness and so gains "contrition and abasement", "the best of the acts of obedience". In obedience he may see himself and his own enjoyment, which is bad adab and so a disobedience [H 105]. The aphorism follows: "There is no minor wrong action when you face His justice. / There is no major wrong action when you experience His bounty" [H 106]. Yahya ibn Mu'adh puts it as accounts: under favour "no evil deed remains for them"; under justice "no good deed remains for them" [H 106]. The believer is "like a bird with two wings" [H 106].
Figure 29. "disobeying You calls me to Your obedience" [H 105].
The deed you forget
"No deed has more hope of being accepted / than the one you do and forget about, thinking it insignificant" [H 106]. An-Nahrajuri's sign of God taking charge of someone is that he "witnesses his deficiency in his sincerity, his heedlessness in his dhikr, his imperfection in his truthfulness" [H 107].
Three Waridat: Awakening, Advance, Arrival
A living heart becomes a place for waridat, "a divine light which Allah casts into the heart of those He loves" [H 107]. The aphorisms name three, and Ibn 'Ajiba maps them to the three kinds of people on the path.
Figure 30. The three waridat of Chapter Six [H 107 to 109].
The aphorisms for the second and third: the warid comes "to deliver you from the control of otherness / and to free you from being a slave to effects", and "to release you from the prison of your existence / and to bring you to the open space of inner witnessing" [H 108]. Ibn 'Ajiba adds that "Annihilation to the self and removing it is harder than annihilation to phenomenal beings": the world can vanish from sight while the self still sits in the middle of it [H 109].
One spirit, five names
"Lights are the mounts of the hearts and the secrets" [H 109]. Here Ibn 'Ajiba restates his anatomy of the inner person: the five terms are "names for the ruh", named by condition [H 109].
Figure 31. The botanical analogy for the five names of the ruh: "The water is the same" [H 110].
| Name | Condition of the ruh [H 109] |
|---|---|
| Nafs (self) | Darkened by disobedience, appetites and faults |
| 'Aql (intellect) | "curbed and hobbled like a camel" |
| Qalb (heart) | Alternating "between heedlessness and presence" |
| Ruh (spirit) | At peace, with "rest from the toil of humanity" |
| Sirr (secret) | Purified of the sensory, returned to its source |
Table 18. The ruh under its five names.
His analogy is botanical: rain enters a tree's roots and rises as leaf, blossom, flower and fruit. "The water is the same, but its names vary according to its different stages" [H 110].
Two armies
"The army of the heart is light. / The army of the self is darkness" [H 110]. The nafs leans toward "the earth of humanity and its appetites"; the heart, reinforced by waridat, pulls toward its source. God's help consists of reinforcing one side and cutting the supply line of the other [H 110]. Zarruq lists the supplies.
Figure 32. Two armies; God reinforces one and cuts the supply of the other [H 110].
| Reinforcements of light | Reinforcements of darkness [H 111] |
|---|---|
| Certainty "not sullied by doubt" | Weak certainty |
| Knowledge with insight and clarification | Ignorance predominating in the nafs |
| Inspiration that prepares for eye-witnessing | Compassion for the nafs |
Table 19. Zarruq's two supply lines.
The next aphorism compresses perception into three verbs: "Light unveils. / The inner eye judges. / The heart both advances and retreats" [H 111]. The image is a dark house holding "scorpions and snakes and ingots of gold and silver"; only when a lamp is brought in can a man tell what helps and what harms [H 111]. Ibn 'Ajiba then runs the same three-step sequence through three sets of lights: awakening, advance and arrival; Islam, iman and ihsan; Shari'a, Tariqa and reality [H 112].
Figure 33. Perception in three verbs, as in a dark house lit by a lamp [H 111].
Joy in Obedience, Rightly Placed
"Don't be overjoyed at obedience because it has issued from you. / Rejoice in it because it has come from Allah to you" [H 113]. Three groups rejoice in different ways.
| Group | Why they rejoice [H 113 to 114] | Their verse |
|---|---|---|
| First | Acts will bring bliss and avert punishment; they see the acts as their own | "You alone we worship" |
| Second | Acts are signs of acceptance, "gifts from the Generous King", carried by "pre-eternal power" | "You alone we ask for help" |
| Third | They rejoice in Allah alone; neither error nor obedience changes their joy | 'there is no strength nor power except by Allah' |
Table 20. Three ways of rejoicing.
Then the aphorism that closes Chapter Six: God "prevents those who are travelling to Him and those who have reached Him from seeing their actions" [H 114]. Travellers, because they suspect themselves and see only shortfall; arrivers, because seeing Him leaves no room to see anything else [H 115]. A gnostic's sign of an accepted act: "Your forgetting it" [H 115]. The story of al-Wasiti sharpens the point. Told that Abu 'Uthman commanded his students "to cling to obedience and to see our incapacity in it", he replied, "He has commanded you to pure Magianism!", meaning even seeing one's incapacity still sees oneself. Al-Qushayri defends Abu 'Uthman: "He meant to protect them from pride and to guide them to adab" [H 115].
Chapter Seven: Greed, the Seed of Abasement
"The branches of abasement only grow from the seeds of greed" [H 115]. Greed is defined as "the attachment of the heart to what is in the hands of people and the longing for other than the Lord" [H 116]. Al-Mursi: "By Allah, I have only seen that might lies in removing aspiration from creatures" [H 116]. The mechanism is dependency: whoever leaves a mighty Lord to attach to a lowly slave "becomes low like him", and "whenever you love something and desire it you are its slave" [H 116].
Ibrahim is the model. Thrown from the catapult, he was asked by Jibril if he had a need: "As for you, no. As for Allah, yes." Told to ask Him: "His knowledge of my state spares me asking" [H 116].
Figure 34. Ibrahim thrown from the catapult [H 116].
Shadhili's account of the would-be alchemist who stayed for the secret recipe is the chapter's best story. The secret turned out to be a sorting: creatures are enemies or lovers; enemies cannot "pierce me with a thorn" unless God wills, lovers cannot help except as God wills, so he despaired of both [H 117]. 'Ali tests al-Hasan al-Basri in the mosque at Basra: the foundation of the deen? "Scrupulousness." Its corruption? "Greed." "Sit. Someone like you can speak to people" [H 117]. Al-Mursi's wordplay: the greedy are never full, for the Arabic letters of the word are all "hollow" [H 118].
Figure 35. The alchemist's secret: despair of both [H 117].
The chain of causes
The aphorisms build a causal chain that Ibn 'Ajiba states outright: "Illusion produces greed and greed produces abasement and slavedom. Certainty produces scrupulousness. Scrupulousness produces might and freedom" [H 119].
Figure 36. Two causal chains of Chapter Seven [H 119].
"Nothing leads you on like illusion" [H 118]: once you imagine people hold benefit or harm, you flatter them, rely on them and fear them. "You are free when you despair of it. / You are a slave when you are eager for it" [H 119]. The saying it rests on: "The slave is free as long as he is content and the free man is a slave as long as he has desires" [H 120]. In the Tanwir, God addresses the human being: "You who We have exalted, woe to you! You are too sublime in Our eyes to busy with other than Me" [H 120].
Scrupulousness of the elite
The cure is wara', scrupulousness, but Ibn 'Ajiba insists on a special sense. Common scrupulousness is "to abandon the doubtful and unlawful", which "is not the complete opposite of greed" [H 122]. Elite scrupulousness, from Lata'if al-Minan, covers four refusals.
- Not relying on or loving anything but God, nor desiring other than His favour.
- Not fearing means and secondary causes.
- Not resting on customs, acts of obedience, or "the lights of tajalliyat".
- Not being tempted by this world nor settling for the Next: "scrupulous regarding this world out of faithfulness and regarding the Next World out of purity" [H 121].
'Uthman ibn 'Ashura' turned from this world and then from the Garden and heard: "If you had stopped with the first, We would have veiled you from the second. If you had stopped with the second, we would have veiled from Us" [H 121]. Al-Mahdawi's definition: scrupulousness is "that you do not move or be still except that you see Allah in the movements and stillnesses"; and "The halal is that in which Allah is not forgotten" [H 123]. One seeker gave alms saying "Take, not for you" until someone replied, "I take it not from you" [H 122].
Gentleness or Chains
"Whoever does not advance to Allah by the tenderness of His goodness / is chained to Him by the fetters of trial" [H 123]. Of the people of the left, right and the forerunners, only forerunners are discussed; they split into the thankful, drawn by blessing, and the steadfast, drawn by trial [H 123]. Abu Madyan: God's custom is to invite by "ample provision", and if that fails, to test, "because what is desired is that the slaves return to him, willingly or unwillingly" [H 123]. A hadith: "Your Lord marvels at a people who are driven to the Garden in chains" [H 124].
Is the thankful rich man better than the steadfast poor man? Al-Mursi says the thankful rich man is preferred. Ibn 'Ajiba dissolves the debate: "The hand may be full and the heart poor, and the heart be rich in Allah and the hand is poor" [H 124]. The story of the two Moroccan brothers makes it vivid. A visitor expected to find an ascetic but found a man living like a king, who sent a rebuke to his fisherman brother: "How much you are preoccupied with this world!" The fisherman wept and agreed: "Allah has washed his heart of this world and put it in his hand ... while I have taken it from my hand and I still look towards it!" [H 125]. Ibn 'Ajiba's verdict: "wilaya is a matter of the heart which is only known by the one who has it" [H 125].
Thankfulness as a tether
"Whoever is not grateful for blessings is asking for them to vanish. / Whoever is grateful for them ties them up with their own tether" [H 125]. Junayd: "Gratitude is that you do not disobey Allah with His blessings" [H 125].
| Scheme | Levels [H 125 to 126] |
|---|---|
| Organs of thanks | Tongue (speaking of blessings), limbs (obedience), heart (knowing every blessing is from Allah) |
| Ranks of people | Common: thanks for blessings. Elite: for blessing and retribution. Elite of elite: absorbed in the Blesser beyond both |
| Kinds of blessing | This world (health, lawful wealth); the deen (knowledge, taqwa, gnosis); the Next World |
Table 21. Thankfulness mapped.
Abu Hazim gives a thankfulness for each organ: for the eyes, "when you see good with them, you proclaim it. When you see evil with them you conceal it" [H 126]. Abu Talib al-Makki warns that treating faith as "an intellectual acquisition" denies the blessing of faith [H 126].
Being led on
"Fear that the fact that He is good to you when you are acting badly towards Him / might be bait to draw you on" [H 127]. Istidraj comes from daraja, a child taking first steps: blessing removed "little by little while he is unaware of it" [H 127]. Sahl: "We support them with blessings and make them forget thankfulness for them" [H 127]. Thanks in practice runs on three channels: speech, belief ("witnessing the Blesser in the blessing ... while thanking the means on the tongue"), and action [H 128].
Help cut off without notice
The murid with bad adab who reasons "If this were really bad adab, / He would have cut off help or sent me into exile" is shown his error: help "can be cut off while one is unaware of it", "by stopping any increase" or "by letting you do what you like" [H 128]. The image is a tree by water: cut the water, and thirst shows only "after a time" [H 129]. "If today someone is worse than yesterday, then he is in loss" [H 129]. Musa's staff becomes the faqir's world: "Cast it from your hand", and once he has despaired of it, "Take hold of it and do not fear because you take it by Allah, not by yourself" [H 129].
The Code of Adab
Chapter Seven gathers its manners into a three-part code [H 129 to 134].
| Toward | Content [H 129 to 134] |
|---|---|
| Allah and His Messenger | Common: obey and follow the Sunna. Elite: much dhikr, watchfulness, preferring His love. Elite of elite: humbleness and respect in everything, recognising majesty and beauty |
| The shaykh (outward) | Obey him; silence and gravity in his presence; hasten to serve; attend constantly |
| The shaykh (inward) | Believe in his perfection; esteem him absent or present; set aside one's own intellect and leadership; do not move to another teaching shaykh |
| The brothers | Respect without ranking or slander; counsel; humility and service; "witnessing purity in them" |
Table 22. The adab code of Chapter Seven.
Several lines stand out. "The error of the shaykh is better than the correctness of the murid" [H 130]. "Make your actions salt and your adab flour" [H 131]. The shaykh's help "is like a water wheel": neglect it and "the water will go elsewhere" [H 132]. A teaching shaykh may not be left for another, but leaving "the shaykhs of the people of the outward" for the people of the inward needs no permission [H 133]. On the brothers: "Anyone broken by the fuqara' is not mended by the Shaykh. Anyone broken by the shaykh can be mended by the fuqara'" [H 133], and "The believer is the mirror of his brother" [H 133]. Abu Hafs: "Tasawwuf is all adab. Every moment has adab. Every state has adab" [H 134].
Do not despise the worshipper
"When you see someone whom Allah has made persist in recitation of wirds ... do not despise what his Master has given him" [H 135]. The worker of wirds is sustained by a hidden warid: "If it had not been for the warid, there would be no wird. The warid is from Him to you and the wird is from you to Him" [H 136]. Shadhili extends the courtesy to sinners: "Honour Muslims, even if they are deviant rebels" [H 136].
"Allah makes some people serve Him / while He singles out other people for His love" [H 136]. The servants include ascetics, scholars, fighters, and "amirs and sultans" who put "the lands in order" [H 137]. Ibn 'Ajiba contrasts them with the lovers in a run of pairs: servants "take their rewards before the door"; lovers "speak intimately"; servants are "the people of evidence and proof", lovers "of witnessing and eye-witnessing" [H 137]. Yet "all the slaves of the King are respected" [H 137]. Sidi 'Ali's portrait: servants receive a tajalli of majesty and grow emaciated with yearning; lovers receive one of beauty and are "intoxicated by the delicious wine of proximity" [H 137 to 138].
Chapter Eight: Gifts that Come in a Flash
"It is very rare that divine warids come / in other than a sudden flash" [H 138]. Suddenness protects them: if effort produced them, the ascetics "would have laid claim to them"; but "States and waridat are gifts" [H 139]. Three reasons are given for the suddenness: so it is known as a gift, so it is valued with joy, and so it is guarded as precious [H 139]. Al-Jilani's test for telling a divine warid from a satanic impulse: it "does not come through claim and is not removed by a cause. It does not come in one form nor at the same time" [H 138].
The man who answers everything
"When you see someone answering all he is asked, / and mentioning all he knows / and interpreting all he sees / - that proves that he is an ignorant man" [H 139].
| Behaviour | Why it is ignorance [H 139 to 142] |
|---|---|
| Answering every question | Claims encompassing knowledge against "You have only been given a little knowledge"; pretension; the asker may not be fit for the answer |
| Interpreting every experience | Inner tastes are "trusts and one of the secrets of the King"; divulging them is treachery and weakens their effect |
| Telling all one knows | Shows one does not value it: "the owner of treasure does not divulge it" |
Table 23. Three signs of the ignorant talker.
Malik, asked thirty-two questions, answered three: "Tell them that Malik said, 'I do not know'" [H 139 to 140]. Junayd answered two askers differently: "The answer is according to the capacity of the asker" [H 140]. One scholar, threatened with the hadith of the bridle of fire for concealing knowledge, replied: "Put down the bridle and go. If someone comes who is entitled to it and I conceal it, then bridle me" [H 140]. "The hearts of the free are the graves of secrets" [H 140]. Al-Majdhub: "Dig a hole for your secret and level it seventy fathoms deep" [H 141]. Al-Ghazali: "The realities can harm some people just as the dung beetle is harmed by rose and musk" [H 142].
Reward deferred, fruit now
God made the Next World the place of reward "because this world is not vast enough / to hold what He wants to give them" [H 142]. Yet there is an early signal: "If you find the fruit of your deeds quickly, / that is a proof of your acceptance!" [H 143]. The fruit is "the pleasure of obedience, the sweetness of intimate conversation", shown in "energy in rising to the actions, delight in them, continuing with them" [H 143]. Zarruq adds three: "A good life, effective words and negation of sorrow" [H 144]. But a warning follows at once: stopping with the sweetness of obedience "is a deadly poison" [H 144].
Where has He put you?
"If you want to learn your value with Him / look where He has put you" [H 144]. Ibn 'Ajiba turns this into a decision tree.
Figure 37. "Look where He has put you" [H 144 to 145].
A further criterion is blunt: whoever finds a teaching shaykh whose lights God unveils to him is among the people of nearness, while whoever is "deluded by the words of someone who says that they do not exist" remains "one of the people of the right among the common Muslims" [H 145]. A variant hadith gives the principle: "Whoever wants to know his position with Allah should look at the position of Allah is in his heart" [H 145].
The translation closes on blessing complete in two dimensions: "When He provides you with obedience and having no need of other than Him, / know that He has bestowed His outward and inward blessings on you" [H 146]. Outward is the Shari'a in the limbs; inward is freedom from need of anything but Him. Shadhili's prayer is the summary: "We ask You for poverty from what is other than You and wealth by You so that we witness only You" [H 146]. The text breaks off as Chapter Nine is about to begin: "If you must seek, then seek from Him what He seeks from you" [H 147].
Book Two, Part A. The Divine Names: Method, the Majestic Name, and the Names of Power and Provision
The second book in this collection is a small treatise on the Ninety-Nine Names, taken by the translator Abdul Aziz Suraqah from Ibn 'Ajiba's exegesis of Sura al-Fatiha. Where the Hikam commentary is a long conversation, this book is a reference grid: each Name gets a definition, then three short instructions on how to connect with it, how to take on its character, and how to realize it [N ix, 17 to 18]. This part covers the method, the Name Allah, and the Names from al-Rahman to al-'Azim [N 3 to 79].
The Man Behind the Book
The publisher's biography gives the frame for all three books [N xi to xiv]. Ibn 'Ajiba was born in al-Khamis, a coastal village between Tangier and Tetuan, in 1746 or 1747 (the scan prints the Hijri year imperfectly). He studied in Tetuan and Fez, was licensed to teach, and was teaching law and hadith in Tetuan still in his early twenties. The turn came when he read the Hikam of Ibn 'Ata'illah (d. 709/1309) with the commentary of Ibn 'Abbad al-Rundi (d. 792/1390).
| Stage | As printed in the biography [N xi to xiv] |
|---|---|
| Scholar | Studies in Tetuan and Fez; ijazas; teaches in Tetuan |
| First turn | Reads the Hikam with Ibn 'Abbad; gives up possessions and teaching for seclusion on Jabal 'Alam |
| Obedience | At a guide's behest returns to teaching for ten years |
| Second turn | Visits the zawiya of Mawlay al-Darqawi (d. 1238/1823); inducted in 1208/1794; disciple of Muhammad al-Buzidi (d. 1814) |
| Trial | Ordered into a patched garment and menial tasks; imprisoned on charges of religious subversion |
| Teacher | Founds zawiyas across the Jabala region; last ten years in Djimmij |
| Death | Ghumira, 7 Shawwal 1224 / 15 November 1809, of plague |
Table 24. Ibn 'Ajiba's life as the publisher tells it.
He wrote "over forty works", among them the tafsir al-Bahr al-Madid (the source of Book Three), the Hikam commentary Iqadh al-Himam (Book One), three commentaries on al-Fatiha, and commentaries on Shadhili litanies and on the Burda and Hamziyya [N xiii]. A branch of the Shadhili order bears his name, al-Tariqa al-Darqawiyya al-'Ajibiyya [N xiii].
The Method: Connect, Cultivate, Realize
The translator's note sets the aim: to know Allah is to fulfil the purpose of existence, and the book offers a three-fold path of connection, inculcation and realization (the scan scrambles this page, so it is paraphrased) [N ix]. Ibn 'Ajiba states the method himself after the first two Names.
A later passage condenses it into three verbs: "to connect with it is to attempt; to cultivate it as a character trait is to strive and exert effort; and to realize it is to arrive and witness it directly. The same may be said with respect to all of the Divine Names" [N 71]. Another adds the line between the second and third stages: if a quality is reached "by way of struggle then it is cultivation, and if it comes by way of your nature then it is realization" [N 56].
Figure 38. The line between the second and third stages [N 56].
Figure 39. The three-step grid used for each Name.
Most entries also contain a fourth element, a sentence beginning "He who knows that Allah is...", which states the practical consequence of the knowledge before the three steps. This knowing changes behaviour line is often the most useful part of an entry.
The Majestic Name: Allah
The book opens on grammar. "THE SOUNDEST POSITION is that the Name Allah is not derived [from a root word]" [N 3]. Two dream stories carry the point with charm: Khalil, seen after death, said God forgave him "on account of saying that the Majestic Name [Allah] is not derived", and Sibawayhi was honoured for calling it the most definite of known things [N 3]. Al-Ghazali's definition follows: Allah is "the Name for the true existent", and every other existent "is perishing insofar as it exists of itself, and exists insofar as it faces Him" [N 3].
A disagreement with Zarruq
Zarruq held that every Name can be cultivated in character except this one, "for it is only for attachment" [N 5]. Ibn 'Ajiba disagrees, and the disagreement shows his school: Zarruq's view holds "only according to the way of those of the outward"; for the people of the inward, "this Name is for both connection and cultivation as a character. Cultivation of it as a character means to become annihilated in it" [N 5 to 6].
Figure 40. A disagreement over the Majestic Name [N 5 to 6].
Ibn Mashish's saying on love, "Love entails the mixing of traits into traits, character into character, lights into lights, names into names, qualities into qualities, and acts into acts" [N 6], gets a translator's footnote warning that it is not an affirmation of indwelling or union, "a belief that is contrary to the doctrine of Muslims and repudiated by Ibn 'Ajiba himself" [N 6]. Al-Ghazali's version is more cautious: man's share in this Name is "for him to become god-like [ta'alluh], by which I mean that his heart and his aspiration be taken up with Allah Most High" [N 7].
The Two Mercies: al-Rahman and al-Rahim
Mercy in humans is "delicateness and affection", which cannot apply to God, so "its intended meaning [with respect to Him] is its outcome, which is grace and largesse" [N 10]. A rule follows that governs the whole book: "Allah's Names are only understood by considering the outcomes of how they manifest" [N 10].
Figure 41. "Allah's Names are only understood by considering the outcomes" [N 10].
Ibn 'Ajiba's own distinction between the two Names is clear and practical.
| al-Rahman | al-Rahim [N 11 to 16] | |
|---|---|---|
| Grace bestowed | The grace of existence | The grace of sustenance (imdad) |
| Applied to people? | Never: existence "cannot come from servants" | Figuratively yes: sustenance can flow through people |
| Scope | All creation | True (spiritual) sustenance reserved for believers |
| Cultivation | Look on creation "with the eye of mercy" | Relieve the poor; be gentle with obedient and sinful alike |
Table 25. The two mercies.
Existence depends on continual supply: "there is no continued existence for created things in the second moment after their initial existence save through the grace of sustenance" [N 16]. Abu Madyan: "The Real [Allah] is independent of existence, while existence draws its sustenance from Him" [N 16]. The realization of al-Rahman is to become a channel: "through you Allah shows mercy to your enemies and all who oppose you. You will then become a mercy for servants and a source of refuge for creation" [N 14]. And a line worth keeping: "The arrival of sustenance is commensurate with one's receptivity" [N 17].
Figure 42. Why existence depends on continual supply [N 16].
Names of Sovereignty and Purity
The next cluster turns each Name of majesty into a matter of self-government. The pattern is consistent: the divine quality, turned inward, becomes control of one's own ego.
| Name | Cultivation in character | Realization [N 19 to 35] |
|---|---|---|
| al-Malik, the King | "taking possession [yamlik] of your ego and desires"; being rich in Allah | Annihilate your being in His and become His vicegerent |
| al-Quddus, the Holy | Purify limbs, wealth, heart, soul and innermost self in turn; never humiliate the self before a created being | Sanctification "flows throughout your entire being" |
| al-Salam, the Flawless | Keep others safe from your tongue and hand | "a clean heart and rancor-free breast" |
| al-Mu'min, the Faithful | Be so trustworthy that "all of creation feel safe from you" | Certainty so strong the Hereafter "becomes the Now" |
| al-Muhaymin, the Guardian | Stand guard over yourself and audit it | Vigilance until "you almost never have an evil thought" |
| al-'Aziz, the Almighty | Place ambition "beyond the domain of Creation" | No glance at any glory but His |
| al-Jabbar, the Compeller | Mend hearts; drop selfish calculation (tadbir) | Those who meet you have their brokenness mended |
Table 26. Names of sovereignty and purity, turned into conduct.
The stories in this cluster are short and memorable. On al-Quddus, a matter of manners: some prefer to define the Name as transcendence beyond what does not befit Him, since the bare negation "is far from proper manners", just as one does not say "the king is not a butcher" [N 21]. On al-Salam, Abu Yazid's staff fell and knocked over an old man's staff; he followed him home to say, "You needed to bend forward to retrieve your staff and fatigued yourself because of me, so please forgive me!" [N 25]. Abu Damdam each morning prayed, "O Allah, I give my honor in charity to your servants" [N 25]. On al-Mu'min, 'Isa saw a man stealing; the man swore he had not, and 'Isa replied, "I believe in Allah, and my eyes have lied!" [N 28]. On al-Muhaymin, God in an old scripture asks: "If you believe that I do not see you then the fault lies in your faith, and if you know that I see you, then why have you made Me the most insignificant of those who observe you?" [N 29].
Pride as a borrowed garment
Al-Mutakabbir, the Proud, is the hardest Name to "cultivate". The hadith qudsi is stern: "Pride is my upper garment and greatness my lower garment" [N 36]. Ibn 'Ajiba's answer is a calibrated pride: behave "arrogantly with every arrogant tyrant, for arrogance toward them is in fact humility", and raise "your ambition over every created thing" [N 37]. But the cultivation of this Name in your character will not be complete until you humble yourself before His greatness. Then the reciprocal law: "Whosoever humbles himself below his true rank, Allah will elevate him beyond his rank" [N 37]. The same move recurs with al-Kabir: be stern with tyrants and proud and haughty with the rich for the sake of one's aspiration [N 87].
Figure 43. Calibrated pride under al-Mutakabbir [N 37].
Names of Creating, Forgiving and Overpowering
Al-Khaliq, al-Bari and al-Musawwir are handled together as a three-stage production line [N 38 to 39].
| Name | Divine attribute behind it | Function [N 38 to 39] |
|---|---|---|
| al-Khaliq, the Creator | Omnipotence (qudra) | Makes things manifest |
| al-Bari, the Maker | Will (irada) | Specifies shape, appearance and time |
| al-Musawwir, the Fashioner | Wisdom (al-Hakim) | Gives each thing its particular form |
Table 27. The three Names of creation.
The practical consequence is a release from anxious planning: casting yourself before the One who alone creates, "you shall extricate yourself from selfish calculation [tadbir]" [N 39]. The human version of these Names is craft: purify and sharpen your reflection until it yields "wisdoms and sciences", and perfect your works so you become "one of the people of spiritual excellence" [N 39].
Al-Ghaffar means to cover and conceal [N 41]. Its cultivation is to forgive: do not harbor hatred against them if they insult you; rather, be like Abu Damdam [N 42], and its realization is the Prophet's prayer when injured, "O Allah, forgive my people, for they know not!" [N 42]. Al-Qahhar, the Dominator, is turned against inner enemies, "the ego, caprice, Satan, the world, and everything that comes between you and your Lord" [N 43].
Names of Giving and Provision
| Name | Key teaching [N 45 to 53] |
|---|---|
| al-Wahhab, the Bestower | He gives without the recipient deserving it; whoever knows this "will not be too proud to beg of Him"; give to others what they need of wealth, knowledge or states |
| al-Razzaq, the Provider | All provision is from Him, lawful or not; every inner faculty has its own food (Table 29) |
| al-Fattah, the Opener | Seek "a new opening" every moment, "for Allah's knowledge is endless" |
| al-'Alim, the All-Knowing | Master Shari'a and Tariqa and plunge into Haqiqa to become "an heir to the Prophets" |
Table 28. Names of giving.
Hatim al-Asamm, asked if his bread came from heaven, answered: "Had the earth not been His, I would have received it from the heavens!" [N 47]. Ibn 'Ajiba then improves on al-Qushayri's account of spiritual food with his own ladder.
| Faculty | Its sustenance [N 48] |
|---|---|
| Self (nafs) | "opposing its base desires and doing the opposite of what it wants" |
| Intellect | Knowledge |
| Heart | Invocation |
| Soul | Meditation and introspection |
| Innermost secret | Stability in the Divine Presence, then constant ascent in gnosis |
Table 29. The diet of the inner faculties.
Contraction and Expansion
Al-Qabid and al-Basit get one of the longest treatments, because for the Sufis they name inner weather: two spiritual states that rise and settle upon the hearts, each one succeeding the other just as the night succeeds the day [N 54]. Fear brings contraction, hope expansion; those who have arrived hold both in balance and "are unaffected by either" [N 54]. Al-Qushayri ties them to beauty and majesty: God's beauty expands, His majesty contracts [N 55]. Al-Shibli supplies the image: "The knower of Allah can carry the heavens and the earths on a single eyelash, while the one who does not know Allah will scream if a gnat's wing lands on him" [N 55].
The realization is a paradox: when "you are constricted in your expansion and expanded in your constriction, for then you are by Allah" [N 56]. The practical consequence is social: whoever knows these Names "will never blame any of creation", nor despair because of a creature, nor pin hopes on one [N 55].
Raising, Honour, Hearing and Judgement
| Name pair | Point [N 57 to 68] |
|---|---|
| al-Khafid, al-Rafi' (Abaser, Exalter) | Never rely on passing states, knowledge or works; abase what God says to abase, exalt what He says to exalt |
| al-Mu'izz, al-Mudhill (Honorer, Humbler) | Honour comes through wealth (freedom from needing others) and inner states (richness in God); seek honour from no one else, humble yourself before no one else |
| al-Sami', al-Basir (Hearing, Seeing) | Live with shyness before the One who hears and sees; realization is the hadith in which He becomes your hearing and sight |
| al-Hakam, al-'Adl (Judge, Just) | Accept His rulings of beauty and rigour; judge fairly over your ego, heart, soul and others |
Table 30. Paired Names of rank and judgement.
Abu Bakr said that when bathing at night he would stoop "out of shyness from my Lord" [N 62]. One ironic saying makes the same point: "If you want to disobey your Lord, do it in a place where He cannot see you!" [N 62]. On hearing and sight the book also records a principle of theological humility: The inability to comprehend [Him] is comprehension! [N 62].
Al-Qushayri's fourfold division of how people regard God's judgements is one of the best frameworks in the book.
| Group | What they attend to [N 65 to 66] |
|---|---|
| People of antecedent decrees | What was decreed for them before time, which no stratagem changes |
| People of endings | The state they will die in: "Do not let the purity of the moment delude you" |
| People of the moment | Only the present duty; the gnostic is "son of his Moment" |
| People of invocation and witnessing | Absorbed in God, they no longer observe time at all |
Table 31. Four ways to face God's judgement.
The connection with al-Hakam includes not complaining to anyone but Him, with a sharp couplet that asks how a lover of God can complain and still claim to love [N 66]. The realization is to judge "by Allah", illustrated by 'Umar's remark to a man 'Ali had struck: "You were struck by one of Allah's eyes!" [N 67].
Subtlety, Awareness and Clemency
Al-Latif has three meanings, the Ineffable, the Knower of hidden things, and the Giver by unseen doors, and Ibn 'Ajiba gives a cultivation for each: refine your humanness so that "all material objects become spiritually subtle", and rescue "the distressed, guiding the lost, mending the broken" [N 70 to 71]. Al-Khabir carries a lesson in asking: a poor man went to a saint, who asked whether God knew his need. he said of course, and was told to take his need to God; he went home and found provision waiting [N 72]. Ma'ruf al-Karkhi gave all three hundred dinars sent by the Caliph's household to a man whose child had just been born: "That is how I wish to spend them" [N 73].
Al-Halim, the Clement, delays punishment. A man boasted to a prophet that God never punished his sins; the reply came: "Know that I am who I am, and you are who you are!" [N 74]. A troublesome young neighbour told those who threatened to pray against him, "Allah is more merciful to me than all of you!"; a voice forbade the prayer, the youth repented, and he was later found dead in the Sacred Mosque, "The young man fulfilled his promise!" [N 75]. The cultivation goes beyond pardon to generosity: a servant girl who split her master's son's head with a skewer recited 3:134 verse by verse until he said, "You are free for the sake of Allah!" [N 76]. The realization comes "after the ego's death, when praise and dispraise and kindness and meanness are equal in one's eyes" [N 77].
Al-'Azim closes this half. For one who knows the Name, "all things will become paltry in his eyes", except what God has made great [N 78]. Its realization is total exchange: "attributes are replaced by attributes, actions are replaced by actions, and character traits are replaced by character traits" [N 79].
Book Two, Part B. From Forgiveness to Patience: The Names of Relationship, Unity and Return
The second half of the Divine Names runs from al-Ghafur to al-Sabur [N 80 to 207]. The entries get shorter, but the themes sharpen: gratitude and self-reckoning, the shaykh as a channel, the near-impossibility of meeting the Rich with anything but poverty, and a theory of why the world is both manifest and hidden. The book ends, fittingly, on patience.
Forgiveness, Gratitude and Height
Al-Ghafur, a close cousin of al-Ghaffar, is given three etymologies: forgiveness, a healing plant called ghafr, and the mighfar, the helmet that covers the head in battle, "because forgiveness covers up sins" [N 80]. The entry also contains a compact rule about seeking forgiveness.
| Seeking forgiveness... | Status [N 80] |
|---|---|
| with brokenness | Sound (sahih) |
| with repentance (tawba) | Perfect (kamil) |
| stripped of both | Invalid (batil) |
Table 32. Three grades of istighfar.
The argument for forgiving others is a fortiori: since God tells believers to forgive those who do not hope in the Days of Allah (45:14), "then the encouragement to forgive those who believe is even more emphatic!" [N 81].
Al-Shakur, the Appreciative, returns to the gratitude theme of Book One. Gratitude secures "what one already has" and hunts "for what is missing" [N 82]. "Whosoever fails to show gratitude for the small favors will not show gratitude for the large favors, and whosoever does not thank people does not thank Allah" [N 83]. Why are the grateful few? "Gratitude entails leaving everything and giving everything to the One who possesses everything" [N 83]. Its realization has a test: "you take hold of the blessing that comes from Him and give it back to Him" without delay [N 84].
Al-'Ali, the Most High, is cultivated through aspiration: "Indeed, Allah loves lofty matters and detests low matters", and 'Ali said, "Lofty aspiration is from faith" [N 85]. The realization uses the cosmology of Book One: your soul becomes "Malakuti" while your ego stays "Mulki" [N 86].
Guarding, Nourishing and Reckoning
| Name | Cultivation | Realization [N 88 to 95] |
|---|---|---|
| al-Hafiz, the Guardian | Guard what you are entrusted with: limbs, commands, deposits | Absorbed in His guarding, absent from your own |
| al-Muqit, the Nourisher | Feed those connected to you, "even in the mystical sciences" | Become a source of material and spiritual provision for others |
| al-Hasib, the Reckoner | Take the ego to account, "accusing it at all times" | Vigilance so steady, or witnessing so complete, that asking falls away |
Table 33. Names of guardianship.
Al-Hafiz brings rest: whoever knows it will be relieved of the fatigue of self-management [N 89]. Al-Hasib quotes the saying, "Take account of yourselves before account is taken of you" [N 94]. The Qadi 'Abd al-Rahim, son of al-Qushayri, describes three reckonings: disbelievers judge themselves; "The people of perfection are reckoned by the angels openly for all to witness"; and for ordinary believers, God removes their shackles, rebukes them "after which He forgives them" [N 93].
Figure 44. Three reckonings [N 93].
Majesty and Beauty: Ibn 'Ajiba Corrects al-Qushayri
The entry on al-Jalil contains one of the few places where Ibn 'Ajiba openly corrects a master. Al-Qushayri said God made Himself known to the gnostics by majesty, so they were annihilated, and to the lovers by beauty, so they were in rapture. Ibn 'Ajiba: "It would have been better had he reversed the description, for the predominant quality of the Gnostics is expansiveness" [N 97]. Lovers, still travelling, meet majesty and are annihilated; gnostics, settled, meet beauty and are delighted.
Figure 45. Ibn 'Ajiba reverses al-Qushayri's description [N 97].
Its cultivation is self-respect, quoting the Hikam: God placed you between His kingdom and His spiritual world "to teach you that you are a jewel wherein the pearls of His creations are hidden" [N 97].
Generosity and the Answer to Prayer
Al-Karim is generous in Essence, Attributes and acts, and knowing each has its own consequence: one will love nothing else, love Him "without ulterior cause", and "not seek from other-than-Him" [N 99]. Junayd: "Al-Karim is the One who does not reduce you to begging" [N 99]. Al-Ghazali's description follows: the Generous "pardons when He decrees and protects when he binds", gives beyond hope, is displeased if anyone else is petitioned, and "suffices from all intermediaries and intercessors" [N 100].
Figure 46. Knowing al-Karim's generosity, and what follows from each kind [N 99].
Al-Raqib, the Watcher, ends with a striking line on the role of the shaykh, paraphrased because the scan breaks it: Shadhili said a shaykh is not a shaykh until his hand goes with the needy disciple wherever he goes [N 104].
Al-Mujib, the Answerer, is where the book addresses unanswered prayer, through the Hikam: God "has guaranteed you a response in what He chooses for you, not in what you choose for yourself, and in the time He wants, not in the time you want" [N 105]. As certainty grows the seeker may stop asking, content with God's knowledge, so "let your asking be out of servitude ['ubudiyya] and propriety with Lordship, not out of seeking the fulfilment of your own interests" [N 106]. The human cultivation is responsiveness: "Never was the Messenger of Allah asked for something to which he said no", though in knowledge, silence is better if the asker is unworthy [N 106].
| Stage | Relation to prayer [N 105 to 106] |
|---|---|
| Ordinary believer | Asks for everything, large and small, from Him alone |
| Stronger certainty | Content with His knowledge of one's state; asking falls away |
| Proper stance | Asks as an act of servitude, not to secure outcomes |
Table 34. Three stances toward supplication.
Vastness, Wisdom and Love
Al-Wasi' explains that God's generosity has two forms, "the grace of conferring benefit and the grace of warding off harm" [N 108]. It is not perfect grace "that one's worldly means are perfectly organized"; what God removes is often the larger gift [N 108]. A warning to scholars from an old scripture: "When a scholar inclines to the lower world, the least that I [Allah] do is strip from him the sweetness of intimate entreaties with Me" [N 109].
Al-Hakim distinguishes power and wisdom in a way that recurs in Book Three: "Wisdom is therefore the effect of divine power upon things; divine power manifests while wisdom masters and conceals" [N 111]. Whoever knows the Name "will never object to Him in any matter" [N 110].
Al-Wadud, the Loving, sets the standard for love: "every love that is for the sake of ulterior motives is tainted. Real love must be pure, free of every extraneous desire" [N 113]. A tradition puts it in God's voice: "The most beloved of the lovers in My sight is the one who worships me not for the obtainment of a gift but in order to give [My] Lordship its due!" [N 113]. The cultivation is to love all creatures, wishing for each what you love for yourself [N 114].
Names of Witness, Truth and Trust
| Name | Teaching [N 115 to 126] |
|---|---|
| al-Majid, the Glorious | Be glorious in essence (God as your aim), attributes (good character), actions (good conduct) |
| al-Ba'ith, the Raiser | Ask to be woken from heedlessness; raise yourself and those around you |
| al-Shahid, the Witness | Worship in vigilance; He who knows the Real witnesses Him in everything |
| al-Haqq, the Real | Free your states of pretension and your speech of lies |
| al-Wakil, the Trustee | Hand all needs to Him; be a trustee for your dependents |
Table 35. Names of witness and trust.
The entry on al-Haqq explains a habit of vocabulary. Sufis say "al-Haqq" for God because, having moved from witnessing acts to attributes to Essence, they did not see in existence anything besides Him; the scholars of rational proof say "al-Bari", the Creator, "because they see nothing but creation and it is from creation that they infer the Creator's existence" [N 122]. Each term reveals where the speaker stands.
Figure 47. Each term reveals where the speaker stands [N 122].
Al-Wakil carries two stories about debt. Al-Dinawari, burdened by a debt, dreamed of a voice: "It is for you to take and for Me to repay it!"; afterward he never demanded exact change from the butcher or the green grocer! [N 124 to 125]. A saying sets an unusual measure: "One of the signs of certitude is having a large family that sit upon the carpet-spread of reliance" [N 124].
Strength, Patronage and the Signs of Sainthood
For al-Qawi the method is inversion, from the Hikam: "realize your weakness and He will support you with His strength!" [N 128]. Its outward sign is that you drop selfish calculation [tadbir], forsake pretentious claims, and no longer fear creation or worry about provision [N 128].
Al-Wali, the Patron, gives the conditions of sainthood: "knowledge, spiritual state, spiritual ambition, and rectitude" [N 132]. Al-Qushayri adds two signs: God makes enabling grace a person's lasting lot, so that even if he wants evil he is protected from it; and God places love for him in the hearts of His friends [N 132]. The realization is a double annihilation: "becoming annihilated, and then by becoming annihilated from your own annihilation" [N 132 to 133].
Figure 48. The conditions of sainthood under al-Wali [N 132].
Praise, Counting, Beginning and Return
Al-Hamid quotes the Hikam: "The believer is the one who is too busy extolling Allah to praise his own self, and too busy fulfilling Allah's rights to mention his own" [N 134]. Al-Muhsi, who counts every separate thing, asks the seeker to audit "each of your breaths" [N 137].
Al-Mubdi' and al-Mu'id, the Beginner and Restorer, carry a gentle teaching for anyone who has lost a period of spiritual warmth. If intimacy is removed "due to a slip or a misdeed he has committed, he does not despair of their return", for God renews lost days [N 138]. A couplet he cites makes it personal: the poet will never despair of God bringing the lovers together again, better than before [N 139]. The entry also states a rule of method: two Names that complete each other's meaning are "in reality a single Name" [N 138].
Life, Self-Subsistence and Ecstasy
Al-Muhyi and al-Mumit distinguish the life of bodies and the life of souls [N 140]. Al-Hayy draws a three-part ethic from one verse (25:58): trust governs dealings with creation, glorification governs dealings with God, and leaving others' sins alone governs dealings with the ego [N 143]. Its realization is total surrender: being before Him as a corpse in the hands of its washer [N 144]. Al-Qayyum, the Self-subsistent, again frees from the "toil of self-management" [N 145].
Figure 49. The three-part ethic drawn from 25:58 [N 143].
Al-Wajid opens on ecstasy (wajd). Al-Sari said "The finder reaches a point where his face can be struck by a sword and he will not feel a thing", and Junayd admitted he doubted it "until I experienced it for myself" [N 147 to 148]. The Tanwir is quoted on true understanding: it is not knowledge or constancy in litanies but "freedom from all things besides his Lord" and being "freed from the fetters of craving" [N 148].
The One, the Alone, the Eternal Refuge
| Name | Realization [N 152 to 157] |
|---|---|
| al-Wahid, the One | All existence "one in your spiritual vision"; cultivated by not aspiring to any but Him |
| al-Ahad, the Alone | so immersed in witnessing Oneness that you no longer have a sense of duality |
| al-Samad, the Eternal Refuge | Five meanings, five cultivations (Table 37) |
Table 36. Names of oneness.
The Hikam supplies the ethic of oneness: "Just as He does not love the deed in which He is a co-sharer, likewise He does not love the heart that has a co-sharer" [N 152]. A couplet compresses the realization: "Existence is naught save one; / And you are that one!" [N 153].
Al-Samad is unusual in giving a cultivation for each of five meanings.
| Meaning of al-Samad | Cultivation [N 156 to 157] |
|---|---|
| Neither eats nor is fed | Raise aspiration above what others hold; eat and drink less |
| Master and Owner | Spend on others |
| The Clement | Be forbearing |
| Exalted in Rank | Detachment from the world; strive in obedience |
| The one to whom needs are taken | Help others in need and become their refuge |
Table 37. Five meanings of al-Samad.
Power, Precedence and the Four Names of Encompassment
Al-Qadir yields one of the most quoted maxims of the book, on free will and fate in practice: in the beginning [of the spiritual path] one should be as if he were a Qadarite, that is, exerting effort as though one created one's own acts, and at the end "as if he were a Jabarite", in utter resignation and contentment with the divine [N 159]. Theology here becomes a sequence of postures, not a choice of creed.
Al-Muqaddim and al-Mu'akhkhir, the Advancer and Delayer, warn against relying on "the fleeting state of his self" and against despair [N 160]. Al-Awwal and al-Akhir ask you to be first in every good work and last in attachment to it [N 163].
Why the world is visible and hidden
Al-Zahir and al-Batin draw Ibn 'Ajiba's own theory: "The sound position is to say that the Real (Exalted is He) has possessed all of His beautiful Names pre-eternally. Thereafter the Names sought to manifest their effects" [N 164]. The Outward made all things appear "by Allah's power"; the Inward made them hidden "by Allah's wisdom" [N 164]. So the Real (Exalted is He) is manifest with His power and light and is hidden with His wisdom and domination [N 165]. Whoever knows the Outward needs no proof of Him: "I am astounded at the one who seeks a witness for you / When it is you who made every witness testify" [N 165].
The cultivation is a social discipline: be "outward" by showing your spiritual distinction to those truly attached to you, and "inward" by concealing your works and states from the undeserving [N 166]. The realization is al-Mursi's: "the servant of Allah is he for whom it is the same whether Allah makes him manifest or hidden" [N 166].
Kindness, Repentance, Vengeance and Pardon
| Name | Teaching [N 171 to 180] |
|---|---|
| al-Barr, the Kind | Hikam: "When He gives to you, He shows you His kindness, and when He deprives you, He shows you His power"; be kind to good and evil alike |
| al-Tawwab, the Oft-Relenting | Repentance begins and ends with God; keep repenting even if you succumb to a sin a thousand times |
| al-Muntaqim, the Avenger | Not "a personal aversion"; turn vengeance on your own base desires |
| al-'Afuw, the Pardoner | Effaces sins without trace; pardon even the boorish |
| al-Ra'uf, the Compassionate | Intense mercy; through you God shows mercy to your foes |
Table 38. Names of mercy and justice.
On repentance Ibn 'Ajiba draws a fine line: "repentance from Him is actualization while repentance from you is exposure to the gentle breezes of divine mercy" [N 173]. He also explains the order of the list: the Avenger follows the Oft-Relenting because pardon has a limit "where it is incumbent to exact vengeance, in order to uphold divine wisdom and fulfil the legal rulings" [N 174].
Sovereignty, Riches and the Greatest Idol
The Absolute Sovereign is cultivated by controlling your ego, your desires, and all of your states [N 182]. Al-Jami', the Gatherer, asks for the heart to be gathered so that one dies "in a state of gatheredness" [N 185].
The entry on al-Ghani contains the sharpest story in the book. Abu Hafs, asked how the needy seeker should meet his Master, replied: And can the Rich be met with anything other than poverty? [N 187]. Ibn 'Ajiba presses further. Ibn Mashish asked Shadhili how he would meet God; Shadhili said "With my poverty"; Ibn Mashish answered: "By Allah, if you were to meet Him with your poverty you would be meeting Him with the greatest idol!" [N 188]. One must be poor even of one's poverty, for otherwise he would find richness through his own expression of poverty [N 188]. "Allah is only met with Himself" [N 188].
Giving, Harm, Origination and the End
| Name | Teaching [N 190 to 207] |
|---|---|
| al-Mu'ti, al-Mani' (Giver, Withholder) | Do not rely on others' giving or fear their withholding; give and withhold as God commands |
| al-Darr, al-Nafi' (Harmer, Benefiter) | Harm the ego, caprice and the world; benefit intellect, heart, soul and believers |
| al-Badi', the Originator | Think well of Him for His treatment of you if not for His qualities; break habits so benefits appear |
| al-Baqi, the Everlasting | Endure through lasting works; annihilation within subsistence |
| al-Nur, the Light | "The cosmos, therefore, is all light", veiled only by divine wisdom |
| al-Hadi, al-Rashid (Guide, Right Guide) | Guide others "without needing to resort to words"; Zarruq: never taking a stance of impudence |
| al-Warith, the Inheritor | Inherit the Prophet in words, works and character |
| al-Sabur, the Patient | Patience in four arenas, maturing into satisfaction |
Table 39. The closing Names.
Al-Nur repeats the Hikam's paradox: "It is only because of the intensity of His manifestation that He is veiled, and it is only because of the sublimity of His light that He is hidden from sights" [N 198 to 199]. Al-Warith grades the heirs of the Prophet: "The scholars of the outward have inherited the Prophet's statements; the devotees have inherited the Prophet's works; while the gnostics have inherited the Prophet's qualities of character after having shared with the others in inheriting his statements and works" [N 203].
The final Name, al-Sabur, lists four arenas of patience, tribulation, misfortune, obedience, and disobedience (that is, patience in doing good and in avoiding wrong) [N 206]. The last sentence of the book describes the endpoint of the whole method: patience becomes "an inherent quality within you", turning into satisfaction and submission, "whereby misfortune transforms into blessing and tribulation transforms into mercy" [N 207].
Book Three. Sura Ya Sin from the Immense Ocean
The third book is a short extract from Ibn 'Ajiba's Qur'an commentary, al-Bahr al-Madid, covering Sura Ya Sin, translated and annotated by Abdullah bin Hamid Ali [Y 2 to 32]. It shows the author in a third mode. In Book One he comments on aphorisms; in Book Two he builds a reference grid; here he works through a scripture verse by verse, first as a grammarian and exegete, then, under the heading "Mystical Reflections", as a Sufi reading the same verses as maps of the soul.
The Two-Layer Method
Each passage follows the same pattern: the verses, then a commentary on readings, grammar, occasions of revelation and narrative, then the ishara or allusive reading. The translator adds footnotes grading the hadith reports, which matters because many of the virtue reports quoted are weak.
Figure 50. How each passage of the commentary is built.
The back cover's biography differs in detail from the one in Book Two: it gives "1208 AH (1793)" for his joining the Darqawiyya and death "of the plague in 1224 AH (1809)", says he went at eighteen to Qasr al-Kabir to study under al-Susi al-Samlali, and notes that "Among his descendants are the famous Ghumari brothers" [Y cover]. Book Two prints 1208/1794 for his induction [N xii]. Both are reproduced here as printed.
Ya Sin: "O Master"
The sura is Meccan, of 83 verses [Y 2]. It opens with reports of its virtues: it is called "The Enveloper", "The Repeller" and "The Fulfiller", and is said to bring security to the frightened and food to the hungry. The translator's footnote is honest: al-Bayhaqi "declared it to be weak" [Y 2]. The famous saying that "the heart of the Qur'an is YaSin" is likewise footnoted as of singular transmission with an unknown narrator [Y 4].
The letters Ya and Sin get several readings. Grammatically, the consensus of the seven reciters treats them as enunciated letters, not a name [Y 2]. Ibn 'Ajiba offers his own: "I [personally] say that apparently they (i.e., the two letters) are acronyms for the word 'sayyid': a form of abbreviation understood by lovers, one of another, expressed so as to conceal its meaning from outsiders" [Y 3]. Al-Qushayri reads "O Master!" and draws a principle: it is God's practice "to deposit His secrets only with those to whom others presume to be undeserving of such distinction", which is why the idolaters asked, "How could He prefer the orphan of Abu Talib over all other men?" [Y 3]. Al-Wartajibi reads Ya as the Day of the Covenant and Sin as the secret between God and His beloved [Y 4].
Figure 51. Readings of the letters Ya and Sin [Y 2 to 4].
He adds his own reading of the sura's central verse, "Peace! A saying from a Forgiving Lord": it alludes "to the secrecy of proximity [with God] to which the Qur'an invites and around which it revolves", God "personally greeting His servants" [Y 4].
Warning Those Who Will Not Listen
Verses 5 to 11 describe people with iron collars to their chins and barriers before and behind them, for whom warning or not warning is the same. This raises an old problem: why command people God knows will not believe? Ibn 'Arafa argues that knowledge of the outcome does not make the command an impossible burden [Y 5]. Ibn 'Ajiba answers in terms he uses repeatedly.
Two stories illustrate the verses. Abu Jahl, coming at the praying Prophet with a stone, found his hand stuck to his neck, and a second man was struck unable to see him [Y 6]. 'Umar ibn 'Abd al-'Aziz recited the verse to Ghaylan, who denied destiny; Ghaylan said he repented, 'Umar prayed that God punish him if he lied, and the next day Hisham seized and crucified him [Y 6]. The commentary reports this without comment; modern readers may find it grim.
The mystical reading: when the saints are ignored
The Mystical Reflection turns the passage to a later age. Whoever begins to teach after a gap between saintly figures is sent "in order that you warn a people whose fathers had not been warned". The iron collars become pride that keeps people from "lowering their heads to the saints of their time"; the covering over their eyes conceals "their third eyes" so they cannot see "the special nature of anyone who guides to Allah" [Y 6]. The verdict is weary: "the [effort of providing] treatment of their ailment is a source of fatigue" [Y 6]. Only those "whose hearts soften to the mention of God" benefit, and their reward is "to gaze upon the countenance of the Magnificent Lord" [Y 7].
Figure 52. The passage read for a later age [Y 6].
Traces: What We Leave Behind
Verse 12, (on recording what they sent forth and their traces), gets a practical gloss. Traces are "the good remnants they left behind, such as knowledge they imparted, a book they composed, an endowment they founded, a citadel or mosque they erected", or bad ones, like a harmful innovation [Y 7]. A hadith lists seven things whose reward continues after death, from planting a seedling to leaving "a pious child" [Y 7].
| Reading | What is recorded [Y 7 to 8] |
|---|---|
| Outer | Deeds sent ahead, and lasting results: teaching, books, endowments, buildings, customs started |
| Alternative | The steps taken to the mosque |
| Mystical | Knowledge, secrets and lights acquired and "transferred to others" |
| Al-Qushayri | Steps to the mosque, time in communion, tears, "the puff of each breath" |
Table 40. Four readings of "their traces".
The Town and the Three Messengers
The parable of the town (verses 13 to 19) is told at length with material from earlier commentators: the town is Antioch, two messengers sent by Jesus are rejected and imprisoned, a third, Sham'un, wins the king's trust from inside the court, a blind boy is healed and a boy dead seven days is revived, and the unbelievers perish by Gabriel's shout [Y 8 to 9]. The translator's footnote notes that the people's reply, "You are nothing more than mortals like us", fits prophets sent by God better than disciples sent by Jesus [Y 8].
The townspeople call the messengers a bad omen. The commentary explains a common human habit: "the custom of the ignorant is to wish for everything for which they have a penchant ... and to be pessimistic about anything they are averse to and abhor" [Y 9]. The messengers reply that the cause of their pessimism is in themselves, "It is your disbelief" [Y 9].
This is the most practical teaching in the sura commentary, and it pairs with the Hikam: sudden waridat are gifts [H 139], but this passage adds a filter, repetition plus a purified heart.
The Running Man
"And there came from the outskirts of the city a man running": Habib the carpenter, who had been worshipping in a mountain cave [Y 10]. His argument is brief: "Follow those who ask you not a wage and who are guided aright" [Y 10]. Ibn 'Ajiba points to his tact. Habib says "what is with me that I would not worship the one who cleaved my very being?", speaking of himself while meaning his people, so he "bestowed direction most kindly by insinuating that as advice to himself" [Y 10]. His people killed him, and he was told, "Enter Paradise" [Y 10].
His wish from Paradise, "O I wish my people could know just how my Lord has forgiven me", becomes a lesson for every teacher. Al-Kawashi: "he advised his people during life and after death. Thus should every inviter to Allah be striving and advising the servants of God: that he not resent them if they offend him" [Y 11]. The Mystical Reflection generalizes: "The most beloved of creatures to Allah are the most beneficial of them to one's dependents and those that offer them the best advice", backed by the hadith, "For Allah to guide one person by you is better for you than the choicest livestock" [Y 11].
| Trait of Habib | Lesson drawn [Y 10 to 11] |
|---|---|
| Comes running from the edge of town | God makes the little effort of a sincere servant count for much (al-Qushayri) |
| Asks first whether the messengers want a wage | Disinterest is a mark of true guides |
| Speaks of himself to correct others | Advise gently, without accusation |
| Wishes his people knew his reward | Keep caring for those who hurt you, even after |
Table 41. The running man as a model teacher.
A Single Shout and the Regret of Peoples
The destruction of the town takes only "a single shout" [Y 12]. Al-Kashshaf's question, why angels were sent in numbers at Badr when one feather of Gabriel's wing destroyed Lot's cities, is answered by the honour given to Muhammad [Y 12].
The Mystical Reflection extends the threat: what applies to those who belied messengers applies "equally" to those who belie the saints, "since they are the successors to the prophets" [Y 12]. Their punishment may be visible, or hidden as "the hardness of their hearts", obstruction from good deeds, and dying "upon disbelief", which is "the gravest misfortune" [Y 12]. "O what regret that befalls people!" becomes regret for those who mock "the exemplars (shaykhs) of spiritual guidance who exist in every age", or for those who mock the divine impulses that come to their own hearts [Y 13].
Signs in Earth, Sky and Sea
Verses 33 to 44 offer signs of resurrection. The dead earth revived by water proves that God revives the dead [Y 13]. Effort and divine act are both present, one inside the other.
A digression on theology and law shows Ibn 'Ajiba's priorities. Al-Qushayri mocks jurists who lack the proofs of divine unity; Ibn 'Ajiba goes further and answers the theologians too, with his own line: "You have missed the taste of spiritual experience to be taken solace with" [Y 14].
| Level | Knowledge it relies on [Y 14] |
|---|---|
| Jurist | Branches of law, without the root of creed |
| Theologian | Proofs of divine unity, the root of law |
| Sufi | The "taste" of experience, the root of the root |
Table 42. Three tiers of knowledge in the Ya Sin commentary.
The night stripped of day, the sun running to its resting place, and the moon passing through mansions until it returns "like the old date cluster" get a full cosmological treatment, including the hadith of the sun prostrating beneath the Throne and a list of the twenty-eight lunar mansions [Y 14 to 16]. The Mystical Reflection makes them inner states: "the night of heedlessness" and "the daylight of wakefulness" alternate until "the sun of gnosis" rises and settles in the heart, "Such has no setting" [Y 16]. The moon of faith waxes and wanes with free time and attention until gnosis strips away its changes [Y 16].
The ship that carries humanity becomes the Shari'a. When gnostics "swim in the seas of divine oneness", waves of bewilderment crash over them, and if they have prior care "they will take refuge in the ship of the Shari'a after riding it in the orbit of the Haqiqa" [Y 17]. Without it, one may drown in heresy, unless rescued "from a well-disciplined spiritual guide" [Y 17].
Charity and the Fatalist Excuse
When told to spend on the poor, the unbelievers answer: "Shall we feed those who if God so pleased would feed them Himself?" [Y 18]. Al-Kawashi notes that "Some stingy people might cling to this verse saying: 'I do not give those who Allah has denied.'" This is wrong, since God has assigned the poor a portion of the rich man's wealth, and al-Ghazali explains that charity's purpose is to free the giver "from the vice of stinginess" [Y 19].
The Mystical Reflection turns "what is before you and behind you" into Ibn 'Ajiba's favourite theme, giving up anxious planning. Guard against planning the future, "because its affair is not in your control. So most of what you construct of planning is demolished by the winds of destiny", and against rehashing the past, which is "seeking to make happen what has already occurred and spending one's time without benefit" [Y 19]. The reward is "the station of satisfaction (rida'), calmness, and serenity of heart under the streams of the divine decree" [Y 19].
| Direction of thought | Why to let it go [Y 19] |
|---|---|
| Planning the future | Not in your control; "demolished by the winds of destiny" |
| Replaying the past | Tries to change what has happened; wastes the present |
| Result of letting go | Satisfaction, calm, serenity under the decree |
Table 43. Tadbir in time.
Resurrection, the Garden and Peace
The single cry of the Hour seizes people "while they argue" about their affairs; at the second blast they rise from their graves [Y 19 to 20]. The Mystical Reflection describes the intelligent: when certainty grows, "future matters become as if they are happening to him", and so he prepares for them [Y 20].
On the Garden, Ibn 'Ajiba distinguishes kinds of bliss: some are occupied with sensory pleasures, some with "intellectual delights (na'im al-arwah), like gazing at God's magnificent face", and some are given both [Y 21].
"Peace: a statement from a Merciful Lord" is the climax. Al-Qushayri: "They hear His speech and His salutation of peace without a mediator" [Y 21]. Ibn 'Ajiba adds that the veil may be lifted "in the abode of this world [also]", so that God's greeting is heard, "just as it happened for some of the saints" [Y 22]. Rather, it is only by mercy in order that the sinner experiences relief and a basis for hope" [Y 22].
A hadith used here, "Most of the inhabitants of the Garden are the simple-minded", is footnoted as objectionable (munkar) by several critics [Y 22]. Al-Qushayri reads "simple-minded" as "the people of the veil who worship God seeking reward" [Y 22].
The Limbs Testify
On the Day, God asks: "Have I not covenanted to you, O children of Adam, that you not serve Satan?" Mouths are sealed and limbs speak [Y 23 to 24]. A hadith gives the scene: a man who would accept no witness but himself hears his limbs testify and says to them, "Get you away from me and stay far away! Are you the ones I stood up for and defended?" [Y 24]. Al-Qushayri adds hope: for sinful believers some limbs testify against them, others for them; in one report a single eyelash testifies to his weeping from fear of God, and he is freed, "This is the one who Allah manumitted because of a hair" [Y 24].
In the Mystical Reflection the "straight path" becomes "the path of spiritual guidance (tarbiya)" taught by the saints, from which Satan turns people by "the world, leadership, and status", so that "they did not lower their heads to those who acquaint them with Allah" [Y 24].
Old Age Reversed, and Poetry
"Whoever We grant extension to their lives, We invert in creation": bodily life rises to a peak and then returns toward infancy [Y 25]. Ibn 'Abbas: "Whoever reads the Qur'an (i.e., acts upon it) will not be returned to the most dejected of age" [Y 25]. The Mystical Reflection carves out an exception: for one guided on the path, "the extension of life only increases him in equanimity in reason, strength in knowledge" [Y 25]. Al-Qushayri adds that the decline "relates to the corpse and constructs; not states and meanings", for the hair of the people of realities turns grey while the objects of their love and their meanings stay young [Y 26].
"We have not taught him poetry": the commentary explains that the Qur'an "is rhymed but not scaled", and that occasional rhythmic lines of the Prophet happened "inadvertently" [Y 26]. The Mystical Reflection allows the saints poetry in praise of "the pre-eternal drunkenness", the divine presence or the Prophet, and reads the hadith against a belly full of poetry as aimed at "whimsical poetry" that distracts from God [Y 27].
Idols, Comfort and the Green Tree
Book Three repeats the Ghani story of Book Two in a new key. "Everything that one relies upon other than Allah becomes an idol, whether it is knowledge, a spiritual state, or anything else"; hence Ibn Mashish told Shadhili that meeting God with his neediness meant meeting Him "with the greatest idol", and "Allah is to be met only with Allah" [Y 28]. "Let not their words sadden you" becomes comfort for anyone harmed for God's sake. Al-Qushayri: "When the slave knows that he is in view of the Truth, whatever He is suffering becomes insignificant" [Y 28].
Three groups respond to God differently, a direct echo of Chapter Seven of the Hikam [H 123]: those drawn by favour who thank Him, those drawn "forcefully by way of the chains of trial", and those whom neither favour nor misfortune helps [Y 28].
The sura closes with a man holding a crumbled bone: "Who will give life to the bones when they are decayed?" [Y 29]. The answer points to the one who made them first and who "made for you from the green tree a fire" [Y 29]. The commentary explains the Arab practice of rubbing moist twigs of markh and 'afar to make fire: whoever can bring fire out of what is wet can bring life back to what is dry [Y 29 to 30]. God's command "Be" stands for the immediacy of His creating, "swifter than the blink of the eye" [Y 30].
The resurrection verses become a promise for the inner life: "Just as He is able to give life to rotten bones, He is able to give life to dead hearts. And whoever is able to extract fire from the place where water is found is able to extract knowledge from ignorance, and wakefulness from heedlessness" [Y 31].
Synthesis
Three books, three genres, one teacher.
Key Takeaways
- Self-planning is the main obstacle. Every book returns to tadbir. The Hikam warns against choosing alongside God, the Divine Names makes dropping it the fruit of trust, and Ya Sin applies it to time: the future is "demolished by the winds of destiny" and the past cannot be redone [Y 19].
- Satisfaction is the station that follows. Rida is calm under the decree, whether it comes as majesty or beauty [Y 31].
- Outer law and inner reality need each other. The Shari'a is the ship; the Haqiqa is the sea [Y 17]. Ibn 'Ajiba never lets inward experience cancel outward duty.
- Every Name is a lesson in character. Connection, cultivation and realization turn theology into a programme of self-training [N].
- Cultivation has limits. Some Names, like the Proud, are for connection only; the human share is humility before them [N].
- The heart can be checked for signs of life. Regret at missing worship and sorrow at sin show the heart is alive [H Ch.6].
- Waridat are gifts, not achievements. They come suddenly and their timing is God's [H Ch.8].
- Prompts must be tested. Repetition and a pure heart confirm an inner prompting [Y 10].
- Greed humiliates. Need for what people hold is the root of abasement; freedom is independence from creation [H Ch.7].
- Some are led gently, some in chains. Favour and trial are two ways God draws people; a third group is drawn by neither [H Ch.7; Y 28].
- Anything relied on besides God is an idol, even knowledge, a state or one's own poverty [N 188; Y 28].
- Secrets belong in hearts that can keep them. Lovers speak in code; the free keep what they see [H Ch.8; Y 3].
- A guide is needed. The living shaykh is the heir of the prophets, and the books insist on this repeatedly [Y 6, 12, 17].
- The teacher should be like the running man: unpaid, gentle and unresentful [Y 10 to 11].
- Leave good traces. Knowledge taught, books written and endowments founded continue after death [Y 7].
- Wisdom rules this world, power the next. This explains why responsibility is real even though God's power governs all [Y 5; N].
- God is hidden by His very clarity. The ten proofs of the Hikam and the Name al-Batin agree: the veil is the strength of the manifestation [H Ch.1; N].
- Obscurity protects sincerity. Bury your existence in the earth of anonymity so the seed can grow [H Ch.1].
- Company shapes the soul. Keep company with someone whose state lifts you [H Ch.5].
- Old age need not mean decline. For the person on the path, a long life adds knowledge [Y 25].
- Revival is the core promise. Whoever revives bones and draws fire from green wood can revive dead hearts [Y 31].
| Framework | Stages or parts | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Three kinds of action | Action of the body, of the heart, of the secret | H Ch.1 |
| Ten proofs | Nothing veils God; He is veiled by His manifestation | H Ch.1 |
| Five kinds of inner sight | Graded seeing, from the eye of faith to witnessing | H Ch.3 |
| Three waridat | Awakening, advance, arrival | H Ch.6 |
| Gentleness or chains | Drawn by favour, drawn by trial, abandoned | H Ch.7; Y 28 |
| Name method | Connection, cultivation, realization | N |
| Majesty and beauty | Contraction and expansion, jalal and jamal | N; Y 31 |
| Wisdom and power | Wisdom governs this world; power the next | Y 5 |
| Triple confirmation | Warid, repeated, confirmed by a third | Y 10 |
| Three tiers of knowledge | Jurist, theologian, Sufi taste | Y 14 |
| Two-layer exegesis | Outer commentary, then Mystical Reflection | Y |
Table 44. The frameworks of the collection.
Figure 53. The path assembled from the three books.
Reading the Three Books Together
Each book has its own voice. The Hikam commentary is intimate and corrective, written for a disciple who already practises and needs his illusions removed. The Divine Names is orderly, almost a manual: every Name in the same frame, every frame ending in a practical trait. The Ya Sin commentary is learned and patient, giving the grammarian and the storyteller their full say before the Sufi speaks. Yet the same themes keep returning, and following one theme through all three shows how the teacher thinks.
| Theme | Hikam | Divine Names | Ya Sin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Self-planning | Do not choose with God; rest from managing | Knowing al-Hafiz relieves the fatigue of self-management | The future and the past both lie outside your control [Y 19] |
| Law and reality | Two eyes: one on the law, one on the reality | Balance between outward and inward | The ship of the Shari'a on the sea of oneness [Y 17] |
| The guide | Company with one whose state lifts you | The signs of sainthood under al-Wali | Rejecting the saints repeats rejecting the messengers [Y 12] |
| Hiddenness | Nothing veils Him but His manifestation | al-Zahir and al-Batin | Secrets kept among lovers [Y 3] |
| Trial | Hardship as an opening; chains of trial | Contraction and expansion | Drawn by chains to Paradise [Y 28] |
| Idols | Reliance on action | Meeting the Rich with poverty is the greatest idol | Anything relied on besides Allah [Y 28] |
Table 45. One theme, three treatments.
The table shows a method as much as a doctrine. Ibn 'Ajiba rarely invents a new idea for a new genre. He takes a small set of convictions and finds them again in each text: in an aphorism by Ibn 'Ata'illah, in a Name of God, in a verse about a running man or a green tree. This gives the collection its unity, and also its limits: a reader looking for argument or debate will find mostly restatement. But as a training text, repetition is the point. The disciple meets the same truth often enough, and from enough angles, that it stops being an idea and starts to become a habit.
Two further patterns stand out. First, the books always move from outside to inside. The Hikam starts with outward actions before it reaches the secret; the Names start with a definition before cultivation and realization; Ya Sin starts with grammar and stories before the Mystical Reflection. The inner sense never skips the outer one. Second, they move from fear toward hope. The warnings about dead hearts, greed and denial are real, but each book ends on mercy: the gifts that arrive without warning, the Patient who waits, and the Lord who revives rotten bones and dead hearts alike [Y 31].
Figure 54. Each book moves from outside to inside.
A closer look
Polemic. The books are hard on exoteric scholars and on those who deny the saints. Ya Sin compares rejecting the shaykhs of one's age to belying the messengers and warns of hard hearts and a bad death [Y 12 to 13]. This is sincere conviction, but it closes off fair criticism of teachers, and the books give few ways to tell a true shaykh from a false one beyond the guide's own state.
Authority of experience. The tiers of knowledge put "taste" above law and theology [Y 14]. This protects real experience from dry rationalism, but it also makes Sufi claims hard to check. The safeguard is the Shari'a, which Ibn 'Ajiba insists on; the ship image is his answer [Y 17].
Passivity. 'Stop planning' can be misheard as 'stop acting'. The books distinguish planning that competes with God from effort made within His decree; Ya Sin's note that growth is God's act carrying the traces of human farming is the clearest statement of the balance [Y 13].
Harsh stories. Some narratives, like the crucifixion of Ghaylan reported after a prayer against him, sit uneasily with the gentleness the same books teach [Y 6].
The texts themselves. Two of the three sources are scans with damaged passages, and the Divine Names scan includes an unrelated booklet. Quoted passages here were checked against the clean text; damaged ones are paraphrased.
Inconsistent dates. The two biographies differ by a year for his entry into the Darqawi order, and Book Two prints a date for Ibn Mashish that cannot be right. These are left as printed or omitted.
Who's Who
| Person | Role in the books | Dates as printed |
|---|---|---|
| Ahmad ibn 'Ajiba | Author; scholar, commentator, Darqawi shaykh | Born 1746 or 1747 [N]; 1747 to 1809 [Y]; died 1224 AH (1809) of the plague [Y cover] |
| Mawlay al-'Arabi al-Darqawi | Founder of the Darqawi order, his shaykh's shaykh | d. 1238/1823 [N] |
| Muhammad al-Buzidi | His direct shaykh | d. 1814 [N] |
| Ibn 'Ata'illah al-Iskandari | Author of the Hikam | d. 709/1309 [N] |
| Ibn 'Abbad al-Rundi | Earlier Hikam commentator | d. 792/1390 [N] |
| Abu'l-Hasan al-Shadhili | Founder of the Shadhili line | d. 656/1258 [N] |
| 'Abd al-Salam ibn Mashish | Shadhili's shaykh; the "greatest idol" saying | Printed date inconsistent; omitted |
| Ahmad Zarruq | Shadhili jurist and Hikam commentator | d. 899/1493 [N] |
| al-Kahin al-Fasi | Later scholar cited in Book Two | d. 1347/1938 [N] |
| al-Qushayri | Commentator cited throughout Ya Sin and the Names | No date printed |
| al-Wartajibi, al-Kawashi, Ibn 'Arafa | Commentators cited in Ya Sin | No dates printed |
| al-Ghazali | Cited on the purpose of charity | No date printed |
| Habib the carpenter | The running man of Sura Ya Sin | Scriptural figure |
| al-Susi al-Samlali | Teacher at Qasr al-Kabir | No date printed |
Table 46. People named in the three books, with dates only where printed.
Glossary
| Term | Meaning in these books |
|---|---|
| Adab | Courtesy; right conduct toward God, the shaykh and people |
| Bast, qabd | Expansion and contraction, two alternating states of the heart |
| Darqawiyya | The Sufi order founded by Mawlay al-'Arabi al-Darqawi, which Ibn 'Ajiba joined |
| Dhikr | Remembrance and invocation of God |
| Fana' | Annihilation; the passing away of self-awareness in witnessing God |
| Faqr | Poverty or neediness before God; can itself become an idol if relied on |
| Ghafla | Heedlessness, the "night" of the soul |
| Haqiqa | Inner reality, the sea crossed in the ship of the Shari'a |
| Himma | Aspiration, spiritual resolve |
| Ishara | Allusion; the inward reading of a verse |
| Jalal, jamal | Majesty and beauty, the two modes of divine self-disclosure |
| Ma'rifa | Gnosis, direct knowledge of God; the "sun" that does not set |
| Mystical Reflections | The translator's heading for the allusive section after each passage in Ya Sin |
| Nafs | The ego or lower self |
| Rida | Satisfaction with the decree |
| Sahib tamkin | One of firm footing, whose state does not change |
| Shari'a | The outward law, pictured as a ship |
| Shaykh | Spiritual guide; heir to the prophets |
| Connection, cultivation, realization | Connection, cultivation and realization, the three approaches to each Divine Name in Book Two |
| Tadbir | Self-planning in competition with the decree |
| Tajrid | Stripping away worldly means to rely on God alone |
| Tarbiya | Spiritual training under a guide; the straight path in Ya Sin |
| Tawhid | Affirming divine oneness |
| Warid (pl. waridat) | A sudden inner arrival or gift from God |
| Zandaqa | Heresy, the drowning of those who leave the ship of the law |
Table 47. Glossary of key terms.
About this book
Ibn 'Ajiba: Wakening Aspiration, the Divine Names and Ya Sin: A Moroccan Sufi on the Heart, the Names of God and the Heart of the Qur'an by Ahmad ibn 'Ajiba. This is a chapter-by-chapter study of the book, with summaries, maps, tables and diagrams; short quotations keep their page references. It is shared free for personal study, is not for sale, and is not endorsed by the author or publisher. Please read and buy the original.
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