Insight Editions · No. 143
The Meccan Revelations, Volume I
Selected Texts from the Futuhat al-Makkiyya
Ibn al-Arabi · Edited by Michel Chodkiewicz; translated by William C. Chittick and James W. Morris
Ibn al-Arabi's selections present teachings on the divine Names, revelation, sainthood, resurrection, spiritual ascent, and the relation between mystical knowledge and Islamic law.
A study guide to The Meccan Revelations, Volume I by Ibn al-Arabi, edited by Michel Chodkiewicz; translated by William C. Chittick and James W. Morris. Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the authors or publishers. Please read and buy the original.
Overview
The volume is an anthology from Ibn al-'Arabi's al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya, edited by Michel Chodkiewicz and translated by William C. Chittick and James W. Morris. It follows the book's order: Morris's preface and introduction, Chittick's selections on the divine Names, Morris on the Mahdi's Helpers, Morris on the resurrection, Chittick on sainthood, and Morris on Ibn 'Arabi's own spiritual ascension. The translators' notes are treated in a closing part. Quotations are short and exactly as printed. Everything else is paraphrase and commentary.
Argument Map
How the Book Is Built
The volume is not a continuous work. It is a set of translated extracts from a book that runs, in the Arabic edition the translators cite, to thousands of pages in 560 chapters. Each translator introduces his selection and annotates it heavily. The result has three layers, and a reader should keep them apart:
- Ibn 'Arabi's text, often elliptical, quoting the Qur'an and hadith at every turn.
- Translators' bridges, italic summaries of omitted passages, which keep the thread running.
- Notes, which supply cross-references, technical terms and debates in the scholarship.
Chapter Map
| Part | Book section (translator) | Futuhat chapters | Central question |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Preface and Introduction (Morris) | Overview; creeds | What kind of book is the Futuhat, and how should one read it? |
| 2 | Divine Names and Theophanies (Chittick) | 6, 73, 198, 558 | How do the Names relate the One to the many? |
| 3 | At the End of Time (Morris) | 366 | What do the Mahdi's Helpers know, and how does it bear on law and authority? |
| 4 | Lesser and Greater Resurrection (Morris) | 73, 302, 351, 369 | What happens at death and resurrection, and how is it happening now? |
| 5 | Towards Sainthood (Chittick) | 130-131, 140-141, 195, 205, 222, 311, 372, 470 | What are states and stations, and what is the highest station? |
| 6 | Ibn 'Arabi's Spiritual Ascension (Morris) | 367 | What did Ibn 'Arabi see when he travelled in himself? |
| 7 | Notes (both) | Throughout | What do the annotations change about reading the text? |
| 8 | Synthesis and Glossary (editor) | All | What follows, and what is it good for today? |
Ten Ideas in Brief
- Presence. God is with everything wherever it is; no place holds Him except the heart of the believer.
- Names. What can be known of God are the Names, relations through which the one Essence appears in the many.
- Disclosure. The cosmos is God's self-disclosure, renewed at every breath.
- Viewer. Every form is a veil or a disclosure; the difference lies in the one who looks.
- Grades of knowing. Reason gives incomparability, revelation adds similarity, unveiling holds both.
- Law and opinion. The Law is kept strictly; opinions about it are not the Law.
- Death now. The lesser resurrection is an awareness available before death.
- Inheritance. Saints inherit from prophets; each walks a path made by walking it.
- Mercy. Mercy precedes and outlasts wrath.
- Servanthood. The summit is pure servanthood: a self that contains much and claims nothing.
Three Reading Paths
Editor's Note on Method
Anything attributed to Ibn 'Arabi, Chittick or Morris here comes from the book; anything presented as application, analogy or verdict is the editor's own and marked as such.
Quotations are kept short and reproduced as printed, including the translators' square brackets. Arabic terms follow the translators' meanings, simplified in spelling. Dates appear only where the book prints them, in the book's paired Hijri and Common Era form.
They condense structures that the text describes in prose, such as the six homelands or the circular journey, and they should be read as aids to memory, not as diagrams the authors drew. Tables gather lists the text scatters across pages.
Part 1. Reading the Futuhat: Morris's Introduction
James W. Morris opens the volume with a short preface and a long introduction that function as a reader's manual. His message is blunt: this anthology is a door into a work that would fill perhaps fifty volumes of this size, and the door only opens for a reader willing to read slowly, follow the notes and bring their own experience to the text.
The History of the Volume
The translations began as a project conceived by Michel Chodkiewicz, whom Morris describes as the foremost French student of Ibn 'Arabi. Work started in late 1984 with an international team, funded by the Rothko Chapel, and the result appeared in Paris in late 1988 as a bilingual volume of some 653 pages, Les Illuminations de La Mecque. The English portions (more than two-thirds of that edition) are what this Pir Press volume reprints. Chodkiewicz's long French introduction is replaced by a new one from Morris, and the French chapters (by Denis Gril and others) are promised for a second volume.
The publishers kept the English title The Meccan Revelations because that is how the work is best known, though the Arabic fath (plural futuhat) means a sudden, unprepared spiritual "opening" or "illumination". Morris notes a second echo: the word also recalls the "conquest" of Mecca by the early Medinan community.
Why the Notes Are Indispensable
Morris gives four reasons, and they double as a profile of Ibn 'Arabi's way of writing.
- Ordinary words carry technical, personal senses. Scriptural terms are used in senses rooted in Arabic etymology that were unfamiliar and sometimes provocative even to his first readers. "Muhammadan" often means spiritually universal or all-inclusive; shar' can mean the ongoing process of inspiration at the core of each person's spiritual life and at the Source of the revealed religions. Modern assumptions, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, tend to suggest the opposite meaning.
- Words work like chords. Key Qur'anic terms carry several registers at once. Morris compares them to musical chords or the symbols of the I Ching, which is why the translators keep inserting transliterated Arabic.
- Constant shifts between disciplines. The text moves among the religious sciences, philosophy and science, earlier Sufism, and Arabic poetry. Few people, even in Ibn 'Arabi's day, were trained in more than one of these fields.
- Cross-references. The book is full of allusions to discussions elsewhere in the same work, which is one reason so few long sections have been fully translated.
Life and Posterity in Brief
Morris gives only a sketch, pointing readers to the biographies. Ibn 'Arabi was born in Murcia in 1165/560, grew up in the cultural centres of Andalusia, met many teachers and "Friends of God" in Spain and North Africa, and left the West for the Hajj, reaching Mecca in 1202/598. His mature years were spent travelling and teaching, usually privately, in an Islamic East squeezed between the Crusaders and the Mongols. He settled for a time in Konya and then in Damascus, where he died on November 9, 1240/638.
Two points stand out in Morris's sketch:
- The hidden saint. External sources show him living out his own ideal of the hidden, "solitary" Friends of God (afrad or malamiya): outwardly conforming to the shared practices of the revelation and avoiding the public miracles (karamat) associated with famous shaykhs. In his own day he seems to have been known mainly as a religious scholar and student of hadith.
- An unlikely afterlife. At his death he was almost unknown and his books existed in a handful of manuscripts. Within a few centuries the Fusus al-Hikam and the Futuhat had become the most cited source of inspiration (and polemical target) for the Islamic humanities from the Balkans to Southeast Asia. His title "the greatest Master" (al-Shaykh al-Akbar) understates this reach. A second wave of influence, over the past century, has come from thinkers outside Islamic cultures looking for a shared language for spiritual realities in a global civilisation.
How the Futuhat Came to Be
The inspirations behind the work came during the first pilgrimage in 1202/598. Ibn 'Arabi says the essence of the book came from what God inspired in him while circling the Ka'ba or sitting in contemplation in its precincts. Composition of the first complete version ran until 1231/629; a revision and expansion began in 1233/632 and ended in 1238/636, shortly before his death. The full autograph of the final version, kept by his disciple Qunawi, survives, so the Futuhat is spared the corrupted texts and false attributions that afflict many of his other works.
Ibn 'Arabi claimed a form of divine inspiration for all his writing. Early in the book he says: "Neither this book nor my other books have been composed in the manner of ordinary books, and I do not write in the way authors normally do". Later he swears that he wrote not a single letter except by a divine "dictation" (imla' ilahi) and a "casting" (ilqa') into his heart.
Working Assumptions, Not Doctrines
Morris argues that the greatest value of these translations may be to undermine the slogans attached to Ibn 'Arabi's name, most of which come from a few paradoxical formulas extracted from the short and difficult Fusus. He compares this to the way Plato has been reduced to "teachings": what gets lost is the dramatic, dialectical form whose purpose is the transformation of the reader.
Instead of doctrines, he offers "working assumptions", orientations a reader needs in order to connect the symbols to experience:
- Three books that mirror one another. Creation, revelation and the human soul correspond at the deepest level.
- Constant re-creation (tajdid al-khalq). Each soul and its situation are renewed at every instant, so the writing is designed to awaken insights specific to each reader at their stage.
- A rhetoric of allusion (ishara). Sudden shifts of tone, irony, paradox and momentary piety are built, on the Qur'anic model, to break through habitual belief and allow a unitive perception of "things as they really are".
- Knowing as gift. Immediate knowing is the joint result of intention, experience and modest "service" ('ibada), together with grace, destiny and each soul's "preparedness" (isti'dad).
Two Symbolic Languages
Ibn 'Arabi draws mainly on two scriptural languages: cosmology and the divine Names for the plane of being, and eschatology for the plane of the soul. Each is bound up with the technical vocabularies of philosophy, theology and science on one side and ritual, devotion and early Sufism on the other. Morris claims this volume remains the best introduction precisely because most selections stay close to "the language of the soul": states, stations, inspirations and the symbolism of the afterlife.
Ibn 'Arabi's Own Introduction: Three Audiences
Morris translates part of the Futuhat's own introduction. Ibn 'Arabi considered opening with a theological creed backed by proofs, then decided it would distract the prepared seeker. Such a person, persisting in remembrance (dhikr) and retreat, emptying the heart of thinking and sitting like a beggar at the Lord's door, may receive knowledge of the kind given to al-Khadir. He quotes Abu Yazid al-Bastami: "You all took your knowledge like a dead person (receiving it) from another dead person. But we took our knowing from the Living One who never dies".
He then supplies three creeds for three audiences, which Morris reads as a map of who will find the book incomprehensible, unnecessary or of limited use:
| Creed | Audience | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Creed of the common people | People of submission and imitation (taqlid) | Accepted belief |
| Treatise on the beliefs of the "people of external forms" | People of rational inquiry (nazar) | Theological proofs |
| Creed of the elite | The "verifiers" (muhaqqiqun), people of unveiling and finding | Spiritual realisation |
| Creed of the quintessence | Not stated in one place | Scattered through the chapters |
The Architecture of 560 Chapters
The detailed table of contents (sixty-two pages in the critical edition) likely dates from the original inspiration in 1202. The book opens with an "Opening Address" and a letter to his Tunisian friend al-Mahdawi, then runs through six sections with very different styles and chapter lengths.
| Section | Chapters | Content | In this volume |
|---|---|---|---|
| I. Fields of inspired knowing (ma'arif) | 1-73 | Map of creation and the Perfect Human; types of saints; eschatology (59-65); phenomenology of ritual (66-72); chapter 73 on saints and Tirmidhi's questions | 6, 73 |
| II. Modes of action (mu'amalat) | 74-189 | Stations of the path, often in pairs: the station and its "abandonment"; centred on pure servanthood ('ubudiyya) | 130-131, 140-141 |
| III. Spiritual states (ahwal) | 190-269 | An "ontological commentary" on Sufi terms, with their limits and dangers | 195, 198, 205, 222 |
| IV. Waystations (manazil) | 270-383 | 114 chapters linked in reverse order to the Suras; each ends with a list of gifts | 302, 311, 351, 366, 367, 369, 372 |
| V. Mutual encounters (munazalat) | 384-461 | Flashes of insight on a single verse or divine saying | none in English |
| VI. Stations (maqamat) | 462-560 | Spiritual "Poles" and their mottoes; three recapitulations: the 99 Names (558), secrets (559), advice (560) | 470, 558 |
Ibn 'Arabi defines the manzil as "The place in which God descends to you, or where you descend upon Him". The closing chapter of advice reminds the reader that the final journey of the realised soul is always the return "from and with God, to the creatures".
Further Reading, as Morris Frames It
Morris closes with a guided reading list, grouped by need: introductions to the life (Hirtenstein, Addas, Austin's Sufis of Andalusia), the teaching (Chittick's Sufi Path of Knowledge and Self-Disclosure of God), the Fusus and its commentators (Izutsu, Burckhardt, Austin, Bursevi), later influence (Murata), poetry (Sells), prayer (Hirtenstein and Beneito) and sainthood (Chodkiewicz's Seal of the Saints). He reserves the last word for two "classic" works for mature readers, Corbin's Creative Imagination and Chodkiewicz's An Ocean Without Shore, which he calls radically different yet complementary.
Part 2. Divine Names and Theophanies (Chittick)
William C. Chittick's section gathers the cosmological core of the anthology: chapter 6 on the origin of creation, three answers from chapter 73 to al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi's questions, two passages from chapter 198 on the Breath of the All-Merciful, and the opening of chapter 558 on the Most Beautiful Names. Together they show how one world can be both "nothing but God" and "creatures", and why the honest end of thinking about this is bewilderment.
Chapter 6: The Origin of Creation
Chapter 6 is the first major chapter of the Futuhat to set out Ibn 'Arabi's cosmology as a whole. Its title asks seven questions about the spiritual creation, and Ibn 'Arabi first answers them in a single compressed paragraph, then expands.
| Question | Short answer in chapter 6 |
|---|---|
| What is the origin of creation? | The Dust (al-haba') |
| What is the first existent within it? | The Muhammadan Reality pertaining to the All-Merciful, not confined in space |
| From what did it come? | From the Known Reality, described neither by existence nor nonexistence |
| Within what? | Within the Dust |
| In what likeness? | The form known within God's Self |
| Why? | To make manifest the divine realities (the Names) |
| Toward what goal? | Deliverance from mixture, so that each world knows its share from its Producer |
Man: Small, Paltry and Theomorphic
Man is small in body and paltry in being temporally originated, but his ta'alluh (being like unto God) is a fact, because he is God's vicegerent and the world is subjected to him. Chittick's note adds that ta'alluh is not one of Ibn 'Arabi's usual terms; he prefers assuming the character traits of God's Names.
A surprising claim follows: man's most perfect plane is in this world. In the next world each person belongs to one of the two groups (Garden or Fire), so his state is "one half". Here, every person is believer and unbeliever, blissful and chastised at once. Hence knowledge is more complete in this world, while theophany is more elevated in the next. Ibn 'Arabi ends the thought with a challenge to the reader: "So understand, and open this lock!" He then gives a poem in which the human being speaks as both "the paltry existence" and the one around whom every existence turns.
The Four Objects of Knowledge
Everything knowable falls into four categories.
- God, described by Nondelimited Being, neither cause nor effect of anything. We know that He exists and know His Attributes of Perfection, but knowledge of the Essence is barred: no proof, demonstration or definition can grasp what is like nothing. The Law itself forbids meditation on the Essence.
- The Universal Reality, belonging to both God and the world, qualified neither by existence nor nonexistence, eternity nor temporality. It is eternal in the Eternal and temporal in the temporal, cannot be divided, and is known only through likeness. Ibn 'Arabi calls it the root of all existents, the Sphere of Life, and "the Truth through which creation takes place". Say it is the world, or not the world, God or not God: each statement is true.
- The entire world: angels, spheres, air, earth and all they contain, the Greater Kingdom.
- Man, the vicegerent placed in that world, to whom it has been subjected.
How Creation Unfolds
Ibn 'Arabi starts from the hadith "God was, and nothing was with Him", to which the Sufis added "And He is now as He was". Creation adds no new Attribute to God; He was already named by the Names His creatures would use. From His Desire, through a theophany of Incomparability toward the Universal Reality, arose the Dust, which he compares to the plaster a builder throws down to mould any shape. The philosophers call it Universal Hyle; Chittick's notes add that Ibn 'Arabi also calls it the Phoenix, known by hearsay but without existence in entity.
God then shone His Light on the Dust. Each thing in it received light according to its preparedness (isti'dad), like the corners of a room lit unequally by a lamp. "Within the Dust nothing is nearer to the Light in reception than the Reality of Muhammad, which is called the Intellect." That Reality is the lord of the world and the first thing manifest; the world's entity stems from its theophany. Nearest to it among humans are 'Ali ibn Abi Talib and the inmost consciousnesses of the prophets.
The likeness on which the world was made is God's knowledge of Himself. Since He knows us through knowing Himself, our form is not chance, nor borrowed from anything "other". So our likeness is eternal through His eternity, though we are not.
Why Creation? The Unemployed Names
The scriptural answer is the verse that jinn and men were created only to serve. "Jinn" here means everything hidden, angels included. When the heavens and earth were "offered" the Trust they refused, because it was an offer; had it been a command they would have obeyed, since they are created in obedience. Fiery jinn and humans were not.
Ibn 'Arabi then pushes against the theologians. They say a command presupposes intelligence, and he agrees. But where they see stones as inanimate, he holds, from unveiling, that the whole world is intelligent, living and speaking. When a stone or a palm stump speaks to a prophet, they say God created life in it for the moment; he says the mystery of life fills the world already.
The deeper answer is the Names. Without a world, God's qualities would be "realities whose effects are nullified": power without an object, generosity without bestowal, a provider without one provided for. Creation exists so that the authority of the Names becomes manifest.
Macrocosm and Microcosm
The chapter closes by drawing correspondences, worked out in his early Insha' al-dawa'ir, begun in Tunis. There are four worlds, each present both in the Greater World and in man.
| World | Greater World | Its equivalent in man |
|---|---|---|
| Highest (subsistence) | Muhammadan Reality (sphere of Life); Throne; Footstool; Inhabited House; angels; seven planets | Holy spirit; body; soul; heart; faculties; Saturn to the moon map onto cognition, memory, intellect, reflection, estimation, imagination, the senses |
| Transmutation (annihilation) | Fire, air, water, earth; seven strata of the earth | Yellow bile, blood, phlegm, black bile; skin, fat, flesh, veins, nerves, muscles, bones |
| Inhabitation (both) | Spirituals, animals, plants, inanimate things | Faculties; what senses; what grows; what does not sense |
| Relations | Accidents and categories: quality, quantity, place, time, relation, position, action, passion; animal forms | Health and sickness, limb lengths, "I ate", "I became satiated"; clever as elephant, stupid as donkey, brave as lion, timid as cockroach |
Chapter 73: Three Answers to Tirmidhi
Chapter 73 runs to 138 pages. After 38 pages on the kinds of saints, Ibn 'Arabi answers the 157 questions (155 by his count) that al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi had posed more than 300 years earlier in Khatm al-awliya' (The Seal of the Saints), questions meant to show sciences open only to saints. Chittick translates three.
Question 108: The Crown of the King
The crown is the sign of the king; the "crowning" of a royal document is the sultan's signature. Existence is an inscribed writing, witnessed by those brought near. Its crowning can only be the one who gathers all realities: the Perfect Man, created "upon His own form". Divine Perfection shows only in composite things, since they contain the simple, not the reverse. So the Perfect Man is first in intention, last in actuality, manifest in the letter and nonmanifest in meaning. He joins nature and intellect, the grossest and subtlest compositions, which is why he alone was taught all the Names. The angels were his students when he taught them; his plane is more perfect, though this does not make him "better". Through him, as through a sultan's signature, divine judgment takes effect in the world.
Question 115: The Glories of the Face
The "face" of a thing is its essence. The "Glories of the Face" are lights of the Essence, and between us and them stand veils, which are the Names. These glories are the lights of Incomparability: the negation from God of everything unworthy of Him. But since only nonexistence is unworthy of Being, bewilderment sets in.
The Names come in two kinds: those that denote positive things are all light; those that denote Incomparability are all darkness. Hence the hadith of seventy (or seventy thousand) veils of light and darkness that, if lifted, would burn up everything the eye perceives. If the Names were removed, the Unity of the Essence would appear and no entity would remain in existence, because things are qualified by existence only through the Names.
Question 118: From Where Does Beauty Come?
From God's self-disclosure in His Name the Beautiful. The Prophet said that God is beautiful and loves beauty. God loves the world, so nothing is more beautiful than the world; beauty is lovable by nature, so all the world loves God. The love of the world's parts for one another comes from God's love for Himself, since love belongs to what exists and nothing exists but God.
Majesty and Beauty are Attributes of God; awe (an effect of Beauty) and intimacy (an effect of Majesty) belong to creatures. Since an Attribute is identical with what it qualifies, there is no lover and no beloved but God, and nothing in existence but the Divine Presence: Essence, Attributes and Acts.
This knowledge "lies beyond the stage of the intellect". Ibn 'Arabi sorts what reason faces into four classes: things it can reach; things it allows but cannot actualise; things it allows but cannot pin down; and things it judges impossible, which can still be known from God through a sound inner event, though they stay "impossible" for reason. He cites the hadith "There is a knowledge that has the guise of the Hidden", known only to those who know God, and adds that much knowledge cannot be spoken at all: these are the sciences of tasting. His verdict on the mind: "there is none more knowledgeable than the intellect, and none more ignorant", because it never stops receiving.
Chapter 198: The Breath of the All-Merciful
Chapter 198 covers eighty-one pages and describes the engendering of the universe through the Breath, with accounts of twenty-eight Names. Chittick admits it is not clear why it sits in the section on states.
Section 11: The Whole Affair
The whole affair is God and creation: Sheer Being (God), sheer nonexistence (the impossible) and sheer possibility (the world), each without beginning or end. Possibility lies between the other two; through the side that gazes on nonexistence it receives nonexistence, and through the side that gazes on Being it receives existence. It is darkness (nature) and light (the Breath).
The world is both carrier (form, body, active) and carried (meaning, spirit, passive). The Lord first shapes and balances each form, giving it readiness, then hands it to the All-Merciful, who turns His Breath toward it. What happens depends on the form's preparedness:
| Form | If it ignites | If it only moves | If neither |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elemental | Animal | Plant | Mineral or inanimate |
| Celestial (pillars, heavens) | Star | Moving sphere | Life not perceived by the senses |
| Spiritual (Throne, Footstool, spheres) | Stars, like pupils in a face | Spheres | |
| Intellective | Light of knowledge | Work | Carrier of both: the soul |
| Divine | The Intellect (made to carry all knowledge of engendered existence) and the First Man (shaped with two hands, made to carry the knowledge of the Names) | ||
In man the Breath reaches its end, because nothing is more perfect than the form of God. The world closes a circle and possible existence appears between light and darkness, spirit and nature, unseen and visible.
Section 46: Relying on the World
The "world" ('alam) is so called because it is a mark ('alama). Being is God Himself; the shifting forms that appear in it are marks of the immutable entities of possible things, written on Being like ink on parchment through the Name the Manifest. The world is therefore a reliable mark, not of God (who is independent of the worlds) but of itself, of the fixed meanings it displays. One can rely on that, whereas God is "each day upon some task" and one cannot rely on what one does not know. The perfect among God's folk change as the tasks change; their reliance is a divine one. Ibn 'Arabi marks this as knowledge withheld from the unworthy.
Chapter 558: The Most Beautiful Names
Chapter 558 covers 131 pages in 101 subsections: an introduction, one "Presence" for each of the ninety-nine Names, and a concluding "Presence of Presences". Chittick notes it is far longer than al-Ghazali's or Fakhr al-Din al-Razi's books on the Names. He translates the introduction and the first Presence, the Name Allah.
Which Words Count as Names?
The Most Beautiful Names are the Divine Presences sought and specified by the properties of possible things, which are the forms manifest in True Being. Ibn 'Arabi widens the field:
- Acts that God ascribes to Himself in verbs ("God deceived", "God mocks them") could yield active nouns, though He does not name Himself by them.
- Indirect expressions: in "shirts to protect you from the heat", He is the Protector and the shirt is His deputy.
- Pronouns and poverty: since people are "the poor toward Allah", everything toward which anyone is poor is a Name of God.
Still, out of courtesy (adab), he names God only as God names Himself and limits the chapter to one hundred Presences.
The Presence of the Name Allah
Allah is the one Name shared by nothing else and the Presence that comprehends all Presences; so no worshipper worships anything but this Presence. When someone cries "O Allah", look at the state that moved him: the specific Name tied to that state is the one he is really calling. Every other Name, because it derives from a root with a meaning, also signals some negation or affirmation, so none denotes the Essence with the same unity. Allah denotes the Essence by exact congruence, as a proper name denotes its bearer.
| Kind of Name | Examples |
|---|---|
| Names of Incomparability | Those that negate likeness |
| Affirmative Attributes of the Essence | Knower, Powerful, Willing, Hearing, Seeing, Living, Responder, Thankful |
| Descriptions (pure relations) | First and Last, Manifest and Nonmanifest |
| Acts | Creator, Provider, Author, Shaper |
Bewilderment, Worship, Incomparability
The states most proper to this Presence are bewilderment, worship and the profession of Incomparability. Ibn 'Arabi then tests every rational account of the Attributes and finds each fails:
- Attributes as real things added to the Essence make God imperfect in Himself.
- "Neither He nor other than He" is a contradiction that shows a lack of intelligence more than God's Incomparability.
- Attributes as nonexistent relations give nonexistence an effect in existence.
- Saying nothing makes reason idle.
- Calling everything illusion destroys the proof that would establish it.
Falling back on the Law does not help, since we accept the Law only through the intellect; reinterpreting it returns us to reason and we end up worshipping our own intellects. "Both intellectual and Law-inspired speculation lead to a single center, which is bewilderment." Worship, too, is bewildering: acts are negated of creatures and given to God, yet affirmed of them because commands require someone to address.
Part 3. At the End of Time: The Mahdi's Helpers (Morris, Chapter 366)
Chapter 366 looks like an apocalyptic text about a world ruler who will come at the end of time. Morris shows that Ibn 'Arabi uses it for something else: a portrait of nine spiritual capacities that the saints already possess, and a pointed critique of the jurists who turn the Law into a career. It is the most autobiographical and the most political selection in the volume.
How to Read This Chapter
The chapter belongs to the section of "waystations" (manazil). Morris stresses three things:
- The end of time is a stage, not only a date. The qualities the hadith ascribe to the Mahdi and his Helpers (or "Ministers", wuzara) are already realised by saints who have reached this stage. In a wider sense they describe the ongoing divine government of each human microcosm.
- Two themes run through it. First, divine communication and each person's very different receptivity to it. Second, the application of that communication to spiritual and communal life, which includes but goes far beyond the outward forms of Islamic law.
- It is written esoterically. Because his view of the authority of saints versus jurists was controversial, Ibn 'Arabi writes allusively, so different readers will see different aims and structures in the same text.
The Mahdi and His Helpers
Ibn 'Arabi summarises the tradition: God has a vicegerent who will come when the earth is full of injustice and fill it with justice; if only one day remained, God would lengthen it for him. He will revive Islam and manifest Religion as it really is, the Religion by which the Prophet would judge if he were present. He will abolish the different legal schools so that only the Pure Religion remains. His enemies will be those who blindly follow the jurists, because they will see him judging differently from their imams. They will accept him only grudgingly, out of fear and greed. Ordinary Muslims and most of the elite will rejoice, and the true knowers will pledge allegiance because God tells them who he is.
The Helpers carry the burdens of government. God has kept them hidden in His Unseen and shown them the divine Realities through unveiling, so the Mahdi consults them. They are all non-Arabs who speak only Arabic, with a guardian "not of their kind" who never disobeys God. Their constant prayer is the verse "The victorious support of the men of faith is obligatory for Us", which teaches them that sincerity (sidq) brings divine support. In Ibn 'Arabi's words, "true sincerity is God's sword on earth".
The Seal Above the Mahdi
The Mahdi is the most sincere person of his time; his Helpers are the guides and he is the rightly guided. But Ibn 'Arabi then places another figure above him: the Seal of Muhammadan Sainthood knows God best of all creatures in his time and after. "He and the Qur'an are brothers, just as the Mahdi and the sword are brothers." Morris points to this as one of several hints at Ibn 'Arabi's view of his own role.
A Personal Refusal
Ibn 'Arabi says he does not know how long the Mahdi will rule, because he has never asked God about temporal events. He feared that while asking about worldly happenings he would lose part of his awareness of God. He had seen Sufis trying to learn such things, especially the identity of the "Imam of the time", and was ashamed to join them. Instead he asked only for stability in a single kind of knowledge of God, while his inner states kept changing, and God granted it. When he asked how the divine Unity fits with the endless variety of theophanies, God "showed me my ignorance" and said: "Are you not content that you are like Me?!"
The Nine Capacities of the Helpers
The Helpers number one to nine (because the Prophet said the Mahdi would rule "five, seven, or nine years"), but their needed functions are always exactly nine. In the body of the chapter Ibn 'Arabi attributes them not to the Helpers but to the Imam, the saints or accomplished Sufis generally.
| # | Capacity | What it means in the chapter |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Penetrating vision | Praying "with inward vision": seeing what the addressed Name can grant before asking; seeing angels and jinn, the hidden "men of the Unseen", and recognising which meaning has taken bodily form |
| 2 | Understanding the divine address | Knowing the three modes of verse 42:51 (inspiration, behind a veil, by a messenger) and recognising a theophanic form as God's veil |
| 3 | Translating from God | Giving letters and words to divine speech; whoever speaks from his own knowledge is not a "translator" |
| 4 | Appointing holders of authority | Weighing each soul against each office; true knowledge always produces action |
| 5 | Mercy in anger | Anger only for God's sake, in prescribed penalties, which is always mixed with mercy |
| 6 | Sustenance for the ruler | Spiritual food (Qur'an recitation, then knowledge) and right allocation of material goods |
| 7 | Interpenetration of things | The "Scale" linking spirit and matter; judging by inspiration, avoiding analogy |
| 8 | Striving for others' needs | Leadership exists only for the subjects; the stories of Moses and Khadir |
| 9 | Knowledge of the Unseen for one's time | Foreknowledge of each day's "affair" so as to give thanks or intercede |
1. Penetrating Vision
Praying "with inward vision" means seeing the inner essence of the divine Name one prays to and asking for what it can grant, pleading where needed. Where God will not ordinarily respond, one asks Him to carry out His Argument (hujja). This is the immunity from error in prayer that the Prophet's hadith ascribes to the Mahdi, and Ibn 'Arabi says many or all saints attain it. It also includes seeing angels and jinn without their choosing to appear (as Ibn 'Abbas and 'A'isha saw Gabriel), perceiving the hidden "men of the Unseen", and knowing without hesitation which spiritual meaning has taken a given bodily form.
2. Understanding the Divine Address
Verse 42:51 names three ways God speaks to a human being, and Ibn 'Arabi gives each a precise test.
The test in each case is whether the message arrives as something given. Necessary knowledge that one finds in the heart is genuine knowledge, but not divine address. A messenger who expresses what he already knew is not conveying divine speech. The revealed Book is both messenger and veil over the Speaker.
3. Translating from God
Whoever receives inspiration or a delivered address becomes a translator: he creates the spoken or written letters, while their spirit is God's speech. Ibn 'Arabi contrasts the people of unveiling, who see for themselves that everything is alive and speaking, with the jurists who explain the Qur'an's "speaking" stones as a figure of speech (the "language of states") and are "veiled by the thickest of veils". His conclusion: there is nothing in the world but translator, when it translates divine speech.
4. Appointing the Holders of Authority
The Imam weighs each candidate's soul against the post. An overqualified person does no harm; an underqualified one will inevitably do injustice. Ignorance of the true reality of the Law is the root of all injustice in office. The jurists think a person can know a divine command and still go against it; Ibn 'Arabi holds that this never actually happens: real knowledge necessarily produces action, and knowledge that does not is not knowledge, whatever it looks like. Hence the Mahdi appoints judges whose knowledge also governs their prejudices.
5. Mercy in Anger
Anger for one's own sake contains no mercy. Anger for God's sake, in applying prescribed penalties, is God's anger, which is always mixed with mercy because His mercy came first and covers everything. The sign of a true holder of this station: once the penalty is carried out, his anger is gone. He may even embrace the condemned man and say "Praise be to God Who has purified you!"
From this he draws a wider rule: only the appointed judge may be angry with the transgressor. The Prophet as messenger only communicated; he was not responsible for who was guided. When he judged, he judged only because that judgment had been assigned to him. Ibn 'Arabi calls this "a sublime knowledge" needed by everyone with authority over this world.
6. Sustenance
The Imam's influence reaches the world of bodily forms and the souls that govern them, and jinn only if they wish. Angels have their known stations. The "travelling" angels seek out sessions of remembrance and feed on them, preferring those who recall the Qur'an. So the Imam keeps a group reciting day and night.
On material sustenance, Morris summarises: everything in the world is divine provision, and people are at most custodians. The Imam allocates goods by inspired judgment; the rest of us should follow the revealed Law and abstain from judging in other cases.
7. The Interpenetration of Things
Knowing how spirit and matter interpenetrate is the "Scale" of justice in both worlds; it frees the Imam from doubt. Every judgment made manifest through a Messenger is the fruit of a "spiritual marriage" that is not found in the texts or in those who reason by analogy. The Mahdi learns analogy only to avoid it. He judges by what the angel brings him, which is the true Muhammadan Shar': exactly what Muhammad would decide if the case came to him. Hence the hadith: "He follows in the trace of my footsteps, and he makes no mistake." He is a follower, not a new lawgiver.
Ibn 'Arabi then extends this to the sincere faqir: since the Prophet is present to the people of unveiling, such a person depends on no legal school and takes judgments from the Prophet directly.
8. Striving for the Needs of Others
The Imam was given precedence only to serve his subjects. A ruler busy with anything else has been cut off from true leadership and is no different from the common people. Morris summarises Ibn 'Arabi's lesson that the highest stages come while serving others in ordinary life, not while hunting for special powers. Two stories carry it:
- Moses found God in the burning bush while looking for fire to warm his family. Ibn 'Arabi calls the verse an admonition from God about the value of this virtue.
- Khadir, sent by his army commander to look for water, fell into the Fountain of Life and drank. When the army rushed to the place, God turned their sight away from it. His life was the fruit of striving for others.
9. Knowledge of the Unseen for One's Time
God is "every Day He is in an affair", and the Imam learns each day's affair before it happens. If it is good he gives thanks and stays silent; if it is an affliction he intercedes, and God may avert it. God shows him the individuals concerned and the judgment Muhammad would have applied. Where God shows no judgment, the case falls under what is permitted.
The Knowledge Given in This Stage
Each manzil chapter ends with a cryptic list of the kinds of knowledge it brings. Morris translates several from chapter 366:
- The knowledge of blissful repose ('ilm al-raha): a knowledge that lifts anguish from the soul, though the sight of what troubles people could make one want to die. It belongs to the people of the Garden; whoever receives it here has their eternal rest in advance, while still observing courtesy about commanding right and forbidding wrong.
- Seeing the world as beautiful: the knowledge of why some things look ugly to a person, and with which eye one sees the whole world as beautiful and responds with beautiful acts. It matches the theologians' saying "there is no Actor but God, and all of His Acts are beautiful". Such people call ugly only what God calls ugly.
- Wonder at the ordinary: for those who see from God's side, the habitual course of things is itself a marvel; the "people of habits" wonder only at exceptions.
- The hidden reporters: with every speaker or group there is a man of the Unseen who spreads what is said, so that others "discover" it in themselves.
- When to argue: argue only about what one has confirmed by unveiling, and in the better way, if commanded; if the listeners will never accept, keep silent, since arguing then only works toward their perdition.
Part 4. Lesser and Greater Resurrection (Morris)
The eschatology section is the heart of Morris's contribution. Its claim is simple and unsettling: the afterlife is not only later; it is the frame of this life now. Through passages from chapters 302, 351, 369 and three of the answers to Tirmidhi in chapter 73, Ibn 'Arabi treats death, resurrection, Garden, Fire and the vision of God as realities the saints can taste before dying.
Morris's Introduction: Three Levels of Reading
Morris begins from the Qur'an's own framing. The "other world" (al-akhira) is presented less as a later series of events than as the ever-present source and destination of life in the "nearer" world (al-dunya). Life, rightly seen, is a return to awareness of one's primordial reality; this is why faith in God and the Last Day always come together.
From Ibn 'Arabi's short Risalat al-Anwar Morris quotes a list of six "homelands" of the Perfect Man:
The last four homelands, Morris notes, make up by far the greater part of reality and possible experience. Ibn 'Arabi's systematic chapters on them (61-65 and the long 371) are only a preamble; the real working-out is scattered through the whole Futuhat, often in unexpected places.
| Level | What it means | Ibn 'Arabi's distinctive move |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Literal | The exact words of Qur'an and hadith | A "spiritual literalism": the exact wording is the fullest expression of the reality, so he reads Arabic and context closely and ignores later legends |
| 2. Microcosmic | Each person's experience of death and rising, voluntary (initiatic) or obligatory | The saints realise the "lesser death" and rebirth in this life |
| 3. Macrocosmic | Cosmological and metaphysical dimensions, in the science of his day | Often unclear whether a cycle of time is symbol or science; some ambiguity is deliberate |
Why is Ibn 'Arabi so reluctant to say this openly? Morris lists three possible reasons without choosing: honest ignorance about ultimate things, prudence toward orthodox opinion, or deliberate concealment of secrets reserved for the "quintessence of the elite". In any case, the resolution lies not in concepts or blind belief but in constant inner openness and practical effort, the mark of those who have "visited the graves".
Chapter 302: The Soul's Return
Before this passage Ibn 'Arabi argues that individual spirits are not produced by bodily constitution: spirits are distinguished by their own forms before joining bodies. So what happens to them after death?
He reports three views among "our fellows":
| View | Image | Consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Return without distinction | Water from broken jars rejoins the river; or sun rays leave a tarnished mirror | No individual survives |
| Return with acquired dispositions | The water keeps the colour, taste or smell it took on in the jar | Character survives (a view shared with some philosophers) |
| Continued governing in the barzakh | Like the form in which one sees oneself in a dream | Spirits govern imaginal bodies until raised in physical bodies |
Ibn 'Arabi does not say the third is right in so many words, but Morris notes that it matches his own constant descriptions of meeting prophets and saints in the imaginal world. Then comes the passage's real point, addressed to the reader as "my brother": the Garden that its people will reach is already visible today in its place, though not its form. "So you are in the Garden, transformed, in whatever state you happen to be, but you don't know you are in it".
- The people of unveiling see the Garden as a green meadow, often at the start of the path. The Prophet said that between his grave and his pulpit is one of the meadows of the Garden.
- They see the Nile, Euphrates, Sayhan and Jayhan as the Garden's rivers of honey, water, wine and milk.
- They see places of the Fire too, such as the valley of Muhassir at Mina, which is why the Prophet told pilgrims to hurry through it.
The veiled person "is like a blind man in a park: he is not at all absent from it, yet he does not see it."
Chapter 351: The Voluntary Death
This short, partly autobiographical passage is Morris's clearest key to the eschatology. Since "the whole affair is returned to Him", return willingly and you will not be returned by force. God meets you in the form of your own attributes, "so examine your self". The hadith says that whoever loves to meet God, God loves to meet.
Because meeting God comes through death, and because he knew death's inner meaning, Ibn 'Arabi says: we sought to bring it about sooner. "We died", to all concerns, activities and desires, and so met God within the Life that never leaves us. When ordinary death comes and the veil of the body lifts, nothing will change and certainty will not increase. He cites 'Ali: "Even if the veil were removed, I would not be any more certain."
The Reversal of the Planes
Ibn 'Arabi then describes the other world. There one controls the outward world as here one controls thoughts and imagination. Everything one owns is enjoyed in a single instant, and nothing is ever separated from its owner; one is among one's companions "through being desired". The other world is an abode of instant response, like passing thoughts here. The planes are reversed: there the inner self keeps a single fixed form (as the body does here), while the outer forms change rapidly (as thoughts do here). Yet after the transformation, nothing will have been added to what we were.
Chapter 369: Lesser Resurrection and Initiatic Death
Morris calls this one of the richest short passages in Ibn 'Arabi. It is a commentary on Sura 102 ("The proliferation of things distracted you, until you visited the graves"). The graves are ordinary unenlightened existence; the death is the transformed awareness of the self summed up in the hadith "he who knows his self knows his Lord".
The Text
The end of the whole affair is the return from the many to the One, for believer and polytheist alike. Everyone taken by death is in a state of unveiling at that moment and turns toward God and Unity. Whoever gains this certainty before the moment of death, through sound inquiry and clear unveiling, is sure of felicity. Whoever gains it only at death is subject to the divine Will; the outcome is still felicity, but after torments for sins.
God made two Resurrections. The lesser is the passage from this life to the barzakh in the imaginal body: "When someone dies, his Resurrection has already begun." Those of the People of Vision see their Lord, for the Prophet said no one sees God until he dies. The greater is the raising of all from their graves and the supreme Gathering.
Bodies are the coffins of spirits. Spirits see and are seen only by parting from these tombs, not by physical separation but by becoming oblivious (fana') to them. Then, witnessing themselves, they witness the One who gives them being.
The final step surprises: on being returned to the bodily tomb, the knower reaches not the first degree again but true certainty. Then every property stands in its proper rank, nothing is confused, and he knows the prophetic announcements did not mislead him.
Chapter 73, Question 62: The Presence of the Hour
Tirmidhi's questions were a test to separate real "verifiers" from pretenders: their answers can only be known by tasting and inspiration, not by reasoning. Questions 59-74 concern the Resurrection and Paradise.
Question 62 asks how the Hour can be like the twinkling of an eye or nearer. The Hour (sa'a) is so called because it hastens (tas'a) toward us through moments and breaths, not across distances. When someone dies his Hour has reached him, until the Greater Hour, which relates to these breath-hours as a year relates to its days and seasons. Its coming, its judgment, its execution and the peopling of Garden and Fire are one event.
Only someone who knows God's power as shown in Imagination grasps this nearness: how much can be found in one breath, how years fold into an instant.
Chapter 73, Question 67: The Beatific Vision of the Saints
Ibn 'Arabi distinguishes the Gardens that reward actions from the symbols of vision, which measure knowledge of God. Two hadith frame the discussion:
- The hadith of the Dune (or Market of Paradise): on a day matching Friday, the people of the Garden visit their Lord, who shows Himself in a meadow. Some sit on platforms of light and precious materials, the lower ones on dunes of musk and camphor, and those seated do not see that others have better seats. Asked if they will see their Lord, the Prophet answered yes, as surely as the sun and the full moon.
- The hadith of transformations: on the Day of Gathering God appears to the community in a form they do not know and says "I am your Lord". They deny Him until He appears in the form they expected. For Ibn 'Arabi, nearly everyone is in the position of these "hypocrites" except the true friends of God.
Vision Follows Belief
Ibn 'Arabi first ranks messengers, prophets with personal revealed paths, prophets who follow, and saints (followers, and those who lived in periods without revelation). Then he gives the principle: vision on the Day of the Visit follows one's beliefs in this world.
| Source of belief | How God is seen | Limit |
|---|---|---|
| Intellectual reflection (nazar) | In the form of one's conclusions | The veil of one's thinking cannot be lifted |
| Unveiling (kashf) | Directly | Pure vision, with the Messengers |
| Imitation of a prophet (taqlid) | In the form of one's prophet | The prophet's veil cannot be lifted |
| All three together | Three theophanies with three "eyes" at once | |
| The "true men" | With the eye of every belief | None |
The highest group are those who understand, for each person, why that person holds his belief: what led him to it and confirmed him in it. They therefore deny no creed and reap the fruit of every creed on the Day of the Visit. The principle beneath this: each person looks at God under the influence of one divine Name, which gives him his belief without his knowing. Since every Name's relation to God is sound, every belief's vision is sound, with no error in it. No one's gaze ever leaves God; most are simply veiled from the Real by the Real's own clarity.
Chapter 73, Question 71: The Imaginal Vision of Ordinary People
Morris notes four themes here: the necessary but ambivalent role of the 'ulama' as guardians of outward forms; the hierarchy of aptitudes; why revelation mostly speaks in images (tashbih); and the central role of imagination (khayal).
Ordinary people contemplate God to the extent they have understood what they took over from the learned, and some take in all their scholar knows while others take only what their own capacity allows. Natural dispositions differ by constitution, which also explains why scholars disagree on intellectual matters. The common people's share is imaginal: they cannot get beyond material forms in perceiving meanings, in this world, the barzakh or the next. Very few scholars can even conceive of total transcendence. That is why most of the Law was revealed for ordinary understanding, with allusions for the elect such as "There is nothing like Him". Each person's share in the vision of the Lord matches the extent and number of their beliefs.
Part 5. Towards Sainthood: States and Stations (Chittick)
Chittick's second section follows the inner path through eight chapters: servanthood and its "abandonment", freedom and its abandonment, unruly ecstatic utterances, withdrawal, gathering, the World of Imagination, God's signs, and worship. The common thread is a paradox: the highest station is the lowest one. The perfect human being is the pure servant who claims nothing, and because he claims nothing, the whole of Being can show itself through him.
How Stations Work in the Futuhat
Section II of the Futuhat discusses thirty-seven pairs of terms in seventy-four chapters, usually "The Station of X" followed by The Abandonment of the Station of X. Since saints are constantly transformed in this world and the next, no station is a permanent home, except perhaps variegation (talwin) and bewilderment. Is X a station of the saints? The answer, Chittick says, is always "yes and no".
Chapters 130-131: Servanthood and Its Abandonment
Servanthood
Servanthood ('ubudiyya) is among the highest Islamic attributes: Muhammad was first "His servant", then "His messenger". Ibn 'Arabi distinguishes servanthood, which grammatically ascribes the servant to someone, from servitude ('ubuda), which is pure and ascribed to no one. He quotes elsewhere: the highest station is that God preserve in His servant the contemplation of his servanthood, and only the Perfect Man has servanthood untainted by any lordship, just as only God has lordship untainted by servitude.
The station is one of lowliness and poverty, not a divine attribute. Ibn 'Arabi tells how Abu Yazid al-Bistami looked for a way to draw near to God and found that divinity was present in every attribute he might use. God answered him: "Gain proximity to Me through that which I do not possess: Lowliness and poverty". The word "servant" means "lowly"; Ibn 'Abbas explained "to serve Me" as "to know Me", because one is lowly only toward someone one knows to be mighty.
No one realised this station like the Prophet. When told to describe his rank on the Day of Resurrection he said "I am the lord of the children of Adam, without boasting", which Ibn 'Arabi reads as information for the benefit of his followers, not a boast.
Abandoning Servanthood
Who can abandon servanthood? Only someone who sees that the entities of possible things remain in their original nonexistence and are merely loci where God appears. Then no one has existence but God, and no one has effects but the entities, which by their nature impose limits on the Manifest.
The entities are like number: intelligible, with no existence, yet governing everything counted. Writing this, Ibn 'Arabi fell asleep and dreamed.
Number explains a Qur'anic puzzle. "God is the third of three" is unbelief, but saying God is the fourth of three is not: He is One for every group without being one of its kind. The possible things relate to the Manifest as knowledge and power relate to a knower.
Ibn 'Arabi calls this the most obscure question in theology. Everyone says possible things acquire nothing from God but existence, but few understand it. If existence is neither God nor the thing, it would be a third reality; since nothing exists eternally but God, the existence things "acquire" can only be God's Being, received according to their realities. The Names show their effects in the world "out of jealousy", lest those effects be credited to the entities. The issue resists words: "You did not throw when you threw, but God threw" negates, affirms and negates again.
| Who | Can servanthood be abandoned? |
|---|---|
| Elite knowers | Yes: seeing that only God exists, there is no servant left to be a servant |
| Those below them | Not inwardly: poverty remains, and poverty is lowliness, unless an ecstatic state takes them out of themselves |
| Through knowledge of acts | Yes, in respect of self-control: acts are God's creation, so He is commander and commanded |
| A group who hold that servants own acts | No: God has entrusted some acts to servants |
| Everyone | The servanthood of being a possible thing can never be abandoned |
Chapters 140-141: Freedom and Its Abandonment
Earlier Sufis treated freedom as the full realisation of servanthood: owned by nothing but God. Chittick quotes al-Sarraj, Bishr al-Hafi and Junayd ("The final station of the knower is freedom"). Ibn 'Arabi takes the idea to its root.
Freedom: A Station of the Essence
Ibn 'Arabi opens with a warning ("This is a chapter of danger") and a definition: freedom is a station of the Essence, not of the Divinity. As God (ilah), He is correlated with His vassals, as lord with servant or king with kingdom; correlation excludes freedom. Only the Essence, "Independent of the worlds", is free.
The servant can realise freedom only by seeing that his own entity is nonexistent. Then poverty vanishes and he is free "in the state of possessing nonexistence", like the freedom of the Essence in Being. But when the thing clings to its preparedness, by which it gives God a temporal name (Throne, angel, horse, Zayd), it is again a poor servant. So, Ibn 'Arabi concludes, we have no station in absolute freedom.
He adds that God is independent even of being denoted by the world. If the world existed to point to Him, the pointer would have a claim over the pointed-to. So signs point to His level (that there is no god but He), not to Him.
The "generality" of Sufis define freedom more simply: being enslaved by nothing but God. Yet everything in existence calls to such a person: "I am that toward which you are poor, so return to me." The knower sees that he is poor toward the divine Name active in each thing.
Abandoning Freedom
"The abandonment of freedom is pure and utter servitude." Its possessor is like the earth, trodden by the pious and the wicked and giving its benefits to believer and unbeliever alike. Like God answering prayers, he responds to the claims of things.
So "freedom" is talk of the ego and a passing state, while abandoning freedom is a divine attribute: God Himself asks for prayer and repentance and, in the hadith, would bring a people who sin and repent so that He might forgive them. God counts the not-free as greater in degree.
Chapter 195: Unruly Utterances
The "unruly utterances" (shath) are the ecstatic sayings that seem to break Law and reason, like Hallaj's "I am the Truth" and Abu Yazid's "Glory be to me". Chittick notes that al-Sarraj compared the word to a stream overflowing its banks.
Ibn 'Arabi defines an unruly utterance as a true claim about one's rank with God, made without divine command and by way of boasting. If commanded, the same words are a communication, as with the Prophet's "without boasting".
Unruly utterances are the slips of the Verifiers; the greatest saints never make them, because they cling to servanthood and contemplate only their Lord. Whoever does is veiled from what he was created for. Even if he has every power he claims, giving life and death, he has no special place with God; he acts like a laxative or a binding medicine, by the property of his state. Worse is the liar who works wonders through the properties of Names and letters and pretends it is sanctity.
Chapter 205: Withdrawal
Takhalli means emptying oneself, entering retreat. Ibn 'Arabi values retreat as a stage: it empties the heart of sensory images that the imagination has hoarded, so the soul can mirror the higher world. But "the retreat is only correct for him who is veiled".
His own twist: real withdrawal is not from the world to God but from the belief that our existence is real. Things never "acquire" existence; they become loci where God appears. When God says "Be!" to a nonexistent thing and it hears, its "being" is becoming a mazhar. He is identical to all things in manifestation, not in their essences: "He is He, and the things are the things."
The person in retreat cannot withdraw from forms (walls, door, mat, food). He has fled only people's speech. Yet if he understood speech as God places it in people, his knowledge would grow; a single prayer's "God hears him who praises Him" is God's own word. So for the one given understanding, retreat and society are the same, and society may be more beneficial, since in it he learns something new about God at every instant.
Chapter 222: Gathering and Its Mysteries
Ibn 'Arabi quotes earlier definitions of gathering (jam') and "gathering of gathering": Daqqaq's "what is negated from you", "the Act of God through you", annihilation in the waves of Reality, and a line of verse: gathered in Him, dispersed from myself, single in union, two in number.
| Term | Ibn 'Arabi's own definition |
|---|---|
| Gathering | Gather in Him the Names you had claimed for yourself, and in yourself the attributes He ascribed to Himself, so that you are you and He is He |
| Gathering of gathering | Gather in Him what is His and what is yours, and return all of it to Him |
| The deepest sense | Gather existence in Him, since He is existence; gather number and dispersion in the entities, since these are their preparednesses |
"There is nothing like Him" has many senses; the highest is that nothing in existence resembles God because nothing else is there. Manyness is only the relations of the entities' preparednesses within the One Being.
He then reinterprets each saying generously, judging Daqqaq by his known state. On "From Thee alone we seek help", he proposes a middle position on human action: the theologians who give acts to the servant alone and those who give them to God alone are both one-sided. The work is shared: the servant's entity colours the Manifest through its preparedness; God receives that effect and acts. It is the possible thing speaking with the tongue of the Manifest.
Chapter 311: The World of Imagination
A Boast About Servanthood
The night he wrote this chapter, Ibn 'Arabi dreamed joyfully and woke to compose a verse of boasting: "Every age has one person through whom it soars", and "For the rest of the age, I am that one". He explains: no one today has realised servanthood more than he, though someone may equal him; he is the pure servant who knows no taste of lordship, and he received this by divine designation, not by works. He recalls 'Utbat al-Ghulam strutting because God had become his master.
Three Presences
There are two worlds, the Unseen (perceived by insight) and the Visible (perceived by sight), and a third born from their combination: the World of Imagination, the manifestation of meanings in sensory frames. Examples: knowledge as milk, firmness in religion as a fetter, Islam as a pillar, faith as a handle, Gabriel as Dihya al-Kalbi or a Bedouin, or as a man to Mary. Just as black ink appears only when gall nuts and vitriol are combined, imagination is something new. It is the vastest presence, because it holds both worlds.
Humans are more at home in imagination than angels. We have an imaginal faculty; angels do not. We enter the Unseen through our spirit and the Visible through our body, while spiritual beings enter the Visible only by taking imaginal forms. Gabriel never appears among angels as Michael, but a human can appear as another human, or among angels as one of them. Common people meet imagination only in dreams; the elite see it awake.
This is not simiya', the magic of Names, letters and talismans. Food eaten by simiya' does not fill you; it exists only in your sight, like a dream. In this station, you eat and are full, and gold received stays gold. Ibn 'Arabi says he tasted it through the spirituality of Jesus at the start of his path, and that it explains the Prophet's saying that he could fast through the night because his Lord fed him and gave him drink. He also recounts a lover who, hearing a shaykh speak of love, melted into a small puddle of water on the mat: "Would that I knew where those parts went!"
The root of all this is the divine theophany in diverse forms (as in the hadith of God transforming Himself on the Day of Resurrection). Only the pure servant has the power of transmutation, and he may be so absorbed in servanthood that he does not even know he has it. "He who knows himself knows his Lord": God knows you from Himself, and you will know Him only from yourself.
Chapter 372: God's Signs
God is beautiful and loves beauty, and made the world in His form, so the world is beautiful in the extreme, with no ugliness in it; it is God's mirror. He multiplied signs so that we would gaze at them with every faculty. He is sought in every sign, gazed on by every eye, worshipped in every object of worship. The knowers try to separate Him from the world and fail; they try to identify Him with it and fail, so they say "He", "not He", and "He/not He". There is no wayfarer and no way, since the Goal travels with them.
Signs are ranked as the Names are ranked; this is why prophets loved wives and children and preferred one thing to another. A poem asks: "Who are Layla, Lubna? Who are Hind, Bathna? Who are Qays, Bishr? Are they all not He?" Even Khadir straightening the leaning wall becomes a figure of divine jealousy guarding a treasure of knowledge until its owner is ready.
Love Lives in Imagination
Everyone who loves something loves it after forming its image in imagination. That is why love does not end when the beloved is out of sight; the image keeps provoking the lover to seek her. So the lover really loves his own making. Those who love God "for Himself" love an image they formed: they are, in effect, people of Similarity, and without imagining they could not love Him at all. That is why the Law put Him in the qibla and in the heart.
| Position | Source | Strength | Weakness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Similarity (tashbih) | Faith, revelation, images | Makes love and worship possible | Binds God to an image |
| Incomparability (tanzih) | Reason, proofs | Protects transcendence | "Grasping at nothing", lovers of nothing |
| The Perfect | Faith whose light includes the intellect's | Agrees with both |
The perfect see like the sun, whose light includes the stars' light without cancelling it. Imagination does the same in its own domain: it makes the sensory subtle and the meaning gross. In Joseph's dream his brothers and parents, flesh and blood, became stars, sun and moon, and their honouring him became prostration. Whatever is in the middle governs both sides, as the present moment defines past and future.
Chapter 470: Worship and Its Secrets
Section VI describes "Muhammadan Poles", each the axis of a group or station, each with a constant invocation (hijjir). Chittick explains that a hijjir becomes real only when it fills every breath and the invoker is given "opening"; the greatest Poles have the Name Allah, which is why the supreme Pole is called 'Abd Allah. This chapter's Pole has the verse "I have not created jinn and mankind except to worship Me".
Ibn 'Arabi's argument: God is Being and things are its forms, connected like matter and form. When something arises only from two things together, each seeks the other, and seeking is a kind of lowliness, which is what worship means. God says "Call upon Me and I will answer", so everything is seeker and sought. Existence comes from two roots: power on God's side and reception on the side of the possible thing; neither is independent. The thing modestly credits God with giving it existence, and God rewards that by manifesting in its form.
Worship is inherent to created things; it needs no command. Since God decreed that only He be worshipped and that people are "the poor toward Allah", He must be identical with everything toward which there is poverty and which is worshipped, and also with the worshipper ("I am his hearing"). People differ only in what they see. The theologian's "not other than He" falls short because he imagines Attributes as something added; Ibn 'Arabi holds that nothing is added.
Part 6. "My Voyage Was Only in Myself": The Spiritual Ascension (Morris, Chapter 367)
The anthology ends with Ibn 'Arabi's own heavenly ascent, modelled step by step on the Prophet's Night Journey. He leaves a part of himself in each element, meets Adam, Jesus and John, Joseph, Idris, Aaron, Moses and Abraham, and arrives at the Lotus of the Limit, where a single verse gives him "all the Signs". The final line of the ascent is the book's thesis in one sentence: the journey was inward, and it ended in pure servanthood.
Morris's Introduction
The Qur'an's brief references to the Prophet's Night Journey (isra', 17:1) and the vision that crowned it (53:1-18) grew into a large later literature. Ibn 'Arabi prefers "nocturnal journey" because it is the Qur'an's term and because it fits the circular shape of the movement: out and back. For him the Ascension (mi'raj) is the archetype of the highest stages of every saint's inner journey, though each traveller experiences it differently.
Morris compares the reading challenge to Dante's Paradiso: one needs the Qur'an and hadith sources, the cosmology and astrology of the time, Ibn 'Arabi's metaphysics, and his view of each prophet's distinctive heritage (as in the Fusus). The text constantly alternates between God's eternal point of view and the traveller's personal experience.
| Narrative | Date and place (as given) | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Kitab al-Isra' | Fez, 594 | Earliest, longest, most personal; dense symbolic rhymed prose and poetry; intimate conversations with God; the whole later system already implicit |
| Risalat al-Anwar | Konya, 602 | Short, practical, for a fellow master guiding disciples; stresses preparation and the saint's return to the world |
| Futuhat, chapter 167 | "Alchemy of Happiness" | Objective cosmology; contrasts the follower of Muhammad with an archetypal man of reason |
| Futuhat, chapter 367 | This translation | Clearer expository prose; universal meaning; autobiographical climax |
The chapter's full title calls it the stage of the "Fifth Trust" (tawakkul), which no one among the people of realisation has found because so few are fit to receive it.
I. Why Travel at All?
God is "with you wherever you are": descending to the lowest heaven in the last third of the night, seated on the Throne, in the Cloud, nearer than the jugular vein. So God does not move a servant from place to place so that he can see God, but "so that He might cause him to see of His Signs". God says, in Ibn 'Arabi's paraphrase, that He made the Prophet journey to see signs, not to reach Him, since no place holds Him and only the heart of the believing servant encompasses Him.
II. The Prophet's Journey: Four Asides
Ibn 'Arabi quotes a long hadith of the Ascension and adds remarks. Morris highlights four:
- Tying up Buraq. The Prophet tied his celestial mount with the halter the earlier prophets had used, though it would have stayed anyway: an affirmation of the reality of secondary causes.
- Two places at once. In the first heaven the Prophet saw himself among the blessed at Adam's right hand while standing before Adam, and learned how a person can be in two places while remaining himself, like a body and its mirror image.
- Jesus, "our first master". Ibn 'Arabi says Jesus was his first master, through whose help he returned to God, and who never forgets him for an hour.
- The vision unchanged. Entering the divine Presence, the Prophet "saw exactly what he had known and nothing else": the form of his belief did not change.
He adds that the Prophet made thirty-four night journeys, only one of them in his body; the rest were in spirit, through vision. It was the claim of a bodily journey that provoked his contemporaries.
III. How the Saints Travel
The saints travel in the intermediate world, seeing meanings embodied in imaginal forms. The Prophet's body crossed real heavens; his heirs receive the same journey in meaning, not in sensory form. Some are made to travel in God, and this journey "dissolves" their composite nature.
- Dissolving. God takes the traveller through each world, composite and simple, and he leaves behind in each the part of himself that belongs to it, with a barrier so he no longer notices it, until he is alone with the divine mystery that links him to God. Then the veil lifts. Throughout, the servant is "God and not-God".
- Through the Names. Realising that he is made in the form of God, not merely as a part of the world, he travels through the Names and learns that God is what every Name designates. The Names are Names in God and "colourings" of states in us; there is no Name God gave Himself that He did not also give us.
- Reintegrating. He returns, collecting what he left in each world, now composed differently because of what he learned, until he "awakens among his people".
He adds a sharp point about symbols. Everyone makes up likenesses for God, and no one objects. The friends of God do not; they observe the likenesses God has made and see exactly what connects the symbol with what it symbolises.
IV. Ibn 'Arabi's Own Ascension
A. Leaving the Elements
God "removed me from my place and ascended with me on the Buraq of my contingency". Passing through earth, water, air and fire, Ibn 'Arabi left with each the matching part of his bodily nature, and entered the first heaven with nothing bodily left to depend on.
B. Adam: Both Hands Are Right Hands
Like the Prophet, he sees his own essential reality among the blessed at Adam's right while standing before him. Adam explains that the "people of the left" and "of the right" refer to Adam's hands; all humanity is in God's Right Hand, "because both of my Lord's Hands are Right and blessed".
Ibn 'Arabi notes the irony: ask anyone if they are content to bear the painful Names, and they will say no and wish them on someone else, which shows ignorance of creatures and of God.
C. Jesus and John
Jesus tells him that his power to revive the dead comes from Gabriel: "No one who revives the dead revives them except to the extent of what he has inherited from me". John (Yahya) answers questions about Qur'anic references to him and explains why he moves between heavens. Both are linked by the theme of life.
D. Joseph: The Stronger State
Joseph teaches a lesson about judging others: do not say If I were in his place I would not have said that. If what happened to him happened to you, you would say what he said, because the stronger state of direct experience controls the weaker state of imagining.
E. Idris: The Central Heaven
In the fourth heaven, that of the Sun and the heart of the cosmos, Idris greets him as "the Muhammadan inheritor". The exchange is among the densest in the book:
- Asked about miracles, Idris says that without them he would not have been raised to a lofty place, and that "the outer is a sign of the inner".
- He called his people only to the word of divine unity, not to unity itself, "for no one has ever denied" it.
- Views about God differ according to each person's constitution. Prophets agree because they speak from a shared direct relation, not from reasoning. And yet the matter is both as the prophets were told and as each person says, since "God is in accordance with the saying of everyone who speaks [of Him]".
On error: what is right is the unchanging principle; error is relative and arises from the clash of two points of view. Since the clash is inevitable, error is too, but whoever affirms error affirms the prior reality of what is right.
F. Aaron and John Again: Every Path Its Own
Arriving at Aaron's heaven, he finds John already there and asks how, since he did not see him on the way. John: "Each person has a path, that no one else but he travels." Where are these paths? "They come to be through the traveling itself."
G. Moses: Seeing Without Knowing
Ibn 'Arabi thanks Moses for sending Muhammad back to have the daily prayers reduced. Moses calls it a benefit of direct experience. On the burning bush, he says: "Man's striving for the sake of others is only a striving for his self, in the truth of things".
Then the central question: Moses asked to see God, yet the Prophet said no one sees his Lord until he dies. Moses: he fell down stunned, and saw God in his stunned state, that is, while dead; then he "awoke" and knew whom he had seen, which is why he said "I have returned to You". What set him apart? "I was seeing Him [all along], and yet I didn't use to know that it was Him!"
Moses adds that the mountain crushed flat and Moses stunned are the same theophany meeting different loci. His last advice: take knowledge from God, not from the world, and do not let prophets veil you from Him; prophets can give only what fits your preparedness, as God does. They were sent to call people to Him, not to themselves. With what did Moses hear God's speech? With his hearing. And what is his hearing? "He."
H. Abraham and the Temple of the Heart
Abraham explains his seemingly polytheistic words in Sura 6 as a test of his people. The essential moment comes at the heavenly Ka'ba, the Inhabited House: "suddenly there was my Heart", with the angels who enter it every day. God discloses Himself to the heart through seventy thousand veils of light and darkness, which shield the creaturely part from burning.
I. The Lotus of the Limit
At the Lotus Tree of the Limit, enveloped in the lights of good actions and filled with singing birds (the spirits of those who did them), its four rivers are four kinds of freely given knowledge. Ibn 'Arabi is enveloped in light "until all of me became Light" and given a robe of honour.
What He Saw There
Of some sixty-nine kinds of knowledge in this station, Morris translates a representative handful:
| Knowledge | Content |
|---|---|
| The Return | Man carries this world with him when he moves to the next |
| Circularity | God is actual only through the form of the creature, and the creature only through the form of God |
| Universal message | Every community has a messenger, and everything that exists belongs to some community |
| Universal mercy | "Do not despair of God's Mercy; surely God forgives the sins altogether" (39:53): all servants return to mercy |
| Worship | God is worshipped in every object of worship, behind the veil of form |
| Barzakh | The conditions of people in the intermediate world |
| This world as token | This world is a sign and likeness of the next, where everything is more complete |
Reading the Chapter as a Whole
First, the order of encounters is a curriculum. Adam teaches the scope of mercy and the dignity of the human being; Jesus and John teach life and its source; Joseph teaches humility in judging others; Idris teaches the relation of belief, reason and prophecy; Aaron corrects a partial mysticism that denies the world; Moses separates seeing from knowing; Abraham reveals the heart as the true Temple. Each lesson prepares the next, and by the Lotus Tree the traveller has been taught everything the culminating verse then gathers into one.
Second, the prophets keep sending him away from themselves. Moses says it outright: do not let us veil you from Him. The prophets function as teachers who refuse to become objects. This is the counterweight to the claim of the Muhammadan station: the traveller who gathers all the prophets finds that none of them wanted to be the goal.
Third, the descent is implied, not narrated. Section III describes the return in general terms: the saint reintegrates himself and awakens among his people, who mock or doubt him. Section IV stops at the summit and the list of what he saw. The reader is left to infer that the author, writing the chapter, is the returned traveller, speaking in the different language that section III predicted.
| Heaven | Prophet(s) | Lesson for the traveller |
|---|---|---|
| First | Adam | Both hands are right hands; mercy outlasts anger; man as the Perfect Man |
| Second | Jesus and John | Life and its source; inherited power never equals its giver's station |
| Third | Joseph | Do not judge words spoken in an experience you lack |
| Fourth (Sun) | Idris | The word of unity versus unity; prophets agree from a shared relation; creation never stops |
| Fifth | Aaron (with John) | Every path is made by walking; the world does not vanish for the perfect |
| Sixth | Moses | Seeing is not knowing; take from God, not from the prophets |
| Seventh | Abraham | The heart is the Inhabited House, veiled by seventy thousand veils |
| Beyond | Lotus of the Limit | All Signs in one Sign; the Muhammadan station; pure servanthood |
Part 7. What the Notes Add
The notes run to well over a hundred pages, close to two fifths of the volume. A reader who skips them misses the translators' running argument about how to read Ibn 'Arabi.
1. The Mahdi Chapter Hides Its Argument
Morris points out that more than a third of chapter 366 is plain quotation of hadith about the Mahdi and the Antichrist, which would give a casual reader no hint of the controversial material that follows. The traditional surface comes first; the critique of the jurists of the day comes after. The hadith Ibn 'Arabi chose all stress the Mahdi's resemblance to the Prophet in character, so that he follows in the Prophet's footsteps without error, guided by an unseen angel. Morris adds that Ibn 'Arabi's handling of law elsewhere is often more conciliatory than in this chapter.
2. Veil and Theophany Are One Thing Seen Twice
A recurring note: any phenomenon can be either a veil or a self-disclosure of the Real, depending on the inner state of the person who meets it. Ibn 'Arabi reads the root of kufr, usually "unbelief", as "covering up" the signs. In the Moses notes Morris makes the same point about the word "veil": it holds concealment and revelation together, and the difference lies in the viewer, not in the form. This is the hinge that links the Names part, the Resurrection part (vision according to belief) and Moses' "I was seeing Him all along".
3. "Necessary Knowledge" and Inspiration
The notes to the Mahdi chapter explain the "necessary sciences" as the universal premises of thought (logic, mathematics) that all humans share and cannot doubt, though they are rarely put into words. Ibn 'Arabi separates them from inspiration proper: discovering something inside yourself is not the same as the heart perceiving a speech delivered from a higher source. Inspiration is marked by its arrival from outside personal thinking.
4. Read the Qur'an, Not the Handbooks
Morris opens the Resurrection notes with a warning: there is no substitute for close reading of the Qur'anic passages in context. Hadith is harder still, because its meaning often lies in details of Arabic expression. Much of the secondary literature on Islamic eschatology, he says, can mislead non-specialists, who cannot tell the scriptural data from later narrative schemes built around them.
5. The Six Homelands
The note on Moses' word "dwelling" (mawtin) supplies the list Part 4 used. The homelands are practically endless but derive from six: the primordial covenant; this world; the barzakh, crossed after the lesser and greater deaths; the Resurrection on the earth of Awakening; the Garden and the Fire; and the Dune of Vision. The Dune of Vision is the dwelling that became present for Moses on Sinai. Morris links Moses' account to the saying "People are sleeping; when they die, they wake up" and to the injunction to die before you die.
6. Annihilation Is Not the Summit
On Aaron, Morris says Ibn 'Arabi is not denying the reality of annihilation (fana'), only judging its rank. The "knowers" who deny the world remain at an immature stage; the true heirs of the prophets stay aware of God's presence throughout the world. Annihilation has a necessary place on the path, which is why Moses must "die" on Sinai.
7. The Pure Servant
The last notes gloss "pure servant". All creatures are servants of God in a metaphysical sense, but few realise it. Ibn 'Arabi explains that anyone to whom another creature holds a claim is a less than pure servant to that extent, since the creature has power over him. In an autobiographical aside he says that since reaching this station he has not owned any living thing, not even the clothes he wears, and gives away or frees whatever comes into his possession at once. In chapter 311 he goes further and says he knows no one who has realised servanthood more fully than he has.
8. Why Most of the Law Speaks to the Common People
Chittick's notes to the Names section quote Ibn 'Arabi on the vision of God available to ordinary believers: their share is imaginal, since they cannot detach meanings from the forms that carry them, in this world, the barzakh or the next. Few scholars can even conceive of full detachment. That, he says, is why most of the revealed Law is phrased for the understanding of the common people, with allusions for the elect. Only one who is free of the veils of sense and imagination knows meanings bare, and even he still perceives the veils and gives them their place. This station belongs to the Perfect Men.
9. Adam Means Man, and Angels Learn From Him
The notes explain that "Adam", for Ibn 'Arabi, refers to the human being as such. Adam's mark was knowledge of the Names, hidden from the angels, who could not glorify God by those Names until they learned them from him. The angels are higher in plane, being made of light, but each reflects only some Names; man is more comprehensive, the locus where all Names appear. Hence God made him the angels' teacher. The same notes tie this to the Prophet's saying that he was given "the All-Comprehensive Words".
10. Realities Do Not Change
On the verse "Everything is perishing except His face", Chittick notes that Ibn 'Arabi often reads it as "except its face": the face of a thing is its reality, and realities do not change, still less perish. A third reading takes face as the human visage. The point fits the renewal of creation: forms change every instant while the fixed reality of each thing remains.
11. Courtesy With the Names
The notes record a rule: God is named only by Names He has given Himself, even where it is known He is denoted by another term. Elsewhere he reasons from the verse on human poverty toward God: in that verse God is named by everything toward which there is need. The highest saints, the Blameworthy (malamiyya), therefore respect secondary causes and follow the outward situation, unlike imperfect saints who skip over causes with miracles.
12. Beauty Calls for Awe
A passage in the notes on chapter 558 inverts the expected response. When God's Beauty, His cheerful openness toward us, discloses itself, we meet it with awe, because openness met with openness would lead to bad manners, and bad manners in the Presence bring expulsion. Majesty, His exaltation beyond us, is answered differently. The emotional economy of the path is courtesy before intimacy.
13. True Dreams as the Start of Revelation
The notes define an "Incident" as a true vision seen in sleep, in a state that suspends normal awareness, or awake. Such visions are counted the beginnings of revelation, citing the hadith that a true dream is one forty-sixth part of prophecy and A'isha's report that revelation began for the Prophet with dreams that came true like the break of dawn.
14. The Trust That Affirms Causes
On the "Fifth Trust" of chapter 367's title, Morris explains that this form of trust no longer ignores secondary causes but affirms them, seeing them as necessary manifestations of the ever-present Real. It corresponds to Ibn 'Arabi's preference for enlightened abiding in the world, the state of those who, like the Prophet, return from nearness to God and keep that insight while living among people. Ibn 'Arabi elsewhere says the levels of trust for the knowers number 487.
15. The Naive Questions Are a Device
Morris notes that Ibn 'Arabi's seemingly innocent questions to Idris about the Hour are almost certainly a literary device, since he treats these matters at length elsewhere. "People" in Idris's answer means ordinary people, as opposed to saints who are aware of the Hour's present reality. And "you", in the abode does not become near except through you, is plural: Idris means all humanity, finally the Perfect Man, who carries this world with him into the next.
16. Why Ibn 'Arabi Holds Back on the Return
In the Resurrection notes Morris observes that Ibn 'Arabi is relatively reluctant, compared with some other Sufis, to speak openly about the deeper dimensions of man's return. Ibn 'Arabi gives three reasons tied to a certain knowledge: it comes only by grace and inspiration, not reflection; whoever knows it knows all forms of knowledge; and anyone who revealed it publicly would be silenced or put to death for heresy. Morris suggests reading later, more open writers, such as the Persian Sufi 'Aziz al-Nasafi, for hints of what this might mean.
17. Hadith Judged by Unveiling
A striking note: Ibn 'Arabi says one hadith he cites is "sound" for the people of unveiling, even though transmission criticism doubts its reporters. He claims that saints can recognise by inspiration whether a report is authentic, even to the point of identifying the person who forged a spurious one. This is a second authority beside the isnad, and it explains both the appeal and the controversy of his method.
18. Avicenna, Ghazali and the Soul-Made Hereafter
The notes identify an allusion to Avicenna's eschatology, developed in writings by or attributed to al-Ghazali and given fullest form in Suhrawardi's philosophy. Ibn 'Arabi mentions Ghazali's theory that the plane of the other world originates from the soul. Morris sets Ibn 'Arabi's view apart: for him the next world is not merely a projection of the soul. Another note records that only one stage among chapters 270 to 383 is qualified at once by the presences of Muhammad, Moses and Jesus, which suggests the special universality of what it discusses.
19. God Is Hidden by Being Too Near
On a passage about the saint and ordinary believers, Morris notes the recurring theme of the divine Reality's obviousness, which escapes notice precisely because of God's excessive nearness, like water for fish or air for birds. Ibn 'Arabi writes in chapter 371 that the Real is the vision of the world and the Seer in the mirror of all contingent things. The ordinary believer sees that the saint shares his belief but not that the saint also realises the truth in other beliefs. The same chapter speaks of two visions of God for the people of the Fire.
20. Assuming the Traits of the Names
The sainthood notes trace the expression "assume the character traits of God", usually identified with the divine Names. Ibn 'Arabi defines Sufism this way. Realisation stands higher than assuming traits; the Pole is described by all the Names, both through assuming their traits and through realisation. Pride is defined as creatures making claims within the domain of lordship by saying "I". Ibn 'Arabi contrasts the claimer, who will be asked to prove his claims in the next world, with the one who acquits himself of acts by attributing them to God. God's jealousy is His response to the existence of an "other": He wants no connection between His servants and anything besides Him.
21. Giving Each Thing Its Right
The notes cite the hadith about giving each thing its right, which Ibn 'Arabi takes as the job description of the Perfect Men: they give each thing its due, as God gives each thing its creation. Every gift to a specific person, he says, comes from a specific Name, not from the all-comprehensive Name Allah; yet the Pole belongs always to that comprehensive Name, as "servant of Allah". In the Garden, where imagination rules, whatever the soul desires is given, so desire determines one's situation.
22. Bewilderment as Knowledge
The final sainthood note explains the station of bewilderment: the great knowers are bewildered because the Name "Allah" is the coincidence of opposites. Ibn 'Arabi expresses it through the verse "You did not throw when you threw, but God threw". The notes also list the Qur'anic verses that pair signs with remembering, reflecting, intelligence, faith, knowledge, hearing, certainty and understanding: each faculty has its own signs. Rational gazing is usually judged negatively, yet the Law itself commands it in certain verses.
23. The Problem Is Not Corruption but Depth
Morris clarifies what Ibn 'Arabi criticises in the jurists. It is not mainly fraud or moral failing, though those appear. It is the humanly unavoidable fact that applying the sources justly requires a grasp of their contexts and intentions, and of each case, that only the rarest people have: those whose actions are divinely inspired and protected from error. The truly qualified "authorities" in any age, whether or not they rule outwardly, are the saints; the Arabic for "saints" and "authority" share a root. Ibn 'Arabi also distinguishes two kinds of guardians: those who preserve the outward forms of the Prophet's judgments and those who preserve his states and secrets. Both are needed.
24. Ijtihad for Everyone Qualified
In chapter 69 on ritual prayer, the notes report, Ibn 'Arabi stresses the diversity of hadith on details of practice and attacks jurists who deny independent judgment (ijtihad) to others while requiring everyone to follow their own school. His ironic line: on the Day of Resurrection the first to disown them will be their own Imam. For him the duty of ijtihad stands for every believer qualified to interpret the sources, based on the verse that God has placed no constriction on people in religion.
25. Religion of God, Religions of Men
The notes on "the Religion of God" and "the Pure Religion" say that all of Ibn 'Arabi's works can be seen as an extended commentary on one distinction: the eternal divine reality that is the source of the prophets' message, versus the many religions of men. His own decisive realisation of this is the culminating revelation of chapter 367.
26. Freedom From Constriction
A note on the Mahdi's knowledge glosses haraj as the inner state of constraint and anxiety that underlies much everyday activity, often unnoticed. The Qur'an says there is no such constriction in religion; distress is a sign of going astray, removed from those God guides and who surrender to Him. The hidden saints show the opposite of distress: extraordinary devotion to ordinary duties, with Khadir as their archetype.
27. Death as Awareness
On chapter 369, Morris states Ibn 'Arabi's essential point: the true reality of death, the lesser resurrection, is a theophanic awareness of God's presence within oneself and throughout being, the perpetually renewed creation. The "people of vision" are both accomplished saints and those who enjoy the beatific vision in the next world, since the saints' experiences prefigure it. Another note suggests the lesser and greater resurrections may not be sequential at all but aspects of a single whole.
28. The Ascension Notes: Sources and Comparisons
The notes to chapter 367 are the longest in the volume. They record that the first European translation of one of the related ascension texts was by M. Asin Palacios in El Islam Cristianizado (Madrid, 1931). They explain that the Fifth Trust is a trust that affirms causes, and that the Qur'an's "There is nothing like His likeness" holds immanence and transcendence together; Ibn 'Arabi often reads "His likeness" as the Perfect Man, created in the image of the Merciful. They gloss the reciprocity behind his paradoxical statements that God and the Names "need" man in order to be manifest and known, and that the caused thing "causes its Cause". They note that the Prophet, unlike Moses after Sinai, showed no outward signs of his ascent, which marks a more perfect realisation shared by the hidden saints who return. And they record roughly 48 Qur'anic references to the Hour, which makes Ibn 'Arabi's innocent-sounding questions to Idris a deliberate device.
29. The Book Behind the Book
Read end to end, the notes keep reminding the reader how much the volume rests on. Morris and Chodkiewicz list four large fields a translator must command (the religious sciences, the intellectual sciences, Sufism and Arabic literature), and one note records that a French scholar needed about sixty pages of commentary for roughly one page of Arabic on the science of letters. The title itself carries a double sense: fath is a sudden opening or illumination and also the word used for the Prophet's taking of Mecca. The notes report that the Futuhat survives in very early manuscripts, including an autograph of the second redaction, and that one variant of the first redaction praises 'Ali in terms with a Shi'ite leaning. They also set the genuine works against a ring of apocrypha, and they treat Ibn 'Arabi's own collection of divine sayings, the Mishkat al-Anwar, as a core reference.
30. A Living, Speaking World
Chittick's notes press the claim that "Everything other than God is alive" much further than the main text does. The examples come from hadith: a stone in Mecca that greeted the Prophet, a poisoned shoulder of meat that spoke, a palm stump that moaned when he stopped leaning on it. The same notes call the basmala God's mark on each sura, like a sultan's seal on a decree, and sum up the cosmology of the Breath in one line: "The whole world is a letter which has come to express a meaning." The twenty-eight letters of Arabic each answer to a Name, and Names combine into things as letters combine into words. A later note gives the second half of the picture: man is a transcription of his Lord and also of the world, letter by letter.
31. Renewal That Never Repeats
The notes tie the doctrine of new creation at every breath to God's boundlessness, "which demands that nothing be repeated in existence". Several connections follow. The phrase kharq al-'ada, "breaking of custom", the usual term for a miracle, is turned around: for the knower the real marvel is the custom itself, a world recreated at each instant. The heart (qalb) takes its name from taqallub, constant turning, and the Sufi word for changing states, talwinat, "colourings", names the same flux from the inside. The seventy thousand angels who enter the Inhabited House each day and never return, and the seventy thousand veils of light and darkness, are read together as figures for theophanies that never repeat. Cosmologically, the same angels enter by the door where the stars rise and leave by the door where they set.
32. Error as Missing the Target
A short note on the Idris dialogue changes how the whole section reads. The two Qur'anic words for right and wrong, sawab and khata', first mean hitting and missing a target. The focus is on the person judging, not on an abstract relation between propositions, and khata' also carries the sense of trespass. Because only Being truly is, error is relative and accidental, close to nonexistence. Read this way, Idris's teaching that each school is right from its own standpoint is not relativism. It is a claim about how far each archer's arrow reached.
33. The Acts and the Limits of Debate
On the old quarrel between Ash'arites and Mu'tazilites over who performs human acts, the notes quote Ibn 'Arabi: "There is no problem related to the knowledge of God within which bewilderment [hayra] is greater and more tremendous than the problem of the acts". The truth lies between the parties, and the dispute never ends because each side has been fixed in its belief by God. On the Essence, a further line closes off even the language of transcendence: "If He were to be delimited by His Nondelimitation, He would not be He". The notes also offer an analogy for the status of entities: one can count ten apples but never find "ten" among them.
34. Nature, Soul and the Few
A dense note maps the soul between two parents. The Greatest Nature, identified with the Breath and the Cloud, is luminous; its daughter, the shadow of the Universal Soul, is dark and maternal. The rational soul is a barzakh between the light of the father and the nature of the mother, and the note quotes the sober conclusion: "Few are the people whose souls rule over their natures and constitutions". Another note distinguishes fitra, the single primordial nature identical in all, from fitar, the plural individual constitutions. Idris's word "constitution" (mizaj) is likewise widened to every factor, social as well as physical, that shapes a person's outlook.
35. Women Among the Men
The term rijal, "men", used for the spiritual elite, is explicitly opened by a note citing chapter 73: "there is no attribute which the [spiritual] men have but that women also share in it".
36. The Market, the Dune and Hell's Dwellings
The eschatology notes add images the main text only touches. The Market of the Garden sells nothing but forms of men and women, into which the blessed can enter. Everyone, including the people of Gehenna, has a place on the Dune on the Day of the Visit, and each goes home thinking himself among the saints because he saw God in the form he expected. Most of mankind then return from the Dune to sensual gardens or to their level in Hell. Morris explains that a person's dwelling in Hell is made by an exclusive attachment to some limited enjoyment that veils him from God; when the veil lifts, he sees that what he called happiness was also his suffering and a purifying punishment. Elsewhere the notes record a hadith in which God first appears to the community in an unfamiliar form, and the hypocrites fail to recognise Him until He takes the form they already knew.
| Mount or site | Literal sense in hadith | Reading in the notes |
|---|---|---|
| Buraq | Steed of the night journey | A mount from the barzakh; for Ibn 'Arabi, his own contingency (imkan), which both separates him from God and makes the journey possible |
| Inhabited House | Celestial temple with Abraham, 70,000 angels daily | The heart of the knower; the angels are never-repeated theophanies |
| Lotus of the Limit | Tree where Gabriel stops | "Form of Man", Tree of the World; boundary of what descends and ascends; threshold of Paradise |
| Four rivers | Two inner (Paradise), two outer (Nile, Euphrates) | Kinds of wisdom; or one great River, the Qur'an, with Torah, Psalms and Gospel flowing from it |
| Rafraf | Green couch covering the horizon | Vehicle beyond the Lotus; in Shajarat al-Kawn the fifth of seven mounts, a carpet of green light linked to Compassion |
| Robe of honour | Royal garment | Echo of the Sufi khirqa; sign of the Muhammadan Station |
37. Prophets in the Spheres, Read Through the Notes
The comparison notes show that each heaven of chapter 367 is one of several treatments. In chapter 167 Joseph's sphere is Venus and concerns beauty and artistic inspiration; Aaron's sphere elsewhere carries the martial qualities of Mars or Ibn 'Arabi's controversial reading of Pharaoh's faith. Idris gathers many faces: Enoch, Elias, the threefold Hermes and even Khadir. In the Fusus, Enoch stands for transcendence and Elias, sent back down to know the lowest creatures, for immanence; Idris is the heavenly Pole, with Jesus and Ilyas as his two Imams, and he greets Ibn 'Arabi as "Master of the Saints". The notes record that Ibn 'Arabi's first shaykh was an "'Isawi", that he says he repented at the hands of Jesus, and that in the Kitab al-Isra' Jesus appears as Seal of universal sainthood descending with the Mahdi.
38. Two Kinds of Travellers and the Owner of Nothing
The notes on the House of Abraham contrast those who work toward perfection step by step, drawn by love, with the rarer ones who are suddenly pulled (majdhub) by divine preference, as Ibn 'Arabi counts himself. In the Kitab al-Isra', Moses sets the 'arif who parades his discoveries against the heir who conceals his secrets and lives outwardly like ordinary people. The last notes give the concrete side of "pure servanthood". In chapter 29 Ibn 'Arabi explains that any creature with a claim on a servant holds power over him, and he says that since reaching this station he has owned no living thing, not even his clothes, and disposes of anything at once. In chapter 311 he goes further: "I am the pure, absolute servant who does not know [even the slightest] taste of Lordship". The final note points out that the sixty-nine kinds of knowledge at the end of chapter 367 are each introduced by "I saw in it", a device unique among the chapters on the stations, and that the chapter title's "God is enough for me" returns at the summit as a statement of trust.
Part 8. Synthesis
The application sections are the editor's, offered as analogies rather than claims about what Ibn 'Arabi meant.
Thirty Takeaways
Frameworks Table
| Framework | Where | Elements | Use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Four objects of knowledge | Part 2, ch.6 | The Real; the cosmos; the Perfect Man; the Breath | Map what any inquiry is actually about |
| Incomparability and similarity | Part 2, Part 5 | Reason affirms distance; revelation adds nearness; the knower holds both | Avoid single-lens accounts of anything |
| Three modes of divine address | Part 3, ch.366 | Direct inspiration of the heart; speech from behind a veil; a sent messenger | Grade sources by how directly they reach you |
| Nine capacities of the Helpers | Part 3, ch.366 | Penetrating vision, understanding divine address, translating from God, mercy in anger, and five others | A competence model for those who guide |
| Six homelands | Part 4, Part 7 | Covenant, this world, barzakh, Resurrection, Garden and Fire, Dune of Vision | Locate any experience on a journey |
| Three certainties | Part 4, ch.369 | Knowledge, eye, truth of certainty | Distinguish knowing about, seeing, and being |
| States versus stations | Part 5 | Passing gifts versus acquired, lasting traits | Separate peak moments from durable growth |
| Three presences | Part 5, ch.311 | The Unseen (insight), the Visible (sight), and Imagination joining them | Ask where a claim comes from |
| Circular ascent | Part 6, ch.367 | Dissolve, Names, reintegrate, return | Model of learning that ends in service |
| Veil and disclosure | Parts 2, 4, 6, 7 | The same form conceals or reveals depending on the viewer | Look at the observer, not only the object |
A closer look
Strengths
- Coverage and balance. In one volume the reader gets metaphysics, prophecy and law, eschatology, the path, and autobiography. The selections are well chosen to show that these are one system.
- Honest scaffolding. The bridges mark where text has been omitted, and the notes refer back to the Arabic edition by volume, page and line. A reader can check.
- Two complementary translators. Chittick's technical precision and Morris's structural readings correct each other's blind spots.
- Morris on method. His remarks on rhetorical structure (the Mahdi chapter's traditional surface) and on reading eschatology from the Qur'an rather than handbooks are useful far beyond this book.
Weaknesses and Open Questions
- Fragmentation. An anthology of a 560-chapter work cannot fully show how the pieces fit together. The reader sees peaks without the valleys that connect them.
- Note weight. Notes are almost two thirds the length of the text. They are excellent, but the volume can feel like a scholarly apparatus with a book attached.
- Self-authorising claims. Ibn 'Arabi grounds his authority in unveiling and in his status as Seal of Muhammadan sainthood, and advises not to explain method. The translators report this; they do not test it. A reader outside the tradition has no way to verify the source of the claims and must judge them by coherence and fruit.
- Universal mercy. The claims that punishment ends and that all return to mercy are defended from Qur'anic verses and visions, but the counter-verses on eternal punishment receive less space in the selections than the theme deserves.
- The jurists. Chapter 366's critique of the jurists of his day is sharp; Morris himself notes Ibn 'Arabi was more conciliatory elsewhere. Read alone, the chapter can give a lopsided picture.
- Unity of being. Morris warns against reducing the final vision to either unity of being or unity of witnessing; still, much of the text supports readings Ibn 'Arabi's critics found troubling, and the volume does not present those critics.
- Uneven access. Morris repeatedly sends the reader to French translations, the Fusus and specialist articles. A reader without those resources will meet many allusions left open.
- Authority of hadith. Ibn 'Arabi accepts some reports because unveiling confirms them, even where transmission critics doubt them. The notes report this frankly, but it means parts of the edifice rest on sources the wider scholarly tradition would not accept.
What the Book Does Better Than Most
Few texts treat the inner life with such structural precision. Ibn 'Arabi does not settle for describing experience; he places it on maps: four objects of knowledge, six homelands, three certainties, nine capacities, a circular journey. Whatever one makes of their source, the maps are testable for coherence, and they travel. That is why the applications below are possible at all.
Open Questions for the Reader
- If vision always takes the form of belief, what could count as evidence that one belief sees more than another? Ibn 'Arabi's answer is comprehensiveness: the knower sees the truth in every belief. Is that a criterion or a description of a result?
- Can the claim that mercy outlasts wrath be held without weakening the seriousness of moral limits? Adam's answer is that the limits must be fully established first.
- Does the advice to tell what you saw but not how protect the community or the teacher? The text suggests both.
- Is the critique of the jurists a critique of law as such, or of a particular institutional moment? Morris's notes point to the second.
Who's Who
Only dates printed in the volume are given. Where the book gives none, none appears.
| Person | Dates in the book | Role here |
|---|---|---|
| Ibn al-'Arabi | Born Murcia 560/1165; in Mecca 598/1202; died Damascus 638/1240 (November 9, 1240) | Author; the "Greatest Master"; claims the Seal of Muhammadan sainthood |
| The Futuhat | First version finished 629/1231; revision 632/1233 to 636/1238 | The work anthologised |
| Michel Chodkiewicz | None given | Editor of the anthology |
| William C. Chittick | None given | Translator of Names and Sainthood sections |
| James W. Morris | None given | Translator of preface, introduction, Mahdi, Resurrection, Ascension sections |
| Ibn Barrajan | Died 536/1141 | Earlier author cited in the notes |
| Sahl al-Tustari | Died 283/896 | Early Sufi master cited |
| Al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi | Died after 295/902 | Posed the questions answered in chapter 73 |
| Abu Nasr al-Sarraj | Died 378/988-89 | Early Sufi author cited |
| Sa'id al-Din Farghani | Died circa 700/1300 | Later commentator in the school |
| Abu Yazid al-Bistami | Died 261/874 | Early master Ibn 'Arabi quotes most often |
| 'Abdallah ibn 'Abbas | Died 68/687-88 | Companion; read "worship" as knowledge |
| Abd al-Karim Jili | None given | Commentator on the Risalat al-Anwar |
| Al-Junayd | None given | Credited with a saying on God being now as He was |
| Abu al-'Abbas al-'Uraybi | None given | Ibn 'Arabi's early master, mentioned in the Mahdi notes |
| Prophets of the Ascension | Not applicable | Adam, Jesus, John, Joseph, Idris, Aaron, Moses, Abraham, Muhammad |
Part 9. Study Guide: Misreadings, Contrasts and Questions
The anthology is easy to misread, partly because its vocabulary sounds familiar and partly because extracts lose the context that would correct a first impression. This part lists the common misreadings the book itself warns against, sets out the paired concepts that organise it, and closes with questions and model answers drawn from the text.
Ten Misreadings and Their Corrections
| Misreading | What the book actually says |
|---|---|
| The ascent is a journey to God | God is with you wherever you are; the journey is to see His Signs, and every station is a place of the heart |
| The Mahdi chapter is about a future ruler | Morris shows it is a portrait of capacities saints already have and a critique of jurists of the day |
| Resurrection lies only in the future | There is a lesser resurrection now; saints taste the greater in this life |
| Annihilation in God is the goal | It is a stage; the perfect return and see the world as God's self-disclosure |
| Ibn 'Arabi rejects the Law | He keeps the Law strictly; he rejects jurists who treat their opinions as the Law |
| Everything is God, so distinctions do not matter | The servant is "God and not-God"; the Names keep their oppositions; the summit is servanthood, not lordship |
| Vision of God is the same for all | Each sees according to belief and preparedness; the form of belief shapes what is recognised |
| Miracles mark the highest saints | The highest, the Blameworthy, respect ordinary causes and stay hidden |
| Hell is eternal punishment for some | Adam teaches that wrath ends once limits are established, and mercy governs; the dwellings differ but happiness lasts |
| Reason is worthless | Reason supplies half the knowledge of God, incomparability; revelation adds similarity; unveiling holds both |
Paired Concepts
The book thinks in pairs. Most of its arguments consist of holding two terms together where others choose one.
| Pair | Error of choosing only the first | Error of choosing only the second |
|---|---|---|
| State / station | Chasing experiences without lasting change | Discipline without living taste |
| Law / unveiling | Legalism; opinion mistaken for revelation | Claimed inspiration that discards the Law |
| Reason / revelation | A remote God of negations | An all-too-human God |
| Mercy / wrath | Indifference to limits | A God defined by punishment |
| Seeing / knowing | Exposure without recognition | Theory with no encounter |
Questions With Model Answers
Part 1
Q. Why does Morris insist the Futuhat is not a philosophical treatise? Because Ibn 'Arabi presents it as knowledge opened to him, built around the Qur'an and hadith rather than derived by argument. Treating it as a system to be judged only by logic misses its claim and its method, which is to keep returning to scripture from different angles.
Q. What do the creeds at the start of the work show? That belief comes in levels: the creed of the common people, of rational inquirers, and of the elite verifiers, while the highest creed is scattered through the book on purpose, because most minds are not ready for it. Ibn 'Arabi even decided against opening with a creed backed by proofs, since it would distract the prepared seeker.
Part 2
Q. How can the Names be many if God is one? The Names are relations between the one Essence and the cosmos, not separate entities. Their multiplicity belongs to the relations, while what they designate is one.
Q. What does the Breath of the All-Merciful explain? How forms receive existence. The Lord first shapes and balances each form, giving it readiness; the All-Merciful then turns His Breath toward it, and what results depends on that form's preparedness. Seen through the Breath, the world is nothing but God; seen as shaped forms, it is creatures.
Part 3
Q. Why is the Mahdi chapter "political"? Because it uses an end-time theme to criticise jurists who confuse their opinions with the Law and turn religion into a career, and to describe the kind of inspired understanding that could correct them.
Q. Name three of the nine capacities. Penetrating vision; understanding the divine address; mercy in anger. Others include translating from God and knowledge of the Unseen for one's time.
Part 4
Q. What is the lesser resurrection? Death and the experiences that follow it, which in Ibn 'Arabi's teaching can also be tasted by the saints before physical death; it contrasts with the greater resurrection of all humanity.
Q. Why do people see God differently in the next world? Because each sees according to the form of belief brought from this world; the One seen does not change, but recognition does.
Part 5
Q. How does a state differ from a station? A state is a passing gift; a station is acquired and kept. The highest attainment, in Chittick's selections, goes beyond particular stations.
Q. What is the claim of chapter 311 about servanthood? That Ibn 'Arabi has reached the furthest limit of servanthood, knowing no taste of lordship, and knows no one who has gone further.
Part 6
Q. What happens to the parts of the traveller on the ascent? He leaves each part in the world it belongs to, with a barrier so he no longer notices it, until he is alone with the divine aspect; on return he collects them, composed anew by what he learned.
Q. What is the point of Moses' story of the stranger? That one can see someone without recognising them; only knowledge can be relied on, and the dead who see God may still be veiled from knowing it is He.
Q. What does the verse at the Lotus Tree give him? Qur'an 3:84, faith in all the prophets without distinction; in it he receives all Signs, learns he is the totality of those prophets, and gains the Muhammadan station.
Part 7
Q. Why does the order of material in chapter 366 matter? Its long traditional opening gives no hint of the controversy that follows; Ibn 'Arabi moves from accepted to contested ground, and the arrangement is part of the teaching.
Q. Why are the highest saints hidden? They respect causes, avoid displays and, like the Prophet after his ascent, show no outward sign of their realisation.
Five Close Readings
These short commentaries model how to read a dense passage: identify the claim, the scriptural anchor, the pair being held together, and the practical consequence.
1. "So that He might cause him to see of His Signs" (chapter 367, section I)
Claim: the journey does not reach God, since He is already with the traveller. Anchor: Qur'an 17:1 and 57:4. Pair: God's presence everywhere and the traveller's experience of movement. Consequence: spiritual effort is reframed. One does not strive to arrive; one strives to become able to see. That changes how failure is understood: the absence of vision is not distance but unreadiness.
2. Adam's two right hands (chapter 367, IV-B)
Claim: all humanity is in God's Right Hand, and suffering is limited. Anchor: the hadith that both of God's Hands are right and blessed; Qur'an 7:156 on mercy encompassing all things; 70:4 on the Day of fifty thousand years. Pair: limits and mercy. Consequence: the Law's penalties are real and must be established, yet they serve a mercy that outlasts them. Ibn 'Arabi frames this as good news received in this life, not a licence.
3. "Each person has a path" (chapter 367, IV-F)
Claim: paths do not exist before they are walked. Anchor: the meeting with John at Aaron's heaven. Pair: a shared destination and unique routes. Consequence: comparison between travellers is misplaced. John reached Aaron before Ibn 'Arabi by a path Ibn 'Arabi never saw. Guidance can describe stages, but cannot pave one person's road for another.
4. Moses and the stranger (chapter 367, IV-G)
Claim: seeing is not knowing. Anchor: Qur'an 7:143 and 83:15. Pair: vision and recognition. Consequence: the decisive change is in knowledge, not in exposure. The text concludes that Knowledge is God's Essence, since knowledge alone can be relied on; whatever we rely on must ultimately be Him.
5. "My voyage was only in myself" (chapter 367, IV-I)
Claim: the whole ascent took place within the self and ended in servanthood. Anchor: Qur'an 3:84 and the Muhammadan station. Pair: comprehensiveness and servanthood: he finds himself the totality of the prophets and, in the same moment, a pure servant without lordship. Consequence: the highest realisation is not self-inflation. The more the self contains, the less it claims. Morris's note warns against reading this union as identity of essence.
Study path for a short week
- Day one: Argument Map and Ten Ideas in Brief (front), then Morris's introduction notes on method.
- Day two: Names (chapter 6 origin; chapter 198 Breath; chapter 558 Names).
- Day three: Mahdi Helpers nine capacities; then Resurrection lesser death.
- Day four: Sainthood stations (servanthood, freedom, imagination).
- Day five: Ascension IV through the Lotus; close with "my voyage was only in myself."
- Day six: Notes part, items that correct misreadings; A closer look.
It does not add outside lectures or secondary books.
Glossary
Arabic terms as the translators use them, with the sense they carry in this volume. Transliteration is simplified.
| Term | Meaning in this book |
|---|---|
| Fitra / fitar | Primordial nature, one and the same in all; plural fitar, the individual constitutions that differ |
| Majdhub | One pulled suddenly by God into the highest stages, as against one who works gradually |
| Rafraf | Green couch or carpet of light, vehicle beyond the Lotus of the Limit |
| Sa'aqa | Being thunderstruck; extinction of the ego in the self-disclosure of Lordship (Moses on Sinai) |
| Sawab / khata' | Hitting and missing the mark; right and error judged from the standpoint of the one judging |
| Talwinat | Colourings: the ever-changing states of the soul |
| 'Abd mahd | Pure servant: one over whom no creature holds a claim, wholly devoted to God; the peak of servanthood |
| Akhira | The other or next world; distinguished from this world, Idris says, only "through you" |
| 'Alam al-mithal / khayal | World of likeness, imagination: where meanings take sensory form |
| Asbab | Secondary causes; affirmed by the Prophet's tying of Buraq |
| Awliya' (sing. wali) | Friends of God, saints; heirs of the prophets |
| 'Ayn | Entity, essence, eye; a thing's fixed reality in God's knowledge |
| Barzakh | Isthmus, intermediate world between death and resurrection, and any in-between that joins two things |
| Buraq | The Prophet's celestial mount; for Ibn 'Arabi, "the Buraq of my contingency" |
| Dawr | Circularity: God is actual only through the creature's form and the creature through God's |
| Dhawq | Tasting, direct experience; known only to the one who has it |
| Fana' | Annihilation; a necessary stage, not the summit |
| Faqih (pl. fuqaha') | Jurist; in chapter 366, the jurists of the time who confuse opinion with Law |
| Fitra | Primordial human nature |
| Futuhat | Openings: knowledge opened to the heart by God |
| Hadith qudsi | A divine saying transmitted by the Prophet; Ibn 'Arabi compiled 101 in Mishkat al-Anwar |
| Hal (pl. ahwal) | State: a passing gift |
| Al-Haqq | The Real, the Truly Real, Truth; God as reality |
| Hijab | Veil; concealment and disclosure at once, the difference lying in the viewer |
| Hukm (pl. ahkam) | Ruling, authority, effect; the influence of a Name |
| Al-insan al-kamil | The Perfect Man, whose heart mirrors the Real at every level |
| Isra' | Night journey (Qur'an 17:1); preferred by Ibn 'Arabi for its circular sense |
| Isti'dad | Preparedness, predisposition; the measure of what one can receive |
| Kashf | Unveiling: knowledge beyond reason and ordinary experience |
| Kufr | Unbelief, read as "covering up" the signs |
| Mahdi | The guided one at the end of time; his Helpers embody nine capacities |
| Maqam (pl. maqamat) | Station: an acquired, lasting quality |
| Mawtin (pl. mawatin) | Homeland, dwelling: one of six planes in which man lives |
| Mi'raj | Ascension; archetype of the saints' inner journey |
| Munajat | Intimate conversations with God, as in the Kitab al-Isra' |
| Nafas al-Rahman | Breath of the All-Merciful, in which the cosmos is articulated |
| Nazar | Reflective reasoning; contrasted with unveiling and inspiration |
| Qalb | Heart; locus of spiritual perception, the only "place" that holds God |
| Qutb | Pole, summit of the spiritual hierarchy; Idris in his perennial role |
| Rububiyya | Lordship; what the pure servant has no taste of |
| Ru'ya | Vision, especially of God; shaped by belief |
| Sidrat al-muntaha | Lotus Tree of the Limit, the summit of the Ascension |
| Tajalli | Self-disclosure, theophany |
| Tajdid al-khalq | Renewal of creation at every breath |
| Tanzih / tashbih | Incomparability / similarity, to be held together |
| Tawakkul | Trust in God; chapter 367 concerns the "Fifth Trust" |
| Tawhid | Divine unity; Idris called people to its word, since none deny the thing itself |
| Wahy | Revelation, inspiration |
| Warith | Heir; "the Muhammadan inheritor" is Idris's greeting to Ibn 'Arabi |
| Afrad | The solitaries; hidden saints at the summit, also called the people of blame |
| 'Adhab / 'adhb | Torment / sweetness; the play on words behind the "sweet torment" thesis |
| Din Allah | The Religion of God, the eternal source, as opposed to the religions of men |
| Haraj | Constriction, inner distress; absent from true religion |
| Hayra | Bewilderment of the great knowers before the coincidence of opposites |
| Ijtihad | Independent judgment, open to every qualified believer |
| Kibr | Pride: saying "I" in the domain of lordship |
| Malamiyya | People of blame, the highest saints, who respect causes and stay hidden |
| Mubah | Permitted; for Ibn 'Arabi a positive space for delight in creation |
| Qiyas | Legal analogy; criticised when it replaces inspired understanding |
| Raji'un | Those who return to the world after nearness to God |
| Takhalluq | Assuming the traits of the Names; below realisation (tahqiq) |
| Waqi'a | Incident: a true vision in sleep, absorption or waking |
| Baqa' | Abiding, subsistence: enlightened life in the world after annihilation, the state of those who return |
| Jam'iyya | All-comprehensiveness: man as the locus of every Name, the mark of the Muhammadan station |
| Khadir | The hidden guide of Qur'an 18, archetype of the solitary saints |
| Sa'aqa | Being stunned: Moses' initiatic "death" on Sinai, in which he saw God |
| Shahwa | Passion, desire; in the Garden desire determines what one receives; in judges it must be governed by knowledge |
| Yaqin | Certainty, in three degrees: knowledge, eye and truth |
How to read the terms
The glossary follows the translators' usage in this volume. Where Chittick and Morris gloss a word in notes or text, that sense is preferred. Broader senses from other Ibn Arabi books are not imported. Pair this list with the Frameworks Table in the synthesis: Names, veil/theophany, servanthood, and ascension are the spine; other terms hang on those hinges.
- Veil and theophany: one thing seen twice, by the viewer's preparation.
- Servanthood and freedom: each station has an abandonment that completes it.
- Lesser and greater resurrection: initiatic death now, and the Hour that discloses belief.
About this book
The Meccan Revelations, Volume I: Selected Texts from the Futuhat al-Makkiyya by Ibn al-Arabi, 2002. 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.
Insight Editions · rajeshrmahapatra.com/insight-editions