Insight Editions · No. 144
The Meccan Revelations: Volume II
Ibn al-'Arabi · Edited by Michel Chodkiewicz; translated by Cyrille Chodkiewicz and Denis Gril
Ibn al-'Arabi's selected chapters address revealed law, the Arabic letters as cosmological principles, and the spiritual stations and culmination of the Sufi path.
A study guide to The Meccan Revelations: Volume II by Ibn al-'Arabi, edited by Michel Chodkiewicz; translated by Cyrille Chodkiewicz and Denis Gril. 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 the second anthology from Ibn al-'Arabi's al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya, edited by Michel Chodkiewicz and translated from the French by Cyrille Chodkiewicz and Denis Gril. It follows the book's order: James W. Morris's preface, Michel Chodkiewicz's long introduction, Cyrille Chodkiewicz's selections on the Law and the Way, Denis Gril's study and translation of the chapter on the Science of Letters, and Gril's closing selections on the end of the spiritual journey. The notes are treated in a part of their own. Quotations are short and exactly as printed. Everything else is paraphrase and commentary.
Argument Map
How the Book Is Built
Like the first volume, this is a set of translated extracts, not a continuous work. It began as part of a French anthology published in 1988, and it keeps the French scholars' introductions and very full notes. There are four voices, and a reader should know who is speaking:
- Ibn 'Arabi, elliptical and dense, quoting the Qur'an and hadith constantly.
- Michel Chodkiewicz, who frames the whole Futuhat: its history, its six sections, its first chapters, and its two axes of mercy and Law.
- Cyrille Chodkiewicz, who introduces four chapters on the Law and argues that Ibn 'Arabi was a strict, not a lax, guardian of it.
- Denis Gril, who writes the longest scholarly essay in the book, on the Science of Letters and its history, and introduces the closing chapters on proximity.
Chapter Map
| Part | Book section (author) | Futuhat chapters | Central question |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Preface (Morris) and Introduction (M. Chodkiewicz) | Overview; ch.1-73 surveyed | What is the Futuhat, and how should it be read? |
| 2 | The Law and the Way, I (C. Chodkiewicz) | 88, 318 | What are the sources of Law, and how does Satan use jurists? |
| 3 | The Law and the Way, II (C. Chodkiewicz) | 344, 437 | How do forgiveness and mercy govern the Law? |
| 4 | The Science of Letters: Study (Gril) | 2 (analysis); antecedents | What is this science, and where does it come from? |
| 5 | The Science of Letters: Text (Gril) | 2 | How do letters, vowels and words map onto being? |
| 6 | The End of the Journey (Gril) | 420, 73 (Q.2), 161 | What lies beyond all stations? |
| 7 | Notes (all) | Throughout | What do the annotations add? |
| 8 | Synthesis, Study Guide, Glossary (editor) | All | What follows, and what is it good for today? |
Ten Ideas in Brief
- Dictation. Ibn 'Arabi says he wrote nothing of the book except by divine dictation; read it as written, not as a system.
- Two axes. Mercy and Law hold the whole work together.
- Law as Way. The Way begins and ends with the revealed Law; it does not leave it behind.
- Opinion is not Law. Only the Qur'an and the Sunna are active sources; analogy and opinion multiply burdens.
- Silence is mercy. What the Law does not address is permitted; its gaps are part of its fullness.
- Mercy wins. Punishment has a term; mercy has none.
- Letters live. The letters are a community, with ranks, messengers and a law.
- Breath and vowel. Vowels are breath given to the consonants, as spirit was breathed into clay.
- No station. Whoever gathers all stations has none left and returns.
- Proximity. The highest sainthood lies between the truthful and the prophets, and its people stay hidden.
Editor's Note on Method
Anything attributed to Ibn 'Arabi or to his editors comes from the book. Anything presented as application, analogy or verdict is the editor's own and is marked as such.
Quotations are short and reproduced as printed. Arabic terms are simplified in spelling and follow the translators' glosses. Dates appear only where the book prints them, usually in paired Hijri and Common Era form.
Part 1. Toward Reading the Futuhat: Michel Chodkiewicz's Introduction
James W. Morris's preface is brief: it recalls the French anthology of 1988, the team assembled from 1984, and the decision to keep Michel Chodkiewicz's long introduction for this volume. That introduction is the best short guide to the Futuhat in either volume. It tells how the book was written, lays out its six sections, walks through its opening chapters, and closes by naming two axes that hold everything together: mercy and the Law. Its watchword: "The how is just as important as the what."
A Pilgrim Arrives in Mecca
Chodkiewicz opens with arrival. Ibn 'Arabi reached Mecca in 598/1202, aged thirty-eight in lunar years, after leaving the West for good. The journey had been crowded with signs. In 597/1200 he was at Sale and Marrakesh, where a vision told him his travelling companion would be al-Hassar; at Bougie he dreamt of a marriage of the stars and the letters; in Tunis he stayed nine months near his friend al-Mahdawi, whom he had met in 590/1194. He crossed famine-struck Cairo, passed Hebron and Jerusalem, and walked to Mecca, where he stayed until the end of 600/1204.
The introduction collects the milestones that matter for this volume:
| Date (as printed) | Event | Why it matters here |
|---|---|---|
| About age 15 | Meeting with Averroes | Philosophy met, and found partial |
| 586/1190, Cordoba | Told he is Seal of Muhammadan Sainthood | Frames his authority in Parts 5 and 6 |
| 590/1194, Tunis | Enters the "Earth of Reality"; meets al-Mahdawi | The imaginal world of the early chapters |
| 597/1200, Igisil | Enters the Station of Proximity | Told in chapter 161, Part 6 |
| 598/1202 | Arrives in Mecca; begins the Futuhat | The book's origin at the Ka'ba |
| Safar 629 (Dec. 1231) | First version finished | Some thirty years of writing |
| 632-636/1238 | Second version, in his own hand, 37 volumes | Basis of the critical edition |
By Tunis he had already written some sixty works, some at astonishing speed (one in four days, another in eleven). All his ideas were present from youth; the Futuhat is a summa, not a development.
The Manuscript and the Editions
The autograph second version, in thirty-seven volumes, passed to his disciple Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi, was placed in a pious endowment in Konya, and later reached Istanbul. Osman Yahia based his critical edition on it from 1972. Earlier printed editions appeared in Cairo: one associated with the Emir 'Abd al-Qadir, one with annotations from al-Nabulusi, and one of 1329/1911 based on the second version. The notes doubt one of the dates commonly given for the Emir's edition.
Dictation, Disorder and How to Read
Ibn 'Arabi claims that the book came from beyond him: "As God is my witness, I swear that I have not written a single letter of this book other than by the effect of divine dictation". He compares the apparent non-sequiturs in it to verses in the Qur'an that interrupt one topic with another, as when a verse on prayer stands among verses on divorce.
The Six Sections
The Futuhat has 560 chapters in six sections (fasl). Its thirty-seven volumes of seven parts each make 259 parts. The notes add that six is "the most perfect of numbers", linked to the letter waw, the copula, which stands for the Perfect Man.
| No. | Section | Chapters | Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Knowledges (ma'arif) | 73 | Doctrine, cosmology, prophetology, the rites; about a quarter of the whole |
| 2 | Behaviours (mu'amalat) | 116 | Practices, each paired with its "abandonment", e.g. remembrance and abandoning remembrance |
| 3 | States (ahwal) | 80 | Bestowed, unstable states, as against acquired stations |
| 4 | Waystations (manazil) | 114 | Keyed to the suras in reverse order; includes ch.366 and 367 |
| 5 | Mutual encounters (munazalat) | 78 | Where God and servant "meet halfway"; 78 matches the branches of faith |
| 6 | Stations (maqamat) | 99 | Matched with the divine Names; ends with three chapters of over 100 pages |
Several remarks in this survey matter later. On states: "In the perfect individual, every time his station rises, his hal falls." The saint is not the one who has states. On stations: they exist only through the one who holds them; the rungs of the ladder appear only as the foot is set on them; the movement is "going toward, not leaving behind". And the perfect heart is finally liberated from stations, a theme chapter 420 develops (Part 6). After knowledge comes perplexity (hayra).
Commentaries on the whole work are few. Chodkiewicz names al-Jili, the Emir 'Abd al-Qadir's Mawaqif, and al-Sha'rani. His aim is to point to "cardinal points", not to summarise.
The Opening Sermon: Who Praises Whom
The khutba opens with "Praise belongs to God". Ibn 'Arabi reads it so that God is both the Praiser and the Praised: "No one praises God but God Himself". The Emir 'Abd al-Qadir distinguishes three ranks of those who praise: by themselves, through God, and to God, and ranks the people of "to" above the people of "through".
The sermon's key phrases carry the whole metaphysics in miniature:
- God "brought things into existence from nothing, and annihilated nothingness".
- Things have a fixed being in God's knowledge (the "immutable entities") before they exist: real for God, not for themselves.
- God's oneness has two faces: the oneness of the Essence and the unity of the Names; two "effusions", the most holy and the holy, correspond to them.
- "For each servant there is a corresponding Name that is his lord; it is a body, and this Name is its heart."
- The universe is a great Qur'an, and each thing receives according to its preparedness.
The Seal and the Young Man
At Mecca Ibn 'Arabi saw the Muhammadan Reality, which told him to celebrate "the praise of Him who has sent me, and mine". Chodkiewicz stresses that Ibn 'Arabi never takes the place of that Reality, which remains the only true Seal. His seal of Muhammadan sainthood is not transferable: he names no successor, though his companion Badr al-Habashi stayed with him twenty-three years.
Chapter 1 tells of a meeting with a mysterious young man (fata) at the Ka'ba. In an earlier book, the Kitab al-isra', a similar youth appeared at a spring. Chodkiewicz connects the motif to a line from Qushayri, "the idol of all men is their egos", and to Ibn 'Arabi's own: "You are the cloud that covers your own sun." The young man's verse frames the whole introduction:
In chapter 1 Ibn 'Arabi doubts the rite he is performing. How could he walk around "a pile of stones that does not understand my movement?" The answer, in verse, tells him to contemplate the House. A divine saying holds that heaven and earth cannot contain God, but the heart of His servant does. The Ka'ba is "the heart of existence", and the young man is the Perfect Man, the Ka'ba incarnate. Ibn 'Arabi confronts his own eternal reality at the zero point of time and space. The youth speaks in silence and says: "Now raise my veils and read what the inscriptions within me contain!" The first line he reads becomes chapter 2, on letters.
The Three Creeds and Three Knowledges
The Futuhat's preface sets out three creeds: the creed of the common people (the only one in the first version), the creed of the theologians (a rhymed summary of a work by Ghazali, framed as a dialogue under the dome of Arin), and the creed of the elite, which lies between speculation and unveiling and criticises the Ash'arites. The creed of "the elite of the elite" is not stated; it is "scattered throughout the chapters of this book".
| Knowledge | Source | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Knowledge of the intellect | Reasoning | Sound within its limits, can err beyond them |
| Knowledge of states | Tasting (dhawq) | Known only by experience; cannot be taught by words |
| Knowledge of secrets | Divine gift | Beyond intellect; includes the other two |
The gnostic stands closer to the simple believer than to the theologian. The one who is ready empties himself and sits, poor, at his Lord's door.
The Science of Letters, Introduced
Chapter 2 opens the science of letters, and Chodkiewicz prepares the ground for Gril (Parts 4 and 5):
- It is a gift, not a product of reflection. 'Ali is named as its founder.
- It is not divination or magic. Ibn 'Arabi vows never to use the power of letters.
- Ibn Barrajan foretold the date Jerusalem would be taken, 583/1187, apparently by letter values, but really, Ibn 'Arabi thinks, by unveiling.
- Parallels with Jewish Kabbalah are real, but Ibn 'Arabi's knowledge of Hebrew was no greater than any educated non-Jew's.
- The science is Christic: Jesus, his first teacher and the Seal of Universal Sainthood, is linked with the breath that gives life.
Behind this lies a claim about the universe: "For us, it is alive in its totality." The Prophet said of Uhud, "This mountain loves us"; Ibn 'Arabi heard the stones glorify God. The letters are a community with messengers and a law, ranked as common people, elite and elite of the elite. The universe is a book and man is its interpreter. The twenty-eight letters match twenty-eight degrees of being; the vowels move the consonants as spirit moves bodies.
Chapters 3 to 13 in Brief
| Chapter | Theme | Key point |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | Similarity and incomparability | God is known only by God; no agnosticism follows |
| 4 | The Names | "To every reality there is a corresponding Name that is specific to it, and that is its Lord"; seven mother Names |
| 5 | Fatiha and basmala | Grammatical cases map onto islam, iman and ihsan; allusion, not interpretation; creation renewed |
| 6-7 | Muhammadan Reality | First manifested from the "dust"; "man is the divine aim of the universe" |
| 8 | Earth of Reality | Made from Adam's leftover clay; the real imaginal world, a "vast land of God" |
| 9 | Jinn | Fire beside the angels' light; the jinn within man; pride makes demons |
| 10 | Cycle of kingship | From Adam to Muhammad; the final Law confirms earlier ones |
| 11 | Fathers and mothers | Higher fathers and lower mothers; filial piety extended to everything |
| 12 | Cycle of Muhammad | Time returns; the age of the Scale |
| 13 | Bearers of the Throne | Four now, eight later: man, lion, bull, eagle |
Chapters 14 to 73: Realization
The rest of the first section treats prophecy and sainthood. General prophecy is the highest sainthood. There is one true Pole, the Spirit of Muhammad; all other Poles are its manifestations and deputies. Twenty-five Poles came before Islam, the first of them a "he who heals wounds" identified with the first Hermes and Enoch. Seven substitutes guard the seven climates, four pillars hold the corners of the Ka'ba, and a Pole with two imams governs.
The hidden saints, the malamiyya or afrad, receive special praise as those who remain hidden, "the faithful guardians of the repository in the universe". They are linked to the Station of Proximity, the theme of Part 6. Other chapters treat Jesus and the letters, night prayer, the ritual prayer as a journey, Khadir, and eschatology, where paradise and hell are real and resurrection is bodily, though for the knower the hereafter is present already.
The saints inherit from different prophets: there are Mosaic, Abrahamic and Christic saints among the 124,000 prophets' heirs. Chapters 34 and 35 describe the "people of the Breath", linked to the Name All-Merciful. Four levels of meaning in the Qur'an match four levels of men.
Chapters 66 to 72 are on the rites. Ibn 'Arabi gives each school's view its divine support and is irenic: "the fuqaha' have made narrow that which Allah had made wide." Chapter 73 classes the men of God and answers 155 questions posed long before by al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi. The aim of it all is operative: man as the copy of God and His deputy.
Oneness of Being and the Two Axes
"Oneness of being" (wahdat al-wujud) is not Ibn 'Arabi's term. The notes trace it to al-Qunawi, who uses it, to al-Farghani, who makes it technical, and to Ibn Taymiyya, who turns it into a polemical label. Ibn 'Arabi does say that nothing exists but God, but he also warns against denying the other: the Real is the Real and creation is creation. One and a thousand illustrate it: the thousand is nothing but ones, yet it is not one.
Chodkiewicz names the two axes of the whole work:
Part 2. The Law and the Way, I: Sources of Law and Satan's Ruses (Chapters 88 and 318)
Cyrille Chodkiewicz sets out to correct a reputation. Ibn 'Arabi has been called a pantheist, an antinomian and a corrupter of scripture. The four chapters translated here show a jurist of unusual strictness, who reduces the sources of Law to the Qur'an and the Sunna, refuses analogy for himself, and blames the jurists, not the Law, for the burdens laid on believers. For him the Law is not the outer shell of the Way. It is the Way.
A Contested Reputation
The introduction lists the verdicts. Corbin called him the "Doctor Maximus"; Massignon a "grammarian of esotericism". In the fifteenth century al-Sakhawi compiled the calumnies: licence and distortion of scripture. As late as 1979 the Egyptian parliament voted a provisional ban on the critical edition. Yet even Ibn Taymiyya, his fiercest critic, conceded that his position on the Law "is in accord with the way it should be".
The notes add that the four chapters on the rites (66 to 72) alone run to more than four hundred pages of Arabic. Cyrille Chodkiewicz chooses chapters that state principles rather than rulings.
Ibn Hazm and the Zahiri Question
Ibn 'Arabi dreamt that the Prophet embraced the Andalusian jurist Ibn Hazm (456/1064) and that the two became one body, in light. Ibn Hazm belonged to the Zahiri school, founded by Dawud b. Khalaf (270/884), which held to the literal sense and rejected analogy. Ibn 'Arabi copied Ibn Hazm's treatise against analogy and summarised his thirty-volume legal work. The Almohad ruler al-Mansur had tried to make Zahirism the official doctrine.
Was Ibn 'Arabi a Zahiri, then? He answered in verse: people associate him with Ibn Hazm, but "I am not one of those who say, Ibn Hazm said". He followed no school; his school is his own, built directly on the texts. Ibn Taymiyya himself, the notes observe, held a similar view of the open door of independent judgment.
Chapter 88: The Sources of Law
Chapter 88 is titled on the secrets of the foundations of legal rulings. Its claims can be set out as a short code.
Two Active, Two Passive Foundations
All agree on the Book, the widely transmitted Sunna and consensus; analogy is disputed, and Ibn 'Arabi's own position is "that it should be avoided". He aligns the four foundations with four divine realities and the four natural qualities:
| Set of four | Members, as listed | Active / passive |
|---|---|---|
| Foundations of Law | Qur'an, Sunna, consensus, analogy | First two active, last two passive |
| Divine Realities | Life, Knowledge, Will, Power | Source of all that exists |
| Qualities of bodies | Heat, cold, dryness, humidity | Heat and cold active; humidity and dryness passive |
| Elements | Fire, air, water, earth | Source of engendered beings |
| Humours | Bile, black bile, blood, phlegm | Source of each human body |
The text lists the sets in parallel and states the active/passive split for the foundations and the qualities; it does not match the members one by one.
The point is that only the Qur'an and the Sunna generate rulings; the other two receive. Nothing has been omitted from them: "Today, I have perfected your religion" (Q 5:3). Cyrille Chodkiewicz draws the consequence: the silence of the Law has meaning, and its gaps are part of its fullness.
The higher source of knowledge is not in dispute either. "Fear God and He will teach you" (Q 2:282); God gives a criterion and a light to those who fear Him; Khadir received knowledge "from Us". Junayd is cited: "This knowledge of ours is related to the Book and the Sunna."
On Analogy
Ibn 'Arabi's position is balanced, and he states it himself: "Even though I am opposed to it for my own personal use, I do accept its use by others". Analogy is not decisive in itself, like a report from a single source. But a clear analogy can be stronger than such a report, and a jurist who reaches a ruling by analogy is rewarded even if he errs. The Qur'an commands speculative thought to establish God's existence and oneness and the Messenger's truthfulness, and "reasoning by analogy is a form of speculative thought". Those who blame analogy outright behave improperly toward the Lawgiver.
Why then avoid it for himself? "No, I forbid myself to use qiyas only because it leads to increasing the number of explicit prescriptions." Every analogy extends a burden to a case God left free.
Resolving Contradictions
Chapter 88 sets out a procedure for apparently conflicting texts. It is the most practical passage in the volume.
The principle behind the last steps is the Prophet's: "What I have commanded you to do, perform it to the extent that you are able". God wishes ease, not hardship (Q 2:185; 22:78). A widely transmitted hadith against a verse leaves free choice, again tilted toward lightening the burden. Reports from unknown transmitters are accepted, with exceptions. And the line that sums up his attitude to the schools: "God in no way obliges us to accept what others say about His Messenger, even if we are enjoined to respect and love them."
Abrogation, Words and Consensus
- Abrogation is not God changing His mind. It means "the period of time during which, in God's wisdom, a certain legal statute was supposed to be observed has come to an end." The Sunna can abrogate a verse, since the Prophet spoke from revelation.
- Words keep their ordinary Arab meaning unless the Lawgiver redefined them, as with prayer, ablution, pilgrimage and alms. A command means obligation and a prohibition means forbidden, unless context says otherwise.
- Consensus means the consensus of the Companions only: each must have been asked and all must agree. One dissent, or one silence, breaks it. In this he sides with Ibn Hazm and Dawud.
The Original Status of Things Is Freedom
From this follow a set of corollaries:
| Rule | Consequence |
|---|---|
| Imitating the Prophet's acts is not obligatory unless commanded | "Pray as you see me pray" binds; his personal habits do not |
| Earlier revealed laws are believed but not binding | Only what Islam confirms applies |
| Imitation of a school (taqlid) is not permitted | Ask what God or His Messenger prescribed; refuse answers from opinion |
| No sanction for error or forgetting unless specified | Silence returns to original licitness |
| The Law applies to names and states, not to beings | A ruling follows the description of the act, not the person as such |
| Obligation only on the capable | "Upon a soul only what it can do" |
| A mujtahid's answer is lawful for him | He must drop it on learning of a contrary text |
| Rule only on concrete cases | Like Malik, who answered only what had happened |
Chapter 318: Satan's Ruses with the Jurists
Chapter 318 turns from principles to their corruption. Its target is the jurist who prefers opinion to text, whom Ibn 'Arabi calls Satan's plaything, and behind it the conformist Maliki establishment of al-Andalus.
Ibn 'Abbas and the Danger of Making Licit
The chapter recalls Ibn 'Abbas refusing to declare a forbidden thing licit: "May God keep me from making licit that which He has forbidden!" The Prophet was told to judge "according to what God has you see", not by his own view (Q 4:105), and was rebuked when he forbade himself something to please his wives (Q 66:1). If the Prophet's own soul could be corrected, how much more an ordinary jurist's. Independent judgment is a search for proof, never an act of legislating. Oaths that create new obligations come close to claiming the power to make law.
The White Road
The Wallet of Fatwas
The chapter's most vivid scene: al-Zahir Ghazi, son of Saladin and ruler of Aleppo, showed Ibn 'Arabi a wallet of legal opinions he had collected. "There is not a single blameworthy thing that is not the result of a decision handed down by a jurist". A famous ascetic jurist had ruled that he could fast any month instead of Ramadan.
Satan works through the imagination: he suggests an unusual interpretation, a lenient ruling for a powerful patron, a citation of the imam against a hadith. Ibn 'Arabi turns the founders of the schools against their followers. Al-Shafi'i said that if a hadith contradicts his words, his words should be thrown against the wall, "because my teachings (madhhabi) are the hadith!" Abu Hanifa forbade fatwas on his sayings without knowledge of his proof. The jurists pass over this in silence, East and West, and so "Sacred Law has been abrogated by the passions".
Epiphanies of the Law
When a person is free of desire, God replaces the form of his nature with the form of guidance and he is "clothed in light", which is the Law. Some see this image as the Prophet, and the devil never takes the form of a prophet. Ibn 'Arabi says he learned rulings from such an image, and scholars confirmed them in the canonical collections, "not a letter was missing". If the form is not the Prophet's, one should take no rulings from it, though sciences and creeds may be received, "for the Divine Presence accepts all creeds, with the exception of polytheism". Polytheism is excluded because what it associates with God is pure nothingness.
Law and Mercy in the Sinner
If one's desire happens to coincide with the Law, that is luck, not merit: ask first. And if one asks, learns that a thing is forbidden, and does it anyway, one has sinned, yet there is still reward: for having asked, for believing, for good opinion of God, for not intending to defy. "The believer is he whose good actions give him joy and whose bad actions afflict him!"
| Veil of forgiveness | What it covers |
|---|---|
| First veil | Between sinner and unbelief, so that he still knows the sin is a sin |
| Second veil | In this world, so he does not go beyond the limits |
| Third veil | In the hereafter, so punishment does not reach him |
Forgiveness (maghfira) is literally a covering. Satan's goal is not the sin itself but the habit of obeying him, which leads to associating others with God.
Editor's Reflection: Strictness as Humility
It is easy to read chapters 88 and 318 as a quarrel between a mystic and the lawyers. The argument is subtler. Ibn 'Arabi's strictness is a form of humility before the text: he will not say more than God said, and he will not let anyone else say it on God's behalf. His leniency is the same humility seen from the other side: where God said nothing, no one may bind the believer.
Three features make the position distinctive:
- It is symmetrical. The same principle that forbids lax fatwas for princes forbids severe rulings by analogy for the poor.
- It is personal before it is public. He refuses analogy for himself but allows it to others, and he asks the disciple to be hard on himself and easy on others.
- It is anchored in experience. The jurist reasons from signs; the gnostic receives the ruling in luminous form and then checks it against the collections. Both end at the same text.
Part 3. The Law and the Way, II: Forgiveness and the Gnostic (Chapters 344 and 437)
The second pair of chapters moves from the jurist to the end of things. Chapter 344 asks what forgiveness finally covers, and answers that happiness is eternal while punishment is not. Chapter 437 portrays the gnostic who lives the Law from inside, giving alms by the hand of God. Cyrille Chodkiewicz quotes him: Revealed Law "is identical to essential reality." And: "It is identical on the inside to what it is on the outside."
Why the Law Is Needed for the Highest Knowledge
The introduction to chapter 344 makes a claim that the chapter will prove at length. Without the Law, the ascetic and the intellect can reach high knowledge, but not the highest. What they miss is the union of incomparability and immanence: God is beyond all likeness, and He also has hands and eyes and descends to the lowest heaven. Only revelation says both, so only the one who follows it can know both.
Chapter 344: The Secrets of Forgiveness
Two Mercies
There is a universal mercy that embraces everything, and a specific mercy reserved for some. A hadith gives the community a striking privilege: "my community is enveloped in Divine Mercy", with no punishment in the hereafter, because its punishment takes place on earth "in the form of earthquakes, mortal combat, and trials."
The Order of Intercession
The heart of the chapter is a sequence in which those in the Fire are brought out, in order, until mercy alone governs.
The details are bold. Affirming oneness and having faith keep the pain away even in the Fire; the bodies of the obedient do not feel the burning. Those who will leave are made to die, so that they do not feel the flames, before death itself is slaughtered (the ram slain by John). The people who remain are "neither dead nor alive" until the fixed term. Then the nineteen angels of punishment are the last to intercede, when mercy has become their attribute. Hell becomes like Abraham's fire, "freshness and peace", and its guardians are happy in it.
The Divine Scale
"Nothing comes into existence without inclination". One pan of the scale must always weigh more. Ibn 'Arabi refutes those who claim, by unveiling, that the scale stands balanced; the error, he says, belongs to those who walked without a teacher.
Two Paths to God: Prophetic and Speculative
The chapter then contrasts two ascensions (developed in chapter 167, "the unequal ascension"):
| Speculative path | Prophetic path | |
|---|---|---|
| Guide | Intellect, ascetic practice | The revealed Law |
| Typical figure | Hayy b. Yaqzan, the self-taught sage of Ibn Tufayl | The follower of a messenger |
| Method | Contemplating a cadaver, dreams, the soul as a mirror | Obedience, remembrance, receptivity |
| Reaches | The Supreme Pleroma; learns from angels | God directly, by the door He opened |
| Knows God as | Incomparable only | Incomparable and immanent (Q 42:11 with hands, eyes, descent) |
| Result | High but incomplete; misses the direct door | Sees existence spread through all things |
The verdict: "God has not actually instituted any other way of access to His Knowledge" than the Law. The spheres offer their knowledge to the man of the Law and he ignores them; later he finds it in himself. He bows his head, subdued by theophanies, and "He sees naught but God in all things". He addresses each person according to his degree, wears every form, and never shows the same form to two people, which is why he is accused out of ignorance or envy. Al-Farabi is criticised by name.
Two Degrees of Pardon
| Degree | Verse | Nature |
|---|---|---|
| Veil from punishment | Q 40:7 | Generosity toward one who sinned |
| Veil of impeccability ('isma) | Q 40:9 | Privilege: protection before the sin |
God is the isthmus between the degrees of paradise on the right and of hell on the left; high and low are the same for Him. Ignorance is the worst disobedience, because it kills the heart. Guarding the heart is not enough when God is one's hearing, sight and hand. The chapter ends with a choice put to the reader: "The choice of which of these two categories you wish to belong to is yours!"
What the Knower Must Know
The chapter closes with a list of the kinds of knowledge the knower of this degree receives: the sequence of the veils, the burning Glories of the Face, the composition of the divine Word, the just imam, the Hour, and more. The list is less a syllabus than a reminder that the reward of keeping the Law is knowledge, not a feeling. That is why ignorance, not sin, is called the worst disobedience.
Chapter 437: The Gnostic and the Law
The title carries a divine saying: "He who knows what part of My Law is his knows what part of Me is his". The degree to which you are in God is the degree He occupies in you. The chapter's subjects are the "Guardians of the secret" and the "Safe Men", other names for the hidden saints, for whom theophany is perpetual.
The Smallest Coin
Ibn 'Arabi then stages a resurrection scene. God asks the stingy giver: "Are you not ashamed to appear before Me with something like this?" He is pardoned, because of the beggar's request and the joy the gift caused; his token has grown larger than Mount Uhud, while what he gave to satisfy his passions has become "scattered dust". God erases usury and makes alms grow (Q 2:276).
How the Gnostic Gives
| Ordinary giver | Gnostic |
|---|---|
| Gives with his own hand | Gives by the hand of God |
| Sees a beggar's hand | Sees the receiving hand as God's |
| Measures the gift by his own need | Gives with the same detachment either way |
| Hopes for reward | Has renounced possession and authority |
The gnostics "occupy the same place with God that He occupies in their hearts". On the "day of mutual deception", when evildoers and the good both boast, the gnostic is silent; his state does not change.
Repentance with Every Breath
Faults decreed for the gnostic are pardoned by substitution: each is replaced by its exact equivalent in good. Repentance has two forms: the legal one, sorrow for infractions, and the essential one, giving up all power and strength to God, renewed with every breath. To the people of Badr was said, "Do as you wish, I have already forgiven you"; for such people every act becomes licit, recommended or obligatory. The pure gnostic "never donned a lying tunic"; he is "a light in a light". He gives his nature its due and no more.
Notes to the Law and the Way
The notes add context worth keeping:
- A letter of Ibn Taymiyya to al-Manbiji contains the concession about the Law quoted above.
- The hadith "I am Time" stands behind the listing of al-Dahr among the Names.
- Ibn 'Arabi held the door of independent judgment open even in the principles of law.
- An oath that creates an obligation amounts to claiming to legislate. Abu Su'ud b. al-Shibl: "Sufism is nothing more than the five prayers and the expectation of death".
- Ibn Hazm called legal "causes" doubly blasphemous.
- A line in the Futuhat (III, 131), "And I profess all that they believe", drew the charge of making all religions one. The notes set it beside the divine saying "I conform to the idea that My servant has of Me".
Part 4. The Science of Letters: Gril's Study
Denis Gril's essay is the longest piece of scholarship in the volume. It explains why chapter 2 of the Futuhat follows the meeting with the young man at the Ka'ba, analyses the chapter section by section, and then traces the science of letters from the alchemist Jabir to the twentieth century. His starting point: the science of letters is the passage of the inexpressible into the expressible. Ibn 'Arabi asks: "Can God's Knowledge be heard without the Word? the Word without words? words without letters...?"
Where Chapter 2 Sits
Chapter 1 ends with the young man telling Ibn 'Arabi to read the inscriptions within him. Chapter 2 is that reading. Its full title promises the hierarchical degrees of the consonants and vowels, the Names that correspond to them, and the knowledge, the knower and the known. It has three sections:
| Section | Subject | Parts |
|---|---|---|
| I | The letters | 1. Hierarchy of letters by spheres; 2. The isolated letters at the head of suras; 3. Properties of particular letters |
| II | The vowels (the "minor letters") | Movement and rest; spoken and written vowels; words |
| III | Knowledge, knower, known | Not translated in this volume |
Section I.1: Letters, Spheres and the Four Degrees
The letters are produced by the rotation of particular spheres within the ultimate Sphere. They stand at the edge of the physical world, combining the four natural qualities in pairs. The opinion of those "subjugated by intellect" divides the letters among four degrees of being:
| Degree | Number of letters | Letters | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| Divine Presence | 3 | alif, zay, lam | Together they spell AZaL, "eternity": Essence, Attribute, and the Bond between them |
| Man | 3 | nun, sad, dad | Three like God's, because man is made in His image |
| Jinn | 4 | 'ayn, ghayn, sin, shin | The four horizontal directions; the jinn cannot rise or fall |
| Angels | 18 | The remaining letters | Six times three: three worlds, each with outer, inner and isthmus |
Why are God and man both three? Because they share the same structure, yet are distinguished: God by eternity, man by contingency, not by knowledge. The phrase Gril highlights: "the sphere of Knowledge is one: eternal for the Eternal, contingent for the contingent."
The nun is the key. It is a circle of which only the lower half shows; the upper half is unmanifest. Trace AZaL within it and one obtains a "human eternity": the Universal Man, eternal by relation to God, as a tribe gives a man its name.
Angels, Spheres and Life
The eighteen angelic letters correspond to three worlds (the visible, the angelic and the world of power), each with an outer face, an inner face and an isthmus between them. These give nine spheres (the seven heavens, the Footstool and the Throne), nine of projection and nine of reception. The angel is the meeting point of the subtle bonds that run between them, and angels move up, down and across like the three vowels.
No single sphere produces life, which needs heat and humidity together. Otherwise life could stop; but life must not be annihilated, and man only seems to die: he returns to his origin. Four qualities give four elements; one plus two plus three plus four make ten; six is the first perfect number.
Gril notes a distinction Ibn 'Arabi draws between realities that the intellect can isolate and realities that exist only in composition, and a parallel between the permutation of sounds in Arabic and the transmutation of the elements. The alif is like a fifth element. On such points the initiate's knowledge may coincide with the philosophers', but it rests on unveiling after the heart has been emptied.
Six Degrees for the Realizers
Those who are "subjugated by their Lord", the realizers, divide differently, into six degrees: God, man, jinn, animals, plants and minerals. The divine degree becomes binary through the nun (Part 5 shows how); the deputy (khalifa) reproduces this duality. Gril calls it the oneness of multiplicity. A prayer from the text expresses its spirit: praise to God who made us beings of projection and reception, of "reciprocal closeness and progressive elevation". The twenty-eight letters match the twenty-eight lunar mansions, but the reality lies beyond number.
Section I.2: A Community of Letters
The letters form a community, ranked by their points of articulation from the innermost throat to the lips. They have common people, an elite and messengers. Two lines of meaning run through them: letters of assuming the character traits of God and of "realization"; people of lights and people of secrets, which Gril links to the two systems of letter values used in the East and West. The closer a letter is to God, the more hidden its light, as the solitary saints escape even the Pole.
The Isolated Letters
Twenty-nine suras open with isolated letters, matching the days of the lunar month, and so point to the perfection of the Form, the Universal Man. Their seventy-eight letters match the seventy-odd branches of faith. Divination by them is only a veil.
Gril follows Ibn 'Arabi through "That is the Book" (Q 2:2). The demonstrative carries distance: a first separation, then a second, with the alif between, and the final kaf addressed to the Logos. The definite article al- is distinctive; the opening A.L. is unitive. Ibn 'Arabi wrote a lost commentary on union and distinction in the secrets of revelation.
There are three books: the unknown (the Mother of the Book), the drawn, and the inscribed. The reader is the place where the revelation descends. Fourteen luminous letters open suras; fourteen others are dark.
Lam-Alif and the Throne
In "no doubt" (la rayb), the la is lam joined to alif. Two alifs written as one give "fusion, but not confusion", like the Throne. The Throne is the investiture of the deputy; the cloak is the perfect servant. "between knowledge and the object of knowledge there are seas whose depths cannot be reached." "That" (masculine) is Adam, totality; "those" (feminine) is Eve, difference and dissemination.
Section I.3: Properties of Letters
This section survives only in part; a fuller treatment was planned in another book. Its claims:
- The alif is not truly a letter, "for whoever has breathed in some of the fragrance of the essential realities". It accompanies every letter as the One accompanies all.
- The sad passage is autobiographical (Part 5).
- Letters map onto the spiritual hierarchy: alif is the hidden Pole; waw and ya the two imams; with nun, the four pillars; with ta, kaf and ha, the seven substitutes.
- These letters are the moving parts of grammar (number, conjugation, case, pronouns). Permutation of letters (ibdal) echoes the "substitutes" (abdal) who maintain the world, with a hint of alchemy.
- The science operates only through Qur'anic writing and recitation.
- Some letters are privileged by solicitude, others by merit, "But in reality, they, we, and the entire Universe were granted the privilege out of divine solicitude."
Section II: Vowels
A vowel is a movement (haraka); its absence is rest. The vowel is like the breath God blew into the clay (Q 15:29): consonants stop the breath, vowels colour the exhalation. Gril links this to Israfil's trumpet and to the Breath of the All-Merciful. The Prophet said he had received the "totalizing words".
| Grammar | Ontology |
|---|---|
| Noun | Independent essence |
| Verb | Dependent event |
| Particle | Bond between them |
| Written vowels | Bodies |
| Spoken vowels | Spirits |
| Fixed vowels | Original nature, the primordial disposition |
| Changing (declined) vowels | Religion imprinted by parents |
Only those receive this knowledge who "empty our hearts of all reflective speculation, and we shall sit with God". The heart of oneness is to consider God's verses on His own unity, "for no one knows anyone better than he knows himself."
Gril's Synthesis
Gril draws the threads together:
- The science of letters is a science of the saints, Tirmidhi's phrase. Ibn 'Arabi calls it "a noble science in itself", rarely practised without harm, and its magical uses detestable in reason and Law.
- There are three kinds of letters: written, spoken and evoked in the imagination. Spoken letters are the Names.
- Ibn 'Arabi admits the power of letters and refuses it: "If I had not vowed never to provoke an effect via a letter, what marvels they would have seen!"
- The tables of correspondence may be deliberately inexact.
- The creative word kun, "Be!", is kaf, a hidden waw and nun. The hidden waw evokes huwa, the Self: occultation and propagation of the divine ipseity.
- The alif stands by itself; the other letters bow. "If it bows, it is in order to descend from its height, through mercy toward you".
- Where are the letters? "in the obstacles presented to the breath". Names are in letters, letters in breath, breath in spirits, spirits in hearts, hearts near Him who turns them.
- Knowledge is not a copy of the thing known. The word is a third term between them.
- "the worshiper is composed of both letters and meaning"; worship rests on composition, not on unity.
Before Ibn 'Arabi: The Antecedents
Gril's history is a short book in itself. It has two strands: a cosmological one with Hellenistic roots, and a metaphysical one rooted in the Qur'an.
| Figure or school | Dates as printed | Contribution |
|---|---|---|
| Jabir Ibn Hayyan | Disciple of Ja'far al-Sadiq | "Science of the balance": letters measure natures; the Soul's desire for matter generates the corporeal world; "The most perfect of all is the division of letters." |
| Ikhwan al-Safa | 350/961-370/980 or late 3rd/9th c. | Sound from the spheres' motion; letters are to ideas as body to spirit; straight alif and curved ba as Adam and Eve |
| Ibn Sina | 370/980-428/1037 | Phonetics of sound; letter values for Creator, Intellect, Soul, Nature, matter; A.L.M. as an oath by the First |
| Isma'ili writers | Abu Hatim al-Razi d. 322/934 | Letters as first creations; seven speakers and seven imams; the last letter is the Riser |
| Kharraz | d. 286/899 | Each letter of the Book a source of inspiration, by love, remembrance and nearness |
| Tirmidhi | Late 3rd/9th c. | "All the sciences are contained within the letters of the alphabet"; known only by the saints |
| Sahl al-Tustari | d. 283/896 | Letters in the primal dust; alif, waw, ya as rationality, animality, physicality; the universe as a book |
| Hallaj | Sahl's disciple | All knowledge in the Qur'an, in its letters, in lam-alif, in the alif, in the dot |
| Ibn Masarra | 269-319/883-931 | Book on the properties of letters; three sciences of Lordship, Prophecy and Trial; universe as a book |
| Niffari | Cited at end of ch.5 | The letter as veil between the one who stands and Reality: "that is the prison of believers" |
| Qushayri | 376-465/986-1027 | A grammar of hearts: the cases as elevation, establishment, lowering |
Gril weighs the Jabirian line carefully. The balance allowed Islam to absorb the ancient heritage through the twenty-eight letters, four natures by seven levels. Jabir and Ibn 'Arabi are three centuries apart and share terms; alchemy and Sufism differ in aim. Yet Jabir also says the science of letters serves to "bring together that which is scattered". The Ikhwan warned against "divulging the secret of Lordship", gave Adam the Syriac tongue, and saw the Arabic twenty-eight as completing the Indian nine, as the moon completes the sun.
The Ikhwan al-Safa also drew a geometry from the alphabet: two lines, the straight (alif, the diameter) and the curved (ba, the circumference), like Adam and Eve, Intellect and Soul, one and two. Sound, for them, is a movement of air spreading in waves; only man articulates it into letters. Different readings of the Qur'an are a mercy, while dialects bring discord.
Sahl and Ibn Masarra presage Ibn 'Arabi most clearly. Ibn Masarra holds that what the seeker finds going up coincides with what the Prophet brought down, and that the intellect cannot leave the enclosure of prophecy without cutting its own link. Niffari "got stuck" at the veil of the letter; Ibn 'Arabi passes through it.
After Ibn 'Arabi: The Successors
Part 5. The Science of Letters: Ibn 'Arabi's Chapter 2
Here Ibn 'Arabi speaks for himself. The chapter is technical, full of counts and correspondences, but its drift is clear: every letter is a creature with a nature, a rank and a meaning, and the way letters combine is the way being combines. This part follows the translation in order and keeps to what can be stated plainly; Gril's diagrams in the book carry the detail.
The Frame: Who Is Addressed
Absolute existence includes the one who imposes the Law (the Real) and those on whom it is imposed (the universe). The letters are spread across four degrees according to the spheres that produce them: seven spheres for alif, zay and lam; eight for nun, sad and dad; nine for 'ayn, ghayn, sin and shin; ten for the remaining eighteen.
| Count | Total |
|---|---|
| All spheres of the letters | 261 |
| Spheres giving heat | 203 |
| Spheres giving dryness | 241 |
| Spheres giving cold | 65 |
| Spheres giving humidity | 27 |
The alif takes on the nature of its neighbours, "hot with what is hot". No sphere produces heat and humidity alone, the nature of air and of life. Cycles too are given: ta and hamza belong to a sphere of 9,000 years; ha, kha, 'ayn and ghayn to one of 11,000; the others to one of 12,000. Ibn 'Arabi promises to say in chapter 60 which cycle we live in.
Why Jinn Have Four Letters and God Three
The jinn have four letters because Iblis said he would come at man "from before them and from behind them, and from their right-hand side and from their left-hand side" (Q 7:17). There is no fifth direction for him: he cannot come from above or below.
The divine letters are three: essence, attribute and the bond between them, which is receptivity. Man too has three, and Ibn 'Arabi explains why they must still differ: "If man and God shared the same constitutive realities, there would be only one unique being, God or servant, and that could not be." God is distinct by eternity, man by contingency, not by knowledge: "the sphere of knowledge is one; it is eternal with the eternal, contingent with the contingent".
The Nun and the Universal Man
The nun is the "loincloth of unreserved admission (taslim)" and the "spirit of death". Its dot is the centre of an intelligible alif. As the alif rises it becomes lam; half the nun gives zay; and so the human eternity, the Universal Man, is hidden in the nun. Man has four planes of existence: in the mind, in himself, in speech and in writing. He is located in divine knowledge as an accident in a substance. Some secrets here are forbidden to books and shared only with the worthy.
The Angel as Meeting Point
The angels' eighteen letters come from three worlds, each with three faces; three times seven, minus three, gives eighteen. Subtle threads run between the spheres of projection and reception: "Wherever these bonds meet, the angel itself is the meeting point". The angel comes and goes along them. Above the seven heavens lie the Footstool and the Throne, and a starless dark sphere.
Elements, Transmutation and the Philosophers
Opposites do not mix, so there are only four elements. One through four make ten; six is the only perfect number in its range. Air is the breath of life, carrying life and movement. Each principle acts separately: fire dries by its dryness, not by its heat. Fire turns into air as certain letters turn into others. All letters derive from the alif.
For the realizers there is no divergence here, he says, because God teaches by emptying the heart, "without this knowledge either remaining general or becoming perplexing". The cause of the universe is the Names and attributes, "the eternal cause of causes", which joins the "mothers" in harmony and engenders the "daughters".
The Six Degrees
| Degree | Number | Representative letters | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| God | Binary | nun (read as alif and waw) | "alif refers to Him and waw to the idea of you" |
| Man | Ternary | mim | The deputy |
| Jinn | Quaternary | jim, waw, kaf, qaf | Four directions |
| Animals | Quinary | Nine letters | |
| Plants | alif, ha, lam | ||
| Minerals | Septenary |
The divine degree is binary because "in existence there is none other than Allah and you, for you are the khalifa". Then Ibn 'Arabi stops himself: were he to go on, "our hand would quickly fatigue, the nib of our pen would grow dull, and our ink would go dry" (compare Q 18:109). "If this knowledge were the product of reflection", it might be confined; but inspirations flow without end to the one who polishes the mirror of his heart and asks, with the Prophet, for more knowledge (Q 20:114).
The Isolated Letters
The letters are distributed over worlds:
| World | Letters |
|---|---|
| Immensity (the world of power, after Abu Talib al-Makki) | alif, hamza |
| The angelic world | ha, kha, 'ayn, ghayn |
| The intermediate world | Seventeen letters |
| The visible world | ba, mim, waw |
| Ambiguous, belonging to several | alif, waw, ya |
Among them are commoners, an elite, an elite of the elite, a quintessence (the ba), the fourteen letters that open suras, and messengers (jim, ha, kha, kaf).
Speaking by Permission
Ibn 'Arabi comments on A.L.M. by command: "I do not speak until I have been authorized to do so, and, similarly, I will stop when a stopping point is given to me." His works are unlike other authors'. They come from hearts "both poor and devoid of knowledge, on the threshold of the Divine Presence"; things are projected into them that they did not know a moment before. Of his order of topics he says it is "like the dove and the crow who lived together because both limped."
Numbers, Moons and a Prediction
The twenty-nine suras with isolated letters match the moon's stations (Q 36:39). Sin is the outside of the wall and sad the inside: mercy within, punishment without (compare Q 57:13). The seventy-odd branches of faith are made exactly seventy-eight by unveiling. Alif is first written, hamza first pronounced, nun last. The nun is half the universe, its intelligible half hidden, like the moon's borrowed light; it is also the trust that man accepted.
A.L.M. at the Head of the Cow
In the second sura, alif is unity, mim the kingdom, lam the mediator. The alif descends like the hadith in which "Our Lord comes down toward the lowest heaven": a descent of transcendence, not of likeness. Lam is Power, joining the maker and the made. The reciter is "present through the All, for the All, and with the All".
Ibn 'Arabi gives a ladder of names for one quality:
| Group | Their word for it |
|---|---|
| Jurists | Sincerity |
| Sufis | Presence |
| Realizers | Spiritual aspiration (himma) |
| Ibn 'Arabi | Solicitude ('inaya) |
The alif is unvowelled; only its name is pronounced, through the hamza. The alif is God's representative among the letters, as man is in the universe. Lengthening a vowel is the secret of asking for support; the vowel fatha, the "movement of opening", is gratitude. Waw and ya are letters of "deficiency" or "causality": waw is the Angel who carries, ya the Prophet who receives, who said "I am nothing other than a man, like you".
"That Book"
"The allusive indication (ishara) is a call from afar". "Take off your sandals" means: remove lam and mim and leave the alif. The alif stands between the dhal and the lam of dhalika, "That", saying in effect: if you join him, it will be through me. Oneness is like the one among numbers: take one from a thousand and you have nine hundred and ninety-nine, a different reality.
There are three books: the drawn, the inscribed, and the unknown, which is Knowledge; hearts are its receptacle. "That book... is My knowledge, not yours". Untie lam-alif and there are two alifs; lam, self-knowledge, comes before alif, the Lord. One times one is one; the contingent times the eternal is contingent, with the eternal hidden. Junayd told someone who sneezed and praised God: "When the adventitious is confronted by the eternal, no trace of it remains". Ibn 'Arabi treats this as true of a different station.
The Sad: A Dream at the Sacred Mosque
The secret of sad came in a dream. On a Saturday in the Sacred Mosque, facing the Yemeni corner, Abu Yahya Abu Bakr al-Hashimi told Ibn 'Arabi of a dream in which he heard: "Sad is a noble letter and the sad in sad is even more veracious." Sad's form is a cycle, and "no form preceded it in time". It lies on its back, the sleeping posture of the prophets, ready to receive.
Lam-Alif: A Love Story
In "there is no god but God", lam-alif appears twice negating and twice affirming. Ibn 'Arabi's advice to the one who does not understand: "make a retreat (khalwa)... until such time as you do know". And in verse: "Look at us with the eye of union, you shall find us in difference".
Sahl was asked whether the heart prostrates. His answer: "Forever!" The Prophet's prayer, "I take refuge in Your pleasantness against Your anger", is mapped onto the leanings of alif and lam (Names, Acts, Essence). The instruction: "Pick your alif up out of its sleep and untie the knot of your lam."
The Article al-
The definite article signals genus, specification, determination and magnification. Its alif is divine, its lam human: God and creature. Lam's downstroke is God's; its visible semicircle is the nun of creation; the unseen half is the angelic world; the alif is the diameter, the word "Be". The Reality of realities is "eternal in the eternal, but not in itself; adventitious in adventitiousness, but not in itself", neither existent nor nonexistent.
Vowels and Words
Six vowel names: three for declined endings and three for fixed ones; the absence of a vowel is death. "take note of this strange life on a dead earth". The vowels come after the shaping, as the spirit after the clay (Q 15:29). Words are like men; particles are like angels and jinn, and "in reality, man is jann".
The Prophet received the totalizing words; Mary received Words. He pronounced the words of the universe on God's behalf, as a governor cuts a thief's hand by command. The Raphaelian Reality blows the trumpet; the breath is one, and differences come from the receivers. Muhammad is the Pillar under the celestial dome.
| Kind of word | Essence | Need |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | Independent | Self-standing in meaning |
| Verb | Indigent (an event) | Needs a subject |
| Particle | Bond | Exists only to join |
All essences need one another; absolute independence belongs to God alone. Written vowels are bodies and spoken ones spirits. Divine realities pass into human breaths, then to the upper sphere, then to the limb that moves; Ibn 'Arabi reconciles the theorists, for "there is no room for divergence on our path".
Part 6. The End of the Journey: No Station and the Station of Proximity (Chapters 420, 73 and 161)
The volume ends where the spiritual path ends, or rather where it stops being a path. Chapter 420 shows that whoever has gathered every station has no station left. Two passages from chapters 73 and 161 name the place he then occupies, the Station of Proximity, and Ibn 'Arabi tells how he entered it in 597, alone, until a dead master came to keep him company. Denis Gril introduces both.
Chapter 420: Liberated from the Stations
Three Words from One Verse
The chapter hangs on a verse spoken by the Hypocrites of Medina during the siege of the Confederates: "O people of Yathrib, you will no longer have a place to stand (la muqama lakum); come back!" (Q 33:13). Gril shows that the whole chapter is built on three words:
| Word | Root sense | Ibn 'Arabi's use |
|---|---|---|
| Yathrib | TH-R-B, to which the idea of reproach attaches | Even reproach belongs to the Whole and becomes the agent of return |
| la muqam, read as la maqam | "No place to stand" becomes "no station" | The non-station of the one who holds them all |
| raja'a | To come back, return | Everything is returned to God (Q 11:123) |
Distinction Is Conditioning
To enter a station is to acquire a knowledge. Whoever has gathered all the stations goes beyond the limited knowledge each one gives. Stations exist to make distinctions between degrees of being, so their law must finally be lifted. Even calling God "absolute" conditions Him, because it distinguishes Him from what is conditioned, and "distinction is conditioning". The hadith "He who knows himself knows his Lord" indicates both identity and difference, resolved in a higher knowledge in which God is "the very being of all things".
The Reversal of States and Stations
Ordinarily stations are the lasting degrees of the path and states the passing gifts. Here the order flips. States, as pure gifts from God, come from the Essence; stations represent the Attributes and the Law that governs the hierarchy of being. So the one liberated from stations is not liberated from states: "It is impossible to free oneself from states; they are a gift". In verse: "A state imposes its law; we are under the authority of states."
Zayd and His Limbs
Reproach Reintegrated
Why cite the Hypocrites at all? Because the Prophet kept them inside the community even though the Qur'an assigns them the lowest depths of the Fire. Negative things are only "mistaken claims". At the conquest of Mecca the Prophet, holding the uprights of the Ka'ba's door, asked the Quraysh: "What do you think I am going to do with you?" They hoped for good from a generous brother. He answered with Joseph's words to his brothers: "Let no disgrace fall upon you today" (Q 12:92).
If a created being forgave those who had broken the bond of kinship, God does so all the more. And the bond is not really broken: "It remains for the individual who knows of such matters; it is broken for the individual who does not know." Gril's note adds that Abu Sufyan, among the fiercest early enemies, appears indirectly in the chapter, another sign of the reintegration of every element.
The Heir and the Onager
"Know that the only one liberated from the stations is the heir to Muhammad". To him are given the totalizing words, knowledge of all the Names, knowledge of the first and the last: "the entire hunt is in the belly of the onagre." He is freed from the law the stations exercised on him; now he exercises his law over them.
The Lauded Station and the Final Mercy
The "Lauded Station" is the Prophet's intercession. He will intercede so that angels, messengers, prophets, saints and believers intercede in turn, and God brings out those who never did any good, until only the people of the Fire remain. These are kept in a constitution suited to it; Paradise would harm them, "just as the fragrance of the rose causes harm to scarabs".
Intercession (shafa'a) shares a root with "pair" (shaf'). It adds "something more" to the divine solitude of non-manifestation, and the Prophet is the one through whom this extra comes into being and returns.
The chapter ends in rhymed prose. God will not doom His creatures to eternal damnation. "Why would He do this when He, Himself, is the Cloak?" The notes explain the pun: the barrier (radd) and the cloak (rida'). The cloak has one side toward the wearer and one toward the viewer, but it is one cloth, so the barrier cannot be eternal. God makes Himself the target of the enemy's arrow; His mercy is final and perpetual.
On Proximity: Gril's Introduction
The Problem
Chapters 73 and 161 concern the highest degree of sainthood, the Station of Proximity. It lies below prophecy but above the degree of the "confirmer of truth" (siddiq), embodied by Abu Bakr. Two objections arise. The Qur'an lists the prophets, then the truthful, then the martyrs and the saints (Q 4:69), with no room between the first two. And Sunni Islam holds Abu Bakr to be the most excellent of the Companions, hence of the saints.
Concentric Spheres
Ibn 'Arabi reviews the stations of sainthood, prophecy and messengerhood and reminds us that they are concentric: "every rasul is a nabi, and every nabi is a wali". Walaya and qurba both mean nearness, a divine quality (God is "near" in the Qur'an); the feminine ending of qurba marks a particular mode. Prophecy too has three kinds: lawgiving, general, and "free" prophecy, not bound to the form of a revelation. The people of Proximity are defined by prophecy because they are its heirs.
The Qur'an calls "close" the higher angels, Jesus, and "those who go beyond". Because their return has already happened, the people of this station are not struck by the thunder of the Resurrection.
Moses and Khadir
The story of Moses and Khadir is the scriptural basis of the station. Moses' mission was pure election; Khadir's station came by acquisition, by passing through all the stations, yet the knowledge "from Our presence" he received was a gift just as Moses' mission was. That Khadir knew what Moses did not does not make him superior. Both had tasted knowledge from God, and a tasted knowledge, like a state, imposes its law. Moses, moved by divine jealousy for the Law, could only protest at acts that outwardly broke it.
Ghazali's Denial and the Solitaries
Ibn 'Arabi singles out Ghazali for denying the station, out of zeal for Abu Bakr's rank. Those who reach it are the afrad, the "solitaries", who escape ordinary human conditions and even the gaze of the Pole, though the Pole is one of them. Hidden by God and hiding their own state, they show only ordinary outward appearance and express their states only by passing on hadith and stories of the saints. Abu 'Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami, who wrote on the people of blame, in which the solitaries are the elite, fits the type.
Ibn 'Arabi adds a point to his predecessors: after Muhammad's coming, Khadir should have followed his law. Those who reason about law are supported, knowingly or not, by this station; their differences begin here and can be resolved here, if reflection is confirmed by unveiling.
Chapter 73: The Answer to Tirmidhi's Second Question
"Where are the abodes of the people of proximity?" Answer: "Between the degree of confirmation of the truth (siddiqiyya) and that of lawgiving prophecy". God brings them near either by election, regardless of deeds, like the one who will rise at the end of time, or by the path of deeds, like Khadir. The station is one, reached two ways, and so the messenger is distinguished from the prophet.
| Level within the abode | Who | Mark |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Messengers | Reached Him fully; rise in merit over one another |
| 2 | Prophets not sent | Worship by a law restricted to themselves |
| 3 | "Free" prophecy | No angel takes part in their revelations |
| Below | Truthful followers of messengers; of prophets; then those brought close | Each plane has its own tasted knowledge |
There are four sciences in the station: of divine writing, of union and separation, of light, and the knowledge from God's presence (Q 18:65). Hence Khadir's question to Moses: "and how could you bear that which you do not know by experience?" (Q 18:68). Experience here is tasting, a "state knowledge". And Khadir's words: "I have knowledge that God taught me, and that you do not know; and you have knowledge that God taught you, which I do not know."
Chapter 161: The Station of Proximity
The Flaw in Perfection
Proximity is "a divine quality and an unknown station", whose effects even elite messengers have denied. Moses' state of jealousy for the Law imposed itself on him. That is why the Prophet was told to say "Lord, make me grow in knowledge!" (Q 20:114), not "in state", since a stronger state would only have increased his disapproval. Through knowledge "perfection was contemplated in the flaw."
Entering the Station: Igisil, Ramadan 597
The dialogue is the emotional peak of the volume. Ibn 'Arabi is surprised to find him there. Sulami answers: "I was seized while in it, and with it I died". He adds, "The foreigner does feel loneliness", and asks: "are you not satisfied that al-Khadir is your companion in this station?" Moses disapproved of Khadir's state; but Khadir let him see only his outer form, so it was his own state Moses saw, and himself he disapproved of. Asked the station's name, Sulami says: "It is called the Station of Proximity; experience it fully!"
Abu Madyan's teaching is cited: Khadir knew Moses' rank, so after the second remark he obeyed Moses' own condition, "keep me no longer in your company!" (Q 18:76). The third time Moses forgot his own earlier need (Q 28:24). Khadir explained, "I did not do it of my own accord" (Q 18:82), for he followed a law from his Lord. That law was valid then, but not after Muhammad, for "the entire hunt is in his entrails."
Why the Jurists Disagree
Ibn 'Arabi saw that jurists who exercise independent reasoning stand in this station without knowing it. Divine help flows from it over them, which is why they condemn one another: they lack the taste of it and do not know its source. "Each of them has a piece of the truth", like the earlier prophets with their laws. Scriptural proofs are to them what revelation is to prophets, and their differences are like differences among revealed laws. Those who join unveiling to reasoning confirm one another; the others accuse each other of error.
Putting First What God Put First
Moses said to Khadir, "God willing, you shall find me patient" (Q 18:69), with the condition first. The Qur'an elsewhere puts "unless God wills" last (Q 18:23-24). Had Moses put it last, he would have had perfect patience. "He who places forward" and "He who places last" are Divine Names; to reverse God's order is a latent conflict that brings privation. The Prophet at al-Safa recited the verse naming al-Safa and al-Marwa and said: "I begin where God began."
Ghazali Answered, Abu Bakr Honoured
Ghazali is quoted: "There is no station between the confirmation of the Truth (al-Siddiqiyya) and prophecy". Ibn 'Arabi answers: a person of lesser merit may be given knowledge that the greater does not have without being superior. Khadir did not say "I am more excellent than you", and he respected Moses' prohibition.
The secret of Abu Bakr comes from this very station. When the Prophet died, all were distraught except Abu Bakr, who climbed the pulpit and said: "For him among you who adored Muhammad, Muhammad is dead, and for him among you who adored God, God is living and immortal!" 'Umar exclaimed: "It is as if I had never heard that verse before today!" Earlier, when the Prophet spoke of a man given the choice to meet God, Abu Bakr alone wept, understanding.
Part 7. What the Notes Add
The volume's three sets of notes run to well over a hundred pages. Much is reference apparatus. This part gathers what changes the reading: corrections, debates, background figures and a few striking passages quoted only in the notes. Items are grouped by the section they annotate.
Notes to the Introduction
| Topic | What the note says |
|---|---|
| Six sections | "Six is the most perfect of numbers"; linked to the copula waw and the Perfect Man |
| First section | About a quarter of the whole work |
| Encounters | The 78 chapters of the fifth section match the branches of faith |
| The state | In time, the state is the present moment, the only real thing between past and future |
| Future Poles | Chapter 555 explains why Ibn 'Arabi did not describe them |
| Fixed entities | "Fixity" differs from existence; al-Jili's phrase for existence in knowledge handed Ibn Taymiyya an argument about the eternity of the world |
| Prepositions | "From" marks separation, not origin; the Breath and the Cloud |
| Oneness of being | al-Qunawi (d. 672/1263) uses it; al-Farghani (d. 699/1299) makes it technical; Ibn Taymiyya makes it a polemical label; reductive readings lead to "monism" and "pantheism" |
| Seal | Some orders held the seal transmissible; the introduction disagrees |
| Red Sulphur | The alchemical elixir, rare and precious; Ibn 'Arabi's epithet |
| Saints' inspiration | Not binding on believers, since saints are not protected from error, but one should suspend judgment |
| Theology | Each country needs one theologian, to defend the faith |
| Corbin | His use of "ta'wil" questioned, since Ibn 'Arabi uses the word pejoratively |
| Cycles | 78,000 years from Adam to Muhammad; the second cycle is shorter |
| Bearers | The four figures first appear in Wahb b. Munabbih; Ibn 'Arabi as a Bearer: "And [God] has made me absolutely merciful" |
A further note remarks that "We are at present in the last third of the night of the sleep of the universe." Another lists the seven mother Names: Living, Knowing, Willing, Powerful, Speaking, Generous, Just.
Notes to the Law and the Way
- Ibn Taymiyya's concession comes from a letter to al-Manbiji.
- Ijtihad in the principles: Ibn 'Arabi kept the door open even there, as later did al-Suyuti (d. 911/1505), who claimed absolute independent judgment.
- Masruq (d. 63/683), like Malik, refused to rule on hypothetical cases.
- Inspiration and revelation differ: ilham is not wahy.
- Prayer: the number of daily prayers comes from the Sunna; the Qur'an alone suggests three or four. The word for prayer is linked to a pre-Islamic racing term for the horse that ran just behind the leader.
- al-Zahir Ghazi reigned in Aleppo 582-613.
- The Almohad caliph Abu Yusuf Ya'qub suggested that Ibn 'Arabi find husbands for his sisters.
- Moses and Adam: the hadith of their dispute, in which Adam's sin was "predestined forty years before".
- Veils: hadith of seventy, or seventy thousand, veils of light and darkness.
Notes to the Science of Letters
| Topic | Note |
|---|---|
| Alif | "all things are attached to it, and it is attached to nothing"; the seven letters that do not join forward are the letters of the Supreme Name |
| Particle | Sibawayh's "particle that came for a meaning"; Ibn 'Arabi: "The entire world is a letter (or a particle) that came to express a meaning" |
| Ali, Muhammad, Salman | Corbin and Massignon read 'ayn, mim, sin as their initials |
| Isolated letters | Ibn 'Abbas held them to be the Supreme Name |
| Sarraj on ALLAH | Remove the alif: LILLAH, "to God"; remove a lam: LAHU, "to Him"; remove the other: HU, the Self |
| Sahl's nine letters | alif, lam, qaf, ha, nun, mim, kaf, ta, sad |
| al-Buni | Death date 622/1225 rests on one source only; his advice: "He who does not know his book, which is his very self, is not, himself, his very self." |
| Later Sufi grammar | Ibn 'Ajiba (d. 1229/1809-10); Shaykh al-'Alawi of Mostaganem (d. 1936) on the basmala |
| Medinan Jews | Used letter values to predict the community's duration |
| Ibn Barrajan | Taught in Seville, accused of claiming the imamate, died a captive in Morocco in 536/1141 |
| Iblis | "I am better than he"; limited to the four elements; one of the jinn (Q 18:50) |
| Adam's form | Created sixty cubits tall in His form; a variant "form of the All-Merciful" is rejected by al-Nawawi |
| Directions | The angel moves vertically, the jinn horizontally, man in three or six directions, like the vowels |
| The Prophet's opinion | Pollination hadith: "I am nothing more than a man like you, and my opinion can be true or false" |
| Taqwa | Seeking protection in God against God: "I take refuge in You against You" |
| The mantle | "Grandeur is My mantle, and immensity is My loincloth"; Ash'arites and Mu'tazilites both right on the vision of God, from the inside and outside of the cloak |
| The missing brick | The palace with one brick missing; the Prophet: "Am I not that brick?" |
The highest annihilation, one note says, is extinction from God through creation: the return. The one who stays "standing" and is not sent back remains there.
Notes to the End of the Journey
- No station. Other works say the Muhammadan saint "has no maqam" and cannot be caught up with; the Yathrib verse refers to the Station of Proximity.
- Signs. The signs on the horizons are the places of divine manifestation.
- Absoluteness. "God is conditioned by nothing other than absoluteness".
- Kinship. The bond of kinship is "a branch that has grown out of the All-Merciful".
- Jesus is the only prophet the Qur'an names among "those who are Close" (Q 3:45), linked to his role as Seal of the Saints. Michel Chodkiewicz: the second Seal's arrival will close the Station of Proximity for good.
- Sulami (d. 412/1021), master of Nishapur, wrote of the one who passes through all stations and remains with the Truth "with no station, no place, no name". Ibn 'Arabi said he found the station's name in one of Sulami's books.
- Ghazali. The editors could not find the two sayings attributed to him. Ibn 'Arabi elsewhere finds Abu Bakr "at the summit of the degree".
- Baghdad and Egypt in the poem: Baghdad, seat of the caliphate, is the Pole's station; Egypt that of the solitaries who escape his gaze.
- Nooks and crannies: the word for "crannies" may mean the hidden closet where the Pole invests the solitaries with robes without their knowing.
- Place names Igisil and Angal lie on the road from Marrakesh to Sale; editions misspell them.
- "God willing" in Hebrew: the editors could not find the verse in the Bible; the phrase is current in Judaism.
- The Self. A passage from the Book of He retells the Yathrib verse as a voyage: setting sail in the Muhammadan vessel, being called back, finding the shore turned to sea, and finally hearing, "Immerse yourself in it." The swimmer drowns and finds repose.
Part 8. Synthesis
The application sections are the editor's, offered as analogies, not as claims about what Ibn 'Arabi meant.
Thirty Takeaways
How the Three Parts Fit
Read side by side, the three sections of the volume describe one movement seen at three scales.
| Law (Parts 2-3) | Letters (Parts 4-5) | Journey's end (Part 6) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The given form | Qur'an and Sunna | The twenty-eight letters | The stations |
| What fills it | Mercy | The Breath, as vowels | States, as gifts from the Essence |
| The temptation | Adding rules by opinion | Using letters for effects | Claiming a rank |
| The corrective | Original licitness; refuse analogy for oneself | The vow never to use them | Hiddenness; keeping the ordinary forms |
| The figure | The gnostic who gives by God's hand | The reader in whom revelation descends | The Muhammadan heir with no station |
In each case the form is not a husk to be thrown away once the content is reached. The Law's text, the letter's shape and the station's discipline are where the gift arrives. What changes at the summit is not the form but the person's relation to it: he no longer adds to it, uses it, or claims it. That is the common thread between the jurist who will not multiply rules, the master of letters who will not work marvels, and the saint who will not be seen.
Frameworks Table
| Framework | Where | Elements | Use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Six sections | Part 1 | Knowledges, behaviours, states, waystations, encounters, stations | Map any body of practice from theory to mastery |
| Active and passive sources | Part 2, ch.88 | Qur'an, Sunna active; consensus, analogy passive | Separate primary authority from derived reasoning |
| Conflict resolution order | Part 2, ch.88 | Combine, exception, addition, later date, lighter burden, free choice | Resolve conflicting rules transparently |
| Original licitness | Part 2, ch.88 | Free unless a text restricts | Default-allow policies with explicit exceptions |
| Ladder of intercession | Part 3, ch.344 | Creatures, the Merciful, the Names, God alone, angels of punishment, Satisfaction | Escalation that ends in mercy |
| Speculative versus prophetic path | Part 3, ch.344 | Intellect alone versus revelation followed | Know the limits of self-taught method |
| A.L.M. | Parts 4-5 | Essence, Attribute, Act | Trace any outcome back to principle |
| Election and acquisition | Part 6 | Moses and Khadir | Two routes to one competence |
A closer look
Strengths
- A corrective portrait. Cyrille Chodkiewicz's selection makes a strong case against the image of Ibn 'Arabi as an antinomian. Chapter 88 reads like a disciplined legal method.
- Mercy argued, not asserted. The ladder of intercession in chapter 344 gives the claim that punishment ends a precise structure.
- Scholarship on show. Gril's history of the science of letters is careful about what came before and after, and marks where influence is likely and where it is only parallel.
- Personal testimony. Chapter 161's story of Igisil and Sulami is among the most human passages in the Futuhat translated in either volume.
- Honest notes. The editors record when they cannot find a source, as with the Ghazali sayings and the Hebrew verse.
Weaknesses and Open Questions
- Double translation. Arabic to French to English loses precision; several lines, such as the one on studying physics, may carry errors.
- Uneven difficulty. The letters chapter assumes Arabic script and phonetics; without them, many correspondences are opaque.
- Authority and verification. Ibn 'Arabi learns rulings from luminous forms and receives knowledge by unveiling. The book offers criteria (the devil cannot take a prophet's form; rulings must match the collections), but an outsider cannot check the experience itself.
- Exclusivity. Only the Muhammadan heir is liberated from stations; earlier laws are abrogated. Readers from other traditions will note how much universality is claimed for one line.
- Ambivalence on power. The critique of jurists who serve rulers is sharp, yet Ibn 'Arabi also enjoyed the favour of rulers, as the notes mention.
- Numbers. The Jerusalem calculation looks arbitrary; Ibn 'Arabi himself calls numbers a veil, which raises the question of why present them.
What the Book Does Better Than Most
It shows that strictness and mercy can be the same commitment. The jurist who refuses to add rules out of reverence for the Law's silence and the theologian who says punishment ends because mercy precedes wrath are the same person, arguing from the same texts.
Open Questions for the Reader
- If the gaps in the Law are part of its fullness, who decides what counts as a gap?
- Can a station be real if its holders do not know they are in it, as with the jurists?
- Does the reversal of states and stations in chapter 420 undercut the usual teaching of the path, or complete it?
- Is the refusal to use letter magic a moral or a metaphysical choice?
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 | In Mecca 598/1202; first version of the Futuhat finished Safar 629 (Dec. 1231); second 632-636/1238 | Author; claims the Seal of Muhammadan sainthood |
| Michel Chodkiewicz | None given | Editor; author of the introduction |
| Cyrille Chodkiewicz | None given | Translator of the Law and the Way |
| Denis Gril | None given | Translator of the Science of Letters and the End of the Journey |
| James W. Morris | None given | Author of the preface |
| al-Mahdawi | Met 590/1194 | Friend in Tunis |
| Badr al-Habashi | Companion 23 years | Disciple |
| Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi | d. 672/1263 | Disciple, son-in-law; received the autograph |
| al-Farghani | d. 699/1299 | Made "oneness of being" technical |
| Ibn Taymiyya | 728/1328 | Critic who conceded Ibn 'Arabi's view of the Law |
| Ibn Hazm | 456/1064 | Zahiri jurist embraced by the Prophet in a dream |
| Dawud b. Khalaf | 270/884 | Founder of the Zahiri school |
| al-Zahir Ghazi | Reigned 582-613 | Son of Saladin; showed the wallet of fatwas |
| Masruq | d. 63/683 | Ruled only on actual cases |
| al-Suyuti | d. 911/1505 | Claimed absolute ijtihad |
| Ibn Barrajan | Died 536/1141 | Predicted the date of Jerusalem's capture |
| Sahl al-Tustari | d. 283/896 | Early master of the science of letters |
| Kharraz | d. 286/899 | Letters as source of inspiration |
| Ibn Masarra | 269-319/883-931 | Andalusian forerunner |
| Ibn Sina | 370/980-428/1037 | Phonetics and letter values |
| Qushayri | 376-465/986-1027 | Grammar of hearts |
| Abu Talib al-Makki | d. 386/996 | Source on the world of power |
| al-Qashani | d. 730/1329 | Later commentator on jafr |
| Abu 'Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami | Died 412/1021 | Master of Nishapur; appears to Ibn 'Arabi in the Station of Proximity |
| Abu Madyan | None given | Master cited on Khadir and Moses |
| Ghazali | None given | Denied the Station of Proximity |
| Ibn al-'Arif | d. 536/1141 | Possible source of "a call from afar" |
| Shaykh al-'Alawi | d. 1936 | Modern commentator on the basmala |
Part 9. Study Guide: Misreadings, Contrasts and Questions
This volume invites misreading from two sides: those who think Ibn 'Arabi dissolved the Law into mysticism, and those who find the letters chapter mere numerology. This part lists the misreadings the book itself corrects, sets out its paired concepts, and offers questions with model answers.
Ten Misreadings and Their Corrections
| Misreading | What the book actually says |
|---|---|
| Ibn 'Arabi was an antinomian | The Law is the Way; he follows it more strictly than the jurists, refusing even analogy for himself |
| He was a Zahiri | He admired Ibn Hazm but followed no school: "I am not one of those who say, Ibn Hazm said" |
| Rejecting analogy means condemning those who use it | He accepts its use by others and blames those who forbid it outright |
| "Oneness of being" is his doctrine in his words | The term is later, and became a polemical label |
| Hell is eternal torment | Punishment has a fixed term; mercy finally governs |
| The science of letters is magic | It is a science of the saints; Ibn 'Arabi vowed never to use letters for effects |
| Letter values tell the future | Numbers are a veil; the knowledge comes by unveiling |
| Liberation from stations means freedom from all rule | The liberated still live under states, and keep the Law |
| Proximity makes saints higher than prophets | It lies below lawgiving prophecy; lesser merit can know what greater does not |
| Ibn 'Arabi demoted Abu Bakr | No one stands between Muhammad and Abu Bakr; Abu Bakr's secret came from this station |
Questions With Model Answers
Part 1
Q. Why does Chodkiewicz warn against systematising the Futuhat? Because the book's order is part of its meaning. It claims to be dictated, compares its digressions to the Qur'an's, and moves in a spiral. A system would replace its logic with the reader's.
Q. What are the two axes? Mercy, by which the universe is born from the Breath of the All-Merciful and punishment ends; and the Law, with which the Way begins and ends.
Part 2
Q. Why does Ibn 'Arabi avoid analogy for himself? Because each analogy extends a ruling to a case the Law left free, multiplying prescriptions. Yet he accepts its use by qualified others.
Q. What is the last step in resolving conflicting texts? If the date is unknown, prefer the text that lifts hardship; if still equal, free choice.
Part 3
Q. Why is the speculative path incomplete? It knows God only as beyond likeness; it misses the nearness that revelation adds, and the direct door to God.
Q. What does the smallest coin reveal? The giver's estimate of his own worth to God.
Parts 4 and 5
Q. Why do God and man each have three letters? Man is made in God's image; they differ by eternity and contingency, not by the structure of knowledge.
Q. What is the lesson of lam-alif? Neither the Sufi (lam's energy raises alif) nor the realizer (grace descends on lam) sees fully; both see with one eye.
Part 6
Q. Why can the liberated not be freed from states? Because states are gifts from the Essence; the stations were the law of the Attributes.
Q. How does Ibn 'Arabi reconcile the Station of Proximity with Abu Bakr's rank? There is no person between Muhammad and Abu Bakr, but there is a station between the degree of the truthful and prophecy; Abu Bakr may hold both.
Five Close Readings
1. "the Law, which is the Way, leads back to itself" (Part 2)
The phrase closes the gap that most accounts of Sufism open. If the Way led beyond the Law, the Law would be a ladder to discard. Here the destination is the starting point seen fully.
2. The wallet of fatwas (chapter 318)
The ruler's wallet is a physical image of how institutions launder desire. Each paper is legal; together they abolish the Law.
3. "I am not worth that much to God!" (chapter 437)
A tiny scene with a large claim: what we give is a self-portrait.
4. The nun and human eternity (chapter 2)
Half a circle visible, half hidden: the human being is eternal by relation and contingent in himself.
4b. "the entire hunt is in the belly of the onagre" (chapter 420)
An old hunting boast becomes a theology of the heir. One animal is worth all the game; one person holds all the knowledges. The notes add that the Prophet first used it to flatter, and humble, Abu Sufyan, his old enemy: the proverb itself enacts reintegration.
4c. Junayd and the sneezer (chapter 2)
Junayd said that when the contingent meets the eternal, no trace of it remains. Ibn 'Arabi does not deny it; he files it under a different station. This is his habit throughout: rarely refuting an earlier master, he relocates the saying to the degree where it is true.
5. "I was seized while in it, and with it I died" (chapter 161)
Sulami's answer shows the station as a dwelling, not an event. The loneliness of the new arrival is met by the dead who never left.
Paired Concepts
Glossary
Arabic terms as the translators use them, with the sense they carry in this volume. Transliteration is simplified.
| Term | Meaning in this book |
|---|---|
| Afrad | The solitaries; hidden saints who escape even the Pole's gaze; people of the Station of Proximity |
| Ahwal / hal | States; given, passing; at the end they govern even the liberated |
| A'yan thabita | Immutable entities; things as fixed in God's knowledge before existence |
| AZaL | Eternity; spelled by the three divine letters alif, zay, lam |
| Barzakh | Isthmus; what separates and joins two things |
| Dhawq | Tasting; knowledge by experience that words cannot pass on |
| Fata | The young man met at the Ka'ba; the Perfect Man |
| Harf | Letter; also edge or limit |
| Haraka / sukun | Vowel (movement) / absence of vowel (rest, death) |
| Hayra | Perplexity; what follows knowledge |
| Himma | Spiritual aspiration; the realizers' word for presence |
| Huwiyya | Ipseity, the Self; one ipseity with many forms |
| Ijma' | Consensus; for Ibn 'Arabi, the Companions' only, unanimous |
| Ijtihad | Independent effort; to derive a ruling, or to reach the disposition for inspiration |
| Ikhtisas / iktisab | Election / acquisition; Moses and Khadir |
| 'Ilm ladunni | Knowledge from God's presence, given to Khadir |
| 'Inaya | Solicitude; divine care, Ibn 'Arabi's word for the privilege of all things |
| 'Isma | Impeccability; the veil that protects before sin |
| Khalifa | Deputy; man as God's representative |
| Malamiyya | People of blame; hidden saints who live the ordinary Law |
| Maghfira | Forgiveness; literally a covering or veil |
| Maqam / maqamat | Station(s); acquired, lasting; finally left behind in the non-station |
| Maqam al-qurba | Station of Proximity; between the truthful and lawgiving prophecy |
| Maqam mahmud | The Lauded Station; the Prophet's final intercession |
| Qiyas | Analogy; a passive source, avoided by Ibn 'Arabi for himself |
| Rahma | Mercy; one of the two axes, nearly "love" |
| Rida' | Cloak; the perfect servant, one cloth with two faces |
| Shafa'a | Intercession; shares a root with "pair" |
| Shari'a | Revealed Law; a watering place and a road; the Way itself |
| Siddiq / siddiqiyya | Confirmer of the truth; a follower; Abu Bakr |
| Taqlid | Imitation of a school; not permitted |
| Taqyid / itlaq | Conditioning / absoluteness; "distinction is conditioning" |
| Wahdat al-wujud | "Oneness of being"; a later label, not Ibn 'Arabi's term |
| Walaya | Sainthood, nearness; contains prophecy and messengerhood |
About this book
The Meccan Revelations: Volume II by Ibn al-'Arabi, 2004. 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