Insight Editions · No. 158
The Ringstones of Wisdom: Fusus al-Hikam
Ibn al-'Arabi · Translated, introduced, and annotated by Caner K. Dagli
Ibn al-'Arabi presents the wisdom associated with twenty-seven prophets through reflections on divine unity, the Names, human knowledge, and the nature of existence.
A study guide to The Ringstones of Wisdom: Fusus al-Hikam by Ibn al-'Arabi, translated, introduced, and annotated by Caner K. Dagli. Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the authors or publishers. Please read and buy the original.
Overview
Dagli (Kazi, 2004). It covers Dagli's introduction, the Shaykh's own preface and all 27 ringstones in order, with Dagli's 1,272 footnotes read alongside the text.
- Core claim. There is one Real. The world is its self-disclosure through the Divine Names, shaped by the immutable identities of things, and each prophet is a "ringstone" setting one facet of that wisdom.
- Scope. Twenty-seven prophets from Adam to Muhammad, among them Khalid ibn Sinan, who is not in the Qur'an. The text reads Qur'an and hadith esoterically, glossed by Qaysari, Qashani and Dagli.
- Key figures. Ibn al-'Arabi; Dagli; the commentators Qaysari and Qashani; Abu Yazid, Junayd, Abu Madyan, Ibn Qasi, Abu Talib al-Makki.
- Best for. Readers who want the argument of the Fusus chapter by chapter, with its key terms, its boldest claims and the places where it is contested.
The Book in Brief
- One Real, many Names. God as Essence is unknowable and "Beyond Need of the worlds". As God (Allah) He is the Lord of the Names, and the Names need the world to show their effects. The Breath of the All-Merciful relieves that need. It is nature itself, the substance that takes on every form.
- Identities decide. Each thing has an immutable identity in God's knowledge. God gives existence; the identity decides what appears, so "the decree only determines things through them" (Ezra). This is not fatalism: prayer and asking are among the ways the identities unfold (Seth, Job).
- Two assertions. Intellect alone affirms incomparability; imagination affirms similarity. Perfect knowledge holds both (Noah, Elias). Each believer worships the god of his belief, the water that takes "the colour of its container" (Muhammad).
- Perfect Man. Adam, made "in His Image", gathers all the Names and is the spirit of the world. The prophets are his facets, and Muhammad is the unique one in whom the series begins and ends.
- Sainthood and Law. Sainthood never ends; law-giving prophethood and messengerhood ended with Muhammad. Saints may receive from God what the Prophet received, while outwardly conforming to his Law (Ezra, David).
- Mercy wins. Mercy outstrips Anger. Every creature ends in happiness of its kind, and even the Fire becomes "coolness and peace". The Shaykh extends this to Pharaoh, who he says died a believer (Moses).
Argument map: from the Essence through the Names and the Breath to the identities, the knower and Mercy.
Chapter Map
| Ch | Ringstone | In one line |
|---|---|---|
| Intro | Dagli; Author's preface | Names, identities, Perfect Man; the dream of the Prophet in Damascus, 627/1229 |
| 1 | Adam: Divine | The world as an unpolished mirror; Adam its polish and God's vicegerent |
| 2 | Seth: Exhalation | Every gift unfolds the receiver's preparedness; the Seal of saints |
| 3 | Noah: Glorification | Incomparability plus similarity; the people's idols read inwardly |
| 4 | Enoch: Holiness | Exaltedness of place, of rank, and in Himself |
| 5 | Abraham: Enchanting Love | Friendship as mutual permeation of God and slave |
| 6 | Isaac: the Real | The sacrifice dream needed interpreting; science of dreams |
| 7 | Ishmael: Loftiness | Each lord's servant is well-pleasing; the promise overrules the threat |
| 8 | Jacob: Spirit | Din as obedience, recompense, habit: our own state returns |
| 9 | Joseph: Light | Waking life is a dream; the world as God's shadow |
| 10 | Hud: Unity | Every creature on a straight path; God as the faculties |
| 11 | Salih: Opening | Creation rests on threeness, as does a valid syllogism |
| 12 | Shu'ayb: Heart | The heart holds the Real; the god of beliefs; renewal |
| 13 | Lot: Mastery | Refuge in God; the knower's chosen weakness over himmah |
| 14 | Ezra: Ordainment | The secret of qadar; sainthood outlasts prophethood |
| 15 | Jesus: Prophethood | Two waters, two quickenings; the Breath is nature; 5:116-118 |
| 16 | Solomon: All-Merciful | Two mercies; Bilqis's throne re-created, not carried |
| 17 | David: Existence | Gift, not wage; explicit vicegerency; Will versus Law |
| 18 | Jonah: Soul | Preserve the human makeup; pardon; death as separation |
| 19 | Job: Invisible | Water of life; patience is complaining only to God |
| 20 | John: Majesty | First name joined to its quality; two greetings of peace |
| 21 | Zachariah: Possessing | Mercy reaches all; God is Mercy; Names as gates |
| 22 | Elias: Intimacy | Horse of fire; the mirror; realising animality |
| 23 | Luqman: Excellence | Spoken and silent wisdom; Subtle, Informed; shirk |
| 24 | Aaron: Imam | The calf; subjugation; desire as the greatest idol |
| 25 | Moses: Exaltedness | Ark and sea; Khidr; Pharaoh's question and faith |
| 26 | Khalid: Self-Sufficiency | Prophethood of the barzakh; reward of hope |
| 27 | Muhammad: Uniqueness | Women, perfume, Prayer; the god of beliefs |
What the book is
Dagli's translation, introduction, and 1,272 glosses (Kazi, 2004).
Cast and Commentators
Edition boundaries
Introduction: The Names, the Identities and the Comprehensive Being
Caner K. Dagli opens his 2004 translation not with a biography but with a slow commentary on the first sentence of the Adam ringstone. Its vocabulary (the Real, the Names, the identities, self-disclosure, presences, Perfect Man) is the toolkit for all 27 chapters. His thesis: the world is the eternal act of the Self being Itself, and man is the one place where that act is gathered whole.
Why "the Real" and Not "God"
Ibn al-'Arabi names the Essence beyond every qualification al-Haqq, the Real. He uses it in place of Allah out of adab (courtesy): Allah is the supreme, personal Name, carrying both awe and nearness, so where God and creature seem to change places in the argument he reaches for another Name. Dagli keeps the distinction in English.
The opening sentence says the Real willed, "by virtue of His Most Beautiful Names (7:180), innumerable", to see their identities. The Names are nisba, relationships: Creator implies a creation. They are 'adami, non-existential, not concrete entities beside the Essence; otherwise Creator and Lord would be two gods. They are innumerable because the Essence is infinite.
"Their identities" can be read two ways: the very essence of each Name, or the forms in God's knowledge that depend on the Names, the immutable identities. Ibn al-'Arabi says he could equally have written that the Real willed to see His own Identity. Since the Named is one, each identity is a Name of the Identity, and to see all identities is to see the one Identity.
How the Names Are Ordered
| Axis | What it sorts | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Denotation | Essence / Quality / Act | Holy, Real, All-Merciful / Clement, Subtle / Creator, Giver of Death |
| Conditionality | One Quality presupposes another | Knowledge → Will → Power |
| Relation | Pairs that demand each other | First/Last, Inward/Outward |
| Scope | Range of what is named | Real > Creator > Giver of Life |
Between any two Names we can say stand infinitely many we cannot: the midpoint of two Names is itself a Name, ad infinitum. The ninety-nine are a representative sample. Qaysari speaks of Names "begetting" Names; a compound such as Just-Creator-Clement is really one Name, and compounding is only our way of seeing it. Each individual identity has its own unique Name, its "lord".
Dagli renders hukm as "determination" (judgment, decree, status, control): Names determine what depends on them and identities receive that determination. Related terms are athar (effect) and sultan (influence).
Self-Disclosure: God Being Himself
Names alone do not yield identities. Self-disclosure (tajalli) produces forms in God's knowledge shaped by the Names. The Essence is All-Possibility, pure actuality with no potency, and at the centre of each identity lies a reflection of the Self. God discloses Himself by being what He is: the Knower entails the known. From the Self's side there are no separate beings; from the identities' side the Self has made them real. To say disclosure divides the Unity is to say "in being Itself the Self ceases to be Itself", which is absurd.
The Self naming Itself: from Unity through the Names to the identities, the manifest world and the human synthesis.
Dagli's terms for the two stages:
- Holiest Emanation (al-fayd al-aqdas). The coming to be of the immutable identities, also called the invisible self-disclosure (tajalli al-ghayb).
- Holy Emanation (al-fayd al-muqaddas). Their existentiation in the manifest world, the visible self-disclosure (tajalli al-shahadah).
An identity holds every quality it can ever have from eternity, or it would be another identity. So God need only say "Be!": existentiation comes from the side of the identity, the command from the side of God. Existence is "a self-disclosure of a self-disclosure".
Names, Identities, and Determination
Dagli's introduction is a commentary on the opening of the Adam ringstone. al-Haqq (the Real) names the Essence beyond qualification. Out of adab, the Shaykh often prefers it to Allah where God and creature seem to change places: Allah carries proximity and awe as the personal Name.
- Names as relations. Names are nisba: relationships of God to the world (Creator implies creation), attributions that are not other than the Essence. They are innumerable because the Essence is infinite. Treated as concrete entities they would make Creator and Lord two gods.
- 'Ayn as identity. Dagli renders 'ayn as identity (not only Chittick's "entity"): spring, eye, source, essence. The immutable identity ('ayn thabitah) in God's knowledge and the existent identity are the same reality, not two things.
- hukm as determination. Names determine what depends on them; identities receive determination. Also athar (effect) and sultan (influence).
Holiest and Holy Emanation
God discloses Himself by being Himself. From the Self's view there are no separate entities; from the identities' view the Self disclosed Itself to make them real. Saying disclosure divides Unity is saying the Self ceases to be Itself: absurd.
- Radii of a circle. Selves meet only at the centre: a spark of selfhood inaccessible as object, known only to it and God.
- Be! Existentiation comes from the identity's side; the command from the Divine side. Holy Emanation is contained in Holiest: existentiation is "self-disclosure of a self-disclosure".
- Presences. Immutable level = all Names in the Inward; corporeal world = same totality in the Outward; between them spirit, then soul. A presence is not a pre-existing container but the weave formed when identities are actualized together.
Shared Qualities and Presence Weave
- Unity vs Oneness. Ahadiyyah beyond polarity vs wahidiyyah: God first "identified" (ta'ayyun), self-naming. "God" -> "God is One"; "I" -> "I am".
- Spirit / Pen / Muhammadan Reality. Transcends and sources the world; restated whole in man's soul.
Dream Authority and Heir Language
Each self is inviolable: however deep you go into an object, the spark of selfhood at its centre stays out of reach, known only to it and God. Dagli's image: selves are radii of one circle, meeting only at the centre.
Presences: How Beings Meet
A presence (hadrah) is a way God is present, nearly a synonym of wujud, and each Name is a presence. The first split is between Unity (ahadiyyah), the Self beyond all polarity, and Oneness (wahidiyyah), where God is first "identified" (ta'ayyun) through His Names: the move from "God" to "God is One", from "I" to "I am". Once we say "God is this", we have left the Supreme Self and entered the relation of God with "what is other than God" (ma siwa'Llah).
Many beings are merciful but there is one All-Merciful, whose presence in them is their mercy. Shared Names let identities interact without losing selfhood. Perception is the quality out there present to the same quality in my soul; a hammer breaks a rock because both share a presence, and so do my hand and the hammer.
- Immutability. All the Names in the presence of the Inward (al-Batin).
- Spirit. Controls and manifests in the soul.
- Soul. Lies between spirit and body and controls the body.
- Bodies. All the Names in the presence of the Outward (al-Zahir).
Perfect Man: Synthesis and Unfolding
The "comprehensive being" of the opening sentence is Perfect Man. In the human soul every Divine Name shows up as a virtue or power, so man is the Image of God and the replica (nuskhah) of the world: the microcosm (al-'alam al-saghir) to the world's macrocosm (al-'alam al-kabir). The soul has no colour or sound, yet the same Qualities run at every level; man's Heart expresses the Essence as his virtues express the Qualities.
| Man | World |
|---|---|
| Total: synthesis | Complete: unfolding |
| A radius cutting all circles | Intertwining circumferences |
| White light | The spectrum through a prism |
| The circle | Polygons and ovals drawn on its points |
Dagli does not moralize this. Emotional and ethical states come and go, which shows they are not central. Most people live off-centre: seeking the centre where it is not, they produce shadow-centres "as in a house of mirrors". In the realized man centre and periphery are present to each other and the soul becomes transparent. Behind both stands the Spirit, also called the Supreme Pen and the Muhammadan Reality, source of the world and restated whole in man.
The Author's Introduction: A Book Handed Over in a Dream
Ibn al-'Arabi says he saw the Prophet in a dream in the last ten days of Muharram 627 (about mid-December 1229) in Damascus. The Prophet held a book: "This is the book of the Ringstones of Wisdom. Take hold of it, and with it go out to the people." The Shaykh claims to present it "with neither addition nor omission", as interpreter (mutarjim), one who retells so that it is understood, not as author.
- Himmah. Dagli renders it "willpower": the traveller's intensity of striving and his power to bring will to bear on an object.
- Folk of God. "Folk of Unveiling", "Folk of the Realities" and similar phrases always mean the Sufis.
- The poem. Hear what comes from God, return to Him, keep it, unfold the enfolded sayings, then give to seekers without hindrance: "This mercy I extend to thee, do thou extend it likewise."
Ringstone 1. The Divine Wisdom in the Word of Adam
The first ringstone states the premise of the whole book. God willed to see His Names in a mirror, and the world without man was a mirror left unpolished. Adam, meaning the Perfect Man, is the polish and the spirit of that form: the one being in whom all the Names are gathered, and therefore the only fit vicegerent.
Seeing Oneself in Another
The opening sentence: the Real willed, by His innumerable Names, "to see their identities (or, if you wish, His Identity) in a comprehensive being that comprises the whole affair insofar as it is possessed of existence, and His Mystery is manifest to Himself through it". Seeing oneself in oneself differs from seeing oneself in another, which works like a mirror: God then appears "in a form accorded by the locus seen", a form that would not exist without the locus and His self-disclosure to it.
Dagli's notes fix the vocabulary. Kawn ("being") belongs to the world only; wujud ("existence") can be God's or the world's. Amr ("affair") means thing or reality; "the whole affair" is everything. A saying of 'Ali ("He sees, though there be no object in His creation to see") shows that God's absolute self-knowledge needs no world; the qualified knowledge does. "It is in encompassing both the absolute and the qualified that God is truly God."
The mirror argument of the Adam ringstone: from God's will to see Himself to the three titles of Adam.
The Unpolished Mirror and the Breath
God first brought the world into existence as a homogeneous form with no spirit, "like an unpolished mirror". It is a rule of divine governance that no place is prepared without receiving a divine spirit: the "breathing" of "He shaped him, and breathed His spirit into him" (32:9). Dagli reads the preparing as the Holiest Emanation, which makes a receptacle, and the filling as the Holy Emanation, the self-disclosure "that has not ceased, nor ever will cease". Adam was the very clearness of this mirror and the spirit of this form.
Angels, Man and Vicegerent
The world as a whole is the Great Man. Its angels are its faculties, like the spiritual and sensory faculties in a human being. Each is veiled from what is above it and thinks itself worthy of every high station, because it holds a share of the Divine Synthesis. Dagli calls this "one of the most difficult sentences in the Ringstones" and unpacks its triad: Divine Oneness (the Names), the Reality of realities (Unity) and Universal Nature (principle of acting and being acted on, receptacle of the Names' effects). Only unveiling knows this, not thought; 'aql, intellect, also carries the sense "to bind".
- Man. Insan also means the pupil of the eye. Through him "the Real looks upon His creation and shows mercy upon them". He comes to be in time (hadith) yet is beginningless and endless, "the separative and unitive Word".
- Vicegerent. He is to the world "what the ringstone is to the ring": the place of the king's seal on his treasures. While the seal is on, no one opens them. When the Perfect Man withdraws from the storehouses of this world, nothing stored there remains, and the affair moves to the Hereafter, where he is set as an eternal seal.
Universals: Real but Never Existent
The chapter then turns technical. Universal realities such as Life and Knowledge have no concrete existence, are always intelligible, and yet determine everything concrete; they are identical with the identities of existents. They are not divided: "being a man" is whole in every man and does not multiply with individuals. The determination runs both ways: knowledge makes its possessor "knower", and the possessor makes knowledge eternal in God, temporal in man. "Each one is determining and determined."
Dagli adds two notes. Universals are both concepts we abstract and their ontological source in a Divine Quality; we can abstract only because every form is already a facet of the human intelligence. And there is a split between the originated (mubda', made with no intermediary, like the First Intellect) and the created (makhluq, made through it); the rule of dependence is the same on both levels.
Need, Image and the Last
The created thing is contingent, so it is needful (faqr) of what is necessary in itself; once it exists it is necessary, but by another. Because it depends on God in Name and Quality, it is in His image in everything except essential necessity. Hence God turns us to His signs in creation (41:53): "He has shown Himself to us through us. We describe Him by no quality without ourselves being that quality." "When we witness Him, we witness ourselves, and when He witnesses us, He witnesses Himself." The one differentiator is our need.
God is not first of a series. Contingent things are infinite, so He is Last only because everything returns to Him: "He is the Last in His very priority, and the First in His very finality."
| God describes Himself as | So the world is | And we experience |
|---|---|---|
| Manifest / Hidden | Visible / invisible (shahadah / ghayb) | The hidden in us, the manifest in us |
| Well-pleased / Wrathful | A place of fear and hope | Wrath feared, good-pleasure hoped |
| Beautiful / Majestic | Beauty and Majesty (jamal / jalal) | Intimacy and awe |
| The two Hands | Form of the world + form of the Real | Perfect Man, who unites them |
The world is visible and the Vicegerent invisible, "that is why the sultan is set under veil". God has veils of darkness (natural bodies) and of light (subtle spirits), after the hadith of seventy (or seventy thousand) veils. The world is its own veil and never perceives God, by taste or by witnessing. In Dagli's words, "Only God can know God."
Iblis and the Two Hands
"What hath prevented thee from prostrating to what I have created with My two Hands?" (38:75). The two Hands are the form of the world and the form of the Real. Iblis is part of the world and lacks the synthesis. Qaysari reports a view that Satan is the macrocosmic face of the Name the Misguider (al-Mudill), whose microcosmic face is conjecture (wahm), "the soul that commands to evil".
Vicegerency belongs only to the Perfect Man. His outward form is made of the world's realities, his inward form on the Form of God. The hadith of supererogatory works says "I will be his hearing by which he hears, his sight by which he sees", not his ear and eye, so the two forms stay distinct. God is in every existent in the measure its reality requires; the Vicegerent surpasses them only by totality.
Godwariness and the Closing List
Adam is the "single soul" of 4:1 and is "the Real/creation". "Be wary of thy Lord" plays on taqwa (godwariness) and waqayah (protection), from one root: make your manifest side a protection for your Lord when there is blame, and your Lord a protection for you when there is praise. Good goes to God, evil to oneself. God then showed Adam his two Hands: the world in one, Adam and all his progeny in the other, ranks marked (the covenant of 7:172 and Tirmidhi's hadith of the progeny for Paradise and for the Fire).
The Shaykh ends by listing all 27 ringstones and stating the rule of the title: "The ringstone of each Wisdom is the Word related to it." He has written what was set out for him, "not that to which I have attained", within the limits of the archetype of the Book (umm al-kitab), and "the presence prevents" any addition.
Vocabulary Fixed by Dagli
- Absolute and qualified knowledge. A saying of 'Ali ("He sees, though there be no object in His creation to see") shows absolute self-knowledge needs no world; qualified knowledge does. It is in encompassing both that God is truly God.
- Holiest then Holy. Preparing the receptacle is Holiest Emanation; filling it is Holy Emanation, the self-disclosure "that has not ceased, nor ever will cease". Adam is clearness of the mirror and spirit of the form.
- Angels as faculties. Each is veiled from what is above it and thinks itself worthy of every high station through its share of the Divine Synthesis. Triad in Dagli's note: Divine Oneness (Names), Reality of realities (Unity), Universal Nature (receptacle of Names' effects). Known by unveiling, not binding reason ('aql also means "to bind").
Universals, Need, and Image
Universal realities such as Life and Knowledge have no concrete existence, stay intelligible, and yet determine everything concrete. They are not divided: "being a man" is whole in every man. Determination runs both ways: knowledge makes its possessor "knower", and the possessor makes knowledge eternal in God, temporal in man.
- Need as differentiator. Contingent things are needful of what is necessary in itself. Once existent they are necessary by another. "He has shown Himself to us through us." When we witness Him we witness ourselves; when He witnesses us He witnesses Himself. The one differentiator is our need.
- First and Last. Contingents are infinite, so He is Last because all returns to Him: "Last in His very priority, First in His very finality."
- Only God knows God. Veils of darkness (bodies) and light (spirits); the world is its own veil and never perceives God by taste or witnessing.
Adab of the Angels and the Closing Canon
- Taqwa / waqayah. One root: make your manifest a protection for your Lord in blame; your Lord a protection for you in praise. Good to God, evil to self.
- Two Hands shown. World in one; Adam and progeny in the other with ranks (7:172; Tirmidhi Paradise/Fire progeny).
- Canon rule. "The ringstone of each Wisdom is the Word related to it." Written what was set out, not what he attained; umm al-kitab limits; the presence prevents addition.
Image Hadith and Totality
Ringstone 2. The Wisdom of Exhalation in the Word of Seth
Seth's name means "gift of God", so his ringstone is a theory of giving. Every gift, from the Essence or from a Name, asked for or not, is the unfolding of the receiver's own preparedness: "no one contains anything but his own soul". The chapter detours into its most contested doctrine, the Seal of the Saints, and ends with a prophecy of the last child born on earth.
A Typology of Gifts and Requests
Gifts come as Essence gifts (from Allah, Lord, All-Merciful) or Name gifts (from particular Names), and either way they follow a specific request ("grant me such-and-such"), a non-specific request ("what Thou knowest benefits me") or no request.
| Asker | Motive | Knowledge of preparedness |
|---|---|---|
| The hasty | "Man was created hasty" (21:37) | None |
| The one asking "from possibility" | Some gifts come only after a request: "perchance this is one" | General, not detailed |
| Folk of Presence (a) | Know their preparedness from what they receive | In the present moment |
| Folk of Presence (b) | Know what they will receive from their preparedness | Most complete |
| The genuine slave | Only obedience: "Call upon Me and I shall respond" (40:60) | Asks when the state demands, silent when it demands entrustment |
Dagli stresses that a request does not bind God: denying either the solicited or the unsolicited gift would restrict Him, a fault the Ringstones attack again and again. Preparedness itself produces the request: the Holiest Emanation sets what the Holy Emanation will bring, including the asking. Job at first did not ask for his affliction to be lifted; later "the state called for them to ask", and it was lifted (21:83-84). Timing belongs to ordainment (qadar): a request that fits its moment is answered at once, otherwise later, here or in the Hereafter. God's "Labbayk" (Here I am) is immediate; only the thing asked for waits.
A request is made by articulation, state, or preparedness. Words alone give absolute praise; a state colours it "in meaning", inciting praise by a Name of Act (the Giver, the Bestower) or of incomparability (the Holy, the Self-Sufficient). "Preparedness is the most hidden of requests." One perceives one's state, never one's preparedness.
Knowing the Mystery of Ordainment
The highest of the Folk of God know that God's knowledge of them is what they are in their immutable identity, and that "the Real grants him nothing but what the knowledge of his identity grants Him". This is the core claim that knowledge follows the known. They know the mystery of ordainment (sirr al-qadar), some in general, some in detail; the detailed knowers learn it through signs or, higher, by unveiling of their immutable identity and its infinite states. Then their self-knowledge stands "at the degree of God's knowledge of him", though from the slave's side it is Divine solicitude that came first.
- "Until We know" (47:31). Read as God's knowledge of the identities of those who strive, not as God learning something new.
- The theologians. Their best position: knowledge is eternal, its attachment (ta'alluq) to temporal things comes to be. Their error is to make knowledge extrinsic to the Essence. The realizer says it is identical from one view and not from another.
- Dagli's aside. Qaysari reads wujud here as wijdan (consciousness); the root w-j-d gives wujud, wijdan, wajd (existence, awareness, ecstasy), which Dagli, following S. H. Nasr, maps onto the Hindu Sat-Chit-Ananda.
The Mirror You Never See
An Essence gift is a self-disclosure, and it "can only ever take on the form of the preparedness of the object". So the recipient sees only his own form in the mirror of the Real, never Him, though he knows he sees himself only there. Try to see the body of a mirror while looking at your image: you never will. Some held that the image floats between the eye and the mirror; Ibn al-'Arabi rejects this (see the Futuhat).
Some say "the inability to perceive is a perception" (Abu Bakr, via Sarraj). Higher are those who know and say nothing: "knowledge bestows silence upon them, not inability". That knowledge belongs only to the Seal of the Messengers and the Seal of the Saints.
The Seal of the Saints
No prophet sees God except from the niche of the Messenger-Seal, and no saint except from the niche of the Saint-Seal; even the messengers, being saints, see from the latter. Prophethood of law ends; sainthood never ends. The Seal of the Saints follows Muhammad's law, so he is lesser in one respect and higher in another. Proof that a perfect man need not lead in everything: 'Umar was right about the prisoners of Badr, and the Prophet's advice on pollinating palms failed ("You know better the affairs of this, your lower-world").
Niches of vision: the two Seals and the two bricks, with Muhammad's sainthood standing to the Saint-Seal as other prophets stand to him.
Every prophet from Adam on receives prophethood from the niche of Muhammad, who was "a prophet when Adam was between water and clay". The Seal of the Saints was a saint then too; others become saints by taking on the divine virtues, since God is named the Friend (al-Wali, 42:28). Muhammad is Saint-Messenger-Prophet, the Seal Saint-Heir, and the Seal is "one amongst the perfections of the Seal of the Messengers". Muhammad alone opens the door of intercession, taking precedence even over the Divine Names: the All-Merciful pleads with the Avenger only after the intercessors (Qaysari's order: Prophet, prophets, saints, believers, then the Most Merciful of the Merciful).
Gifts, Preparedness, and Asking
- Three askers. From haste ("Man was created hasty", 21:37); from possibility ("what Thou knowest benefits me"); or no request. Denying either solicited or unsolicited gifts restricts God.
- Folk of Presence. Know preparedness in the present moment: either from what they receive, or (more complete) what they will receive from preparedness. Highest: ask neither from haste nor possibility but in conformity with "Call upon Me and I shall respond" (40:60): genuine slave.
- Speed of response. Fits the moment: quick; else later (this world or Hereafter). God's Labbayk is immediate; the thing may come later.
- Mystery of ordainment. Highest know God's knowledge of them = what they are in immutable identity. Detailed knowledge via unveiling of the identity and its infinite states: then self-knowledge is at the degree of God's knowledge of him, from one source. From the slave's side, Divine solicitude preceded him.
Seal of Saints and Custodian Names
Silent knowers: knowledge gives silence, not inability. Belongs to Seal of Messengers and Seal of Friends. No prophet sees except from the niche of the Messenger-Seal; no saint except from the niche of the Saint-Seal; messengers, as saints, see from the niche of the Seal of Saints.
- Custodian Names. All-Merciful (no blemish), Encompassing, Wise, Giver, Almighty, Forgiver, Keeper, Just. Pure mercy vs mixed (bitter medicine then ease).
- No repetition. Nothing repeated in Divine Presence (la takrar fi'l-tajalli; 55:29). Names infinite by effects from finite Mothers (99 Names; seven Qualities; or Allah, All-Merciful, Lord).
- Seth's support. His spirit supports any who speak of this knowledge, except the Seal (support from God). Seal = knowing-ignorant: knows by reality, ignorant as elemental body.
- Seal of Progeny. Last human born in Seth's line, in China, with a sister who comes out first; sterility follows; the Hour.
Mirror Types and the China Seal
Intercession Order and Mothers of Names
Name Gifts and the Custodian Names
Name gifts are mercy, either pure (a pleasant bounty, untainted at the Resurrection, from the All-Merciful) or mixed (a bitter medicine followed by ease). Each passes through a Custodian Name:
- All-Merciful. No blemish disagreeable to one's nature.
- Encompassing. A wider gift. Wise: what suits the moment.
- Giver. Benefit with no recompense owed in gratitude or works.
- Almighty. Looks to a place and what it is entitled to.
- Forgiver. Veils one from chastisement deserved, or from the state that would deserve it ("protected", "guarded").
- Keeper, the Just and its brethren. Nothing comes out of His coffers "except by a known measure" (15:21); He gives each thing its creation (20:50).
The Names are infinite because their effects are infinite, yet stem from finite Mothers of the Names (the ninety-nine; or the seven Qualities of Life, Knowledge, Will, Power, Hearing, Seeing, Speech; or Allah, All-Merciful, Lord). One reality receives all the attributions; each Name is told apart by its own what-it-is. "In the Divine Presence nothing is repeated at all", the doctrine of no repetition in self-disclosure (55:29).
The Knowing-Ignorant
Seth's spirit supports anyone who speaks of this knowledge, except the Seal, whose support comes from God and from whom all spirits draw. In his elemental body the Seal may not know this: he is the knowing-ignorant, holding opposites as the Principle holds Majesty and Beauty, Hidden and Manifest, First and Last. Dagli adds that ignorance belongs to the identity's total perfection: some degrees of knowledge are realized only through the veil of the body.
Some thinkers of "feeble intellect", sure that God does as He wills, impute to Him what contradicts wisdom; others deny contingency altogether, keeping only the self-necessary and the necessary-through-another. The realizer affirms contingency and knows where it comes from.
Ringstone 3. The Wisdom of Glorification in the Word of Noah
Noah's ringstone is a lesson in how to speak of God. Asserting only His incomparability (tanzih) or only His similarity (tashbih) gets Him wrong; knowledge joins the two. Ibn al-'Arabi then rereads Surah 71, Noah's complaint against his people, line by line as praise hidden in blame, ending with the drowning as immersion in the sea of divine knowledge.
Two Half-Truths
To the Folk of the Realities, asserting incomparability alone is itself a delimitation: it fences God off from the world. Whoever stops there is "ignorant or a man of poor adab", like those who "believe in part and disbelieve in part" (4:150). Asserting similarity alone limits Him just as surely. Whoever holds both knows Him in a general way, not in detail, exactly as one knows oneself. Hence "Whosoever knoweth himself knoweth his Lord" and "We shall show them Our signs on the horizons and in their own souls" (41:53, which Dagli cites as 40:53).
- God as spirit of the world. He is the Manifest in every object of understanding and the Hidden from all understanding; His relation to the world's forms is that of governing spirit to body.
- Why God cannot be defined. Any definition covers manifest and hidden aspects (man: "rational" plus "animal"). The Real is the object of every definition, so defining Him would need every form of the world: impossible.
- The corpse analogy. A body without its spirit is "man" only metaphorically; but the Real never leaves the forms, so His divinity is literal. Forms praise their spirit as the world's forms glorify God, in praise we do not understand. They are "tongues of the Real": He praises and is praised.
The poem adds a warning in arithmetic: holding to the even (duality) is idolatry, holding to the odd (fard, the single) speaks of the One; so do not assert similarity when you speak of a second, nor incomparability when you speak of One. The proof-text is 42:11, "Naught is there like unto His likeness, and He is the Hearing, the Seeing". It has two readings (redundant or real ka), and Ibn al-'Arabi exploits both: each half can be read as tanzih or tashbih.
| Stance | What it says | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Tanzih alone | God beyond every likeness | Delimits Him, bad adab; Noah's call, "Furqan" |
| Tashbih alone | God like His forms | Limits Him; idol worship |
| Both, in general | "Not He, yea He" | True knowledge; Qur'an, Muhammad's call |
| Both, in detail | Knowing every form | Possible only for God |
The four positions on likeness, with the label the chapter gives each.
Tanzih, Tashbih, and the Double Call
- Law's two audiences. Speaks to the common in the primary sense and to the elite in all meanings (zahr / batn / hadd / matla').
- Qur'an and Furqan. Qur'an (root q-r-n, join) contains Furqan (f-r-q, separate). Muhammad: night in day, day in night; all-comprehensive words.
- Forgive as cover. Ghafara: fingers in ears and garments were an answered call by action, not by labbayk.
- Mighty device. Calling on God is makr since He was never absent. The call is to Names: muster to the All-Merciful (19:85).
Parents as Intellect and Nature; House as Heart
Wealth, Children, Torrents
Noah's Failed Call: Furqan without Qur'an
Had Noah joined the two calls, his people would have answered him.Instead he called "
by night and by day" (71:5), openly and secretly, and his call "only increased them in flight". Ibn al-'Arabi reads Noah's complaint as
praising them in the language of blame: they refused because they sensed the call was partial. Qashani folds even refusal into God's glory; Qaysari says their souls were asking, through their actions, for the
Divine Subjugationto carry them to perfection.
Two ways of calling: Noah's separated call ends in flight, Muhammad's joined call in the "all-comprehensive words".
- Qur'an contains Furqan. Reading Qur'an from q-r-n ("join") rather than q-r-' ("recite"), the reality of things is Qur'an, not Furqan; one who stands in the Qur'an pays the Furqan no heed. So Muhammad, given "the all-comprehensive words" (Bukhari), received the Qur'an, and 42:11 joins both truths "in half a verse".
- Night and day. Noah called by night to their intellects and spirits, by day to their forms and senses, but never synthesized them. Muhammad called "by night in the day, and by day in the night".
- Covering answered with covering. Noah called them "that He may forgive", not that He may unveil. Ghafara means to cover, so they covered themselves: fingers in ears, garments over heads. They answered in action, not with labbayk.
Surah 71 Reread
The rest of the chapter glosses the surah verse by verse. The pattern: every threat becomes a station, and every Muhammadan counterpart is the fuller form.
- Torrents, wealth, children (71:11-12). Torrents are the intellectual sciences; wealth is what takes you unto Him, where you see your own forms in Him ("whosoever imagines he sees Him knows not"); children are the fruits of reflection. Real knowledge comes by witnessing, not thought, so these "increase in ruin" (71:21, 28).
- Wealth of vicegerency. "Give of what We have made thee vicegerents over" (57:7) and "take no guardian but Me" (17:3): the wealth is theirs, God is its owner and their guardian, as al-Tirmidhi (d. 898) asked in his Seal of the Saints.
- The mighty device (71:22). Calling upon God is itself a device (makr), since He "was not absent from the beginning". Dagli stresses this is half the Shaykh's view; Job's chapter defends prayer. The Muhammadan knows calls go to Names, not the Essence: "We shall muster the godfearing to the All-Merciful" (19:85).
- Astray means bewildered (71:24). The idols led many into bewilderment at the One counted through aspects. The "evildoers" are those who wrong their own souls, the first of the three heirs of the Book (35:32), ahead of the lukewarm and the outstrippers. "Save in error" means the Muhammadan bewilderment: "Increase me in bewilderment in Thee" (a saying not in the major collections).
- Orbit versus long path. The bewildered circle the pole and never leave it. The man of the long path faces away from the goal, owning a "from", a "to" and the distance between; the man of orbital motion has neither, and "the most complete existence".
- Drowned and burned (71:25). Their sins drove them into the sea of the knowledge of God, which is bewilderment; the Fire is in the water ("when the seas are made to overflow", 81:6, root s-j-r = overflow and kindle). God is their only helper and they are annihilated in Him; to reach the shore of nature would lower them.
- "My Lord", not "my divinity" (71:26). Lord implies an immutable relation to the one lorded; divinity shifts through the Names ("every day He is upon some labour", 55:29). "Leave not on the earth" is a prayer that they go to its interior: "if thou lowered a rope, it would alight upon God" (Tirmidhi).
- Slave-lords (71:27). Left alone, they would lead slaves from slavehood to the secrets of lordship within them, making slave-lords, and "beget only transgressors", kafir as coverers who unveil and then veil again. Qaysari reads this positively (ecstatic Sufis who reveal and then hide, explaining odd behaviour); Qashani negatively (a false claim to lordship that must be re-veiled).
- Noah's own prayer (71:28). "Forgive me": cover me, so my worth stays unknown as God's is (6:91). Parents = Intellect and Nature; house = the heart; believing men and women = intellects and souls. The evildoers' ruin is the state of Folk of the Invisible who see the Face of the Real while losing themselves: for the Muhammadans, "all things perish save His Face" (28:88).
The chapter closes by pointing to the sphere of Noah and to his own unpublished Descents at Mosul, which Austin locates in an Istanbul manuscript (Murad Molla 1236).
Ringstone 4. The Wisdom of Holiness in the Word of Enoch
Enoch (Idris) was "raised to an exalted place" (19:57), so his ringstone dissects exaltedness. There are two kinds that belong to creatures only by dependence, place and rank, and a third that is God's alone: being exalted in Himself, a perfection that swallows all opposites. Number theory, the sacrifice of Ishmael and a lesson on sultans fill out the argument.
Place and Rank
Exaltedness has two attributions: of place (makan, cosmic position) and of rank (makanah, degree). Dagli calls them horizontal and vertical superiority. Enoch's place is the sphere of the Sun, the pole around which the "millstone" of the spheres turns. Rank belongs to the Muhammadans: "You are the most exalted, and God is with you" (47:35). God shares rank with us but transcends place. To soothe those who work through deeds, the verse adds "He will never cheat you of your deeds": deeds seek place, knowledge seeks rank, and God joins both elevations for us. Then "Glorify the Name of thy Lord, the Most High" (87:1) lifts Him beyond even this shared meaning.
| Above the Sun | Below the Sun |
|---|---|
| Mars | Venus |
| Jupiter | Mercury |
| Saturn | Moon |
| Lunar mansions | Ether |
| Black satin sphere (zodiac) | Air |
| Footstool | Water |
| Throne | Earth |
The fifteen spheres: seven above and seven below the Sun, Enoch's station at the centre.
- Man's exaltedness is borrowed. The Perfect Man is the highest creature, yet exalted only through place or rank, never in essence. Place peaks in the Throne ("the All-Merciful mounted the Throne", 20:5); rank in "all things perish save His Face" and "is there a divinity along with God?" (27:60).
- The angels prove it. God asks Iblis "art thou among the exalted ones?" (38:75), meaning the archangels. If exaltedness came with being an angel, all angels would have it; since they don't, it is rank, held with God. The same goes for human vicegerents (2:30).
The Exalted in Himself
Among the Names is the Exalted (al-'Ali). Over whom? Regarding what? There is nothing but He, so His exaltedness is His own, not relational. The immutable identities "have not sensed the odor of existence"; multiplicity lives in the Names, which are mere relations. Yet existence comes in degrees, so relational exaltedness does appear "in the one identity by its multiple aspects". Hence the formula: "He not He" and "Thou not thou".
Abu'l-Qasim ibn Qasi (Andalusia, d. 545/1151): in Removal of the Sandals, "every Divine Name can be named by all the Divine Names".
- Opposites with one speaker. He is "the First, the Last, the Manifest, the Hidden" (57:3). The Hidden says "No" when the Manifest says "I", and the reverse: speaker and listener are one. Everyone knows this from talking to himself ("what their souls spoke", Bukhari).
- One and the numbers. One generates the numbers and the numbers unfold one. Each number (two, nine, ten) is a single reality, yet each is a grouping of ones; number exists only in things numbered, sensed or conceived. There are twenty levels (1-10, 20-90, 100, 1000). Whoever sees that their negation is their affirmation sees that the incomparable Real is the similar creation, though creation stays distinct: "Creator-created, created-Creator".
The result is bewilderment, though not for the one who grasps this. How much anyone knows is fixed by the locus, his immutable identity: the Real is determined only by what He discloses Himself in. A poem: the Real is creation in some respect, and not in that respect; "He unites and separates, for the identity is one / And it is many".
Only the Name Allah
Being exalted in Himself means a perfection in which all existents and all relations are drowned, whether praised or blamed by custom, intellect or law. It belongs only to the bearer of the Name Allah. Other Names are either loci of self-disclosure, which differ in excellence, or forms in Him, which share the Essence's perfection; of such a form say neither "it is He" nor "not He". A Name is the Named through the Essence it points to and not the Named through the meaning that sets it apart (Lord, Creator, Giver of Forms).
Place, Rank, and the Exalted in Himself
- Kharraz. God is known only by uniting opposites (57:3). He "bears the name Abu Sa'id al-Kharraz": a tongue by which He spoke of Himself. Hidden says No when Manifest says I; speaker and listener are one.
- One and numbers. One generates the numbers; each number is a single reality yet a grouping of ones. Twenty levels (1-10, 20-90, 100, 1000). Whoever sees their negation as affirmation sees the incomparable Real as the similar creation: Creator-created, created-Creator.
- Sacrifice scene. Ishmael: "do as thou art bidden" (37:102). Son identical with father; the ram appears. Eve from Adam (4:1): he wed himself.
Fifteen Spheres and Dependent Exaltation
Ringstone 5. The Wisdom of Enchanting Love in the Word of Abraham
Abraham is the Friend (al-Khalil), and Ibn al-'Arabi hears in the word its root kh-l-l, "to permeate". Friendship is mutual permeation: either Abraham takes on every divine quality, or God pervades Abraham's form. From this follow the chapter's boldest lines: we make God a divinity, we determine ourselves in Him, and God and man feed on each other, the root of Abraham's famous hospitality.
Permeation: Colour, Not Container
Permeation is like colour in a coloured thing, an accident one with its substance, and not like a thing in a place (two substances). Both readings stand: Abraham permeated the divine qualities, or the Real permeated Abraham. The Real describes Himself with creaturely qualities, even those of deficiency and blame, and creatures bear the Qualities of the Real "from first to last". All praise returns to Him (1:1, 11:123), blame included.
Water in wool: whichever side is visible, the other runs through it unseen. The right branch is the hadith of supererogatory works.
We Make Him Divine
An Essence bereft of relations would not be a divinity. "Our identities bring about the relationships. We make It Divine through our being objects of divinity. Thus He is not known until we are known." Hence "whosoever knows himself knows his Lord". Al-Ghazali (d. 1111) and others held God can be known without looking at the world; Ibn al-'Arabi calls this an error: the Essence is known eternally, but as God only through what is His.
- First unveiling. The Real is His own indication, and the world is nothing but His self-disclosure in the forms of the immutable identities.
- Final unveiling. Our forms appear in Him; each knows the other there and each is distinguished. Dagli maps the pair onto fana' (union, jam') and baqa' (union of union).
- Synthesis. "He determines us only through us; nay, we determine ourselves through ourselves, but in Him."
Determination and Mutual Food
"None of us but has a known station" (37:164). Whether existence is the Real's or yours, the determination is yours: "You praise none other than yourself, and blame none other than yourself." God keeps only the praise for emanating existence. You feed Him with determinations; He feeds you with existence. You are charged with responsibility because your state asked "charge me"; He is never the charged one.
| Domain | Pair member 1 | Pair member 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Forms | Adam | Israfil |
| Spirits | Muhammad | Gabriel |
| Bounties (food) | Abraham | Michael |
| Threats and promises | Malik | Ridwan |
Ibn Masarra's pairs around the carried Throne (Futuhat ch. 31, via Qaysari); Malik and Ridwan are both angels, guardians of Hell and Paradise.
Because he held this station, Abraham founded hospitality. Ibn Masarra paired him with Michael, angel of provision. Food permeates every part of the one fed; in God there are no parts, so what permeates are the Divine Names. A last poem: "I have two faces, He and I / He hath no 'I' in 'I' / But hath in me His locus... / so, like a vessel, we are His."
Khalil: Mutual Permeation
- Two appearances. Real apparent: creation = His Names, His hearing. Creation apparent: Real = its hearing, sight, foot (supererogatory works hadith).
- Divinity needs us. Essence without relations is no divinity; we make It divine as objects of divinity. Not known until we are known. Ghazali's claim that God is known as divinity only via the world is, for the Shaykh, incomplete: unveilings show the Real indicating Himself, then forms manifest in Him.
- He determines us only through us. "If He willed" marks impossibility: will depends on knowledge, knowledge on the known. Address follows reason, so believers are many and knowers few.
- Mutual nourishment. You feed Him with your determinations; He feeds you with existence. Taklif: you asked "charge me" by your own preparedness.
Decisive Argument and Die before You Die
Ringstone 6. The Wisdom of the Real in the Word of Isaac
Isaac's chapter is about the sacrifice, and its claim is startling: God never meant Abraham to kill his son. Abraham saw a ram in his son's form in a dream and failed to interpret it. From that "clear trial" Ibn al-'Arabi builds a science of dream interpretation, a theory of the knower's creative willpower, and a test that separates the slave from the Lord: the slave forgets.
The Opening Poem: a Ram for a Prophet
How could "a single small ram" stand in for the Vicegerent of the All-Merciful? The poem's answer reverses the usual ladder: "There is no creation more high than the mineral", then plants, then animals, and all know their Creator by unveiling. Man alone is bound by intellect, thought or the "necklace of faith", his own belief. Sahl al-Tustari (d. 896) said as much. The ram, being simpler, outranks the son it ransomed.
Abraham's Uninterpreted Dream
"In my sleep I see myself sacrificing thee" (37:102). Sleep is the presence of imagination, and imagination's forms need a science to read them. The ram had appeared in the form of his son; Abraham "deemed the dream true" at face value. So God "ransomed him with a great sacrifice" (37:107), but the ransom was only in Abraham's mind: "Sense formed the sacrifice, and the imagination formed the son." God's words "Thou hast been true to the dream" (37:105) deliberately do not say "true about your son". The episode was "a clear trial" (37:106): a test of knowledge, whether he would grant the dream its right to interpretation.
- What interpretation is. Ta'bir, from '-b-r, "to cross over": passing from the seen form to something else, as Joseph read the fat and lean kine as years of plenty and famine (12:43).
- Even Abu Bakr erred. The Prophet told him "You are correct in part, and erred in part", and refused to say which (Bukhari).
- Why prophets slip here. Qaysari and Qashani: Abraham was used to revelations needing no interpretation, so he took this as a command. The shared meaning of ram and son was submission.
The Prophet's bodily form lies in Medina, and no spirit is ever seen as such. In dreams his spirit takes his bodily form as at death, "with nothing missing", and Satan cannot copy that form. So one should accept what he commands, forbids or reports in a dream as one would a legal text, while what he gives must be interpreted. A dream that comes true in the senses exactly as seen needs none; Abraham and Baqi wrongly assumed theirs was that kind.
| What is seen | Rule | Example |
|---|---|---|
| A form that later occurs as seen | No interpretation | What Abraham and Baqi assumed |
| Something given (milk, a ram) | Interpret to its meaning | Milk = knowledge |
| Prophet's command or prohibition | Accept like a legal text | Satan cannot take his form |
| The Real in a form reason denies | Interpret as the Real of the Law, by the seer's state and place | Seen likewise in the Hereafter (Muslim) |
| The Real in a form reason allows | Leave as seen | "The truest are the seers" |
The adab of visions drawn from Abraham's trial.
The Heart that Holds the Real
Abu Yazid (al-Bistami) said that if the Throne and all in it were placed a hundred million times in a corner of the knower's heart, he would not notice. Ibn al-'Arabi goes further: even the infinite, if it could be finished, plus the Identity that brings it into being, would pass unnoticed, because "the heart encompasses the Real" ("My heavens and earth contain Me not, but the heart of My believing slave contains Me"). Such a heart is never sated, as in Abu Yazid's "I drank love, goblet after goblet... nor was I satiated".
Willpower and the Secret of Forgetting
Everyone creates forms in his imagination. The knower, by willpower (himmah), creates forms that exist outside himself, but only while he keeps attending to them; if he forgets, the creation ceases. A knower who has mastered all the presences never forgets everything at once, so a form held in one presence preserves its counterparts in the others.
The presence one never leaves is like "the Book" in which "We have been remiss regarding nothing" (6:38). Only one with the Qur'an in his soul grasps this; for the godfearing God makes a Criterion (8:29), the highest of which is the slave-Lord distinction. A closing poem: there are moments when the slave is lord and moments when he is slave. As slave he is vast through the Real; as lord he sees creatures asking of him what he cannot supply, which is why some knowers weep. "Be, then, a slave of the Lord, not the lord of His slave."
Dream, Interpretation, and the Ram
- ta'bir. Cross over ('-b-r): from form to meaning. Milk in a dream is knowledge (Baqi ibn Mukhallad; Umar's milk dream). Satan cannot take the Prophet's form.
- Accept dream-commands from the Prophet when the sense matches what was seen; no further interpretation needed. Vision of the Real in a form intellect denies: interpret as the Real of the Law according to state and place.
- Mineral to man. Opening poem: ram ransomed the prophet; mineral highest in knowing the Creator by unveiling, then plants, animals; man is bound by intellect, thought, and faith (Sahl al-Tustari).
When the Sense Matches the Vision
Ringstone 7. The Wisdom of Loftiness in the Word of Ishmael
The Qur'an calls Ishmael "well-pleasing to his Lord" (19:55) and "true to the promise" (19:54). Ibn al-'Arabi turns both phrases into doctrine. Every creature has its own lord, one Divine Name, and is well-pleasing to it. And because God keeps His promise but may pass over His threat, even the punishment of Hell ends up sweet.
Each Creature Has Its Own Lord
The bearer of the Name Allah is one in Essence and a totality through the Names. No existent can have all of them; each has a specific lord (one manuscript adds: "Each individual has a Name which is its lord"). Only man's lord is the all-embracing Name Allah. Unity (ahadiyyah) allows no shares, so no one receives anything by virtue of God's unity; hence the Folk of God deny any self-disclosure in unity. Contemplate Him in yourself, or in Him and yourself, and unity vanishes, since "you" and the contemplated make two.
Lordship is distributed: each identity answers to its own Name, and only Perfect Man pleases the Lord of lords without qualification.
- Everyone is well-pleasing. A lord needs what it lords over, and every identity sustains its lord's lordship, so each is beloved, and all it does is loved. Its acts are really its lord's acts in it, and every maker is pleased with his work. "He gave everything its creation" (20:50): nothing more, nothing less.
- Sahl's mystery. Sahl al-Tustari: "Lordship has a mystery which, if it disappeared, would annul lordship." The mystery is you, and "if" marks an impossibility: identities never vanish.
- Not pleasing to another's lord. Being pleasing to your own lord does not make you pleasing to someone else's. Only one who displays all the acts is pleasing without qualification: Perfect Man. Dagli reads the "vertical" view (each thing alone with its Name, no evil) against the "horizontal" (Names in tension, which is where evil appears).
Entering the Garden you enter yourself, with a second knowledge: first you knew Him through yourself, now you know yourself through Him. Dagli calls these the negative and positive ways of knowing. A poem: "Thou art slave and thou art the lord / Of whom thou art slave"; and "each belief an individual has / Is undone by another belief", a first sketch of the "God of beliefs" worked out in Hud.
No Likeness, No Contrary
The presences of lordship and slavehood face each other as likenesses, and likenesses are contraries, since two likes cannot merge without losing their distinction. Yet existence is one, and nothing is the contrary of itself. So distinction lives among slaves and among lords: the Giver of Glory and the Abaser are one by the Named and two by meaning. The poem: "Do not look to the Real while divesting Him of creation / And do not look to creation clothing it with aught but the Real... Do not perish, nor abide."
Promise Beats Threat
Praise is for keeping a promise, not for carrying out a threat. God says "think not God will break His promise to His messengers" (14:47), never "and His threat"; of sinners, "We shall pass over their sins" (46:16). Ishmael was praised as true to his promise. In Arabic wa'd (promise) and wa'id (threat) are nearly the same word.
Each Lord, Each Servant Well-Pleasing
- Tranquil soul. 89:27-30: return to thy Lord, enter among My slaves, My Garden. Janna also means cover: the Garden is thee (veil).
- Promise over threat. Wa'd overrules wa'id. 14:47; 46:16 passes over sins. Ishmael true to promise (19:54).
- Giver of Glory / Abaser. Same by the Named, differ by meaning. Do not divest the Real of creation: union or distinction.
Promise, Threat, and the Garden-Veil
Ringstone 8. The Wisdom of Spirit in the Word of Jacob
Jacob told his sons, "God has chosen for you the religion; so die not except in surrender" (2:132). Ibn al-'Arabi takes the word din apart: it means obedience, recompense and habit or recurrence, and every sense shows that what comes back to us is our own state. The chapter ends with prophets as physicians who serve God's command while working against what His will has decreed.
Two Religions
- Religion in God's sight. The one He chose and taught directly or through those He taught: "the religion with God is Islam" (3:19). The definite article marks it as known and familiar. Islam here means obedience.
- Religion in creatures' sight, acknowledged by God. "They invented monasticism; We did not prescribe it" (57:27). These are rules of wisdom the Messenger did not bring, which God accepts when they serve the aim of His law. Qashani's example is Sufism itself. God placed reverence for these rules in their hearts "through a gate of mercy of which they were unaware". Those who keep them are rewarded; those who don't are "corrupt".
Din: Obedience, Recompense, Habit
- Self-reward. Religion as recompense: he rewards and punishes himself in the mirror of the Real. Transgressor asks pardon or accountability; the Real obeys the slave by state.
- Recurrence not repetition. Being-a-man of Zayd and 'Amr does not recur as the same event. Scholars neglected this.
- Physician vs Messenger. Physician serves nature (and does not: temperament, humors). Messengers and Heirs serve command, not will; will follows knowledge of the known.
Two Religions in One Word
The slave sets up religion as he "raises" the prayer (iqamat al-salah); the Real lays down its rules. Obedience is your act, so religion comes from you, as your happiness does. In parallel, His acts, which are you, establish the Divine Names: "Through His effects He is called Divinity, and through your effects you are called happy."
Religion as Recompense, Then as Habit
The transgressor asks God, through his transgression, either for pardon or for accountability; either way "the Real obeys His slave", because "it is the state which affects".So
dinis also
recompense: "God is well-pleased with them" (98:8) is reward, "a great chastisement" (25:19) is punishment, and "We shall pass over their sins" (46:16) is a recompense too. Islam is
surrender, and one surrenders to both kinds.
| Sense of din | Proof | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| Obedience | "The religion with God is Islam" (3:19) | Religion is your act; God gives the rules |
| Recompense | 98:8; 25:19; 46:16 | Your state calls forth its result |
| Habit / recurrence ('adah) | Poet: "as was your din with Umm Huwayrith" | What a state requires comes back to its owner |
Three meanings of one word, each pointing back to the self.
- The inner mystery. Recompense is a self-disclosure in the mirror of the Real's existence. God gives contingent things only what their essences give in their states; forms differ as states differ. So "it is he who bestows upon his own essence, and punishes it": praise and blame belong to oneself, and God's argument is decisive because knowledge follows the known (6:149).
- A deeper layer. Contingent things come from non-existence (non-manifestation). The only existence is the Real's, in the forms of their states. What "follows" ('aqaba) a state is its penalty ('uqubah); custom just calls the good kind "reward".
- Recurrence without repetition. A poet's line uses din for habit. But nothing truly recurs: Zayd and 'Amr share "being-a-man", which does not repeat, since one reality cannot become many. The senses see recurrence by resemblance; sound judgement sees none. Recompense, too, both is and is not. The scholars have "neglected" to explain this.
The Physician and the Will
The chain runs: the slave acts as God's will requires; the will follows God's knowledge; knowledge follows what the thing is in its essence. God can command what He does not will to occur in the one commanded: that is disobedience. Dagli names the two sides: the existentiating command (takwini), which gives being, and the enjoining command (taklifi) of law. From God's side all is obedience, as all is good.
Ringstone 9. The Wisdom of Light in the Word of Joseph
Joseph is the prophet of dreams, so his ringstone is a theory of imagination. Ibn al-'Arabi pushes it to its limit: waking life is also a dream to be interpreted, the world is God's shadow cast by His Name Light on the screen of the immutable identities, and "all of existence is imagination within imagination".
Mankind Is Asleep
'A'ishah said revelation began with veridical dreams that came "like the break of dawn", for six months, before the angel. Her knowledge "reached that far but no further": she did not know the Prophet's saying "Mankind is asleep, and when they die, they awaken". His whole earthly life was "a sleep within a sleep"; everything met while awake belongs to the world of imagination and must be interpreted. Interpretation (ta'bir, "crossing") passes from the form seen to what it is, as from milk to knowledge.
- Revelation without sleep. In revelation the Prophet was withdrawn from the senses and hidden from those present, but not asleep; he perceived it in the presence of imagination.
- Gabriel as a man. When the angel came as a man, the Prophet said both "bring back this man" and "that was Gabriel, come to teach you your religion" (Muslim). Both were true: one to the sensory form, one to its interpretation.
The World as God's Shadow
What is called "other than the Real", the world, is to Him as a shadow to an object. A shadow exists in the senses only where it falls; take away the surface and it remains intelligible, in potency in the object. The surface is the immutable identities; what extends over them is the Essence's existence; what makes it perceptible is the Name Light.
The shadow analogy: object, light and surface are all God; the shadow is the world, one as shadow and many as forms.
- Why shadows are dark. Shadows incline to black even from a white object: a sign of the gap between them and their source. Distance does the same: far mountains look black, the sky blue. The identities are non-luminous because they do not exist; "existence is light".
- Why the book looks small. Distance makes luminous bodies look small: the sun, proven "116 times the size of the earth", appears "the size of a shield".
- Known and unknown. The world is known as far as shadows are known; the Real is unknown as far as the Object is. "See how thy Lord extends the shadow; had He willed He would have made it still. Then We made the sun its guide... then We seize it to Ourselves gently" (25:45-46). In its unity the shadow is the Real; in its many forms it is the world.
Sleep within Sleep; World as Shadow
- Joseph's dream. Eleven stars, sun, moon = brothers, father, stepmother (12:4). Made true (12:100): sensible fulfillment like dreaming you woke and interpreted. Muhammadan heirs know better: "Muhammadan language of Joseph".
- Unity and multiplicity. With respect to unity: Real. With respect to multiplicity: world. The world is imaginary insofar as imagined to subsist apart; as shadow it is real in dependence.
- Prophet withdrawn. During revelation he is not a sleeper; Aisha: revelation began with veridical dreams like the breaking of dawn for six months.
Shadow Metrics
You Are Imagination
So "the world is imaginary and has no real existence": imagination here means fancying it subsists apart from the Real. A shadow can never be cut from its object. Knowers are ranked by how well they know by what they are the Real and by what they are "the world".
"You are imagination, and all the things of which you say 'This is not I' are imagination. All of existence is imagination within imagination." Only Being, the Real, is real, and it is God by Essence, not by Names. Each Name indicates Himself (where all Names are one: the Real) and its own meaning (where they differ: "the imagined Real we encounter"). Stand with multiplicity and you are with the world and the Names; stand with Unity and you are with the Essence, "beyond need of the worlds".
- Surah al-Ikhlas (112). "God, the One" is His Self; "the Self-Sufficient" is by our need; "begets not, is not begotten, none like Him" deny our traits. We beget, are begotten, depend, resemble. The surah is "the Real's lineage" (Dagli's choice for nasab; Qaysari reads "description", Qashani "attributions").
- Two unities. The Unity of multiplicity (One with respect to Names that need us) and the Unity of Identity (One beyond need of us and the Names). "The One" names both.
- Needs. Shadows to right and left exist to show universal need (on God) and relative need (of things on each other), as the earth needs the moon for tides but not for its orbit (Dagli). "O mankind, you are needful of God" (35:15): our need of each other is need of His Names. "Our identities are His shadow. He is our selfhood and not our selfhood."
Ringstone 10. The Wisdom of Unity in the Word of Hud
Hud told his people: "There is no creature that crawls, but He takes it by the forelock. Verily my Lord is on a straight path" (11:56). Ibn al-'Arabi calls this the greatest glad tidings creation ever received: every creature walks its Lord's straight path, so misguidance and wrath are accidents and mercy is the end. The chapter gives the Shaykh's own vision of the prophets at Cordoba and his best-known doctrine, the "God created in beliefs".
Every Walker Is on the Straight Path
The opening poem: the straight path is God's, "manifest and unconcealed for all", His Self in small and great, in the ignorant and the knower, which is why His mercy encompasses everything (7:156). In this respect no creature is "of those who incur wrath or go astray". Misguidance and wrath are accidents ('arid, something that befalls a substance from outside); the substance is mercy. Everything has a spirit, so everything "crawls", and only by Another. "It is a path only in its being walked upon."
- Knowledge by taste. "I am his hearing... sight... hand... foot" (supererogatory hadith): one Selfhood, diverse members, and a taste-knowledge proper to each. Like water, one reality, sweet in one place and salty in another.
- Knowledge of the feet. This wisdom is the knowledge of "what was beneath their feet" (5:66). Paths are walked with feet; to witness the forelocks being seized by the One on the path takes this lowest, special taste. What lies below the feet is the path itself, and "whoever knows that the Real is identical with the path knows the affair as it is".
For believers and the people of unveiling creation is intelligible and the Real sensible; for everyone else the Real is an idea and creation is what they see. The first are sweet water, the second salty. Both groups walk the same path; one knows it and its end, the other does not. The knower "calls upon God with discernment" (12:108); the other by imitation.
'Ad and the Cloud
God is jealous (ghayur, kin to ghayr, "other"), and so forbade indecencies (7:33), meaning what is manifest: that He is identical with things. He veils this with jealousy, "which is you, because it is 'other'". The "other" says "this is Zayd's hearing"; the knower says it is the Real.
Everything About Him Is a Limit
God describes Himself only through limits, because we are limited things.Revelation runs down a ladder of delimitation:
| Text | Where God is placed |
|---|---|
| Hadith of the Cloud (Tirmidhi) | "No air above it, no air below", before creation |
| "Mounted the Throne" (20:5) | On the Throne |
| Hadith of the descent | In the lowest heaven, asking "is there one seeking forgiveness?" |
| 43:84; 57:4 | In heaven and earth; "with you wherever you are" |
| Supererogatory hadith | Identical with us |
| 42:11 "naught like unto Him" | Even this is a limit: what differs from the limited is limited by not being it |
Every revealed description, including incomparability, delimits.
"To be absolute is qualification": the absolute is qualified by being absolute. Read 42:11 as denying likeness and, with the hadiths, you reach His identity with things. Each thing's limit is a limit of the Real; He "flows in all things", or nothing would exist. He is "Protector of all things" (11:57) and "it tires Him not" (2:255) because He protects His Image, lest anything be other than it. The world is His Image, He its spirit: the Great Man. The poem: "He feeds / For my existence is His nourishment"; and "I seek refuge in Thee from Thee" (Muslim).
- The Breath. Out of the tension (karb) of the Names longing to appear, He breathed, so "breath" belongs to the Merciful. He is First (He is, they are not), Last (identical with them when manifest), Manifest and Hidden.
- Divine lineage. "This day I have lowered your lineage and raised My lineage": ancestry to yourselves is removed, ancestry to Him put in its place.
- The godfearing. Taqwa shares a root with protection: the godfearing take God as a shield, so He is their manifest form; or they shield the Real with their form. "Are they equal, those who know and those who know not?" (39:9). The slave, who looks to his Master, outranks the wage-earner, who works for pay.
Being may be called creation, the Real, Real-creation, neither, or simply bewilderment: say what you wish.
This is no licence to drop practice. The perfect slave keeps facing the Sacred Mosque in prayer, believing God present in his qiblah as one of the "wheresoevers", but does not say He is only there. The chapter ends: "There is nothing but beliefs, and all are right, and he who is right is rewarded... and happy", even if he suffers a while hereafter. Those in Hell will have an enjoyment of their own: either relief from pain or a separate joy like Paradise's. "And God knows best."
Straight Path and God as Faculties
- Two groups, one path. Believers: creation intelligible, Real sensible. Others reverse: salty vs sweet. Lowest of low (95:5) are the feet; the Real is the path and the traveller.
- 'Ad and the cloud. 46:24: cloud that gives rain; He is as the slave thinks. Wind (rih / rahah / ruh) is comfort; 'adhab can be sweet. Only dwellings remain = bodies; skins speak.
- Jealousy. Ghayra (jealousy) from ghayr (other): forbids indecencies that are manifest; veils that He is identical with the faculties.
Forelock, Feet, and Skins that Speak
Ringstone 11. The Wisdom of Opening in the Word of Salih
The shortest chapters often carry one clean idea, and Salih's is three. Creation rests on oddness (fardiyyah), whose first number is three: God's Essence, Will and Word meet the thing's essence, hearing and obedience. The same ternary runs through a valid syllogism and through the three days Thamud were given before the Cry.
Ibn al-'Arabi treats one as the origin of number, not a number, so three is the first odd. "Our Word to a thing when We desire it is 'Be!', and it is" (16:40, 36:82) shows a divine ternary: an Essence owning Will and Speech. Facing it is a creaturely ternary: the thing's immutable essence, its audition of the command, and its obedient receptivity. So God attributes the bringing into being (takwin) to the thing itself: He only commands. The image is a feared master who says "Stand!"; the standing is the slave's act, the master's share is only the order. Dagli links this to the two emanations: the Holiest gives the possibility, the Holy actualizes it at the word "Be".
| Divine side | Creature side | In a proof | In Thamud |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essence | Immutable essence | First premise | Day 1: faces yellow |
| Will | Audition (hearing) | Repeated middle term | Day 2: faces red |
| Word "Be!" | Obedient receptivity | Conclusion | Day 3: faces black, then the Cry |
The ternary at every level: creation, logic and Salih's people (11:65-67).
- The syllogism. Two premises hold four terms, but one is repeated to bind them, "a kind of marriage", leaving three. The condition: the judgment must be more general than or equal to the cause. Dagli's notes run worked examples ("This is a man, all men are animals"; an invalid "some animals are horses").
- The proof misapplied. Error in the world mirrors a bad syllogism: relating acts to the slave without God, or to God absolutely. The Shaykh's sample proof: whatever comes to be has an occasion; the world comes to be; so the world has an occasion.
- Three days of Thamud. After the she-camel was hamstrung, Salih promised three days (11:65). Faces turned yellow, red, black; at the end "the preparedness became a fact" and its manifestation was called destruction.
The moral is self-sourcing: "Nothing affected them but themselves, just as their being brought into being comes only from themselves" (6:149). Whoever witnesses this is freed from attachment to other things, pleads the case of all existents even when they do not, and meets misfortune with the proverb "Thy hands marked and thy mouth blew."
Ternary: Creation and Syllogism
- Syllogism. Two premises, four terms, one repeated (middle) => three. Judgment must be more general than or equal to the cause. Invalid: all men animals; some animals horses; therefore...
- Error in the world. Relating acts to the slave without God, or to God absolutely. Occasion-argument: whatever comes to be has an occasion; the world comes to be; the world has an occasion.
- Three days. Salih's delay (11:65): faces yellow, red, black. Yellow ~ shining faces (musfirah); red ~ laughter of felicity; black ~ the Cry.
Mounts, Riders, and the Cry
Be! and the Thing's Audition
Ringstone 12. The Wisdom of the Heart in the Word of Shu'ayb
The heart of the knower is vaster than God's Mercy, because it holds the Real Himself. Like a ring's setting, it takes the exact shape of each self-disclosure that sits in it. From this the chapter builds the "God of beliefs", the gap between heart and intellect, and the doctrine of new creation with every breath.
The starting point is the divine saying "My heavens and My earth encompass Me not, but the heart of My believing slave encompasseth Me." Spoken plainly, the heart is vaster than Mercy, since "the Real shows Mercy but is not shown Mercy". In the language of the elite it is the other way round. God's Breath (nafas) means giving vent (tanfis). The Names require the world: divinity needs an object, a lord needs a vassal. The Essence is beyond need of the worlds, but lordship is not. By breathing out the world God relieved that pressure, so Mercy covers all things, the Real included, and is vaster than the heart or equal to it. Dagli notes the heart can only be "equal" because man comprises all the Qualities.
- Filled, not crowded. When God fills the heart, nothing created can be seen with Him. Abu Yazid al-Bistami: if the Throne and all it holds were in a corner of the knower's heart "one thousand thousand times", he would not notice. Junayd (d. 910): "When what comes to be is joined with the eternal, its effect is no more."
- The ring setting. The heart is "like the setting for the stone of a ring". It is round for a round stone, and four-, six- or eight-sided for those shapes. Dagli's long note uses Qaysari, Lane and the Lisan to show that fass means the stone, not the setting. The book's title is therefore about the gem each prophet holds.
Two self-disclosures: the invisible one cuts the setting, the visible one fills it, and the believer meets the God his heart has room for.
The Sufis ("the Folk") say the Real appears in the measure of the slave's preparedness; Ibn al-'Arabi says the reverse, that the slave appears to the Real in the measure of the form in which He discloses Himself.The two views meet in
two self-disclosures. The
invisibleone, from the Essence, the
Selfhoodof "He" (
Huwa), gives the heart its preparedness: "He granteth everything its creation" (20:50). Then the
visibleone lifts the veil, and the slave sees Him "
in the form of what he believes". Dagli explains why he translates
huwiyyahas
Selfhood, not "He-ness" or "Ipseity": the pronoun
huwalies beyond I and Thou. He quotes
Amir 'Abd al-Qadirin support.
- God of beliefs. Whoever qualifies Him denies Him in every other form. Whoever leaves Him unqualified draws near "in every form within which He self-transmutes", infinitely: "My Lord, grant me increase in knowledge" (20:114). "The affair is infinite from both sides."
- Entirely Real, entirely creation. In the hadith "I will be his foot... his hand... his tongue", the thing is creation under one ascription and the Real under another, with one identity. "Whoever universalizes Him specifies Him."
- Heart, not intellect. "A reminder to him who has a heart" (50:37), not to one with intellect. The intellect ('aql, "to bind") locks the matter into one description. Believers who hold such gods curse one another and "have no helpers" (3:22): a believed god cannot help its holder. Only the totality helps and is helped.
- Those who give ear. The verse goes on "or gives ear as a witness". These are the Folk of Faith, who imitate the prophets and use imagination: "worship God as if you see Him", and "God is in the qiblah of him who prays". People who follow the rationalists are not meant. Of them God says the followed will disown their followers. (Dagli's note cites this verse as 2:66; it is 2:166.)
The soul is always ascending without knowing it, because the veil is fine and the forms look alike: "they shall be given its like" (2:25). Two similars are two others. There is no repetition in self-disclosure. The knower sees multiplicity in one identity, as every form contains the same hyle. Only the Messengers and Sufis have found the soul's reality; philosophers and theologians reasoning about its quiddity labour "in vain" (18:104).
Heart Vaster than Mercy; Renewal of Creation
- Qualifier vs liberator. Who qualifies God denies Him elsewhere; who frees Him from qualification draws near in every form, infinitely. "Increase me in knowledge" (20:114).
- Shu'ayb ~ ramifications. Every belief a ramification (tasha''ub). 39:47: what they were not wont to consider appears from God (Mu'tazilite expecting threat finds Forgiving).
- New creation with breaths. 50:15. Ash'arites found renewal in accidents; Sophists in the whole world; both err. Folk of unveiling: God self-discloses with every breath, no repeat; each disclosure gives a new creation and takes one away.
Intellect Binds; Heart Fluctuates
Divine Breath as True Substance
Ringstone 13. The Wisdom of Mastery in the Word of Lot
Lot cried, "O, would that I had power against you, or might take refuge with a forceful support" (11:80). The Prophet answered across the centuries: "May God have mercy on my brother Lot, who sought refuge in a firm support", meaning God. Ibn al-'Arabi turns the episode into a teaching on why the greatest knowers do not work miracles: knowledge leaves the will nothing to act on.
"God is He that created you of weakness, then made after weakness strength, then after strength weakness and gray hairs" (30:54). Strength is accidental, something "made". Weakness is the origin, and old age returns to it, "the vilest state of life" (16:70). The Prophet was sent at forty, when decline begins. Lot's wish for power is the wish of a mortal (bashar) for an effectual willpower (himmah).
Why would a messenger lack what ordinary travellers have? Because knowledge does not leave willpower any disposal: the more one knows, the less one acts by will.Why the perfect knower "manifests his knowledge through the utmost of inability and weakness".
- Abu Su'ud's slip. He said God had granted him disposal for fifteen years and he "gracefully" abstained. The Shaykh calls this conceited: abstaining as a preference still keeps a self that chooses. He says he himself abstains from perfect knowledge, and acts only under compulsion of a command. He also claims to be "more perfect" than Abu Madyan (d. 1126) in incapacity.
- Miracles and messengers. A messenger needs signs for the message to be accepted; a saint does not. Yet he holds back out of compassion, because a decisive proof would destroy those who reject it. Some would believe, some would deny out of pride and envy, some would cry sorcery. Only a heart lit by faith benefits.
- Abu Talib. No will was stronger than the Prophet's, yet it did not bring his uncle to Islam: "Thou guidest not whom thou lovest" (28:56). "He best knoweth those who are guided" means they told Him so through their immutable identities.
Refuge, Himmah, and Chosen Weakness
- Himmah can move objects and states; the perfected knower often refrains, lest he rival the decree.
- Two saintly poles. Abu Madyan represents intensity of will; Abu Su'ud represents the choice to be weak so that the Real remains the agent.
- Adab. Asking for angels or for force may be answered in a way that undoes the asker. Refuge keeps the slave in his place.
When Himmah Must Sleep
Refuge as Positive Power
Ringstone 14. The Wisdom of Ordainment in the Word of Ezra
Ezra passed a ruined town and asked, "How shall God give life to this now it is dead?" (2:259). God made him die for a hundred years and showed him bones being clothed with flesh. A tradition adds a threat: "If thou desistest not, We shall erase thy name from the register of prophethood." Ibn al-'Arabi reads the threat as a lesson on ordainment, which no creature can taste, and on sainthood, which outlasts prophecy.
The core rule runs both ways: "The determined thing, through that by which it is determined, determines the determiner to determine it by that." Even Decree, Knowledge, Will and Wish depend on ordainment. Qaysari explains that this "ordainment" means the ordained thing, the immutable identity itself. Knowing this mystery brings total comfort, since one sees why things happen, but it can also bring the "grievous punishment" of seeing what one is. That is why God is both wrathful and well-pleased and the Names face each other.
- Ranked messengers. As messengers, prophets receive knowledge in the measure their communities need, so they rank as their communities rank. As individuals, they rank by preparedness ("We have favored some of the prophets above others", 17:55). Bounty comes "by a known measure" (15:21), spiritual (knowledge) and sensory (food) alike.
- Taste over news. Prophets know by revelation, not reasoning; they know that intellect falls short and that hearing news falls short of taste.
- What Ezra was shown. Like Abraham's "show me how Thou quickenest the dead" (2:260), his question drew an act: death for a hundred years, then the bones (2:259). He saw the how of growth. What he really asked about was ordainment, the Keys of the Invisible "which none know but He" (6:59). They are keys "only in the state of opening", when power touches its object. Only absolute existence can taste that.
Nested offices: messengerhood and law-giving prophethood are special degrees inside sainthood and end; sainthood abides.
Sainthood is "the encompassing, universal orbit" and does not end; it is the domain of general prophethood. Law-giving prophethood and messengerhood ended with Muhammad. The Shaykh admits this "deals a blow to the Friends of God", because prophet and messenger were the only names a slave held that God does not. The Friend (al-Wali) is a divine Name ("the Friend of those who believe", 2:257), so it abides in both worlds. In His gentleness God left the saints general, non-law-giving prophethood and left the jurists ijtihad: "The men of knowledge are the heirs of the prophets."
- The one exception. People between revelations, young children and the insane are gathered on one highland. A prophet comes with a fire: "Hurl yourselves into this Fire." Those who obey find it cool and peaceful and enter the Garden; those who refuse enter the Fire. "They shall be called to prostrate but they cannot" (68:42-43), as Abu Jahl could not obey in this world. After this, no creature is under law.
Secret of Qadar; Sainthood Outlasts Prophethood
- Sainthood abides. Law-giving prophethood and messengerhood ended with Muhammad; al-Wali is a divine Name, so sainthood never ends.
- Heir receives. Saints may receive from God what the Prophet received, while outwardly conforming to his Law (cross-ref David).
- Ezra's questioning. The chapter turns on knowledge of how the measured-out arrives; the secret of qadar is tasted, not deduced.
Concentric Walayah
Ringstone 15. The Wisdom of Prophethood in the Word of Jesus
Jesus is the one prophet whose body and spirit came together in a single act: Gabriel's breath into Mary. Ibn al-'Arabi uses that birth to explain why Jesus could quicken the dead, why Christians mistook him for God, how the Breath of the All-Merciful is nature itself, and how Jesus answered God's question on the Day of Judgment (5:116-118) with perfect adab.
Spirits give life to what they touch
Spirits quicken whatever they tread on. The Samiri knew that the messenger who passed was Gabriel, so he took "a handful" of his traces and cast it into the calf, which lowed (20:96). The form decides the sound: a camel shape would have brayed, a human shape would have spoken. Dagli's gloss: in Islamic cosmology angels are the life-giving aspect of things. The life flowing in things is lahut (from ilah, divinity); its locus is nasut (from insan, man); above both sits hahut, the Divine Self.
- Mary's two states. Gabriel came as "a man without fault" (19:17). Mary feared rape and fled to God with "complete presence", a state of contraction. Had he breathed then, Jesus would have been born so sullen "no one could bear" him. Only after "I am but a messenger... to give thee a boy most pure" (19:19) did she expand and grow glad, and then he breathed. The mother's state shapes the child.
- Desire. "Desire flowed in Mary" (shahwah). Qaysari reads it as the Essence's love to bring the world into being; Qashani as a woman's desire for union. Dagli calls it a "holy passion" and admits Christians would reject it.
- Two waters. The body came from the real water of Mary and the imaginational water of Gabriel (mutawahham, "as if water"), and took mortal form because both mother and angel had it. Birth stayed "in the usual way" for the species.
| Aspect | Source in Jesus | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Humility | Mary: woman is "below man both legally and physically" | Christians pay the tax "humbling themselves" (9:29); turn the other cheek |
| Life-giving | Gabriel's breath in a mortal form | Raised the dead in human form; another angelic form would have required Jesus to take that form |
| Real quickening | Real water of Mary | "And he quickeneth the dead" (42:9) |
| Imaginational quickening | Imaginational water of Gabriel | "He breathed... and it became a bird by the leave of God" (5:110) |
| Three names | What predominates in the onlooker | Word of God, Spirit of God, slave of God |
The double birth explains the double nature of every miracle Jesus worked.
The grammar carries the theology. If "by the leave of God" attaches to he breathed, Jesus was licensed to breathe and the bird came from him: a real quickening. If it attaches to it became, God made the bird when Jesus breathed: an imaginational one. "The quickening was that of God, while the inbreathing belonged to Jesus, just as the inbreathing belonged to Gabriel while the Word was God's." Onlookers said "It is he, it is not he", because giving life to a rational being is a divine prerogative (animating a body, Qaysari adds, magic can fake).
Error and disbelief
- Covering God. Some called Jesus God by virtue of the dead he raised. Kufr (disbelief) means covering: they covered the God who quickens with a mortal form (5:17).
- The exact mistake. Dagli puts the point exactly: "Christ is God" is defensible (all things show the Self) and "son of Mary" is plainly true. The error is joining them so that God is confined to one form. They first distinguish the Divine Selfhood from the form, then declare them identical. Gabriel's form existed before it breathed, so the breath was not part of its definition; nor is Jesus' form essential to God.
- Three sects. One argues from his human form (son of Mary), one from the represented mortal (Gabriel), one from his miracles (Spirit of God).
- Unique conception. Everyone else is related to a form-possessing father; for Adam's line the body was fashioned and then spirit breathed (15:29). For Jesus the breath was part of the fashioning.
The Breath is nature
The Breath of the All-Merciful receives the forms of the world like hylic substance, and "is none other than nature itself". Qaysari: nature is the Breath's first self-identification, as the God of the Names is the Self's; God "speaks" the world as breath carries words.
From the Essence to the elements: the Breath unfolds as nature, and opposition grows with each step down.
- Disputing angels. The supreme assembly is called disputatious because nature is opposition, and only the Breath lets the Names (Life-giver, Death-giver) stand apart. The Essence, outside this, is "Beyond Need of the worlds".
- Medicine. The Breath's heat makes things rise, its cold and moisture make them sink, its dryness keeps them still. A physician who sees sediment in a urine bottle knows the illness has matured and gives the medicine.
- Two Hands. Nature is opposition, so God kneaded Adam's clay with two Hands (both "right"; Dagli: Rigor and Gentleness). Hence bashar, mortal, from mubashirah, contact (root b-sh-r). Iblis was asked: "What prevented thee to bow... before what I created with My two Hands? ...art thou one of the exalted ones?" (38:75). Iblis, made of fire, is elemental, not exalted.
- Ranking. Man outranks the angels of earth and heavens, but the exalted angels are better than the human species (Dagli: the Perfect Man still exceeds them). "Whoso knoweth himself knoweth his Lord": know the world to know the Breath.
Jesus answers on the Day (5:116-118)
God asks, "Didst thou say unto men, 'Take me and my mother as divinities apart from God?'" in the station of "That We may know" (47:3), though He knows. Jesus answers in separation within union, and the Shaykh parses each phrase.
- "To Thee be glory." He opens with incomparability; "Thee" implies an encounter.
- "If I said it, Thou knowest it." God is "the tongue by which he speaks" (hadith of supererogatory works).
- "I know not what is in Thy soul." He denies knowledge to his selfhood, not to himself as a speaker or doer.
- "Worship God, my Lord and your Lord." He uses Allah, the all-gathering Name, because slaves and laws differ, and he says "my Lord and your Lord" rather than "our Lord", since God is Lord to each differently.
- "Witness" and "Watcher." He calls himself witness and God Watcher (raqib), puts his people before himself but God before them, then grants God the name Witness of "every thing" too.
Command runs both ways. God says "Establish the Prayer" (2:43) and commands; the slave says "My Lord, forgive me" and God is the one commanded. What God seeks from the slave through His command is the very thing the slave seeks from God, so every supplication is answered, even if late, and at least through intention.
The Shaykh reads it word by word. "Them" is the absent pronoun: absence is the veil that keeps them from God. "Thy slaves" (singular "Thy") reflects unity; slaves are the most abased, which already is the chastisement. "Forgive" means cover. "Mighty" means Preventor and Protector against the Avenger. "Wise" means He who puts things in their places. God laid out each of their sins and the Prophet answered each with the verse. Had any demanded God's side, he would have prayed against them. God delays an answer out of love for the voice of the asker, "not out of reluctance". Ask with the tongue and you hear with the ears; ask in meaning and you hear with the heart's hearing.
Two Waters, Two Quickenings, Breath as Nature
- Adab of the inbreathing. Gabriel as man without fault (19:17); Mary seeks refuge (contraction). Had he breathed then, Jesus would be unbearably sullen. After "boy most pure" she expands; then the breath. Desire (shahwah) flowed in Mary (Dagli: holy passion).
- It is he, it is not he. Incarnationists cover God with mortal form (kufr as covering). "Christ is God" and "son of Mary" each fine alone; error is joining them = confining God to one form.
- Breath = nature. Hylic substance receiving forms. Nature means opposition, hence two Hands (both right: Rigor/Gentleness). Essence Beyond Need of the worlds (3:97).
- 5:116-118. Adab in response; separation within union. Every supplication answered (maybe delayed, even by intention). Prophet repeated 5:118 whole night till dawn.
5:116 Adab and Answered Prayer
- Witness order. Adab: them first, then himself; God before them. "Thou art witness over every thing."
- Punishable => forgivable. Each sin set out; he kept saying the verse. Hear with ears (tongue-asking) or hearing (meaning-asking).
Nature's Opposition and Two Hands
Ringstone 16. The Wisdom of the All-Merciful in the Word of Solomon
Solomon's letter to the Queen of Sheba opens "in the Name of God, the All-Merciful, the Compassionate" (27:30). Ibn al-'Arabi reads those two Names as two kinds of mercy. He then uses the moving of Bilqis's throne to set out his doctrine of the renewal of creation at every breath, and asks what was special about a kingdom "such as may not befall anyone after me".
- Whose name came first. Some exegetes said Solomon put his own name before God's. The Shaykh calls that unfitting: Bilqis called the letter "honorable" (27:29). He thinks they had in mind Chosroe, who tore up Muhammad's letter only after reading all of it. Putting the sender's name first would not have saved the letter. In any case Solomon, a thing existentiated by mercy, must come after the Names on which he depends.
- Who acts. Acts are spread over the eight bodily parts, and God says He is the selfhood of each. So the agent is the Real while the form is the slave's. The slave holds the Names Manifest and Last (he appears, after not having been); his dependence shows the Hidden and First. "When you see creation, you see the First, the Last, the Manifest, and the Hidden."
Ranking within one identity
Unity does not erase rank. The Divine Qualities themselves are ranked. Knowledge reaches more objects than Will, and Will more than Power. So one may say "Zayd is more knowing than 'Amr" while holding that the Real's selfhood is identical with both. Each part of the world is receptive to the whole world (Dagli: wujud never travels without its host). Do not affirm Him in one place and deny Him in another. Copy His own formula, "There is none like unto Him" (negation) and "He is the Hearing, the Seeing" (affirmation) (42:11). Hearing and seeing belong to animals, and everything is an animal. This is hidden here and plain in the Hereafter, "the abode of animals".
The throne of Bilqis
| Who | Offer (27:38-40) | How |
|---|---|---|
| The 'ifrit of the jinn | "Before thou risest from thy place" | Carry it across the distance: motion takes time |
| Asif ibn Barkhiya (vizier, Pole of his age) | "Before ever thy glance returns to thee" | His words were the act: the throne ceased in Sheba and existed before Solomon in one moment |
| Bilqis | "It seems the same" | True: a likeness renewed, like the glass that looked like water |
Three readings of one transfer: carrying, re-creating, recognising.
- The glance. A glance is faster than rising from a seat. The eye that opens meets the fixed stars in the same instant, whatever the distance.
- No conveyance. "In our view, there is no instantaneous conveyance." The throne was annihilated and re-created. People are "uncertain of a new creation" (50:15) because everyone is renewed at every breath without noticing. "The moment of non-existence is the moment of the existence of its likeness." The throne crossed no span, the earth did not fold, nothing was pierced. "Then" here marks causal order, not delay, as in the verse "like the shaking of the spear, then it trembled". The Shaykh compares the Ash'arite renewal of accidents.
- Why a companion did it. So that greater things would be left to Solomon in the eyes of Bilqis.
Solomon was a gift. "We gave unto David Solomon": a gift is benefaction, not merit. In the case of the strayed sheep and the tillage (21:78-79) both gave rulings, but "We made Solomon to understand it". David judged by knowledge God gave him; through Solomon God judged without intermediary. The jurists' rule follows: a mujtahid who is right gets two rewards, one who is wrong gets one, and both rulings count as knowledge. The Muhammadan community holds both ranks, so "there is no community superior to it" (3:110).
Solomon's real privilege was not subjugation as such. God "has subjected to you what is in the heavens and the earth" (45:13), but that runs by God's command. The wind "ran at his commandment". Solomon moved things by the bare word, with no himmah (spiritual will) and no union, the means saints use (see Lot). Normally such a gift is not counted against one's afterlife. Still, the taste of the Path says what is stored for others was hastened for him. "This is Our gift; bestow or withhold without reckoning" (38:39). He asked because he was commanded to ask, so he has full reward. A request made on one's own initiative may be called to account.
- Knowledge by command. "Say: My Lord, increase me in knowledge" (20:114). So the Prophet read milk as knowledge: in a dream he drank a goblet and gave the rest to 'Umar, explaining it as "Knowledge". On the Night Journey he chose milk over wine: "Thou hast attained to the fitrah." Over milk he prayed "grant us increase"; over other food, "feed us with better".
- The world as dream. "Mankind sleeps, and when they die, they awaken." Everything seen here is imagination and needs interpretation: "Being is but imagination / Yet truly is the Real." The Shaykh closes by saying most men of the Path do not know Solomon's rank. A full account of the Solomonic station "would terrify you".
Two Mercies; Throne Re-Created
- Asking by command. "Increase me in knowledge" is safe; unbidden asking may be held against you. Solomon's gifts display mercy's two modes.
- Wind, jinn, birds. Subjection is gift, not wage (cross-ref David). The All-Merciful seats the affair on the Throne.
- Queen of Sheba. Submission after the throne's re-appearance teaches that identity persists through renewal as likeness, not as transported substance.
Gift Display and the Book's Knower
Ringstone 17. The Wisdom of Existence in the Word of David
David is the prophet of pure gift: "We gave David bounty from Us" (34:10), with no price attached. He is also the one man God named outright as "a vicegerent in the earth". From these two facts Ibn al-'Arabi builds a theory of spiritual succession after Muhammad, a sharp split between God's Will and His Law, and a closing claim that Mercy is where all creation ends.
- Thanks on request. God asked no thanks from David, but asked it of his people: "Labor, O People of David, in thankfulness; few indeed are those that are thankful" (34:13). For David the bounty was benefaction; for them it carried a demand for recompense. Prophets thank of their own accord. Muhammad prayed until his feet swelled, though forgiven past and future faults: "Shall I not be a grateful slave?" Noah too "was a grateful slave" (17:3).
- A name of severed letters. Dawud is written with dal, alif, waw, all letters that never join the next, so the name itself cuts him off from the world. Muhammad and Ahmad mix joining and non-joining letters: he is separate from and joined to the world. David had both states in meaning; Muhammad had them in his name too.
- Bounty listed. The mountains and birds glorified with him so that their act was his; he had power, wisdom and "judgment of affairs".
The explicit vicegerent
God's greatest favour to David is explicit vicegerency: "O David, behold, We have appointed thee a vicegerent in the earth; therefore judge between men justly, and follow not caprice" (38:26). "Caprice" means any thought not given by revelation. God also shows David adab: He says "those who stray... a terrible chastisement awaits them", not "if thou strayest".
| Figure | Wording | Why it is weaker than David's |
|---|---|---|
| Adam | "I am appointing a vicegerent" (2:30), said to the angels | Adam not named; may mean successor to earlier inhabitants, not God's deputy in judgment |
| Abraham | "I shall make thee a leader (imam)" (2:124) | Imamate is vicegerency, but not under its most specific name |
| David | "We have appointed thee... judge" | Unambiguous, and in the domain of judgment, which can only be for God |
Reading God's wording closely: "take care in contemplating how the Real informs us of His slaves".
Two lines of succession after the Prophet: the outward line through texts, and the inner line straight from God.
Today's vicegerents. Those who judge by transmitted texts or ijtihad are vicegerents of the Messenger. Some "receive from God, and so are vicegerents for God in that very judgment", drawing from the same source the Messenger drew from, while outwardly conforming to his law, as Jesus will when he returns. In unveiling one says "vicegerent of God"; outwardly, "of God's Messenger". That, says the Shaykh, is why the Prophet named no successor: he knew such people would come.
- What they cannot do. A messenger can add or abrogate. A vicegerent may change only ijtihad-law, never Muhammad's stated law (Dagli: he may rule on shortening prayers, never abolish prayer). The Jews accepted Jesus while he seemed to add nothing to Moses. When he changed rulings they could not bear it and sought his death.
- Contradicting a hadith. If such an imam rules against a hadith, the hadith simply was not confirmed to him by unveiling. Even a chain of trustworthy men is open to conjecture and paraphrase. When Jesus descends he will clear away much ijtihad-law and restore the single Divine Judgment behind the schools' disagreements. The rest is latitude, kept "to take burden off this community".
The end is happiness. "My Mercy encompasseth everything" (7:156) and "My Mercy outstrips My Anger". The prior determines what joins it. Everyone travels to the final end, so everyone joins Mercy and parts from Anger, each in the measure of his state (Dagli: some in the Garden, some even in Hell).
Gift, Explicit Vicegerency, Will versus Law
- Will is not Law. Whatever happens is God's Will, even when it breaks the Law. Disobedience touches only the "command by intermediary".
- Abu Talib al-Makki. Called the Will "the Throne of the Essence".
- Subjugation by function. The office binds the ruler to those he rules; rulers who know their lot and rights are rewarded.
- Letters. Connection and disjunction in Muhammad / Ahmad names: David had both in meaning only.
Caprice versus Just Judgment
Ringstone 18. The Wisdom of the Soul in the Word of Jonah
This is a short chapter that never tells the story of the whale. Its subject is the human makeup of spirit, body and soul, made "in His Image", and the rule that only its Maker may undo it. From that rule come a case for pardon over retaliation, a teaching on remembrance, and a view of death as separation, not ending.
| Ruling or saying | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Jizya and truce | "If they incline to peace, do thou incline to it" (8:61) |
| Blood-money | The next of kin may take money or pardon; if one kinsman pardons, his choice prevails over the rest |
| The man of the belt | A man found his murdered kinsman's belt on another and meant to kill him; the Prophet said he would then be "like him" |
| "Evil the like of it" (42:40) | Retaliation is called an evil even though prescribed; "whoso pardons... his wage falls upon God" |
| "In retaliation there is life" (2:179) | Retaliation exists to deter and preserve the species, as the "men of kernels" (albab) see |
The Law keeps choosing preservation over destruction whenever it can.
Why pardon pays. A man pardoned is God's image, so his pardoner's wage "falls upon He whose image he is". God is the Manifest only through man's existence: "whosoever guards him guards the Real." Blame falls on the act, never the self, and only where the Law blames, not where personal motive does. While a man lives there is hope he will reach the perfection he was made for; killing him blocks that.
Remembrance
The Prophet asked: what is better than meeting the enemy, "beheading them, they beheading you"? "The Remembrance of God." Only one who remembers knows the worth of the human makeup.
- Company. God is the companion (jalis) of whoever remembers Him, and the rememberer witnesses Him. One who does not witness is not truly remembering.
- The tongue alone. When a heedless man says God's name, the Real keeps company with the tongue, and the tongue sees Him while the man does not.
- A multiple self. "Man is multiple; God is one in Himself and multiple through the Names." One part may remember while the rest is heedless, and the remembering part protects the others. Dagli cites Rumi: remember until your big toe says "Allah".
Death and the Fire
- Separation, not ending. Death is "not a bringing to non-existence, but a separation": God takes the person to Himself ("to Him the whole affair shall be returned", 11:123). He gives him a new compounded body suited to the abode of permanence, which never falls apart. Dagli explains it as a subtle body that the soul shapes from within, which is why some are raised "as pigs". Mulla Sadra accepted "transmigration" only in this sense and rejected reincarnation.
- The Fire turns cool. For the Folk of the Fire "their final end is enjoyment, but enjoyment in the fire". When the term of punishment ends, the fire becomes "coolness and peace", as it did for Abraham. He first suffered at the sight of it, not knowing God's intent, then found it cool, though onlookers still saw fire.
- One thing, many sights. Either God's self-disclosure varies to suit the onlookers, or their temperaments vary the disclosure. "Both are permissible." Dagli matches these to the Holy and Holiest Emanations.
- No loss. God prescribed killing and death only because nothing escapes Him. Everyone returns, and "no thing comes out from Him that is not identical with Him".
Preserve the Makeup; Pardon over Retaliation
- Retaliation is evil though prescribed. 42:40: recompense of evil is evil the like of it. Whoso pardons, his wage is on God; he is His image; guarding him guards the Real (Manifest).
- Blame the act, not the man. All acts are God's, yet praise and blame stand; blame only per Law.
- Death. Moves the self into a new compounded body suited to the next abode. Preserve the human makeup.
Image Guarded by Pardon
Ringstone 19. The Wisdom of the Invisible in the Word of Job
God told the suffering Job, "Stamp thy foot: this is a laving-place, cool, and a drink" (38:42). Ibn al-'Arabi reads that spring as the water of life that holds up the Throne and every living thing. He reads Job's cry to God as the true definition of patience: complaining to God is not impatience, and refusing to ask Him for relief is a kind of ignorance.
Water, life, and the six directions
Life lies in water, the principle of the elements (air, fire, earth, water) and the pillars (hot, cold, dry, moist): "We made from water every living thing" (21:30). The Throne rests on water, made out of it and protected from below by it. Without that life it would come apart, as a body does at death.
- God below. Man grows proud, yet God protects him from below too: "If you were to lower a rope, it would alight upon God" (hadith, Ibn Hanbal). God is also above ("they fear their Lord above them", 16:50). The six directions show only in man, made in the image of the Merciful.
- Food from above and below. Had the People of the Book kept "the Torah and the Gospel and what was sent down to them", they would have eaten "from above them and from beneath their feet" (5:66). The general phrase covers every ruling given to a messenger or an inspired person. Dagli adds a long gloss on revelation (wahy, through an angel, from outside) and inspiration (ilham, direct, from within).
The argument from Job's fever: existence runs on imbalance, so even God's anger must tilt back toward pleasure.
No path to equilibrium. The cool water eased Job's fever, so medicine means reducing excess and supplying deficiency, aiming at balance. Balance can only be approached, because nothing comes into being without an inclination. In nature that is called imbalance or decay; in the Real it is Will. Dagli: left in equilibrium for a moment, "we would turn to nothing".
- Anger and good-pleasure. Each diminishes the other, and each is an inclining. Some hold that God's anger at the Folk of the Fire is eternal. But if their suffering ends and the Fire stills, that is good-pleasure: "anger ceases due to the cessation of the torments, since anger is identical with suffering." Human anger is a hurt seeking relief through revenge, and the Real taken apart from the world is above that.
- Two readings of return. "To Him the whole affair shall be returned" (11:123) is unveiling; "So worship Him and trust in Him" is veil. We are His manifest form; His Selfhood is the spirit governing it.
Patience redefined
"Satan has touched me with weariness and chastisement" (38:41). Qaysari derives Shaytan from shatana, "to be distant": Satan is distance from realities, and the water ends that thirst. Job spoke of a "touch", a closeness, because near and far are relations, and what is seen is near the eye however far it is.
| View | Patience is... | Result |
|---|---|---|
| The Tribe (Sufis) | Keeping the soul from complaining at all | Silence before God "reinforces the Divine Severity"; it is ignorance |
| Ibn al-'Arabi | Keeping the soul from complaining to others than God | Job cried out and was still praised: "an excellent slave; he was a penitent" (38:44) |
Contentment is owed to the Decree, not to what is decreed; the suffering lies in the latter.
- The Occasioner over occasions. "Penitent" means he turned to God, not occasions. Occasions are many and the Occasioner is one. Whoever fixes on one specific remedy may then say "God did not answer me" when he never actually asked God.
- God is hurt. God speaks of "those who hurt God and His Messenger" (33:57). The worst hurt is to be afflicted and stay heedless of Him. Asking relief eases the Real as well, since you are His manifest form.
- The weeping knower. Some knowers weep from hunger, and the untasting blame them. The knower answers: "He has made me hungry that I might weep." One asks the Face of the Selfhood, not the Faces called occasions, while knowing that those too are He.
Water of Life; Patience as Complaint to God Alone
- Protected from below. Man proud against Lord, yet "if you lowered a rope it would alight upon God". Above: fear their Lord above them (16:50).
- Nourisher. 5:66: establish Torah, Gospel, and what was sent down: eat from above and from beneath the feet.
- Mercy in torment. Affliction existentiated by Mercy; do not be veiled by the afflicted. Anger ends when suffering ends (cross-ref Zachariah).
Equilibrium Medicine
Ringstone 20. The Wisdom of Majesty in the Word of John
The shortest ringstone is a lesson in names. John (Yahya, "he lives") was the first person whose proper name was also his quality: through him the memory of his father Zachariah lives on.
- God before the gift. Zachariah prayed "give me, from Thee, a kinsman", naming God before the son. Asiyah, Pharaoh's wife, did the same: "build for me with Thee a house in Paradise", the Neighbor before the house. He asked for an heir "of the House of Jacob" (19:6).
- Two greetings of peace. God said of John, "Peace be upon him, the day he was born, and the day he dies, and the day he is raised up alive" (19:15). Jesus said the same of himself from the cradle (19:33). Jesus' wording is "more perfect in union". John's, spoken by God, is more perfect "in union and creed", because a miraculous speaker need not be truthful.
| John (19:15) | Jesus (19:33) | |
|---|---|---|
| Speaker | God, about John | Jesus, about himself, in the cradle |
| Proves | Divine favour, witnessed | Mary's innocence; the speaking alone was the sign |
| Doubt left | None | Content ("I am God's slave", 19:30) proven only by his later life |
Why God's greeting outranks the self-greeting.
Firstness of Names; Two Greetings of Peace
- Speaking infant. Need not be truthful as such (wall example); Jesus' speech proved Mary; dry palm dropping dates is another sign.
- Content later proven. "I am God's slave" (19:30) proven by his life.
Inheritance as Remembrance
Creed Weight of God's Speech
Ringstone 21. The Wisdom of Possessing in the Word of Zachariah
This chapter is a treatise on Mercy and never names Zachariah. Its claims: Mercy reaches everything, torment included, and it comes in two ways. It is freely given to every identity, and it is earned by those who ask and act. God does not "have" mercy as a quality inside Him. He is Mercy.
- Universal reach. "His Mercy surpasses His Anger", and anger itself exists through "God's Mercy upon anger". Mercy pays no attention to purpose or agreeableness: "Through showing Mercy upon torments He existentiates torments." Do not let the sight of an afflicted man, or belief in the torment of the Hereafter, hide this from you.
- Order of mercy. First Mercy embraces itself, the thingness of the identity of al-Rahman. Next comes "the thingness indicated", then every existent without end, in this world and the next, accident and substance, compound and simple. Dagli's long gloss reads this as Beyond-Being giving itself Being, then the identities unfolding.
- Effects from the non-existent. As the Futuhat says, "effects belong only to non-existents": the immutable identities, which never exist, govern what does. Only "men of imagination" grasp this, by taste.
| Way | Mercy of... | Text | Who receives |
|---|---|---|---|
| In itself | Free-giving (imtinan) | "My Mercy encompasseth everything" (7:156); "forgive thy sins before and after" (48:2); "Do as thou wilt; I have forgiven thee" | Every identity, before it exists; first of all the god created in belief |
| By request | Obligation (wujub) | "We shall write it for those who are wary and offer alms" (7:156) | The veiled ask mercy in their belief; knowers ask Mercy to reside in them: "O Allah, have Mercy upon us" |
The two mercies of the Solomon chapter, seen from the receiver's side.
States and Qualities
A state is neither existent nor non-existent. "Knower" names neither the essence nor the knowledge but the state of an essence that has taken on knowledge as a quality. It is an attribution. Likewise God "is not a locus for becoming", and mercy is not produced in Him when He shows mercy. "It is established that He is identical with Mercy."
Each Name is a gate for Mercy. Mercy is one but differentiated by Name, so one can say even "O Avenger, grant me Mercy". Each Name both indicates the single Essence and keeps a determination of its own that no other Name has. Abu al-Qasim ibn Qasi put it this way: "Each Divine Name, standing alone, is named by the totality of the Divine Names." Dagli: one looks to the gate for what comes through it, not for what sets it apart.
Mercy Encompasses; Names as Gates
- Futuhat note. Effects belong only to non-existents (immutable identities), to existents only via a non-existent's determination; known by men of imagination by taste.
- Remembrance = existentiation. Anything Mercy remembers is happy. Do not be veiled by afflicted people or Hereafter torment.
- Names as gates. Each Name a way God is present; anger's gate is still inside Mercy's enclosure.
Anger Inside Mercy
Ringstone 22. The Wisdom of Intimacy in the Word of Elias
Elias, says Ibn al-'Arabi, "was Idris", a prophet before Noah who was raised to heaven and came down again as a messenger. He rode a horse of fire and became pure intellect, and that gave him only half the knowledge of God. The other half needs imagination, self-disclosure and finally a strange descent into animality.
Half and whole knowledge
Intellect alone knows only incomparability. That is "half of the knowledge of God". With self-disclosure, the knower declares God incomparable in one respect and similar in another, and sees "the Real flowing in the forms of nature". That is perfect knowledge, the knowledge the revealed Laws bring.
- Imagination rules. Wahm (estimative imagination; Dagli cites Ibn Sina: the sheep sees the wolf's hostility) is "the greatest authority in this perfect form of man". No thinker can avoid putting what he understands into form. The Laws speak to it: similarity within incomparability through imagination, incomparability within similarity through intellect.
- The proof text. "There is none like unto His likeness... He is the Hearing, the Seeing" (42:11) is the strongest verse of incomparability, yet it still uses "like". "Glorified be thy Lord... above what they attribute": God is above even the thinkers' incomparability, because it limits Him.
- A double reading. In "God knoweth best where He placeth His Message" (6:124), split the clause and it reads "the Messengers of God are God": they are His loci.
- Dream vision. Someone who sees God in a dream should not deny it. Interpreting a dream (ta'bir, "crossing over") moves toward incomparability. A man of unveiling gives the form its due as well.
The Elias path: down into animality, then up past intellect to the Breath.
The mirror
One Identity, many forms. Zayd is one person with a head that is not his foot. Mankind is one identity in countless individuals. On the Day of Resurrection God appears in a known form, changes to one that is denied, then to one known again. "It is as though the one Identity is a mirror": each onlooker recognises the form of his own belief and denies the belief of another. No form is in the mirror itself, but it changes the form's dimensions (smaller, larger, longer, wider). Look at one mirror and you contemplate the Essence, Beyond Need. Look at many and you see the Names, each colouring the one who looks into it.
- The snake. "God loves courage, even in the killing of a snake" (a saying Dagli could not trace). The snake is yourself. Killing destroys a sensory form, but its definition survives and imagination keeps it. "It was not thyself that threw, but God threw" (8:17): the act is denied, affirmed, then amended into God's throwing in Muhammad's form.
- Reason's limit. Intellect rules that a cause cannot be caused by its own effect. Self-disclosure shows exactly that. "None are more intelligent than the messengers": they affirmed what intellect affirms and added what it calls absurd. "The slave of the Lord" makes his intellect defer. "The slave of speculation" makes truth defer.
After animality. He becomes "a pure intellect outside of natural matter" and sees, by taste, the principles behind nature's forms. If nature is unveiled to him as the Breath of the All-Merciful, "he has been given much good" (2:269). Knowers already carry their Hereafter makeup: they have been "assembled" and "resurrected from their grave" while they walk among us. At the summit "he will see the seer as being identical with the seen".
Horse of Fire; Wahm; Animality before Pure Intellect
- 42:11. Greatest incomparability verse still uses "like". 37:180: incomparable even to their incomparability (which delimits).
- Animality. To know as Elias knew: descend into animality, see the life of the grave, fall mute, then rise to pure intellect and the Breath. Ibn al-'Arabi claims this total animality.
- Baalbek. Sent to Baal (idol) and Bek (ruler); mountain = body, horse = animal soul, fire = Spirit (cf Moses' tree).
Laws Need Both Eyes
Ringstone 23. The Wisdom of Excellence in the Word of Luqman
"We gave Luqman Wisdom" (31:12), and "whoso is given Wisdom is given much good" (2:269). Ibn al-'Arabi reads Luqman's advice to his son (31:13-16) phrase by phrase. He finds in it spoken and unspoken wisdom, the Names Subtle and Informed, and a definition of associating others with God as splitting a single Identity.
| Phrase (31:16) | Wisdom |
|---|---|
| "A grain of mustard-seed... God shall bring it forth" | Spoken: God is the one who brings forth |
| No recipient named | Silent: "in the heavens or in the earth", as "He is God in the heavens and in the earth" (6:3). The Real is identical with everything known, yet "the most unknowable of unknowables" |
| "God is Subtle" | He is the very thing called heaven, rock, tree, angel, food: one identity under conventional names |
| "Informed" | Knowing by test, "until We know" (47:31): knowledge by taste, through the slave's faculties |
| Grain = ant's food | "An ant's weight of good" (99:7-8): the smallest eater and the smallest food; "a gnat, or aught beyond it" (2:26) |
One verse, five lessons.
Subtle. The Ash'arites say the world is one substance made various by accidents. That matches "the identity is one" and is "multiple through forms and relationships". The theologian's mistake is to think that this substance "is not identical with the Real".
Informed. "I will be his hearing... his sight... his tongue... his foot... his hand": God names faculties and bodily parts, and "the slave is none other than these". "That which is called slave is identical with the Real, but the slave is not identical with the Master", because the attributions stay distinct while their Object is one. Luqman's wisdom would have been "more complete" with kana ("is"): "God is Subtle, Informed". God reported the meaning of Luqman's words and added nothing.
Spoken and Silent Wisdom; Subtle, Informed
- Will vs Wish. Mashiyyah (takwini) vs iradah (intermediary). When Divinity wills bounty for Himself, all being is food; for us, He is food.
- Shirk warning. Slave identical with Real by taste, but attributions stay distinct: slave not identical with Master.
- Better kana. Dagli notes Luqman would have been clearer with "is" making identity explicit.
Food for God, Food for Us
Ash'arite Parallel and Its Limit
Ringstone 24. The Wisdom of the Imam in the Word of Aaron
The story is the golden calf. Aaron, the older brother, could not stop the people, and Moses seized him by the beard. Ibn al-'Arabi turns the scene inside out. Moses was angry at Aaron's narrowness, because the knower sees that God alone is worshipped in every form. The chapter ends with the boldest claim in the book: desire is the greatest of God's idols.
- The tablets. "Take me not by the beard nor by the head... make not my enemies to gloat over me" (7:150): these words are "breath from the Breaths of the All-Merciful". Had Moses read the tablets he threw down, he would have found guidance (Aaron was innocent) and mercy (an older brother he would not have handled so).
- Division. Aaron feared the charge "Thou hast divided the Children of Israel" (20:94). Some worshipped the calf following the Samiri; others waited for Moses. Moses rebuked Aaron for "his lack of scope": God has decreed "that only He shall be worshipped", and the knower sees Him "as identical with everything". Dagli: it is "not clear" how the Shaykh draws this from the text, and it is typical of his reversing the characters' motives.
- Treasure. The Samiri made the calf from the people's jewelry so it would seize their hearts. Jesus said "the heart of each man is with his treasure". The Shaykh links mal (wealth) to mala (to incline); Dagli notes the roots differ.
- Burning. Forms pass anyway; Moses "hastened" out of zeal, burned the calf and scattered its ashes, saying "Look on your divinity" (20:97). He called it divinity to teach that it was a locus of self-disclosure.
Subjugation
| Kind | Example | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| By the subjugator's will | Master over slave; sultan over subjects | Degree ("We raised some above others in degree that some may take others in subjugation", 43:32), working on the other's animality: fear or hope of a wage |
| By state or function | Subjects "subjugate" the king to defend them and guard their wealth | The office binds him; kings who know this are rewarded like knowers |
| Of God by the world | "Every day He is upon some labour" (55:29) | The world needs Him to show His Names |
Two equals are contraries (look at the strife among beasts), so subjugation always runs across a difference of degree.
Man's animality rules animals, and the calf, not truly animal, had no will at all. Animals with will may resist.
Desire, the greatest idol
Aaron's failure was a divine wisdom, "for Him to be worshipped in every form". "There are no species that are not worshipped", either by deification or by subjugation. A thing is worshipped once it is "clothed with exaltation" in the heart, and so God is "Raiser of degrees" (40:15), in the plural.
- One desire. Nothing is worshipped except through desire, and even worship of God comes from a desire for Him, "a will based on love". Worshippers condemn one another, yet the knower is bewildered at "the unity of desires... a single identity in every worshipper". "God has led him astray knowingly" means bewilderment.
- The idolaters' slip. They said "We only worship them that they may bring us nigh" (39:3) and "Has he made the divinities one divinity?" (38:5), so they did affirm God. "Name them" (13:33) catches them out: the only names they can give are stone and tree.
- The knower's practice. Knowers outwardly reject worshipped forms, following the Messenger ("follow me, and God will love you"). They are "worshippers of the moment" who know God was worshipped in those forms. The ignorant denier does not know this; the prophet, messenger or heir veils it. "No vision perceiveth Him", yet He is the Subtle, the Informed: being informed is tasting, tasting is self-disclosure in forms, so "there must be those who worship Him through their desires".
Calf, Subjugation, Desire as Greatest Idol
- Tablets cast. Moses did not look: would have found guidance (Aaron innocent) and mercy (older brother).
- Samiri. Calf from jewelry to seize hearts via treasure. Mal (wealth) ~ incline. Forms do not abide.
- Subjugation. Function binds; the imam serves those he leads (cross-ref David).
Treasure, Heart, and Scope
Mercy Breaths in the Rebuke
Ringstone 25. The Wisdom of Exaltedness in the Word of Moses
The longest ringstone follows Moses' life from the slaughter of the infants to the burning bush, reading each episode as a lesson in hidden knowledge. Its themes are the body as an ark on a sea of knowledge, love as the root of every motion, the teaching meeting with Khidr, the debate with Pharaoh on what God is, and the Shaykh's most notorious verdict: Pharaoh died a believer.
The small acts on the great
The newly arrived is closer to its Lord. A child subjugates an adult without knowing it: the adult stoops to play, carries him, gives up his own ease. The young are "newly arrived and know their Lord", like courtiers who rule those farther from the king. The Prophet bared his head to the rain: "It is newly arrived and knoweth its Lord."
- The ark is the body. The ark (tabut) was Moses' nasut, his body. The sea was the knowledge he would gain through the body's faculties of thought, sense and imagination, which the soul can only have through an elemental body. The spirit governs the body "through none other than itself".
- God's governance works the same way. God rules the world through the world itself: child through parent, effect through cause, conditioned through condition, proven through proof. He also rules it through its form, the Divine Names, whose meaning we find in the world. Hence "God created Adam in His Image": Perfect Man, the birnamij or summary model of Essence, Qualities and Acts, to whom everything is subjected (45:13). "Whosoever is ignorant of it... such is animal man."
- Ruin outside, rescue inside. Being set adrift looked like loss but saved him from murder, as knowledge revives a soul "dead through ignorance" (6:122). "Guidance is that man should be guided to bewilderment... bewilderment is unrest and motion, and motion is life."
- Pairs. Watered earth "quivers, and swells, and puts forth every wonderful pair" (22:5). Likewise the one Real is many through His Names, as one hylic substance carries many forms.
- The real mother. "In reality one's mother is she who suckles him." The embryo feeds on blood the mother would otherwise suffer from, so there is no free-giving in it; nursing is intended. Moses alone had both in one woman.
- Law and way. "For each of you We have appointed a law and a way" (minhaj, read as minha ja'a, "came from it", 5:48). Knowledge of a Law must come from its own source, as Moses' milk came only from his mother. What one Law forbids and another permits only looks the same: creation is new without repetition.
Khidr's three lessons
| Khidr's act (18:60-82) | Moses' objection | The mirror in Moses' life |
|---|---|---|
| Kills a boy | "Hast thou slain a soul?" | His own killing of the Egyptian, divinely inspired "in his mystery" though he did not know it. "I did it not of my own bidding" (18:82): a prophet is inwardly inerrant before being told |
| Holes a boat | "To drown its people?" | His ark: outward ruin, inward deliverance from a tyrant |
| Rebuilds a wall unpaid | "Thou couldst have taken a wage" | He watered the maidens of Midian unpaid and said, "I have need of whatever good Thou shalt send down" (28:24) |
Khidr staged Moses' own past for him. In the Shaykh's imaginal meeting, Khidr said he had prepared a thousand such lessons and Moses had patience for three.
- The mother's knowledge. She cast him into the sea out of fear: "When the eye seeth not, the heart is afflicted not." Her hope, "Perhaps this is the Messenger by whose hands Pharaoh... shall be destroyed", was knowledge, not fancy.
- Parting with adab. The Prophet wished Moses had kept silent "so that God could have told us more". Moses set the condition himself: "If after this I question thee, keep not company with me" (18:76). Khidr honoured it as a messenger's command: "This is the separation between us" (18:78). Khidr softened his rebuke with: "I have knowledge God hath taught me which ye know not, and thou hast knowledge... which I know not." The Prophet's "You know better your worldly affairs" (the date palms) shows the same adab.
- Messenger and vicegerent. "My Lord gave me Judgement" means vicegerency; "made me one of the Messengers" means messengerhood (26:21). A vicegerent has the sword, dismissal and rule. A messenger only conveys, unless he also fights for his message.
Love moves everything
Moses fled "when I feared you" (26:21), but in meaning he fled out of love of deliverance. "Motion is always the motion of love, but one who sees it veils it with other occasions." The world moved from non-existence into existence because "I was a hidden treasure and loved to be known" (Dagli: not in the major collections). The world, for its part, loves to see itself in existence. Knowledge is completed by eternal plus originated knowledge, existence by eternal plus originated existence, and the Names are "relieved" by the world's appearing.
- The robe. Prophets speak the language of the outward for the generality. The Prophet gave gifts to the weak "lest God cast them into the Fire". The dull man admires the robe; the subtle one says, "This is the robe of a king."
Pharaoh's question
The debate of 26:23-32 as the Shaykh stages it: two knowers speaking over the heads of the court.
Pharaoh asked about God's quiddity knowingly, to test Moses and to teach his court without their noticing. God has no genus or differentia, so the only possible definition is His relation to the world's forms. "Lord of the heavens and the earth... if you are certain" serves the folk of unveiling. Pharaoh called him "possessed" (majnun, read as "veiled"). Moses then added "Lord of the East and the West... if you understand", the Hidden and Manifest, for intellect, which "binds".
- The threat. "If thou takest a god other than me, I shall imprison thee" (26:29). The s of sijn (prison) is treated as extra, leaving veil. Pharaoh's meaning, in the Shaykh's voice: "I am you in identity, but other than you in degree." Moses granted him that, then offered "something clear".
- Staff and snake. The staff ('asa) was the form of Pharaoh's disobedience ('isyan). Turned into a serpent, it is evil changed to good (25:70). It was truly staff and truly snake, so it ate both. The magicians' ropes (habl) were small hills (hibal) beside a mountain. They believed in "the Lord of Moses and Aaron".
- The Most High. As holder of the sword, Pharaoh said truly "I am your Lord, the Most High" (79:24): everyone is a lord in some relation, and he ruled outwardly. The magicians accepted it: "Decide what thou wilt; thou canst only decide touching the life of this world" (20:72). "The identity was the Real's; the form was Pharaoh's." Their mutilation was needed so they could reach levels reachable only that way.
The burning bush. God spoke from fire because fire was what Moses was looking for. Any other form and he would have turned away. "Recall the fire of Moses, which he saw with his need's eye / He is the Divinity, but he knows Him not."
Ark and Sea; Khidr; Pharaoh's Question and Faith
- Khidr's three acts. Mirror Moses' life: damaged boat = ark; slain boy = Egyptian; wall without wages = Midian watering. Separation by Moses' own condition. Taste-knowledge each lacks.
- Pharaoh's "What is the Lord?" Testing, not ignorance. Moses answers by relation to forms. Staff = disobedience become serpent; magicians believe. "I am your Lord the Most High" correct by control at the level of form.
- Pharaoh's faith. Believed before sure of death; body saved as a sign (10:92). General belief in his damnation has no explicit text.
Love Veiled as Fear; Fire as Need
- Vicegerent vs messenger. "My Lord gave me Judgement and made me a Messenger": vicegerent has sword and rule; not every messenger is vicegerent.
- Sudden death. Those on verge of death witness; inhaled breath exits without exhaled entering. "One assembled as he died."
- Poem. Fire seen with need's eye; He is the Divinity but he knows Him not.
Magicians, Staff, and Levels of Faith
Ringstone 26. The Wisdom of Self-Sufficiency in the Word of Khalid
Khalid ibn Sinan is the only figure here who is not a Qur'anic prophet. He claimed a prophethood that would begin after his death. His people failed him, and the Shaykh uses his story to ask whether hoping to do a good deed earns the same reward as doing it.
Why he wanted it. Khalid was not a messenger, so he had no message to convey. He wanted a large share of the mercy of the Muhammadan message, close as his own prophethood was in time, and to grow stronger in knowledge of creation. The Prophet himself said his people "failed" him.
| Case in the Law | Reward |
|---|---|
| Comes for congregational prayer but misses it | Reward of one who was present |
| Poor man who hopes to give like the rich | A reward equal to theirs |
| The open question | Equal to their intention, or to their intention and deed? The Prophet did not say |
Hope is certainly rewarded; whether it equals the act is disputed.
"There is no doubt or disagreement about his having the reward of his hope."The Shaykh leans toward
hope and deed not being equal. That, he suggests, is why Khalid wanted actually to
preach: to unite intention and act and earn
two rewards.
Prophethood of the Barzakh; Reward of Hope
- Law analogies. Missed congregation gets congregation reward; poor man intending rich man's deeds gets equal reward. Equal to intention or to deed? Prophet silent; seemingly not the same, so Khalid sought to unite both and get two rewards.
- Mercy share. Wanted to be mercy for the worlds (21:107), near Muhammad's prophethood; not a messenger.
Barzakh News and Two Rewards
Between Jesus and Muhammad
Ringstone 27. The Wisdom of Uniqueness in the Word of Muhammad
The last ringstone is a long commentary on one hadith: "Three things have been made worthy of love to me in your world: women, perfume, and my comfort has been placed in the Prayer." From it Ibn al-'Arabi draws the metaphysics of threeness, a theology of sexual love as the most complete witnessing of God, a grammar lesson in the priority of the feminine, and a closing account of Prayer as dialogue and of the god of beliefs.
Self-knowledge. "Whoso knoweth himself knoweth his Lord." Read it as impossibility if you like (you cannot know yourself, so you cannot know Him), or as possibility. Both readings hold.
| Item | Gender in Arabic | What it stands for |
|---|---|---|
| Women (nisa') | Truly feminine; a plural with no singular, linked to nus'ah, "postponement" | The passive locus, as nature (the Breath) is to the Real; they came into being after him |
| Perfume (tib) | Masculine, placed between | The "scents of bringing into being"; man stands between the Essence (feminine, dhat) and woman |
| Prayer (salah) | Only grammatically feminine | Witnessing, intimate discourse, "comfort of the eye" |
He said thalath (the count for feminine nouns), not thalathah, so the feminine wins, against the Arab rule that one masculine word ("the Fatimahs and Zayd left") makes the group masculine.
- The feminine comes first. "Follow any path you wish, you shall always find that the feminine comes first." Essence, quality, power and even the philosophers' "cause" ('illah) are feminine words.
Love of women
Why he loved women. He yearned for them as a whole yearns for its part. God "cleaved" woman from man in his image. He yearns for her as a thing for itself; she yearns for him as for her homeland. The ternary is Real, man, woman: man makes the Real "even" as woman makes man one of a pair, and man yearns for his Lord as woman yearns for him. He said "made worthy of love to me", not "I love", because his love was God's love working through him.
- God's longing. "O David, I long for them more intensely." None sees his Lord until he dies, so God longs for a meeting that only death allows: "I hesitate in nothing as I hesitate in taking my believing slave who hates dying... but he must meet Me." "The lover longs for the sight of Me / But stronger is My longing for him."
- Fire, not light. The breath into the four humours ignited the body's moisture, so man's spirit is fiery. That is why God spoke to Moses in fire. A purely natural (angelic) makeup would have made it light.
"All this is the marriage, in each of these modes, of the first odd-numberedness": two that produce a third.
The greatest witnessing. Seen in oneself, God is witnessed only as passive; seen in woman, as both active and passive. Since the Real is never witnessed apart from some matter, "witnessing the Real in women is the greatest and most perfect witnessing." The conjugal act is the greatest union. It resembles God turning to the one made in His Image, and desire fills the whole body, which is why the greater ablution (ghusl) washes all of it. "God is jealous that His slave should believe that he can experience pleasure with another", so the washing returns him to contemplate Him in that wherein he "perished".
- Without knowledge. One who loves women only for natural desire loves "a form possessing no spirit": "In the sight of people I am truly a lover / Though they knoweth not who my love is for."
- The degree. "Men have a degree above them" (2:228), as the image stands a degree below the One who formed it. That degree is His being Beyond Need and Prime Agent; the image is a secondary agent.
Perfume
Perfume follows women because the "scents of bringing into being" come from them: "the sweetest of perfumes is in the embrace of the beloved." He never sought to be a master; he was given active rank only "in the world of breaths". The All-Merciful sits on the Throne that encompasses all, so nothing escapes Mercy.
- Speech is scent. God cleared 'Aishah with "good women for good men" (24:26). Words are breath, and breath smells good or bad.
- Garlic. Of garlic he said "a plant whose smell I dislike", not "I dislike it": the thing is good, and only what comes from it may offend.
- Angels and scarabs. Angels are bothered by the smell of man's "moulded clay" (masnun, also "foul-smelling", 15:26). The scarab suffers from the scent of a rose. Some temperaments suffer truth and enjoy falsehood.
- No pure-good temperament. No temperament perceives only good, since even the Real loves and dislikes. One can attend to the good in the bad, but "removing what is bad from... being cannot be". Mercy is in both, and every good is bad for some temperament.
Prayer
- The halves. "In the Name of God" is answered "My slave hath remembered Me". "Praise belongs to God" gets "hath praised Me", "the All-Merciful" gets "extolled", "Master of the Day" gets "magnified". "Thee we worship" is shared. "Guide us" belongs to the slave. So the Prayer requires the Fatihah.
- Seeing and hearing. God keeps company with whoever remembers Him: whoever has sight sees Him. If not, worship "as though he saw Him", imagining Him in the qiblah and listening for His reply. Whoever neither sees nor hears "is not praying at all".
- Every worshipper an imam. Angels pray behind a man praying alone, so he holds the messengers' station as God's deputy. "God heareth the one who praiseth Him" is God speaking on his tongue.
- The remembrance of God is greater. Prayer "forbids indecency" "The remembrance of God is greater" means God's remembrance of the slave outweighs the slave's.
- Three motions. Standing is upright, the motion of man. Bowing is horizontal, the motion of animals. Prostration is downward, the motion of plants. Stones do not move of themselves.
- Comfort as stillness. The comfort "was placed", given freely by Him. Qurrat 'ayn (comfort of the eye) shares the root q-r-r with "being fixed". Turning aside in prayer is "something Satan pilfers".
Women, Perfume, Prayer; God of Beliefs
- Yearning. Whole for part; God longs more intensely. Woman cleaved in his image; he yearns as thing for itself, she as for homeland. Love attached to Lord; loved them with God's love.
- Prayer halves. Fatihah divided; "Thee we worship" shared; "Guide us" for the slave. Whoever neither sees nor hears is not praying. Every lone worshipper is imam (angels behind). Three motions: standing (man), bowing (animals), prostration (plants).
- God of beliefs. Junayd: water's color is that of its container. "I am as My slave thinks of Me." Absolute Divinity not encompassed; the god of beliefs fits in the heart. Allow every belief; know God in every form.
Ternary Marriage; Feminine First
- Perfume. Scents of bringing into being from women; sweetest in the beloved's embrace. Slave never master; active station in the world of breaths.
- Angels and scarabs. Moulded clay bothers angels; rose bothers the scarab. No temperament perceives only good.
- musalli. Horse behind the frontrunner; God prays upon us by the Name the Last.
Fatihah Dialogue and Three Motions
Synthesis
The whole Fusus in takeaways, frameworks, a critical reading, its cast and the few places where its ideas genuinely touch present-day work.
Argument Arc across Twenty-Seven Bezels
Cross-cutting tables
| Cluster | Ringstones | Gist |
|---|---|---|
| Ontology | Adam, Seth, Enoch, Salih, Shu'ayb, Solomon | Identities, preparedness, exaltedness, ternary, renewal |
| Epistemology | Noah, Isaac, Joseph, Elias, Luqman | Tanzih+tashbih, ta'bir, shadow, wahm, silent wisdom |
| Anthropology | Abraham, Hud, Jonah, Job, John | Permeation, faculties, makeup, water of life, names |
| Law and walayah | Jacob, Ezra, David, Aaron, Khalid | Din, qadar, Will/Law, desire, hope |
| Christic / Mosaic / Seal | Jesus, Moses, Muhammad | Breath, ark, women-perfume-Prayer |
Reading Discipline
Main Points
- One Real, seen through Names. The Essence is unknowable and Beyond Need. Everything we know of God is a Name, and every Name needs the world to show its effects. The world is the mirror, and Adam, the Perfect Man, is its polish.
- The identity decides; God gives. Each thing's immutable identity fixes what it receives: "the decree only determines things through them". Every gift is the receiver's own preparedness unfolding (Seth, Ezra).
- Incomparability and similarity together. Intellect alone gets "half of the knowledge of God". Perfect knowledge joins tanzih and tashbih, as 42:11 does in one verse (Noah, Elias).
- The god of beliefs. Each heart worships the God it has formed: "The water's color is that of its container." The knower allows every belief and knows God in every form (Shu'ayb, Muhammad).
- Mercy outstrips Anger. Mercy encompasses everything, even torment, and the end of creation is happiness of each kind. The Fire becomes "coolness and peace", and anger ends when suffering ends (Zachariah, Job).
- Sainthood never ends. Law-giving prophethood was sealed with Muhammad, but sainthood (al-Wali is a divine Name) abides. Saints may receive from God what the Prophet received, while outwardly keeping his Law (Ezra, David).
- The Breath is nature. The Breath of the All-Merciful relieves the Names and takes on every form like hylic substance. Nature means opposition, which is why God used two Hands (Jesus).
- Creation is renewed at every breath. Bilqis's throne was annihilated and re-created, not carried: "the moment of non-existence is the moment of the existence of its likeness" (Solomon).
- All motion is love. "I was a hidden treasure and loved to be known": the world's move from non-existence is love on both sides. Fear only veils that love (Moses).
- Patience allows complaint to God. Patience is not silence. It means complaining only to God, and refusing to ask Him for relief "reinforces the Divine Severity" (Job).
- Every supplication is answered. What God asks of the slave is what the slave asks of God, so every request is answered, even if late or only "through intention" (Jesus).
- Asking by command is safe. A request made because God commanded it is not held against you; an unbidden one may be. "Increase me in knowledge" is the model (Solomon).
- Will is not Law. Whatever happens is God's Will, even when it breaks the Law. Disobedience touches only the "command by intermediary" (David).
- Desire is the greatest idol. Nothing is worshipped except through desire, even God. Aaron's failure let God "be worshipped in every form" (Aaron).
- Woman is the most perfect witnessing. God is seen in woman as both active and passive, so "witnessing the Real in women is the greatest" (Muhammad).
- Death is separation. Death moves the self into a new compounded body suited to the next abode. Preserve the human makeup, and prefer pardon to retaliation (Jonah).
- Pharaoh died a believer. His faith came before he was sure of death, and his body was saved "as a sign". The general belief in his damnation has "no explicit text" (Moses).
- Animality before pure intellect. To know as Elias knew, descend into animality: see the life of the grave and fall mute, then rise to pure intellect and the Breath (Elias).
- Prayer is dialogue. The Fatihah is split between God and slave. Whoever neither sees nor hears in prayer "is not praying at all" (Muhammad).
- Hope earns reward. Khalid is rewarded for his hope. Whether hope equals the deed is left open (Khalid).
Frameworks and Mental Models
| Name | What it says | Use it when |
|---|---|---|
| Essence / Names / identities | Unknowable Self; relational Names; fixed receivers in God's knowledge | Placing any claim about God on the right level |
| Two mercies | Free-giving (al-Rahman) for all; obligation (al-Rahim) earned by deeds | Separating unconditional provision from earned reward |
| Two commands | Bringing into being (never disobeyed); by intermediary (Law, can be) | Reconciling "all is God's will" with moral judgment |
| Tanzih + tashbih | Intellect negates, imagination affirms; truth joins them | Judging any account of God as half or whole |
| God of beliefs | Each heart's God takes the shape of its vessel | Reading disagreements between creeds |
| Renewal of creation | Everything ceases and recurs at each breath | Change, identity over time, the throne of Bilqis |
| Ternary (fardiyyah) | Two that produce a third: Command and Breath, man and woman, premises and conclusion | Seeing how unions create |
| Subjugation by degree and by function | The higher rules by rank; the office binds the ruler to his subjects | Thinking about power and duty |
| Sainthood and prophethood | Concentric: sainthood encloses prophethood, which encloses messengerhood | Reading the Seal and succession passages |
A closer look
Who's Who
| Name | Role in the book |
|---|---|
| Ibn al-'Arabi | The Shaykh; received the book in a Damascus dream, 627/1229; claims the Seal of saints (Seth) and total "animality" (Elias) |
| Caner K. Dagli | Translator; introduction on Names and identities; 1,272 footnotes |
| Qaysari, Qashani | The main classical commentators Dagli follows and contrasts |
| Abu Yazid al-Bistami | Breathed life into an ant he had killed; "Christic" witnessing (Jesus) |
| Junayd | "The water's color is that of its container" (Muhammad) |
| Abu Madyan; Abu Su'ud | Saints on himmah and chosen weakness (Lot) |
| Ibn Qasi | Each Name is named by all the Names (Zachariah) |
| Abu Talib al-Makki | Called the Will "the Throne of the Essence" (David) |
| Khidr | Moses' teacher in inward knowledge; three acts mirror Moses' life |
| Pharaoh; Asiyah | Pharaoh debates quiddity and dies a believer; his wife, perfect among women |
| Bilqis; Asif ibn Barkhiya | Queen of Sheba; Solomon's vizier who re-created her throne |
| Samiri | Made the calf live with Gabriel's traces (Jesus, Aaron) |
| Khalid ibn Sinan | Pre-Islamic Arab prophet "whose people failed him" (Khalid) |
Glossary of Key Terms
| Term | Meaning in the Fusus |
|---|---|
| al-Haqq | The Real: God as the one reality |
| 'ayn thabitah | Immutable identity: a thing's fixed reality in God's knowledge, never existent in itself |
| isti'dad | Preparedness: what an identity can receive |
| tajalli | Self-disclosure; Holy and Holiest Emanations |
| nafas al-Rahman | Breath of the All-Merciful; identical with nature |
| tanzih / tashbih | Asserting incomparability / similarity |
| al-insan al-kamil | Perfect Man, the comprehensive being made in the Image |
| walayah | Sainthood or friendship with God; never ends |
| qada' / qadar | Decree / ordainment (measuring out in time) |
| himmah | Spiritual will that acts on things |
| wahm; khayal | Estimative imagination; imagination |
| lahut / nasut | Life flowing in things / its bodily locus |
| barzakh | Isthmus; the world between death and resurrection |
| fitrah | Primordial norm of "Am I not your Lord?" |
| hukm | Determination: the governing effect of a meaning in a locus |
| fardiyyah | Uniqueness and odd-numberedness; the creative ternary |
| ilah al-mu'taqad | God created in belief |
| dhawq | Taste: direct knowledge, set against thought |
Quick cross-ref
| If you need... | Open... |
|---|---|
| Mirror / Perfect Man | Adam + Intro |
| Preparedness / Seal | Seth + Ezra |
| Tanzih + tashbih | Noah + Elias |
| Heart / god of beliefs | Shu'ayb + Muhammad |
| Breath = nature | Jesus + Solomon |
| Will vs Law / Pharaoh | David + Moses |
| Ternary / women-Prayer | Salih + Muhammad |
About this book
The Ringstones of Wisdom: Fusus al-Hikam 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.
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