Insight Editions · No. 179
Wisdom of the Prophets
In the Light of Tasawwuf
Ibn al-Arabi · Translated and summarized by Khaja Khan
Khaja Khan presents Ibn al-Arabi’s twenty-seven prophetic bezels, explaining how divine reality appears through the prophets as both transcendent and present in creation.
A study guide to Wisdom of the Prophets by Ibn al-Arabi, translated and summarized by Khaja Khan. Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the authors or publishers. Please read and buy the original.
About the Book
Khan Sahib Khaja Khan's Wisdom of the Prophets is the first English rendering of Ibn al-Arabi's Fusus al-Hikam, a "synoptical translation" of all twenty-seven bezels with an analytical note on each and a long Life of the Shayk.
What the book is
Wisdom of the Prophets (in the light of Tasawwuf) was printed by the Hogarth Press, Mount Road, Madras. Its author signs himself Khan Sahib Khaja Khan, B.A., author of The Philosophy of Islam, Studies in Tasawwuf and The Secret of Ana'l Haqq. Louis Massignon wrote the foreword in Paris on 21 September 1928 and called the book the "first attempt of such a transposition" from Arabic into English. The volume holds:
- a foreword by Massignon and the translator's preface, with a frontispiece diagram of the descents of Being;
- a Life of the Shayk that is really a short treatise: biography, the doctrine of descents (tanazzulat), the future world, the hierarchy of saints and the ascent (uruj);
- the twenty-seven chapters, one per prophet, from Adam to Muhammad. Each gives a compressed version of the Shayk's bezel, then a separate Note in which Khan explains, compares and sometimes disagrees;
- a glossary of about two hundred numbered terms;
- an appendix of press opinions on Khan's other books.
Argument map
Ten ideas to carry away
- There is one Reality; the world is its appearance. Khan renders the Noah bezel as saying that we are the appearance and God is our Reality.
- Each thing was first an aptitude in God's knowledge (ayn thabita), and it receives existence exactly as its aptitude asks.
- Creation is the breath of a love that wished to be known, and it is renewed at every moment.
- Tanzih alone and tashbih alone are both half-truths; the gnostic holds both.
- God appears to each in the form of his belief, so the Hud bezel tells the wise to believe in all forms of belief.
- The heart, not reason, can follow God from form to form, as a compass needle turns.
- Mercy precedes wrath, so even calamity and hell are framed by grace.
- Prophethood ends; friendship with God (wilayat) never ends.
- The perfect man is the mirror of all the names, and Muhammad is its fullest form.
- Prayer is vision: "Pray to God as if you see Him".
1. Foreword, Preface and the Life of the Shayk
Before the bezels, three introductions: Massignon places the Fusus among Ibn al-Arabi's works, Khan explains how and why he translated it, and the Life sets out the whole metaphysics in advance.
Massignon's foreword
Massignon writes as the scholar of al-Hallaj. He sets the two mystics side by side: Hallaj went deeper "by one single supernatural rush", while Ibn al-Arabi built a system. He notes that the Futuhat, in its chapter 559, praises Hallaj, and that the Fusus alludes to his saying Ana'l Haqq. From a catalogue of 439 works he gives three dates: the Futuhat written from 599/1202 to 634/1236, the Tajalliyat written for Isma'il bin Saudakin al-Nuri, and the Fusus at Damascus in 627/1230. The Futuhat's 560 chapters, he says, would fill twenty volumes; the twenty-seven Fusus are its best summary. He names later students of the Shayk (Asin Palacios, Nicholson, Nyberg) and his great opponent, Ibn Taimiya.
Khan's preface: how the book came to be
The preface tells the origin story the Shayk gave: in the first ten days of Muharram 627 AH, at Damascus, he saw the Prophet in a dream holding a book and was told to publish it. The Shayk therefore presents himself as a reproducer, not an author. Khan distinguishes two kinds of inner casting: ilqa-i-subuhi, from the divine name al-Hadi (the Guide), and ilqa-i-shaitani, from al-Muzil (the one who leads astray).
Then a long digression follows on Ezra and the formation of scripture, with the Septuagint dated to Ptolemy Philadelphus (284-247 BC) and the Vulgate to 405 AD. Its point is that books gather commentary and accretion, and that the original can be recovered.
Khan quotes the Western verdicts honestly. Browne found the Fusus obscure, "probably of set purpose"; Macdonald called it a "strange jumble". Khan replies that each prophet is only a heading for a theme: Lot for angelic influences, Shuaib for the branches of knowledge, Khalid for barzakh, Ezra for destiny, Hud for the vehicle of the path. The order is not chronological, and three of the figures (Hud, Luqman, Khalid) are not in the Jewish scriptures. The Shayk builds on the Quran, first on a rational base, then on unveiling (kashf).
He calls his own work "mere spade work", says the Notes are kept apart from each bezel, and states his aim: to show that Islam has a spiritual side. The preface ends with a plea for reverent prayer, citing Canon Gairdner of Cairo, and with the hadith of ihsan.
The Life
The Life opens with a meeting. Sadruddin, meeting the Shayk on the road, asks where he is coming from and going to, and receives the reply "From knowledge towards the reality". The printed facts follow.
| Event | As printed |
|---|---|
| Birth | 7 Ramazan 560 AH (July 28, AD 1165), Murcia |
| Study | Seville and Cordova, under Abul Hasan ibnul Hudhyale |
| Journey east | 598 AH, after the death of Amir Yaqub: Egypt, Aleppo, Hijaz, Baghdad, Mosul, Asia Minor |
| Fusus | Damascus, 627 AH (Massignon: 627/1230) |
| Death | Damascus, 22 Rabi-uth-thani 638 AH (November 16, AD 1240) |
| Age | "78 years, 7 months, and 9 days" |
| Grave | Foot of Mount Qasun, at Saliha |
Khan adds that the Shayk descended from Hatim Tai, was a Maliki, lived for years in a grave in the Maghrib, and learned from a woman saint, Fatima Binti Waliyyah, aged ninety-five. He cites a memorandum of AD 1234 listing 259 writings and Jami's figure of 500 books. Browne's phrase for his output, "colossal fecundity", is quoted. Ghazali, Khan notes, died 55 years before the Shayk was born; his contemporaries included Suhrawardi, Sadi and Rumi. Opponents called him kafir and zindiq; admirers, Shayk-i-Akbar, the greatest master.
The doctrine of descents
The heart of the Life is the doctrine of tanazzulat, the stages by which the Dhat (the Essence) comes down into manifestation. Khan's frontispiece draws them as nested circles. In the first stage, Ahdiyyat, there is only absolute, undifferentiated existence, the hidden treasure. In the second, Wahdat, four aspects appear: Ilm (knowledge), Nur (light), Wujud (existence) and Shuhud (witnessing). This boundary is Haqiqat-i-Muhammadi, the Reality of Muhammad. In the third, Wahidiyyat, sight, hearing and speech are added to make seven attributes, and the names stand distinct.
Two points recur through the whole book. First, "Wahdat is the mirror in which the cosmos is reflected". Second, the divine names (asma-i-elahi) and their creaturely counterparts (asma-i-kiyani) come out at once, as a seal and its impression. This, Khan says, avoids both an eternal world in Aristotle's sense and a creation from bare nothing: things pre-exist as aptitudes in God's knowledge, and aptitudes are not created.
The twenty-eight names and the alphabet
Seven attributes multiplied by the four aspects give twenty-eight names, matched to the twenty-eight Arabic letters. The names come out in pairs, like a marriage: Badi (the Originator) with Aql-i-kul (Universal Reason), the spiritual Adam and Eve; Baith with Nafs-i-kul (Universal Soul); and so down to Rafi-ud-darajat, whose partner is Insan-ul-kamil, the perfect man. Khan quotes the Gulshan-i-Raz: "Your first mother had a father", who was also her mother.
The point of the letter ba in Bismillah is the Dhat; Bismillah is unfolded in the Fatiha, the Fatiha in the whole Quran. The Rahman of Bismillah is the breath given to all without condition; the Rahim is its fruit for those who act. "The shadow disappears, when the sun reaches overhead": the world is God's shadow, and it vanishes when He is fully seen.
The future world, the saints and the ascent
The Life closes with three short essays drawn from the Futuhat.
| Theme | What Khan reports |
|---|---|
| Future world | Creation is new each breath; barzakh is the first rung after death; "Death is a bridge between the lover and the beloved"; the Shayk met a man at the Kaaba who died 40,000 years before |
| Hierarchy | 25 Kutubs from Adam to Muhammad, met in barzakh at Cordova; a Ghawth, four Awtad at the corners, seven Abdals over seven climes |
| Ascent | Three journeys: towards God, in God, with God; the goal is vision (deydar), not dissolution, because the ayan are eternal |
The ascent essay ends with Gabriel at the lote tree, refusing to go further: "If I fly higher by a hair-breath than the lote tree, / The glory of His tajalli will singe my wings." The same couplet, in Sadi's wording, returns in the Luqman chapter.
2. Adam to Abraham: Bezels I to V
The first five bezels lay the foundations: why the human being exists, how gifts reach us, how to speak of God without either emptying or shrinking Him, what "elevation" means, and why love makes Creator and creature hide each other.
I. Adam: the polished mirror
Khan begins by explaining the word fas. It means the essence of a wisdom, and also the bezel of a ring, where the stone sits and the owner's name is engraved; the heart of each prophet is such a bezel. The Shayk opens with two kinds of inspiration: a direct casting from the divine (from the name al-Hadi), and an indirect one through a spirit. A satanic casting can mimic both.
The argument runs like this. God wished to see His own reality (ayn) in a composite creature, because seeing oneself in another differs from seeing oneself in oneself. The cosmos already existed, but as a form without a soul, "like a glass without brilliance". Adam was the brilliance in that mirror and the soul of that form. The angels are faculties of the cosmos; Adam gathers all of them.
The angels objected (Q2:30) because each knows only the limited names it carries. Iblis refused to bow because he saw only Adam's clay and not his compositeness. Adam was made with "both hands", which the Shayk reads as jamal and jalal, beauty and majesty, hope and fear. A creature can never become the Lord; the most it can be is His likeness, His khalifa. That is why the famous hadith says God becomes the servant's hearing and sight, and not his "eye and ear": the faculty, not the organ.
Khan's note adds his own comparisons: the Reality of Muhammad matches the Alexandrian Son of God and the Hindu Narayan. He insists that this is not incarnation and that the doctrine of the names "cuts at the root of metempsychosis".
II. Seth: gifts and their receivers
The Seth bezel sorts divine gifts. Some come from the Dhat, some from the names; some are asked for and some unasked; some definite and some not. Prayer is fruitful only in its time. An aptitude is a "suppressed desire", and every gift arrives in the shape of the receiver's capacity.
| Gift | Source | What the receiver sees |
|---|---|---|
| Gift of the Dhat | A disclosure in the form of one's capacity | His own form in God's mirror, not God |
| Gift of the names | A particular name, e.g. Wahab | A definite favour |
| Asked | Vocal, attitudinal or aptitudinal prayer | What was asked, in its time |
| Unasked | Pure grace | More than was known to ask |
"The illuminated sees his own form in the mirror of God, and does not see God." At the highest stage, Khan glosses that at that stage all is blank. Seth's bezel also states a principle that returns in Ezra: "Prophetship has an end", and wilayat has none. The last human being, the Shayk says, will be a boy born after the manner of Seth, twin to a sister born first, in China; Khan explains China as any land outside Arabia.
III. Noah: tanzih and tashbih
This is the most quoted bezel in the book. Tanzih declares God beyond all likeness; tashbih finds Him in likenesses. Tanzih alone makes a person ignorant or disrespectful; tashbih alone limits God. The gnostic holds both. Khan sums up the Shayk's reading of Q41:53 in one line: we are the appearance, and God is our Reality. A couplet makes the same point: "He who says that the Creator and the created are two, he is a mushrick". But equally, "You are not Him", from the side of the absolute.
Noah failed, the Shayk says, because he called his people to the two separately: first to tanzih, then to tashbih. Muhammad brought them together, so his book is a qur'an (a gathering) where Noah's call was a furqan (a separation). Noah's promise of rain (Q71:11) is read as knowledge poured down. Khan compares nirguna and saguna Brahman.
IV. Enoch: two kinds of height
Q19:57 says that Enoch was raised to a high place. The Shayk separates elevation of position, which Enoch had in the sphere of the sun, the centre of fifteen spheres, from elevation of rank, which belongs to those of whom God says "You are high", and which comes by knowledge. Position comes by acts, rank by knowledge.
| Above the sun | Below the sun |
|---|---|
| Mars, Jupiter, Saturn | Venus, Mercury, Moon |
| Zodiacs, Crystalline sphere | Fire, water |
| Kursi, Arsh | Earth |
The bezel then makes a daring move. Among the names of God is al-Ali, the High; but high over what, if there is no other? The ayan "have not smelt the smell of existence", so the elevation is His in every case. Abu Saeed-i-Kharraz said God is known only by joining contraries. "Mirrors are many, the face is one."
V. Abraham: the friend who is permeated
Khalil, friend, is read from takhallul, permeation: Abraham was permeated by the divine attributes as colour permeates cloth. This yields a mutual hiding. When the Creator is manifest, the creature is hidden; when the creature is manifest, the Creator is hidden. "Until we are not known, God will not be known." The Shayk here says Ghazali was wrong to hold that God can be known without the world.
The bezel adds a hard saying: we are food for God, because by us His names appear; and He is our food, because by Him we exist. Abraham's hospitality to his guests becomes the sign of this mutual nourishing. Khan's note names this the bezel of love and quotes the hadith qudsi of the hidden treasure, together with Abraham's words from Q6:76 about the setting stars.
3. Isaac to Hud: Bezels VI to X
The second group turns to how the unseen reaches us: in dreams, in the Lord proper to each thing, in religion as a received gift, in light that takes the colour of its glass, and in the path every creature already walks.
VI. Isaac: the dream that needed interpreting
Abraham saw himself sacrificing his son. He took the dream literally; the Shayk says he should have interpreted it, because the world of dreams is a world of images, and the ram that replaced the son was the son's true meaning. God's words "You have made the dream veridical" (Q37:105) are read as gentle correction: Abraham made literal what was symbolic. Pharaoh's kine and the Prophet's dream of milk, which he took as knowledge, are given as models of right interpretation.
The bezel then discusses himmat, concentrated aspiration. A gnostic can create forms outside himself by it, but the forms vanish the moment his attention lapses. God never lapses (Q2:255), which is the difference between the creature's making and the Creator's. Five presences (hazrat) frame where forms can be made: Wahdat, Wahidiyyat, Arwah, Amthal, Ajsam.
VII. Ismail: approved of his own Lord
Q19:55 says that Ismail was approved by his Lord. The Shayk generalises: every thing is approved of its own Lord. Allah is the Dhat with all the names; each name is a Lord (rab) to the creatures that manifest it; Allah is Rab-ul-arbab, the Lord of lords. Sahl Tustari said to the creature: you are a secret of lordship. So "God has given every thing its due and then guided it" (Q20:50).
| Level | What rules | What is ruled |
|---|---|---|
| Ahdiyyat | No Lord, no disclosure | Nothing distinct |
| Allah | Rab-ul-arbab | All the names |
| A name, e.g. al-Hadi | Its own rab | The guided |
| A name, e.g. al-Muzil | Its own rab | The led astray |
Khan's note names this the doctrine of Indiraj, inclusion: saint and brute alike are carried back to the book by their own Lords. Ismail's verse of the soul at peace, "Enter into My paradise" (Q89:30), is read through the word jannat, from junn, a shield: paradise is the veil that shelters. Khan adds that the beatific vision is in the names, not in the Dhat.
VIII. Jacob: religion as received
Jacob's bezel distinguishes religion from God, which is gnosis and submission (Q3:19), from religion that people innovate, like the monasticism of Q57:27. The shariat was brought by the Namus, Gabriel. The prophet is like a physician who serves nature, adding and subtracting, not forcing. The Prophet's saying that Surat Hud "has made a weak, old man of me" is linked to its command to go straight (Q11:112), which only a perfect servant can bear.
IX. Joseph: light that takes the colour of the glass
Joseph's bezel is about light and the imagination. Ayesha reported that the Prophet's revelation began with true dreams for six months. The bezel quotes the saying "People are asleep; and when they die, they awake", and goes a step further: "the life of man is a dream within dream". When Joseph said "This is the interpretation of my dream of old" (Q12:100), he still spoke inside a dream, the Shayk says, because the waking world is itself a dream to be interpreted.
Then the theory of shadow. The world is the shadow of God's light falling on the ayan (Q25:45). The ayan have no light of their own; the light takes the colour of the bottle it passes through. Hence the instruction to clean the heart, so that the light shows true. "Shadow cannot be separated from the person." The world is not mere fancy, yet "the world is thought within thought".
Khan's long note on Joseph
Khan's note on Joseph is the most philosophical in the book. He sets the Shayk beside Western thinkers he knows through Lewes and Hamilton: Parmenides, Berkeley, Fichte's subjective idealism, Schelling's objective idealism, Hegel's absolute. He calls the Shayk's view sui generis, nearest to Schelling. The Dhat holds the world as a tree is held in its seed; the names divide into categorical ones (Living, Holy) and conditional ones (Provider, Merciful) that need a counterpart. Things "have not smelt the smell of existence", and Q39:30 tells the Prophet that he and they are alike dead. Below the Throne, tashbih; above it, tanzih. The world is illusory as thought-forms and real as attributes, like an iceberg that is water throughout.
He also classifies dreams: from the dreamer's own will (false), from the thing's will (true), from both (as with Gabriel's visits), and from neither, as with Joseph's.
X. Hud: everyone is on a path
Hud preached that "there is no creature on the earth" whose forelock is not in the hands of its Lord (Q11:56), and added: "Surely my Rab is on the right path". The Shayk's conclusion is startling: every walker is on a straight path, the path of his own Lord. The avenger's servant is approved by the name Avenger and condemned by the name Pardoner; both names merge in Allah. Anger is temporary; mercy prevails.
Knowledge by taste (ilm-i-dhouqi) varies by temperament, as one water tastes of many soils. The people of Ad were driven by the westerly wind; sinners driven to Jehannam find there a nearness they did not expect: "We are nearer" (Q56:85). The bezel gives its formula: "God is what is sensed and the world is what is inferred".
The bezel then states the doctrine that Khan's whole book turns on. God appears to each person in the form of his belief. Do not confine Him to any one form; the bezel tells the reader to believe in all forms of belief, for "Wherever thou turnest thy face, there is the face" of God (Q2:115). One still turns to the Kaaba, out of respect. Even good men may stay a little while in Jehannam.
| Hud's terms (Khan's note) | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Sowq | The Lord pulls the creature from in front by the forelock |
| Quod | The nafs drives the creature from behind |
| Ilm-ul-arjul | "Science of walking": the formal path, ceremonial |
| Ilm-ul-dhowq | Knowledge by zest: the spiritual path |
| Rih-i-dubur | Westerly wind that destroyed Ad; inwardly, the wind of the nafs |
Khan's note compares the Gita's image of the Atma as a calm bird at the top of a tree while its reflections, the jivas, eat sweet and bitter fruit below. He summarises the creation story once more: the hidden treasure, the Cloud (Ama), the ayan praying for existence, and the Dhat breathing out "in a convulsion of love". Sale is cited for Hud as Eber and for the people of Ad and their tomb.
4. Salih to Jesus: Bezels XI to XV
The third group asks how things come to be and who acts in them: a triad in every creation, a heart wider than mercy, a prophet who will not use his will, a destiny written by the creature itself, and a spirit born of real and imagined moisture.
XI. Salih: the triad of creation
Salih's bezel opens with a poem on the riding animals of the prophets, and then states its principle: manifestation depends on oddness, and the first odd number is three. "When We resolve (to create) a thing, We say unto it, 'Be' and It becomes" (Q36:82). On God's side there are three: the Dhat, the will, the word. On the thing's side there are three answers: its reality (ayn) fixed in non-being, its hearing of the command, and its obedience.
| From the Creator | Answered by the created |
|---|---|
| Dhat | The ayn of the thing |
| Will | Hearing |
| Command "Be" | Obedience |
"The master says to his slave "stand" and he stands up"; the standing is the slave's act. So the aptitude to appear belongs to the thing and not to God. Salih's people had three days of warning: on the first their faces went pale, on the second red, on the third black, and then they perished.
Khan also writes that the Jews had schools for prophets, one at Naioth in Ramah (1 Samuel 19), where the trainees meditated like the Qadiris and sang like the Chishtis. He quotes Jami's couplet in which God tells the ayan: "Whatever is to your honor or disgrace, / Is entirely out of the requirements of your ayn". And he sets the Christian Trinity, the Vedantic Sat-Chit-Ananda and the Sufi fourfold (knowledge, light, existence, witnessing) side by side.
XII. Shuaib: the heart and the compass
The Shuaib bezel begins with a famous paradox: "The qalb (heart) of ariff (gnostic) is more extensive than the grace of God", because the heart contains God and grace does not. Then it turns the paradox around: for the adept, grace does contain Him, because God described Himself with breath.
The heart contains God not as a jug contains water but as a bezel takes the shape of its stone, square or oblong or octagonal. Abu Yazid said that if the Throne and all below it were placed in a corner of the gnostic's heart, he would not notice. The hadith qudsi says "The Heavens and the earth could not contain Me, the heart of the true believer contains Me".
Two disclosures meet in the heart. The inner one (of the unseen) gives the heart its aptitude through the Most Holy Effusion (Faiz-i-Aqdas). The outer one (of the seen) shapes the heart to the form of the disclosure through the Holy Effusion (Faiz-i-Muqaddas); in it the servant sees God in the form of his belief. Reason limits a person to one attribute, so one reasoner refutes another. The heart turns with the forms.
Khan's note identifies Shuaib with Jethro of Midian, who preached honest weights and measures, and gives three derivations of the name. It also states a doctrine of the next life that will matter later: the dead will see God either in the form of their own face, or in a form they never expected, because "The truth is sensed, and the creation is inferred". Ali said he saw no things, only God; Abu Bakr said he saw God along with the thing.
XIII. Lot: the strength not used
Lot said "Would that I had strength" or a strong support (Q11:80). The Prophet answered across the centuries: "May God bless our brother Lot"; he had taken refuge in the mighty name of God. The strength meant is himmat, will-power. God made man weak, then strong, then weak and grey (Q30:54); prophets are sent after forty, when bodily weakness has begun.
The Prophet could not guide his uncle Abu Talib (Q28:56), and that proves the point: if will-power worked on hearts, he would have used it. A prophet delivers the message; God converts. God says in Q50:29 that He does not tyrannize; people tyrannize themselves, because their acts follow their own aptitudes. Khan's note puts it in a sentence: prophets are sent to show the difference between right and wrong, not to compel, and also to show God's love.
XIV. Ezra: destiny and its secret
Ezra's bezel defines two terms that the glossary repeats.
| Term | Bezel's definition | Glossary's definition |
|---|---|---|
| Qaza | God's command to things, according to their nature | The time and circumstances in which ayan are commanded to be |
| Qadr | Specification of the time for each thing's appearing | The aptitudes of the ayan and their measurement |
The commander who depends on the commanded is, in a sense, the commanded. Knowing this gives "perfect comfort" and also "great distress": comfort in certainty, distress in what cannot be changed. Ezra was reproved because he asked "How?" (Q2:259) by reflection and not by unveiling; God answered with an act, making him dead for a hundred years and raising him.
Then comes the bezel's most debated passage. Wilayat is the sphere that encloses both prophets and saints and never ends; prophethood, tied to law, ends. The saying that there is no nabi after him closed prophecy, not friendship with God. Wali is a divine name; nabi and rasul are not. The friendship of a prophet is higher than his own prophethood, but friendship as such is not higher than prophethood.
Khan's note cites Sale on the Jewish story that Ezra, raised after a hundred years, dictated the law anew, and suggests a confusion with Ezekiel's valley of dry bones. It ends with the Dhat as the Unmanifest, which "always remains a sealed book".
XV. Jesus: spirit, word and the logic of belief
Jesus was formed from the real moisture of Mary and the imagined moisture of Gabriel, who had appeared as a man. Had Gabriel breathed while Mary was still alarmed, the child would have carried her agitation. So Jesus is both humble (from his mother) and a reviver of the dead (from the Spirit). Samiri knew the power of the Spirit's trace and threw its dust into the calf, which lowed.
Jesus's answer to God in Q5:116 is a model of courtesy: he chose separation (tafriqa) over union, declaring God holy, and ended with "My God and your God". God made man with both His hands, so man is above the elemental angels, yet below the angels of light. Everything created is a word of God, never annihilated.
Khan's note surveys Christian and Muslim opinion on the virgin birth (Sir Saiyid Ahmad, Muhammad Ali, Justin Martyr in AD 140, Ebionites and Docetists), gives the three aspects of Jesus (bodily, spiritual, divine), and explains the miracles by the doctrine of nearness through supererogatory works: Gazur-i-Ilahi likened it to an ant walking on an elephant's legs.
5. Solomon to John: Bezels XVI to XX
The fourth group is about rule and its limits: a king whose letter put his own name first, a khalifa given iron and song, a temple refused to a man of blood, a patient man who complained, and a son whose name kept his father alive.
XVI. Solomon: two mercies and a throne
Solomon's letter to Bilqis began "Truly this (letter) is from Solomon" and then "In the name of God". Some objected that he put his name before God's. The Shayk answers that Bilqis herself called the letter noble, and that Solomon, being one whom mercy brought into being, could not rank himself above the source of mercy. The letter shows two mercies.
| Mercy | Name | Given to | Glossary term |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unconditional | Rahman | All, without deserving, as existence itself | Faiz-i-Aqdas |
| Conditional | Rahim | Those who act, as reward | Faiz-i-Muqaddas |
Good works are spread over eight organs of the body, and God is the reality of each organ, so there is no actor beside Him. The names al-Zahir and al-Akhir (the Manifest, the Last) belong to the creature's side; al-Batin and al-Awwal (the Hidden, the First) to God's. The bezel warns the reader not to restrict Him to one appearance: grades of appearance are real, and one person sees more of God than another.
The throne and the new creation
Asaf Barkhiya brought Bilqis's throne to Solomon in the blink of an eye. The Shayk explains it by tajaddud-i-amthal, the renewal of likenesses: the world is annihilated and re-created at every moment (Q50:15), so the throne ceased in Sheba and was re-created in Jerusalem in the same instant. Bilqis said "It is similar to it". Then she was shown the crystal floor, which she took for water and bared her shins: as water seemed to be the floor, so the throne seemed to have travelled.
So, the Shayk says, it carried no account in the next world: "This is our gift" (Q38:39). The Prophet was told to ask for more knowledge, and took milk in dreams as knowledge; on the night journey he chose milk over wine. A couplet closes the bezel, saying that the world is a mere thought which in reality is the Truth.
Khan also quotes the Shayk's couplet from the Futuhat: "God is the Truth and abd is the Truth. / I do not understand who is restricted by shariat." He reads Solomon's mulk, his kingdom, as knowledge of this fact.
XVII. David: gifts that ask no thanks
Prophethood is a pure gift, not earned, and God does not ask the prophet for thanks; He asks it of the prophet's people: "Do good works, O progeny of David, to express your gratitude" (Q34:13). Prophets thank anyway, out of fullness: the Prophet prayed all night until his feet swelled and said "What, shall I not be His grateful servant?"
| David's gift | Bezel's reading |
|---|---|
| 1. His name | Dal, alif, waw are all "detached" letters: God detached him from the world. Muhammad's name mixes detached and attached: detached from the world, attached to God |
| 2. Mountains and birds sang with him | Khan: the light in him became reflexive; even his hairs sang |
| 3. Khilafat with authority (Q38:26) | Adam's khilafat was succession; David's was to rule with justice |
| 4. Iron made soft | "Everything protects itself from itself", as iron armour guards against iron blades |
There is one God, so there is one khalifa; if there were two gods, both worlds would be ruined (Q21:22). Whatever happens is by God's will; sin is what goes against the will as written in the shariat. The armour teaches the prayer "O my Lord, I seek protection of Thee from Thyself".
Khan's note sees khilafat beginning in Adam and complete in David, and messengership beginning in Noah and complete in Muhammad. He holds that hell is permanent as a place, against Conan Doyle (as Khan spells it, "Conon Doyle"), but that happiness comes in it after expiation, under the mercy that "spreads over all things".
XVIII. Jonah: mercy over severity
The Jonah bezel barely mentions Jonah. Its theme is the human being as soul, body and nafs, made in God's form, and the sin of destroying that form beyond what the law requires.
So Solomon built it. The lesson: "To treat God's creatures with kindness for their safe guarding is better than enforcing His shariat with severity." Peace with enemies, the poll-tax in place of war, blood-money in place of retaliation, and preference for the one heir who agrees to pardon, all follow. Retaliation is lawful but is still "evil commensurate" with evil (Q42:40); the pardoner is rewarded because the killer, too, is in God's image.
Dhikr with the tongue alone does not make God one's companion; it must run through tongue, limbs and soul. Death separates the soul from the organs, and God gives it a new body of the elements of the next world. The people of the fire, once the name Avenger has run its course, find the fire turned cool, as it was for Abraham.
Khan's note adds the debate on whether Jonah was swallowed or only seized, the Baidawi range of anything from part of a day to forty days, and Jonah's prayer (Q21:87). The stages of dhikr he gives are worth noting: the heart's stray thoughts vanish, then come disclosures of attributes, then of names, then of the Dhat, and finally God makes dhikr of Himself.
XIX. Job: complaint without impatience
Water is the origin of every living thing (Q21:30), and the Throne rests on water. God told Job to strike with his foot: "this is the place for bathing" (Q38:42), cool water for a body heated by affliction. The bezel then makes a striking claim: when the servant is in distress, "God also is in distress", insofar as His being pervades the creature, though His Dhat is free of all this. "We-His creatures-are His face."
Why are prayers not answered? Two reasons: the means the servant pictures may not be the means in God's knowledge, and the timing of the prayer may not match the time of the name addressed. "God is realized from observation and not from reason."
Khan's note gives the Book of Job's outline, cites Luther and Theodore of Mopsuestia (printed as living in the "5th country A. D."), and reads the story inwardly: Job's thirst in the desert is doubt, and the stamp of the foot is spiritual practice that clears rust from the heart's mirror. He rejects the comforters' reasoning, which he calls a doctrine of karma, in favour of qismat, the aptitudes in God's knowledge: a calamity does not prove a previous sin. He adds that Muhammad is the Face of God (Wajhullah), so to appeal through him is to appeal to all the names.
XX. John: a name that gives life
Khan says that the name Yahya comes from the word for life and means that he shall make alive. No one had the name before, and in him God joined a name and an attribute: he kept his father's name alive. Earlier prophets were remembered through sons (Seth for Adam, Shem for Noah). Zacharias asked for "a successor to me from Thyself" (Q19:5), putting God's name first, as Pharaoh's wife asked for a house "with Thee" before a house in paradise (Q66:11). The only inheritance prophets pass on is the duty of calling people to God.
6. Zacharias to Muhammad: Bezels XXI to XXVII
The last group gathers the book's themes: grace beneath calamity, half and whole knowledge, God as food and experimenter, the gnostic view of idols, Pharaoh's last-moment faith, a prophet of barzakh whom his people let down, and the three things the Prophet loved.
XXI. Zacharias: everything that exists is blessed
Grace runs through everything, and even wrath exists by grace, because grace comes first. Every ayn prayed for existence and was granted it out of grace, with all its tendencies. The bezel's formula: "Thus whatever is existent is blessed". Even the pains of this world and the next owe their being to grace; they are not lessened for those who deserve them, because they are "the apex of their perfection".
Khan's note recalls that Zacharias was sawn in two and did not complain. He explains jalal, majesty, as the receding of the attributes into the Dhat, which the Shastras call pralaya, and jamal, beauty, as their appearing. A Deccani poet, Shah Kamal, gives the doctrine in four lines: "I am without hearing, God is hearer; / I am without sight, God is seer; / I am without speech, God is speaker". Attributes are only relations between the Dhat and its aptitudes, as mercy in a man is only a state of the man.
XXII. Elijah: half a gnosis, then the whole
The Shayk identifies Elijah with Enoch, raised to the sphere of the sun and sent down again to Baalbek. Lebanon split open and a fiery horse came out; when Elijah mounted it his desires fell away and he became pure intellect. But pure intellect knows God only as beyond all quality, so Elijah had only half the gnosis. Full gnosis sees God both ways at once.
On the Day of Judgment God will be like a mirror: "The mirror is one dhat, and the faces reflected in it are many". Each will see the name he seeks. "God loves valour although it be in the killing of a serpent", and the serpent is one's own nafs. When the Prophet threw pebbles, it was God who threw (Q8:17).
The bezel ends with Elijah's second descent. The traveller comes down from pure intellect into the state of an animal and sees what animals see: the dead in their graves, punished or rewarded. Then he becomes dumb. The Shayk adds, in his own voice: he too "got into this state" and could not find words. Khan stresses that this is not incarnation: it is buruz, the influence of one soul on another while each stays where it is, as Azrael appears in many places at once.
Khan names four prophets still bodily alive: Enoch and Jesus in the heavens, Khizr and Elijah on earth. He reads the fiery horse as burnt desire, "to put it in Indian parlance" as tapas, and the ravens that fed Elijah at the brook Cherith as a sign of his state in barzakh. A man who does not tame his nafs here meets it in the world of images in the form his habits gave it, as a dog, a cat, a scorpion or a tiger; that bewilderment is hell.
XXIII. Luqman: God as food and as experimenter
The scan reads this chapter's heading as Aesop, because Khan's note discusses whether Luqman and Aesop were one man. The bezel opens with a poem on food: when God wills to feed Himself, the whole world is His food; when He wills to feed the world, He is its food.
Luqman was given wisdom (Q31:12), and wisdom is "great blessing" (Q2:269). It is of two kinds, spoken and silent. Spoken: the mustard seed, "even though it be in (the heart of) rock", God will bring out (Q31:16). Silent: Luqman did not say for whom it is brought out, and did not say that God is the reality of everything; that is left for the listener to see.
Shirk, which Luqman forbade (Q31:13), is for the Sufis not the worship of a second god (there is none) but the raising of one aspect to the rank of the Reality, or confusing one aspect with another. Khan's note cites the Chishti stages: annihilation in the shaykh, then in the Prophet, then in God. He observes that the Prophet kept no image before him in the cave of Hira, and suggests that the practice of holding a form in meditation came from lands east of Arabia, where meditation on nothing was thought impossible. He quotes Rumi against it, telling the seeker to close lips, eyes and ears.
| Who Luqman was (Khan's note) | Source cited |
|---|---|
| Same as Aesop of Samos, sixth century BC | Some; Chambers' Encyclopaedia notes the resemblance |
| Son of Baura, kin of Job, lived to David's time; a slave freed for eating a bitter melon | Arab writers, via Sale |
| An Ethiopian; "Aesop" a corruption of Ethiopian | Muhammad Ali |
| Did not exist | Luther |
XXIV. Aaron: the gnostic and the calf
Aaron's prophethood came from God's mercy (Q19:53), so Moses called him "son of my mother": mercy belongs to the mother. Moses seized Aaron's beard because, the Shayk says, Aaron had not seen what every gnostic sees, that God is the reality of everything. God had told them to worship none but Him; He had not told them to worship no thing. Moses burnt the calf and scattered its ashes in the sea, and told Samiri to look at his god. Property (mal) is named from inclination (mayl): where the treasure is, the heart is.
The same bezel turns to politics. One person rules another because of ranks and wants (Q6:165). There are two subjections: of slave to master, and of king to subjects, since the king must serve their interests. A king who does his duty earns the same merit as a gnostic and is "the shadow of God". Khan's note adds that the world is neither natura naturata, a wound clock, nor natura naturans, a clock that runs itself: it is God's workshop, and "God is godding or ruling". A Persian line puts it: "The worker is hidden in his factory".
XXV. Moses: the infants, the ark and Pharaoh
Pharaoh killed the newborn boys of Israel, each in the belief that it was Moses; so each infant's soul, pure in submission, passed its strength to Moses, and he was a composite of all of them. The small rules the large, as an infant rules the adult who plays with him, because the infant is nearer his Lord; the Prophet bared his head to new rain for the same reason.
| Episode | Bezel's reading |
|---|---|
| The ark on the river | The body, launched on the water of knowledge; seeming danger, real safety |
| Only his mother's breast | His law would be original, not borrowed (Khan); the one who nurses is the true mother |
| Killing the Copt, flight to Midian | Inspired acts; flight is the motion of love towards life |
| Khizr's boat, boy, wall | Reminders of Moses's own ark, killing and unpaid help at the well |
| Rod and serpents | Moses's tranquil soul swallows the commanding souls of the sorcerers |
| God speaks from the fire | Moses was seeking fire; any other form, he would have turned away |
Pharaoh asked about the reality of the Lord of the worlds (Q26:23) as a test, not out of ignorance. Moses did not define God by genus and difference, which is impossible; he pointed to the signs. Khan notes frankly that "the Shayk has added the word suwar (forms) which is not in the Quran": the Shayk's Moses calls God the one in whom the forms of the worlds appear. Pharaoh's reply, that he and Moses were one in reality and different in rank, and his claim to be the supreme Lord, follow from the same premise misapplied.
Khan's note ends with a Persian quatrain of welcome: "Come back, come back, whatever you are, come back". It also gives the Prophet's command to Bilal to announce in Mecca that whoever says there is no god but God will enter paradise.
XXVI. Khalid: the prophet of barzakh
Khalid bin Sanan, a seer near Aden shortly before the Prophet (not the famous general), drove a fire back into a mountain cave and entered it, telling the villagers to call him after three days. They called after two; he came out with a headache and said he would die. He told them that forty days after his burial a flock led by a tail-cut ass would come to his grave, and that they should open it then: he would rise and describe the state between death and resurrection. His sons refused, not wanting to be known as children of a man whose grave was opened.
When Khalid's daughter visited the Prophet, he greeted her as "daughter of a nabi, whom his nation turned to waste". Khan's note describes the lower world of images in which the greedy appear as rats and the violent as tigers, and cites 1 Peter on Christ preaching to the spirits in prison.
XXVII. Muhammad: the wisdom of singularity
The last bezel calls Muhammad's wisdom that of singularity (fardiyya), because he was the most perfect human. He was Nabi "while Adam was yet between Water and mud". His being shows a triad, and so does his love: "Three things of your world have been made beloved to me": women, fragrance, and the coolness of his eyes in prayer.
Women are named before prayer because knowing oneself comes before knowing God, and woman, taken from man, is his own form. Man loves woman as his own image, as God loves man as His image; so "This love of man towards woman is thus really his love towards God." The full bath after union restores the whole body to God, in whom it was lost for a moment. Love out of lust alone misses this: such a lover "loves the place of love, and not the reality of it". Fragrance is next: the breath of God is fragrance, and even a foul smell is sweet to itself, as the dung-beetle dies at the scent of a rose.
Prayer is the third. It is a dialogue: the Fatiha is divided between God and the servant, half to each. God is "the co-sitter of one who prays to Me". Its postures trace the motions of the world: standing (the human), bowing (the animal), prostration (the plant). The vision in prayer is a gift, not a due. Junayd said "the color of the water is the color of its vessel": the God one prays to is the God one has conceived, so the wise accept the God of every believer. God is "near the idea which my banda has of Me".
Khan's last note
Khan closes with his longest note. The Reality of Muhammad is the first form in God's knowledge, like the number one in every number. He answers J. C. Molony, who would call Muhammad "a messenger, not the messenger": the truth he taught ran partly through every prophet and fully through him. He contrasts the Prophet, who at the top of the ascent kept his eye on the Dhat and called himself servant, with Hallaj, who looked downward and cried Ana'l Haqq. He explains God's eternal and transient knowledge with an image from Einstein's relativity: a man on a hilltop sees the train's whole course, but sees it arrive only when it arrives. And he closes with a Rumi line on self-effacement: "Try in your self-effacement to find yourself".
7. Khan's Notes, Method and Reception
The Notes are half the book. They show a Madras scholar of the 1920s reading Ibn al-Arabi through Indian Sufi commentary, Hindu philosophy, the Bible and European thought, and they deserve to be read as his work.
What the Notes do
Each Note does some of five things: it gives the scriptural or legendary story of the prophet, often from Sale, Geiger, Baidawi or the Bible; it restates the bezel's doctrine more plainly; it links the bezel to the doctrine of descents from the Life; it compares other traditions; and it defends the Shayk against a likely objection.
| Tradition | Examples of Khan's comparisons |
|---|---|
| Hindu | Gita's two birds (Hud); nirguna and saguna (Noah); Sat-Chit-Ananda (Salih); pralaya (Zacharias); tapas (Elijah); namarupa (Luqman); Mulaprakriti (Zacharias) |
| Christian | Logos and Trinity (Salih); spirits in prison (Khalid); "Ye are gods" (Moses); virgin birth debate (Jesus); St Anthony's dancing angels (Solomon) |
| Jewish | Schools of prophets at Naioth (Salih); Shema (Muhammad); Samael and the calf (Aaron) |
| Western philosophy | Parmenides, Berkeley, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel (Joseph); Malebranche (Luqman); natura naturans (Aaron) |
| Modern science | Myers' telaesthesia, psychical research (Solomon); Einstein's relativity (Muhammad); cinema film (Seth) |
| Indian Sufi | Deccani poets Shah Kamal and Mawlana Bahri; Chishti practice; the mirror at weddings; Sheth-ka-basan |
Where Khan adds and where he cuts
Khan tells the reader plainly where he departs from the text. He cut digressions throughout, he suppressed the second half of the John bezel, and he notes where the Shayk reads into the Quran a word it does not contain (suwar, in the Moses bezel). He also signals where Muslim scholars disagree: on whether Isaac or Ismail was the sacrifice, on whether Jonah was swallowed, on whether Luqman was Aesop, on whether Jesus's "birds" were metaphors.
Doctrines Khan stresses again and again
| Doctrine | Where it returns |
|---|---|
| Not incarnation, not reincarnation | Adam, Elijah, Moses, Khalid: buruz in place of tanasukh |
| Ayan are eternal; goal is vision, not dissolution | Life, Jesus, Muhammad |
| Faiz-i-Aqdas and Faiz-i-Muqaddas | Shuaib, Solomon, David, Zacharias, Moses, Muhammad |
| Twenty-eight names in pairs | Life, Ismail, Muhammad (the appended diagram) |
| Calamity is not proof of sin | Job, Zacharias |
| The heart over reason | Shuaib, Ezra, Job |
The twenty-seven bezels at a glance
Khan's preface insists that each prophet is a heading for a theme. Gathered from his chapters and notes, the themes run as follows.
| Bezel | Theme in Khan's version | Bezel | Theme in Khan's version |
|---|---|---|---|
| I Adam | Perfect man as mirror and seal | XV Jesus | Spirit, word, the error of confining God |
| II Seth | Gifts and aptitudes | XVI Solomon | Two mercies, renewal of likenesses |
| III Noah | Tanzih with tashbih | XVII David | Khilafat as pure gift |
| IV Enoch | Elevation of place and of rank | XVIII Jonah | The nafs; mercy over severity |
| V Abraham | Love and mutual hiding | XIX Job | Water of life; patience with complaint |
| VI Isaac | Dreams and their interpretation | XX John | Life by taste; a name kept alive |
| VII Ismail | Each thing approved of its Lord | XXI Zacharias | Grace beneath calamity |
| VIII Jacob | Religion as received; prophet as physician | XXII Elijah | Half and whole gnosis |
| IX Joseph | Light, shadow, dream within dream | XXIII Luqman | Spoken and silent wisdom; shirk |
| X Hud | The path; God of every belief | XXIV Aaron | Idols; rank and rule |
| XI Salih | Triad of creation | XXV Moses | Composite soul; Pharaoh's faith |
| XII Shuaib | Heart wider than mercy | XXVI Khalid | Barzakh; intention and deed |
| XIII Lot | Will-power given up | XXVII Muhammad | Singularity; women, fragrance, prayer |
| XIV Ezra | Qaza, qadr, wilayat |
Read down the columns and a design appears that Khan does not spell out but plainly feels. The early bezels build the metaphysics (mirror, gift, speech, rank, love). The middle bezels apply it to knowledge (dream, light, heart, destiny). The later ones apply it to rule and conduct (mercy, khilafat, patience, idols, rank), and the last returns to love and prayer, the place where the whole system becomes a practice. The book begins with God wishing to see Himself and ends with the servant seeing God in prayer.
That circle is the best single reason to read Khan's version alongside the fuller translations. His compression makes the arc visible in an afternoon, where the full text, with its digressions, can hide it for weeks.
The press opinions
The book ends with reviews of Khan's earlier works. They are not reviews of this book, but they show how he was read. Nicholson found Studies in Tasawwuf full of "interesting and suggestive matter" but said it contained some inaccurate statements and tried to cover too much in too little space. Arnold praised its explanations of technical terms. Zwemer used it in lectures at the American University in Cairo. A Toronto journal found it "not very critical" in its treatment of Quran and hadith. A Hyderabad minister praised the companion book on Ana'l Haqq as a bond between the communities of India.
8. Synthesis
Takeaways
- One Reality, many forms. Every bezel restates it: the world is shadow, mirror, film or dream, and the Real is what appears in it.
- Aptitude decides reception. Gifts, disclosures, guidance and even punishment arrive in the shape of what each thing already is.
- Hold both sides. Tanzih without tashbih is cold; tashbih without tanzih is idolatry. Noah, Elijah and Muhammad mark the three positions.
- Belief shapes what one sees. God appears in the form of each belief; the mature accept the God of every believer, while still keeping their own direction of prayer.
- Mercy comes first. Grace frames wrath, calamity and even hell; kindness to creatures is better than severity of law.
- Power is best unused. Lot and Solomon show that maturity lets go of will-power; the prophet delivers and God converts.
- Friendship with God continues. Prophethood closed; wilayat, the inner side of it, never ends.
- Prayer is vision and dialogue, and its fruit is the coolness of the eyes.
Frameworks
| Framework | Elements | Use |
|---|---|---|
| Two arcs | Descent through six stages; ascent in three journeys | Place any doctrine or experience on the map |
| Triad of creation | Dhat, will, word / ayn, hearing, obedience | Every act needs a capacity on the receiving side |
| Two effusions | Most Holy (aptitudes) / Holy (appearance) | Separate what a thing is from how it shows |
| Lord and ruled | Each name rules its creatures; Allah rules the names | Every path is straight to its own Lord |
| Sowq and quod | Pulled from in front / driven from behind | Is a person led by meaning or pushed by appetite? |
| Spoken and silent wisdom | What is said / what the hearer must see | Teaching that leaves room |
A closer look
On the positive side, Khan is open about his cuts, fair to opponents, and steady in refusing the two errors he fears most, incarnation and pantheistic dissolution. His glossary is one of the first English lexicons of Sufi metaphysics, and reviewers valued it.
Who's Who
| Person | Role in the book | Dates as printed |
|---|---|---|
| Ibn al-Arabi (the Shayk) | Author of the Fusus | Born 7 Ramazan 560 AH (July 28, AD 1165); died 22 Rabi-uth-thani 638 AH (November 16, AD 1240) |
| Khaja Khan | Translator and annotator, Madras | Not printed (his Philosophy of Islam reviewed 1903) |
| L. Massignon | Foreword | Signed Paris, Sept 21, 1928 |
| Sadruddin | Step-son and disciple, first commentator | Not printed |
| Al-Ashari | Founder of the Ashairah | Born AH 260 (AD 873) |
| Wasil ibn Ata | Founder of the Mutazilites | Died 131 |
| Ghazali | Corrected in the Abraham bezel | Died 55 years before the Shayk's birth |
| Abdul Qadir Jeelani | Life: transferred his son | Ob. 561 AH |
| Aesop | Compared with Luqman | Latter half of the sixth century BC |
| Justin Martyr | Virgin birth note | A.D. 140 |
| Mani | Glossary, zindiq | Born A.D. 215-216 |
| Hud, Salih, Shuaib, Khalid | Arab prophets | Khalid: shortly before the Prophet |
| Sir Saiyid Ahmad, Muhammad Ali | Modernist commentators cited | Not printed |
| Hallaj, Junayd, Abu Yazid | Early Sufis quoted | Not printed |
Applying it
Discussion questions
- Is the claim that God appears in the form of each belief a doctrine of tolerance, of relativism, or of something else? How does the Hud bezel keep the Kaaba?
- Why does the Noah bezel blame Noah for calling to tanzih and tashbih separately?
- Lot and Solomon refrain from will-power. When is restraint wisdom, and when is it neglect?
- Does Job's bezel succeed in reconciling complaint with patience?
- Khan cut half of the John bezel. Is a translator right to do this, if he says so?
- How persuasive is Khan's appeal to Einstein to explain God's eternal and transient knowledge?
- What does the Muhammad bezel mean by calling prayer the believer's ascent?
9. Glossary
Selected from Khan's own glossary of about two hundred terms, with his definitions condensed. Spellings follow the book.
Stages of Being
| Term | Meaning in the book |
|---|---|
| Dhat | "That which displays sifat": the undefinable Essence, above even the four aspects of Wahdat |
| Ahdiyyat | First stage, absolute oneness; "nothing but Wonderment" |
| Wahdat | Second stage: knowledge, light, existence, witnessing; the Reality of Muhammad |
| Wahidiyyat | Third stage: seven attributes, names distinct; "the reality of Humanity" |
| Arwah, Amthal, Ajsam | Souls, images (similitudes), bodies: the outer three stages |
| Tanazzulat | The descents of the Reality from Ahdiyyat down to man |
Names and realities
| Term | Meaning in the book |
|---|---|
| Asma | Names, with the named hidden in them |
| Asma-i-elahi / kiyani | Creator names and their creaturely counterparts |
| Ayan-i-thabita | Fixed realities: "Thought-Forms" of God's own potentiality in His knowledge |
| Rab | The name that relates to a given creature; Allah is Rab-ul-arbab |
| Rububiyyat / Uluhiyyat | Lordship of conditional names / divinity of the inner three stages |
| Haqiqat-i-Muhammadi | First form in God's knowledge; also Qalam-i-Aala, the Supreme Pen |
Effusion and disclosure
| Term | Meaning in the book |
|---|---|
| Faiz-i-Aqdas | Most Holy Effusion: the Dhat manifest to Itself; ayan known but merged |
| Faiz-i-Muqaddas | Holy Effusion: manifestation in externality as the ayan require |
| Nafas-i-Rahmani | Breath of the Merciful; Khan compares the Holy Ghost and Mulaprakriti |
| Tajalli | The Dhat taking on limits; also illuminations on the traveller's heart |
| Tajaddud-i-amthal | Renewal of likenesses: the world re-created each moment |
| Buruz | "The influence of one soul upen another, both being where they are"; not reincarnation |
God spoken of
| Term | Meaning in the book |
|---|---|
| Tanzih | Dhat with attributes hidden; the first three stages |
| Tashbih | Dhat with attributes manifest; the last three stages |
| Jalal / Jamal | Majesty: attributes withdrawing into the Dhat / Beauty: their appearing |
| Ghayr | What is other than God, which does not exist |
| Shirk | Associating another with God; for Sufis, taking a form for the Reality |
| Zindiq | For Sufis, one who ignores the grades, as by calling a creature God |
The path
| Term | Meaning in the book |
|---|---|
| Salik, suluk | Traveller, and the way he walks |
| Sayr-ila-allah / fillah / ma-allah | Travel towards God (nafs to heart), in God (names to Wahidiyyat), with God (downward, in baqa) |
| Fana / Baqa | Annihilation of self / permanence, keeping the memory of higher visions |
| Mujahada, Muraqaba | Striving against the nafs; freeing the heart of other-than-God |
| Kashf | Unveiling: lesser (graves, images, heaven and hell) and greater (the Dhat in creation) |
| Uruj, Mairaj | Ascent; the highest ascent of servant to Lord |
Soul and person
| Term | Meaning in the book |
|---|---|
| Nafs, Dil, Ruh | Successive manifestations; marked by desire, knowledge and sight |
| Qalb | The heart, borderland of outer and inner; not the "pine shaped" organ |
| Ruh, five grades | Mineral, vegetable, animal, human, and Ruh-i-Qudsi, which is uncreated |
| Banda / Abd | The limited creature; the first abd is the first limitation |
| Insan-ul-kamil | The perfect man, mirror of all the names |
| Qiyamat | "The time when the realites of his ayn will dawn on each person" |
Saints, law and schools
About this book
Wisdom of the Prophets: In the Light of Tasawwuf by Ibn al-Arabi. 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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