The Texts1

Ṣadr a l-Dīn Qūna wī

Translator’s Introduction
Ṣadr al-Dīn Qūnawī (d. 673/1274) is generally considered to have been the most
influential of Ibn ʿArabī’s direct disciples.2 In contrast to his master, who seldom speaks of the
philosophers in a positive light, Qūnawī demonstrates a good deal of explicit and implicit
respect for the philosophical tradition. The most obvious example is found in the
philosophical correspondence that he initiated with Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī. He tells us that he was
motivated to do so by the desire to combine the results of philosophical demonstration
(burhān) with those of “realized unveiling” (kashf muḥaqqaq) and “direct vision” (ʿiyān).3
Qūnawī’s relation with the philosophical tradition can perhaps best be seen in the
manner in which he disseminated Ibn ʿArabī’s teachings. He used a much more explicitly
philosophical language in his writings than did his teacher, with far less reference to Koran
and Hadith and a much higher percentage of reasoned and systematic discourse in explanation
of basic ideas. He selected certain themes from Ibn ʿArabī’s writings that later became the key
issues discussed and debated whenever Ibn ʿArabī’s name was mentioned. In short, the
tradition looks back upon Ibn ʿArabī largely through the eyes of him and his students.
Qūnawī’s students include Saʿīd al-Dīn Farghānī, author of an extensive metaphysical
commentary on the Poem of the Way of Ibn al-Fāriḍ; ʿAfīf al-Dīn al-Tilimsānī, a philosophically
inclined author of several important commentaries on early Sufi works; Fakhr al-Dīn ʿIrāqī,
author of Lamaʿāt, a classic Persian exposition of the metaphysics of love; and Muʾayyid al-Dīn
Jandī, author of a long and foundational commentary on Ibn ʿArabī’s Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam. Jandī in
turn was the teacher of the well-known Fuṣūṣ commentator, ʿAbd al-Razzāq Kāshānī, who in
turn was the teacher of Dāwūd Qayṣarī, another famous commentator. In short the Fuṣūṣ
commentarial tradition leads back to Qūnawī.
The text translated here is itself something of a commentary on the Fuṣūṣ, though there
is no direct reference to it except in the full title of the book, given in the concluding sentence
(and not found in all manuscripts). It is certainly no accident that the name of the present
treatise, al-Nuṣūṣ, differs from al-Fuṣūṣ in only one letter.

1
This is the original text prepared at the request of Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Mehdi Aminrazavi for inclusion in
An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia. The version printed there was abbreviated because of publishing constraints.
2
For his life and works, see Chittick, "Ṣadr al-Dīn Ḳūnawī," Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 7 (1995), pp. 753-55.
3
See the edition of the text by Gudrun Schubert, Annäherungen (Beirut: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1995), p. 131.
 2

Qūnawī held this treatise in high esteem. He uses the term nuṣūṣ (plural of naṣṣ) with a
view toward its technical sense in the religious sciences, where it means a clear and explicit
text that leaves no room for interpretation. As he says in the final Text, “Everything I
mentioned in this book. . . is the explicit truth of the actual situation.” He seems to have in
mind what we might call “pure metaphysics.” He explains in Text 5 that these writings pertain
exclusively to “the station of most-perfectness” (maqām al-akmaliyya), which he also calls the
station of “equilibrium” (iʿtidāl) and “the central point of the circle of existence” (nuqṭa wasaṭ
al-dāʾirat al-wujūdiyya). So, what he means to imply by the title of the treatise is that the texts
pertain to the purest metaphysical perception, unsullied by any individual perspective or any
specific station of wisdom, virtue, or understanding.
Ibn ʿArabī seems to have written each of the 560 chapters of his massive al-Futūḥāt al-
makkiyya with a view toward one of the many stations that are traversed on the path to God.
He often tells us explicitly which station he has in mind, and he provides general categories in
which he places many of the chapters, such as Musawī, Ibrāhīmī, ʿĪsawī, and Muḥammadī. In
one respect, all the stations are Muḥammadī, since Muḥammad achieved every perfection. But
in the technical sense, “the Muhammadan stations” are those that belong exclusively to him
and his inheritors. The highest of these is what Ibn ʿArabī often calls “the station of no
station” (maqām lā maqām) or the station of “realization” (taḥqīq, taḥaqquq). This is precisely
Qūnawī’s “point at the center of the circle,” the “standpoint” from which the Nuṣūṣ was
written.1 It is not without significance that he refers to the school of thought of his master and
himself, both here and elsewhere, as mashrab al-taḥqīq, “The School of Realization.” He
commonly refers to those who achieve this station as the realizers (muḥaqqiqūn) or the perfect
(kummal).
In translating the treatise, I have refrained as much as possible from adding
explanatory material, even though this is perhaps the densest work of a notoriously difficult
author. I have tried to be consistent in rendering technical terminology, so I have usually
limited myself to one mention of the original Arabic term (typically in maṣdar form).
Qūnawī pays much less attention than Ibn ʿArabī to the images and symbols implicit in
Koranic Arabic. He tends rather to employ words in keeping with the abstract, technical
meanings that had been given to them in the sciences. Although I have tried to translate the
text using the same terminology that I have employed elsewhere in translating Ibn ʿArabī, I
have often opted instead for a more abstract, philosophical-sounding word. To cite but one
example, Ibn ʿArabī commonly speaks of the athar or “trace” of a divine name, a word that

1
See Chittick, “The Central Point: Qūnawī’s Role in the School of Ibn ʿArabī,” Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn ʿArabi
Society 35 (2004), pp. 25-45.
 3

carries the same sort of significance as Koranic “sign” (āya). But Qūnawī uses the word in a
more abstract manner, and I render it as “influence.”
The word wujūd is central to Qūnawī’s vocabulary, and indeed, in this treatise we see
some of the first instances of the expression waḥdat al-wujūd, always associated in the later
tradition with Ibn ʿArabī’s name (though he did not use it). Qūnawī is fully aware of the broad
range of meanings embraced by the word wujūd, including being, existence, finding,
awareness, and consciousness. To choose one English term over another leads to an
unwarranted specification of the word’s meaning, so I have left it untranslated. As for the
adjective wujūdī, I translate it as “of wujūd” rather than, e.g., “ontological,” which may or may
not be appropriate in a given context.
I have used the edition of the text established by Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī, which
includes notes by the early twentieth century scholar Āqāmīrzā Hāshim Ishkawarī (d.
1332/1953).1 However, the edition has many minor errors, which I have tried to correct by
collating it with two good manuscripts from the Süleymaniye Library in Istanbul, copies of
which were kindly supplied by the Muhyiddin Ibn ʿArabi Society in Oxford. These are Şehid Ali
Paşa 1351, copied in 690, sixteen years after Qūnawī’s death; and Ayasofya 1724, copied in 813.
Neither is without copyist errors, and a critical edition of the text will certainly need to take
into account other manuscripts (of which there are well over thirty in the Süleymaniye alone).
Significant discrepancies between the Āshtiyānī edition and the two manuscripts have been
indicated in the notes.

1
Risālat al-nuṣūṣ, Tehran: Dānishgāh-i Mashhad, 1362/1983.
 4

The T exts:
The Keys to the Fuṣūṣ
by
Ṣadr al-Dīn Qūnawī
Praise belongs to God, who, by means of the resting-places of aspiration, clarified the
levels and degrees of certainty, which are knowledge, eye, and truth; who, by stilling the
disquiet of the seekers upon arrival at the utmost wish of their souls, elucidated the disparity
of their degrees in the waystations of knowing Him and being near to Him; and who, from
among His creatures, set apart an elect by not giving them any goal among all His worlds and
all the Presences of His names and attributes other than His Essence. Rather, He made the
utmost aim of their aspirations the most eminent objects of His Essential knowledge and the
highest objects of His desire, so the object of their desire and their furthest wish is what He
desires through His Essence for His Essence with regard to the highest modalities of His
original, first Tasks and the most elevated of His entifications. Hence, He is identical with their
knowledge, eye, and truth of certainty, in all the levels of His Essential Knowledge, which is
connected first to Him and then to the objects of His knowledge, while they qua they are
effaced in Him, though their ruling remains and pervades all His existents and His Presences.
And God bless him who realized Him in respect of the most perfect witnessing and the
most complete, eminent, and inclusive knowledge while having perpetual presence with Him
in all of his homesteads, states, levels, and configurations—our master Muḥammad; and the
purified among his community and his brethren, those who possess the most complete
inheritance of his knowledges, states, and stations along with the realization of the results of
their own exclusive shares that distinguish them from him; through these become distinct the
specificities of the intermediaries, the fruits of the following, and the rulings of the
interrelations. May that blessing be continuous in ruling and perpetual in ripening
throughout the perpetuity of time in respect of His universal reality and the forms of its
differentiated rulings, which are called “His years, His months, His days, and His hours.”

[1] An Eminent Text , t he First of t he Texts that Must be Offered

Know that it is not correct, in respect of the Real’s Essential Nondelimitation [iṭlāq
dhātī], for Him to be ruled by any ruling [ḥukm], to be recognized by any description [waṣf], or
to have any relation [nisba] whatsoever ascribed to Him—whether oneness [waḥda], the
necessity [wujūb] of wujūd, originatingness [mabdaʾiyya], the demand of existence-giving [ījād],
 5

the emergence of an influence [athar], or the connection [taʿalluq] of His knowledge to Himself
or to anything other than Himself.
For, all of this demands entification [taʿayyun]1 and delimitation [taqayyud], but there is
no doubt that the intellection [taʿaqqul] of an entification demands being preceded by
nonentification [lā taʿayyun], and everything that we mentioned precludes nondelimitation. Or
rather, the condition [sharṭ] of conceiving [taṣawwur] of the Real’s nondelimitation is that it be
intellected in the meaning of a negatory [salbī] description, not that it be a nondelimitation
whose opposite [ḍidd] is delimitation. On the contrary, it is nondelimited by both the oneness
and the manyness [kathra] that are known, as well as by restriction [ḥaṣr] in nondelimitation or
delimitation, in comprehending [jamʿ] all that, or in being incomparable [tanazzuh] with it. In
respect to Him, all of that is correct while He is incomparable with it all, so ascribing all of it
and anything else to Him is equal to negating it from Him. Neither is more appropriate than
the other.
Once this has been elucidated, then it is known that oneness, originatingness,
influencing [taʾthīr], the existentiating act [al-fiʿl al-ījādī], and so on may correctly be ascribed
to the Real from the standpoint [iʿtibār] of entification.
The first of the intellected entifications is the Essential Relation of Knowledge [al-nisbat
al-ʿilmiyyat al-dhātiyya] from the standpoint of its being distinct [tamayyuz] from the Essence,
but through a relative [nisbī], not a true, distinction. By means of the Essential Relation of
Knowledge are intellected the oneness of the Real, the necessity of His wujūd, and His
originatingness; especially in the respect that [1] His knowledge of Himself is through Himself,
and His very knowledge of Himself is a cause [sabab] of His knowledge of everything; [2] the
“things” [ashyāʾ] consist of the entifications of His universal [kullī] and differentiated [tafṣīlī]
intellections; [3] the “quiddities” [māhiyyāt] consist of the intellections; and [4] these
intellections are configured [intishāʾ] one from another—not in the sense that they arrive
newly [ḥudūth] in the Real’s intellection (exalted is God beyond what is improper for Him!);
rather, the intellection of some is posterior in level [mutaʾakhkhirat al-rutba] to others. All are
beginningless [abadī] and endless [azalī] intellections in an identical manner. They are

1
Use of taʿayyun as a specific technical term apparently begins with Qūnawī. Ibn ʿArabī uses the word on
occasion, but not in a technical sense. From Qūnawī onward, it is a standard expression among Ibn ʿArabī’s
followers. When translated as “determination,” as it often is, its connection with the word ʿayn, one of the most
important technical terms of this school of thought is obscured. Taʿayyun means basically “to become an ʿayn” or
“to take on the characteristics of an ʿayn.” ʿAyn means “entity,” that is, a “thing” (shayʾ) as distinct from other
things. The “First Entification” is Real Wujūd inasmuch as It discloses Itself in characteristics and attributes that
allow us to understand and conceptualize It as an entity distinct from that which is absolutely nondelimited and
nondistinct, i.e., the Essence (al-dhāt).
 6

intellected in knowledge, which becomes connected to them in accordance with what their
realities [ḥaqāʾiq] demand.
The demand [muqtaḍā] of their realities is of two sorts:
The first is that they are intellected inasmuch as their manyness is effaced [istihlāk] in
the Oneness of the Real. This is the intellection of the differentiated [mufaṣṣal] within the
undifferentiated [mujmal], like the intelligent knower who witnesses in one kernel, with the
eye of knowledge, all the branches, leaves, and fruit that it contains potentially and, in each
individual fruit, the like of what was in the first kernel, and so on ad infinitum.
The other sort is the intellection of the rulings [aḥkām] of oneness in one group [jumla]
after another such that each group is intellected through the quiddities that it comprises.
These are the forms of the multiple, plural intellections of the One Wujūd. This is the reverse
of the effacement mentioned first, for that consisted of the effacement of manyness in
oneness, and this consists of the effacement of oneness in manyness. So, let this be known!

[2] The Se cond Text

Know that the Real, in respect of His nondelimitation and His encompassment [iḥāṭa], is
not named by any name, nor is any ruling ascribed to Him, nor does He become designated by
any description or impression [rasm]. The relation of demand [iqtiḍāʾ] is not more appropriate
for Him than the relation of not demanding, for the demand that is thereby intellected or
negated is an entified ruling and a delimited description.
You should also know that although demand is Essential, it has three levels:
Its ruling in respect of the first level is that its entification does not depend [tawaqquf]
upon any condition [sharṭ], nor is there any reason [mūjib] that is the cause [sabab] of its
entification.
Its ruling in respect of the second level is that its entification depends only on one
condition.
Its ruling in respect of the third level is that the manifestation of its rulings depends
upon conditions, causes, and intermediaries.
So, the ruling of the first demand is the Essential Effusion [al-fayḍ al-dhātī], not for any
reason. No receptacle [qābil] or preparedness [istiʿdād] is intellected as its counterpart
[muqābil].
The ruling of the second demand depends upon one condition of wujūd alone, and that
condition of wujūd is the First Intellect, which is the intermediary between the Real and those
contingent things [mumkināt] whose wujūd has been ordained [taqdīr] until the Day of
Resurrection.
 7

As for the ruling of the demand in respect of the third level, the manifestation of its
influence [athar] and ruling depends upon many conditions, such as the rest of the existents
[mawjūdāt].
I do not mean by this that we have three demands, diverse in their realities. Rather,
there is one demand with three levels. In respect of each of the three levels, an influence or
some influences become manifest and entified. So understand!

[3] Am ong the Divine Texts

Know that plurality [taʿaddud] is ascribed to the unitary, Essential Knowledge in respect
of its connection [taʿalluq] to the known things [maʿlūmāt]. Perception [idrāk] of them is
realized only in respect of its entifications and connections. Its connection to each known
thing follows the known thing as that thing is in itself—whether the known thing be simple or
compound, temporal [zamānī] or locational [makānī], nontemporal or nonlocational, temporary
[muwaqqat] in reception [qabūl] and finite [mutanāhī] in ruling and description, or
nontemporary and infinite in what we have mentioned. So know this!
Also, one of the branches of the mentioned texts is that the ruling of any ruler [ḥākim]
concerning any ruled thing [maḥkūm ʿalayh] follows the state [ḥāl] of the ruler at the moment
[waqt] of ruling; and, it follows the state of the ruled thing in the state of the ruler’s ruling.
If the ruled thing is such that it undergoes transition [tanaqqul] in states, then the
rulings of what rules over it will be varied [tanawwuʿ] in each state, and the ruler will differ in
keeping with its becoming clothed [talabbus] by those states. If, however, the ruled thing is
such that it stays fixed [thābit] in one manner, then the ruling of what rules over it will be fixed
in keeping with the first connection designated by the ruling and the demand of the ruler.
There remains the situation according to the state of the ruler. Is the demand of the
ruler’s essence {transformation [taqallub] in states? Or, is the demand of its essence}1 that it be
fixed, and that the states undergo transformation over it?
So, the ruling of the ruler will follow in accordance with one of the two affairs that
restricts the levels of the ruling of every ruler and every ruled thing, since no ruling of any
ruler and no ruled thing is outside what I mentioned.2

1
Missing in the two manuscripts.
2
Ishkawarī says in his notes that the purport of this Text is to explain the four possible types of ruling in terms of
ruler and ruled. In the first type, both ruler and ruled are fixed, as in the case of the Real, who is the subject and
object of his own knowledge. Second, neither ruler nor ruled is fixed, such as the wayfarer who undergoes
transformations as he passes over the stations on the path to God. Third, the ruler is fixed but not the ruled, such
as wujūd, which rules over its entifications, because the Real determines the creatures. Fourth is the opposite,
such as the entifications, which rule over wujūd and determine the way it becomes manifest, since they are fixed
in the First Entification (the fact of their being known to God in Himself).
 8

[4] Among t he Texts

Knowledge follows wujūd, in the sense that, wherever there is wujūd, there will be
knowledge, without disjoining [infikāk].
The disparity of knowledge accords with the disparity of the quiddity’s complete
[tāmm] or defective [nāqiṣ] reception of wujūd. So, when something receives wujūd in a more
complete manner, knowledge will be more complete. Knowledge will be defective in the
measure of the defective reception and the domination [ghalaba] of the rulings of contingency
[imkān] over the rulings of necessity [wujūb], in contrast to what we mentioned first. So know
this!

[5] Am ong the Realized Texts

I have hinted at something of this in one place in my books in the midst of and in the
language of something else. Nonetheless, I have set this book apart for the mention of texts
derived from tastings [adhwāq] specific to the elect station of perfection [khuṣūṣ maqām al-
kamāl], leaving aside its common tongue [lisān ʿumūm], namely, the delimited tastings gained
by the masters of specific stations; at root, these latter depend upon the Presence [ḥaḍra] of
one of the divine names or attributes, which is the source and headspring of that specific
tasting.
So, it is incumbent upon me to single out and distinguish what pertains specifically to
the tasting of the most perfect and the most comprehensive station and [to show] the
correctness of affirming it and its congruence [muṭābaqa] with what God knows in the highest,
most complete, and most perfect degrees of His knowledge of the affair that is being spoken of,
without stipulating its correctness and affirmation in relation or ascription [iḍāfa], or in one
station rather than another station, or from the standpoint of a state or a moment to the
exclusion of other states and moments or what was mentioned.
So we say, having offered this introduction clarifying the text that we intend to
elucidate: When man perceives [idrāk] any known thing with his theory [naẓar], his unveiling
[kashf], his senses [ḥiss], or his imagination [khayāl], together or individually, and when his
theory or his unveiling of that affair—or his perception of it through the senses or
imagination—does not reach as far as the perception of what lies beyond it after having
recognized its essentialities [dhātiyyāt] and universal requisites [lawāzim kulliyya], then he has
not perceived the thing with right perception nor recognized it with right recognition
[maʿrifa].
It makes no difference whether his perception and recognition are connected to the
cosmos in respect of its meanings [maʿānī] and spirits [arwāḥ], or in respect of its forms [ṣuwar]
and accidents [aʿrāḍ]; or if his recognition is connected to the Real.
 9

When the true state of affairs is unveiled for him along with the form of the entification
of every known thing in the Real’s knowledge, he will find the affair to be so. This is because,
as long as his recognition of the Real does not reach as far as His nondelimitation and the utter,
true oneness of His Essence—which is not designated by any name, description, ruling, or
impression, nor apprehended [inḍibāṭ] by any witnessing [shuhūd] or intellection, nor
restricted by any designated affair—he will not know that “There is no target beyond God,”1
that encompassing Him in knowledge and witnessing [shuhūd] is absurd [muḥāl], and that
beyond the Nondelimited Wujūd of the Real there is nothing but imaginary nonexistence [al-
ʿadam al-mutawahham].
There is, nonetheless, another path to the recognition of the impossibility of knowing
God as He knows Himself that is even higher, more complete, and more unveiled. We have
recognized it through tasting and witnessing—by the praise and favor of God the exalted—but
it is among the things whose clarification and recording is forbidden. Its utmost clarification is
the mentioned hint. So be it.
Tasting, the recognition gained by its possessor, and witnessing—inasmuch as the
tasting and station depend upon the Presence of one of the divine names, which is the kiblah
of the possessor of that station and the furthest limit [ghāya] of his recognition of the Real—are
an utmost limit [nihāya], especially from the standpoint that demands the name to be the same
as the Named [al-musammā], as we have elucidated in various places in our discourse. But
these are relative furthest limits, for the origins and furthest limits are waymarks of the
relative perfections.
The situation in respect of true perfection is otherwise. God alludes to this in His words
to the most perfect of His servants, “Surely at thy Lord is the endpoint” [53:42]. He placed in this
verse a hidden subtlety, and that is the fact that He did not say, “Surely at thy Lord is thy
endpoint.” Rather, He pointed out to him that his furthest limit in unqualified Lordship
[muṭlaq al-rubūbiyya] is the furthest limit that is the furthest of all furthest limits. After that,
there is nothing but the differentiations of the degrees in most-perfectness [akmaliyya], which
do not come to a halt at any boundary or furthest limit.
The Prophet alluded to what we have mentioned in one of his intimate prayers, for he
said, “I seek refuge in Thy good pleasure from Thy anger and in Thy pardon from Thy
punishment and I seek refuge in Thee from Thee. I do not enumerate Thy laudation. Thou art
as Thou hast lauded Thyself.” In other words, “I do not reach everything that is in Thee.”
Thus he pointed out the impossibility of encompassment, and he combined with it giving
knowledge of his having reached the furthest of the furthest limits in his recognition of the

1
A well-known hadith that is not found, however, in Wensinck’s Concordance.
 10

Real. This is like a commentary on the mentioned verse, that is, His words, “Surely at thy Lord is
the endpoint.”
In the prophetic hadiths there are many pointers that allude to what we have
mentioned. Those who explore them after waking up to and understanding what I have
mentioned will find them lucid and resplendent.
Now we say: The aforementioned station and tasting has tongues that translate it in
diverse styles. Among its tongues in the Koran in respect of naming is “the Ramparts” [al-
aʿrāf], concerning which He gave news that its “men recognize each by its mark” [7:46]. This is
one of the characteristics of gazing over all sides by reaching the point of recognizing things to
the furthest limit, which makes it necessary to raise up one’s gaze to what is beyond them.
Its tongue and name in the station of prophethood is “place of cognizance” [muṭṭalaʿ].
Thus the Prophet said concerning the Mother of the Koran, or rather, concerning the mystery
of each of the Koran’s verses, that it has “a manifest sense, a nonmanifest sense, a limit, and a
place of cognizance, up to seven nonmanifest senses.” According to another version, “up to
seventy nonmanifest senses.” I have informed about this in Tafsīr al-fātiḥa, so one can look for
it there.1
Its name and tongue in the terminology of the Folk of God is “halting place” [mawqif],
which is the endpoint of every station and which gazes over the coming station.
Its name and tongue in the tasting of the station of perfection relative to every two
stations is “the isthmus [barzakh] that comprehends the two,” and, relative specifically to the
station of perfection, “the isthmus of isthmuses.”

[6] An Eminent Text , Difficult of Acces s

“The Unseen of the Real’s He-ness” [ghayb huwiyyat al-ḥaqq] is an allusion to His
nondelimitation from the standpoint of nonentification and His true oneness that erases all
standpoints.
The “names, attributes, relations, and ascriptions” consist of the Real’s intellection and
perception of Himself in respect of His entification. This entificational intellection and
perception follow the mentioned nondelimitation, but, relative to the Real’s entification
within the intellection of any intellecter in any self-disclosure [tajallī], it is a nondelimited
entification; it is the vastest entification and is witnessed by the perfect [kummal]. This is the
Essential Self-Disclosure that has the station of the highest tawḥīd.

1
Tafsīr al-fātiḥa is the same as Iʿjāz al-bayān fī tafsīr umm al-qurʾān (published by the Dāʾirat’l-Maʿārif al-
ʿUthmāniyya, Hyderabad-Deccan, 2nd edition, 1949); the text was also published by ʿAbd al-Qādir Aḥmad ʿAṭā as al-
Tafsīr al-Ṣūfī li’l-Qurʾān (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub al-Ḥadītha, 1969). For the passage Qūnawī is referring to here, see Iʿjāz,
pp. 262-63; al-Tafsīr, pp. 377-78.
 11

The “originatingness” of the Real follows this entification. The originatingness is the
source of the standpoints and the headspring of the relations and ascriptions that become
manifest in wujūd while staying nonmanifest in the courtyard of intellections and minds
[adhhān].
What is said to be “a Nondelimited, One, Necessary Wujūd” consists of the entification
of wujūd in the Essential, divine relation of knowledge. In respect of this relation, the realizers
call the Real “the Origin” [mabdaʾ], not in respect of any other relation. So understand and
ponder this, for I have inserted in this text the root of the roots of the divine knowledges. And
God is the right-guider.

[7] A Text
When any traveler [sālik] travels on a path whose furthest limit is the Real on condition
of his winning from Him some sort of felicity [saʿāda], that traveler is the possessor of a miʿrāj
and his traveling is an ascent [ʿurūj]. So understand!

[8] An Eminent, Universa l Te xt

Conta ining Resplendent Mysteries

Know that whenever something is described as influencing [taʾthīr] one thing or some
things, the application of this description to it will not be completely true so long as it does not
influence the reality of the thing inasmuch as it is it, without the intellection of the inclusion
of another limitation [qayd] or some outside condition—whatever it may be—within the reality
described as exerting the influence.
I only mention these limitations because of the influences that are ascribed to things in
respect of their levels, or in respect of standpoints that are requisites of their realities; and
because of what has also become widespread among the folk of theoretical intellect and most
of the folk of tastings; namely, that when something is described by mirrorness [mirʾātiyya],
whether its mirrorness be supraformal [maʿnawī] or sensory [ḥissī], its mirror has an influence
on what is reflected within it, because it gives the form of the reflected thing back to it, and
the form of the reflected thing becomes manifest within it according to it.
This is correct in a certain way, but not in an unqualified sense. It would be correct for
the mirror to influence the reflected thing only if it influenced its reality per se. This,
however, does not happen. One affirms the mirror’s influence on the reflected thing only in
respect of the perception of those who do not know the reality of the reflected thing and who
perceive it only in the mirror. The mirror, however, is not a locus for the reality of the
reflected thing, but rather a locus for the disclosure of its image and some of its
 12

manifestations. Manifestation is a relation that is ascribed to the reflected thing in respect of

the reflection of its form in the mirror; it is not the very reality of the reflected thing.
By my words “some of its manifestations” I mean to point out that the Essential,
exclusive self-disclosures [al-tajalliyyāt al-dhātiyyat al-ikhtiṣāṣiyya] are not within a locus of
manifestation [maẓhar] or a mirror, nor do they accord with some level. For, when someone
perceives the Real in respect of these self-disclosures, he has witnessed the Reality as It is
outside the mirror, not according to a locus of manifestation or a level, as we said—not a name,
an attribute, a designated state, or anything else. It is he who knows by tasting that the mirror
has no influence on the Reality. Our Shaykh, the leader, used to name these self-disclosures
“the Essential, lightning-like [barqī] self-disclosures.”1 In those days I did not know the reason
for this nomenclature, nor what the Shaykh meant by it.
These Essential, lightning-like self-disclosures occur for no one except those who are
completely detached [farāgh] from all descriptions, states, and rulings—both those pertaining
to necessity and [divine] names and those pertaining to contingency. This detachment is a
nondelimited detachment that does not differ from the nondelimitation of the Real except that
it lingers no more than one breath [nafas], which is why it is likened to lightning. The reason
for its lack of continuity [dawām] is the ruling of the all-comprehensiveness [jamʿiyya] of the
human reality. Just as this all-comprehensiveness does not demand its continuity, so also, if
human all-comprehensiveness did not entail this description—namely, the detachment and
nondelimitation that attract these self-disclosures—then human all-comprehensiveness would
not be an all-comprehensiveness that fully embraces every description, state, and ruling. So,
the ruling of all-comprehensiveness affirms it and negates its continuity.
I found, when God granted me this self-disclosure, that it had wonderful rulings in my
inward and my outward. Among them was that, although it did not stay for two breaths, it left
in the locus [maḥall] descriptions and sciences that no one but God can calculate. I came to
know in the night that I wrote down this Arriver [wārid]2 that he who does not taste this locus
of witnessing [mashhad] is not a Muhammadan inheritor [wārith Muḥammadī]; he does not know
the secret of his words, “I have a moment when no one embraces me other than my Lord;” nor
the secret of his words, “God was, and nothing was with Him;” nor the secret of God’s words,
“Our command is but one, like a glance of the eyesight” [54:50]. Nor does he know the secret of the
fact that existence-giving does not originate in any existent time.

1
For a few references to these lightning-like self-disclosures in Ibn ʿArabī’s writings, see Chittick, Imaginal Worlds
(Albany: SUNY Press, 1994), pp. 81-82.
2
In the technical language of Sufism, an “Arriver” is an influx of knowledge by way of unveiling. See the
translation of Ibn ʿArabī’s chapter on the Arriver from the Futūḥāt in Chittick, The Self-Disclosure of God (Albany:
SUNY Press, 1998), pp. 148-50.
 13

In the same way, when someone tastes this locus of witnessing, having already known
that the fixed entities [al-aʿyān al-thābita] are the realities of the existents; that they are not
made [ghayr majʿūl]; that the reality of the Real is incomparable with making [jaʿl] and
influencing; and that there is no third thing other than the Real and the entities; then he will
necessarily know—if indeed he has what we have mentioned—that nothing influences
anything, that the things influence themselves, and that what are named influencing “causes”
[ʿilal] and “occasions” [asbāb] are conditions for the manifestation of things in themselves. It is
not that one reality influences another reality.
So also he should know the situation in “assistance” [madad]. There is nothing that
assists anything else. Rather, assistance reaches the manifest side of something from its
nonmanifest side, and this is made manifest by the luminous self-disclosure of wujūd [al-tajallī
al-nūrī al-wujūdī]. But making manifest does not take place by influencing the reality of what is
made manifest. So, the relations influence each other, in the sense that some of them are the
cause of the configuration of the ruling of others and their manifestation in the reality that is
their source.
Among the things that come to be known by the taster of this self-disclosure is that the
fixed entities, in respect of being mirrors, have no influence on the divine self-disclosure of
wujūd except in respect of the manifestation of the plurality latent in that self-disclosure. So,
this is an influence in the relation of manifestation and a condition of making manifest. The
Real, however, transcends being influenced by other than Himself, and the realities of the
engendered things [al-kāʾināt] transcend being influenced in respect of their realities, for, from
this standpoint, they are—in the tasting of the perfect—the same as the Tasks [shuʾūn] 1 of the
Real, so it is not permissible that others should influence them. Hence, in the respect that it is
a mirror, a mirror has no influence on the reality of what is reflected within it, because of the
explanation already given.
So, understand this text and ponder it, for I have inserted within it precious sciences
and mysteries whose measure cannot be measured by any but God. This is the certain truth
and the clear text. Even though something you hear that opposes it may be correct, it is
relatively correct. This is the explicit truth within which there is nothing dubious. And God is
the right-guider, the guide.

[9]
Among the Universal Texts

1
This term derives from the Koranic verse, “Each day He is upon some task” (55:29) which Ibn ʿArabī interprets in
terms of the day of the “He-ness” or the Essence, which is the present moment, and the fact that there is no
repetition in divine self-disclosure. See Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989), pp. 98-99.
 14

These are texts that I mentioned in the book Miftāḥ ghayb al-jamʿ wa tafṣīlihi and in other
books. I composed them without mixing in the words of anyone else, for that is not my
1

custom, because God has preserved me from that—with His high, unadulterated gifts, He has
delivered me from any need for low, outside borrowings. But I have specified this book for
mentioning the texts, so it is also necessary to mention those texts here.
So, I say: Among them is that inasmuch as something is the cause of the wujūd of
manyness [kathra] and many [kathīr], it is impossible for it in that respect to become entified
through manifestation, nor will it appear to a gazer [nāẓir] except in something gazed upon
[manẓūr].
Among them: Nothing that is opposed to [muḍādda] or different from [mubāyana] a
thing emerges [ṣudūr] or results from it, despite the diversity of the sorts and kinds of results
[thamar]—the supraformal [maʿnawī], spiritual [rūḥānī], imaginal [mithālī], imaginary [khayālī],2
sensory [ḥissī], and natural [ṭabīʿī]. This holds generally for anything that is called “a place of
emergence” [maṣdar] or “a result-yielding root” [aṣl muthmir] for a thing or things. However, it
has this description from the standpoint of intellecting it inasmuch as it is it, and, from
another, hidden standpoint, of which only rare realizers gain cognizance.
When it is thought that something happens counter to what we mentioned, that will
only be so because of and in accordance with a condition or conditions, external to the essence
of the thing, and in accordance with the guise [hayʾa] that is intellected because of the coming
together—I mean the coming together of the reality that is described by emergence and result-
yielding and the external conditions and standpoints along with the rulings of the level within
which the coming together becomes entified.
“Each works similar to its way” [17:84]. Nothing results in or makes manifest anything
that is the same or completely similar to it, because that would require that wujūd had come
about and become manifest twice in one reality and in one level in one way and mode. This
would be to gain what is already there [taḥṣīl al-ḥāṣil], which is absurd; it would be empty of
benefit and would pertain to the useless [ʿabath], but the Wise, Knowing, Real Actor transcends
useless acts. Hence, the roots must be different from their results. Moreover, the contingent
things are infinite, and effusion from the Real, who is the Root of roots, is one. So, in the view
of him who knows what I have mentioned, there is no repetition in wujūd. So understand!
This is why the realizers have said, “God does not disclose Himself twice in one form to
one individual, nor to two individuals in a form.” On the contrary, there must be a separating

1
Compare Qūnawī, Miftāḥ al-ghayb, text in Fanārī, Miṣbāḥ al-uns, edited by Muḥammad Khwājawī (Tehran:
Intishārāt-i Mawlā, 1374/1995), pp. 13-14.
2
Şehid Ali Paşa 1351 lacks the word “imaginary,” and Ayasofya 1724 lacks both it and “imaginal.”
 15

factor and a difference in one or more ways, as I pointed out earlier. So understand! And God
is the right-guider.

[10] An Emine nt Te xt
Know that, given that it is not possible to ascribe any attribute or name to the Real in
respect of His nondelimitation, nor to apply to Him any ruling, whether negatory or
affirmative, it is thus known that attributes, names, and rulings are not applied or ascribed to
Him except in respect of the entifications.
Once it is clear that every manyness in wujūd and intellection must be preceded by
oneness, then it becomes necessary that the entifications—in respect of which names,
attributes, and rulings are ascribed to the Real—be preceded by an entification that is the
origin and source of all the entifications, in the sense that nothing lies beyond it save unmixed
nondelimitation; this is a negatory affair that requires the negation of descriptions, rulings,
entifications, and standpoints from the core [kunh] of His Essence as well as the lack of
delimitation or restriction by any description, name, entification, or anything else that we
have enumerated or mentioned in summary fashion.
Now, unimpaired intellects, even if they lack sound unveiling, may take the standpoint
of the ensuing attributes and names. If they are unable to intellect any names or attributes
beyond what they conceptualize [taṣawwur] and if their intellective perceptions reach only
that, then, in relation to them, these are “the names of the Essence.” In the stage of the
theoretical intellect and the state of this veil [ḥijāb], they will draw conclusions about these
realities from the inclusiveness [shumūl] of their ruling, from the fact that the other names and
attributes are subordinate [tabaʿiyya] to them, and from the fact that what comes after them
becomes entified depending upon them.
So, the Essential [dhātī] and name-related [asmāʾī] divine gifts [ʿaṭāʾ] are known from
this rule, in the sense that every gift and good [khayr] that reaches creation from the Real will
be either an Essential or a name-related gift, or it will combine the Essence and the names.
There is no way to reckon the Essential gifts. Their entifications are not restrained or
restricted by number.
As for the name-related gifts ascribed both to the Essence and the names, either their
relation to the Presence of the Essence will be stronger and more complete than their relation
to the Presence of the names and attributes, or the contrary. If their relation to the names and
attributes dominates over their relation to the Essence, then they may be reckoned, either
with difficulty or ease, according to the domination [ghalaba] and the being dominated over
[maghlūbiyya] that occurs in this case. But here there is a great secret that cannot be divulged.
 16

If the result of domination and being dominated over is that the relation of the gifts to
the Presence of the Essence is strong, this will have no reckoning, because the Essential gifts
and whatever has a strong relation to them emerge and are received only because of an
Essential correspondence [munasāba]. There is no reason for them other than this
correspondence.
Whoever does not recognize this principle does not know the reality of His words, “He
gives provision to whomsoever He will without reckoning” [2:212], or the secret of His words, “This is
Our gift, so bestow or withhold without reckoning” [38:39], or the like of that, mentioned repeatedly
in the Exalted Book and also in the prophetic hadiths, such as his words, “Surely from my
community seventy thousand will enter paradise without reckoning, and with every thousand,
seventy thousand.” These are the possessors of the name-related gifts. Their relation to the
Presence of the Essence, however, is stronger than their relation to the Presence of the names
and attributes. This is why they follow the possessors of the Essential correspondence and
share with them in their states. So know that!
Now that we have mentioned the sorts and the rulings of gifts, let us mention the sorts
of their recipients [qābilūn]. For, in their taking, they have classes that become numerous
according to the requests of their preparedness, state, level, spirit, constitutional [mizājī]
nature, or accidental [ʿaraḍī] nature. It is these that are expressed by the tongue of the
receiving seeker.
In short, the highest level of the recipients in receiving what reaches them from the
effusion and gifts of the Real is the vision of the Real’s face in the conditions and causes named
“the intermediaries” [wasāʾiṭ] and “the chain of [cosmic] order” [silsilat al-tartīb]. The taker
knows and witnesses that the causative intermediaries are nothing but the entifications of the
Real in the divine and engendered [kawnī] levels in all the diversity of their kinds. In other
words, there is nothing between the received effusion of the Real and the recipient except the
very entification of the effusion through the delimited receptivity. There is no inclusion of a
ruling of contingency [ḥukm imkānī] that would be demanded and made necessary by the
influence of the effusion’s passing over the levels of the intermediaries and by its becoming
colored [inṣibāgh] by the rulings of their contingencies. It is seen that the effusion is one of the
self-disclosures of the Real’s Nonmanifest, for the pluralities {and entifications}1 joined with it
are among the rulings of the name Manifest in respect of the fact that the Real’s Manifest is a
locus of disclosure for His Nonmanifest. So, the rulings of manifestation pluralize the
nondelimited oneness of nonmanifestation. It is these rulings that are named “recipients,”
and they are the forms of the Tasks, nothing else. So understand. “And God speaks the truth, and
He guides whomsoever He will to a straight path” [35:41].

1
Not found in the two mss.
 17

[11] A Resplendent Text and U nivers al Ru le

Providing Knowledge of the Divine Compliance and
Response, and Hi s Withholding the Two
Know that the complete, explicit scale [mīzān] and the taste-derived, sound
demonstration [burhān] in recognizing when the servant is among those who obey their Lord
and when he will quickly be given the divine response [ijāba] in exactly what he asks, without
substitution or delay, is sound recognition and perfect compliance [muṭāwaʿa]. When
someone’s recognition of the Real is sounder and his conception of the Real is sounder, then
the response to him will be quicker in exactly what he requests. When someone is more
complete in watching over [murāqaba] the commandments of the Real and in undertaking
them with perfect compliance, then the Real’s compliance with him will also be more complete
than His compliance with other servants. This is why the state of the great ones among the
Folk of God demands that most of their supplications receive a response—because of the
perfection of compliance and the soundness of recognizing God and conceiving of God. God
alludes to this with His words, “Supplicate Me and I will respond to you” [40:60].
When someone lacks sound recognition by way of witnessing, he is not the supplicant
of the Real to whom He guarantees a response with His words, “Supplicate Me and I will respond
to you.” For he turns his attention only to the form individuated [mushakhkhaṣ] in his mind
[dhihn] and resulting from his theory [naẓar] and imagination [khayāl], or from the imagination
and theory of someone else, or from what all this has given him. This is why someone of this
sort is deprived of being given a response with exactly what he asked for, or there is a delay in
it—I mean, in the response. When someone like this receives a response, its cause is the
mystery of the divine withness [maʿiyya], which demands that nothing be empty of the Real; or
it is the complete concentration [jamʿiyya] that is gained by the distressed [muḍṭarr], who are
promised a response when they supplicate in distress,1 and the preparedness they have gained
from that—that is, the distress.
The state of someone who has this description is different from the state of the
possessor of sound conception and realized recognition, for the latter calls the Real to
presence [istiḥḍār] and turns his attention [tawajjuh] toward Him with a realized calling to
presence and turning of attention. Even if he does not have this in every respect, it is enough
that he has conceived of the Real and called Him to presence in his attention only in some
levels and in respect of some names and attributes. This is the state of the intermediate Folk of
God, whereas the just-mentioned state is the state of the veiled.

1
The reference here is to Koran 27:62: “He answers the distressed one when he supplicates Him, and He removes the evil.”
 18

As for the perfect [kummal] and the solitaries [afrād],1 their attention to the Real follows
the Essential self-disclosure that they have, and their realization of the station of perfection
depends on having attained it. For them it results in a complete recognition that comprehends
the modalities [ḥaythiyyāt] of all the names, attributes, levels, and standpoints along with a
sound conception of the Real in respect of His already mentioned Essential self-
disclosure gained by them through the most complete witnessing. This is why the response is
not delayed for them.
Also, the perfect and those solitaries whom God wills are the folk of cognizance of the
Guarded Tablet, or rather, of the station of the Pen, or rather, of the Presence of the Divine
Knowledge. Hence they are aware of what has been ordained to come to be, because of
foreknowledge [sabq al-ʿilm] of its inescapable occurrence. So, they do not ask for something
absurd, something whose wujūd has not been ordained. Their aspirations are not incited to
seek [ṭalab] or desire [irāda] that.
I only say “desire that” because there are those upon whose desire the occurrence of
things depends, even if they do not supplicate or ask the Real for it to come about. I witnessed
that from our Shaykh—may God sanctify his mystery—for many years in uncountable affairs.
He reported to me that he saw the Prophet in one of his visions2 and that he gave him good
news and said to him, “God is quicker to respond to you than you are to supplicate Him.” This
station is above the station of receiving response to supplications and is one of the specificities
of perfect compliance.
The station of perfect compliance is above the station of compliance, for the station of
compliance is specific to what was alluded to—namely undertaking to observe
commandments, following everything that pleases the Real, and performing His rights [ḥuqūq]
in the measure of ability. The Prophet alluded to it when he replied to his uncle Abū Ṭālib,
who said to him, “How quickly your Lord hastens to do what you want, O Muḥammad!,” when
he had seen the quickness of the Real’s response to him in what he would ask from Him.
According to another version, he said to him, “How your Lord obeys you!”
The Prophet said to him, “And you, O Uncle—if you obey Him, He will obey you.”
This station, which we said is above that, goes back to the perfection of the servant’s
fulfilling what the Real desires from him in respect of his reality through the first, universal
desire, which is connected to the achievement of the Perfection of Disclosure and Discovery

1
In Ibn ʿArabī’s teachings a Solitary is a perfect human being who stands at the same level but outside the scope
of the Pole (quṭb); the latter governs the unseen world of sanctity. See Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge, p. 413, n. 23.
2
“Vision” translates wāqiʿa, which means befaller, happening, event, occurrence. In the Sufi vocabulary it
denotes a true vision, typically seen during wakefulness. The word is derived from the Koranic verse, “When the
Befaller befalls, no one will deny its befalling” (56:1).
 19

[kamāl al-jalāʾ wa’l-istijlāʾ].1 This is the reason for giving existence to the cosmos and Perfect
Man, who is precisely God’s Intended Entity [ʿayn maqṣūda]. Everything else is intended by way
of subordination to him and because of him. For, when there is something without which the
sought thing [maṭlūb] cannot be reached, that also is sought. This is what I mean by my words,
“by way of subordination.”
Perfect Man alone is desired for himself because he is a complete locus of disclosure
[majlā] for the Real. Through him the Real becomes manifest in respect of His Essence and all
His names, attributes, rulings, and standpoints as He knows Himself through Himself in
Himself; and through everything comprised by His names, His attributes, and all the rulings
and standpoints that I alluded to, and the realities of the things known by Him [maʿlūmāt],
which are the entities of the things He engenders—without any alteration by reason of
defective reception, or a deficient mirrorness that would demand that [Perfect Man] reflect
something that becomes manifest other than as it is in itself.
When someone is of this sort, he has no desire distinct from the Real’s desire. Rather,
he is the mirror of His Lord’s desire and His other attributes. Thus his supplication is effaced
in his desire, which does not differ from his Lord’s desire. So, what he desires occurs, just as
He says: “Doer of what He desires” [85:16].
If someone who has reached the realization of what we mentioned supplicates, he will
be supplicating with the tongues and levels of all the inhabitants of the cosmos, because he is a
mirror of them all. In the same way, when he leaves aside supplication, he leaves it aside only
in respect of being the Real’s locus of disclosure from the standpoint of that face among his
two faces that is adjacent to the Divine Side.2 He does not differ from Him in respect of His
being “doer of what He desires.” No one can aim at any target or climb to any level or station
beyond this station.
Below him is the one who turns his attention toward the Real with complete
recognition and sound conception, the one intended by the address, “Supplicate Me and I will
respond to you”—and the Real’s report is truthful. This has become easy for the servant alluded
to, so the result is inescapable, that is, the response, in contrast to the other turners of
attention whose characteristics were mentioned.

1
By this expression Qūnawī is referring to the full actualization of God’s goal in the creation of the universe as
announced in the famous ḥadīth qudsī, “I was a hidden treasure and I desired to be known, so I created the
creatures that I might be known.” For more on Qūnawī’s teachings here, see Chittick and Peter Lamborn Wilson,
Fakhruddin ʿIraqi: Divine Flashes (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), the discussion of “the perfection of distinct-
manifestation and distinct-vision,” pp. 23 ff.
2
On the two “faces” (wajh) of all things, one directed at the Real and the other at creation, see Chittick, Self-
Disclosure, pp. 135 ff.
 20

So know this! You will attain exalted mysteries and wonderful sciences to which
thoughts and imaginings do not climb, nor do fingers inscribe them with pens. And God is the
right-guider.

[12]

An Emine nt Te xt
Know that the highest degree of knowledge of a thing—whatever thing it may be, in
relation to whatever knower it be, and whether the thing known be one or more things—is
gained only through unification [ittiḥād] with the known thing and the knower’s being no
different [mughāyara] from it; for, what causes ignorance of something and prevents perfect
perception of it is nothing other than the domination of the ruling through which the two are
distinct [imtiyāz]. This is a supraformal distance [buʿd maʿnawī]. Distance, in whatever respect,
prevents perfect perception of the distant thing.
The disparate degrees of knowledge of the thing are in the measure of the disparate
domination of the ruling that unifies the knower with the known thing. True nearness
eliminates the separation that is true distance, which was alluded to as the rulings through
which difference and distinction come to be.
When you witness this affair and taste it with realized unveiling, you will know that the
Real has perfect knowledge of things only because He discovers [istijlāʾ] them in Himself while
their manyness and otherness are effaced in His oneness. For, when something is within
something else—whether the locus be supraformal or formal—it will only come to be and
become manifest in accordance with that within which it is entified and manifest. This is why
we say that the Real knows Himself through Himself and He knows the things in Himself
through His very knowledge of Himself.
Divine reports have come that “God was, and nothing was with Him,” thus negating the
otherness of things relative to the oneness that is their unseen1 locus and affirming the
firstness of the Real in respect of the oneness. Through the distinction of the manyness of the
things that are intellected in the second place and latent [kāmin] before that in oneness, and
through the fact that in actuality oneness comprehends [jamʿ] the things, the perfection that
was first concealed in oneness becomes manifest. Thereby the door is opened to the

1
Reading ghaybī, in keeping with Şehid Ali Paşa 1351 and an alternative reading offered in the printed edition.
Both the latter and Ayasoyfa 1724 have ʿaynī, in which case the meaning would be not “unseen,” but “in entity.”
This could mean “as fixed entities” (i.e., invisible objects of divine knowledge) or “in their state of being existent
entities” (i.e., as present in the universe).
 21

Perfection of Disclosure and Discovery, which is the true sought object. Thereby become
manifest the rulings of oneness in manyness, and of manyness in oneness.
Oneness makes manyness one [waḥḥadat al-kathra], for it becomes the common measure
[qadr mushtarik] among the many things, which are distinct from each other by essence; hence
it joins [tawṣīl] their separations [fuṣūl], because by essence it comprehends, as we mentioned.
And the many things [mutakaththirāt] pluralize [taʿdīd] the One in respect of the entifications,
which are the cause of the variation of the One’s manifestation in color [ṣibgh] and colors and
[the cause] of the diverse qualities [kayfiyyāt] that demand the diversity of the preparednesses
of the many things that receive the One Self-Disclosure. Thereby is renewed recognition of the
kinds of manifestations and their requisite rulings, which consist of some influencing others
by holding together and taking apart, outwardly and inwardly, high and low, temporarily and
not temporarily, correspondingly and not correspondingly—all that by means of the
conjunction [ittiṣāl] that they have through the unitary self-disclosure of wujūd that
comprehends them all, as was mentioned.
So knowledge, bliss [naʿīm], and felicity in all their diverse kinds accord only with the
correspondence [munāsaba]; and ignorance, chastisement, and wretchedness accord with the
strength of the rulings of difference [mubāyana] and distinction. As for the intermixing
[imtizāj] of those rulings through which there is unification and of those rulings through which
there is distinction, its governing authority [salṭana] has no end.
The source of each group of rulings through a sort of correspondence, the place to
which they refer in respect of ascription, and that to which they are traced back [mustanad] is
named “the level.” So understand!
When I started to write this text, it was said to me in my inwardness while I was
writing: In respect of oneness, the root of the rulings ascribed to oneness and to the One Real
and called “the rulings of necessity” is one ruling, and that is the reality of the “decree” [qaḍāʾ].
The measures [maqādīr] of the influence of the pluralities of the known things belong to the
one ruling. The One Wujūd becomes manifest by reason of these pluralities, first by being
influenced, and second by influencing these pluralized things through returning their
influences to them. So know this, and ponder the wonderful thing that I have pointed out!
You will attain exalted knowledge. And God is the right-guider.

An Emine nt Cha pter

Elucidat ing the Rem aining Secr et s of t his Text

Know that the highest degree of knowledge of a thing, whatever it may be other than
the Real, is that you know it with a knowledge that results from your vision of it totally within
the knowledge of the Real.
 22

This knowledge has two signs. One is that the knowledge you gain of the thing leaves
you without need to resume and repeat your gaze [naẓar] upon it so as to seek increased
recognition of it, for, if you renew the knowledge of the thing by way of increase after having
claimed already to have recognized it, the only reason for this would be defective knowledge of
it in the first place. If knowledge of it had been perfected the first time, there would have been
no need for increase—as is the case with the Real. This depends upon perfect encompassment
in knowledge of the thing known.
The other sign from which one concludes that this knowledge has been soundly gained
is that the ruling of someone’s knowledge applies to the thing such that he passes beyond its
delimitation and reaches the point where he sees the last of it conjoined with the
nondelimitation of the Real.
Knowledge of the Real, however, is not like this, for it connects to Him only in respect
of His entification in a level, a locus of manifestation, a state, a modality, or a standpoint. As
long as He is apprehended [inḍibāṭ] by the one who knows Him through His entification in one
of the mentioned ways, for him will become manifest and entified from the Nondelimited
Essence, in keeping with the state of the recipient of self-disclosure [mutajallā lahu], what had
previously not been entified. And just as the states of man do not reach a furthest limit at
which he may halt, so also there is no end to the
Real’s entifications and the variations of His manifestations to man in accordance with his
states, which are the entifications of the Nondelimited Essence of the Real and the variations
of Its manifestations. It was already pointed out that the names are names of the states and
that {the states undergo transformation [taqallub] over [ʿalā] the entities—in contrast to the
Real, for He undergoes transformation in [fī] the states. He
indicates}1 this with His words, “Each day He is upon some task” [55:29]. So understand, and do
not interpret! Rather, strive to see for yourself, or else do not do so, but have faith and
submit—you will be safe. And God gives success.

[13] A Majestic Te xt
Know that no existent in wujūd is described by nondelimitation without having a face
toward delimitation, if only in respect of its entification in the intellection of one or more
intellecters. Likewise, no existent in wujūd is ruled by delimitation without having a face
toward nondelimitation. No one recognizes this, however, save those who recognize the
things with complete recognition after recognizing the Real and recognizing everything that is
recognized.

1
The text in brackets is missing in the two manuscripts.
 23

He who does not witness this locus of witnessing through tasting has not realized the
recognition of the Real and creation.

[14] A Text

Clarifying the Se cret of Pe rfection and Most-perfect ness

Know that the Real has an Essential perfection [kamāl dhātī], as well as a name-related
perfection [kamāl asmāʾī] whose manifestation depends upon giving existence to the cosmos.
In respect of entification both perfections are name-related, because every ruling
concerning an affair by any ruler is preceded by the entification of the object of the ruling in
the intellection of the ruler. So, were it not for the intellection of the Real’s Essence before the
ascription of the names to Him and the fact that He is distinct in His independence [ghinā]—in
the sense that wujūd is affirmed for Him to the exclusion of everything else—it would not be
ruled that He has an Essential perfection.
There is no doubt that every entification intellected for the Real is a name for Him, for,
in the view of the realizer, the names are nothing but the entifications of the Real. Therefore it
is true that in this respect, every perfection by which the Real is described is a name-related
perfection. Nonetheless, in respect of the fact that the Real’s names are configured from the
Presence of His Oneness by the demand of His Essence, all the perfections by which He is
described are Essential perfections.
Once this has been settled, we say: When someone has this perfection in His Essence
from His Essence, He does not become defective through external accidents and requisites
such that these would detract from His perfection. Nor is it permissible to imagine concerning
His perfection a defect [naqṣ] such that He would become perfect through the accidents and
requisites. Rather, these may bring about in some levels the manifestation of the description
of His most-perfectness [akmaliyya]; they include the recognition that He is of this sort.

[15] A Ve ry Emine nt Te xt
The reality of the Real consists of the form of His knowledge of Himself in respect of His
entification within His intellection of Himself, such that the knowledge, the knower, and the
known are united [tawḥīd].
His Essential attribute, which is no different from His Essence, is an all-comprehensive
unity [aḥadiyya jamʿ] beyond which no all-comprehensiveness (jamʿiyya), relation, or
standpoint is intellected. The complete witnessing and recognition of this attribute will be
realized only by recognizing that in every entified thing the Real is a receptacle for the ruling
that He is entified in keeping with the situation; this demands that the Real be perceived
 24

within [the thing] as entified and that it be known that He is not restricted by the entification
and that He, qua He, is nonentified. This is the form of His knowledge of Himself.
So, His Essence is recognized as entified in relation to His manifestation in and
according to the entified things and in relation to him who witnesses Him only in a locus of
manifestation; and He is recognized such that inasmuch as He is He, He is also not entified in
the state in which it is ruled that He is entified, because of the incapacity [quṣūr] of the
perception of those who only perceive Him in a locus of manifestation, whether the locus of
manifestation is taken as the same as or other than the Manifest.
The reality of the creatures consists of the form of their Lord’s knowledge of them.
Their essential attribute is the poverty [faqr] that results from unqualified independence, not
just any poverty. So understand!

[16] A Ve ry Emine nt Te xt
Know that the result of the intellective declaration of incomparability [tanzīh] is
distinguishing [tamyīz] the Real from everything named “other than He” [siwāhu] by means of
negatory [salbī] attributes, as a precaution against defects that minds suppose but do not occur
in wujūd.
The result of the Shari’ite declarations of incomparability is the negation [nafy] of any
plurality in wujūd [taʿaddud wujūdī] or any sharing [ishtirāk] with the Divine Level [al-martabat
al-ulūhiyya]. This is affirmed also by the Shariah [sharʿ] after the stipulation that the
affirmative [thubūtī] attributes are shared with the Real, so as to negate similarity [mushābaha]
and equality [musāwāt]. To this He alludes with His words, “And God is the best of providers”
[62:11], “the best of forgivers” [7:155], “the fairest of creators” [23:14], and “the most merciful of the
merciful” [12:64]; “God is greater;” and the like.
As for the declaration of incomparability of the folk of unveiling, it affirms that all-
comprehensiveness belongs to the Real without restriction, and it distinguishes the rulings of
some names from others, for it is not correct to ascribe every ruling to every name. On the
contrary, there are names for which it is absurd to ascribe some rulings, even though these are
affirmed for other names. So also is the situation with the attributes.
One of the results of declaring incomparability by unveiling is the negation [nafy] of the
“other” [siwā] along with the subsistence [baqāʾ] of the ruling of plurality, without supposing
that a defect has been negated [salb] and without intellecting a perfection that is ascribed to
the Real by affirming something positive [muthbat]. Peace!
 25

[17] An Emine nt Te xt
Each thing that is in something else is so only in keeping with the locus, whether the
locus be supraformal or formal. This is why the contingent known things, inasmuch as their
entification is fixed and impressed [irtisām] in the Real’s knowledge, are described by eternity
[qidam].
So also, in another respect, nothing entified in the Real’s knowledge is empty of the
ruling of new arrival [ḥudūth], because the wujūd of the cosmos and all the knowledge of its
folk are newly arrived and passive [munfaʿil], in contrast to the Real’s wujūd and knowledge. So
know this! You will be rightly guided, God willing.

[18] An Emine nt Te xt
This is one of the most eminent, majestic, and comprehensive texts concerning the
principles of divine and engendered recognition.
Know that the ascription of the name “Essence” to the Real is only true from the
standpoint of His entification which, in the intellection of creatures other than the perfect,
follows upon a Nondelimitation of unknown description and no name. This Nondelimitation is
a negatory description [waṣf salbī] of the Essence, for it is posited as distinct from every
entification. In fact, what is actually affirmed is the First Entification, which by essence
comprises the Essential names, which are “the Keys to the Unseen.” 1
What is named “the Essence” is no different from Its names in any respect. As for the
names, they differ from and are opposed to each other, and they are also unified [ittiḥād] with
each other in respect of the Essence that includes [shumūl] them all.
Unity [aḥadiyya] is a description of the entification. It is not a description that
designates the Nondelimited, for the Nondelimited has no name or description.
In respect of these names and from the standpoint of their not being different from the
Essence, we say that the Real exercises influence [muʾaththir] by Essence. So understand!
The Essence has only one requisite, which is no different from It except relationally;
this requisite is knowledge. Unitariness [waḥdāniyya] is affirmed for the Real in respect of
knowledge, in and through which the level of Divinity [martaba al-ulūhiyya] and the other
levels and known things become entified, because all are impressed within it. It is the mirror

1
Concerning the Essential Names, Qūnawī says that no one knows them except the Perfect. “They are among the
greatest secrets of the Real and it is forbidden to divulge them.” They are followed by “the Mothers of the
Names” (ummahāt al-asmāʾ), to which reference will be made shortly. These are Knowing, Alive, Desiring, and
Powerful and “They are like shadows and gatekeepers of the Essential Names.” Kitāb al-fukūk, edited by
Muḥammad Khwājawī (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Mawlā, 1371/1992), p. 242.
 26

of the Essence in respect of its including the Essential names from which the Essence is no
different in any respect, as was mentioned.
It—I mean knowledge—is the source and starting point of supraformal manyness. I said
that knowledge is like the mirror of the known things and also of the Essence and Its Essential
names because, from the standpoint of the distinction of knowledge from the Essence—a
distinction of relation and standpoint—the entification of the Real is intellected in His
intellection of Himself in Himself. So, His Essential knowledge is like a mirror for Him. That is
why we said elsewhere, “The reality of the Real consists of the form of His knowledge of
Himself.” I also called attention to the fact that everything manifest in a locus of
manifestation is different from the locus of manifestation in one or more ways, except the
Real, for He is identical with the manifest and identical with the locus of manifestation. So
bear this in mind!
As for the levels, they consist of universal entifications comprised in the one, Essential
requisite, which is knowledge. They are like loci for the nondelimited effusion of the Essence
that passes over them inasmuch as the Effuser is no different from the effusion. This was
already pointed out in terms of the Real’s situation both as locus of manifestation and as
Manifest. The levels enter into the reality of exerting influence, though not in an unqualified
sense; rather, in respect of what we said: “They are like loci.”
Every level is a supraformal locus for a group of rulings of necessity and contingency
that branch off from the Essential names, from the Mothers of the Divine Names, and from the
ensuing names that follow. The levels have fixed entities in the courtyard of knowledge and
intellection, but independently they have no influence—rather, by way of wujūd. Such is wujūd
with the levels, for their rulings become manifest in everything that conjoins with them and
becomes entified within them through the instilling of qualities [takyīfāt] by the nondelimited
effusion that reaches them and passes over them. They are like relative ends [al-nihāyāt al-
nisbiyya] in respect of the journey of the Essential Effusion and Self-Disclosure of Wujūd in the
waystations and degrees entified between the beginningless and the endless—not to a furthest
limit [ghāya] or a settling down [qarār].
So, what I have mentioned has made clear that the levels comprehend the groups of
rulings that settle down within them from the Presence of necessity and contingency; they
make manifest the results of all that they comprehend in accordance with themselves, not in
accordance with the rulings or the nondelimited effusion. The levels’ ruling is the ruling of the
shapes [ashkāl] and molds [qawālib] of every shaped and molded thing that conjoins with them
and dwells within them. This is their influence. They are fixed in entity, and upon them
depend and to them are ascribed the results of the rulings in the end, because they are the
starting point [mashraʿ] and the returning place [marjaʿ]. So understand!
 27

Know now that the levels are intellected as being configured one from another, and so
also are the names. Thus the Divinity with its universal names—which are Living, Knowing,
Desiring, and Powerful—is a shadow [ẓill] of the Essence inasmuch as It includes by essence the
Keys to the Unseen. In the tasting of the perfect, however, there is a delicate difference
between the Divinity and the Essence; this is that the Essence is intellected as distinct from the
mentioned Mothers of the Names, but the Essence is not intellected as distinct from Its
Essential Names except by those veiled from the Essential Self-Disclosure.
As for the folk of the Essential Self-Disclosure, they do not intellect this kind of
distinction, nor do they witness it except inasmuch as they know the knowledge of those who
are veiled. In their view, the distinction here is what I pointed out: The Essence is no different
from Its Essential names in any respect, but the names differ from each other, even though
there is no disjoining and the degrees of the Keys are disparate; for some follow others, just as I
pointed out concerning the names of the Divinity—namely, that the names Creator, Author,
Form-Giver, and so on follow the name Powerful. The rest of the Mothers of the Names have a
similar situation with those that ensue from them. So bear in mind!

A Chapte r in Connection
As for the secret of the correspondences [al-munāsabāt], it has to do with sharing
[ishtirāk] in what demands the removal of the rulings of difference [mughāyara] such that the
correspondence is affirmed.
The first and highest of the correspondences is the Essential correspondence. The
Essential correspondence between the Real and the [Perfect] Man who is the Intended Entity is
affirmed in two ways. One of them is in respect of the weakness of his mirrorness in exerting
influence on the self-disclosure that is entified within him, for he does not drape it in any
description that would detract from his declaration of holiness [taqdīs] save the limitation of
the entification, which does not detract from the Real’s magnificence, majesty, and
unitariness; he is empty of most of the rulings of contingency and the characteristics of the
intermediaries. The disparate degrees of the Proximate [muqarrabūn] and the Solitaries with
the Real are in this respect.
As for the correspondence with the Real in the other way, that is in keeping with the
servant’s share in the form of the Divine Presence. This share is disparate according to the
disparity of all-comprehensiveness. The correspondence is weak or strong according to the
narrowness or expanse of the all-comprehensiveness of that person in respect of his
receptivity. Because of this the shares are defective or ample.
In every age and time, perfection belongs to the one who fully embraces what is
comprised by the station of necessity and contingency—namely the attributes, rulings, and
 28

everything of these that may possibly become manifest in actuality—and who is also fixed in
correspondence in the first way. He is the beloved [maḥbūb] of the Real whose entity is
intended. In respect of his reality, which is the Isthmus of Isthmuses, he is the mirror of both
the Essence and the Divinity along with their requisites. The possessor of the Essential
correspondence in the first way is the proximate beloved—no one else. This was already
pointed out.
As for essential correspondence among people, this also is affirmed in two ways, and
these are images of the two mentioned divine ways. One is in respect to a sharing of
constitution [mizāj] by the two who correspond. In other words, their constitutions fall into
one of the degrees of the equilibriums [iʿtidālāt] comprised by the unqualified expanse of
human constitutions; or, the degree of the constitution of one of them is adjacent to the
degree of the other’s constitution—this is a magnificent principle in the School of Realization
[mashrab al-taḥqīq]; few recognize it by tasting.
This is because the spirits of people come from the spiritual worlds. They have
disparate degrees in eminence and highness of waystation in respect of the fewness or
manyness of the intermediaries, and [in respect of] the multiplication and strength of the
modes of contingency because of the intermediaries’ manyness, or their fewness and
weakness. The reason for this [disparity of degrees]—after God’s decree [qaḍāʾ] and
ordainment [qadar]—is the constitution, which requires that the spirit become entified
accordingly. So, the one who is nearer relative to true equilibrium—in the central point of
whose circle become entified the souls of the perfect—will receive a spirit more eminent and
higher relative to the high intellects and spirits. He who is further relative to the mentioned
central point of equilibrium will be the contrary—in terms of meanness and descended degree.
So know this, and understand what I have mentioned concerning the affair of the shared
constitution. Through it you will climb up to the recognition of the spiritual correspondence
that pertains to the other way, which is similar to the essential, hidden correspondence.
Once you have recognized this with a witnessing or a realized understanding, you will
see that, in entification, the origin of the station of some spirits is the Guarded Tablet; the
origin of the entification of others is from the spirituality of the Throne, from the station of
Isrāfīl; others are from the Footstool, from the station of Michael; others are from the Lote
Tree, from the station of Gabriel; and so on in descent until the affair reaches the heaven of
this world, which pertains to Ismāʾīl, who is the chieftain of its angels—upon all of them be
peace.
In this state you will recognize that the greatest condition making necessary what I
mentioned concerning the disparity of the degrees of the spirits of people in this—after the
precedent knowledge of God, His solicitude, His decree, and His will [mashīʾa]—is what was
 29

mentioned concerning the constitutions and their nearness or farness from the central point
of true equilibrium. The influence of solicitude and will pertains specifically to the beauty of
the Lordly proportioning [ḥusn al-taswiyat al-rabbāniyya], which is followed by the inblowing
[nafkh] and entification of the spirit. So understand and bear in mind!
As for correspondence pertaining to level, this is not in one way but in numerous ways.
One of these, in regard to some spirits, is their root quarry, which is from the origin of the
entifications of the spirits to which reference was just made. For, the origin of the entification
of the highest of them in degree—I mean, the spirits of the perfect—is the Mother of the Book.
The origin of the entification of some, in unified knowledge and wujūd, is the essence of the
Highest Pen, which is named “the First Intellect” and “the Universal Spirit.” The origin of the
entification of others is the Guarded Tablet. Others pertain to the Throne and Isrāfīl; others to
Michael, from the station and spirituality of the Footstool; and others to Gabriel, from the
station of the Lote Tree of the Endpoint. So it continues until it reaches the last of the genera
of these spiritual roots, which is specific to Ismāʾīl, the companion of the heaven of this world,
who is called by the Peripatetic sages “the Agent Intellect,” as was mentioned.
Another way is in respect of their imaginal loci of manifestation, for, in the view of all
the realizers, the spirits, despite the diversity of their levels, are never empty of loci of
manifestation through which they become entified and manifest. The first level of the loci of
manifestation of the spirits of people—apart from the perfect—is the world of nondelimited
images and paradisial forms. Although these forms are configured from the various sorts of
matter that are the subtle potencies [laṭāʾif al-quwā] of the natural configuration and its
purified [mutaṭahhira] and cultivated [muzakkāh] substances [jawāhir] draped in the attributes
of the spirits, nonetheless their attributes and states in paradise become manifest only in
accordance with their spiritualities, their potencies, and the characteristics of their imaginal
loci of manifestation.
The domiciles of the folk of paradise are the loci of manifestation of the levels of the
spirits in respect of their ranks with the Real and in respect of their first, imaginal loci of
manifestation. The Prophet called attention to this with subtle allusions, such as his words, “O
ʿAlī, your palace in paradise is face-to-face with my palace;” and, in another version, “is
opposite my palace.” He also said something like this concerning al-ʿAbbās. And he said
concerning the generality of believers, “Each of you is better guided to his domicile in paradise
than to his domicile in this world.” This is nothing but the ruling of correspondence.
As for the Market of Paradise, which comprises beautiful human forms that the folk of
paradise choose to wear as they wish, this derives from one of the streams of the world of
nondelimited images, which is the quarry and springhead of the loci of manifestation. It is the
watercourse of the assistance that arrives from the world of images to the loci of manifestation
 30

of the spirits of paradise’s folk; it is the fountainhead of their foods, their drinks, their clothing,
and everything that they enjoy in the earths of the levels of their deeds, beliefs, character
traits, and attributes and in the degrees of their equilibriums in all of that.
The conferrals and gifts that the angels bring from the Real to the generality of the folk
of paradise when they carry them to the Dune of Vision [kathīb al-ruʾya] to visit and sit with the
Real are the loci of manifestation for the rulings of the names and attributes upon which the
visitors depend in actual fact, even if they do not know it. These gifts strengthen their
correspondence with the Real and bring to life the tenuities [raqāʾiq]1 of their ties to Him in
respect of these names and attributes, which have the degree of Lordship over the visitors.
God’s saying to the angels about the folk of paradise at the end of the sessions of visitation,
“Take them back to their palaces/incapacity,”2 is an allusion to the rulings of the
correspondences deriving from those conferrals and gifts and to the cessation of the rulings of
the names and attributes in respect of which was affirmed the correspondence between them
and the Real, making necessary their gatheredness [jamʿiyya] and presence [ḥuḍūr] with Him.
So, when the governing authority of names and attributes contrary to the rulings of the names
and attributes that demand gathering becomes manifest, then the rulings that demand
distinction become manifest, so distance and veiling come about. So understand!
As for the disparity of their levels while sitting [mujālasa] with the Real, this accords
with the disparity of their levels within the self of the Real; and it accords with the soundness
of their beliefs about God, or their sound knowledges and witnessings, and their preferring, in
what went before, the side of the Real over everything else.
The length and shortness of the time of the sitting and the disparate eminence in what
is addressed [khiṭāb] to them and what they understand from His address accords with what we
mentioned; and it accords with their presence with what they were knowing of Him, or their
calling Him to presence as demanded by their beliefs concerning Him and their
correspondence with His side in respect of the station of the Dune of Vision and the self-
disclosure specific to it. So know this!
As for the state of the perfect—may God give us benefit from them in what we have
mentioned and other than it—it is different from that, for they have passed beyond the
Presences of the names and attributes and the self-disclosures specific to them to the
courtyard of the Essential Self-Disclosure. They are as the Prophet reported concerning them

1
The reading follows the two manuscripts. The printed text has daqāʾiq rather than raqāʾiq. Ibn ʿArabī uses the
term raqīqa to designate subtle ties among the levels of being. See Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge, p. 406, n. 6.
2
The word for palace, qaṣr, also means incapacity, and its plural, quṣūr, can be read as a maṣdar in the same
meaning. Hence Qūnawī takes the hadith, which clearly refers to the palaces within which believers dwell in
paradise, as an allusion (ishāra) to the individual limitations that bestow upon them specific identities.
 31

with his words, “There is one sort of the folk of paradise from which the Lord does not curtain
and veil Himself.” This is because they are not restricted to paradise or any of the other
worlds and Presences. Thus, I have pointed out elsewhere that neither paradise nor anything
other than paradise embraces perfect men.1 For, although they become manifest in any loci of
manifestation that they want, they are free from restriction, limitations, locations, and times,
just like their Master. Rather, they are with Him wherever He is—where there is no wherever
and no where. Necessarily, there is no distance, no veil, no transferal for visiting, and no
beginning due to the ruling of one moment among others or of the names and attributes. So
understand, strive, and hope to join with them and to share with them in some of their high
levels, for God it is who is the patron of beautiful-doing.
As for the correspondences fixed among people in respect of the isthmus levels [marātib
barzakhiyya], a sample of them, calling attention to their details for those to whom they are not
unveiled and witnessed, is mentioned by the Prophet in the hadith of the Night Journey [isrāʾ]
and his vision of Adam in the heaven of this world. On his right hand were the multitudes of
his felicitous progeny, and on his left hand the multitudes of his wretched progeny. When he
gazed to the right he would laugh, and when he gazed to the left he would weep.
This is an allusion to the levels of all the wretched and the felicitous. The folk of
wretchedness are those for whom the gates of heaven do not open at death, and they have
diverse levels in their wretchedness. The Prophet reported about the spirits of some of the
wretched that they are gathered together in Barahūt and al-Khābiyatayn. 2 So the origin of the
levels of the wretched are from the underside of the heaven of this world, within which is
Adam, and the lowest of them is what the Prophet mentioned.
The levels of the generality of the felicitous are in the isthmus of the heaven of this
world in disparate degrees that are comprehended by one degree. The levels of the elect
among the felicitous are what he alludes to in the hadith of the Night Journey after mentioning
Adam, namely that Jesus is in the second [heaven], Joseph in the third, Idris in the fourth,
Aaron in the fifth, Moses in the sixth, and Abraham in the seventh—upon them all be peace.
Such is the situation of those who share with these prophets and those who inherit from them
completely—they have disparate degrees in these heavens.
This report from the Messenger is in terms of what he witnessed in one of his Night
Journeys, for it has been affirmed that the Prophet had thirty-four ascents [miʿrāj]. They have

1
See Qūnawī, Kitāb al-fukūk, p. 249.
2
Barahūt is often mentioned in Shi’ite hadiths and is typically said to be a wadi in Hadramawt into which will be
thrown the spirits of the unbelievers. I am guessing at the reading of the second word on the basis of the almost
identical orthography in the two manuscripts. The Āshtiyānī edition has Ḥillatayn (?). I could not trace either
word.
 32

been recounted and collected, and their transmissions have been affirmed, by Abū Nuʿaym al-
Iṣfahānī.
How can this state, however, be restricted to these seven prophets and exclude others?
It is clear that the messengers and prophets are many, and among them are those that are
perfect according to God’s knowledge-giving, like David, concerning whose vicegerency there
is a clear text; and others of the great prophets and envoys. So how should their isthmus levels
be entified after death, given that there are only the higher world and the lower world? The
low world is the locus of the entifications of the levels of the wretched in their diverse classes.
Hence it is established that the entifications of the levels of the prophets, the envoys, the
perfect among their inheritors, and the elect among the felicitous after death and before the
Mustering will be in the heavenly presences; and, the Prophet mentioned what he did because
of what was pointed out before, so it is like a sample of what was not mentioned. So
understand!
The Prophet had this specific vision pertaining to these seven [prophets] in that state
because of a correspondence in attributes, acts, or states, nothing else, like the situation with
John, given that sometimes he is with Jesus and sometimes with Aaron. This is only because of
something that demands his sharing with both. So ponder! You will be rightly guided, God
willing.

[19] An Emine nt Text

It is among the greatest of the texts.1
Know that the Real is Sheer Wujūd without any diversity within Him. He is one with a
true oneness that is not intellected as the contrary of manyness; its realization in itself and its
conception in sound, realized knowledge does not depend upon conceiving of an opposite. On
the contrary, it is fixed in itself; it affirms and is not affirmed [by any “others”]. We say
“oneness” to assert incomparability, to make understood, {and to add emphasis},2 not to
denote the notion of oneness as it is conceptualized by the minds of the veiled.
Now that you have recognized this, we say: From the standpoint of His mentioned
oneness and His disengagement [tajarrud] from loci of manifestation, from the descriptions
ascribed to Him in respect of these loci, and from His manifestation within them, He is not
perceived, encompassed, known, depicted, or described.
Whenever something is perceived in the entities and whenever any engendered thing
is witnessed, in whatever way man may perceive it and in whatever Presence witnessing
occurs—except the perception connected to the disengaged meanings and the realities in their

1
This text is also found in Miftāḥ al-ghayb, pp. 19-26.
2
Not found in the two manuscripts.
 33

unseen Presence by way of unveiling (which is why I said “in the entities,” that is, what is
perceived in any locus of manifestation whatsoever)—that perceived thing is colors [alwān],
lusters [aḍwāʾ], and surfaces [suṭūḥ], diverse in quality and disparate in quantity. Or, it is their
images, which become manifest in the world of images [ʿālam al-mithāl] conjoined [muttaṣil]
with man’s configuration or disjoined [munfaṣil] from him in a certain respect, 1 just as they are
in the external realm [al-khārij] or just as their individuals are in the external realm; the
manyness of all is sensory [maḥsūs], and the unity within it is intellibible [maʿqūl] or
conjectured [maḥdūs].
All of this is the rulings of Wujūd; or, you can say that it is the forms of the relations of
Its knowledge and Its requisite attributes in respect of Its linkage [iqtirān] with all existent
entities because of the mystery of Its manifestation within them, through them, for them, and
according to them—however you wish to put it. It is not Wujūd, for Wujūd is one, and It is not
perceived by anything in the respect that It differs from it, as was mentioned. For the One qua
One is not perceived by the many qua many, and vice versa. Nor is this perception correct for
man inasmuch as he is one with a true oneness, like the oneness of Wujūd.2 Rather, it is correct
for him only inasmuch as he is a reality described by wujūd, life, the inherence [qiyām] of
knowledge within him, the fixedness of correspondence between him and what he wishes to
perceive, and the removal of the obstacles preventing perception. Hence he perceives what he
perceives only in respect of his manyness, not in respect of his unity [aḥadiyya]. So, in respect
of himself, he cannot perceive that which has no manyness whatsoever, because of what was
mentioned.
This point has precious mysteries that I have mentioned in greater detail in my book
called Lifting the Curtain of Jealousy from the Mystery of Bewilderment.3 Also, in the midst of this
book will come additional clarification of what we have mentioned and described, God willing.
Now let us return to the completion of what we were busy with. We say: Wujūd in the
case of the Real is identical with His Essence, but for everything else, it is something added to
its reality.
The reality of each existent consists of the relation of its beginningless entification in
its Lord’s knowledge. In the terminology of the realizers among the Folk of God, it is named “a
fixed entity” [ʿayn thābita]; and, in the terminology of others, “a quiddity” [māhiyya], “the

1
On these two sorts of imagination, conjoined and disjoined, or contiguous and discontiguous, see Chittick, Sufi
Path of Knowledge, p. 117.
2
Notice that the meaning of the phrase waḥdat al-wujūd here, one of its earliest instances, does not coincide with
any of its later technical senses.
3
This work is not known to have survived.
 34

nonexistent known thing” [al-maʿlūm al-maʿdūm], “the fixed thing [al-shayʾ al-thābit],” and the
like.
In respect of the oneness of His Wujūd, nothing emerges from the Real except one,
because it is absurd for the One, inasmuch as He is one, to make manifest and give existence to
what is more than one. However, in our view that “one” is the general wujūd [al-wujūd al-ʿāmm]
effused [al-mufāḍ] upon the entities of the engendered things [al-mukawwanāt], both those that
have come into wujūd and those that have not yet come into wujūd but of whose wujūd the Real
has precedent knowledge. This wujūd is shared by the Supreme Pen, which is the first existent,
also named “the First Intellect,” and by the other existents. It is not as the folk of theory
among the philosophers mention, for, in the view of the realizers, there is nothing but the
Real, and the cosmos is nothing in addition to the realities known in the first place by God—as
we pointed out before—and qualified [muttaṣif] in the second place by wujūd.
It would be absurd for the realities—in the respect that they are known and their forms
are entified in the Essential, beginningless knowledge of the Real—to be “made” [majʿūl],
because of the absurdity of the inherence of newly arrived things in the Real’s Essence; the
absurdity of the Real being a container for or contained by something else; and because of
other corrupt ideas not hidden from the clear seer. Hence, in the view of the realizers among
the folk of unveiling and also of theory, He is not described by making [jaʿl], for the “made” is
the existent. When something has no wujūd, it is not made. Were it so, the eternal knowledge
would exert an influence upon the beginningless entification of the things known within itself,
even though they are not outside their knower, for they are nonexistent in themselves and
have no fixity save in the self of their knower.
So, if it were to be said that they are made, this would require either that they are
coextensive [musāwiq] with their Knower in wujūd, or that their Knower is a locus of receiving
influences from Himself in Himself and also a container for other than Himself, as was
mentioned. But all this is false, because it detracts from His utter oneness and demands that
the effused wujūd fall upon things that are existent rather than nonexistent. But all that is
absurd, for it would be to gain what is already there [taḥṣīl al-ḥāṣil], and in other ways as well,
but there is no need to draw this out by mentioning them. So understand! Thus it is affirmed
that, in respect of what we mentioned, [the realities] are not made. There are not two wujūds,
as was mentioned, but rather one wujūd shared by all of them, acquired [mustafād] from the
Real.
Now, this one wujūd that falls [ʿāriḍ] upon the created contingent things is no different
in reality from the Real, Nonmanifest Wujūd that is disengaged from the entities and loci of
manifestation, except through relations and standpoints, such as manifestation, entification,
 35

the plurality that comes through linkage, the reception of the ruling of sharing, and similar
descriptions that join up with It by means of the connection to the loci of manifestation.
The springhead of Wujūd’s loci of manifestation from the standpoint of Its linkage, the
Presence of Its self-disclosure, and the domicile of Its entification and Its coming down [tadallī]
is the Cloud [ʿamāʾ] mentioned by the Prophet.1 It is the station of the Lordly descent [tanazzul]
and the arising place [munbaʿath] of the Essential, All-Merciful munificence [jūd] from the
unseen He-ness [huwiyya] and the exalted Ipseity [inniyya]. In this Cloud becomes entified the
level of the First, Unseen, Covenantal2 Marriage [nikāḥ], which opens up the Presences of the
divine names through Essential, beginningless attentivenesses. We shall break the seal of the
key of its keys shortly, God willing.3
So, if you have understood, there are two standpoints on wujūd. One is inasmuch as It is
Wujūd alone, and that is the Real. In this respect, as was pointed out, within Him there is no
manyness, composition [tarkīb], attribute, depiction [naʿt], name, impression, relation, or
ruling—rather, mere Wujūd. And, our saying “Wujūd” is to make understood; this is not a true
name for Him. Rather, His name is identical with His attribute, and His attribute is identical
with His Essence. His perfection is the same as His Essential Wujūd, fixed for Him by Himself,
not by someone else. His life and His power are identical with His knowledge. His
beginningless knowledge of the things is identical with His knowledge of Himself, in the sense
that He knows Himself through Himself and knows everything through His very knowledge of
Himself, {for everything comes from His tasks in His Essence, so when He knows Himself
through all His tasks, He has known everything through His very knowledge of Himself}.4
In Him the diverse things are unified, and from Him the many things arise, without
their containing [ḥawāya] Him or His containing them; they do not make Him appear from a
prior nonmanifestation, nor does He set them apart from Himself so as to make them appear.
He has a oneness that is the source of every manyness, and a simplicity [basāṭa] that is identical
with every composition at last or at first. Whatever is contradictory [tanāquḍ] for something
else is fixed for Him in the most perfect way.

1
On the Cloud in Ibn ʿArabī, see Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge, pp. 125-27.
2
Reading illī, as in the two mss. (For Ibn ʿArabī’s use of this word, see Chittick, Self-Disclosure, pp. 233, 235).
Despite the fact that four of the manuscripts used in the preparation of the printed text of Miftāḥ al-ghayb (p. 11, n.
2) give illī in this passage (an unusual word and therefore less likely to be a copyist error), Khwājawī’s edition, like
the printed text of Nuṣūṣ, has azalī, “beginningless.”
3
The “breaking of the seal” is a reference to extensive later discussions of divine and cosmic marriage in Miftāḥ al-
ghayb, from which this text is taken, not to the rest of this passage. On marriage in this school of thought, see
Sachiko Murata, The Tao of Islam (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992), pp. 147-51
4
Not found in the manuscripts or in Miftāḥ al-ghayb.
 36

Whoever speaks of Him and not through Him, negating [nafy] from Him everything
dubious and restricting Him within what he perceives, will be a silent mute, a perplexed
ignoramus, until through Him he sees every opposite in its very opposite, or rather as identical
with it, while he distinguishes between its reality and Him. [He will see that] His oneness is
identical with His manyness, and His simplicity is the same as His composition. His
manifestation is the same as His nonmanifestation, and His lastness identical with His firstness.
He does not become restricted by what is understood from “oneness” or “wujūd,” nor is He
apprehended by a witnesser or in something witnessed. It belongs to Him to be as He has said
and to become manifest as He desires without restriction in nondelimitation or delimitation.
He has the meaning that encompasses every letter and the perfection that fully embraces
every description.
Whenever the beauty [ḥusn] of something is concealed from the veiled because of what
is imagined to be a stain and defect within it, once its leg is unveiled [68:42] such that the
correctness of its ascription to Him is perceived, the form of perfection will be found within it,
and it will be seen as a platform [minaṣṣa] for the self-disclosure of majesty [jalāl] and beauty
[jamāl].
All the names and attributes are many for Him in a oneness that is His very Entity. He
is not incomparable with what is fixed for Him, nor is He veiled from what He brings into
appearance so that it may be perfected. His veil, His exaltation [ʿizza], His independence, and
His holiness [quds] express His reality’s distinction from everything that is opposed to it, His
lack of connection with anything, and His lack of need for anything in the fixedness and
subsistence of His wujūd. Nothing has any realization through itself or anything else, only
through Him. So pay heed!
In this respect intellects and thoughts do not perceive Him, directions and regions do
not contain Him, and insight [baṣīra] and eyesight [baṣar] do not encompass the contemplation
and recognition of Him. He is incomparable with formal and supraformal limitations;
hallowed beyond the reception of every measurement connected with quantity or quality;
transcendent beyond encompassment by conjecture, understanding, supposition, and
knowledge; and veiled by the perfection of His exaltation from all His creatures, the perfect
among them and the defective, those who presume that they are approaching, and the
withdrawing.
All declarations of incomparability by intellects in respect of their thoughts and their
insights are negatory rulings that do not convey recognition of His reality; despite this, they
are less than what His majesty demands and His holiness and perfection rightfully deserve.
The fountainhead of the connection of His knowledge to the cosmos is from His very
knowledge of Himself. This connection becomes manifest through the manifestation of the
 37

relations of His knowledge, which are the things known by Him. He knows the infinite in
respect of encompassment in His knowledge and the fact that from Him everything emerges,
for He knows His Essence, the requisite of His Essence, and the requisite of the requisite—
together and individually, undifferentiatedly and differentiatedly—and so on ad infinitum.
When He entifies something, or He knows that something’s level will be entified by a condition
or a cause, He knows it with its condition, its cause, and its requisite—if He has precedent
knowledge of it and its entification. Otherwise, He knows it through Himself and how He wills.
Knowledge, however, does not come to Him newly, and no affair or ruling by which He would
be restricted becomes entified for Him.
His perfection is through Himself. His wujūd is actual, not potential; necessary, not
contingent. He is incomparable with known change or new arrival. Newly arrived things do
not contain Him so as to make Him appear or to keep Him safe. He does not engender them
because of needing something other than Himself, nor because the things are tied [irtibāṭ] to
Him in respect of what becomes entified from Him. He is not tied to them in respect of their
distinction from Him through their plurality. The wujūd they have for themselves depends
[tawaqquf] upon Him, but He does not depend upon them.
He is independent of everything through His reality,1 and everything is poor [muftaqir]
toward Him in its wujūd. There is no relation between Him and the things save solicitude, as
was mentioned. There is no veil but ignorance, obscurity, and imagination because of His
utmost nearness and closeness and the excess of His exaltation and highness.
In reality His solicitude is the effusion of the light of His wujūd upon what is reflected in
the mirror of His Entity—the relations that are known by Him—and prepared for the reception
of the ruling of His existence-giving and being His locus of manifestation.
Glory be to Him! “Nothing is as His likeness” in the first respect, “but He is the Hearing, the
Seeing” [42:11] in the second respect: When He is perceived or witnessed, when He addresses
or is addressed, this is from behind the veil of His exaltation and the aforementioned level of
Himself; [it takes place] through the relation of His being the Manifest and through the ruling
of His self-disclosure in the domicile of His coming down [tadallī] in respect of the linkage of
His complete wujūd to the contingent things and the shining of His light upon the entities of
the existents. It is nothing other than this.
In this respect, when the entification of His wujūd is looked upon as delimited by the
attributes requisite to all the entified contingent entities, which are in reality the relations of
His knowledge, together and individually; [as delimited] by what follows upon these attributes,
that is, the affairs named “tasks, characteristics, and accidents;” [as delimited] by the
influences that follow upon the rulings of the name Aeon [al-dahr] called “moments” [awqāt];

1
Not found in the two manuscripts but present in the text of Miftāḥ al-ghayb.
 38

and [as delimited] by the levels and homesteads; then that entification and individuation
[tashakhkhuṣ] is named “creature” [khalq] and “other” [siwā]. You will recognize the secret of
this shortly, God willing.
Then every description is ascribed to Him and He is named by every name. He becomes
manifest in every impression, He receives every ruling, He becomes delimited in every station
by every impression, and He is perceived by every means of awareness [mashʿar], whether
eyesight, hearing, intellect, understanding, or any other of the potencies [quwā] and
perceptual means [madārik]. So remember, and know! This is because He pervades everything
through His Essential Light, hallowed beyond partition [tajazziʾ], division [inqisām], and
indwelling [ḥulūl] in spirits and bodies. So understand! But all of this when He loves and how
He wills.
In every moment and state, He receives these two mentioned universal, opposite
[mutaḍādd] rulings by His Essence, not by something added to It. He comprehends every two
diverse things, whether absent or present, emerging or entering. If He wills, He becomes
manifest in every form, and if He does not will, no form is ascribed to Him. His entification and
individuation in forms and His being qualified by their attributes do not detract from the
perfection of His wujūd, His exaltation, and His holiness. His becoming manifest, His making
manifest, His entification, His delimitation1 in and through the things and their rulings as they
are, do not preclude His elevation, His nondelimitation by any limitations, and His
independence in His Essence from everything that is described by wujūd. Rather, through the
self-disclosure of His wujūd He comprehends the realities that are similar to each other but
different, so they combine, and those that are averse to each other and incompatible, so they
stay apart.2
Through the self-disclosure of His wujūd hidden things become manifest and blessings
descend from the Unseen to the Visible in respect of His names Expander [bāsiṭ] and Originator
[mubdiʾ]. By the lifting of the ruling of His coming down, the existents become hidden and
cease to exist, through the names Contracter [qābiḍ] and Returner [muʿīd]. When He is veiled
by His exaltation, He is “the Forgiver;” and when He loves to be known, He comes down and
becomes manifest in whatever He wills just as He wills, so He is “the Loving” [al-wadūd]. As
Lover [muḥibb] He makes appear through love [maḥabba], and it makes Him appear; and
through it as Lover and Beloved He makes return. Everything is in His grasp and subjugated

1
In Miftāḥ al-ghayb, the text reads, “the making manifest of His entification and delimitation,” which eliminates a
certain awkwardness in what we have it here.
2
Qūnawī probably has in mind the hadith, “Spirits are assembled troops. Those acquainted with one another
become familiar, and those not acquainted keep apart."
 39

under the strength of His hold because of the strength of His act and the weakness of what is
acted upon.
The locus of manifestation for His power, the instrument of His wisdom in His acting by
His wont [sunna], the locus of manifestation for the mystery of contraction and expansion,
making appear and making hidden, the Unseen and the Visible, and unveiling along with the
formal, relative veil through which He acts as mentioned—not in an unqualified sense—is His
splendorous Throne. This is why He says, making apparent the mystery of this affair for him
who has a heart or gives ear while he is a witness [50:37], “Surely thy Lord’s hold is severe. Surely it is He
who originates and makes return. He is the Forgiver, the Loving, the Possessor of the Splendorous Throne,
Doer of what He desires” [85:12-16] in the two levels of nondelimitation and delimitation. His
words, “Doer of what He desires,” are the answer to a supposed question, known to appear from a
veiled protester.

[20] An Emine nt Te xt
Which is the Last of the Texts
The greatest of obfuscations and veils is the pluralities that occur in the One Wujūd by
reason of the influences of the fixed entities upon It. It is imagined that the entities have
become manifest in wujūd and through wujūd, but only their influences have become manifest
in wujūd. They have not become manifest, nor will they ever become manifest, because by
essence they do not demand manifestation.
Whenever a realizer reports something other than this, or he ascribes to them wujūd
and manifestation, that report is in the tongue of one of the levels and the relative tastings. In
other words, its correctness is affirmed relative to a designated station, or certain specific
stations, below the station of perfection. As for the text whose ruling will never be abrogated,
that is what we have mentioned. So also is everything I mentioned in this book, for it is the
explicit truth of the actual situation. Anything else may be correct in an unqualified way, like
what we just mentioned, or correct in relation and connection to a certain station, as was
pointed out.
When what I have mentioned in this text becomes clear to you, you will know that
manifestation belongs to wujūd, but on condition of plurality along with the influences of the
entities within it. Nonmanifestation is an essential attribute of the entities, and also of wujūd
in respect of the intellection of Its oneness. The affair circles between manifestation and
nonmanifestation through domination and being dominated over. In other words, what is
diminished [naqṣ] from the manifest is incorporated [indirāj] into the manifest, and vice versa.
The relations and ascriptions are the forms of the states and rulings that are configured among
 40

the levels. Some manifest others, and some too hide others, according to the mentioned
predominance and being predominated over. So understand!
Completed is The Texts: The Keys to the Fuṣūṣ.