Praise be to God [alone], Who has revealed to His servant the Book: God, exalted be He, praises Himself by the tongue of differentiation in consideration of the union insofar as He is described as revealing the Book which incorporates the meaning of the union into the form of the differentiation. Hence He is the Praiser and the Praised at the level of differentiation and that of union. Praise is the manifestation of the divine perfections and the attributes of beauty and majesty upon the Muḥammadan essence considered from the perspective of the ascension after singling him out for Himself by [His] pre-eternal solicitude alluded to in the genitive construction in His saying ‘[to] His servant’ (ʿabdihi). That [singling out] entailed making his [Muḥammad’s] entity pre-eternally receptive to nondelimited perfection from His effusion and the depositing of the all-comprehensive Book in him in potentiality, which is the perfect preparedness. The revealing to him of the Book is the exteriorisation of these realities from what lies latent^{1Read makman here instead of mumkin, since what follows (al-kāmina fī ghayb al-ghayb) suggests this. In reality the two significations are very close.} within the union of the [inclusive] unity onto that human locus of manifestation. In reality the two are reflections of each other when considering the descent, the ascension and the sending down [of the revelation] as praise from God, exalted be He, to His Prophet, since the significations that are latent in the unseen of the Unseen, that which has not been revealed to his heart, he is not able to praise God in the way that He ought to be praised and so what God has not praised does not praise God, but His praise praises Him, as he [the Prophet] said, ‘I cannot enumerate praise of You in the way that You praise Yourself’. First, He praised Himself at the source of the union, considered from the point of view of differentiation, then reflected that by saying, ‘Praise be to God’; and He has not allowed for him, that is, for His servant, any crookedness, that is to say, any deviation or inclination to the other, as He has said [elsewhere]: The eye did not deviate, nor did it go beyond [the bounds] [Q. 53:17]. In other words, he [Muḥammad] did not see the other during his presential vision.

[a servant] upright, that is, He made him upright as he was commanded in His words: so remain upright as you have been commanded [Q. 11:112]. The meaning [of this] is that He made him an affirmer of the Oneness, annihilated in Him, not veiled in his presential vision by the other, nor by his own soul — since this too constitutes a contingent other, but upright in the state of subsistence, as He has said: Truly those who say, ‘Our Lord is God!’ and then remain upright [Q. 41:30]. Or [it means] that He has made him the sustainer (qayyim) of the affairs of [His] servants and of their guidance, since perfection is contingent upon perfectedness, for he [the Prophet], blessings and peace be upon him, having finished making his soul upright (taqwīm) and cleansing it, the souls of his community were assigned the station (maqām) of his soul and so he was commanded to make these upright and to cleanse them. It is for the same signification that Abraham, may God’s blessings be upon him, was called ‘a community [unto himself]’ [cf. Q. 16:120]. This capacity to make [others] upright, that is, to sustain the guidance of people is subsumed by the very uprightness to which he has been commanded in reality, to warn: this [verb] is connected to the [grammatical] operator (ʿāmil) of qayyiman (‘upright’): in other words, He has charged him with the [making upright of the] affairs of servants in order that he should warn, of severe distress: the omission of the first direct object is intended to express generality because no one, neither believer nor unbeliever, is exempt from distress, as God, exalted be He, has said: ‘Warn the sincere righteous that I am a jealous One and give good tidings to sinners that I am Forgiving’. For distress represents His vanquishing, which is why He has aggrandised it by the use of the indefinite [form] — in other words, [warn them of] a distress that befits His tremendousness and His might — [and why] He has qualified this [distress] with [the term] ‘severe’ and specified it by saying that it is: from Him. Vanquishing is of two kinds. One kind is pure vanquishing, outer and inner vanquishing, such as the one that specifically afflicts those who are veiled by idolatrous association. Another kind is vanquishing in its outer [manifest] aspect but graciousness in its inner [hidden] aspect. Such is [divine] graciousness, as the Commander of the Believers, ʿAlī [b. Abī Ṭālib], peace be upon him, said: ‘Glory be to Him whose disfavour towards His enemies is severe just as His grace is all-embracing and whose mercy towards His friends is all-embracing just as His disfavour remains severe’. An example of the latter type is the vanquishing that is specific to the affirmers of Oneness from among the people of annihilation. He has given the warning to all in a nondelimited way in order to alert [all], but then differentiated between grace and vanquishing by making them dependent on attributes and merit, hence He says: and to bring good tidings to the believers, that is, the affirmers of Oneness, since they constitute the counterpart to the idolaters who said that God had taken to Himself a son, who perform righteous deeds, that is, the enduring good deeds and virtues because the fair reward pertains to the garden of effects and acts which is merited by deeds. Know also that the warning and the good tidings, both of which belong to the perfection that is concomitant of his [the Prophet’s] being watcher (qayyim) over the two [groups], are the effect and result of the two divine attributes of vanquishing and graciousness the locus of preparedness for the reception of which within the soul of a servant are wrath and passionate desire. For the servant only prepares to receive these [divine attributes] by means of the two attributes of [his] wrath and passionate desire and their annihilation, just as he is only prepared for the two virtues of courage and self-restraint when those attributes are present: when these [wrath and passionate desire] are annihilated, the two [divine attributes] take their place, because each of the two is the shadow of one of those two [divine attributes] and disappears with their actualisation. Thus when the heart has imbibed these two [divine attributes] and the assumption of them as character traits has been perfected there ensues from vanquishing the warning, upon the meriting of the locus as a result of disbelief and idolatry and [there ensues] from graciousness the good tidings, upon the meriting by means of faith and righteous deeds, since effusion only takes place when the locus has acquired the meriting [of it].

They do not have, in this any knowledge, nor did their fathers: in other words, they have no knowledge regarding that claim [about God having a son], rather it issues from extreme ignorance and [blind] imitation of their fathers and not from any knowledge or certainty, a fact which is reinforced by His words: Dreadful is the word, in other words, how great [in injustice] is that statement, that comes out of their mouths: in their hearts there can be no such meaning, since it is impossible and has no meaning. For certain knowledge testifies that the sublime necessary existence is unique in essence and cannot be likened to defective contingent existence. A son is the like of his father in terms of species and his equal in terms of strength. But presential vision of the essence stipulates that creation will be annihilated in the Truth and the effect in the Witnessed, whereupon there will be nothing there except Him and no other, let alone [that there should be] a like or a son, as one of them has said:

‘In this existence, even if outwardly it as well as your life should be multitudinous outwardly, there is only you’.

They speak nothing but lies, since rational proof and the consciousness of the tasting in the presential vision are both in accord on the impossibility of that.

Yet it may be that you will consume, destroy, your soul, because of the intensity of the ecstasy [?] and grief over their turning away and rejection, and that is because compassion for God’s creatures and mercifulness towards them is one of the concomitants and results of the love of God. And since he [Muḥammad], may God bless him and grant him peace, was the beloved of God, and one of the concomitants of his being beloved [by Him] was his love of God — as in His saying whom He loves and who love Him [Q. 5:54] and the stronger his love for the Truth, the greater his compassion and mercifulness towards His creatures, since compassion towards them constituted the shadow of his love of God — so his sympathy for them was great, for they are [to him] as his children and his kin, nay, as his organs and limbs in the real presential vision, which is why he was extremely grief-stricken over them, so much so that he almost destroyed himself; and so he also realised that when a lover fortifies himself with his Beloved through the continuing effort to [achieve] arrival [at knowledge of God], the acceptance of Him becomes manifest in the hearts by virtue of God’s love of him [the Prophet]. Hence when they failed to believe in the Qurʾān, he [the Prophet] became conscious of a remnant of his soul and sensed a deficiency in his state whereupon he was overcome by ecstasy and resolved to vanquish his soul totally in pursuit of that goal. That was because of his extreme compassion for them and his perfect manners before God, for he attributed their non-belief to the weakness of his state and not to the lack of preparedness on their part, which is why He then gave him solace with the words:

Truly We have made, in other words, do not be grieved by them, for it is none of your concern if they should all be destroyed. We bring forth all causes from non-existence into existence in order to try [mankind] and then annihilate these without any injustice or diminution. Or [it means] We have made all that is on the earth of the body in the way of the soul, its pleasures and passionate desires, and the faculties of its attributes, its perceptions and exigencies, as an adornment, for it, so that it might become manifest who is the strongest in vanquishing it and disobeying its vain desires in seeking to please Me and who is most capable in opposing it in order to be in accord with Me.

And indeed We shall turn, by means of Our self-disclosure and the self-disclosure of Our attributes, all that is therein, in the way of its attributes, lifeless, like a level land without vegetation. In other words, We shall annihilate it and its attributes through real death or through natural death and We shall not be concerned thereby. Nay:

or did you think that the Companions of the Cave and the Inscription were a [unique] marvel from among Our signs? In other words, if you have witnessed such origination and annihilation, then the state of the Companions of the Cave is not a marvel from among Our signs. Rather this [origination and annihilation] is more marvelous. Know that the Companions of the Cave are the perfect seven,^{1According to Ibn ʿArabī, “perfect man possesses two kinds of perfection, one related to his essential reality as a form of God, and the other to the various attributes and qualities which he manifests in his specific functions in this world and the next” (Chittick 1989: 366). In respect of that ‘essential’ perfection, perfect man manifests the all-comprehensive name Allāh. In respect of his, other, ‘accidental’ perfection he manifests perfections of knowledge and character the origin of which goes back to an individual name of God; cf. I. Goldziher (H. J. Kissling), ‘Abdāl’, EI2, I, 94; also Hussein La-Shay’ (tr. Farzin Negahban), ‘Abdāl’, EIs, I, 303.} those who always uphold the command of the Truth, the ones through whom the world is sustained and of whom no age is [ever] devoid. [Their number] is the same as and corresponds to the number of the planets, the seven orbiting ones. And just as God, exalted be He, has disposed these to manage the order of the world of form, as alluded to in His words, By those that race forward, and by those that direct the affair [Q. 79:4-5], according to some commentaries, so He delegated [the management of] the order of the world of meaning and the perfecting of the order of [the world of] form to seven souls from among the former [generations], each one of whom is related, in accordance with formal existence, to one of these [planets]. The pole (quṭb) belongs to the sun; the Cave is the inner aspect of the body, while al-Raqīm (‘inscription’) is its outer aspect, which has been engraved with the forms of the senses and organs — if it is to be explained as [referring to] the [Preserved] Tablet wherein their names have been inscribed (ruqqimat); or [al-Raqīm is] the corporeal world, if [al-Raqīm is] taken to be the name of the valley wherein lies the mountain and [its] cave; or [it represents] the animal soul, if [al-Raqīm is] taken to be the name of the dog; or [it represents] the upper world, if [al-Raqīm is] takent to be the name of the town from which they came, [all of these interpretations] being in accordance with the varying opinions of the commentaries. Among these [seven souls] are the seven well-known prophets that were sent during the [various] generations and eras, even though each of these prophets followed a [separate] Remembrance. They are Adam, Enoch (Idrīs), Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus as well as Muḥammad, blessings and peace be upon them, since he [Muḥammad] is the seventh one, the one designated for the miracle of the splitting of the moon [cf. Q. 54:1],^{2See Kāshānī’s commentary at Q. 54:1.} that is to say, [the miracle of] its being cleft from him because of his having appeared in the period of the sealing of prophethood and [because] through him the divine religion has been perfected, as alluded to by him in his statement: ‘Time has come full circle back to how it was the day God created the heavens and the earth’. For the one who comes at the later stages in terms of time and manifestation, that is, [in terms of] sensory existence, is the one who secures the attributes of the All and their perfections, much like the human in relation to all the other animals. That is why he said, ‘It is as though the edifice of prophethood is complete except for a single brick the space for which still remains. I am that brick’. The divine sages of ancient Persia were all of the view that in terms of the descending order, the irradations of the levels of intellects and spirits, according to their school of thought, intensify, such that the later the level the more ample and the greater that share of the irradiations of the Truth, [of] His lights and [of] the august glories of His countenance and [of] the irradiations of the lights of intermediaries. Likewise is the case with [order in terms of] time. Thus he is the one who combines and encompasses the attributes of the All and their perfections, the one who comprises their specific qualities and their meanings in addition to the perfection that is specific to him and concomitant of the configuration of all-comprehensiveness, just as he [himself] said, ‘I was sent to complete the noble character traits’. From this becomes his precedence over them [the other prophets] in terms of honour and merit is apparent and considered from the aspect that Abraham, peace be upon him, was the locus for the manifestation of the Essential and Greatest affirmation of Oneness and the middle one in chronological sequence, being equal to the station of the sun in terms of [his] level, he was also the pole of prophethood and all [of the prophets] were obliged to follow him even if he was not manifest for those who came after him chronologically, [this] being similar to the connectedness of the six planets to its [the sun’s] orbit, but not like the moon. Thus in reality Muḥammad, may God bless him and grant him peace, followed him. Know that the spirits have designated levels in their world and ranks according to a hierarchy as well as varying preparednesses configured from pre-eternity as result of the pure original solicitude and holiest effusion. Thus those of the first rank are the foremost, the isolated individuals who are brought near, the beloved ones who are singled out for His solicitude and His preceding generosity, who recognise one another by His light and love one another through Him. The rest [of those spirits] differ in degrees and recognise or do not recognise one another in accordance with the proximity or distance between these [degrees]. Accordingly, those [spirits] that recognise one another become familiar with one another and those that do not recognise one another differ, all the way [down] to the last of the ranks. Thus these [spirits] have fixed points and firm roots in the upper world. So, upon their attachment to bodies, the degrees of their perfections [necessarily] and the goals of their felicities vary in accordance with the capital each [spirit] possesses in the way of its initial preparedness, the one specific to it from its point of origin since pre-eternity, as he [the Prophet], blessings and peace be upon him, said, ‘People are like ores, such as gold and silver ores’. [Thus continue the degrees of rank] until the degrees in terms of loftiness terminate with annihilation in the affirmation of the Oneness of the Essence. Considered thus then, Muḥammad, peace be upon him, is the very entity of Adam, nay, the very entity of all of the seven [souls]. Similarly, considering that he [Muḥammad] is the one who combines [all of] their attributes — as related in the case of Abū Yazīd [Basṭāmī], may God’s mercy be upon him, who when asked, ‘Are you among the seven?’, said, ‘I am [all of] the seven’ — and considering the loftiness of his level and his station, his eternal precedence and the high degree of his perfection and merit, he [Muḥammad] is the most eternal, the first and the most excellent of all of them, as he himself once said, ‘The first thing that God created was my light and I was a prophet while Adam was still water and clay’. Consequently, he precedes them in terms of level, loftiness, honour and merit, succeeding them [only] in terms of time. He is them from the point of view of the mystery and essential unity with the result that their differing and varying spirits, hearts and souls does not contradict their being one in reality. Likewise, their separation in time does not contradict their togetherness from pre-eternity to eternity and at the source of the union, just as He has said Those messengers some We have preferred above others [Q. 2:253] but also said we make no distinction between any of them [Q. 3:84].

It is also possible that by ‘the Companions of the Cave’ is meant the spiritual aspects of man, those that subsist after the decay of the body. As for the statement of those who said ‘they were three’, that is an allusion to the spirit, the intellect and the heart, while the dog represents the soul that adheres to the entrance of the cave. As for those who said ‘they were five’, that is an allusion to the spirit, the heart, the considerative intellect, the practical intellect and the holy faculty that belongs to prophets, which for others is [the faculty of] reflection. As for those who said ‘they were seven’, then those five in addition to the mystery and concealment. But God knows best.

When the youths took refuge in the Cave, that is, the Cave of the body by becoming attached to it; they said, by the tongue of [their] state: ‘Our Lord! Give us from Yourself, that is, from the storehouses of Your mercy, which are Your Most Beautiful Names, mercy, perfection that corresponds to our preparedness and is entailed by it, and remedy for us our affair, one in which we find ourselves separated from the upper world and plunged down to the lower world to seek perfection, by way of rectitude’, as a way of being upright before You by wayfaring along Your path and orienting ourselves to Your Side. In other words, they sought [from God] cognitive and practical perfection by corporeal conjunction and attachment to the instruments and causes of perfection.

So We smote their ears, that is, We put them to sleep the sleep of obliviousness to their world and their perfection, a heavy sleep from which neither a sentry’s whistle nor the call of a summoner with news arouses them, in the Cave of the body, for years, numerous, that is, many [years] or a [specific] number [of years], that is to say, a few, being the period of their immersion in the governing of the body and their being engulfed in the sea of physical nature, preoccupied with it, oblivious to what lies beyond it of their world until the time [arrives] of the attaining of true maturity and of voluntary or natural death, as has been said, ‘Mankind are asleep: at death, they awaken’.

Then We sent them forth, We aroused them from the sleep of obliviousness by their rising from the lying-place of the body and by their knowledge of God and their disengaged souls, that We might know, that is, so that Our knowledge might become manifest in them as loci of manifestation or in the loci of manifestation of others from among all people [as to], which of the two parties, that differed regarding the duration of their tarrying [in the Cave] and [regarding] the calculating of its end, whether those who specified the period of time or those who left the knowledge of that to God [were the better of the two]. For people differ over the period of occultation (ghayba). Some say that one of them emerges every one thousand years, which amounts to a year with God, because of His statement: And truly a day with your Lord is like a thousand years of your counting [Q. 22:47]. Some say every seven hundred years or every one hundred years, which is part of a day, as they said: we have tarried a day, or part of day [Q. 18:19]. But the verifiers, who are correct, are the ones who leave the knowledge thereof to God, like those who said Your Lord knows best how long you have tarried [Q. 18:19], which is why the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, did not specify the moment of the appearance of the Mahdī, peace be upon him, and said, ‘They are liars, those who [are given to] specify the moment [of his appearance]’.

They were indeed youths who believed in their Lord, a cognitive faith of certainty by means of inference or unveiling, and We increased them in guidance, that is, [with] a guiding that helps [them] to arrive at the source of certainty and the station of witnessing through divine assistance.

And We fortified their hearts: We strengthened them by causing them to endure the [spiritual] struggle with patience and We gave them courage to wage war against Satan, to resist the soul, to abandon corporeal familiars, sensory pleasures and to uphold the word of the affirmation of [His] Oneness, to deny the divinity of vain desire and to reject the worship of the idol of the body before the tyrant that is the commanding soul, without any concern for it, when it [that tyrannical soul] rebuked them for refraining from the worship of the deity of vain desire and the idol of the body and threatened them with poverty and ruin. For [indeed] the soul is given to call to the worship of that [false deity] and to being in accord therewith and to preparing the means for [the actualisation of] its [that deity’s] shares, [the soul] also being given to incite fear in the heart of fear [itself] and of death. Or [it means] that We emboldened them to uphold the word of the affirmation of [His] Oneness and to make manifest the upright religion and to call to the Truth in the presence of every tyrant, who [in this case] was Docianus,^{1Emperor Domitian (Titus Flavius Domitianus), who reigned 81-96 CE.} whose moment was like that of Nimrod, Pharaoh and Abū Jahl and their ilk from among those who followed their religion and over whom the commanding soul had acquired mastery so that they ended up worshipping vain desire, or those who, out of their insolence and the rebelliousness of their I-ness and their belligerence, claimed lordship without any concern, when he [the tyrant] rebuked them for abandoning the worship of a given idol, as was the habit of some of them, or [for abandoning the worship of] the idol of his own soul, just as the accursed Pharaoh said: I do not know of any god for you other than me [Q. 28:38] and ‘I am your most high lord!’ [Q. 79:24].

These, our people: an allusion to the commanding soul and its faculties. For every people have a deity whom they worship, [that deity] being what they desire and seek, and the soul worships vain desire, as in where He says: Have you then seen him who has taken as his god his [own] vain desire [Q. 45:23]. Or [it is an allusion] to the people who lived at the time when each of them had gone forth summoning to God, since whoever cleaves to something which he desires then he worships it. Why [if what they claim is true] do they not bring regarding them, that is, regarding their worship of them, their divinity, their effect and their existence, some clear warrant?, some clear proof: this is an indication of the corrupted nature of [their] practice and a rebuke to the effect that to establish a proof for the divinity of something other than God or for the effect and existence of such [a thing] is impossible, as He Himself has said: These are nothing but names which you have named, you and your fathers. God has not revealed any warrant for them [Q. 53:23]. In other words, these [things] are mere names without objects named [by those names], since they are nothing [in reality].

And when you withdraw from them, that is, [when] you keep yourselves apart from your souls and their faculties by means of disengagement, and from that which they worship except God, in the way of their wishes and vain desires, then take refuge in the Cave, in the body, in order to deploy the corporeal instruments for the seeking of perfection by means of forms of knowledge and [righteous] deeds and be forsaken therein, broken and tamed, as if dead, by avoiding ego-centric movements, bestial whims and predatorial assaults. In other words, die a voluntary death: Your Lord will reveal for you something of His mercy, a true life through knowledge and gnosis, and prepare for you in your affair some comfort’, some perfection which can be benefited from, by the manifestation of qualities of excellence and the rising of the lights of self-disclosures, so that you might take pleasure in the witnessings and enjoy perfections, as God says: Why, is he who was dead, and We gave him life, and appointed for him a light by which to walk among people [Q. 6:122]. And he [the Prophet], peace be upon him, said of Abū Bakr, may God be satisfied with him, ‘Whoever wants to behold a dead person walking upon the face of the earth, let him behold Abū Bakr’: in other words, one who is dead to himself, walking by means of God. Or [it means] when you withdraw from your people and their objects of worship that are other than God in the way of their differing demands, disparate goals, myriad vain desires and adopted idols, then take refuge in the Caves of your bodies and refrain from curious movements and from going forth in the footsteps of passionate desires; but cleave to acts of spiritual discipline and your Lord will reveal from His mercy an extra perfection, a strengthening and assistance by means of resources from the angelic realm and holy reinforcements, and He will grant you victory over them and prepare for you a religion and a way from which you can benefit as well as an acceptance so that creatures will find guidance through you to salvation.

In [their] taking refuge in the cave upon separating [from their people] there is another mystery that can be understood as the entry into the cave of the Mahdī when he has emerged and Jesus has descended. But God knows best. And in the revealing of a mercy [from God] and the preparation of a comfort in their affair upon the taking refuge in the cave there is an allusion to the fact that the mercy that is latent within their preparedness is only revealed upon their corporeal attachment and perfection through the configurations thereof.

And you might have seen the sun, that is, the sun of the spirit, when it rose, that is, when it rose [in rank] by means of disengagement from the coverings of the body and [when] it emerged manifest from its [the body’s] horizons, inclining with them from the direction of the body, its [the spirit’s] inclination and love being for the direction of the right, that is to say, the side of the holy world and the path of pious deeds such as acts of goodness, of merit, of virtue and obedience, the conduct of the pious, for the pious are the companions of the right; and when it set, that is, [when] it hurtles down into the abyss of the body and becomes veiled therein and disappears into its darknesses and recesses so that its light is extinguished, it crosses over them and leaves them while they remain on the left, that is to say, [on] the side of the soul and the path of evil deeds so that they become engrossed in acts of disobedience, misdeeds, evil and vices and [follow] the conduct of the profligate who are the companions of the left, while they were in a cavern therein, that is, in a wide space within their body which is the station of the soul and physical nature. For therein is an expanse in which the light of the spirit does not fall on them. Know also that the side of the heart that is adjacent to the spirit is a spot illumined by the light of the spirit and is called the intellect; it is this that summons to good and paves the way to heavenly inspiration. The side [of the heart] that is adjacent to the soul is dark because of the darkness of its attributes and is called the breast; this is the locus for the evil whisperings of Satan, as He has said who whispers in the breasts of mankind [Q. 114:5]. But when the spirit stirs and the heart turns its face to it, it [the heart] becomes illumined, is strengthened by the rational faculty that summons to, and causes yearning for, perfection and inclines to good and obedience. Yet if the soul stirs and the heart turns its face to it, it [the heart] is sullied and is veiled from the light of the spirit, while the intellect becomes dark and inclines to evil and disobedience. And in both states the angel turns to inspiration and satan to evil whisperings and they mix a righteous deed with an evil one. There is in the verse a subtlety, which is that He uses [the verb] ‘to incline away’ (izwirār) from the cave in the context of inclining to good and in the context of inclining to evil [He uses the verb] ‘cut across’ (qaraḍa). That is because the spirit conforms with the heart along the path of good and commands it thereto and accords therewith, turning away from the side of the body and what this [side] conforms with, not according with it along the path of evil. Rather it cuts across it and separates from it while it is engrossed in the darknesses of the soul and those attributes of it that veil it from the light. This is an allusion to variegation in wayfaring. For as long as the wayfarer has not reached the station of fixity and remains in variegation, the soul manifests itself on him together with his attributes so that he becomes veiled from the light of the spirit before returning once again. That, namely, the rising of the light of the spirit and its disappearance, is of God’s signs, [the signs] through which the way is found and through which one arrives at Him and His guidance. Whomever God guides, by making him arrive at the station of the witnessing and granting him fixity therein, he indeed is rightly guided, in truth and in no other way, and whomever He leads astray, by veiling him from the light of His countenance, then there will be no one to guide him or direct him [to the right path]. Or it means, and whomever God guides to them [the youths of the cave] and to the truth of their state [is truly guided], and whomever He leads astray, He will veil him from [the truth of] their state.

And you would have supposed them awake, O you who is being addressed, on account of their eyes being open, their senses functioning and their voluntary animal movements, though they were asleep, in reality, in the slumber of obliviousness, with you seeing them [as though] looking at you while they are not in fact perceiving. And We caused them to turn over to the right and to the left, that is to say, at times We turn them towards the aspect of goodness and pursuit of qualities of excellence, and at others, towards the aspect of evil and what nature entails, and their dog, that is, their soul, [lay] stretching its forelegs, that is, with its irascible and appetitive faculties^{1These are the two basic powers of the animal soul that ensure its ability to face danger and to fight for its survival.} unrolled, on the threshold, that is, in the courtyard of the body. He did not say, ‘and their dog [lay] asleep’, since it [their soul] did not sleep but stretched forth its twin faculties across the courtyard of the body, adhering to the latter and not parting with it. The right foreleg represents anger, since it is stronger, nobler and more receptive to the exigencies of the heart when it comes to the edification of it. The left one represents passionate desire (shahwa) on account of its weaker nature and its baseness. If you had observed them, that is, [observed] their disengaged realities and their brilliant states and the luminosity and brilliance which He has deposited in them and the might and splendour with which He has garbed them, you would have turned away from them, fleeing for your lack of belief in disengaged souls and their states and for your lack of preparedness to receive their perfections; or [it means] you would have turned away from them in order to flee from them and from their interactions (muʿāmalāt) on account of your inclination to sensory pleasures and matters of nature; and you would have been filled with awe because of them, [in awe] of their states and spiritual acts of self-discipline; or [it means] had you observed them after the arrival at perfection and [had you observed] their innermost secrets and their stations in the unity, you would have kept away from them and would have fled from their states and you would have been filled with awe of them because of the extent to which God has garbed them with His tremendousness and magnificence: and how, I ask you, can the temporally originated (ḥadath) compare with the eternal (qidam) and how can nonexistence (ʿadam) encompass existence (wujūd)!

And thus it was that We aroused them, meaning, just like that real arousal and spiritual revival did We arouse them, that they might question one another, that is, that they might seek [to discover] among one another the significations deposited in their preparednesses, the truths hidden within their essences, that they might become perfected by exteriorising these and bringing them out into actuality, which is the beginning of attentiveness, what the Sufis call vigilance (yaqaẓa). One of them said, ‘How long have you tarried?’: the interpretation of this has already been given, and it is the verifiers among them who were: They, who, said, ‘Your Lord knows best how long you have tarried. Now send one of you with this silver coin of yours to the city: this was the time of their coming to perceive, their gaining [of knowledge] and their perfection. The silver coin represents the principle forms of knowledge which they posssessed and which are not acquired, since it is through these [forms of knowledge] that mental truths are gained from the forms of true knowledge and [from] divine gnoses. The city represents is the locus for the coming together (ijtimāʿ), for companionship and training are unavoidable; or [it represents] the city of knowledge, as per his statement, peace be upon him, ‘I am the city of knowledge and ʿAlī is its gate’. As for the fact that they only sent one of them, that is because the perfection of all is not dependent upon instruction and learning. Nay, the more noble perfection is that of knowledge. And so it suffices for one to gain knowledge in place of the group and to [then] alert the remainder, as God, exalted be He, says: Why should not a party of every section of them go forth so that they may become learned in religion and that they may warn their folk when they return to them [Q. 9:122] and let him see which is the purest food, which of its inhabitants is the most goodly and most excellent in terms of knowledge and purer than meddlesomeness, idle talk and superficial things (ẓawāhir) such as the art of contradiction and disputation and the like by which the soul cannot become stronger nor perfect itself, as in His saying neither nourishing nor availing against hunger. For knowledge is the nourishment of the heart, as food is for the body, and it is the true divine provision [Q. 88:7]. Let him be careful, when choosing the food [to buy] and the people to buy from, that is to say, let him choose the verifier with the pure soul, the one rightly-guided in his way, excellent in conduct, unpolluted in his inner heart (sarīra), the perfect and perfecting one, and not the meddling, superficial (ẓahirī), evil soul, who feigns knowledge and informs of what he does not possess, so that he [the former] might profit from his companionship and manifest his perfection by sitting with him and acquire perception through his knowledge and then in turn benefit us. Or: let him be careful in this matter lest an ignorant one become aware of your [spiritual] state and your [true] religion inadvertently; and [let him] not make anyone, from the veiled exotericists (ahl al-ẓāhir) or those deniers who dwell in the world of nature, aware of you. If we were to interpret ‘the companions of the cave’ as the spiritual faculties, then the one who has been sent [off to the city] represents reflection (fikr), the city the locus of the coming together of the spiritual and egocentric faculties with nature; the purest food is the intellect as opposed to estimation, imagination and the senses, for every perceptible thing has a [specific] nourishment; the provision [he is sent for] is considerative knowledge in the case of both interpretations; and [it would also mean] ‘[let him] not make anyone, of the egocentric faculties, aware of you.

For indeed if they should come to prevail over, that is, to overwhelm, you, they will [either] stone you, with the rocks of caprice and the exigencies of anger and passionate desire and the pursuit of pleasure and thus slaughter you by preventing you from your perfections; or make you return to their creed, by the prevailing [over you] of estimation and the victory of satan and the inclination to vain desire and the worship of graven images. According to the former interpretation then, [this means] the prevailing of the commonalty and the dominance of the veiled imitators^{1Literally, those whose legal recourse was primarily to rely on the teachings of previous juristic authorities; for a full discussion, see N. Calder, ‘taḳlīd’, EI2.} and the exaggerating traditionists,^{2On the use of this term as a derogatory reference to the aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth, the traditionists, who promoted ḥadīth over all texts or arguments, regardless of content and provenance, see ‘ḥashwiyya’, EI2.} as well as that of the engrained followers of falsehood. As for their stoning of the people of the truth and their call to these [latter] to their own [false] creed, that is apparent just as it had been during the time of God’s Messenger, may God bless him and grant him peace.

And so it was that We disclosed them: that is, in the very same way as that arousing and putting to sleep did We disclose their state to the prepared who are receptive to the guidance therein and to gnosis of their realities; that they might know, by means of their companionship and their guidance, that God’s promise, of resurrection and recompense, is true; and that, as for the Hour, there is no doubt concerning it. Behold they were disputing among themselves their affair: that is, when the prepared seekers were disputing among themselves the matter of one’s appointed final return, some of them were saying that resurrection specifically concerns disengaged spirits and not bodies. Some were saying that it concerns both spirits and bodies together; but when they observed them and came to know them, they realised that it [the final return] will be in both body and spirit and that the corporeal [resurrection of the] final return is true, so they said, ‘Build over them a building, that is, when they [the sleepers] passed into death, they [the observers] said that, in the same manner that lodges (khānqāh), tombs (mashhad) and pilgrimage sites (mazār) are constructed over the perfected ones, those who enjoy [spiritual] propinquity to prophets and saints, such as Abraham, Muḥammad, ʿAlī and all of the other prophets and saints, may God bless them all and grant them peace. Their Lord knows them best’: these are the words of their followers from among their communities and those who follow their example. In other words, those [sleepers of the cave] are too eminent and too illustrious for anyone to know them other than those who die in God and who achieve spiritual realisation through Him, for He is most knowledgeable about them, as He has said, exalted be He: “My friends reside beneath my domes, and none knows them except Me”. Those who prevailed regarding their affair, from among their companions and those who followed their affair seeking blessedness through them and through their site, ‘We will verily set up over them, a place of worship’, in which prayers can be performed.

They will say, namely, the exotericists from among the People of the Book and the Muslims, those who have no [real] knowledge of [such] truths — and His saying ‘guessing at random’ (rajman bi’l-ghayb) means: throwing random guesses at what is unseen to them, in other words, out of speculation completely devoid of certainty, after where they say ‘Three; their dog the fourth of them’, and ‘Five; their dog the sixth of them’: the interpositioning of the wāw (‘and’) that indicates that the adjectival qualification combines inseparably with the qualified [noun] and that there is no [possible] number beyond between His words, And they will say, ‘Seven, and their dog the eighth of them’, and His words and none knows them except a few’ afterwards is proof that the true [number] was seven and nothing else. The ‘few’ are the verifiers whose opinion is that [they were seven]. If we were to interpret them as representing the spiritual faculties, then they will be the following: 1) The twin faculty of reason, the considerative and the cognitive; 2) reflection; 3) estimation; 4) imagination; 5) memory; 6) the sensus communis, called ‘fantasia’;^{1[note needed on Ibn Sīnā’s psychology of the senses and the imaginal faculty – Mulla Sadra]} and 7) the dog representing the soul and the spirit in both interpretations. That explains what has been related from the Commander of the Believers [ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib], peace be upon him, where he said, ‘They were seven, three [seated] to the right of the king and three [seated] to his left, with the seventh being the shepherd, the very owner of the dog’. If this report is sound, then that King was Decius, representing the [evil-] commanding soul; the three [seated] to his right with whom he would consult were the two rational faculties in addition to [the faculty of] reflection; the three [seated] to his left to whom he would delegate affairs (istawzara) were the imagination, estimation and memory; the shepherd was ‘fantasia’ the owner of the sheep of the senses. As for those who said that they [the sleepers] had been three, they intended the heart and the two rational faculties. As for those who said that they had been five, added to these [three] the faculties of reflection and estimation and left out the [faculty that is the] perceiver of forms and that of memory on account of their lack of [the power of] free disposal (taṣarruf) and each of the two functioning as a storage place. According to this [last] interpretation, the observing of the subsistence of the soul after the disintegration (kharāb) of the body belongs to the group of verifiers from the divine presence; the ‘disputing’ represents the mutual attraction and struggle that takes place between the faculties as they vie to take possession of the body in which they are resurrected, which is the very ‘building’ they are commanded to build, the commanding ones being ‘those who prevailed’, the ones who said, ‘We will verily set up over them a place of worship’, in which shall prostrate [in worship], that is, shall be made compliant all of the faculties, the animal, the natural and the egocentric. The ones commanded are the ones who were prevailed upon, the agents of the resurrected body. But God knows best.

And never say regarding something, ‘I will indeed do that: He disciplined him [the Prophet] by His divine edification after prohibiting him from ‘contending’ (mumārāt) and ‘questioning’, and so He said to him, ‘Never say [anything] until God wills [it] by permitting you to say; in that way you will be a sayer through Him, through His will. In other words, never say regarding anything that you resolve to do tomorrow, ‘I shall do that’ unless you have completely enveloped yourself by the divine will by saying, ‘If God will [it]’. So never ascribe an action to your own volition, but [always] to that of God, and in this way you will be a doer through Him and by His will.

[…] And remember your Lord, by returning to Him and [seeking] presence, if you forget, because of forgetfulness at the manifestation of the soul and [because of] variegation at the manifestation of its [the soul’s] attributes. And say, ‘May be my Lord will guide me to [something] closer than this, that is, to remembrance (dhikr) at the [point of] variegation and ascription of the action to its attributes, by means of fixity and the essential presential vision (shuhūd dhātī) that is clear of the veils of the attibutes, by way of guidance, by way of uprightness, which is the fixity [granted] in the essential presential vision.

And they tarried in the Cave three hundred years, of the kind based on the lunar cycles, so that every year represents one month, the total being twenty five years, which was the time of their alertness and vigilance, and remained there in addition another nine, which is the duration of a pregnancy [?]. Within the verse a delightful detail is taken into account, which is that He did not say [and they tarried in the cave] thalāthamiʾata sanatin wa-tisʿan or thalāthamiʾatin wa-tisʿata sinīna, because sana is conventionally used [to denote] the time of the descent of revelation during a solar cycle and not a lunar one. And thus He mentioned the [total] number collectively [without differentiation] but then clarified it with His [other] words, so that it is possible that the specific [unit] is something other than that, such as a month, for example.^{1It is not possible to tease this out from the English translation, but the point centers on the use in the verse of the indefinite thalāthamiʾatin, which does not make it dependent necessarily on the following word sinīn, as opposed to saying thalāthamiʾata sinīn. Thus, the sentence may be read ‘and they tarried in the Cave for three hundred, years [note the comma before years] …’; in other words, ‘and they tarried in the Cave for three hundred [months], [a period of many] years …’.} He then made it clear that the [total] period was an ambiguous and unspecified number of years. For if it had been said thalāthamiʾata shahrin, sinīna, whereby sinīna substitutes for the total number, the sentence would have been sound, the intended meaning being ‘such a number of years’, namely twenty five. This is supported by His words afterwards:

Say: ‘God is more knowledgeable of how long they tarried. Qatāda said, ‘These are the words spoken by the People of the Book and completing where they had said They will say … [Q. 18:22]. And His words Say: ‘God is more knowledgeable…’ is a refutation of them. In the codex (muṣḥaf) of ʿAbd Allāh [b. Masʿūd] it is: And they said that they had tarried (wa-qālū labithū),^{1In other words, thus begins verse 25 in Ibn Masʿūd’s codex, as opposed to the standard wa-labithū (and they tarried…).} that is because there is no verifiable or unvarying certainty [regarding the exact duration].

And recite that which has been revealed to you of the Book of your Lord: it is possible that the min (‘of the Book’) denotes inceptiveness of purpose, such that the Book is First Tablet that comprehends all forms of knowledge from which revelation was given to those to whom it was revealed. Or it [the min] could be an explication of what has been revealed, with the Book denoting the Discriminating Intellect in both cases. There is none who can change His words, which are the principles of religion such as the affirmation of oneness and justice and various other such [principles]. And you will not find, besides Him, any refuge, to incline to, since such a thing cannot exist.

And restrain yourself: a command to exercise patience with God and His folk and not to turn your attention to other than Him — this patience is the kind indicative of uprightness and fixity and can only be [realised] through God — along with those who call upon their Lord at morning and evening, in other words, continuously, being the affirmers of His oneness the disengaged indigent ones who seek nothing other than God and have no want of either this world or the Hereafter and who do halt with any acts or attributes, desiring His Countenance, namely, only His essence, calling on Him and not being veiled from Him by other than Him at the moment of the manifestation this [essence] at the daybreak of annihilation or at the moment of Its being veiled by them at subsistence. And so patience with them is patience with God, and the overlooking of them with the eye, which is forbidden, constitutes the turning of one’s attention to what is other [than God].

Indeed We have prepared for the wrongdoers, namely, those who associate [others with God] the ones veiled from the Truth, on account of His words [elsewhere]: Idolatry is truly a tremendous wrong [Q. 31:13], a, tremendous, Fire, and they will be surrounded by its pavilion, of levels of engendered existence (akwān), such as the elemental natures, and the material species forms that comprehend hylic individuals; with water like molten copper, such as pus (ghassāq) [cf. Q:38:57] and vile excretions (ghislīn) [Q. 69:36], that is to say, the putrid fluids that are secreted by the bodies of the inhabitants of the Fire, darkened and containing fat with which they are succoured; or, [they are succoured with] their filthy slops; or, [they are succoured] burning torments and anxieties.

Truly those who believe, by affirming the Oneness of the Essence, being the opposites of the idolaters, and who perform righteous deeds, in the way of acts that are sought for their own sake at the station of uprightness — indeed We do not leave to go to waste, their reward: the replacement of a pronominalisation with an overt noun is intended to indicate that ‘reward’ is merited by acts to the exclusion of knowledge, since it is on this basis that an advance in degree and level is merited.

[Those, for them there shall be] Gardens of Eden, in the way of the three Gardens; therein they shall be adorned with bracelets of gold: that is, they shall be made ornate therein with different kinds of adornments in the way of the realities of the affirmation of the oneness of the Essence and the meanings of the entified self-disclosures of the Exclusive Unity (aḥadiyya). For, the gold adornments constitute the entifications, whereas the silver ones constitute the luminous ones of the [divine] attributes, as in where He says: and they will be adorned with bracelets of silver [Q. 76:21]; and they shall wear green garments: they shall resplendent, virtuous and radiant attributes that shall necessarily bring about joy; of fine silk: of states and bestowals, since these are subtler; and [heavy] silk brocade: of character traits and earnings,^{1States are ‘bestowed’, while stations are ‘earned’: see Chittick, Sufi path, 222.} since these are denser, reclining therein on, the couches that are the divine names, which are the points of origin for His acts, on account of their having assumed His attributes and of the fact that the attribute together with the Essence is precisely what that [divine] name is supported by in the Garden of attributes and acts. How excellent a reward, and how fair a resting-place!, in contrast with How evil a drink and how ill a resting-place [Q. 18:29].

And the day when the mountains shall be set in motion: that is, [the day when] We remove the mountains that are the organs [of the body] by crumbling them and making them as ‘scattered dust’ [Q. 25:23]; and you will see the earth, that is the body, exposed, manifest, even and flat, simple as it had [once] been without form or compound, pure dust. And We shall gather them: the pronoun [‘them’] either refers to the aforementioned faculties or to individual human beings, such that We will not leave out anyone of them, ungathered.

And they shall be presented before your Lord, at resurrection, in ranks, that is to say, standing in rows, standing according to different rank, none veiling another, each in his own rank. ‘Verily you have come to Us: We say to them on that Day, ‘you have come to Us, barefoot, naked, uncircumcised and each on his own, in other words, just as We created you the first time; rather you claimed, by your denial of the resurrection, that We would not appoint for you a tryst’, a moment for the fulfilment of what you were promised by the tongues of prophets in the way of a sending forth [after death] and a resurrection.

And the Book shall be set in place, that is, the Book of the mould that corresponds to what their souls contain of configurations of acts deeply-rooted in them. And you will see the guilty apprehensive of what is in it, because they found in it what they had forgotten about; and they will say: ‘O woe to us!: they call for the destruction by which they perished that was the [resulting] effect of corrupt beliefs and evil acts. What is it with this Book that it leaves out neither small nor great, but [instead it] has counted it?’, and that is because the effects of their motions and their works, be they great or small, all remain in their souls, fixed in the celestial tablets of the souls, that is, accounted for therein, and these [effects] become manifest on them in differentiation at the second re-creation, and they have no way of escaping them; that is the signification of His words: And they shall find all that they did present. And your Lord does not wrong anyone.

The signification of the prostration of the angels and Iblīs’s refusal has already been mentioned. As for His words, He [Iblīs] was one of the jinn, [syntactically] constitutes incipient speech, as though someone had said, ‘What was wrong with Iblīs that he did not prostrate himself?’, to which the reply is, ‘He was one of the jinn’, that is, [he was] one of those corporeal faculties that are concealed in matter, and that is why he transgressed, against his Lord’s command, in other words, on account of his veiling himself with matter and its appendages.

And when Moses said to his lad: the exoteric aspect of this is what is related in the stories of the prophets (qiṣaṣ) and there is no way of denying the miracles. As for its esoteric aspect, that is to say the following: and when Moses-the-Heart, said to his lad-the-Soul at the moment of its attachment to the body, ‘I will not give up, that is, I will not cease to march and journey, or, I will continue to march, until I have reached the juncture of the two seas, the meeting-point of the two worlds, the world of the spirit and the world of the body, which constitute the sweet and the salty within the form of mankind and at the station of the heart, though I march on for ages’, that is, [though] I march for a long time.

So when they reached a juncture between the two, in the all-comprehensive present form, they forgot their fish, which is the fish that swallowed Dhū’l-Nūn, may peace be upon him, as a type and not as that individual [fish], because their breakfast was before their arrival at this form externally from that fish which he had been commanded to take as a provision for the journey at the moment of resolve; and so it made its way, into the sea of the body alive as it had been at the first instance, by burrowing, a wide tunnel, as is related. Its [tunnelled] path to the sea remained open and was not covered over by the [waters of the] sea.

And when they had made the traverse, the place of the separation from the fish and fatigue and hunger befell Moses, whereas he had not become fatigued during his journeying and had not become hungry before that, according to what has been narrated, he remembered the fish and the nourishment it could provide and so he asked his lad [to bring them] the breakfast. He said, ‘Bring us our breakfast, because his [spiritual] state then was that of the daytime in relation to what comes before in the womb. We have certainly encountered on this journey of ours much fatigue’, which is the fatigue and hardship of being born.

He said, ‘Do you see?, what is it that has left me nude [as a child], when we sheltered at the rock, at the chest to suckle; indeed I forgot the fish, when we had no need for it — and none but Satan made me forget to mention it, that is to say, it was Satan that made me forget to remember it, substituting an adhkurahu for the [suffixed] pronoun [hu in ansānī-hu]. Moses had been asleep when the fish made its way into the sea in the way related, while the lad-the-Soul had been awake, and so Satan-the-Estimation, the one who had adorned the tree for Adam [cf. Q. 2:35-6], made Moses forget to remember the soul-the-Fish, since the state was one of distraction (dhuhūl). The ‘way’ that caused amazement was the aforementioned burrowing [made by the fish].

Said he, ‘That, in other words, that escape of the fish and its making its way in accordance with its innate disposition (jibilla), is what we have been, seeking. Because there can be found the juncture of the two seas where Moses had been promised that he would find someone more knowledgeable than him. For the ascent to perfection by close pursuit of the holy intellect can only be at such a station. So they turned back, retracing their footsteps, in rising to the station of the first primordial nature (fiṭra ūlā) as they had initially been retracing their footsteps at the descent from the ascent to perfection until they found the holy intellect which is one of God’s servants singled out for the privilege of [divine] solicitude and mercy.

[So [there] they found one of Our servants] to whom We had given mercy from Us, that is, spiritual perfection through disengagement from matter and sanctification from direction as well as pure luminosity all of which are the effects of propinquity and with-ness, and We had taught him knowledge from Us, in the way of holy gnoses and God-given universal realities without the medium of human instruction.

As for his words, ‘May I follow you, this is the manifestation of the [spiritual] desire for wayfaring and the ascent to perfection.

‘Truly you will not be able to bear with me, since you are not privy to matters of the Unseen or spiritual realities as you have not disengaged, but are veiled by the body and its coverings and so you will not be able to bear my company; and that is the signification of his words:

And how can you bear with that whereof you have never been informed?’

He said, ‘You will find me, God willing, patient, because of the power of my preparedness and my steadfastness in staying the path, and I will not disobey you in any matter’, on account of my orientation towards you and my acceptance of your command because of my purity and the sincerity of my [spiritual] desire. All of [these] negotiations are taking place by the tongue of the state.

‘If you follow me, in the wayfaring along the path of perfection, then do not question me concerning anything, in other words, you must follow [my] lead and persevere along the journey with works, acts of self-discipline, [noble] character traits and exertions, and not demand realities or significations, until, the moment for that comes along and then, I [myself] make mention of it, that is, of that knowledge, to you’, and inform you about the Unseen realities upon your disengagement through interactions belonging to the mould and to the heart.

So they set off until when they embarked, on the ship of the body that has reached the limit of self-discipline, when it is good for servanthood, [travelling] to the world of holiness across the sea of primordial matter as it journeys to God, he made a hole in it, that is, he diminished it by means of [spiritual] discipline, by decreasing [his intake of] food, weakening its workings, upsetting its regulation and enervating it. Said [Moses], ‘Did you make a hole in it to drown its people?, that is, did you break it in order to drown in the sea of primordial matter the animal and vegetative faculties that are in it so that it might be perish? You have certainly done a dreadful thing’: this denunciation is an expression of the manifestation of the soul with its attributes and the inclining of the heart to it and the dissatisfaction with being deprived of its shares during the act of [spiritual] disciplining and its lack of contentment with its duties.

He said, ‘Did I not say [that] you would not be able to bear with me?’: a spiritual warning and a holy incitement to the effect that resolve during the wayfaring should be stronger than that.

He said, ‘Do not take me to task on account of that which I forgot, to the end [of the verse]: an apology at the station of the self-reproaching soul.

So they set off until, when they met a boy: this is the soul, which manifests itself with its attributes and thus veils the heart accordingly becomes an evil-commanding soul. The slaying of him is the extinguishing of anger, passionate desire and all of the [other] attributes. ‘Have you slain an innocent soul: an objection [arising] from the heart’s affection for the soul.

And [the statement]: ‘Did I not say to you, is a reminder and a spiritual expression.

And [the statement]: ‘If I ask you about anything, to the end [of the verse] is an apology and an affirmation of guilt and an admission, all of which constitute variegations at the engendering of the self-reproaching soul.

So they set off, until, when they came to the folk of a [certain] town, [folk] being the corporeal faculties. Their asking of them for food is a demand for spiritual nourishment from them, that is, by means of them, as when universal significations are extracted from the particular perceptibles of these. They refused to extend them hospitality, even though they had given them nourishment before that, because their nourishment at that point came from above them from the holy lights and from the self-disclosures of the Beauty and the Majesty and [from] the divine gnoses and the significations belonging to the Unseen, and not from below their feet as had been the case before the holing of the ship and the slaying of the boy by means of spiritual discipline, when the faculties and the senses prevented that and were not facilitating it. Nay, these only become configured after they have become somnolent and quiet, as when Moses said to his family, ‘Wait [here]’ [cf. Q. 20:10]. As for the wall which was: about to collapse, this is the reassured soul. It is referred to by the [expression] ‘wall’ because it originated after the slaying of the evil-commanding soul and [after] its [the latter’s] death by means of spiritual disciplining, and so it became like a thing that is inanimate, unable to move by itself and by its own desire and because of the extent of it feebleness it nearly perished. Thus its state was depicted as one ‘desiring to collapse’. As for his straightening of it, that is the setting of it in order by means of the perfections of character traits and the beautiful qualities of excellence by the light of the rational-speech faculty until the qualities of excellence came to replace its attributes of vice. As for Moses’ words, Had you wished, you could have taken a wage for it, is a variegation of the heart, not of the soul, which is the demand for wage and reward by the acquisition of qualities of excellence and by the use of acts of spiritual discipline, which is why the other responded to him with the words:

‘This is the parting between me and you: in other words, this is the separate reality of my station and yours and the difference between them and the separation between my state and yours. For the cultivation of the soul through spiritual discipline and the assumption of praiseworthy character traits are not intended in anticipation of reward or wage. Otherwise, these would not be qualities of excellence or perfections, since a meritorious quality is to assume the character traits of the divine such that the acts that issue from that person are intended for their own sake and not for some other purpose. What is [done] for some other purpose is [in reality] a veil, a vice and not a quality of excellence. What one ought to do is to throw off the veil and to remove of the cover of the soul’s attributes and to become projected into the world of light in order to receive the significations of the Unseen, nay to become qualified by the divine attributes, nay to be realised in God after being annihilated in Him, and not for the sake of reward, as you [Moses] claim. I will inform you the interpretation of that which you were not able to endure with patience: in other words, when the soul is reassured and the faculties have become stable, you will be able to accept [Unseen] significations and to receive the Unseen which I had forbidden you to inquire about ‘until I had made mention to it of you’. Now I shall make mention [of things] to you and I shall inform you of the interpretation of these matters if you are prepared for the reception of meanings and gnoses:

As for the ship, it belonged to poor people, in the sea of primordial matter, that is [it belonged to] the corporeal faculties such as the external sensoria and the natural vegetative faculties. He referred to these [faculties] as masākīn (‘poor’) because of their constant stillness (sukūn) and their adhering to the dust of the body and their ineffectualness in contravening the heart during wayfaring and conquering it, as with all of the animal faculties. It is related that these [poor] were ten brothers, five of whom were chronically ill with the other five working at sea, which is itself an allusion to the [five] external sensoria and the internal ones; and I wanted to make it defective, by means of spiritual disciplining lest the-king-the-evil-commanding-soul should seize it by force. This was the king who was behind them, that is, infront of them, seizing every ship by force, by taking possession of it and using it for his own vain desires and pursuits.

And as for the boy, his parents, who were the spirit and physical nature, were believers, affirmers of the Oneness by virtue of their yielding as they wayfare in obedience of God, submit to God’s command and comply with what God desires from them; and We feared lest he should overwhelm them, totally cover them, with insolence, towards them by manifesting himself in his I-ness at the presential vision of the spirit, and ingratitude, towards the grace of having them by his disobedience and evil action; or with ingratitude for the veil so that he ends up spoiling for them their affair and their religion and invalidating [for them] their servanthood of God.

So We desired that their Lord should give them in exchange one better than him in purity, as He did by giving them in [his] place the reassured soul which is better than him in purity and unblemishedness, and closer to mercy, to being loving and merciful since it [the reassured soul] is more affectionate towards the soul and the body and more beneficial to both and more compassionate towards them. It is possible that by ‘parents’ is meant that the grandfather and the father, and so they figuratively stand for the spirit and the heart, in which case his [the boy’s] being ‘closer to mercy’, means that he is more suitable for them and more intensely affectionate [to them].

And as for the wall, it belonged to two orphan boys [who lived] in the city: that is, the twin rational faculty of the considerative and the practical that are severed from their parent, who is the holy spirit, because they have veiled themselves from him by means of corporeal coverings, or [he is] the heart that has died or was slain before perfection by the soul’s conquest of the city-the-body. And beneath it there was a treasure belonging to them, that is, the treasure of gnosis which is only actualised through these two [faculties] at the station of the heart on account of the fact that all of the universals and the particulars are able to come together in it [the heart] in actuality at the moment of perfection, which is the state of coming of age and the extraction of that treasure. Some exoteric commentators relate that the treasure was scrolls in which there was [certain] knowledge. Their father had been — [this is valid] in the case of both interpretations — a righteous man: it is also said that he was a father from ‘above’ to them and God preserved them for him, in which case, he can only be the holy spirit.

The story of Dhūʾl-Qarnayn is well-known. He was a Greek (rūmī) who lived in times not long ago. The [spiritual] correspondence [for this story] is as follows: Dhūʾl-Qarnayn in this existence represents the heart which took possession of his two horns (qarnān), that is, his two setting points, the East and the West.^{1The paronomasia of Kāshānī’s statement cannot be appreciated in the English translation. The term khāfiq also means ‘(throbbing) heart’ in Arabic and in the dual form is an expression used to mean the East and the West.}

Indeed We established him, throughout the land of the body by empowering him and giving him the fixity to be able to gather wealth from universal and particular meanings, and to [be able to] journey to whichever region of the East and West he wishes; and We gave him to everything, that he desired, in the way of perfections, a road, that is, by which to arrive thereat.

And he followed, a path of attachment to the body and heading in the direction of the lower world,

until, when he reached the setting of the sun, that is, the setting of the sun of the spirit, he found it setting in a muddy spring, namely, one that was mixed with mud, which is the corporeal matter, an admixture of dark bodies, similar to where He says from a drop of mixed fluid [Q. 76:2]; and he found by it a folk, namely, the egocentric faculties, the corporeal and the spiritual. We said, ‘O Dhūʾl-Qarnayn — either chastise, by means of spiritual discipline, subjugation and bringing to death, or treat them kindly’, by setting them straight and fulfilling their share.

He said, ‘As for him who does wrong, by being immoderate, and neither submitting or yielding, like passionate desire, anger, estimation and imagination, we shall chastise him, with spiritual discipline. Then he shall be returned to his Lord, at the minor resurrection, and He shall chastise him, by casting him into the Fire of nature, with an awful chastisement, that is, a terrible one that is more severe than mine; or [he shall be returned to his Lord] at the major resurrection, and He shall chastise him with the chastisement of subjugation and annihilation.

But as for him who believes, by means of knowledge and gnosis, like the two rational faculties, as well as reflection and the external sensoria, and acts righteously, by hastening to acquire qualities of excellence and by yielding and being obedient, he shall have, as a reward, the fairest thing, in the way of the Garden of the attributes and the self-disclosures of Its lights along with Its rivers of knowledge; and we shall speak to him mildly in our command’, that is to say, a gentle speech by the actualisation of excellent habitus (malaka).

Then he followed, a path, the path of ascent and wayfaring to God by means of disengagement and purification,

until, when he reached the rising of the sun, that is, the rising of the sun of the spirit, he found it rising on a folk, namely, the two rational faculties, reflection, intuition and the holy faculty, for whom We had not provided against it any [form of] cover, that is, any veil, on account of their being illumined by its [the spirit’s] light and their perceiving of the universal meanings.

So [it was], that is, his affair was as We have described it; and We encompassed in knowledge whatever pertained to him, in the way of forms of knowledge, gnoses, perfections and qualities of excellence. The meaning of this is that none other than Us encompassed [him thus], since it was the Presence that combines the two worlds, and there is no one in existence that can comprehend the things which He knows except God [Himself]. And for some reason it is called God’s Throne.

Then he followed, a path by wayfaring in God,

until, when he reached between the two barriers, that is, the two engendered existences — that was his rank and original station, between the two sides of the two mountains of God; the marching east and west represent two journeys, one a descent and one an ascent — he found on this side of them a folk, namely, the natural faculties, the corporeal and the external sensoria, that could scarcely comprehend speech, on account of their being unable to perceive meanings or utter them.

They said, by the tongue of [their] state, ‘Truly Gog, the exigencies and estimative murmurings, and Magog, the whisperings and imaginative tendencies, are causing corruption in the land, of the body by inciting to vices and passionate desires that violate order and [by] urging to works that result in its impairment and the ruining of the rules that regulate good-doing and the bases of wisdom and [result] in the bringing about of vicissitudes, temptations, vain desires, and innovations [all of] which conflict with justice and necessarily bring about the corruption of crops and offspring. So shall we pay you a tribute, by reinforcing you with our perfections and the forms of our perceptibles, on condition that you build between us and them a dam?, which they cannot traverse and a barrier which they cannot scale, being the legal limit and the veil of the heart in terms of practical wisdom.

He said, ‘That wherewith my Lord has empowered me, in the way of universal and particular meanings that are actualised through experience and journeying east and west, is better; so help me with strength, that is, [with] work and obedience, and I will build between you and them a rampart, namely, practical wisdom and the canon of the Law.

Bring me ingots of iron!’, in the way of practical forms and the conventions of works. Until, when he had levelled up [the gap] between the two flanks, by setting [things] right and ordaining, he said, to the animal faculties, ‘Blow!’, into these forms the blowing of particular meanings and egocentric configurations in the way of excellent character traits, until when he had made it a fire, that is, a form of knowledge in its own right, from among the totality of forms of knowledge, which contains an explanation of the modality of works, he said, ‘Bring me molten copper, intention and purpose, to pour over it’, which comes halfway between knowledge and works and by which the spirit of knowledge is united with the body of work, like the animal spirit that is halfway between the human spirit and the body. There then was actualised a barrier, that is, a base and an edifice constructed from the ingots of works and the blow of forms of knowledge and character traits and the molten liquid of resolves and intentions, and the soul was reassured by it and it became governed and so it became faithful.

And so they were not able to scale it, and climb over it because of the stature of its affair and its being comprehensive of forms of knowledge and arguments which they could neither repel nor take possession of; nor could they pierce it, on account of its becoming sturdy through habitus, works and invocations.

Said he, ‘This, barrier, that is, [this] canon, is a mercy from my Lord, to His servants, [one] which will necessarily bring about security and subsistence for them. But when the promise of my Lord, of the minor resurrection, comes to pass, He will level it, [making it] invalid and collapsed on account of the impossibility of using it at the point of death and [because of] the disintegration of the body’s instruments [then].

And on that day, We shall let some of them surge against others, tumultuously mixing. In other words, We shall leave them to mix on account of their coming together in the spirit without separation, and the Trumpet shall be blown, for the sending forth [from death] at the second creation, and We shall gather them a [single] gathering: or at the major resurrection, in the state of annihilation. The manifestation of the Truth which levels it because of the high stature of knowledge and wisdom there. The manifestation of the signification of the dissolution and licitness [granted by God] is by the self-disclosure of the divine acts and the nonexistence of the other and His act And on that day, We shall let some of them surge against others bewildered mixing as one thing without movement. And the Trumpet shall be blown by the existentiation through the existence of [God] the Truth at the state of subsistence and We shall gather them a [single] gathering in the [reality of the] Oneness, uprightness and fixity, and in the fact that they will be in God and not in themselves.

And on that day We shall present Hell to the disbelievers: that is, on the day of the minor resurrection those veiled from the Truth shall be chastised with all sorts of chastisements and fires, as mentioned in sūrat al-Anʿām; or [it is] at that presential vision when their chastisement in the fire of Hell is manifested to the one experiencing the major resurrection;

those [disbelievers] whose eyes were masked from My remembrance, that is, veiled from My signs and [from] the self-disclosures of My attributes that necessarily entail My remembrance.

[wherein they will abide] with no desire to be removed from them, [with no desire for] any self-transmutation (taḥawwul) since they will have attained perfection which their preparedness had entailed and so there will be no yearning for what might be beyond these [Gardens], even if there should be [another] perfection beyond that since they will have no perception thereof, and so neither tasting nor yearning [will they have beyond the Gardens]. The fact that they are the opposite of the polytheists who are veiled from the Truth by the other and the fact that their Gardens are the Gardens of Paradise (firdaws) both prove that the ones intended [here in the verse] are the affirmers of the Oneness (muwaḥḥidūn) of perfected preparedness, above whose perfection there is no other perfection and so there is nothing remaining beyond their rank which they would want to ‘change’ to.

Say: ‘If the sea, the sea of primordial matter that is receptive to the forms that provide it [the matter] with manifestation, were ink for the Words of my Lord, in the way of meanings, realities, entities and spirits, the sea would be spent before the Words of my Lord were spent, since these [Words] are infinite and what is finite can never satisfy what is infinite. And God knows best.