Alif Lām Mīm.

God! There is no god except Him, the Living, the Eternal: the interpretation of this [verse] has already been [given].

He has revealed to you the Book by the truth, He has elevated you from level to level and from grade to grade by sending down the Book to you showing the way to the knowledge of the affirmation of the Oneness which is the Truth with respect to the union called the Gathering-intellect (ʿaql qirānī),^{1Read as qirānī, from the root q-r-n (qarana) to ‘bring together’, which some early authorities suggested was the basis of the word Qurʾān, as opposed to its being from q-r-ʾ, ‘to recite’. The point here is that the Qurʾān, as evidenced by its two names (al-Qurʾān and al-Furqān) gathers all things (cf. jamʿ), including previous scriptures, and separates all things, hence the reality of multiplicity necessary for degrees of excellence (tafāḍul): cf. Chittick 1989: 363. These two terms also reflect the Qurʾān’s teaching about God, that He is at once incomparable (laysa ka-mithlihi shayʾ) yet similar (through His attributes).} confirming what was before it, of the pre-eternal affirmation of Oneness that has preceded, and which is known in the first covenant that is stored in the Unseen of preparedness, and He revealed the Torah and the Gospel,

before, in that way, [as guidance to people] then, He revealed the Criterion, that is, the differentiated affirmation of Oneness with respect to the dispersion called the Differentiating-intellect (ʿaql furqānī), which is the source of uprightness and the starting point of the mission. As for those who disbelieve in God’s signs, that is, those who have veiled themselves from these two aspects of the affirmation of the Oneness by the loci of manifestation and the engendered things which in reality constitute the signs of the affirmation of the Oneness, for them awaits a terrible chastisement, by way of distance and privation, for God is Mighty, that is, vanquishing, Lord of Retribution: whose description cannot be made nor its quintessence fathomed nor its like be paralleled by any retributer.

Truly God, nothing whatever is hidden from Him, in the worlds, knowing as He does the times and places of retribution.

[He it is Who revealed to you the Book] wherein are verses [that are] clear, above that they should be susceptible to polyvalence or ambiguity, supporting only one meaning, forming the Mother, that is, the original, Book, and others ambiguous, supporting two or more meanings and in whose case truth and falsehood are ambiguous. That is because the Truth, exalted be He, has one face which is the absolute abiding face after the annihilation of creation and which does not allow for multiplicity or plurality. He also has multiple additional faces, a plurality in accordance with the mirrors of the loci of manifestation, and these [faces] are what become manifest of that one face according to the preparedness of each locus of manifestation, in these [faces] truth can become enmeshed in falsehood. The revelation came in this manner so that the ambiguous [verses] turn towards the faces of the many forms of preparedness and thus every one attaches to that which is appropriate to it and the testing and trial become manifest. As for the verifying gnostics who know the abiding face in whatever form or figure it may take, they know the true face from the faces conveyed by the ambiguous verses and so they refer these back to the clear [unambiguous] verses, exemplifying the saying of the poet:

‘The face is but one, except that if you were to number its virtues, they [the faces] seem to be many’

As for, the veiled, those in whose hearts is deviation, from the truth, they follow the ambiguous part, because of their veiling themselves from the unity by multiplicity — whereas the verifiers follow the clear part and make the ambiguous follow [from] it — [and because of] their choosing thus from the many potential senses that which is suits their religion and their school, desiring sedition, that is, seeking to be misguided and to misguide, that being the very path which they follow, and desiring its interpretation, according to what suits their situation and their method: ‘If the knife is skewed, it will skew its scabbard’. And so just as they do not know the abiding face among the [many] faces, it is necessarily the case that they do not know the true meaning from among the [various] meanings. Thus their veil increases and becomes denser so that they might merit thereby [God’s] chastisement; and none knows its interpretation except God and those firmly rooted in knowledge: those who possess knowledge [are able to] know through His knowledge, that is to say, God knows it [all] as a totality and in differentiated mode. They say, ‘We believe in it: they affirm God’s knowledge through it, as they have knowledge through the light of faith; it is all from our Lord’, because for them ‘all’ has the meaning of ‘one’ without difference; yet none remembers, that one knowledge differentiated into multiple ambiguous detail, except those whose intellects have become pure by the light of guidance and have become disengaged from the rind of caprice and habit.

Our Lord, do not cause [our hearts] to deviate, from orienting [themselves] towards Your Side and hastening to seek Your encounter and to stand by Your gate, by the temptation of the love of this world and the overpowering of caprice and the inclining towards the soul and its attributes and to stand content with its shares and its pleasures, after You have guided us, by Your light to Your straight path and the upright religion, and by the glories of Your face to Your glorious beauty, and give us from You a mercy, from Your Merciful Name (raḥīmiyya), that will efface our attributes through Your attributes and our darknesses by Your lights. You indeed are the Bestower.

Our Lord, You shall gather mankind for a day of which there is no doubt, that is, He will gather them for the Day of Gathering which is the arrival at the station of the unity that comprehends the entirety of creation, the first and the last, such that they shall have no lingering doubt in that locus of witnessing of theirs.

[As for the disbelievers] neither their riches nor their children will avail them against God, nay, these are the cause of their being veiled and their distance from God and their being chastised by His chastisement because of the intensity of their attachment to these [things] and their love of these.

There has already been a sign for you, O wayfaring folk, [a sign] that is proof of your perfection and your attainment of the affirmation of Oneness, in two hosts that met, one group, constituting the spiritual faculties, which are God’s folk and His hosts, fighting in the way of God; and another, constituting the hosts of the soul and the assistants of the devils who are veiled from the Truth. You will see the former group twice the number of these [latter] when the two [groups] meet one another in the battle of the body, [and that is] because of the former group is aided by the light of God and His granting of success, while the latter group is forsaken and abased, incapable, too weak and severed from the world of [divine] aid and power. Thus the former group defeat the latter and subdue them with God’s aid and assistance, and expend their property, namely, the objects of their perception and the objects of their knowledge in for the cause of knowing God and affirming His Oneness; for God confirms with His help whom He will, from among the recipients of His solicitude who are prepared for His encounter. Surely in that is a lesson, that is, a consideration or something to be considered in order to arrive at the truth for those endowed with the faculty of vision, the eyes of whose insights have been opened and coloured by the light of the certainty that comes from knowledge, from among the people of the spiritual path (ṭarīqa), by which they consider their states at the end.

Beautified for mankind is love of lusts, because man is composite of the higher world and the lower one, and from the time of his configuration and his birth, his primordial nature is veiled and the fire of his instinct subsides, while the light of his insight is extinguished by the veils of nature and the corporeal coverings and the bitter water of sensual pleasures as well as the tempestuous winds of animal lusts so that he becomes abandoned by the Truth in the abodes of estrangement and the habitations of darkness, carried along through trials of various kinds of toils and troubles, when suddenly he finds a shimmering light of discernment and a flash of lightning from the world of the intellect and a summoner [all of which are] calling him away from caprice and Satan and so he falls [this summoner] and chances upon an exalted waystation and an elegant garden in which there is all that the souls can desire and the eyes can delight in. He takes up his abode therein, grateful for his effort and satisfied with his [new] dwelling, saying:

‘When the morning comes the people praise their night journeying, while the summoner has prepared for them a hospitable reception’.

Such is the love of lusts, that is [the love of] the mentioned desired things and the way that these are made beautiful for him, which is an enjoyment given to him in accordance with how much he has of the lower world and of perfection for his life [in this world] by which he has been veiled from the enjoyment of the life of the Hereafter and its perfection in accordance with how much he has of the higher world, while he is inattentive to the fact that this [latter] is more splendid and more pleasurable, purer for that matter and more abiding, which is the meaning of His words: but God — with Him is the more excellent abode. If the divinely-granted success and the alerting of the inner secret should reach him, in conjunction with the prophetic apprising, as He says:

Say: ‘Shall I tell you of something better than that?, then there will issue forth from his interior a yearning and a fervent love because of the motion of the higher part towards its focus: his fire that had subsided re-ignites and there cascade upon him in succession flashes of the divine lights and the risings of the holy illuminations, such that the light of his insight that had been extinguished is now illumined and the veils that had prevented his primordial nature from seeking the [true] resting-place and the [ultimate] abode become thin; the life which he leads is spoiled and his way becomes sullied and what he had deemed pure of the life of this world now seems dark; the vehemence of caprice subsides by the subduing of the spiritual part the corporeal one. He now tastes the sweet water of true life and no longer has patience for the bitter salty one and his heart pursues the inclinations of certainty after the small draughts which he imbibed from the running spring water, knowing [now] that it had been hidden beneath the earth. He seeks the radiance of the light of the stars at night deeming it to be day and exits therefrom whereupon he finds himself in open country wherein the water is brackish and various kinds of grasses such as weeds and watercress. He thinks these aromatic plants and fruits but at this discovery he finds himself barred from the light of the sun and the various scents and fruits; thereupon he resolves to depart for the return [to the spiritual] but he is overcome by the loneliness of estrangement [from what he has seen]; yet he guards against what he has deemed good and delightful and journeys on leaving it behind until the day when the morning light of the eye of certainty shines forth and it is time for the rising of the sun of the unity, he sees a garden the vision of which perplexes his eyesight and the description of which dazzles his intellect and so it is the like of which no eye has ever seen, no ear has ever heard nor has ever occurred to the mind of man. And when he awakes and the sun has risen, he will find therein close friends and beloved ones and he will know that that [place] is his final lodging and abode. Intimacy will return to him and he takes his place in the waystation of holiness in the enduring abode in the vicinity of the Forgiving King the glories of whose noble face shine upon him and the spirit of the all-comprehensive satisfaction permeates his heart. That is the meaning of His words:

For those that are fearful, with their Lord there are Gardens underneath which rivers flow, to where He says, and God is Seer of His servants. Thus the Gardens are the gardens of the acts, while the spouses (azwāj) are classes of spiritual beings from the world of the holiness; the Satisfaction (riḍwān) is the gardens of the attributes.

Those who say: “O, Our Lord, we believe, in the lights of Your acts and attributes, so forgive us our sins, that is, the sins of our existences by Your essence, and guard us from the chastisement of the Fire”, that is, the fire of abandonment and the existence of those who remain,

the patient, who endure the ordeals of spiritual struggle and discipline, those who are truthful, in love and the will [for this struggle], obedient, in wayfaring towards it and in it, expenders, of all else in the form of their wealth, their acts, their attributes, their souls and essences, imploring God’s pardon, for the sins of their variegations and their remains at the daybreaks of the days of luminous self-disclosures at the emergence of the rising points of the lights and the manifestation and good tidings of the morning of the Day of the Greater Resurrection in the celestial horizons, whereupon He answers their call at the moment of the rising of the sun of the Essence from the setting of their existence so that there no longer remains any setting, saying:

God bears witness that there is no god except Him: the abiding Face rises to bear witness by Its essence at the station of the union to Its Oneness, for there will no longer be any witness or thing to be witnessed other than Him. He then returns to the station of differentiation and witnesses by Himself together with others to His Oneness at that locus of witnessing, saying: and the angels, and those of knowledge, upholding justice, that is, He establishes justice in the differentiations of His loci of manifestation and their multiple forms, that which constitutes the shadow of Oneness outside the union, by granting every truthful one in accordance with his preparedness and merit what is due to him from His generosity and perfection and [by] His self-disclosure within him in accordance with the capacity of his receptacle; there is no god except Him, in both loci of witnessing, the Mighty, the Vanquisher who vanquishes everything at the level of union so that none can reach Him, the Wise, who through His wisdom governs everything and grants it what is appropriate [for it] at the level of differentiation.

Lo!, the religion with God, is this affirmation of the Oneness which He Himself has established. His religion is the religion of the submission of countenances, as Abraham, may God bless him and grant him peace, said: I have surrendered my countenance to God [Q. 3:20], that is, [I have surrendered] my soul and my totality, and I have divested myself of my egoism and thereby am annihilated in Him. God, exalted be He, commands His beloved, blessings and peace be upon him, to say:

So if they dispute with you, say: ‘I have surrendered my countenance to God and whoever follows me’…

Those who disbelieve in the signs of God, that is, those who are veiled from [the true] religion, and slay the prophets without right, veiled as they are by their [own] religion, refusing all except that to which they are delimited^{1For Ibn ʿArabī, ‘delimitation’ (taqyīd) defines ‘reason’ or ‘intellect’, in which such restriction is reflected in its very root meaning (ʿaql, ‘fetter’, ʿaqala, ‘to hobble a camel’). Reason seeks to define and delimit God, which is impossible, whereas it is the heart, by its infinite capacity, free from mental (rational) constraint, is able to understand God; cf. Chittick 1989:107.} [of beliefs] and which they follow by imitation, while the prophets summon them to the affirmation of Oneness and prohibit them from delimitation, and so they slay them; and slay those who enjoin to equity, from among their followers, for equity is the shadow of the affirmation of Oneness — thus he for whom this [affirmation] has not been perfected is not capable of being equitable. For they, by their delimitation to their religion have become veiled and are consequently veiled by their injustice from equity. That is why they oppose them and slay them.

Those are the ones whose works have failed, those [works] which they performed while following the religion of their prophets and that is because while they were following blindly their prophet they were still saved by virtue of their following [him], since their prophets were their intercessors mediating between them and God in order to procure for them the [divine] effusion; but when they denied the prophets and their just followers they were contravening their particular prophet, since all prophets follow one creed in reality, namely, the belief in the Oneness [of God], without distinguishing between them, being as they are [all] upon the one [single] truth. Thus he who contravenes one [prophet] has in effect contravened all. Likewise, he who contravenes the upholders of justice from among the followers of the prophets is himself unjust and he who is unjust has, by virtue of his injustice, abandoned the following [of prophets]; similarly the denier of the followers is a denier of those who are followed, and the denier of the shadow [of God’s Oneness] is a denier of the Essence, abandoning Its light. Once they have contravened their prophet there no longer exists any contact or correspondence between them and him that enables [the procurement of] effusion from His light and they are thus veiled from His light. Although their works had been illumined by His light by virtue of their following [the prophet], not because of any essential light that these [works] possess, since they are not produced out of certainty, once they are veiled from their prophet the accidental light [of these works] disappears and they become dark and like all other evil deeds from among the attributes of the commanding soul. Here [the following comes to mind], something which I have heard on more than one occasion: the slaying of the disbelievers of the faculties of the commanding soul at the hands of the prophets of the hearts and the justice-commanding spiritual faculties.

Say: ‘O God, Possessor of Mastery, You possess mastery of the world of bodies absolutely, disposing of it [however You wish], there being none who have mastery or disposal or effect in it other than You. You give mastery to whom You will, granting him disposal over some of it; and seize mastery from whom You will, by assigning that [power of] disposal in the hands of someone other than him, except that there really is no other [than You] there, rather You turn it about from one hand to another, for You are the [only] disposer in all cases in accordance with the different loci of manifestation; You exalt whom You will, by casting upon him a light from the lights of Your glory, for Truly glory belongs altogether to God [Q. 4:139]; and You abase whom You will, by stripping him of the garb of Your glory leaving him abased; in Your hand is good, all of it, and You are the absolute Powerful One, giving in accordance with Your will, at times self-disclosing Yourself in a certain locus of manifestation with the attributes of glory and grandeur, garbing that [locus] with the vestment of glory and splendour, and at others with the attributes of vanquisher and abaser, garbing that [locus] with the vestment of ignominy and lowliness; sometimes with the attribute of exalter but You are [in reality] abasing, and sometimes with the attribute of abaser while You are exalting; sometimes with the attribute of independent and You give wealth, sometimes with the attribute of availer but You make [that person] poor, that is, You avail him of wealth, indigent without need of anything.

You make the night to pass into the day and You make the day to pass into the night: You make the darkness of the soul enter the light of the heart rendering it dark, and You make the light of the heart enter the darkness of the soul so that it is illumined by the mixture of the two despite the lack of correspondence between them. You bring forth the living, that is, the one whose heart is alive, from the dead, that is, from the one whose soul is dead, [and You bring forth] the one with the dead soul from the one with the living heart; indeed, You bring forth the one who is alive with knowledge and gnosis from the one who is dead with ignorance, and You bring forth the one dead with ignorance from the one alive with knowledge veiling him from the light, as was the case with Balʿam b. Bāʿūrā;^{1The story of this scholar from among the Israelites is traditionally appended to the exegesis of Q. 7:175 (see the commentary of the Jalālayn and that of Ibn Kathīr thereto), as having been given great knowledge by God but misused it and so it turned against him.} and You provide whom You will, in the way of both outward and inward graces, or in the way of one of the two, without reckoning’.

Let not the believers take the disbelievers as friends, rather than the believers, for there is no correspondence between the two in reality. Friendship cannot be except in the case of similarity of genus and correspondence; for in that case the love between them [the believers and the disbelievers] could not be essential, rather it would be manufactured and artificial by virtue of its being a superficial show and an act of hypocrisy, which are traits far removed from truth as these are all veils of darkness, since if they [the believers] did not possess a darkness within them that corresponded to the state of disbelief they would not be able to mix or associate with them — for whoever does that, does not belong to God in anyway, that is, [he does not] belong to the friendship of God in anyway that he can rely on, since they possess no pure luminosity with which they would merit correspondence to the divine presence — unless you protect yourselves against them, as a safeguard, that is, unless you fear something from their part, in which case one must take precautions, in which you case you associate with them outwardly without there being any love for them in your hearts: but even that can only be as a result of the weakness of [your] certainty, for if certainty were to overtake their hearts, they would fear only God, exalted be He, and they would witness the significance of God’s words: And if God afflicts you with some hurt, there is none who can remove it except Him; and if He desires good for you, there is none who can repel His bounty [Q. 10:107], and they would [in that case] fear none other than Him and hope for [the favour of] none other than Him, which is why He follows [this verse] with the words: And God warns you of His Self, that is, He calls you to the eyewitnessed affirmation of Oneness, so that your caution be against none other than His Self; and to God is the journey’s end, so guard against none other than Him, for He is the One observing your innermost secrets and overt actions, the One Able to requite you if you were to associate with His enemies or to fear them, either secretly or openly.

The day every soul shall find, [to the end of] the verse: everything that a human being does or says produces an effect in his soul and becomes engraved in his soul. If this happens over and over again, the engraving becomes a deeply-rooted disposition and is thus engraved onto the scrolls of the heavenly souls. But he is distracted from the configurations of his soul and the things engraved upon it by the distractions of the senses and by the estimative and imaginative perceptions, having no time for them. When his soul departs from his body and there remains nothing to distract it from its configurations and the things engraved upon it, it will find its good or evil deeds presented [to it] before it. If it is evil deeds, it will wish that a great distance separated it from that Day or that deed on account of the chastisement it is undergoing as a result of that [deed]. If these configurations and engravings are deeply-rooted they will constitute that [soul’s] form; otherwise it will receive a requital commensurate with that [deed]. This [statement] is repeated: God warns you of His Self: reiterating [for emphasis], lest they do something that then warrants His punishment; and God is Kind to His servants, which is why He warns them against evil deeds, in the way that a caring parent cautions the child against what would bring about ruin [for that child].

Say: ‘If you love God, follow me, and God will love you: because the Prophet is His beloved and every person who claims love [of God] is required to follow him [the Prophet, for the beloved of a beloved is beloved, which is why love of the Prophet becomes obligatory. To love him [the Prophet] entails following him and wayfaring along his path in words, deeds, character, [spiritual] state, way of life and beliefs. The claim of love can only be in this manner, for he [the Propher] is the pole of [divine] love and the locus of its manifestation; his path is the talisman of [divine] love. The one who enjoys no share in his [the Prophet’s] path has no share of [divine] love. If, on the other hand, he follows him sincerely, his inward aspect, his inmost consciousness, his heart and his soul will correspond to the Prophet’s inward aspect, inmost consciousness, heart and soul, and since he [the Prophet] is the locus of manifestation of the [divine] love, by such a correspondence, that follower will necessarily enjoy a portion of God’s love commensurate with his share of the following. God then casts His love upon that person and the light of that [divine] love travels from the inner aspect of the Prophet’s spirit to him and he becomes a beloved of God and loving of God. If that person should not follow him, then his inward aspect will be in opposition to the inward aspect of the Prophet and he will then be far removed from the qualifications of [divine] love and love will be removed from his heart instantly, since if God does not love that person, he will not be loving of Him; and forgive you your sins, just as He forgave his beloved [Prophet] where He said: So that God may forgive you what is past of your sin and what is to come [Q. 48:2]. His [the Prophet’s] past sin is his essence, while his sin to come is his attributes. Likewise is the case with the sins of the followers, just as God, exalted be He, says: ‘[My] servant does not cease to approach Me …’ to the end of the [divine] ḥadīth.^{1The full divine saying (ḥadīth qudsī) is quoted by Kāshānī in his commentary to Q. 2:9, above.} God is Forgiving, erasing the sins of your attributes and essences, Merciful, endowing you with existence and attributes deriving from [Him] the Truth that are better [than those sins]. He then descends from this station, since it is more difficult [to secure] than red sulphur, and He calls them to a more general station than the station of love, namely, the station of will, saying:

Say: ‘Obey God, and the Messenger’, in other words, if you are not loving [of him] and are not able to follow My beloved, then the least that you can do is to be willingly^{1The term murīd literally means ‘one who wants’ or ‘one who is willing’ (from irāda), but in Sufi terminology denotes ‘the seeker’ who ‘wants’ or ‘is willing’ to be on that path to gnosis, to God.} obedient to what you have been commanded, for the willing one must necessarily follow the command and comply with what he has been commanded to. But if they turn their backs, God loves not the disbelievers, that is, if they also refuse to do that, then they are disbelieving deniers who are veiled and God does not love the disbeliever. Refraining from obedience necessarily entails disbelief, whereas refraining from following [the prophet] does not necessarily entail that, because the one who refrains from following [the prophet] may still be obedient by following the command. The meaning of ‘obey God and the Messenger’ is ‘obey the Messenger of God’, because of God’s saying: whoever obeys the Messenger, verily obeys God [Q. 4:80].

Lo! God has elected Adam and Noah: ‘election’ is more general than love or friendship and extends to include all prophets since they are God’s elect and elite. Their levels vary in excellence, just as God has said: Those messengers some We have preferred above others, and so the most specific of levels is [that of] love, alluded to by His [subsequent] words and some He raised in rank [Q. 2:253], which is why the most excellent of them was God’s beloved Muḥammad, may God bless him and grant him peace; next [in rank] comes friendship, which was the attribute of Abraham, peace be upon him, while the most general is election, that is, the attribute of Adam, peace be upon him;

the seed of one another, in terms of religion and in reality, since generation by birth [read: wilāda?] are of two types, formal and spiritual. Every prophet is a successor to another prophet in terms of the affirmation of Oneness, gnosis and what relates to the esoteric principles of religion and is as such that [other] prophet’s son, similar to the [case of] sons of [Sufi] shaykhs in our times. As they say, you have three fathers, a father that has given birth to you, a father that has nurtured you and a father that has given you knowledge. So just as the existence of the body in the formal birth is generated within the womb of the mother from the seminal infusion of the father, so the existence of the heart in the true birth becomes manifest within the womb of the preparedness of the soul [generated] by the [spiritual] infusion of the shaykh or teacher; it is to this [latter] birth that Jesus, peace be upon him, alluded in his saying: ‘He who has not been born again shall not enter the kingdom of heaven’ [cf. John 3:3]. Know then that spiritual birth mostly ensues from the formal one by procreation, which is why outwardly prophets were also the progeny and the fruit of a single tree: ʿImrān son of Yaṣhur, father of Moses and Aaron, was a descendant of Levi son of Jacob son of Isaac son of Abraham; and ʿImrān son of Māthān, father of Mary mother of Jesus, was a descendant of Judah son of Jacob. It is also well known that Muḥammad, blessings and peace be upon him, was a descendant of Ishmael son of Abraham, and that Abraham was [a descendant] of Noah, peace be upon him. The reason for [all of that] is that in terms of purity and impurity the spirit corresponds to the constitution in terms of equitability or lack of it at the moment of engenderment. For every spirit there is a corresponding constitution that is specific to it, since the [divine] effusion arrives in proportion to the correspondence and the varying quality of spirits from pre-eternity according to their kinds and levels in terms of proximity or distance [from the divine]. Hence constitutions vary accordingly in sempiternity so that they are connected to these [spirits]. Bodies that are generated from one another are similar in constitution, for the most part, though God knows, except when there are accidental matters that intervene that accord [with God’s will]. Likewise then the spirits that are attached to these [constitutions] are close in terms of rank [to one another], corresponding in attribute, all of which reinforces [the fact] that the Messiah (mahdī), peace be upon him, shall be from the progeny of Muḥammad, may God bless him and grant him peace. God is Hearer, when the wife of ʿImrān said ‘Lord, I have vowed …’ [Q. 3:35], Knower, of her intention as she bore witness with her words:

Lo! It is You Who are the Hearer, the Knower. Know that the intentions and configurations of the soul have an effect on the soul of the child, just as foods have an effect on its body. Thus the one whose food is licit and wholesome and the configurations of whose soul are luminous, and whose intentions are sincere and directed towards the Truth, his child will be a believer, a truthful one, a saint or a prophet. The one whose food is forbidden and the configurations of whose soul are dark and vile, whose intentions are corrupt and despicable, his child will be corrupt or a vile disbeliever, since the semen from which the child issues is generated by that food, nurtured in that soul and thus corresponds to it. That is why the Messenger of God said, ‘A child is the innermost secret of its father, and so the truthfulness of Mary and the prophethood of Jesus were the blessing of the truthfulness of her father.

[Whenever Zachariah went into the sanctuary, where she was,] he found her with provisions: it is possible that what is meant by this is spiritual provision in the way of gnoses, [spiritual] realities, knowledge and wisdoms that were being effused upon her from that which is with God. Since to be designated specifically by [divine] withness (ʿindiyya) is proof that these [provisions] were provisions directly from God (laduniyya).

Then Zachariah prayed to his Lord: Zachariah was an extremely old man and a leader and guardian of the people. He requested from his Lord a true child who would take his place in nurturing and guiding people, as alluded to in sūra Kāf-hāʾ-yāʾ-ʿayn-ṣād.^{1These are the enigmatic letters with which sūrat Maryam (Q. 19) begins.} He then bestows upon him the gift of John (Yaḥyā) from his own loins through his own ability after he had been commanded to cleave in spiritual retreat for three days. At this point you might seek the interpretation [of this] by seeking a correspondence [with this story] to your own states and the details of your existence as you have come to know. That is to say, the corporeal nature, that is, the corporeal faculty is [represented by] the wife of ʿImrān the spirit, who vowed as an offering what was in her faculty of the reassured soul to God, exalted be He, by complying with the command of the Truth and by her obedience to it and so she gave birth to the female of the soul. God thereupon placed the Zachariah of reflection in charge of her after He accepted her [offering] on account of her being pure and holy. Whenever the Zachariah of reflection entered into the sanctuary of the brain, where she was, he found her with provisions of intuitive meanings which had been unveiled to her [simply] as a result of her purity without any distinction of reflective capacity on her part. Then the Zachariah of reflection called upon the compositions of those meanings and sought from God as a bestowal a wholesome child sanctified from the pollutants of nature. God heard his call, that is, He responded. Thereupon the angels of the spiritual faculties called to him as he stood fulfilling His command putting together the components of knowledge, communing with his Lord, seeking that the lights descend upon him and approaching Him by orienting himself towards the world of holiness in the sanctuary of the brain;

that ‘God gives you good tidings of John, of the intellect in act, confirming, Jesus of the heart, believing in him, as he is Word from God, sanctified as he is above the world of bodies and material generation, a lord, to all kinds of faculties, and one chaste, preventing his soul from engaging [his] corporeal nature or clothing himself in the natures of the corporeal faculties, and a prophet, informing [as he will] of forms of gnosis and universal truths and teaching virtuous character traits and correct manners of governance by the command of the Truth; of the righteous’, of the dispersions and disengagement that by virtue of their acts merit being among those brought near to the divine presence after the reflection [sc. Zachariah] had attained the old age of the limit of its [creational] stage but had not reached the ability to perceive the holy truths and the universal gnoses; while his wife, who constituted the nature of the ego-centric spirit being the locus for the disposal of reflection, barren by [pure] disengaged light. The indication of that, namely, the indication of the actualisation of the disengaged light and its becoming manifested by the pure soul is the abstention [by Zachariah] from communing with the corporeal faculties as these seek to actualise their demands and desires as well as [abstaining from] mixing with them with regard to the surpluses of their pleasures and lusts for three days, each day constituting a full decade of the [various] stages of his life, ten years [in all], except for gesturing to them by some subtle token, commanding them to [perform] the glorification specific to each one of them — without drawing near to any of them with regard to their goals — and occupying himself for three days, the duration of which is thirty years starting from the age of discernment which is [after] the first ten [years], with the remembrance of his Lord in the sanctuary of the brain and [with] the glorification specific to that always. Likewise the angels of the spiritual faculties said to Mary of the pure wholesome soul:

God has elected you, because of your being above lust, and made you pure, from the vices of reprehensible character traits and attributes, and He has chosen you above the women, of the concupiscent souls variegated by despicable acts and vile natures.

O Mary: be obedient to your Lord by [the fulfilment of] the duties of acts of obedience and worship, and prostrate, at the station of brokenness, humility, poverty, incapacity and pardon-seeking, and bow, at the station of submissiveness and heartfelt humility with those who submit.

That is of the tidings of the Unseen, that is, the states of the unseen aspects of your existence. We reveal it to you, O prophet of the spirit, for you were not with them, [you were not] with the spiritual and ego-centric faculties, that is, at their rank or station, when they were casting their quills, which of them should have charge of Mary: that is, [when] they were vying against one another with their arrows and hurrying with their shares, which of them should govern Mary the soul and take charge of it in accordance with his opinion and what his nature entails, to preside over it and command it to what he sees as beneficial to his affair; nor were you with them, at the station of the breasts, which is the locus for the conflict between the spiritual faculties and the ego-centric ones, the locus of the their conflict being the breast, when they were disputing, in conflict back and forth seeking to be in charge when this [possibility] became manifest, before [engaging in] spiritual discipline, when the angels of the spiritual faculties were victorious with the success granted by the Truth after spiritual discipline and said to Mary the soul:

‘God gives you good tidings of a Word, the heart, bestowed, from Him, whose name is the Anointed one, because he shall anoint you with light, honoured shall he be in this world, because of his perception of particulars and his determining of the means of livelihood in the best, purest and most correct way, such that the human beings of the outer faculties and the jinn of the inner faculties obey, revere and exalt him, and, in, the Hereafter, because of his perception of universal meanings and holy gnoses and his management of the final return and his guiding to the Truth such that We shall grant him the kingdom of the heaven of the spirit and honour him, being among those brought near to the presence of the Truth, accepting of His self-disclosures and unveilings.

He shall speak to mankind in the cradle, of the body, and in his manhood, as one having attained the stage of the shaykh of the spirit overtaken by the brightness of his light, and he is of those who are good, for the station of gnosis’.

She said, ‘Lord, how shall I have a child when no mortal has touched me?’: the soul marvels at its bearing child and giving birth without having been touched by a mortal, that is, without having been nurtured by a shaykh or taught by a mortal teacher, this being the significance of her virginity. He said, ‘It is such. God creates what He will, that is, He elects whom He will through divine attraction and unveiling, endowing that person with the station of the heart without nurture or pedagogy, as is the state with [God’s] beloved and some of the loving ones.

And He will teach him, by Lordly pedagogy the Book of intellectual knowledge and the wisdoms of the divine laws and the gnoses of the divine scriptures such as the Torah and the Gospels, in other words, the exoteric and the esoteric gnoses.

To be a messenger, to the spiritual ones who are prepared from among the children of Jacob the spirit: ‘I have come to you with a sign from your Lord, that proves that I have come from His part; I will create for you, through [my] nurture and acts of purification and practical wisdom, out of the clay of the souls of the deficiently prepared ones, like the shape of a bird, the one that flies off to the Holy Side by the intensity of its yearning; then I will breathe into it, of the breath of divine knowledge and an infusion of the true life by the effects of [divine] company and nurture, and it will be a bird, that is, a living soul, flying away with the wings of yearning and aspiration towards the Side of the Truth. I will also heal the blind, the one veiled from the light of the Truth whose insight has never opened up [to the truth] and the sun of whose face has never seen the Truth or His light and has never known His folk adorned as they are by the light of guidance; and [heal] the leper, whose soul is disfigured by the sickness of vices and corrupt beliefs and the love of this world and the pollutants of lusts, with the medicine of the souls; and I bring to life, the dead of ignorance by means of the life of knowledge, by the leave of God. And I will inform you too of what things you eat, [of what things] you partake in your pursuit of lusts and pleasures, and what you treasure up in your houses, that is, in the houses of your unseens in the way of motives and intentions. Surely in that is a sign for you, if you are believers.

Likewise, confirming that which was before me of the Torah, that is, of the Torah of exoteric knowledge, and to make lawful for you some of that which was forbidden to you, of the inner lights; I have come to you with a sign, a proof, from your Lord, namely, the proclamation of Oneness concerning which no prophet has ever disagreed with me. So fear God, if you oppose me, for I am upon the truth, and obey me, when I call you to the proclamation of Oneness.

And when Jesus, the heart, sensed, on the part of the ego-centric faculties, disbelief, veiling, denial and opposition, he said, ‘Who will be my helpers unto God?’, that is, he demanded from the spiritual faculty what he required to assist him against them in his orientation towards God. The disciples said, that is, the purest and best aspects of the mentioned spiritual elements [said]: ‘We will be helpers of God; we believe in God, through proofs and by being illumined with the light of the spirit; witness that we have submitted, [that] we are obedient and compliant.

Lord, we believe in what You have revealed, of the knowledge of Oneness and the effusion of [Your] light, and we follow the Messenger; inscribe us therefore with those who bear witness’, those who are present before You, observing Your command, or of those who bear witness to Your Oneness.

And they schemed, that is, the estimations and imaginations [schemed] to seize the heart and destroy it through all sorts of tempting insinuations, and God schemed, by making rational arguments and definitive proofs prevail over their imaginations and doubts, rasising Jesus the heart to the heaven of the spirit and casting his likeness upon the soul so that their attempt to slay [it] collapses; and God is the best of schemers, for His scheming prevailed; and He said to Jesus:

‘I shall gather you, that is, I shall seize you unto Me from among them, and raise you to Me, that is, to the heaven of the spirit alongside Me, and I shall cleanse you of, the impurity of being alongside, those who disbelieved, from among the vile faculties and their scheming and [from] the vileness of their company; and I shall set those who follow you, of the spiritual ones, above those who disbelieved, of the ego-centric ones until the Day of the Greater Resurrection and the arrival at the station of the Unity. Then, on that Day, to Me shall be your return, and I will decide between you, in truth, as to what you were at variance about, before unity, in terms of the contention and conflict that resulted from [those] faculties. I shall then establish each one in its rightful abode there and shall grant it what is appropriate for it from that which is with Me, whereafter disagreement and conflict shall be removed.

As for the disbelievers, I will chastise them with a terrible chastisement, by depriving them of the station of the heart and veiling them in the guises of their deeds.

But as for the believers, from among the spiritual ones, who do deeds of righteousness, of all sorts of acts of [spiritual] augmentation, adornment and purification in order to assist the heart against the soul and remaining closely behind it as it orients itself towards the Truth; He will pay them in full their wages, by way of the holy lights and spiritual illuminations that radiate upon them; God loves not the evildoers, who stint what is due by right of wages. As for the intepretation [of this verse] without [effecting] correspondences, it is that they schemed to send someone to slay Jesus, peace be upon him. But a corporeal form was presented to them as a likeness, which was the manifestation of Jesus, the spirit of God, peace be upon him, in the real form of Jesus such that they supposed it to be Jesus and so slew it and crucified it, when God had raised Jesus, peace be upon him, to the fourth heaven as his spirit, peace be upon him, was an effusion of the spiritual aspect of the sun. But in their ignorance they did not know that the spirit of God could not be slain. When he was certain of his state before being raised, he [Jesus] said to his companions: ‘I am departing to my father, your heavenly father’, that is, I am seeking purification from the world of impurity and connecting to the holy spirit, bestower of forms, effuser of spirits and perfections, nurturer of men by means of infusing [their] spirit with the breath. I shall reinforce you with that effusion. At that time his call was not heeded and his example was not followed and so he commanded the disciples to disperse after him across the land and to call [people] to the Truth. They said, ‘How are we to do this if you shall not be amongst us and now when you are our call is not heeded’. He said [to them]: ‘The sign of my reinforcement of you is that people will accept your call after me’. After he was raised, his companions would not leave anyone until he heeded their call. Acceptance of their call appeared amongst people, their word prevailed, and their religion spread in all corners of the world. But since he [Jesus] did not reach the seventh heaven to which Muḥammad, may God bless him and grant him peace, ascended, the one referred to as the Lote-tree of the Ultimate Boundary [Q. 53:14], by which I mean, [that Jesus did not reach] the ultimate station of perfection and did not attain the degree of [divine] love [which Muḥammad attained], it was inevitable that he would have to come down again in a corporeal form to follow the Muḥammadan religious community by which he would attain that degree [of divine love], and God knows best the realities of things.

Truly, the likeness of Jesus, in other words, his attribute in God’s sight, his being created by [divine] power without a father, is as Adam’s likeness, in having been created without parents. Know that the marvels of [divine] power are endless and there can be no analogy in this respect to the effect that there is an analogue from the world of wisdom for the creation of a human being without parents, since there are many deficient animal beings of unusual nature that are generated from the point of creation in a short period of time then reproduce and propagate [further]. Likewise, a human being can come into being by being generated in one of several cycles, then through propagation. Similarly is engenderment without a father, for the seminal fluid of a man is much hotter than that of a woman and contains a more powerful capacity for coagulation, just as in the case of rennets with regard to [the curdling of] cheese, whereas in the woman the more powerful capacity is that of being coagulated, as is the case with milk. When the two come together coagulation takes place, the fluids coagulate and the embryo is engendered. It is possible to have a strong female constitution that corresponds to a male constitution as can be seen in the case of many women, to the extent that what is generated in her right kidney [read: ovary?] is equivalent to male seminal fluid on account of its extreme heat sitting as it does next to the liver in the case of the woman the constitution of whose liver is sound and sufficiently hot, and that what is generated in her left kidney is equivalent to female seminal fluid. So when she experiences seminal emissions as a result of a male form overwhelming her imagination during sleep and consciousness because of her spirit’s being joined to the holy spirit and to another angel and [by] the imagination’s reproductive imitation (muḥākāt) of that [male form], as God, exalted be He says: and he became imaginalised to her as a man without fault [Q. 19:17], the two seminal fluids from both sides proceed to the womb. In the setting place on the right side is formed the stronger capacity for causing coagulation and in the setting place on the left side is formed the capacity for becoming coagulated whereupon the embryo is engendered and the spirit is attached to it. As for His saying: ‘Be’, and he was, this is an allusion to the infusion of the spirit, which derives from the world of the command and as such is not preceded by any substrata or [time] duration, as in the case of the creation of human bodies. Adam thus corresponds to Jesus as mentioned in that both share in the breaking of the [creational] habit and in that both of their bodies were created from the dust of the elements, both preceded by substrata and a duration, and that their spirit is originated [without precedent] from the world of the command which [spirit] is not preceded by substrata or duration.

And whoever disputes with you concerning him, that is, concerning Jesus. [As for the intepretation of the rest of] the verse: mutual imprecation (mubāhala) against prophets has a tremendous consequence the cause of which is the connection of their souls to the holy spirit and God’s reinforcing theirs with this [latter] which is the cause of effects in the world of elements and so the world of elements is acted upon by it in the way that our body is acted upon by our spirit by means of the configurations that occur to it such as wrath, grief, reflection upon the states of the beloved one and so on in the way of the movement of limbs when will and resolve arise and human souls act upon them just as our senses and all our other faculties are acted upon by the configurations of our spirits. Thus if a holy soul is joined to it or to certain spirits of the celestial bodies and souls of the angelic realm, its effect on the world upon the joined orientation is the effect of that to which it is joined and so the elemental bodies and deficient human souls are acted upon by it in the way that it wants. Have you not seen how the souls of the Christians were acted upon by his [Muḥammad’s] soul, peace be upon him, with fear and thus refrained from the mutual imprecation [against the Prophet] and sued for peace by accepting to pay the poll-tax (jizya).

There is no god but God, that is, Jesus has nothing to do with divinity and ought not to be worshipped just by virtue of the disengagement of his essence, for the world of the angelic realm and that of the realm of the divine attributes are all similarly [disengaged].

[Come now to a word] agreed upon between us and you: that is to say, no prophet or scripture has ever been at variance over the word proclaiming God’s Oneness.

It belongs not to any mortal that God should give him, [to the end of] the verse: prophesying (istinbāʾ) can only come after the level of sanctity (walāya) and annihilation through Unity. It is not for a mortal whose mortality God has effaced by annihilating him from his soul and whom He has rewarded with a luminous existence from the Truth, [an existence] that accepts the Book and the divine wisdom, [it is not for such] to then call creatures unto himself, since the one who calls unto himself is [by definition] veiled by his own soul, just as Pharaoh and his likes: those who knew the Oneness [of God] but did not encounter it as a state or by the tasting and who did not arrive at the eyewitnessing, those whose souls subsist without having tasted the flavour of annihilation and were veiled by these [souls of theirs] and called creatures unto themselves. They are the ones regarding whom the Messenger of God said, ‘The most evil of people is the one is still alive when the Resurrection takes place’. Rather, he would say, ‘Be lordly, related to the Lord because of the Lordship overtaking them and the obliteration of [their] mortality on account of their being knowers who act and teach and recite God’s scriptures. In other words, be worshippers content with knowledge and deeds and the regular performance of acts of obedience so that you might become lordly by the prevailing of light over darkness.

He would never order you, to a particular devotion and to confine yourselves to a [particular] form for that is a veil and disbelief, nor would the Prophet order you to veil yourselves after you have submitted that your existences belongs to God.

And when God made a covenant with the prophets, to the end [of the verse]: there is between prophets a pre-eternal mutual familiarity due to the fact that they are the people of the first row, knowers of God. Every [spiritual] knower knows the station of all other knowers. Their pledge from God on the basis of the covenant of His Oneness is includes all the children of Adam, as mentioned, whereas the pledge for the prophets is specific to them and to those who know them through sincere adherence [to them]. God has then made two covenants with the prophets, one of which is the one mentioned in His statement And when your Lord took from the Children of Adam … to the end of that verse [Q. 7:172]. The other is the one mentioned in His statement And when We took a pledge from the prophets, and from you, and from Noah and Abraham and Moses and Jesus son of Mary. And We took from them a solemn pledge [Q. 33:7], namely, the covenant of mutual familiarity between them, the establishing of religion and not to be divided with regard to it, each one of them confirming the other, and to call [people] truthfully to the proclamation of God’s Oneness and to specify that worship be to God alone and to obedience of the Prophet and that they should make each other known to their respective communities. The specificity of that [pledge for the prophets] is because to know God, exalted be He, in the form of differentiations, the veiling of attributes and the multiplicity of loci of manifestations is more intricate and more subtle than to know Him at the source of union. Those who have been provided [the capacity] to follow [prophets] sincerely know this and [know] specifically to the exclusion of others the regulations of the self-disclosures of the attributes which are the [divine] laws.

Then whoever turns his back after that, that is, after having known God’s covenant with the prophets and the prophets’ communication to him of what God has pledged to them, those they are, the ones who have departed from God’s religion, and there is no other religion in reality on which to rely except that it be illusion.

What! Do they desire other than God’s religion, when all who are in the heavens and the earth abide by His religion, willingly, such as [all those] other than human beings and Satan, or unwillingly, such as human beings and Satan, since disbelief cannot embrace any other existent. All [these other existents] comply with what God has commanded them obediently. Man, on the other hand, veils himself of his own free will and because he has forgotten God’s covenant and has accepted the call of Satan, corresponding to him by virtue of his [man’s] ego-centric darkness: he does not believe, nor does he comply except unwillingly, God knows, except the one whom God has protected [from such sin] and chosen [for such protection]. Satan, on account of his veiling himself with his conceit and ego, when he said I am better than him [Q. 7:12], and because of his refusal and arrogance, disbelieved even as he knew that he was being disobedient, realising that his disbelief took place by God’s will: that is the essence of faith, as God says: like Satan when he says to man, ‘Disbelieve!’… he [then] says to him, ‘Lo! I am absolved of you. Indeed I fear God, the Lord of the Worlds [Q. 59:16]. He also says: And that Satan adorned their deeds for them and said, ‘Today no person shall overcome you, for I shall be your protector’. But when the two armies sighted each other, he turned his back in flight saying, ‘I am quit of you, for I see what you do not see. I fear God and God is severe in retribution’ [Q. 8:48]; and in another place: And Satan says, when the issue has been decided, ‘Truly God promised you a promise of truth, whereas I promised you, then failed you, for over you I had no warrant, except that I called you and you responded to me. So do not blame me, but blame yourselves. I cannot heed your [distress] call, nor can you heed mine. Lo! I disbelieved in your making me an associate of God before [Q. 14:22]. All of these verses are proof that he [Satan] has faith, but when it shall not profit him; and to Him they shall be returned, in the final sequel, when there shall be no religion other than God’s religion. Nay, all upon this return shall be upon His religion:

‘All are followers of the religion of the Truth if they [only] could discern, for a religion that is not for [sake of] the Truth, is not one that is lawful’.

Whoever desires a religion other than Islam: what is meant by islām here is affirmation of Oneness which is God’s religion according to His statement I have surrendered my countenance to God [Q. 3:20] and is the one mentioned in the preceding verse and what He has described as subsuming all religions and what requires complete voluntary obedience, as mentioned at the end part of that verse where He says: and to Him we submit [Q. 3:84]; it shall not be accepted from him, since his religion shall not arrive at the Truth, exalted be He, because of the [intervening] place of the veil; and in the Hereafter he shall be among the losers, those who have lost by purchasing their souls and what they have been veiled with in exchange for the truth.

How shall God guide a people, to the end of the verse: He denies His guidance to a people whom He had guided initially by the light of preparedness to faith, then by the light of faith until they witnessed with their own eyes the truth of the Messenger and acquired certainty to the extent that they no longer had a single doubt; and this [certainty] was supplemented by [their] acquisition of rational proofs from clear signs. But then after all of these testimonies their souls manifested themselves in obstinacy and obduracy. The lights of their witnessing hearts, intellects and spirits, all three of them, were veiled by the Truth for the sake of the Truth, on account of the misfortune of this [act of] injustice of theirs and the mastery which their [evil-] commanding souls acquired over them, that which constitutes the utmost in evil deed. Thus God says: God guides not the evildoing folk, because of the harshness of their veil and the great extent to which they are distant from the Truth and from the reception of the light. And these [evildoing folk] are of two classes. For one class the configuration of the mastery of the commanding soul over their hearts has taken deep root and become fixed in them. They have engrossed themselves excessively in error and the pursuit of evil and have reached extreme distance [from the Truth] and obstinacy until such [behaviour] became an inherent trait that does not abandon them. In the case of the other class, that configuration has not taken deep root in them yet and their hearts have not become rusted over; [for these] there remains behind the veil of the soul a ray of the light of their preparedness that perhaps a mercy and a gift of success from God should reach them that they might then become remorseful and feel shame by virtue of the innate disposition of the intellect. He thus alludes to the first class in His statement surely those who disbelieve after they have believed to the end of that verse [Q. 3:90], and to the second [class] with His statement:

But those who repent thereafter, and make amends, for what they had rendered corrupt, by pursuing devotedly [good] deeds and acts of spiritual discipline.

[Surely those who disbelieve, and die disbelieving,] the whole earth full of gold shall not be accepted from any one of them, because at that instant only subsisting luminous matters are accepted, as the Hereafter is the world of light and subsistence wherein perishing matters of darkness shall have no effect or bearing. Besides, was the cause of their disbelief and their being veiled anything but their love of these wicked and transient things? So how then could these constitute the cause of their salvation, nearness, acceptance and remorse when they are the very cause of their destruction, distance, loss and privation?

You will not attain piety: any act that brings a person closer to God is piety (birr). The only way to become closer to Him is to absolve oneself (tabarrī) of all that is other than Him. Thus when one loves something he becomes veiled thereby from God, exalted be He, and is guilty of a subtle associationism (shirk) because his love is attached to something other than God, as God says Yet there be people who take to themselves compeers besides God, loving them as God is loved [Q. 2:165], preferring that their souls love these over God. Such a person has become distant from God on three accounts: the love of other than the Truth; association of others [with God]; and preferring one’s soul over the Truth. But is such a person were to prefer God over his soul and voluntarily give away that [love of others to God], expending it [for God], then that distance would disappear and nearness would ensue. Otherwise, he will remain veiled, even if he were to expend many times over of something else, and will not attain piety because God knows what is being expended and [knows of] his being veiled by something other than Him.

All food was lawful to the Children of Israel, that is, [to] those possessing intellect, by virtue of [its] being the foundation, since the intellect judges that things were created for the benefit of servants absolutely and hence what pertains to the category of things eaten was created to be consumed; save what Israel, the spirit, forbade for himself, through rational consideration by trial and comparison, ascertaining what is harmful and what is beneficial at the level of differentiation after the undifferentiating stipulation that it is all lawful was made. For the intellect judges that what is harmful or what brings about ruin should be forbidden; before the Torah was revealed, that is, before the divine [prescriptions of the] law was revealed in the Torah and all of the other divine scriptures. People fell into disagreement after they had been one community following the religion of the Truth, as has been mentioned. God then sent prophets to guide them and to put right the states determining [both] their livelihoods [in this world] and their final return [in the next], and to make them return the [path of] truth and agreement. What divine wisdom required that it be forbidden was indeed forbidden, in accordance with their imbalanced states and the foolish natures of their hearts and their diseased souls, in the way of things to which they were accustomed and things which turned [them] away from the Truth and constituted veils between them and God, and which incited caprices and passions and all manner of corruptive acts and temptations that prevented them from [realising] their perfections and [achieving] guidance.

The first house established for the people: they say that it was the first house to appear on the surface of the water at the time of the creation of the heaven and the earth. He created it 2000 years before the earth; it had been a clear froth on the surface of the water under which the earth was then spread out. The House then is an allusion to the real heart; its appearance on the surface of the water constitutes its attachment to the drop of [creational] fluid at the heaven of the animal spirit and the earth of the body; its creation before the earth is an allusion to its eternity and the temporal incidence of the body; the specification of 2000 years is an allusion to its precedence over the body in two modes, the mode of the soul and the mode of the heart, a precedence of level, since 1000 constitutes one complete level, as has been alluded to before; its being a clear froth is an allusion to the purity of its substance; the spreading out of the earth below it is an allusion to the engenderment of the body by effect and the fact that its [the body’s] figures, delineations, and the forms of its limbs follow on from its configurations. That is the interpretation of the narrative. Know also that the locus for the attachment of the spirit to the body and the joining point of the real heart to it is at first the formal heart, which is the first of the organs to undergo engenderment and the first to function and the last to become still, hence its being the first house established for people: was that at Bakka, the breast as a form, or the first locus of worship and place of prayer established for people, [that is] for the real heart that is located in the Bakka of the spiritual breast. That [spiritual] breast is the most noble station of the soul and the place in which swarm the faculties that are oriented towards it; a blessed place, possessing divine blessedness emanating from the effusion that it connects to all existence, faculties and life. For all of the faculties that are contained in the organs proceed to these [organs] first by way of that [place]; and a guidance to all worlds: a cause of guidance and a light by which one is guided to God.

Therein are clear signs, in the way of forms of knowledge, gnoses, wisdoms and realities, the station of Abraham, that is to say, the intellect which is the foothold of Abraham the spirit, meaning the locus wherein the light of that [house] is joined to the heart; and whoever enters it, of the wayfarers and the perplexed who wander in the deserts of ignorance, shall be secure, from the misguiding enticements of scheming demons and [from] the afreets of the insinuations of the soul and the snatches of the satans of estimation and the jinn of imaginations and the slaughter by the beasts of prey of the egocentric faculties and their attributes. It is the duty of people towards God to make the pilgrimage to the House, [to] this [House], and to circumambulate it, if he is able to make his way there, of the wayfarers who are prepared and who are sincere in their will, and have the means of the provision of piety and the mount of powerful resolve, to the exclusion of others who are of a weak preparedness and who stay behind because of weakness and [spiritual] sickness and [because of] all barriers pertaining to character traits or those egocentric or corporeal [barriers] that are accidental. As for the one who disbelieves, that is, the one who has veiled his preparedness despite its having the capacity [for spiritual growth] and who turns away from it out of the caprices of the soul, God is Independent of, him, and of, the worlds, all of them. In other words, He is not concerned with him because of the latter’s distance [from God] and his being unreceptive to His mercy [existing as he does] under the ignominy of the veil, which is that privation [from God] entails being forsaken and rejected.

Whoever holds fast to God, by severing himself from all that is other than Him and [by] holding on to true affirmation of Oneness, he is guided to a straight path. For the straight path is the way of the Truth, exalted be He, as He has said: Surely my Lord is on a straight path [Q. 11:56]. Thus whoever severs himself in devotion solely to Him through annihilation in the Unity, his path becomes the path of God.

[O you who believe] fear God as He should be feared, for what concerns the remainder of your existences, for the true way to fear Him is to fear Him as He ought and deserves to be feared, which is to be annihilated in Him. In other words, make [fear of] Him a means of protection so that you guard against the remainders of your essences and your attributes. For in God there is compensation for all that has gone before; and do not die, except in a state in which [your] countenances have submitted to Him. In other words, let your death be annihilation in the Oneness.

And hold fast to God’s bond, together, that is, [hold fast] to His covenant, the one [mentioned] in His statement: Am I not your Lord [Q. 7:172], united in affirmation of [Hi] Oneness; and do not separate from one another, with disagreeing opinions, for to be separated from the truth results from the divergence of natures and the pursuit of caprice as well as the mutual attraction of faculties. The affirmer of [His] Oneness is far removed from such [a predicament], because his heart has been illumined by the light of the Truth and his soul has been irradiated by the effusion of the heart, such that his faculties are at peace and in friendship with one another. And remember God’s grace upon you, by way of [His] guiding you to the affirmation of Oneness that entails love in the hearts, when you were enemies, because of your being veiled with egocentric veils and the coverings of nature, far removed from the light, and [by] the universal goals that allow for association and which remain, by consensus, in the abyss of darkness; and He brought your hearts together, by making you love one another for God’s sake so that these [hearts] might be illumined by His light; so that by His grace you became brothers, in religion, friends through God; and you were upon the brink of a pit of fire, which is the abyss into which fall wicked nature and the locus of privation and chastisement; but He delivered you from it, as a result of your true closeness with one another in pursuit of the Lote-tree of the station of the spirit and the spirit of the Paradise of the Essence. So God makes clear to you His signs, by means of the self-disclosures of [His] subtle attributes and [by His] luminous irradiations, that you might be guided, to His beauty and the self-disclosure of His Essence.

Let there be one community of you calling to good, that is, let there be from among you all a company of men who are knowledgeable and who pursue [good] deeds, who are knowers, upright in religion, such as the [Sufi] shaykhs of a ṭarīqa; calling to good, for the one who does not know God does not know good. Absolute good is absolute perfection, that which can enable a human being, depending on the type, to know the Truth, exalted be He, and to reach Him. Supererogatory [good] is the type by which one can attain the absolute [good] or [attain] that perfection specific to each person depending on what his specific preparedness entails. Therefore, the good to which the call is being made is either the Truth, exalted be He, or the means to reach [Him]. ‘Decency’ (maʿrūf) is every obligatory or recommended deed in religion, by which one seeks nearness to God, exalted be He; and ‘indecency’ (munkar) is every prohibited or reprehensible act that distances a person from God, exalted be He, and renders the person disobedient or one who has fallen short of his duties and is blameworthy. For the one who does not affirm the Oneness and is not upright, neither the station of the call nor the station of enjoining decency and forbidding indecency have any bearing on him; the one who is not an affirmer of Oneness might call [others] to obey other than God and to one who is not upright in religion. But even if such a person were an affirmer of the Oneness, it may be that he enjoins what for him is decent but what at the same time is indecent; or that he forbids what for him is indecent but what in reality is decent. Like the one who has attained the station of union but has veiled himself with the Truth from creatures, so that he frequently deems licit what is illicit, such as certain intoxicants, or he disposes of [other] people’s property and deems illicit what is licit, nay what is recommended, such as being of humble character, rewarding virtuous acts and so on; those are the successful, the ones singled out for prosperity, those for whom there remains no veil, being the viceregents of God in His earth.

Do not be, configured [merely] in accordance with your natures, not following any imam, nor being in agreement, of one voice as [when] you follow a [spiritual] leader who unites you upon the same path (ṭarīqa); like those who became divided, pursuing capricious opinions and innovations, and disputed after there came to them, the definitive proofs of reason and the [divine] law, [proofs] which require a uniting of orientations and an agreement in voice. People have differing natures and innate dispositions, divided opinions, dissimilar habits and conducts, deriving from their constitutions and their caprices. From these there result divergent comprehensions and hostile character traits. When they do not have an exemplar or an imam under whose guardianship their convictions, conduct and opinions can be unifie, and through whose love and obedience their voices, habits and desires are brought into harmony with one another, they become neglected, divided, prey for Satan, much like a stray sheep is [an easy target] for a wolf. That is why the Commander of the Believers, peace be upon him, said: ‘People must have an imam, whether he be pious or impious. The Prophet never sent two or more men on some mission except that he commanded that one be [imam] over the other and commanded the other to obey the former and to follow him [in all decisions], so that their affairs are unified and organised. Otherwise, confusion and chaos would ensue. The affairs of religion and of this world would be in disarray and the means to livelihood and to the [life at the] final return would be disrupted”. The Messenger of God said, “Whoever separates himself from the community (jamāʿa), even by an inch, shall never the heart of Paradise”. He also said, “God is with those who stay together. Do you not see that if human society is not regulated by the leadership of the heart and the obedience of the intellect, how its organisation is disrupted and begins to fall into corruption and schism, both which entail the loss of this world and the Hereafter”. When God’s [following] words were sent down, And that this is My straight path, so follow it; and do not follow other ways, lest it separate you away from His way [Q. 6:153], the Messenger of God drew a line and said, “this is the path of right-guidance”, then drew lines to the right and to the left of it and said, “these are [other] paths, and upon each path sits a devil calling [man] to that [path]”.

The day when some faces are blackened, and some faces whitened: the whitening of the face is a reflection of the illumination of the countenance of the heart by the light of the Truth by virtue of its [the heart’s] orientation toward it and its turning away from the lower egocentric darkened aspect. That can only come about as a result of affirming the Oneness [of God] and remaining upright upon it by the illumination of the soul, in addition, with the light of the heart, so that the totality becomes illumined by the light of God. [As for] its blackening, that is [the result of] the darkness of the countenance of the heart when it pursues the soul that seeks its shares [of this world] and turns away from the luminous aspect of the truth, the consequence of its [the heart’s] befriending of the soul and the following after desires in order to actualise pleasures, all of which ensues from following the divided satanic paths. As for those whose faces are blackened, it is said to them: ‘Did you disbelieve after you had believed?, that is, have you veiled yourselves from the light of the Truth by the dark attributes of the soul and have taken up abodes in these darknesses after you had been guided and illumined by the light of preparedness and the purity of primordial nature and the guidance of the intellect? Then taste, the chastisement of privation for veiling yourselves from the Truth.

But as for those whose faces are whitened, they shall be in God’s mercy, which is the spirit of connectedness and the holy light and the presential visions of [God’s] beauty, abiding therein.

You are the best community [brought forth to men], by virtue of being affirmers of the Oneness and upholders of justice, which is His shadow, enjoining decency and forbidding indecency, since none but the just one who is an affirmer of the Oneness is able to do that, since he knows what is decent and what is indecent, as has been mentioned already in the interpretation of His words Thus We appointed you a midmost community [Q. 2:143]. The Commander of the Believers [ʿAlī], peace be upon him, said, ‘We are the midmost saddle, with whom the [ultimate] interpretation ends and to whom the zealous extremist refers”. Thus upon the one who has fallen short [in his behaviour] they enjoin the decency that will help him attain the station of Oneness; and they forbid the zealous extremist veiled by the union from [the level of] differentiation and by the Oneness from [the level of] multiplicity; and believing in God, that is, you stand firm at the station of the Oneness which is the midmost. Such [you are] in every act of excess, immoderation and moderation in matters of character traits. Had the People of the Scripture believed, they would have been like you.

They will not harm you, except with a little hurt, because they are severed from the basis of strength and power; in affairs they follow their soul, which is the locus of enfeeblement and evil, while you are protected by God, drawing your strength from Him, in affairs following the truth, which is the source of vanquishing. Thus their power does not exceed the level of slander by the tongue, wickedness and causing hurt, which is the utmost limit of the soul’s capacity. Your power surpasses every [other] power by its ability to vanquish and utterly destroy by virtue of your assumption of the attributes of God, exalted be He. No doubt they retreat before you in battle and are not aided [to victory].

Abasement shall be cast upon them, because might belongs, altogether, to God [Q. 4:139] and none can have a share in it except the one who assumes those character traits [derived] from His attributes by effacing the attributes of mortals, as is the case with the Messenger and the believers, who constitute loci for the manifestation of His might, as He, exalted be He, says: Yet the [real] might belongs to God and to His Messenger, and to the believers [Q. 63:8]. Thus the one who opposes them stands in contrareity to the attribute of might, at variance with the mighty ones, such that abasement necessarily attaches itself to him and subsumes him in whatever state he might be, except for a connection that ties him to the people of might, as where God says save by a rope of God, and a rope of the people, that is, [except for] some protection-guarantee or covenant; but that tends to me a transient affair without [solid] foundation, dependent on a contrived connection. Their essential attribute is not accepted, that [attribute] which adheres to them that is the abasement originating from the origins of their soulsl. They have merited severe wrath from God by their distance and their turning away from the truth. Poverty attaches itself to them because of their severance from God in favour of their souls and so He leaves them to the devices of their own souls.

Yet they are not all alike; some of the People of the Scripture are a community upright, that is, [upright] upon [the path of] God. He then describes them with [reference to] the states of those of uprightness. In other words, there are among them affirmers of Oneness and people of uprightness.

And whatever good you do, you shall not be denied it: in other words, everything that issues from you that brings you nearness to God is joined to its reward from Him. You shall not be denied anything of that [reward]. God, exalted be He, said: ‘Whoever draws near to Me by an inch, I shall draw near to him by an arm’s length. And whoever draws near to Me by an arm’s length, I shall draw near to him by a fathom. And whoever comes to Me walking, I shall come to him hurrying’. He has also said, ‘I am in the company of the one who remembers Me, the intimate of the one who gives thanks to Me, and the obeyer of the one who obeys Me’. In other words, just as you obey Him by purifying your preparedness and orienting yourselves towards Him, He indulges you by effusing [upon you] the effusion in kind and [by] turning to you; and God knows, those who guard against that which veils them from Him and so He discloses Himself to them in the measure that the veil recedes.

The likeness of what they expend in the life of this world, [the life] that is evanescent and its shortlived pleasures, lusting after passions or for show or for a reputation out of vanity, seeking people’s praise without seeking God’s face thereby, and [seeking] what destroys and totally annihilates of the wind generated by the desires of the soul, [a wind] that carries the cold of your corrupt intentions and false goals, such as the making of a show [infront of others] and the like, is as the likeness of a wind wherein is a blast that smote the tillage of a people who have wronged themselves, through associating [others with God] and through disbelief, such that it destroyed it, as a retribution from God for their wrongdoing. God did not wrong them, by destroying their tillage, but they, were wronging themselves, because that [destruction] was caused by their wrongdoing, as they say: be careful, for your hands seal your mouth while you blow.

[O you who believe] do not take as intimates anyone apart from yourselves: a person’s intimate is his closest and most faithful friend, the one who keeps him hidden and is privy to his secrets. Such a friend cannot exist unless the two are united in their purpose, are in accord on religion and in attribute, loving one another for God’s sake and not for some [other] purpose, as is said of friends [that they are] one soul in separate bodies. And if he happens not to be a believer, then it is far more likely that he will be secretly an enemy. He then makes clear his hypocrisy and secret enmity with His words: such men spare nothing to ruin you … to the end [of the verse]. For true and pure love can only be between believers in [God’s] Oneness, since it is the shadow of [the very] Oneness: it cannot be between those who are veiled as they inhabit the world of contrareity and darkness. Where in this world of theirs is there purity and harmony? Nay, it may be that the all-inclusive human genus brings them close together, sharing as they do in that species, and [in] benefits and delights, and in their need for cooperation therein. But once what they have sought of benefits and delights is not actualised, they quarrel and fall into mutual hatred. And that [initial] closeness between them dissipates, since it had been the result of something that undergoes change, because the soul is the origination point of change. This-worldly benefits do not remain in the same state, while egocentric pleasures are fleeting; therefore love based upon it does not endure, unlike the former [type of] love, since this [latter] is based on something that by its essence never changes. That [kind of enmity] ensues when it is a matter between them: how [much worse] would it be when the matter is between them and those who oppose them in principle and in attribute. How can light and darkness be of the same nature and how can the sublime and the low be compatible? Thus between those [aforementioned] men there exists real enmity and essential disagreement, the effects of which cannot be hidden, as God makes clear in His words: Hatred is [even] revealed by their mouths, because the description of [a person’s] essence cannot be concealed. The Prophet said: ‘Never does a person hide something except that God makes it manifest in slips of the tongue and the expressions of the face; and what their breasts conceal is yet greater, because it is a fire and this is the spark: that is the source and this is its offshoot. Now We have made clear to you the signs, the proofs of love and enmity and its causes, if you understand, the import of these words.

Lo, there you are, you love them, as required by the affirmation of Oneness, since the affirmer of Oneness loves all people through the Truth and for the [sake of] the Truth; he seems them connected to his soul in the way that [his] affines and kin [are connected to him], nay, in the way that parts are connected [to a whole]. Thus he regards them through the eyes of divine mercy and lordly tenderness and is sympathetic to them, treating them compassionately, when [the like of him] the people of mercy see them preoccupied with falsehood and tested by fate; but they do not love you by virtue of their being veiled and [their] subsisting in the darkness of the soul and the contrareity of nature. You believe in the Book, that is, in the genus of scripture, all of it, by virtue of the all-inclusiveness of your knowledge of the Oneness, while they do not believe because of their confinement to their religion and their being veiled by what they follow; and when they meet you they say, ‘We believe’, out of that hypocrisy of theirs that seeks to procure their evanescent goals; but when they are alone, they bite at you their fingertips, in rage, because of the rancour that stems from their essences and [because of] their concealed hatred [for you]. As for the rest [of their enmity], it is manifest.

Yet if you endure, with patience what God tests you with in the way of hardships, trials and calamities, and remain firm as required by belief in Oneness and obedience [to God], and guard against, seeking their assistance in your affairs and resorting to friendship with them, their guile will not hurt you at all, because the one who trusts in God, who endures His test and seeks His assistance and not that of another, shall succeed in securing what he demands, vanquish his opponent, receiving his share of his Lord’s good protection. The one who seeks the assistance of another shall be forsaken, left to the devices of his own soul, deprived of the aid of his Lord, as the poet says: ‘he who seeks the help of any other than God in what he wants, shall surely have [nothing but] failure and forsakenness for his assistants. Of what they do, in the way of schemes, God is indeed encompassing, invalidating them and destroying them. They say that if you want to curb [the evil of] the one who envies you, then grow in virtue in yourself, for patience and God-consciousness are among the most beautiful virtues. If you adhere to them, you shall be victorious over your enemies.

Yea, if you are patient and fear, and they come against you … to the end of the verse: to endure with patience the hardship of struggle and to expend the soul in obedience of God and to bear discomfort in pursuit of God’s satisfaction can only take place when there is God-consciousness with the support of the Truth and illumination by the light of certainty and its sureness, and by the sending down of the divine peace and reassurance upon that person. But to be conscious of God while contravening the command of the Truth and inclining to profit and gain, fearing the ruination of the soul can only come about when the soul is broken by the subjugating authority of the heart and the spirit. For constancy and dignity are the attributes of the spirit, while inconstancy and restlessness are the attributes of the soul. Once the authority of the spirit has acquired mastery over the heart and takes its seat [there], it protects that [heart] from falling under the mastery of the attributes of the soul and the [soul’s] hosts, such that the heart becomes enamoured of it [the spirit] and feels at peace with it because of its luminosity the pleasures of which are beloved. It is able to fortify itself with it [the spirit] against the soul and its faculties, defeating it, breaking it, thwarting its [potential] overpowering and [repelling] its darkness from itself, rendering it instead meek, obedient and reassured so that it is no longer agitated and it [the soul] becomes illumined by its [the heart’s] light. Thereupon mercy comes down and the heart corresponds to the heavenly spiritual realm with respect to its [the soul’s] luminosity, its capacity to vanquish what is below it and its love and yearning for what is above it. Thus by that correspondence it [the heart] becomes joined to it [the illumined soul] and is able to draw on its [this soul’s] faculties and [draw] its attributes into its [the heart’s] acts especially when it [the heart] is stirred and spurns the lower aspect and severs itself in exclusive devotion to the higher aspect by the power of certainty and the trust. It is then able to draw upon the faculties of its [the illumined soul’s] capacity to vanquish against the one with whom it [the heart] is angry: this is [the moment of] the coming down of the angels. But when it [the heart] is anxious and alarmed, changes and becomes fearful or inclines to this world, it is overpowered by the soul and subjugated by it and ac quires mastery over it, veiling it by the darkness of its attributes from the light, such that that correspondence is no longer there, the reinforcement [from the spiritual realm] is severed and the angels do not come down.

What God ordained was only as a good tiding to you, that is, He made that reinforcement [to you] with angels only so that you might rejoice at this good news and the strength of your hearts, your valour, your succour, your vitality might be enhanced in your orientation towards the Truth and disengagement [in preparation] for the wayfaring, and so that your hearts might be at peace, and so that the effusion is realised thereby in accordance with the purification [effected] and the successorship [of the earth is granted] in accordance with the relinquishing [of the worldly]. Victory comes only from God, not from angels or from any others. So do not be veiled by multiplicity from unity, nor by creatures from the Truth, for these are [merely] loci of manifestation without reality or effect; the Mighty, the strong who is victorious by His vanquishing, the Wise, who veils His vanquishing power and His assistance in the form of angels out of His wisdom.

And that He might cut off a party of the disbelievers, that He might have some of them slain in order to strengthen the believers, or suppress them, degrade them and humiliate them with defeat to make the believers glorious.

Whether He relents to them, through their submission, to bolster the numbers of the believers, or chastises them, because of their wrongdoing and their persistence in disbelief in order to bring joy to the believers. His words it is no concern at all of yours have fallen between both parts of the coordinated sentence within the narrative as a parenthetical lest the Messenger of God lapse and suppose that he is able to have any effect in these matters, and [lest he] become veiled from the affirmation of the Oneness and remains so, and his witnessings in all oaths are changed. In other words, their affair is not your concern, whatever the situation. You are but a mortal commanded to warn. Your duty is to deliver [the message to them] and their affair is with God.

O you who believe, do not exact usury, in other words, put your trust in God when seeking provision and do not try to acquire it through usury. That is a duty [enjoined] upon you just as it is your duty to trust in Him when seeking victory and [pursuing] the struggle against the enemy, lest you be cowardly despite the protection and the preservation of God [over you]. Know that the recompense of the usurer is the [same as] the recompense of the disbeliever. So beware of [being] such [a person] as he is veiled from His acts, exalted be He, in the same way that the disbeliever is veiled from His attributes and His essence. And the one who is veiled in unable to receive mercy despite its all-encompassing nature. Therefore, remove the veil through acts of obedience and refraining from contravening [God and the Messenger] so that God’s mercy might reach you.

And vie with one another hastening to, conceal your acts, which veil you from the witnessing of the acts of the truth through His acts. For you are deprived from trusting [in God] and from the garden of the world of the kingdom, which is the self-disclosure of [His] acts, by your inspection of your acts. That is [vie in hastening] to what necessitates the concealment of your acts by His acts and then [to] the garden of the acts by means of acts of obedience, as mentioned [in the ḥadīth]: ‘I seek refuge in Your pardon from Your retribution’. Since what is meant by the garden here is the garden of the [divine] acts, the width of which has been described as equal to the width of the heavens and the earth, because the unity of the acts is the unity of the world of the kingdom. As for its length, it has been [left to be] reckoned because acts are considered in relation to a widening chain in which every act depends on another act confined to the world of the kingdom [the extent of which] people attempt to reckon. But in terms of length, these [acts] cannot be confined therein or reckoned, because the act is the locus of manifestation for a description and the description is a locus of manifestation for the essence and as such is infinite and limitless. Thus the ones who are veiled from the essence and the attributes can only see the width of this garden, whereas for those who are apparent before God, the One, the Vanquisher, the width of their garden is its very length and since its length is without limit, neither its length or its width can be reckoned; prepared for those who are wary, those who guard against the veils of their acts and the idolatry of ascribing acts to other than the Truth.

Those who expend in prosperity and adversity: states of contrareity do not prevent them from expending, because of the soundness of their trust in God, as they see that all acts are from Him; and those who restrain their rage, for the same reason, since they see that any wrong committed against them is by an act of God and so they do not object; and if they were not to have rage [in the first place], their station would be that of [God’s] satisfaction and the garden of the attributes; and who pardon their fellow-men, for the reason that we have mentioned and because of their seeking refuge in His pardon, exalted be He, from His retribution; and God loves those who are virtuous, those who witness the self-disclosures of His acts, exalted be He.

And who when they commit an indecency, a grave sin by considering their acts as issuing from power within them, or wrong their souls, [those who] stint what is due to these by committing minor sins and the manifestation of their souls in these, remember God, upon the issuing forth of their acts by seeing them as having occurred as a result of God’s power and [who] absolve themselves of these [acts] before Him, seeing that these are a trial for them from Him, and pray forgiveness, asking for their acts to be concealed, [acts] which constitute their sins, by His acts, absolving themselves thereof by affirming that might and power are His alone; and who shall forgive sins, that is, the existences of acts, but God? In other words, they have realised that there is none to forgive [them] except Him — and who do not persist in what they did, when they were unaware and when their souls were manifest, but who repent and returned to Him in terms of their acts, knowing, that only God acts.

excellent is the wage of those who work, according to what the [true] affirmation of the unity of the acts entails.

There have passed away before you [many] ways of life, smites and calamities from among the things that God has established in His acts as ways of dealing with those who deny the prophets when these affirm the unity of [God’s] acts; so travel in the land and behold, the vestiges [of those ways] therein so that you might know how was their end came about.

This, that has been mentioned, is an exposition for mankind, of the knowledge concerning the affirmation of the unity of [God’s] acts and a differentiating of the God-fearing who are the people fixed (tamkīn) in that [knowledge], [from] the repentant who are the people of variegation (talwīn), and the persistent [in sin] who are veiled from that [knowledge], being deniers of it. This [exposition] is in addition a guidance, an unveiling for eyewitnessing, an ascertainment and an admonition for those who guard against seeing their acts; or it is guidance for them to the affirmation of the unity of the [divine] attributes and the essence.

Faint not, in the struggle when the disbelievers have mastery, neither grieve, for what has eluded you of victory and [for] those brethren of yours who are injured or who have been martyred, for you are the uppermost, in [terms of] level because of your nearness to God and your more exalted degree as the people of God, if you are, affirmers of the Oneness; because the affirmer of Oneness considers that what befalls him of trials is from God and so the least of his degrees, if it is not satisfaction [with that predicament], is patient endurance from which he draws strength in such a way that he does not grieve or faint.

[Such] days: [such] events. Any tremendous affair that occurs is called ‘a day’ or ‘days’, as [in the expression] where God says And remind them of the Days of God [Q. 14:5]. The explanation of ‘that God may know’ has already been given to mean the manifestation of knowledge at the level of differentiation that is subsequent to the eventuality of known things; and that He may take witnesses from among you, those who bear witness to the Truth such that they are distracted from their souls. In other words, We deal out [such] events among mankind for various purposes and [on the basis of] many wisdoms which are not mentioned, from [allowing for] the actualisation of what [potential] is [contained] in their preparedness, to action in the way of patience, endurance, the strength of certainty and little concern for the soul, its being mastered and suppressed by the heart and so on; and also for the two reasons mentioned [in the verse] and to deliver the believers from sins and coverings that distance them from God through punishment and trial, when these [days] are against them;^{1In other words, when the events are not in favour of believers but, as Kāshānī goes on to explain, are (at least on the face of it) in favour of the disbelievers.} and to obliterate the disbelievers, to vanquish them and destroy them when these [days] are in their favour. Between the reasons given [by God] comes a parenthetical: and God loves not the evildoers, in order that it be known that the one who lacks the attribute of faith and witnessing, as well as [the capacity] to examine [his] sins and [lacks] the strength of steadfastness to perfect [his] certainty, but is present at the battle in pursuit of spoils or for some other purpose, such a person is an evildoer and that God does not love him.

You were longing for death before you met it, [to the end of] the verse: every person of certainty whose certainty is not a natural disposition but a passing inclination will always in some of his states long for things and claim certain states in accordance with [the desires of] his soul; likewise [when he is in] a state of other than certainty. When the heart comes forward then he is sincere, so long as he is qualified by that [state of certainty]. But when in another state and at the turning away [of his heart], there remains no trace of that [certainty]. Similar is the case with the one who has not witnessed a [particular] state or experienced it. It may be that he longs for it by virtue of its being formed [as an image] in his soul and the fact that he is not harmed by it when it is [simply] an image. However, when it does take place and he is tried [with it], he is unable to bear its hardships, as is related of Sumnūn the lover,^{1On Sumnūn (or Samnūn, d. 298/910), an early Sufi shaykh of the Baghdad school, famed for his irrepressible zeal in the articulation of the concept of ‘the love of God’, whence his nickname al-muḥibb, ‘the lover’. Sumnūn was so convinced that the only measure of true love of God is the endurance of near unbearable trials that when (see his verse) he invoked such a trial upon himself and failed, he thereafter referred to himself as ‘the liar’, al-kadhdhāb, which was later understood as a humbling admission of the frailty of the human character, as opposed to a frivolous act of pretense on his part: see B. Reinert, ‘Samnūn b. Ḥamza’, EI2, IX, 873.} may God have mercy upon him, when he said in one of his verses:

‘However You wish, then test me!’

He was then afflicted with urine retention (asr) but was unable to bear the trial. He would wander the streets and give children things to play with such as walnuts, saying to them, ‘Pray for this old man of yours, the liar’. It is in this sense that the poet says: ‘[Only] when the coward finds himself alone in some place, does he seek the challenge and lines up for battle, all alone’.

Thus a state is of little concern until it becomes a station and can only be considered a station when the person has been tried in that very abode.^{2A person ‘abides’ in a station in the sense that it defines his spiritual location and becomes like a dwelling (mawṭin) for him (contrast this with temporary passage through ‘waystations’, manāzil). Naturally, the experience of the abode differs in the case of the one who has just arrived at a particular station from one who has ‘dwelt’ there far longer. To confirm the station one needs to successfully undergo the trials associated with the meriting of that station.} If he makes it through the trial then it [his station] is good. This is one of the benefits of the dealing out of the days between them, that they might be trained in [the presence of] death and their certainty be strengthened, their patience abound and their station realised through the witnessing, as He says: Now you have seen it, with the slaying of your brethren before your, as you, witnessed that. Therein is a rebuke for them, for that their certainty was a state and not a station,^{3On the difference between ‘states’, which are transient, and ‘stations’, which are fixed qualities see Chittick 1989:274ff.} which is why they have failed [to dwel] in the abode [of that station].

Muhammad is only a messenger, that is, he is only a mortal messenger who will pass away or be slain like other prophets before him. Thus the one who is certain in his religion and follows an insight from his Lord does not turn back [from his religion] should the Messenger die or be slain, nor does he neglect the path that he followed, because he is struggling for the sake of his Lord and not the Messenger, as was the case with the companions of former prophets. And as Anas, the uncle of Anas b. Mālik said on the day of [the battle of] Uḥud, when [false] rumours circulated that the Messenger of God, peace be upon him, had been killed and when this news spread and the Muslims were defeated, and it reached him [Anas] that some were saying, ‘Would that someone secure for us a guarantee of safety from Abū Sufyān!’ and that the hypocrites were saying, ‘Were he a [true] prophet, he would not have been killed’, he [Anas] said, ‘My fellow men: if Muḥammad has indeed been slain, then [know that] Muḥammad’s Lord is Living and does not die! What, in any case, do you hope to do with your lives after the Messenger of God [has gone]? So fight in the way that he fought and die upon that [religion] which he died!’ He [Anas] then said, ‘O Lord, I apologise to You for what they have said and absolve myself before You of their behaviour’. He then seized his sword and fought until he was slain. If any man should turn back on his heels, he will not harm God in any way, but will have harmed himself by his hypocrisy and the weakness of his certainty, and God will requite those that are thankful, for the grace of Islam, the likes of Anas b. al-Naḍr and men of certainty of his mettle.

It is not for any soul to die, save by the leave of God, a prescribed term, and so the one who has certainty shall witness the meaning of this and find himself the most valiant of men, as Ḥātim b. al-Aṣamm related of himself in what he witnessed with Shaqīq al-Balkhī, may God have mercy on both, in one of the campaigns into Khurāsān. He relates, ‘Shaqīq found me as the battle was raging. He asked me, “How do you find your heart O Ḥātim?”. I replied, “Like on my wedding night, [wavering] between two states”. He then put down his weapons, saying, “As for me, mine is like this”, and laid his head down on his shield. He slept [so deeply] as the battle raged, you could hear him snoring. That is the ultimate in terms of the heart being reassured by God and its confidence in Him by virtue of the strength of its certainty.

We will cast terror into the hearts of the disbelievers, [to the end of] the verse: He has ordained that the terror cast into the hearts of the disbelievers be caused by their association of others [with Him]. For valour and all the other virtues are forms of moderation within the faculties of the soul against that the shadow of the Oneness should be cast on it upon its illumination by the light of the heart which is itself illumined by the light of the Oneness. As such these [virtues] can only be perfected for the affirmer of the Oneness who has certainty in his affirmation of the Oneness. As for the one who associates others [with God], because he is veiled from the source of strength and power by what he associates with God of existents that are blemished by nonexistence and the contingency (imkān) of whose existence is [necessarily] subtle and weak and which in itself possesses no strength, existence or essence in reality and regarding whose existence God has not sent down any definitive proof of its existence in the first place, given that its nonexistence has been realised in accordance with [the nature of] its [contingent] essence, such [an associating person] possesses nothing but incapacity, cowardice and all vices, since he cannot be stronger than the object of his worship, even if he should be given a turn of fortune, a show of force or a dash of bravery then this will be something without foundation, fixedness or endurance, like the [short] fire of the arfaj bush;^{1Rhanterium epapposum, common to the desert areas of the Arabian peninsula.} such were the [shortlived] fortunes of the [Meccan] polytheists.

God has been true to His promise, that is, His promise to you of assistance if you are patient and Godfearing. So long as you remain in this state of yours, with [your] intense endurance of the struggle and certainty of [God’s] assistance, remaining firm upon that certainty, united in word in your orientation towards the Truth, wary of contravening the Messenger and the inclining of [your] souls to the adornments of this world and away from the truth, struggling for the sake of God and not for this world, then God will be with you granting you assistance and fulfilling the promise. Indeed you were, by His leave, cutting them down and making them retreat, until you lost heart, that is, [until] you became cowardly and weakness intruded into your certainty and the your belief spoiling what it would have deserved by right by allowing it to be fraudulent in [the coveting of] the spoils, and you quarrelled, over the conduct of the battle after having been in accord. You were not patient for the share of this world, but contravened the Messenger by ignoring his command to you to hold your position and you inclined to the adornments of this world, after He had shown you what you longed for, in the way of victory and spoils, when the time for giving thanks to God and turning to him with zeal was upon you. [Instead] you were distracted from Him, the noblest of you desiring the Hereafter and the rest desiring this world, but there remained none who desired God. [Thus] He withheld His assistance from you, then He turned you away from them, so that He might try you, with what you did. And that trial was a kindness and a bounty to you [from Him], and God is Bounteous to the believers, in all states, either through [His] assistance [to them] or through trial. Indeed trial is a bounty and a subtle kindness [to believers] so that they might come to know that the [spiritual] states of servants attract the manifestations of the descriptions of the Truth onto them. And so what they have prepared their souls for is bestowed on them from God, as has been mentioned already in His words ‘the obeyer of the one who is obedient to Me’. God is with them as they are with Him; and lest they sleep on their states without [seeking to acquire] the natural dispositions and so that they might be trained [spiritually] to be patient in adversity and to remain firm in the abodes [of their spiritual stations] and to become fixed in certainty making this a natural disposition of theirs and a station, and that they might verify [the truth of] that God does not alter the state of a people unless they have altered the state of their souls [Q. 13:11], and so that they might not incline to this world and its adornments or be distracted from the Truth or sell it in exchange for this world and the Hereafter; and so that it might be a punishment hastened for some of them now in order for them to be purged of their sins and to attain the degree of witnessing by the removal of the veils, especially the veil of the love of one’s soul, and so that they might then encounter God as pure ones. That is why He says yet now He has pardoned you [Q. 3:152], for the trial was the cause of the pardon.

so He rewarded you with grief for grief, that is, He turned you away from them and rewarded you with grief because of a grief that befell God’s Messenger from your part when you disobeyed him and lost heart and quarreled. Or [it means] grief after grief, doubled, so that you might be trained to be patient and to remain firm in adversity, and so that you might become accustomed to seeing power, victory and spoils and all things as being from God and not from your own souls, so that you might not grieve for what eluded you, of shares and benefits, neither for what befell you, of grief and harm.

Then, He spared you the grief by [granting you] security and casting sleep upon the truthful party and not the [party of the] hypocrites, whose own souls distressed them, not the soul of the Messenger, nor indeed those who manifested an indication [that they were deserving] of [God’s] pardon; those for whom it had been appointed that they be slain would have sallied forth to the places where they were to lie, because of His statement No affliction befalls in the earth or in your souls but it is in a Book, before We bring it about [Q. 57:22], that God might try what was in your breasts, in other words, so that God might test what is in your preparedness of [the potential] truthfulness, sincerity, certainty, patience, trust in God, and disengagement, and all the other [virtuous] traits and stations, in order to bring them forth from potentiality to actuality; and that He might prove what was in your hearts, meaning, so that He might deliver those [potentials], which have sallied forth out of the hiding place of the breast and into the storehouse of the heart, from the stumbling blocks that are the evil whisperings of Satan, base states and the passing inclinations of the soul…For the trial is one of God’s scourges by which He drives His servants towards Him by purifying them of the attributes of the soul and making manifest the perfections [dormant] in them so that they are devoted completely to Him instead of creatures and to the Truth instead of the soul. That is why it has always been the prophets, followed by the friends [of God], and then the most exemplary [of servants] that have been charged with such [trials]. The Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, as an illustration of his excellence said, ‘No prophet has suffered hurt to the extent that I have’. It is as though he were saying, ‘No prophet has been purified like I have’. Good are the words of the one who said:

‘How excellent are calamities, for verily they bring rust to the ignoble, but lustre to the free’.

For whatever manifests on either of the two [of rust or lustre] is only what is hidden in that person’s preparedness, in the same way that they say, ‘At the test a man is either honoured or disgraced’.

[Satan] made them slip, that is, he asked them to slip and called them to do so, the slip being the turning away [from the battle], through some of what they had earned, in the way of sins. For Satan is only able to whisper to people and to fulfil his task when there is an opportunity through the smallest darkness in the heart resulting from a sin or a motion of the soul, as they say: the sin that follows a sin is the punishment of the former [sin]; but God pardoned them, by their apology and their remorse;

so that God may make that anguish in their hearts, in other words, that He might make that statement and belief^{1That is, the belief that had their brethren not set out on campaigns and had they stayed behind they would not have been slain, as stated in the first part of this verse.} a constraint, a straitening and a grief in their hearts for considering that death or slaying is caused by an act [of man]. Had they been people of certainty affirmers of the Oneness they would have seen that it is [all] from God and their breasts would have been expanded [embracing God]. For God gives life, to whom He will, be they on journey or in a struggle or otherwise; and He gives death, to whom He will in the towns or otherwise.

[And if you are slain in God’s way, or die] forgiveness from God and mercy, that is, your bliss in the Hereafter in terms of the garden of the acts and the garden of the attributes is better for you than that [bliss and reward] of this world, since you are working towards the Hereafter.

[And if you die or are slain] it is to God you shall be mustered, [you shall be mustered] to the place of your affirmation of the Oneness. Thus your state after death will be better than your state before it.

It was by the mercy of God, that is, by your possession of the attribute of mercy from [His Name] the Merciful, in other words, a complete, perfect and abundant mercy, which is an attribute from the totality of God’s attributes that is a concomitant of your divinely-bestowed existence and not [from your] mortal existence, that you were lenient with them; had you been harsh, possessing the attributes of the soul from which derive harshness and fierceness of heart, they would have dispersed from about you, because the divine mercy that precipitates their love for you brings them together. So pardon them, for the offences they have committed against you, for you see that it is from God from the perspective of [your] belief in the Oneness and because your station is too exalted for that you should be hurt by the actions of mortals or that you should be infuriated by their acts or that you should desire to satisfy your fury by taking revenge on them; and ask [God’s] forgiveness for them, for what relates to [offences against] the obligations due to God, on account of their forgetfulness, their remorse and their apology, and consult with them, in the matter of war and other things, in consideration of them and out of respect. But when you are resolved, then leave the matter to God by relying on Him and seeing that all acts, including conquest, victory and knowledge of what is the most expedient and best-guided [decision] is from Him and not from yourself, neither from those with whom you consult. He then verifies the meaning of reliance [on God] and affirmation of [His] Oneness in acts by saying:

If God helps you…to the end [of the verse: then none can overcome you; but if He forsakes you, then who is there who can help you after Him? Therefore on God let the believers rely].

It is not for a prophet [to be fraudelent], given the remoteness of the station of prophethood and the immunity of prophets from all vices and the impossibility of such [behaviour] issuing from them, removed as they are from the attributes of mortals, immune to the effects of the summonings of the soul and Satan on them, subsisting in God and possessing of His attributes; [whoever defrauds] shall bring what he has defrauded, that is, he shall appear in the form of his defrauding, exactly in [the form of] what he had defrauded.

Is he who follows God’s beatitude, namely, [is he who follows] the prophet through the station of beatitude, which is the garden of the attributes, by his [the prophet’s] possession of the attributes of God, and the defrauder who is at the station of wrath by virtue of his being veiled by his own attributes, and whose abode is, the lowest pits of the dark soul: are they the same?

They are of degrees: that is, each of the people of the beatitude and the people of wrath are of varying degrees, or they differ from each other by a variance in degree.

Say: It is from yourselves: this [statement] does not contradict [His other statement] Say: Everything is from God [Q. 4:78], because the agent cause in all cases is the Truth, exalted be He, while the receptive cause is themselves. The agent effuses only in the measure that befits the [receiving] preparedness and is required by it. Thus from the perspective of the agent it is from God and from the perspective of the recipient it is from themselves. The preparedness of souls is either innate or accidental. The innate derives from His holiest effusion in accordance with His will. The accidental issues as required by His decree, which aspect also ultimately derives from Him. From another perspective, what is from themselves is also from God, if one considers His Oneness, for there is nothing else there.

and that He might know the believers.

And that He might also know the hypocrites, that is, so that the believers and the hypocrites might be distinguished at the level of differentiated knowledge.

Count not those who were slain in God’s way, whether their slaying was the result of the lesser struggle and the expending of the soul for the sake of God’s satisfaction, or whether through the greater struggle and the breaking of the soul and the suppression of caprices by means of spiritual discipline: as dead, but rather, living with their Lord, the real life, disengaged from the filth of natural traits, brought near to the Holy Presence, provided for [by Him], with spiritual provisions, namely, gnoses, realities and the irradiation of lights and are provided for in the formal garden in the way that all the living are provided for. For there are levels in the gardens, some of which are spiritual and some formal. In each of the spiritual and the formal there are degrees [merited] in accordance with the works [performed]. The spiritual [levels] are the garden of the Essence and the garden of the attributes and the superiority of certain degrees over other degrees within them is relative to the varying superiority of the degrees of the people of God’s power and those of the angelic realm. The formal one is the garden of the acts whose varying degrees of superiority is relative to the varying degrees of superiority of the world of the kingdom that is the upper heavens and the gardens of this world. It is related from the Prophet that he said: ‘When your brothers were struck down in [the battle of] Uḥud, God placed their spirits in hollowed-out forms of green birds circling in flight over the rivers of the Garden, eating of its fruits then returning to golden lanterns hung in the shadow of the Throne’. The green birds are an allusion to the celestial bodies, and the lanterns are the stars. In other words, they attach themselves to the luminous celestial bodies because of their purity. The rivers of the Garden are the springs and watering-places of knowledge; its fruits are the states and the gnoses; as for the formal rivers and fruits are commensurate with their spiritual or formal garden. For every thing that exists in this world of foods, drinks, spouses, garments and all pleasures and delights exists in the Hereafter and in the various strata of the heavens [but] more pleasurable and purer than those of this world.

Joyful in what God has given them of His bounty, in the way of an honouring, graces and nearness to God, and rejoicing for, the state of their brethren, those who have not joined them but are left behind, and have not yet attained degrees like theirs [being as they are] behind them, because they will be made joyous soon with the like of their state and will join them, that no fear shall befall them, neither shall they grieve: an inclusive substitution for ‘those who’ (alladhīna), that is to say, they rejoice [for them] that they shall be safe and that no fear shall befall them, and that neither shall they grieve.

Rejoicing in grace, that is, their safety is by virtue of a tremendous grace the quintessence of which cannot be known, this being the garden of the attributes, by the actualisation for them of the station of beatitude, mentioned further on, and bounty, and in addition to that [garden] the garden of the Essence and total safety from the remainder of existence. That is the perfection of their being witnesses of God. Still, God does not let the wage of their belief go to waste, and that is the garden of the acts and the reward of works.

[For] those who responded to God, by being annihilated in the Essential unity, and to the Messenger, with the station of true uprightness, after the wounds, that is, the breaking of the soul, had afflicted them, for all those who were virtuous, who stood firm at the station of witnessing, and were wary, of their remainders, shall be a great wage, after faith, and that is the spirit of the witnessing.

Those to whom people said, before their arrival at the witnessing, ‘The people have gathered against you, therefore fear them’, in other words, they have taken into account your existence and reckon with, so you reckon with them; but that, statement, increased them in faith, that is, in certainty and in affirmation of the Oneness by negating any other [than God] and not being concerned by it. By negating what is other than God they attained the very affirmation of God when they said: ‘God is sufficient for us. So they witnessed Him before returning to the differentiated mode of the attributes with uprightness, saying: an excellent Guardian is He’, which are the words that Abraham, peace be upon him, said when he was cast into the fire and it became coolness and safety for him [cf. Q. 21:69].

So they returned with grace and bounty from God, that is, they returned by means of the existence deriving from [His Name] the Truth to the garden of the attributes and the Essence, as was mentioned earlier; and evil, the remainder and the sight of other [than God], touched them not, and they followed the beatitude of God, which is the garden of the attributes during their state of wayfaring when they did not know what had been hidden for them of things that delight the eye, and that is the garden of the Essence referred to in His words: and God is of bounty abounding. For ‘bounty’ is an increase [granted] over beatitude.

[That is only Satan] giving fear to [or of] his friends, those people who are veiled by their own souls like him, or [it means] that he is making you fear his friends; therefore do not fear them, and do not reckon with their existence, but fear Me, if you are, affirmers of the Oneness. In other words, do not fear anyone other than Me, because that [other] has no existence in itself and no effect.

Let them not grieve you those that vie with one another in unbelief, given their innate veiledness and essential darkness, for fear that they might hurt you; they will not hurt God at all: the indulging of the disbelievers and the extending of their lifespans are [in fact] a cause for the intensity of their chastisement, their utter ignominy and abasement, since the longer their lifespan the more they become veiled and distant and the more they become distant from the Truth, with His unassailable might, the more they increase in ignominy.

It is not God’s purpose to leave the believers in the state in which you are, of outward submission and affirmation [of belief] by the tongue, till He shall distinguish the evil, in the way of the attributes of the soul, the doubts of estimation, the shares of Satan, or the exigencies of desire, from the wholesome aspects of the attributes of the heart, such as sincerity, certainty, unveiling, the witnessings of the spirit, the sweet talk of the innermost heart and its night conversings, so that gnosis and love of God might be made pure through the testing [of you by God] and the befalling among you of trials and afflictions. And it is not God’s purpose to apprise you of, the Unseen of your existence in terms of the realities and states that are dormant in you without the medium of the Messenger, because of the great gulf that separates you from Him, the nonexistence of any correspondence [between you and God] and the absence of preparedness to receive from Him; but God chooses of His messengers whom He will, and apprises him of His mysteries and realities through the unveiling so that He might guide you to what is hidden from you of the treasure troves of your existence and His mysteries on account of the generic compatibility in terms of the soul between you and him that necessitates the possibility of your being guided by him. So believe in God and His messengers, with an affirmation of the heart and a will and adherence to the divine law so that you might be able to receive and accept [such things] from them; and if you [continue to] believe, after that faith through verification and wayfaring towards certainty and observance of the spiritual path, and are wary, [guarding against] the egocentric veils and the bars to wayfaring, then yours shall be a great wage, by way of the unveiling of reality. The bounty that God has granted them in the way of property, knowledge, power and soul, which they do not expend in the way of God on those who deserve [them], and the [spiritually] prepared, as well as the prophets and the truthful ones in order to protect them or to be annihilated in God,

what they were niggardly with, they shall have hung around their necks on the Day of Resurrection: in other words, He will make [all] that [bounty] a fetter around their necks and a cause for their confinement and privation from the spirit of God and His mercy, and a necessitating cause of their ignominy and their veiling from the light of His beauty because of their love of, and attachment to, it; and to God belongs the inheritance of the heavens and the earth, in terms of souls and their attributes, such as the faculties, powers, knowledge, properties and all that falls under the name of existent: how then can they be niggardly towards Him with what is His property?

[Regarding His words from] verily God has heard to where He says:

if you are truthful?’: it is related that for the prophets of the Children of Israel the miraculous proof [of their prophethood] was that they would bring forth an offering and invoke God whereupon a fire would come down from the heaven and consume it. The interpretation of this is that they would bring forth their souls seeking nearness to God by them and they would invoke God through renunciation and devotion whereafter the fire of love would come down from the heaven of the spirit and consume this [offering of theirs] and annihilate it in the Oneness, whereupon their prophethood would be [proven as] authentic and would become manifest. The common folk of the Children of Israel came to hear of this and came to believe in its outward form, even if this should be possible in the world of [God’s] power. They thus required from every prophet that sign. They also falsely believed that ‘to lend to God’ — which means to consecrate wealth in the way of God by expending in order to receive the full reward, and to consecrate [one’s] acts and attributes by effacing them through the wayfaring and replace them with the attributes of the Truth and His acts and to actualise the station of the substitutes (abdāl)^{1On these spiritual realities, or beings, see Hussein La-Shay’, ‘Abdāl’, Encyclopaedia Islamica, eds W. Madelung and F. Daftary, Leiden: Brill, 2010, I, 303.} — meant that the Truth was poor and that they were rich. Or, it means that they contested contemptuously the prophets in both instances after they had understood.

Do not reckon that those who rejoice in what they have brought, those who are delighted by what they have done of acts of obedience or selflessness and every good deed and are veiled by the sight of these [deeds], and who love to be praised, that is, that people should praise them, and who are thus veiled by the accidental praise and commendations of people, or [who love] that they should be praiseworthy in the eyes of God for this same reason, for what they have not done, but what God has done through their hands, since there is no act that is not God’s — And God created you and whatever you do [Q. 37:96] — [do not reckon them] saved from the chastisement of privation, and there shall be a painful chastisement for them, because of the place of their preparedness and their being veiled from what is in it. They should have by right attributed [all] merit and virtuous act to God and declared themselves quit of any power or strength on their part not being His, and not to have become veiled by seeing the act as issuing from themselves and to expect thereby commendation or praise.

To God belongs the kingdom of the heavens and of the earth: nothing of it belongs to anyone else that they should then give of it to another person and be self-satisfied with their gift; and God has power over all things, no one other than Him has the power to act in anyway that he should then be pleased to see it and rejoice in it a rejoicing of self-centered admiration.

Those who remember God, in all states and in all configurations, standing, at the station of the spirit witnessing, and sitting, at the locus of the heart [remembering Him] through unveilings, and on their sides, that is, in their fluctuations at the place of the soul by means of the struggle, and reflect, with their pith, that is, their intellects pure of the blemishes of estimation, upon the creation of, the world of spirits and bodies, saying [the following] upon the witnessing: ‘Our Lord, You have not created this, creation, as falsehood, that is, as something other than You, for what is other than the truth is falsehood; rather You have made it to be Your Names and the loci for the manifestations of Your attributes. Glory be to You!: we exalt You above that there should be anything other than You, that is, that anything should be compared to Your uniqueness or that it should duplicate Your Oneness. So guard us against the chastisement, of the fire of being veiled by engendered things from Your acts and by the acts from Your attributes and by Your attributes from Your Essence, an absolute guarding that is complete and sufficient.

Our Lord, whomever You admit into the Fire, by way of privation, You will have abased him, by the existence of the remainder that is entirely humiliation, shame and disgrace; and none shall they have, these evildoers, who have associated others [with God] by seeing the other absolutely or [seeing] the remainder, as helpers.

Our Lord, we have heard, with the hearing channels of our hearts, a caller, from our innermost secrets, which constitute the shore of the right valley of the spirit, calling to, the belief of the eyewitnessing, saying, “Believe in your Lord!”, that is, “Witness your Lord”, and so we witnessed. So, our Lord, forgive us, the sins of our attributes through Your attributes, and absolve us of, the evil deeds of our acts by a vision of Your acts, and receive us, from our essences among the company of the pious substitutes whom You receive from their essences with Your essence, and not those pious who remain in the same state at the station of the effacement of the attributes who are not ready to be received totally.

Our Lord, grant us what You have promised us through, [our] following of, Your messengers, or of what is borne by Your messengers in the way of subsistence after annihilation and uprightness through the existence bestowed after the affirmation of [Your] Oneness; and abase us not on the Day of, the Greater, Resurrection, and the moment when creatures shall be brought forth before God, the One, the Vanquisher, by leaving us to be veiled by the Oneness from the multiplicity and by the union from the differentiation. You will not fail the tryst’, by leaving behind us a station at which we will not have arrived.

And their Lord answers them, ‘I do not let the labour of any labourer among you go to waste, be it a male, of the heart (qalb), in the way of the works of the heart such as sincerity, certainty and unveiling, or a female, of the soul, in the way of the works of the mould (qālib) such as acts of obedience, struggle and spiritual discipline — the one of you is as the other: you are united by one origin and one reality that is the human spirit, in other words, you are created from one another and I will not reward one and deny another; and those who emigrated, from the abodes of the things familiar to the soul, and were expelled from, the habitations of its attributes; or [read it as] those who emigrated from the states in which they were delighting and were expelled from their stations, in which they dwelt, and who suffered hurt in My way, that is, they were tested along the way of the wayfaring in My acts with afflictions, ordeals, calamities and trials so that they might be trained through patience and that by trusting in the way of the wayfaring in My attributes they might triumph with the assaults of the self-disclosures of the Majesty, the Tremendousness and the Greatness and thus arrive at the beatitude; and fought, the rest through struggling for My sake, and were slain, annihilated totally in Me — them I shall surely absolve of their evil deeds, all of them, minor and grave, meaning, the evil deeds of their remainders, and I shall admit them to, the three gardens mentioned, as a reward, a compensation for what I have taken from them of the three existences. And God — with Him is the fairest reward: the absolute reward from which nothing can be outstanding cannot be with anyone other than Him, which is why He says [first] ‘And God…’, since this is the Name that combines all of the attributes. It would not have been correct for Him to say ‘And the Compassionate One…’ or any other Name in this instance except the Name of the Essence.

Do not be deluded by the going to and fro of the disbelievers, those who have been veiled from the affirmation of the Oneness, which is the religion of the truth with respect to all stations and states;

a little enjoyment, that is, this veiledness by stations and fluctuation within them is but a little enjoyment, then their abode is Hell, privation — an evil cradling!

But those who fear their Lord, from among the believers, that is, those who have disengaged from the three forms of existence shall have the three gardens — a hospitality, prepared, from God Himself.

Verily, there are some among the People of the Scripture, that is, the ones who are veiled from the affirmation of Oneness and the ones described with the attribute of fluctuation in states and stations, who believe in God, [who] verify the affirmation of the unity of the Essence, and what has been revealed to you, of the knowledge of the affirmation of the Oneness and uprightness, and what has been revealed to them, of the knowledge of the origin^{1Origin, here, (mabdaʾ), denotes the first point of motion in the engendered cosmos.} and the final return, humble before God, receptive to the self-disclosure of the Essence, not purchasing with the verses of God, which are the self-disclosures of His attributes with the price of the remnants (baqiyya), described here as a paltry one. Those — their wage, of the mentioned gardens, is with their Lord. God is swift at reckoning, reckoning with them and recompensing them such that He requites the remnants of those of whom something has remained, or He rewards these remnants in accordance with the degrees merited in the three abodes.

O you who believe, be patient, for God, and vie in patience, with God, and be steadfast, in God, that is, be patient at the station of the soul by struggling, and vie in patience at the station of the heart with the assaults of the self-disclosures of the attributes of Majesty through the unveiling, and be steadfast in your essences at the station of the spirit through the witnessing so that you might not be overcome by any langour or neglectfulness or absence because of any variegations; and fear God, at the station of patience, guarding against contravening [Him], or making a show [of your deeds], and at the vying in patience [by guarding] against becoming resistant and self-satisfied, and when being steadfast [by guarding] against [your spiritually untransformed] remnants and [against] becoming crude, so that you might prosper with real timeless prosperity, [a prosperity] beyond which there is no other prosperity, God willing.