O people, fear your Lord: be wary of claiming for yourselves His attribute when good things issue from you. Rather, adopt that attribute as a shield for you when good issues from you and say that it has issued from the Absolute Powerful, Who created you of a single soul, which is the universal rational-speech faculty that is the heart of the world, being the real Adam, and from it created its mate, that is, the animal soul that issues from it. They say that she was created from his left breast-bone from the aspect that is turned towards the world of engenderment, which is weaker than the aspect oriented towards the Truth. Were it not for its [the single soul’s] mate, he [Adam] would not have been made to descend to this world, as is commonly known. Iblis seduced her first and by leading her astray he found the means to lead Adam astray. There is no doubt that corporeal attachment does not materialise except through the medium of this [animal soul]; and He scattered from the pair of them many men, that is, possessors of hearts who yearn for their father [Adam], and women, possessors of souls and natures yearning for their mother [his mate], and fear God, in His essence against affirming your existence and make it a shield for you when your remnants become manifest upon the annihilation in the Oneness lest you become veiled by inspecting the annihilation [as from you], by Whom, [since it is by Him] and not by yourselves that, you claim [your rights] from one another and kinship ties: in other words, be wary of severing the true kinship ties, that is, the near of kin who are the sublime points of origin, the disengaged realities (mufāraqāt) and the spirits of prophets and saints by not loving them, and make this love a protection for you so that you are able to actualise your felicities and perfections. For the severing of kinship ties by the absence of love is to be oriented away from conjunction and unity towards separation and multiplicity and constitutes the true loathing and the total distance from the Side of the Truth, exalted be He. That is why the Prophet said: ‘The maintenance of kinship ties increases one’s lifespan’; in other words, it necessarily results in abiding subsistence. Know also that kinship ties outwardly represent the form of true conjunction inwardly. The outward works like the inward in terms of the affirmation of Oneness and thus the one who is unable to look after the outward is more likely not to be able to look after the inward. Surely God has been watchful over you, watching over you lest you should be veiled from Him by the manifesting of one of your attributes or some of your remnants and then suffer chastisement.

Give, your orphaned spiritual faculties, who have been severed from the nurture of the holy spirit, their father, their property, that is, their objects of knowledge and perfections and use these to nurture them; and do not exchange the evil, that are the sensory objects, the imagined things, evil insinuations and the exigencies of estimation and all the [other] faculties of the soul, these being its [the soul’s] property, for the good, that is their property; and absorb not their property into your property, that is to say, do not mix these such that truth and falsehood come to resemble one another and use these [properties] to actualise sensory pleasures and egoistic perfections in order to profit from them in your despicable this-worldly pursuits so that you end up making them the nourishment of your souls: surely that is a great crime, a cause for veiledness and privation.

If you avoid what is forbidden to you of grave sins, in the way of affirming any other [than God] in existence, that which is an [idolatrous] act of association in essence, in attribute and in fact. For the gravest of sins is the affirmation of an existence other than His existence, exalted be He, as was said [to man]: the sin of your very existence alone is an immeasurable sin; then [the gravest is] to affirm a duality in [His] essence by affirming that the attributes are additional to it, as the Commander of the Believers said: ‘Sincere belief in Him [as One] is not to ascribe attributes to Him’; We will absolve you of your evil deeds, by the manifestation of the soul or the heart in the form of one of its attributes sometimes, for after the manifestation of the light of the affirmation of the Oneness, these [attributes] are unable to withstand; and admit you by an honourable gate, being the presence of the source of the union, outside of which there is no glory.

Do not covet that in which God has preferred some of you above others, in the way of perfections that are appointed in accordance with the original forms of preparedness, for every preparedness entails in itself from pre-eternity a perfection and a felicity that corresponds to it. The actualisation of such a specific perfection to some other [than the one specified] is impossible, which is why it is referred to with the expression ‘to covet’, which is when a person demands what cannot be actualised for him because of the lack of any similarity. To men, that is, to those individuals who have arrived, a share from what they have earned, by the light of their original preparedness, and to women, that is, the deficient ones who fall short of the arrival, a share from what they have earned, commensurate with their preparedness. And ask God of His bounty, that is, ask Him to effuse a perfection that is entailed by your preparedness through purgation and purification so that nothing should come between you and Him that would cause you to be veiled and to thus be chastised by the fires of privation from Him. God is ever Knower of all things, that are unknown to you latent as they are in potentiality in your preparednesses, and answers your call in accordance with what is appropriate for you, as He says: And He gives you of all that you ask of Him [Q. 14:34], that is, [He responds to you] in the tongue of [your] preparedness by which none call on Him but He responds to them, as He says: And your Lord has said, ‘Call on Me and I will respond to you’ [Q. 40:60].

And worship God, make Him the specific object of your orientation and for your your annihilation in Him, that which is the ultimate in self-abasement [before God]; and associate nothing with Him, by affirming His existence. Be kind to parents, be kind in spirit and soul these two from which the heart is generated, for it is your reality: your are nothing but that [heart]. Fulfil your duties towards them and treat them with true consideration by drawing on the effusion of the former [the spirit] and orienting yourselves towards in submission to it and in reverence, and by cleansing the latter [the soul] and preserving it from the filth of the love of this world and from its being abased by covetousness and greed and the like of these or by the evil of Satan and his enmity towards it; help it through compassion and zeal by procuring for it what is its due and preventing it from its shares; and the near kindred, the one who truly corresponds to you in kinship on account of the nearness in terms of original preparedness and spiritual resemblance; and to orphans, those who are prepared but severed from the light of the holy spirit, which is the true father [of these orphans], by being veiled from it, and to the needy, those who perform works but have no wealth, that is, no share of forms of knowledge, gnoses or realities and have thus stood still unable to journey: these are the felicitous, the righteous whose return shall be to the garden of the acts; and to the neighbour who is near, the one who is at one of the stations of wayfaring that is near to your station; and to the neighbour who is a stranger, the one who at his station is distant from your station; and to the friend at your side, the companion who is at the very source of your station and accompanies you on your [spiritual] journey; and to the wayfarer, the one wayfaring on the path of the truth, who has entered into estrangement from the refuge of the soul, the one who has not arrived at any of the stations of the folk of God; and to what your right hands own, those who are under subject to your will and your love, who are your slaves, each according to what corresponds to him and is appropriate to him of the various types of kindness. If you wish you might interpret ‘the near kindred’ as that to which the person is conjoined of the disengaged things of the upper kingdom; and ‘the orphans’ as the spiritual faculties, as has been mentioned already; and ‘the needy’ as the ego-centric faculties such as the external senses and so on; ‘the neighbour who is near’ as the intellect; ‘the neighbour who is a stranger’ as estimation; ‘the friend at your side’ as yearning or desire; ‘the wayfarer’ as reflection; ‘those owned by the right hand’ as the acquired natural traits that are the sources of virtuous acts. Surely God loves not the conceited, who pursues the [spiritual] wayfaring with his soul and not with God, admiring his works [in conceit], and the boastful, who is blissfully gladdened by his states, his stations and perfections, veiled by his inspection of these and by inspecting the fact that he has these attributes.

Those who are niggardly, at the first instance by withholding their perfections and forms of knowledge in the hideaways of their innate dispositions and the mattamores of their natural impulses, failing to manifest them by working with them at the [right] moment; then [they are niggardly] by failing to procure the rights of those to these are due and do not consecrate their attributes and essences to the annihilation in God because of their love for them; nor do they expend of the substance of their knowledge and character traits and perfections on the deserving, in the way mentioned; and bid other people to be niggardly, inducing them to states like theirs, and conceal what God has bestowed upon them of His bounty, in the way of the affirmation of the Oneness, gnoses, [virtuous] character traits and realities in the recesses of preparedness and the darknesses of faculty, as though non-existent. And We have prepared for those that disbelieve, those who are veiled from the Truth, a humbling chastisement, in the light of their disgraced countenances and disfigured attributes.

And those who expend of their substance to show off to people, that is, who manifest their perfections from the concealment of non-existence and bring them out into actuality, veiled by their seeing these as being of their own souls and make a show to people that these [perfections] are theirs, and believe not in God, with true belief so that they might know that absolute perfection can only be His — what existence does anything other than Him possess so that such [perfection] might belong to it? — and that they might be rid of the veil of seeing perfection as that of their souls and might thus be delivered from the sin of vanity; and the Last Day, that is, the annihilation in God and the issuing forth before the One, the Vanquisher, that they might thus be quit of the sin of associating [others with God]. And that is because of their comradeship with the satan of estimation. Whoever has Satan for a comrade, then an evil comrade has he, because he [Satan] leads him astray from guidance and veils him from the Truth.

And what burden is on them if they were to believe in God, that is, if they were to be true to God through affirmation of [His] Oneness and annihilation in Him and the effacement of the perfections which God has provided them by attributing them to God. God is ever Aware of them, recompensing them with subsistence after annihilation and [aware] of their possessing those attributes and perfections through God and not through their own souls.

Surely God shall not wrong, that is, He does not diminish anything of those perfections with the annihilation in Him, so much as the weight of an atom, rather, He augments them by means of the reinforcement of [His Name] the Truth; and if it be a good deed, He will double it, and it cannot be a good deed unless it is [done] for Him, and He will give from Himself a great wage, namely, what He has hidden for a person of what delights the eye, that is to say, the witnessing of the essence in which there is no veiledness from the differentiations of the attributes.

So how shall it be when We bring forward from every community a witness, to the end [of the verse]: a witness (shahīd) or a sign (shāhid) is what is present to every person of the degree of gnosis which he has attained and that which prevails on him, thereby revealing his state, his work, his endeavour and the extent of his efforts, whether it be in terms of station or one of the attributes of the Truth, or essence. Thus for every community there is a witness commensurate with that to which their prophet called them and that which he has made known to them; he only calls them to that station of gnosis at which he has arrived. A prophet is always sent in accordance with the preparedness of his community. And so they know God by the light of their preparedness in the form of the perfection of their prophet. That is why it is mentioned in a ḥadīth, ‘Indeed God discloses Himself in [a manner commensurate with] the form of their belief, such that members of all religious communities and schools know Him; but He then changes from that form and emerges in another form whereby the only ones who know Him are the affirmers of [His] Oneness, who enter into the Presence of the Exclusive Unity (aḥadiyya) from every gate. Just as every community has a witness, so every member of a legal school also has a witness who unveils the state of the object of the witnessing. As for the Muḥammadans, their witness is God, the beloved Who enjoys the descriptions of all attributes and that is because of the stature of the perfection of their Prophet, being the beloved [of God and of his community], the one who has been given the sum of all [excellent] speech, the completer of [virtuous] character traits. There is no doubt that they can know Him in all the forms of His transmutation if they follow their Prophet with a veritable following and are affirmers of His Exclusive Unity, beloved [to God] like their Prophet.

Upon that day, those who disbelieved, by choosing to be veiled from the Truth, those who disobeyed the Messenger, by veiling themselves from religion, will wish that the earth, of preparedness, might be levelled with them, so that their souls might be obliterated or become innocent free of the engravings of corrupt creeds and ruinous base traits. And they will not hide from God any talk: they will not be able to suppress the words of those engravings in order to avoid being chastised by His punishment.

O you who believe, with the faith of knowledge, for a believer by his entified faith cannot be forgetful in his prayers, draw not near to prayer, that is, do not draw near to the state of presence communion with God when in your state you are, inebriated, by the sleep of forgetfulness or by the wines of desires and the love of this world, until you know what you are saying, in your communions and your hearts are not preoccupied with the distractions of this world and its insinuations lest you be distracted from Him, nor in a state where you are distant from the Truth by the intensity of [your] inclination to the soul and the pursuit of its pleasures, lusts or shares or finding comfort in these, unless you are traversing a way, [unless] you are passing through as you wayfare along one of the paths in which you give it enjoyment [of these things] in the measure that is necessary or beneficial, such as when passing through the path of nourishment by means of food and drink in order to fulfil a need, to preserve your strength and to garb yourselves against heat or cold, or to conceal your private parts, or to engage in sexual relations in order to sustain your lineage without being totally drawn to [any of] that simply on the basis of desire such that it is imprinted on you and cannot be removed or it becomes difficult [to do so], until you have washed yourselves, that is, [until] you have cleansed yourselves of that configuration resulting from your attraction to the lower aspect with the water of repentance and the asking of forgiveness and [from] the springs of apology and absolution. But if you are sick, in heart, having lost its soundness because of the sicknesses that are the corrupt beliefs and the ruinous vile traits, or on a journey, in the wilderness of ignorance and perplexity in pursuit of the pleasures of the soul and abominable matter through covetousness; or if any of you comes from, having been ensconced in the soil of property and the acquisition of transient things, polluted by the configuration of the object of his love and his inclinations, with that configuration deeply embedded in him; or you have touched women, [or] you have adhered to the soul and have embraced it and its [sources of] pleasure and lust; and you can find no water, [no] knowledge to guide you to ridding yourselves of it and to set you right by purging yourselves of it, then resort to wholesome soil, then orient yourselves towards the wholesome soil of your preparedness, seek it and then return to the original preparedness of primordial nature, and wipe, with its light, your faces and your hands, that is, your existing essences and attributes, by alighting [at the stations along the journey] and effacing the configurations that attach you to these and cause you to dispose of them, for that soil effaces their vestiges and leaves them pure as they once were. God is ever Pardoning, of these dark configurations and the embedding of those veiling traits when you abandon them and refrain from them, eliminating them totally so that your preparedness becomes pure and you are prepared for His encounter and the communion with Him, Forgiving, covering your attributes and your essences with His attributes and His essence.

Have you not seen those who were given a share of the Book, that is, some part [of It], which is their admission of the truth despite their being veiled from religion, purchasing error, choosing to be veiled from religion, which is the path of the truth, in exchange for the guiding light of their preparedness and desiring that you should do the same. They are your enemy and God has knowledge of their enmity for you, then

God suffices as a Protector, protecting your affair by granting your success in finding the path of the affirmation of His Oneness and [He suffices] as a Helper to help you against your enemies by repressing them.

O you who have been given the Book, the Book of preparedness, believe, a true belief of eyewitness by bringing out what is in the Book of your preparedness [from potentiality] to actuality by the affirmation of the oneness of the Essence, before We obliterate faces, by the removal and effacement of their preparednesses, and turn them on their backs, which is the lowest of the low in the world of bodies which is posterior to every [other] world, or We curse them, We chastise them by transforming [them] as We transformed, those of the Sabbath, and God’s command is done, that is, fulfilled for all eternity, none able to change it or revoke it.

God forgives not that anything should be associated with Him: an allusion to the fact that wretchedness of knowledge and creed is everlasting and can never be reached without that [wretchedness] of deeds, in other words, He does not shelter with His existence or allow to be annihilated in His essence the one who affirms the existence of any other than Him. How could it be otherwise, when He afflicts him repeatedly in his existence?

Have you not seen those who praise themselves for purity?, that is, [those] who remove the attributes of their souls through their own souls, which is not possible, just as it is not possible for one of us to bear [the burden of] his soul, since these [attributes] are concomitants of the soul, subsisting and adhering to it, which is why God, exalted be He, says And whoever is saved from the avarice of his own soul [Q. 59:9], since the vile traits are kneaded into it, subsisting [in it] as long as it subsists. The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him: ‘The worst of people is the one who is still alive when the resurrection takes place’; that is, he has stopped at the knowledge of the Oneness but his soul has not found death in annihilation so that it might then find life in God. Such a person in that case is a heretic who permits violation of the law in all things (ibāḥa). Nay, God purifies whom He will, effacing his attributes by eliminating them with His attributes, exalted be He; and they shall not be wronged, a single date-thread, in other words, they shall not have even the smallest thing of their attributes and what is due to these [attributes] diminished. For God does not take anything from them, despite their feebleness and the speed with which they are extinguished, until He gives the equivalent in return from His attributes, despite their power and everlastingness.

Consider how they invent falsehood against God, by claiming to purify their souls of their attributes when they have not been purified, or, because of the existence of their souls, by falsely ascribing God’s attributes to their own souls.

Have you not seen, to the end [of the verse where it says]: they believe in al-Jibt and al-Ṭāghūt, by their affirmation of the existence of other [than God], and that is the way in which they lead [others] astray from religion, which is the path of the affirmation of [His] Oneness, and say, to those who have been veiled from the Truth, ‘These are more rightly guided, than the affirmers of the Oneness, in their way’?, since they are like them in associating [others with God], in contrast to the believers who are opposed to them in both way and goal. For when those who affirm the Oneness go astray in their way, they do not arrive at the goal which they affirmed. They are thus guilty of a subtle association (shirk) that approximates the state of those who are veiled from the Truth, those who have committed a manifest association, and thus they correspond to them and are directed towards them, claiming to be the most rightly-guided of the affirmers of Oneness, as we see is the case with certain exoterics [today] who belong to the Muslim community.^{1Note on ẓāhiriyyūn and islāmiyyūn.}

Those are the ones whom God has cursed, by transfiguring [their] preparedness: the one whom God banishes, none can help him through guidance or bringing [him] near or deliverance.

Surely those who disbelieve in Our signs, that is, [those] who have been veiled from the self-disclosures of Our attributes and acts, since the point of departure of the verse is His being self-disclosed through knowledge and wisdom in the family of Abraham — We shall expose them, to the fire of the yearning for perfection since this is what is entailed in their natural impulses and traits in accordance with their preparedness in addition to the deep-rootedness of the veil and its adherence [to them]; or [We shall expose them] to the fire of vanquishing through the self-disclosures of the attributes of His vanquishing power, [a fire] that corresponds to their states; or to the fire of the evilness of their souls and the vehemence of their yearning and pursuit of the perfections of their attributes and their lusts which have been provoked in them but of which they are deprived; as often as their skins are consumed, [as often as] their corporeal veils are removed [from them] when they abandon them, We shall replace them, with new veils other than those, that they may taste the chastisement, the fires of privation. Surely God is ever Mighty, powerful. He vanquishes them and disgraces them by abasing the attributes of their souls and He burns them with the fires of their longing for their perfections by depriving them [of these] forever; Wise, requiting them with the chastisement which is appropriate to them and which they have chosen for their souls by their irascible and concupiscent exigencies and other [such motivations] and their inclination to corporeal pleasures; that is why veils of darkness are successively replaced for them.

And those that believe, by affirming the unity of [God’s] attributes, and perform, what makes them righteous by virtue of [their] acceptance of the self-disclosures of these [attributes], We shall admit them to the Gardens, of those who have assumed these attributes and the stations thereof, underneath which rivers flow, that is, the rivers of the knowledge deriving from the self-disclosures of these [attributes] in the way of the knowledge of the heart. Here the [purified] spouses are the sanctified spirits which are the loci of the manifestations of the divine attributes that are purified through the corporeal configurations; and We shall admit them to plenteous shade, that is, [to] the shade of the divine attributes whose spirit lasts forever by the effacement of the human attributes.

Verily, God commands you to restore trusts back to their owners, that is, [to give] what is due to the person to whom it is due by fulfilling what is due of preparedness first, then by fulfilling what is due to all of the faculties in terms of the perfections which they entail, then by fulfilling what is due to God, exalted be He, in terms of restoring to Him the attributes, then by restoring [to Him] existence, so that you are then annihilated in the Oneness and so that when you return to subsistence after annihilation and judge between people, you will do things with God in mind, upholding justice, possessing the attributes of God’s justice such that no injustice can issue from you. The least degree of justness is to effaced in terms of one’s own attributes, since the one who does things of his own soul can never be just. God is ever Hearer, of the statements you make in arbitrations between people, and whether these are truth-inspired and sound or soul-inspired and corrupt; Seer, of your deeds and whether they issue from the attributes of your souls or from the attributes of the Truth.

O you who believe, by [your] affirmation of the unity of [His] attributes, obey God, by affirming the unity of the essence and by being annihilated in the union, and obey the Messenger, by observing what is due at the level of differentiation at the source of the union and taking note of the hierarchy of the attributes after being annihilated in the essence, and those in authority among you, of those who deserve spiritual guardianship (walāya) and leadership [over you], as has already been mentioned in the story of Saul.

Have you not seen, that is, have you not marvelled at, those who claim that they believe in what has been revealed to you, of the knowledge of the affirmation of the Oneness, and what was revealed before you, of the knowledge of the point of origin and the final return, desiring to take their disputes to a false deity, when it is incompatible with their claim. For if their faith was sound, they would not have affirmed an other [in the first place] for that [other] to then have any power to arbitrate. Indeed they, by virtue of true belief, are obliged to disbelieve in any other than Him. The one who has not been stripped of his attributes and acts and whose essence has not been obliterated in God, exalted be He, constitutes some other [than God]; and the one who orients himself towards some other has verily obeyed Satan. But Satan only desires that they be led far astray, which is to deviate from the truth through association [of others with God], since to incline away from religion is to be in clear error.

We never sent any Messenger, but that he should be obeyed by the leave of God, [to the end of] the verse: the difference between a messenger and a prophet is that messengership entails the communication of laws, [as in] O Messenger, communicate [what has been revealed to you] [Q. 5:67]. As for prophethood, this is to inform of spiritual knowledge and realities that have to do with the differentiated aspects of [God’s] attributes and acts. Prophethood is the exoteric aspect of spiritual sanctity (walāya), which is to be absorbed in the source of the union and the annihilation in the essence. The knowledge of these two is the knowledge of the affirmation of the unity of the essence and the effacement of the acts and attributes. Thus every messenger is a prophet and every prophet is a spiritual guardian (walī), but not every spiritual guardian is a prophet, nor is every prophet a messenger, even if the rank of spiritual guardianship is nobler than prophethood and prophethood [nobler] than messengership, as it is said: ‘The station of prophethood is in an interstice (barzakh) slightly below that of the spiritual guardian and just above that of the messenger’.

Thus a messenger is only sent to be obeyed, since his law is the law of God by virtue of the communication [inherent therein]. He must therefore be obeyed, but is only obeyed by His permission, for the one who is veiled from him by a shortcoming in his preparedness, such as the primordial disbeliever and the true wretched one, or [veiled from him] by the rusting [of the heart] and the effacement of preparedness, such as the hypocrite is in reality not permitted to be obedient.

If, when they had wronged their souls, by preventing these from what is due to them, namely, their [unrealised] perfections that are fixed in them in potentiality, and by sullying their preparedness by orienting themselves towards the pursuit of sensory pleasures and transient goals, they had come to you, out of [their own] volition as entailed by their preparedness, and asked forgiveness from God, [and] asked God to conceal the attributes of their souls, which are the sources of those acts that veil what is in their preparedness by the light of His attributes, and the Messenger had asked forgiveness for them, by reinforcing them from the light of his attributes, which are the attributes of God, Might and Majestic, because of the interconnection that they have with him through genus and the place of will and love required by their nearness to him and their being admixed with him, they would have found God Relenting, cleansing and purifying of their preparedness with His light, for [His] acceptance of [their] repentance is the casting of the light of [His] attributes on them and the illumination of their inner aspects with the luminous configuration that protects them from erring in acts, given the remoteness of light from darkness, Merciful, effusing upon them the mercy of perfection that befits them in the way of certainty that comes through knowledge or entific existence or the Truth.

But no, by your Lord! They will not believe, with the true faith of the affirmation of the Oneness, until they make you judge, by virtue of your judgement being God’s judgement, but the essence has been veiled by the attributes and the attributes by the acts.Thus when they fall into dispute they have stood by their attributes veiled from the attributes of the Truth, or by their acts veiled from the acts of the Truth and are not in reality believers. When they make you judge, however, they will have been stripped of their acts and if they do not find in their souls any inhibition regarding what you decide, they will have been stripped of their will and attained the station of satisfaction, and [stripped] of their knowledge and power and attained the station of submission whereafter their attributes will no longer constitute a veil and they will have acquired the attributes of the Truth who is unveiled to them in the form of the attributes and they will know that you are Him, subsisting in Him and not in your own self, in reality being just through His justness and so their belief in God will have been realised.

And had We prescribed, that is, [had] We made it obligatory, for them: ‘Slay your souls’, by curbing the caprice that is their [the souls’ source of] life and by annihilating their attributes, or ‘Leave your habitations’, your stations, which are patience, trust, satisfaction and the like, because of their veiling [of the soul] from the affirmation of Oneness, as al-Ḥusayn b. Manṣūr [al-Ḥallāj],^{1Al-Ḥallāj was a Persian born Iraqi 10th century Sufi executed by the authorities in 309/922, apparently for the controversy caused by some of his ecstatic, or theopathic, statements (shaṭaḥāt) — famously, ‘I am the Truth (ana’l-Ḥaqq)’; but his execution was most likely for political reasons centred around the intrigues of the viziers at the Abbasid court and the rivarly between the various dominant Sunni schools in Baghdad; see L. Massignon [L. Gardet], ‘al-Ḥallādj’, EI2, III, 99; Louis Massignon, Hallāj: mystic and martyr, tr. Herbert Mason, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982; Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī, Ṭabaqāt al-Ṣūfiyya, ed. Muṣṭafā ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1998, 236. As for Ibrāhīm b. Adham (q.v. Russell Jones, EI2, III, 985), the most reliable death date is given as 161/777-8, and could not have actually met al-Ḥallāj (born 244/857).} may God sanctify his spirit, said to Ibrāhīm b. Adham, may God have mercy on him, when he asked him about his state and [al-Ḥallāj] responded by saying, ‘I wander the deserts and roam the open lands where there is neither water nor trees, and neither meadows nor rain: am I right in assuming a state of trust [in God] or not?’, to which he [Ibrāhīm] replied, ‘If you were to spend your entire life cultivating your belly: where [in all of that] is the annihilation in the Oneness?’; they would not have done it, save a few of them: and these [few] are the lovers [of God], those prepared for His encounter, the greatest in power, the smallest in number, as God says but few are they [Q. 38:24]; it would have been better for them, in terms of the perfection that would have been actualised for them upon the removal of the veil of the attributes of the soul by the assumption of the attributes of the Truth or by the arrival at the source of the union, and stronger in establishing, by making [them] upright in religion upon subsistence after the annihilation.

And then, We would have surely given them from Us a great wage, in the way of self-disclosures of the attributes upon the slaying of the soul.

And We would have guided them to a straight path, upon their departure from their homes, that is, [from] the waystations of the soul and the stations, which is the path of the Oneness and [the path of] uprightness in the affirmation of the Oneness.

Whoever obeys God, by wayfaring in the paths of the affirmation of the Oneness and the union, and the Messenger, by being mindful of the differentiations, they are with those whom God has blessed, with guidance, from among the prophets and the truthful, who have been truthful in ascribing attributes and acts to God by repudiating their attributes and assuming His attributes; were they to manifest themselves with the attributes of their own souls, they would have been untruthful, and the martyrs, that is, the folk of the presence, and the righteous, namely, those who are upright in religion.

That bounty, in other words, [that] facilitation granted for the actualisation of perfection by which they have acquired a correspondence to prophets and those with them, thus becoming their companions [is from God]; [God suffices] as Knower, knowing the potential in their preparedness for perfection and thus makes it manifest upon them.

[O you who believe] take your precautions, that against which you exercise caution, such as Satan’s casting [of his insinuations] and his evil whisperings and his leading of you to perdition by means of [his] deception, and [such things as] the manifestation of the attributes of your souls and their acquisition of mastery over you, for these are the most hostile of all your enemies; then move forward in companies, wayfare in the path of God in groups, each party [following] the spiritual path of a perfect, knowledgeable shaykh, or move forward all together, along the path of the affirmation of Oneness and that of submission (islām) following closely [the path of] the Prophet.

And if a good thing befalls them, they say, ‘This is from God’, to the end [of the verse]: proving that they are Qadarites,^{1Qadar, properly referred to God’s decree but came to refer to those who upheld the idea of human free will. This popular theological movement emerged among the students of al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (d. 728), himself said to have composed an epistle defending the concept of human free will to the caliph ʿAbd al-Malik b. Marwān (d. 705). The Qadarites are thought to prefigure the later rationalist Muʿtazilī movement who justified human freedom in the context of God’s justice and the Qurʾānic scheme of reward and punishment (sc. if humans are not free it would not be fair of God to reward them for good deeds and punish them for evil ones); see Michael A. Cook, Early Muslim Dogma, Cambridge: CUP, 1981, 117ff; Josef van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft, I, 72-135, II, 50ff.; id., ‘Ḳadariyya’, EI2, IV, 368-72.} since they ascribe good to God and evil to man, imitating Magians in affirming independent efficient causes in existence and ascribing evil to the Messenger but not to themselves, since he was the one who sent them forth [to battle] and who incited them to [suffer] the evil that they encounter because of him. Thus the Messenger is commanded to call them to the belief in the unity of acts and the denial of efficient cause on the part of others and to the affirmation that He is the agent of good and evil by His words Say, ‘Everything is from God’. What is wrong with this people that they do not understand?, because of their being veiled by the attributes of [their] souls and [by] the failure of the hearing of their hearts which are the vessels for audition and understanding. Then it is made clear that God is bounteous and just by the fact that good things and perfections are all out of His bounty, and that evil things are from His justness. In other words, He decrees them for us and afflicts us with them because of a preparedness and a meriting [of that] in us that requires it be so. That meriting occurs by the soul’s manifesting of itself in its attributes and its commission of acts of disobedience and sins that necessitate punishment and not because of any other act, as when they attributed the evil that befell them to the Messenger. For the meriting [of such evil] is dependent on the preparedness [of that individual], such that what is entailed by the preparedness of one person does not interfere with another, just as God says And no burdened soul shall bear the burden of another [burdened soul] [Q. 6:164]. Thus He has shown them to be liars in their ascription to … by proving that the efficient cause for [both] good and evil is none other than God alone as required by His bounty and justice. As for the receptive cause, even if in reality that is also from Him, the receptivity for good relates to the original preparedness [of an individual], that derives from the holiest effusion on which our acts and choices have no bearing. Receptivity of evil derives from the preparedness temporally created by the soul’s manifesting itself in its attributes and acts, which veil the heart and tarnish its substance such that it needs to be polished by means of calamities, afflictions, trials and misfortunes, and does not derive from the part of the Messenger or anyone else.

And those whom the angels receive [in death], to the end [of the verse]: al-tawaffī is to receive fully the spirit (istīfāʾ) from the body by having it seized from it, which can be in one of three ways: the reception of [it by] the angels, the reception of [it by] the angel of death, and the reception of [it by] God. As for the angels’ reception [of the spirit], that is for the folk of the souls who are either fortunate, being the good folk, those of the praiseworthy attributes and virtuous character traits from among the righteous, the Godfearing, those whom the angels receive [in death] while they are goodly, saying to them, ‘Peace be upon you! Enter Paradise because of what you used to do’ [Q. 16:31-32]: their final return shall be to the garden of the acts. Or they are the damned, the evil folk, those of the base attributes and the wicked character traits, whose spirits are only received by the powers of the angelic realm which in this world are the equivalent of their faculties which constitute their station, veiled as they are by attributes of the soul and the pleasures of the imaginative, estimative, predatorial and bestial faculties, the disbelievers, those whom the angels receive [in death] while they are wronging themselves [Q. 16:27-28]: their final return shall be to the Fire. As for the reception of the angel of death, that is for the possessors of hearts, those who have emerged from the veil of the soul to the station of the heart and have returned to the primordial nature and have become illumined by it. The spirits of these [latter] are seized by the universal rational soul, which is the heart of the world, because of their conjunction with it; this is the case if it is the angel of death himself who seizes their spirits. If he seizes [these spirits] by means of his assistants and their powers, then they belong to the first group [mentioned above]. He [the angel of death] may seize them himself and turn them over to the angelic realm of chastisement so that they might be brought to reckoning and requited in accordance with their vices and be rid [of them]; that will be on account of [their] perfection or deficiency of knowledge, as in the case of the one who is delivered from ignorance and associating [others with God] and becomes adorned with knowledge and the affirmation of Oneness, but upon whose heart there had accumulated dark configurations and base natures because of wicked deeds and reprehensible character traits; or on account of having knowledge of the affirmation of the Oneness but ignorance of the final return, as in the case of the affirmer of the Oneness who denies the [final] recompense and is ensconced in acts of disobedience, as God, exalted be He, says Say: the angel of death, who has been charged with you, shall receive you [in death] [Q. 32:11]. As for the reception of [spirits in death by] God, that is for the affirmers of [His] Oneness who have ascended from the station of the heart to the locus of presential vision (shuhūd) and so there remains no veil between them and their Lord. Thus He takes charge of the seizure of their spirits Himself and gathers them unto Himself the day on which We shall gather the God-fearing to the Compassionate One, as honoured delegations on mounts [Q. 19:85], and as He says God receives the souls at the time of their death [Q. 39:42]; while they are wronging their souls, by preventing them from what is due to them by virtue of their preparednesses in terms of the perfections deposited within them; [the angels will say] ‘What was your predicament?’, when you fell short of the effort required to [attain] what was decreed [for you] and neglected your duty to God [cf. Q. 39:56], and fell short of attaining the perfection that had been prepared for you and to which you were enjoined. They will say, ‘We were oppressed, in the land of the preparedness to which we had become innately disposed by the mastery [over us] of the faculties of the commanding soul and the overwhelming power of caprice through the satanic nature of estimation: these have held us captive in their shackles, compelled us to [follow] their religion and coerced us to [adopt] their disbelief. They [the angels] will reply, ‘But was not God’s earth spacious: was not the capacity of your preparedness such that you might have emigrated a few steps within it from the original point of your primordial nature in such a way that when some of the veils are removed from you, you would be able to depart from the captivity of the faculties and to be rid of the fetters of caprice and would have drawn strength from the reinforcement of your helpers, the spiritual faculties, and you would have been assisted to victory by the lights of the heart and thus left the town, whose people were evildoers [cf. Q. 4:75], and which is the city (madīna) of the soul, to the goodly land of the heart whereafter the mercy of your Forgiving Lord would have reached you; that you might have emigrated therein?’ As for such, their abode shall be Hell, [their abode shall be] their souls yearning intensely yet deprived — an evil journey’s end!

Except the oppressed among the men, that is, those of strong preparedness, those whose concupiscent and irascible faculties have been strengthened while their preparedness has also been strong but who have not been able to curb these by wayfaring along the path of truth; nor have they turned to their estimative and imaginative faculties and invalidated their preparednesses with corrupt beliefs. They have thus remained captive in their corporeal faculties, their preparedness illuminated by the light of knowledge but unable to remove their fetters in order to wayfare; women, those whose preparedness falls short of the level of perfection of knowledge and wayfaring along the path of realisation, those of weak faculties and the simple-minded regarding whom it was said, ‘The majority of the inhabitants of Paradise shall be those simple souls’; and children, that is, the deficient who fall short of attaining the degree of perfection because of a jealousy (ghayra) on the part of the attributes of the soul that affects them; who are unable to devise a plan, because of their inability and incapacity to break the attributes of the soul or curb caprice through spiritual discipline, and are not guided to a way, because they do not know how to wayfare and because of their being deprived of the light of the guidance of the religious law.

As for such, perhaps God will pardon them, by effacing these dark configurations because these have not taken deep roots [in their souls] and because of the soundness of their beliefs, for God is ever Pardoning, of sins as long as the primordial nature has not changed, Forgiving, covering up the attributes of their souls with the light of His attributes.

Whoever emigrates, from the habituated resting places of the soul in the way of the Truth through resolve, will find, in the earth of his preparedness many refuges, abodes and waystations therein, in spite of the estimative, imaginative, bestial and predatorial faculties of his soul and their degradation [of one’s preparedness], and abundance, expansion in the breast upon deliverance from the constriction of the attributes of the soul and the fetters of caprice; and whoever goes forth, from the station at which he is, whether it be the resting-place of his preparedness to which he has become naturally disposed or one of the waystations of the soul or one of the stations of the heart, as an emigrant to God, by orienting himself towards the affirmation of the unity of the Essence, and His Messenger, by orienting himself towards the pursuit of uprightness in affirming the unity of the attributes, and is then overtaken, by being severed [from the way] before arriving, his wage is then incumbent upon God, in accordance with the object of his orientation. For the one oriented towards wayfaring shall have the wage of the waystation at which he has arrived, that is, a level of the perfection that has been actualised in his case, if it should be so, and the wage of the station on which he has set his sights and to which he aspires. That perfection, even if it should not be actualised for him on account of possession and eternity, is yearned for by him by virtue of his seeking of it and having it in his sights. Perhaps he will be supported by the [divine] gift of assistance, after the removal of the veils, to arrive thereat; surely God is ever Forgiving, forgiving him those things which prevent him from attaining what he seeks, Merciful, to him by bestowing on him the perfection to which he was oriented and on which his sights were set.

And when you are journeying in the land of preparedness along the path of knowledge in pursuit of certainty, you would not be at fault if you shorten, that is, [if] you curtail the corporeal deeds and the fulfilment of the duties of servanthood (ʿubūdiyya) such as gratitude and presence, for the Prophet, blessings and peace be upon him, said, ‘Whoever has been given his [full] share of certainty, let him not be [overly] concerned with what he has missed of prayers and fasting’, if you fear that you may be afflicted, that you may be deceived and led astray, by those who do not believe, that is, [by] those that have been veiled such as the faculties of estimation and imagination and the human devils who are astray and who lead [others] astray, given what we know from the words of the Prophet, ‘A single man of [deep] understanding is more difficult for Satan [to lead astray] than a thousand worshippers’.

Surely We have revealed to you the Book, that is, the knowledge of the differentiations of the attributes and the rules governing their self-disclosures, with the truth, apparelled in justice and sincerity, or [it means] upheld by the Truth and not by your soul, so that you might judge between creatures, by that which God has shown you, of His justice. And do not be, for traitors, those who do not restore to God the trust which He has deposited in them since pre-eternity by virtue of the possibility embedded in their preparedness of knowing Him perfectly, but who have betrayed their souls and [those of] others by pillaging what is their due and expending it in inappropriate ways, a disputant, who wards off [their] chastisement for them and the fact that God has given power to [other] creatures over them to hurt them, [or a disputant] who remonstrates in defence of them against others or against God by objecting that he has put right their [state of] having been forsaken and vanquished [by God]. For verily they are the evildoers. They have no argument [against God], rather the [burden of] proof is against them.

And pray for forgiveness from God, for your soul by refraining from objecting and remonstrating on their behalf so that We might forgive you your variegation, which has manifested itself on you by the presence of your heart and its attributes.

And do not dispute: the interpretation of this has become clear from this [preceding statement].

They hide themselves from people, by concealing from them their vices and the attributes of their souls, which are the sources of their shame; but they do not hide themselves from God, by eliminating them and eradicating them, even though He is the witness over them, knowing their inner selves, while they contrive, [while] they lend weight to, in the world of the darkened soul and nature, what is displeasing to Him of suppositions, in the way of illusions and corrupt machinations which they string together in order to actualise what they desire of the transient things of this world and its pleasures. God is ever Encompassing of what they do, recompensing them in accordance with their attributes and their deeds.

Ah! There you are: [the interpretation of this is] clear from what has already been mentioned.

Whoever does evil, by the manifestation of one of the attributes of his soul, or wrongs his soul, by diminishing something of his [potential] perfections, [perfections] entailed in his preparedness by falling short [of something] therein or by committing a deed that is incompatible with it, [but] then asks God to cover up that attribute or configuration that is concealing his perfection by orienting himself towards Him and renouncing sinful behaviour, he shall find God is Forgiving, covering up that evil deed and dark configuration with the light of His attribute, Merciful, bestowing [on that person] what his preparedness entails.

And whoever commits a mistake, by manifesting his soul, or a sin, by effacing what is in his preparedness or by acquiring a configuration that is incompatible with [the realisation of] his perfection, and then casts it upon an innocent one, by saying [something like], ‘So and so drove me to do it, or so and so prevented me from seeking the truth, or this is the crime of so and so’, as is the habit of those who are given to brandishing excuses, he has thereby burdened himself with calumny, by [falsely] attributing his own [mis]deed to another. For had there not been a proclivity in his soul towards what is opposed to his perfection and a correspondence to those who agree with him and obey him [in that], it would not be accepted from him. So it is only of the doing of his own soul, as Satan says to them, 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 your own souls [Q. 14:22]. For if there had not been a darkness in their souls which they had acquired and which resulted from the manifesting of their attributes, there would not have been in them a locus for his [Satan’s] evil whisperings or a receptivity for his call; and a manifest sin, one that is manifest and multiplying, composed as it is of the configuration of the mistake and their refusal to confess [their sin] and to ascribe the shortcoming to their own souls so that it might be broken and become too weak to hold sway over the heart or to prevent it from perfection.

Were it not for God’s bounty to you, that is, His granting [you] of success and His reinforcement [of you] for the wayfaring along His path with what brings out your perfection [from potentiality] into actuality and accentuates the knowledge that is latent within you; and His mercy, His gift [to you] of that absolute perfection which He has deposited in you from pre-eternity, that mercy beyond which there is no [greater] mercy; but they lead only their souls astray, since that errancy the product of their original preparedness, moulded as they are upon wretchedness from pre-eternity: how then can that errancy that has been kneaded into them affect anyone other than them? God has revealed to you the Book, that is, the complete differentiated knowledge after the existence bestowed [on you from Him], and wisdom, knowledge of the rules governing the differentiations and the self-disclosures of the attributes and how to implement this [wisdom], and He has taught you what you did not know, since it is God’s knowledge, which only He possesses, and so when He revealed to you His Essence upon your annihilation in Him, then made you subsist through the existence derived from [His Name] the Truth and your heart came to be and He veiled you with the veil of that heart, He taught you of His knowledge, as the attribute is consequent to the essence, and God’s bounty, in manifesting that perfection upon you by facilitating for you the performing of deeds that have helped you arrive at where you have arrived, is ever great.

There is no good in much of their secret conversations, for that is idle curiosity and a wayfarer must refrain from idle curiosity, as the Prophet said, ‘A sign of the virtuousness of a person’s submission (islām) is that he refrains from what does not concern him’; except for he who enjoins, that is, except for the secret conversation of one who enjoins, to voluntary almsgiving, that is, to a virtue such as generosity, which is a kind of [virtuous] abstinence, or a kindness, that is verbal, such as the imparting of knowledge or a wisdom, given the virtuousness of wisdom, or [a kindness] that is practical, such as the succour of one in distress or assisting a victim of injustice, which is an act of valour, or setting things right between people, out of a sense of justice. And whoever does that, namely, [whoever] brings together all of these mentioned perfections, desiring God’s good pleasure, not seeking praise or to make a show to people or to seek a reputation such that the virtue in his case becomes a vice, We shall surely give him a great wage, of the gardens of the attributes.

What they pray to instead of Him are but females, that is, [these are but] souls, since anyone who associates others with God is a worshipper of his own soul by his obedience of its caprice and a worshipper of the Satan of estimation by accepting its misguidance and obeying it; or [females means] all that is worshipped besides God, since that [object of worship] is a contingent being and every contingent thing succumbs to the effect of another and is liable to its effects, in need of it, which is an attribute of females.

[And he [Satan] said, ‘Assuredly I will take to myself] an appointed portion, that is, other than those who shall be saved because they have been sincere in their religion by their affirmation of the Oneness.

and surely I will command them, to [engage in] corrupt habits and ruinous caprices and grotesque acts that are opposed to reason and to revelation.

But those who believe, with [that] true faith, the affirmation of the Oneness, since they are the antitheses of those who associate [others with God], and perform, what sets them on the right path to arriving at the union, or what sets people right all together by making them upright before God and in God after the annihilation and the actualisation of subsistence, We shall admit them, to the three mentioned gardens.

It, the actualisation of what is promised, is not according to your desires nor the desires of the People of the Scripture, that is, [it is not by] your subsisting in your souls, their attributes and acts, for your will is merely wishful desire, and wishful desire is to ask for what habitually is not forthcoming.

And who is fairer in religion, that is, in terms of path, than he who submits his purpose, namely, his existence, to God, and purges his essence of the blemishes of egoism and dualism by pure annihilation, and is virtuous, witness of the union at the source of differentiation, mindful of what is due from the self-disclosures of the attributes and the rules governing them, wayfaring along the path of virtuousness by being upright in his deeds, and who follows the creed of Abraham, in terms of the affirmation of [God’s] Oneness, as a ḥanīf, inclining away from every act of association in his essence, his attributes and his acts and from every false religion, that is, [from] every path that leads to the affirmation of [the reality of] an act, or attribute or essence, of one other than Him, for his [Abraham’s] religion is the religion of truth, by which I mean, that his [a person’s spiritual] journeying will in that case be a journeying towards God, not a journeying in God by wayfaring along the path of the attributes, nor [a journeying] towards God by severing the attributes of the soul and the founts of the attributes of the heart. Thus there is no religion better than his [Abraham’s] religion. And God took Abraham for an intimate friend (khalīl), in other words, He treats him as an intimate (khālala), that is, He pervades the fissures of his essence and his attributes in such a way that He leaves no remnants thereof, or He seals the fissures and stands in place of what has been annihilated of him when he has been perfected and is in need of Him. The ‘intimate’ (khalīl) may be a higher level than the ‘elect’ (ṣafī) but it is lower than the ‘lover’ (ḥabīb), because the intimate is a lover in whom it may be estimated that there is a remnant of an otherness (ghayriyya), whereas the lover is a beloved in whom no such thing can be conceived of, which is why he [the lover] is cast into the fire of [divine] love and not the other.

Whoever desires the reward of this world, satisfied to remain with the caprice of the soul: why does such a one seek the vilest of things and remain at the lowest levels? then God has the reward, of both abodes at once, if he should desire it [the reward of this world] by being annihilated in it, for He is the Existence that encompasses everything and nothing escapes Him. God is ever Hearer, of the conversations of your souls, Seer, of what your intentions and desires are in your deeds.

O you who believe, with the affirmation of the Oneness through knowledge and by the desire for the reward of both abodes, be, firmly established at the station of justness, which is the noblest of virtues, upright, in fulfilling its duties such that it becomes a deeply-rooted trait in you alongside which no injustice or tyranny can issue from you in any matter nor the manifestation of a soul-attribute as a result of the pursuit of some whim in order to draw some worldly profit or to ward off some harm.

O you who believe, with a traditional faith, believe, with the faith of realisation, or believe with the faith of knowledge, or believe with individual faith.

Verily, those who believed, and then disbelieved, to the end [of the verse]: in other words, those who were perplexed and wavered between the two aspects of the upper lordship [of God] and the lower one [of themselves] by the intensity of their hypocrisy, with at times the victory of the light of the primordial nature and at others the mastery of the darkness of the soul and caprice. That is because both states were equal in them until [finally] the darkened configurations were able to establish themselves [in their souls], veils multiplied, corrupt beliefs and stagnant disposition took deep root as a result of the sway and absolute mastery that the attributes of the soul acquired [over them], such that they rusted over their hearts; it was not for God to forgive them, because of the veiling rust, the corruption of the heart’s substance and the disappearance of preparedness, nor to guide them to a way, to truth, to perfection, or to the original primordial nature because of their non-receptivity to guidance and their chastisement is described as painful because of the status of their preparedness at the point of origin.

Those who take disbelievers for friends, by virtue of their correspondence to them in terms of being veiled, instead of believers, because of the lack of [their] generic compatibility [with believers] — do they desire, to assume power through them in this world and to draw strength from their assets and their status? There is no possibility of that. Moreover they are mistaken, because power altogether is one of God’s attributes, exalted be He, unassailable is He in His powers and might. His is the power to vanquish and to overwhelm all. Therefore power is actualised [for a person] in the measure that one is near to Him, receptive of His light and strength, and possessive of His attributes. So the people of faith are more deserving of this [power], while the people of the veil and disbelief are more deserving of making errors.

[When they stand up to pray] they stand up lazily, because the lack of yearning on their part for the presence and their aversion towards it which is due to the darkness of their preparedness that is the result of the mastery [over them] of caprice.

[O you who believe] take not the disbelievers as friends, lest their disbelief and their veiledness infect them through [their] companionship and mixing with them. For there nothing influences more than companionship. Moreover, the tendency towards friendship of them cannot [ultimately] be free of a generic compatibility between [the disbelievers and] them, as there must exist with them [these believers] some latent caprice and a voracity for a vile habit that subsumes [both of] them. One cannot be assured that they will not fall into disbelief [by such friendship] as a result of the overpowering of caprice and the soul; [do you desire to give God over you] a clear warrant?, a manifest argument in favour of requiting you, as a result of the taking root [in you] of that configuration through which you incline to friendship of them by being their companions and mixing socially with them?

[Verily, the hypocrites will be] in the lowest level [of the Fire], on account of his increased chastisement, the severity of his torture and burning, and not on account of its being the lowest level, for the effect of the Fire on the hypocrite is more severe and more painful given that there is a remnant of preparedness in him. As for the original bovine disbeliever, because of the lack of any preparedness in him does not suffer in his chastisement the pain which the hypocrite suffers, even if he should be in a worse state than him and endure a greater chastisement and degradation; [and you will never find for them] a helper, to help them from God’s chastisement, because both their connection and the raising of their love [to God] together with [that of] the folk of God are severed [from them].

Save those who repent, [those] who return to God through a remnant of the light of [their] preparedness and [their] acceptance of the support of divine assistance, and make amends, for what they have corrupted of their preparedness by curbing caprice, breaking the attributes of the soul, and eliminating the veils of the faculties by means of renunciation and spiritual discipline; and hold fast to God, by grabbing hold of the rope of volition and the strength of resolve in turning towards Him, and make their religion purely God’s, by annihilating the impediments to wayfaring such as the attributes of the soul, and [by] eliminating subtle idolatrous association and desisting from the contemplation of the other [than God] during the wayfaring, those are with the believers, who are certain, and God will certainly give the believers a great wage, in the way of witnessing the self-disclosures of the attributes and the garden of the acts.

Those who disbelieve, [those] who veil themselves from the Truth and from religion, and from the union and from differentiation, and seek to divide between God and His messengers, by veiling themselves from religion but not the Truth and from differentiation but not the union, and so deny the messengers estimating that unity is incompatible with multiplicity and that union is inconsistent with differentiation: that is how they end up believing in some things and disbelieving in others: [and say, ‘We believe in some, and disbelieve in some’] and seek to adopt, a way between total faith, in union and differentiation, and total disbelief.

Those are the disbelievers, the ons who are veiled, truly, by their essences and attributes, for their knowledge [of God] is illusory and erroneous, their affirmation of Oneness a clandestine unbelief. They are following neither religion nor truth; [and We have prepared for the disbelievers a chastisement] that is humiliating, humiliating them by the existence of the veil and the ignominy of the soul and its attributes.

And those who believe in God and His messengers, at the levels of union and differentiation, [We shall surely give them] their wages, in the way of the three gardens. God is ever Forgiving, concealing from them their essences and attributes, which constitute their sins and their veils, with His essence and attributes, Merciful, to them by granting them the bliss of the three gardens and of the existence that is bestowed from [His Name] the Truth and of timeless subsistence.

[The People of the Scripture will ask of you to cause] a Book from the heaven, a certain knowledge, [to be revealed to them], by means of an unveiling from the heaven of the spirit. [They asked Moses for] something greater than that, since witnessing is greater and more exalted than unveiling, [for they said, ‘Show us God openly’ so the thunderbolt seized them] for their evildoing, for demanding the witnessing while their essences subsisted, because the existence of remnants at the moment of witnessing is to have something in a place where it does not belong. To demand a witnessing while there are remnants is a tyranny of the soul that arises from its contemplation of the perfections of the attributes for itself, and that is an injustice; [and We bestowed upon Moses clear] authority, the capacity to have mastery over them through a proof against them after his return to consciousness.

[From where He says] Nay, God raised him [Jesus] up to Him, to where He says, but will assuredly believe in him: the raising of Jesus, peace be upon him, is the conjunction of his spirit to the upper world upon separation from the lower world; his being in the fourth heaven is an allusion to the fact that the source of the effusion of his spirit is the spirituality of the solar sphere which is the equivalent of the heart of this world and to which was his [Jesus’] return. This spirituality is a light that puts the said sphere into motion by virtue of its being the lover and the irradiation of its rays on his soul, which carries out the moving of that [sphere]. Since his return was to his original resting place and he did not arrive at true perfection, it is necessary that he will come back down at the end of time by attaching himself to another body. Thereupon everyone will know him and the People of the Scripture will believe in him, that is, the folk of knowledge, the knowers of the origins and the final return every single one of them before Jesus [finally] dies by being annihilated in God. When they believe in him that will be the Day of Resurrection, that is, the day in which they will emerge from their corporeal veils and their rise from their state of forgetfulness and the life of ease in which they are now.

[he will be] a witness, witnessing them, the Truth disclosing Himself to them in his form, as has been alluded to.

And because of the, tremendous, evildoing of some of those of Jewry, that is, because of their worship of the calf of the soul and their assuming it as a deity and their refraining from entering into the village which was the presence of the spirit, and their transgression of the Sabbath by contravening the divine law and their veiling themselves from the unveiling of the unity of the acts and their breaking of God’s covenant and their veiledness from the self-disclosures of the attributes, which constituted their disbelief of God’s signs and their immersion in all manner of vices, such as the slaying of prophets and imputing lies to God by virtue of their hearts being sealed, that is, covered with moral veils which cannot be removed, and because of their tremendous calumny against Mary and their claim to have slain Jesus, peace be upon him, are all traits which come together to constitute an evildoing the quintessence of which cannot be fathomed. We have forbidden them certain good things, the gardens of bliss in the way of the self-disclosures of the acts and the attributes and the presential vision of the Essence, all of which are good things the quintessence of which cannot be fathomed, that were lawful for them, in line with the receptivity of their preparedness, were it not for the impediments mentioned; and because of their barring, of people by their companionship of them and their calling them to error, or by barring their spiritual faculties, from God’s way …

And because of their taking, the usury of the excesses of knowledge, such as disputation and argumentativeness, corporeal pleasures and shares from which they had been forbidden; and their consuming people’s wealth through falsehood, through the vice of covetousness and [their wicked] nature, as in the acceptance of bribes and wages for falsification and deception, or [through] the use of the knowledge of the spiritual faculties from reflection to speculative or scientific reason in order to secure foods and drink, and the acquisition of the useless ephemera [of this world], as well as the actualisation of sensory pleasures and lusts and predatorial and beastly goals, [We have prepared] a painful chastisement for the existence of their preparedness.

But those who are firmly rooted in knowledge, that is, the verifiers, among them and those who believe, with the corresponding and fixed traditional faith, believing in what has been revealed to you, to the end [of the verse], that is, possessing the attributes of being cleansed and [spiritually] adorned, and those who believe [in God], those who affirm the Oneness through eyewitness, and the Last Day, those who witness with the eye the states of the final return as it really is — [to them We shall surely give] a great wage, from the shares of the self-disclosures of the attributes and the gardens of these [attributes];

messengers bearing good tidings, of the self-disclosures of the attributes of [divine] gentleness, and warning, of the self-disclosures of the attributes of the [divine] vanquishing, so that people might have no argument against God, [no] manifestation [of their souls] or mastery by the existence of some attribute after these have been removed and effaced as a result of the [spiritual] reinforcement of the messengers. God is ever Mighty, Powerful, vanquishing them by effacing their attributes and annihilating their essences, Wise, only doing that out of the wisdom entailed in their assumption of His attributes or their subsistence in His Essence.

But God bears witness with what He has revealed to you, since you are at the station of the union, while they are veiled and do not affirm it [the revelation]; rather He Himself bears witness that, He has revealed it through His knowledge, clothed with His knowledge, that is, in the state of His being Knower, such that it constitutes knowledge specifically His, neither your knowledge nor that of anyone other than you other than Him; and the angels also bear witness, because of your being mindful of the differentiated modes outside the union. Thus He is the witness through His Essence, His Names and His Attributes, and God suffices as a Witness, in other words, the Essence together with the Attributes suffice as testimony since there is no existent other than Him.

[Surely those] who disbelieve, [those] who are veiled from the Truth by virtue of their errancy being, far gone.

Surely those who disbelieve, [those] who have been veiled from religion, and who have done wrong, who have prevented their preparednesses from [realising] what is their right in terms of [realising their] perfection, by committing vices and unleashing the attributes of the soul upon their hearts, it is not for God to forgive them, because the configurations of these vices are firmly rooted in them and their preparedness has been invalidated, nor to guide them to any path, because of their composite ignorance, their corrupt belief, and their lack of knowledge of any of the paths of perfection,

except for the path of Hell, the fires of the yearnings of their souls for their pleasures while they are deprived of them; and that is, an easy matter for God, because they are by nature drawn to these [pleasures].

O People of the Scripture, do not go to extremes in your religion: as for [the extremism of] the Jews, it is their absorption in the exoteric and the denial of the esoteric aspects [of things], and [their] demotion of Jesus from the rank of prophethood and the station of the possession of the attributes of lordliness. In the case of the Christians, it is their absorption in the esoteric aspects and their denial of the exoteric as well as the elevation of Jesus to the station of divinity; and do not say about God except the truth, by combining [belief in both] the exoteric and esoteric aspects as well as the union and the differentiation, as is the case with the Muḥammadan affirmation of Oneness and with the statement that Jesus was the locus for the manifestation of the divine attributes, drawing life from His life and calling to the station of the affirmation of descriptions; and [Jesus is] His Word, a disengaged soul, a word from among the words of God, that is, one of His spiritual realities, a spirit from among [many] spirits. So believe in God and His messengers, at the level of union and differentiation, and do not say, ‘Three’, by adding life and knowledge to the essence such that the divinity becomes three things and Jesus becomes a part of His life at the breathing [into Mary]; or [do not say ‘Three’] by differentiating between the essence of the Truth and the world of light and the world of darkness such that Jesus becomes generated by His light; rather believe in all [as one], since He is all and hence knowledge and life constitute His very essence, as well as the world of light and that of darkness, and Jesus becomes annihilated in Him, existing by His existence, alive by His life, knowing by His knowledge, all of which constitutes His essential unity, expressed in His words: Verily, God is but One God. Glory be to Him, exalted above that there should be an existent other than Him such that it can be generated from Him, separate itself [from Him] and share in His genus by being an existent like Him; nay, He is the [only] existent in the sense that He is existence. To Him belongs all that is in the heavens, spirits, [and in] the earth, bodies, being His Names and His exoteric and esoteric aspects; [God suffices] as a Guardian, standing in for creatures in terms of their acts, their attributes and their essences upon their annihilation in the affirmation of the Oneness, as the Commander of the Believers ʿAlī [b. Abī Ṭālib], peace be upon him, said, ‘There is no god except God after the annihilation of creatures’.

The Messiah would never disdain to be a servant of God, at the station of differentiation, since if one considers the union neither the Messiah nor anyone else has any existence, and so it is impossible in the first place [for him to disdain anything]. If one considers the level of differentiation, any thing that has become manifest through entification is [necessarily] contingent and a contingent thing has no existence in of itself independent of any thing other than it, and so it is a needy, lowly servant that is dependent and is not disdainful of the submissiveness entailed in servanthood, even if it should have no need of being attached to a body by virtue of pure disengagement and being sanctified from the impurities of [physical] nature, such as the nigh angels, who are the disengaged spirits and the pure lights Whoever disdains to worship Him, by the manifesting of his ego, and waxes proud, in the tyranny of manifesting himself through his attributes, He will assuredly muster them to Him, all of them, by manifesting the light of His countenance and [by] His self-disclosure in the attribute of His vanquishing power so that they might be annihilated totally in the source of the union, as He has said, To whom does sovereignty belong today? To God, the One, the Vanquisher [Q. 40:16]. The Prophet said, ‘God, exalted be He, has seventy thousand veils of light and darkness. If He were to remove them, the august glories of His countenance would burn up everyone whose eyesight perceived Him’.

As for those who believed, in the annihilation at the source of the union by the effacement of attributes and the obliteration of essence, and who did righteous deeds, by being upright in [their] deeds and mindful of the differentiations of [God’s] attributes and their self-disclosures, He will pay them in full their wages, and their attributes from the gardens of His attributes, and He will give them more of His bounty, by means of the existence that is bestowed on the essence after annihilation, and as for them who disdain, by manifesting their ego, and are too proud, becoming tyrannical upon the self-disclosures of the [divine] attributes and their being illumined by their light by manifesting themselves in these [attributes] and ascribing them to their own souls, as with [Pharaoh] the one who said I am your most high lord! [Q. 79:24], He will chastise them with a painful chastisement, for their veiling themselves behind the remnants of their essences and attributes, depriving them of the station of union; and they shall not find, besides God, any supporter, to support them in removing the veil of the essence, or helper, to help them [successfully] remove the proof-veil of the attributes, which is the affirmation of the Oneness of essence and the clear light, that is the differentiation at the source of the union, namely, the Qurʾān, which is the knowledge of the union, and the Distinguishing Criterion, which is the knowledge of the differentiation.

As for those who believe, in the affirmation of the Oneness of essence and hold fast to it in light of the multiplicity of the attributes and their separations, and [who] are mindful of the union at the level of differentiation, He will surely admit them to mercy, from the gardens of the attributs, the quintessence of which cannot be known, and bounty, from the gardens of the Essence, and He will guide them to Him by a straight path, by remaining upright in maintaining the unity in light of the differentiations of multiplicity. Alternatively, [it means] a mercy from the gardens of the acts, bounty from the gardens of the attributes, and that He will guide them to Him by a straight path by way of the differentiations of the attributes towards the annihilation in the Essence. The former [interpretation] fits better in this instance. It is for you to effect a [similar] correspondence between the differentiations of your existence and the states of your soul wherever possible in this sūra on the basis of the rules that have already been mentioned in [the sūra of] Āl ʿImrān [Q. 3], and God, exalted be He, knows best.

They will ask you for a pronouncement. Say: ‘God pronounces to you concerning indirect heirs. If a man perishes, having no children, but he has a sister, hers is half of what he leaves, and he is her heir, if she has no children. If there be two sisters, theirs are two-thirds of what he leaves; if there be siblings, men and women, then the male shall receive the equivalent of the portion of two females. God makes clear to you, lest you go astray; and God has knowledge of all things’.