O you who believe, with cognitive faith, fulfil your bonds, that is, the resolutions which you have consolidated in the wayfaring. The difference between the covenant (ʿahd) and the bond (ʿaqd) here is that the covenant was the depositing in them of [the knowledge of] the Oneness since pre-eternity, as has been mentioned, while the bond is the consolidation of the resolutions to [fulfil] the obligations [of religion] imposed upon them so that they might be led to the fulfilment of what they were covenanted to. Thus the covenant comes first and the bond follows. Every resolution to do something requires the bringing out of what is in the preparedness from potentiality into actuality, a bond between the person and God which must be fulfilled and which must avoid invalidating by any neglectfulness or shortcoming. Lawful to you, are all types of enjoyments and shares through healthy souls, [souls] which are not overcome by predatorialness or covetousness, such as the souls whose natures are those of the three types of animal flocks, except that which is [now] being recited to you, of the enjoyments that are incompatible with virtuous traits and justness: these are forbidden [to you] because they veil [you] from [realising] perfection [at the level] of the individual or of the species, game not being lawful to you when you are on pilgrimage, that is, not enjoying shares while disengaging for the wayfaring and embarking on spiritual discipline for the journey to God desiring arrival; for in this case it is necessary to make do with what one is entitled to [only], because entering into pilgrim sanctity is manifestly the [outward] form of real entry into sanctity for those wayfaring along the path of the Kaʿba of connection and for those seeking to enter into the divine sanctuary and the pavilions of the attributes of Majesty and Perfection. Verily, God decrees whatever He desires, for whomever of His friends (awliyāʾ) He wishes.

[O you who believe] do not profane God’s sacraments, in the way of the stations and the states by which the state of the wayfarer in his wayfaring is known, such as patience, gratitude, trust, satisfaction and their like. In other words, do not commit the sins of the states and do not infringe the bounds of the station, for these are the sacred waymarks of God’s pure religion. Just as these acknowledged places are marked out by the ritual that is performed thereat, such as the circumambulation, the pacing and the sacrifice and others, and [just as] the acknowledged acts of the pilgrimage are waymarks by which the pilgrim perceives his way, so these stations, levels and states are [also] waymarks by which the wayfarer perceives his state. And just as manifestly according to the [divine] law it is not permitted that one change the places of these [waymarks] or infringe its rules, so it is with these [spiritual waymarks] according to the law of the lovers, as is related of one of them who used to talk [at length] about [the station of] patience. When a scorpion pounced onto his leg and began to sting him, he remained as he was and did not cast it off. He was asked about this and said, ‘I am ashamed to speak so much of a station then do what it is contrary to it’; nor the sacred month, meaning the moment of entering into pilgrim sanctity for the true pilgrimage, which is the moment of the wayfaring and the arrival, [profaning it] by infrining its bounds and occupying oneself with what is incompatible with it and bars him from his orientation and slows him down in his journeying; nor the offering, nor the prepared soul that is made ready for the sacrificial offering upon arrival at the courtyard^{1The term fanāʾ, of course, also means ‘annihilation’, but that is to be understood as prefiguring the arrival.} of the divine presence, in the way mentioned, [profaning it] by using it for a purpose that distracts it from its path or weakens it, or by making it bear more than it has the capacity for in terms of spiritual discipline such that the person is severed [from the goal of wayfaring] before he has even reached [the desired] locus; nor the garlands, nor what the soul has garlanded itself with of the distinguishing mark of the wayfaring folk and of the [good] customary practices and outward deeds, by abandoning them or changing their condition; nor those repairing to the Sacred House, nor those purposeful seekers who are conscientious and industrious in their wayfaring, by causing them to change or preventing them from [pursuing their] spiritual discipline, or by belittling their resolve by interfering [with them] or reducing [their] ceremonious pacing, giving them the illusion that they have no need for any of that, or by distracting them with what bars them [from their spiritual purpose] or causes them to be idle, while they seek bounty from their Lord, by means of the self-disclosures of the acts, and beatitude, by means of the self-disclosures of the attributes. But when you are discharged, upon the return to subsistence after annihilation and uprightness, then hunt for game, that is, then you would not be at fault with regard to [enjoying] the shares. Nay, it may well be that permitting the soul to enjoy its shares is of assistance to it in its witnessings and unveilings given its nobleness, astuteness and its intense purity. And let not hatred of a people, to the end [of the verse]: that is, let not some ego-centric faculties that impede you from your wayfaring lead you to vanquish these [faculties] totally by preventing them from the rights to which they are entitled so that you end up invalidating these [duties] or impairing them from [receiving] these benefits and what is required of their acts as a result of your barring of them, for the evil consequence of such will fall on you; or [the verse means] let not the enmity of some from among your folk or kin or friends, because they have prevented you from disengagement or from spiritual discipline in the wayfaring, cause you to commit aggression, against them by way of causing them harm or loathing them or desiring that evil befall them, for that will cause more harm to you in terms of your wayfaring than their prevention of you. Help one another to righteousness and piety, by controlling these faculties and managing them delicately by being kind to them with regard to what they are entitled to and by preventing them from their shares, or by being considerate towards relatives, kin and friends by being indulging them and being kind to them and honouring duties towards them even as you do not obey them concerning that which would prevent you from such [righteousness and piety], avoiding it as God, exalted be He, says: then do not obey them, but keep company with them in this world honourably [Q. 31:15]. And fear God, by making [fear of Him] a means of protection [from error] for you in such matters and be wary of contravening Him in such [matters]; surely God is severe in retribution, requiting you with sanction and privation.

Forbidden to you is carrion: these are the exceptions from among the kinds of lawful enjoyments and they are carrion, that is, extinguished desire which is the vice of excess that is incompatible with contentment, such as effeminacy or the inability to pursue the [minimal] necessary of enjoyments or to partake of enjoyment with a loss of moderation in the appetitive faculty as is the case with effeminates and certain flirts, as well as those ascetics and renouncers in character, who fall short of [the requirements of] wayfaring by their lack of preparedness; and blood, that is, enjoying the caprices of the soul in deeds, for the admixing of caprice and its tarnishing effect spoils all deeds; and the flesh of swine, and all aspects of enjoyment that are actualised through covetousness and avarice, for the faculty of covetousness is the vilest of faculties and the most obstructive of the paths to perfection and salvation; and what has been hallowed to other than God, that is acts of spiritual discpline and deeds performed for show and all that is done for other than God, as the breaking of the soul, curbing it and opposing it does not count as a beautiful and meritorious act and an aid to wayfaring unless it is [done] for the sake of God. If it is done for other than God, it is an act of [idolatrous] association and association is the greatest of grave sins; and the beast strangled, that is, restricting the soul from vices and preventing it from despicable acts by the actualisation of forms of virtues and the issuing forth of good acts in forms [contaminated] with caprice, for acts of the soul are virtuous when it is curbed and vanquished for the sake of God, and when [its] caprice, its source of vigour and life, leaves it so that it subsists by the will of the heart, similar to when blood, which is the life force of an animal, is let out upon its being slaughtered for the sake of God; and the beast beaten down, that is, when qualities of excellence issue forth outwardly from the soul while it is averse to that and must be coerced to it; and the beast fallen, those [enjoyments] which are connected to excess, diminution and inclination to the lower aspect and the soul’s lapsing from [its] sublime aspirations and the powerful degree; and the beast gored, that which issues forth out of fear and of being compelled out of the like, such as the probity that comes about by means of the reprimands of the market inspector and out of the fear of being disgraced; and what beasts of prey have devoured, such as the virtues of probity that come about as a result of the intensity of the irascible faculty in the way of pride and passion and the mastery of wrath. For when wrath becomes master it prevents the intensity from working, or [that come about] as a result of a repression of a repressor such as a king or a commander — except for what you have sacrificed duly, except what has become conjoined to you and a habit for you and is obedient to you after being repressed by another such that virtues issue from it by the will of the heart without any admixture of caprice; and what has been sacrificed in [the name of] idols, what is done on the basis of habits which must be eliminated, unless it relates to a rational or law-fulfilling purpose; and that you apportion through the divining of arrows, and that you seek felicities and perfections by means of descriptions and risings relying on what God has decreed and determined, neglecting conscious effort and industry in the pursuit [of these]; and you make that an excuse for falling short [of the required] by saying, ‘there is no share in it for us, for had there been a share for us [therein] it would have materialised’. Perhaps this was simply an excuse while according to the [divine] decree his perfection has been made contingent on his conscious effort, but he has failed to discover that; that is wickedness, a violation of religion, that which is the path of truth. Today, that is, at the moment of the actualisation of perfection resulting from the training of the soul with qualities of excellence and its firm adherence to resolutions, the disbelievers have despaired, that is, the veiled faculties of your souls, or your offspring and your ilk from among the natural philosophers and the belief-feigning atheists, of your religion, that is [they have despaired] from barring you from the path of truth; therefore do not fear them, for then they will overcome you, but fear Me, by not stopping at the self-disclosure of any one of My attributes and being in awe of the tremendousness of My Essence until you have arrived at the station of annihilation. Today I have perfected your religion for you, by explaining the sacraments and the method of wayfaring, and I have completed My favour upon you, by guiding [you] to Me, and I have approved for you, submission and obedience through effacement upon the self-disclosure of [My] acts and attributes, or [I have approved for you] the surrender of [your] faces for annihilation upon the self-disclosure of the Essence, as religion. But whoever is constrained, to [engage in] one of the forbidden things which we have enumerated, by emptiness, by a severe agitation of the soul or an overwhelming as a result of the manifestation of one its attributes, not inclining purposely to sin, not deviating from religion and the orientation [of the wayfaring] toward a preventive vice deliberately and resolutely, then God is Forgiving, covering that up for him by the light of one of His attributes that counters it, Merciful, with the reinforcement of divine assistance in order to manifest perfection and remove the barriers to it.

Say: ‘The good things are made lawful for you, from among the realities and the truth-derived gnoses and cognitive virtues that are actualised for you through your intellects, your hearts and your spirits; and what you have taught, of the predatory creatures of your internal and external senses and all your faculties and corporeal limbs to acquire virtues and refined dispositions, inciting [them], teaching them of what God has taught you, in the way of knowledge relating to character traits and divine prescriptions that elucidate the means by which shares are secured in an equitable manner; so eat what they have caught for you, what these [senses] have procured for you as a result of your teaching of them in the proper way, with an intention and a will that derives from the heart and a sound purpose that leads to the perfection of the individual or the species, without that these [senses] stir, bear their teeth and heave in agitation over it [the quarry] out of an inclination and a covetousness for the pursuit of their pleasures and lusts. And mention God’s name over it, and be present with your hearts to [declare] that this quarry is being sought and desired for the [fulfilment of the] perfect human form and not for any other purpose. And take God as a guard for your when you do that so that it might be virtuous. Indeed, God is swift at the reckoning, for He reckons with you instantly concerning this and not over periods of time, as [can be seen] in the [sorts of] configurations that result in your souls as [soon as] you commit these [acts].

O you who believe, with cognitive faith, when you rise, up from the sleep of [spiritual] forgetfulness and seek out the prayer of the presence, the real communion and the orientation towards the Truth, wash your faces, that is, cleanse the existence of your hearts with the cleansing water of pure and beneficial knowledge in the way of the knowledge of the divine laws, [virtuous] character traits and the transactions that entail the elimination of the barriers against the sullying of the attributes of the soul; and your hands, that is, your powers, [cleanse them] from the filth of partaking of lusts and disposing of abominable matter, up to the elbows, up to the measure of what is due by right and what is beneficial, and wipe your heads, [wipe away] in the direction of your spirits the darkness of the turbidity of the heart and the dust of its changing when it orients itself towards the lower world and [towards] the love of this world by the light of guidance. For the spirit is not sullied by attachment but its light is veiled from the heat and the heart in turn becomes black and darkens. It suffices for the diffusion of its [the spirit’s] light to polish the higher aspect of the heart that is adjacent to it,^{1Read alladhī yalīhi, instead of alladhī ilayhi.} since the heart has two aspects, one of which is towards the spirit and the head, and is the one referred to here, while the other is towards the soul and its faculties and it is more likely that the feet [here] are a reference to this [latter]; and your feet, those aspects of your natural corporeal faculties, [wash these] by shaking off the dust of being engrossed in lusts and excessive indulgence in pleasures, up to the ankles, up to the level of moderation by which the body becomes upright. According to this then, the one who is engrossed in lusts and indulges excessively in pleasures is in need of washing it [the soul] with the waters of the knowledge of [virtuous] character traits and the knowledge of spiritual disciplining so that it might return to the purity with which the heart prepares for the presence and the communion [with the divine]. As for the one whose pool is near in terms of these by virtue of his moderation, it suffices him to wipe, which is why the one who must wipes and the one who must washes. If you are defiled, [if you are] distant from the Truth by having been drawn to the lower aspect and by having turned away from the higher aspect with total inclination towards the soul, purify yourselves, totally from this dark configuration and vile attribute that entail distance and veiledness; but if you are sick, to the end [of the verse] reiterates [the same points]. God does not desire to make any hardship for you, any constraint or difficulty by means of extensive [spiritual] struggles and acts of endurance, but He desires to, purify you from dark configurations and vile attributes, and that He may perfect His grace upon you, by perfecting [you], so that you might give thanks, for the grace of [your] perfection by being upright and fulfilling what is due in terms of justness upon subsistence after annihilation.

[And remember] God’s grace upon you, in guiding [you] to the path of arrival, and His covenant, that is, the bonds of the resolutions made for His sake as mentioned, since you accepted these from the source of prophethood by the purity of [your] primordial nature.

that is nearer to God-fearing, that is to say, the intellect is more able to disengage from the doubts that garb the attributes of the soul and to assume the attributes of God, exalted be He, as a protective guard, as it is the noblest of excellent qualities which if actualised is followed by all [the rest]. And fear God, take Him as your guard to ensure that equity issues forth from you, for the fountainhead of perfections and excellent virtues is His Essence, exalted be He; surely God is aware of what you do, whether this issues from the attributes of your souls or from Him.

God has promised those who believe, among you, with the cognitive affirmation of Oneness, and perform righteous deeds, that help them to arrive at the entific affirmation of Oneness and prepares them for it, they shall have forgiveness, by their attributes, and a great wage, from the self-disclosures of His attributes, exalted be He.

when a people, from among the faculties and attributes of your veiled souls, purposed to extend their hands against you, by holding sway [over you], vanquishing [you] and dominating you in order to actualise their goals and pleasures, He restrained them from you by means of the methods of purifying [yourselves] and exalting [Him] which He has shown you; and fear God, and take Him as a shield by which you can vanquish this [people] and restraing them, and in God let the believers put their trust, by seeing that all acts are from Him.

[God had made] a covenant with the Children of Israel, the covenant mentioned [below]. The twelve leaders are the five external senses, the five internal ones, as well as the considerative intelligent faculty and the cognitive intelligent faculty. And God said: ‘I am with you, in the subsequent bond [ensuing from the covenant], granting you assistance and help, that if you fulfil the dues in terms of self-purification and withdrawal in the way of refraining from corporeal felicities by means of devotions and abandoning the external felicities by means of renunciation and giving preference to the third, which is belief in the messengers of the intellect and in the inspirations, correct reflective thoughts, sincere thoughts coming in from the spirit, the heart, and [from] the reinforcement of the angelic realm, and by succouring these [messengers], that is, exalting them by unleashing them against the devils of estimation, reinforcing them and protecting these [messengers] from their [these devils’] whisperings and [their] casting [upon them] of illusory, imaginary and ego-centric thoughts, and lend to God a goodly loan, by acquitting yourselves totally from [claims to] the might, strength, knowledge and power that belong [only] to God in terms of the acts and attributes in their entirety, then from the Essence by means of [your] effacement, annihilation and surrender of these [acts and attributes] to God, I will absolve you of your evil deeds, that is, [of] the existences of these three, which constitute your veils and your impediments, and I will admit you to gardens, of My acts, My attributes and My essence, underneath which rivers flow, [these rivers being] the forms of knowledge relating to trust [in God], satisfaction, surrender, and the affirmation of the Oneness, which as a whole constitute the knowledge of the self-disclosures of the acts, the attributes and the Essence. Thus whoever remains veiled after this covenant and [after] the sending forth of leaders from among you, surely he has strayed, from the way that is made straight by the truth.

[So because of their breaking their covenant, We cursed them and made their hearts] hard: these [hearts] hardened as a result of the soul’s attributes holding sway over them and because of their inclination towards solid and hardened earthly affairs, and so they have become veiled from the lights of the angelic realm and the realm of the divine attributes, which constitute the words of God; they exchanged the faculties of their souls for these [affairs] and implemented their illusions and imaginations instead of their gnoses and realities in the way of intelligible concepts, or they mixed them together, which is [what is meant by] the distortion of words from their contexts; and they have forgotten a share, that is, a substantial portion of what they were given in a former covenant in terms of the latent perfections within their preparedness [that reside therein] in potentiality and they were therefore reminded of this [share] in the subsequent covenant; and you will never cease to discover some treachery on their part, that is, some infraction of the covenant or the withholding of some trust because of the sway acquired over them by the attributes of the soul and by Satan and because of the hardness of their hearts [except for a few of them. Yet pardon them, and forgive; surely God loves] the virtuous, who witness such folk as they endure God’s trial but do not counter them with requital; rather they treat them with forgiveness and pardon.

So We have stirred up among them enmity and hatred, that is to say, We have forced this upon them because of the mutually opposed exigencies of their predatorial, bestial and satanic faculties and [because of] their inclining towards the lower aspect, that which necessarily entails contrareity and mutual resistance by virtue of their veiledness from the light of the affirmation of the Oneness and their distance from the world of Holiness wherein lie purposes in their entirety entailing neither mutual attraction nor mutual resistance, until the moment of their rising by the manifestation of the light of the spirit and the major resurrection by the manifestation of the light of the affirmation of the Oneness; and God will assuredly inform them, of the punishment for what they have wrought at the point of death and the manifestation of privation and loss at the manifestation of the despicable and hurtful configurations deeply rooted in them.

They indeed are disbelievers those who say, ‘God is the Messiah, by confining divinity to him and restricting the Deity by entifying Him; [if He desires] to destroy the Messiah, son of Mary, to where He says, all together?’, by annihilating them in the affirmation of the Oneness and obliterating them in other than the union, as He has said Everything will perish except His countenance [Q. 28:88]? And to God belongs the kingdom of the heavens, that is, the world of the spirits, and the earth, the world of bodies, and all that is between them, of forms and accidents, the manifest and the hidden in their entirety, as well as His names, His attributes and His acts.

[O my people] enter the Holy Land, that is, [into] the presence of the heart, which is the self-disclosure of the attributes, for in relation to the heaven of the spirit it [the heart] is the earth, which God has ordained for you, [which] He has specified for you in a preceding decree, having deposited in your preparedness [the means to achieve] the arrival to it and the stationing [of yourselves] therein, and do not turn back in flight, by inclining to the city of the body and pursuing it by seeking to actualise its [the body’s] desires and pleasures, seeking to satisfy it and to adorn its configurations, for it [the body] constitutes a station that is anterior to your station and baser and inferior to your level, or you will end up as losers, in exchanging the lights of the heart for the darknesses of the body, and the goodly aspects of the former for the vile aspects of the latter.

[They said, ‘O Moses] there are a tyrant people in it, in the way of the sultan of estimation and the princes of caprice, wrath, lust and all the other pharaonic attributes of the soul which they have seized by force and by subjugation and they have mastery over them, dominating them and compelling all to [follow] their whims; we have no strength against them and are unable to resist them. They said that because they had become habituated to physical pleasures and carnal appetites and because of their being overcome by caprice. Thus they were unable to pursue spiritual disciplining, or to curb desire, or to curtail the attributes of the soul through spiritual struggle; we will never enter it until they depart from it, that is, [until] God should turn them out of it withouth any spiritual discipline or struggle on our part, or [until] they depart out of [their own] nature, despite the impossibility of this, or [until] their sway be weakened as is the case with [the advent of] old age, despite the fact that they would not be able to enter it then.

There said two men of those who feared: the two were from among the twelver leaders — and they were the considerative intellect and the cognitive intellect, who feared the evil sequel of contiguity with the body and the evil consequence of being punished with its dark configurations — to whom God had been gracious, by guiding them to the straight path and the upright religion: ‘Enter against them by the gate!, the gate of the village of the heart, which is trust through the self-disclosures of the acts, just as the gate of the village of the spirit is satisfaction. For if, you enter by the station of trust which is the gate of the village, you will be victorious, by having departed from your acts and your states and by being agents through God. For if might and strength are [procured] through God, the Satan of estimation and imagination as well as caprice and wrath shall flee from you and you shall be made victorious. That the gate is trust is indicated by His words: Put your trust in God, if you are, truly, believers, for faith when it is absent to the one adhering to it is the least of the degrees of presence at the self-disclosures of the acts.

They said, ‘O Moses, that is, they persisted in their refusal and their refraining from entry. So go forth, you and your Lord, and fight, that is to say, if you are [truly] a prophet then drive them away by the power of your soul and curb the caprice and those faculties in us without any spiritual discipline or struggle on our part, and ask your Lord to drive them away from us, as shrewd scoundrels [are given to] say when you admonish them, rebuke them and threaten them, ‘Why don’t you rid us of this wretchedness by your own resolve!’, either in mockery and out of obduracy, or earnestly and out of conviction; we will be sitting here, we will adhere to our place at the station of the soul, cleaving to the whims of our souls and the pleasures of our bodies, as they said, ‘Ḥiṭtan samqāthā!’^{1Cf. Kāshānī’s commentary to Q. 2:59, above.}

He said: ‘Then it shall be forbidden them for forty years; they shall wander lost in the land: this constitutes the duration of their subsisting at the station of the soul. In other words, they remained in the wilderness of nature wandering perplexed for forty years [searching] for the village of the heart. For entry into the station of the heart when it is under the mastery of the tyrannical attributes of the soul is forbidden and prohibited. That is why He says [elsewhere] until when he is attained maturity and has attained forty years [Q. 46:15], for that is the moment of true maturity. It is related of this story of the wandering in the wilderness that they would journey earnestly all day the distance of six parasangs, but when it came to evening they found that they were still at the same station from which they had departed [earlier]. In other words, their endeavour was focused on the actualisation of carnal satisfactions and corporeal desires, which were confined to the six aspects and did not depart from these [six] aspects by disengaging. Thus they were [still] at the first station because they failed to orient themselves towards the azimuth of the heart by seeking disengagement and rising above corporeal configurations and ego-centric attributes. At night a column of fire would descend from the heaven by whose light they could journey and benefit; that is to say, there would descend upon them the light of the intellect of livelihood from the heaven of the spirit and they would be guided thereby to their welfare. It is described as being ‘of fire’ because it is an intellect that is blemished by illusion and not a pure intellect, for otherwise they would have been guided thereby to the path of the heart. As for the clouds, the manna and the quails, these have already been mentioned along with their interpretation. It is said that every child born in the wilderness had a shirt that was the length of his body and would grow as the child grew; by this they meant the garb of the body, but God knows best. If you wish to effect the correspondence between this story and your state, then you should interpret Moses as the heart and Aaron as the spirit, since he was his elder brother, which is why he said he is more eloquent than me in speech [Q. 28:34], and [you would interpret] the Children of Israel as the spiritual faculty and the Holy Land as the reassured soul and would then recount the story as it stands to the end; so do not grieve for the wicked folk, that is, do not be concerned to guide them and do not be distressed by their punishment, for they are indeed wicked, having departed from the path of the heart by their own caprice and insolence.

And recite to them the story of the two sons of Adam, [Adam] of the heart, of the two who are Abel of the heart and Cain of estimation. Each of them had a twin. As for the twin of the intellect, this is the cognitive intelligence (āqila ʿilmiyya) that manages the affairs relating to livelihood and the final return by means of beneficial opinions that require righteous deeds and excellent characters traits which are able to infer all types of handiwork and rules of governance. As for the twin of the estimative faculty, this is the imaginal faculty that has free disposal of objects of sensory perception and particular meanings for the purpose of actualising satanic opinions. Thus the Adam of the heart commanded that the estimative faculty be married to the twin of the intellect, namely, the cognitive intelligence so that it might acquire mastery over it by means of rational proof-based analogies and that it might train it by means of obedience-inducing forms of spiritual disciplining and spiritual manipulation, making it subject to the intellect so that it might become obedient to the father-heart, be kind to him and be dutiful towards him and designate him in righteous deeds and refrain from being disobedient to him through corrupt satanic enticements and embellishments and by tempting the soul to these through wicked configurations and evil deeds. As for the marrying of the intellect the twin of estimation, that is in order to make it righteous and to prevent it from lusting after corrupt imaginations and from the goading of the mendacious conversations of the soul so that its father [the heart] might find rest from it and exercise it in intelligible and sensory objects as well as universal and particular meanings so that it then becomes a reflective entity that works to actualise forms of knowledge and its father thereby profits. The Cain of estimation was envious of the Abel of the intellect since his [Abel’s] twin was more beautiful to him [Abel] and more beloved [to him] on account of its correspondence to him. Their father the heart commanded that each of them offer a sacrifice, a ritual slaughter, with which to draw nearer to God by means of the effusion of the result [of the sacrifice] and the annihilation of the analogous form and the acceptance of the universal intelligible form [of the sacrifice] that corresponds to the very thing that is his ritual sacrifice by which he seeks nearness to God. The non-acceptance of the sacrifice of estimation, which is a fraudulent form or a particular illusory form, is due to the impossibility of the conjunction of the intellect to it at the effusion of the result since there is no result therefrom, or it is due to the impossibility of the acceptance of the illusory form, since there is no correspondence to the very thing [being sacrificed]. Thus his envy increased against him: He said, ‘I will surely slay you’, that is, the closer that the intellect drew to God and the further away it became from the level of estimation in terms of the objects of its perception and objects of disposal, the more eager was the desire of the estimation to invalidate its [the intellect’s] deed and to prevent it from its act, as when you see [the appearance of the] doubts induced by illusion and its [estimation’s] opposition to the intellect’s actualisation of profound considerative pursuits. As for his slaying, this expresses its [the estimation’s] attempt to prevent it [the intellect] from its act and to sever from it any reinforcement from the spirit and the light of guidance from which the intellect draws life. [The other said, God accepts only] from the God-fearing: those who take God as their protective shield when good things issue from them, or who guard against the sins of dark corporeal configurations, invalid fabrications, misguiding deceptions, ruinous caprices and destructive temptations.

‘I will not extend my hand against you to slay you, because I shall not invalidate your deeds, which in their contexts are intense, in the way of objects of sensory perception; nor shall I sever from you your life which is the sustenance of the soul and of desire; nor shall I prevent you from any act that is specific to you, for the intellect knows that the particular benefits, the rules governing sensory objects and the particular meanings attached to these and the hierarchic arrangement of the means to livelihood are not actualised or facilitated except by means of estimation. Were it not for hope and the actualisation of wishes and aspirations produced by the estimation, no one would have any means of acquiring a livelihood. I fear God, the Lord of the Worlds, because I know Him — He says Indeed only those of God’s servants who have knowledge [truly] fear Him [Q. 35:28] — and I know that He created you for a purpose and brought you into existence for a wisdom and so I do not [suppose to] interfere with His purpose in that.

I desire that you should end up with my sin, the sin of slaying me and the sin of your slaying in the way of false opinions and corrupt conceptualisations because of which your sacrifical offering was not accepted, and so become an inhabitant of the Fire, of veiledness and privation. That is the requital of the evildoers, of those who place things in other than their contexts such as your application of the rules governing sensory things in the context of intelligible things.

Then his soul prompted, facilitated and enticed, him to slay his brother, so he slew him, by preventing him from his specific acts and veiling him from the light of guidance, and became one of the losers, because of his suffering harm by his assumption of mastery over the intellect and exchanging the guidance and rightness of the intellect for his own misguidance and wrongness. For when estimation suffers the severing of the support of the intellect, it prompts the soul by all manner of temptations and [seductive] embellishments to indulge in things by which both the soul and the body suffer harm, such as those reprehensible acts of immoderation in the way of bestial and predatorial pleasures such as extreme covetousness in the pursuit of wealth and repute and excess, and therefore estimation is weakened or even invalidated.

Then God sent forth, the raven of covetousness, scratching into, the earth of the soul, to show him how he might hide the nakedness of his brother, meaning, estimation, because by its severing of the intellect from the light of guidance and its veiling of it from the journeying in the upper world to actualise perfection and to pursue the felicity of the end, becomes perplexed regarding itself, whereupon covetousness was sent forth and guided it in the wilderness of misguidance and showed it how to hide and bury its nakedness, that is, its slain corpse which estimation bore upon its shoulders until it had putrified. Thus the intellect of livelihood ended up under the soil of the earth, which is the form of the intellect that has been severed from the life of the spirit, blemished by estimation and caprice, veiled from its world in the darknesses of the earth of the soul, within which it lies buried as it is being consumed by the worms of the natural faculties which use it in order to actualise their pleasures and goals. He said, ‘Woe to me! Am I not able to be as this raven, which has buried its youngling, that is, its herald or its perfection, in the earth of the soul by annihilating what can be actualised for it and suppressing it therein, and so hide my brother’s nakedness?’, by concealing it in the darkness of the soul and thus profit from it. And he became one of the remorseful, upon this loss and the resulting privation;

it shall be as if he had slain mankind altogether, because every individual [human] entails what is entailed by every individual of that species, for a species subsists in the one as it subsists in all outwardly and number has no bearing in this respect, for a species is not augmented in reality by the number of its individuals nor is it diminished by its being restricted to the one.

O you who believe, fear God, by purifying yourselves, and seek the means to Him, by [spiritual] adornment, and struggle in His way, by the effacement of [your] attributes and the annihilation in the Essence, so that you might prosper, against the manifestation of the remnants of [your] attributes and essences.

[Truly, as for the disbelievers, if they possessed] all that is in the earth, that is, what is contained in the lower aspect, as these are the causes for the increase of the veil and [of] distance, and the only success can be found in the upper aspect in the way of gnoses and luminous realities.

And We have revealed to you the Book, the knowledge of the Criterion which is the manifestation of the differentiations of your perfection, with the truth confirming the Book that was before it, that is, the knowledge of the Qurʾān, which is the undifferentiated knowledge that is fixed in your preparedness and watches over you by its manifestation; or [confirming] what was before it of the forms of knowledge that were sent down to prophets who preceded [you] in time. For in the case of Moses, when he returned to subsistence upon [his] annihilation by means of the divinely bestowed existence, it was the faculty of the soul and its authority that was dominant in him, which is why he struck his brother, as where God says and he seized his brother by the head, dragging him toward him [cf. Q. 7:150], and [why] when he asked for the self-disclosure he said my Lord, show me that I may behold You [Q.7:143]. Thus most of the Torah consisted of the knowledge of judgements, that which is concerned with the states of the soul and its refinement, its call being an exoteric one. In the case of Jesus, the dominant was the faculty of the heart and its light, which is why he disengaged himself from the apparel of this world, enjoined monasticism and would say to some of his disciples ‘Whoever shall smite you on your [right] cheek, then turn to him who has smote you the other cheek also’ [Matt. 5:39]. Most of the Gospel consisted of the knowledge of the self-disclosures of the attributes, character traits, admonitions, and counsels that are concerned with the states of the heart, its purification and its illumining, its call being an esoteric one. In the case of Muḥammad, peace and blessings be upon him, the dominant was the sway of the spirit and its light. Thus he brought together to all the noble character traits, completing of them, equitable in judgements and moderate therein. Thus the Qurʾān encompassed what was contained in both [of the preceding] scriptures in terms of knowledge, judgements and gnoses, confirming all of it and watching over it, as well as [containing] supplementary material concerning the affirmation of Oneness, love [of God] and the call to the proclamation of the Oneness [of God]. So judge between them according to what God has revealed, of justice, which is the shadow of [divine] love, which is the shadow of [His inclusive] unity that has been revealed to you, and do not follow their whims, by allowing either one of the two sides to predominate, be it the exoteric or the esoteric; away from the truth that has come to you, in the way of the affirmation of Oneness, [divine] love and justice. For the affirmation of Oneness entails love, and love entails justice and it shadow is cast from the heaven of the spirit unto the heart by means of love and unto the soul by means of justice. To every one of you, We have appointed a divine law and a way, a watering source, such as the source-path of the soul, the source-path of the heart and the source-path of the spirit, as well as a path such as the knowledge of judgements and transactions which is attached to the heart and the wayfaring along the esoteric path that leads to the arrival at the garden of the attributes; and [another path that is] the knowledge of the affirmation of the Oneness and the witnessing which is attached to the spirit and the wayfaring along the path of annihilation that leads to the arrival at the garden of the Essence. If God had willed, He would have made you one community, affirmers of Oneness following the original primordial nature, in agreement over one religion, but that, He may make manifest on you what He has given you in accordance with your preparednesses commensurate with the receptivity of each of you, so that as a result perfections are varied. So vie with one another in good works, that is, in those matters that lead to your perfection, that which has been decreed for [each of] you in accordance with your preparednesses and which brings you near to Him bringing that [potential] out into actuality; to God you shall all return, at the source of the union of existence in accordance with [your] levels, not at the source of the union of the Essence, and He will then inform you of that in which you differed, that is to say, He will make manifest upon you that in which you differed in accordance with your different preparednesses in terms of seeking one of the three gardens, arriving there, being deprived [therefrom] by the impediments by which you are veiled from the perfection that is [latent] in your preparedness.

[God desires to smite them] for some of their sins, the sins of the Jews are the veilings of the acts, while the sins of the Christians are the veilings of the attributes. Thus the wickedness of the Jews is the infringement of the rules governing the self-disclosures of the divine acts by the soul’s inspection of its own acts, while the wickedness of the Christians is the infringement of the rules governing the self-disclosures of the attributes of the Truth by the soul’s inspection of its own attributes and its being veiled thereby. The wickedness of the Muḥammadans is their turning of their attention to their essences and infringing the rules governing the unity of the Essence.

Do they desire the judgement of paganism?, meaning that what they desire by their ignorance is but a judgement issuing from the station of the soul and not issuing from divine knowledge.

[O you who believe] whoever of you apostatises, whoever retreats from the path of the truth to the veiling of oneself with some veil, whatever that veil be, and withdraws from, he is from among the rejects, not from among the folk of love; nor is the religion of truth veiled or nullified by his apostasy. For God will assuredly bring a people whom He loves, in accordance with the first providence, not for any one reason, but for their essences, and [a people] who love His Essence, not for any one of His attributes, such as His being gentle, or merciful or gracious. For love of the attributes changes with the different self-disclosures of these [attributes]. The one who loves ‘the Gentle’, his love will not remain if He discloses Himself in the attribute of vanquishing; the one who loves ‘the Gracious’, his love will be effaced if He discloses Himself in the attribute of ‘the Vengeful’. As for love of the Essence, it remains by Its subsistence, and does not change with the different self-disclosures. Thus the one who loves It will love the Vanquisher upon the vanquishing, just as he will love the Gentle upon gentleness, and will love the Avenger at the point of [His] vengeance, and will love the Gracious upon [His bestowal of] a grace. Thus this [love] does not undergo any discrepancy either during [a state of] satisfaction or its absence. And the love of such [a person] does not differ according to his states, for he thanks Him during affliction just as he thanks Him during comfort; whereas the one who loves the Gracious does not thank Him during affliction, rather he exercises patience. Such a love entails the former [kind of] love, which is the one that is for God, on the part of His friends (awliyāʾ), so that they love Him for His love of them, for otherwise whence their love of God? O what is dust before the Lord of all lords! Humble [they are] towards believers, gentle and tender with them, compassionate in their humility before them on account of the genus-compatibility of [their] essences, the interconnection [between them] of pre-eternal love and [their] mutual correspondence in terms of the primordial nature; stern, severe and harsh, towards, those who are veiled on account of the contrariety of those [aspects] mentioned, struggling in the way of God, by effacing their attributes and annihilating their essences which constitute the veils [preventing them] from their witnessings, and fearing not the reproach of any reproacher, who might impute to them antinomianism, atheism or disbelief or who might blame them for avoiding this world and its pleasures, nay for avoiding the Hereafter and its bliss, as the Commander of the Believers, peace be upon him, said, ‘Worship God neither in desire [of His reward] nor in fear [of His requital]. Therefore they are the youth of whom it was said:

‘When the young man knows right-guidance for himself, the reproach of reproachers’.

Your patron is only God and His Messenger, and those who are believers. The mutual incompatibility in reality between you [and the two mentioned] is of no consequence. In other words, God, His Messenger and the believers will be your guardians; or God and His friends from among the Messenger and the believers shall not be the patrons of those who are veiled because of the contrareity between them in reality. It is you, plural, who affiliate with God and His Messenger and the believers, first by affirming their affiliation with God in an absolute way, then by separating it outwardly. He says and the Meessenger and the believers in the same way that He did in regard to the testimony of the faith where He says God bears witness that there is no god except Him [and the angels and those of knowledge] [Q. 3:18]; those who, are believers, establish, the prayer of presential vision and the essential presence, and pay the alms, of the [untransformed] remnants, bowing down, submissive in their subsistence in God by ascribing their perfections and attributes to God — as is the case with the Commander of the Believers, peace be upon him, regarding whom the following saying came down: ‘There is no god except God [even] after the annihilation of creatures’ — not established in the station of tyrannical insolence by ascribing these [perfections and attributes] to their own souls.

Whoever affiliates with God and His Messenger and the believers, he is of the folk of God and verily the folk of God, they shall have the victory, of God.

And you see many of them vying, that is, indulging in all manner of vices in earnest because of their habituation to them and their having been trained in them, and because they constitute natural traits of their souls. Sin is the vice of the rational-speech faculty because it is mendacity; enmity is the vice of the concupiscent faculty

But had the People of the Scripture believed, [with] the faith of the true affirmation of the Oneness, and feared, and guarded against the idolatrous association of their acts, their attributes and their essences, We would have absolved them of their evil deeds, from among their remnants, and We would admitted them to, the three gardens.

And had they observed the Torah, by ascertaining the exoteric aspects of knowledge [therein] and fulfilling the duties arising from the self-disclosures of the acts and observing their rules in transactions, and the Gospel, by ascertaining the esoteric signs and fulfilling the duties arising from the self-disclosures of the attributes and observing their rules, and, consolidated, what was revealed to them, of the knowledge of the origin and the final return as well as the affirmation of the unity of the kingdom and the spiritual realm of the world of lordship, which is the world of the [divine] Names,^{1The world of lordship (rubūbiyya) is the world of the Names since it is the realm that defines God’s lordship over those ‘lorded over’, sc. creatures. The correlations between God’s aspects and the objects of those aspects (such as His being knower through the fact that there are knowables etc.) define this realm of lordship, which can be known by the rational faculty. Even divinity (ulūhiyya) falls within the same principle, the exception being the Essence which cannot be known as it has no correlated term or counterpart as object (see discussion further below, Kāshānī’s commentary to Q. 5:112).} they would surely have received nourishment from above them, that is, they would surely have been provided from the higher spiritual world with divine forms of knowledge, rational realities of certainty and the gnoses of the Truth by which they are guided to knowledge of God and to knowledge of the angelic spiritual realm and the realm of divine power, and from beneath their feet, that is, [they would have also been provided] from the lower corporeal world with knowledge of the natural [physical] world and of sensory objects of perception by which they are guided to knowledge of the world of the kingdom and would come to know God by His exoteric and esoteric name, nay, by all of the names and attributes and would arrive at the station of the two mentioned affirmations of unity. Some of them are a just community, equitable, having arrived at the affirmation of the unity of the names and attributes, but many of them, have not arrived at the affirmation of the unity of the acts yet, let alone the affirmation of the unity of the attributes and thus their deeds are evil since they arise from the attributes of their souls, this being their densest veil.

[And We made a covenant with the Children of Israel] and We sent messengers to them, in accordance with their [spiritual] levels. Thus when they were veiled from all aspects, We sent [them] Moses to remove the veil of the acts and to call [them] to proclaim the unity of the kingdom but their souls did not desire it, because his call was opposed to their caprices greedy as these are in their acts and because of their vaunting of these [acts of theirs] and of their pleasures and lusts. Thus they denied him and took to worshipping the calf of the soul and transgressed in the Sabbath and did what they did, until when he who would believe in him believed in him and emerged from the veil of the acts, but supposed that this was absolute perfection [that he had attained]. So We then sent Jesus to remove the veil of the attributes and to call to the esoteric and to the proclamation of the unity of the spiritual realm, but their souls did not desire it, because his call was opposed to their caprices supposing [to have attained] perfection. Thus they denied him and they did what they did until he who would believe in him believed and emerged from the veil of the attributes, but remained in that state supposing that his soul had attained absolute perfection. Then We sent Muḥammad to remove the veil of the attributes and to call to the proclamation of the unity of the Essence, but their souls did not desire it and they denied him,

and they thought there would be no trial, [no] idolatrous association upon the affirmation of the unity of the acts and the manifestation of the call of Jesus, and so they were wilfully blind, to the self-disclosures of the vision of the attributes, and deaf, to hearing the knowledge thereof. Then God relented to them, by opening up the audition-channels of their hearts and their eyes, and they repented and so He accepted their repentance; then they were wilfully blind and deaf, during the call of Muḥammad to the witnessing of the Abiding Face and to hearing the knowledge of the affirmation of the unity of the absolute union; and God sees what they do, at all three stations, including [their] rejection of the calls, [their] denial of the prophets and so He will requite them in accordance with their state.

[For the Messiah said, ‘O Children of Israel] worship God, my Lord and your Lord, that is to say, make your acts of worship specific to the Essence that is qualified by all of the attributes and names, that which constitutes absolute existence. Do not designate Him with any one name or attribute, for His Lordship is equally related to all [of these names and attributes]. Whoever restricts His divinity to any one form and specificies it by a particular name, word or attribute, has verily affirmed the existence of some other than Him, by the necessity of names, forms and attributes existing besides Him, and whoever affirms other than Him, has verily committed an idolatrous act of association with Him, and whoever has committed an idolatrous act of association with Him, to him God has made forbidden, the garden of the witnessing of Him through His essence, His attributes and His acts, namely, the absolute all-encompassing garden, in other words He has veiled him in an absolute way; and his abode shall be, the Fire of privation on account of the injustice which he committed by his act of idolatrous association, and for wrongdoers there shall be no helpers, to help them and save them from the chastisement.

They have indeed disbelieved, [they have indeed] been veiled, those who say, ‘God is the third of three’, [that He is] one thing comprising three things: the act, the exoteric aspect of the world of the kingdom; the attribute, which is the esoteric aspect of the world of the spiritual realm; and the essence, in which the attribute subsists and from which the act issues. But He is not that ‘one’ they have imagined. Rather the act and the attribute are in reality the essence itself and there is no distinction [between them] except in relative terms.^{1In other words, if one might use one of either three to refer to the same concept, the divinity.} God is but the absolute One, for otherwise there would be a god for every one of His names and there would be a plurality of deities, glorified and exalted be He greatly above what the evildoers claim. If they do not desist from what they say, of the attribute and the act being other than the essence, those [of them] who are veiled, shall suffer a chastisement, that is painful because of their falling short in their knowledge of God despite their possessing the preparedness [for it].

Will they not turn in repentance to God, by falling back from their affirmation of a plurality in God to the absolute source of the union and seek His forgiveness for the sin of inspecting their existence and the existence of others besides them; God is Forgiving, shielding them with His essence, Merciful, to them by [bestowing upon them] perfected knowledge [of Him] and affirmation of the Oneness.

[Say: ‘Do you worship besides God] what cannot hurt or profit you?, since that [which they worship besides Him] possesses no agency by which to hurt or profit, nay possessing no existence quite besides agency. He says what besides God [cannot hurt or profit you], even though Jesus is what is meant, in order to point out that he [Jesus] can be considered as a thing [besides God] insofar as he is an entity, though he has no [independent] existence in reality.

[Say: ‘O People of the Scripture] … [do not follow the whims of a people] who went astray formerly, by becoming veiled to the lights of the attributes, and have led many astray, and strayed, now, from the even way’, the path of the [inclusive] unity of the essence, which is to be upright before God.

You will truly find, to the end [of the verse]. Friendship and enmity are [to be understood] in terms of correspondence and oppositeness. Whenever someone affiliates with another that is an indication of an interconnecting factor of genus between them, and whenever he displays enmity towards another that is an indication of discrepancy and contrareity between them. Since the Jews were veiled from the essence and the attributes and only engaged in the affirmation of the unity of the acts, their correspondence to the idolaters who are veiled absolutely was stronger than their correspondence to the believers who are affirmers of unity absolutely. As for the Christians, because when they emerged from the veil of the attributes they affiliated only to the veil of the essence, their correspondence to the believers was stronger, which is why they are nearer in love of them than others, while the idolaters and the Jews are the most hostile because of the intensity of their veiledness. Do you not see how He has explained the reason for their nearness in terms of their knowledge and worship [of God] and their lack of disdain. For worship leads to the garden of the acts in which they become disengaged from the acts of their souls, doing what God commands [of them]; and knowledge leads to the garden of the attributes, [knowledge] by which they are exalted above the garden of the souls and [by which] they arrive at the station of the heart which is the locus for the [divine] unveiling. [Their] reception of divine knowledge and their lack of disdain are indications that they do not see their souls as qualified by the attributes of worship and knowledge; nor do they ascribe their acts and knowledge to them [their souls], rather to God, since otherwise they would be disdainful and would manifest pride;

you see their eyes overflow with tears, in yearning for what they recognise of the affirmation of the unity of the essence, for they were folk who practiced spiritual discipline and [experienced] the tasting. Thus their souls were excited upon the hearing of the revelation and the mention of the unity; because of what they recognise of the Truth, by way of His attributes, or of what they heard of the Truth by way of His words and so they wept out of longing, as is said [by the poet]:

‘And he weeps yearning for them when they move afar; yet he [also] weeps when they come near for fear of separation’.

[They say, ‘Our Lord] we believe, in the unity of [Your] essence, with an entified faith, so make us of, the witnesses, those who are present, whose station is the presential vision of the essence and the true certainty and the certain cognitive faith, so appoint us among the eyewitnesses.

And why should we not believe, in His essence with a true faith and in what has come to us of His words, or not believe in God as all-comprehensive, and what has come to us of the truth, in differentiated mode; [and hope that our Lord should admit us] with the righteous people?’, who have remained upright in the subsistence after [experiencing],

Gardens underneath which rivers flow, in the way of the three self-disclosures^{1Kāshānī here places his commentary so that it connects different sections of the Qurʾānic narrative, whereas usually he either omits sections or uses a particular section independently. The three self-disclosures are of the essence, the attributes and the acts, each of which is associated with a garden.} together with the knowledge of these [three]: that is the requital of those who are virtuous, who witness the unity at the source of multiplicity by their uprightness before God.

But those who, have been veiled from the essence and, disbelieve, in the signs of the attributes — they are the people, of total privation in the Hell-fire of the attributes of the soul.

O you who believe, with a cognitive knowledge, do not forbid the good things that God has made lawful for you, of the unveilings of states and the self-disclosures of the attributes by falling short of your wayfaring, and do not transgress, by the insolence of the soul and the manifesting of itself through its attributes. Rather make God your shield for actualising those perfections by seeing them from Him and for His sake, not from you or for your sake, lest you then become insolent, if you are [truly] affirmers of [His] Oneness.^{1The standard printed text of the commentary has in kuntum, ‘if you are’, as Qurʾānic narrative, glossed by Kāshānī’s muwaḥḥidīn. However, there is no such phrase in any of the narratives in this section of the Qurʾān. The phrase has thus been rendered as though Kāshānī’s own words.}

And obey God, by being annihilated in Him so that you become compliant in what He uses you for, as [compliant as] one who is dead; and obey the Messenger, by subsisting after the annihilation so that you become upright therein, mindful of the differentiations, alive through his life; and beware, of the manifestation of [your untransformed] remnants at the point of uprightness; but if you turn away, then know, that the shortcoming is yours and the Messenger’s duty is only to proclaim openly [the message] and not to commit [you to it].

There shall be, upon those who believe, with faith based on the unseen by the affirmation of the unity of the acts, and who perform, in accordance with what their faith entails, deeds that bring them out of the veils of the acts and set them right for the vision of the acts of the Truth, no fault or constraint in what they enjoy of different types of shares, so long as they avoid the remnants of their acts and take God as their shield against acts issuing from themselves, and believe, in the unity of the attributes, and perform deeds, that bring them out of the veils of the attributes and set them right for the witnessing of the divine self-disclosures by their effacement therein, and then guard themselves, against the remnants of their attributes and take God as their shield upon the issuing of His attributes upon them, and believe, in the unity of the essence, then guard themselves, the remnants of their essences and take God as their shield upon their existence through the pure annihilation and [their] consumption in the source of the essence and who are virtuous by witnessing the differentiations at the source of the union and by their uprightness at the subsistence after the annihilation; for God loves the virtuous, those who witness the unity at the source of multiplicity, who are mindful of the dues of the differentiations at the source of the union by means of the Truth-given existence.

O you who believe, in the unseen, God will surely try you, at the point of your wayfaring and your entry into pilgrim sanctity for the visiting of the Kaʿba of arrival, with something, of the shares that come your way and by which you are given to consider that these are a means to arriving at this [Kaʿba of arrival], so that God may know, at the level of differentiated knowledge that is consequent to the event from which recompense ensues; who fears Him, in the state of absence, since fear (khawf) only applies in the case of those who believe in the unseen, as it is connected in the narrative that is addressing acts. As for the state of presence, then [what applies is] either reverential trepidation (khashya), ^{1Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī (fl. 5th/11th cent.) states that khashya is fear that entails knowledge of the thing or person feared, which is why, he points out, this expression is used where God speaks of the reverential fear of those who have knowledge (al-ʿulamāʾ) [Q. 35:28]: see Mufradāt, s.v. kh-sh-y.} in which case, by the self-disclosure of Lordship and Exaltedness, or awe (hayba), in which case, by the self-disclosure of the Essence. Thus fear is an attribute of the soul, reverential trepidation is an attribute of the heart, while awe is an attribute of the spirit. Whoever transgresses thereafter, by committing acts [entailing the enjoyment] of shares after the [divine] trying, his shall be a chastisement, that is painful for his veiling himself from [divine] love by his act.

[O you who believe] do not slay game, do not indulge in ego-centric shares during the state of true pilgrim sanctity. Whoso indulges therein deliberately and intentionally by the inclining of some faculty of the soul and the attraction to that [inclination], not by chance or out of consideration for some passing inclination of a guest or a companion; the compensation shall be, that is, the judgement for that [unlawful indulgence] shall be a compensation of vanquishing that faculty, from among the soul’s bestial faculties, through which he indulged in that ego-centric share by something that balances out that share, to be judged by two just ones, in the way of the two rationals, the considerative and the practical, among you, that is, from among your souls, or from among your elders or from among your companions that are foremost leaders who shall designate its modality and its quantity, an offering to reach the, true, Kaʿba, in other words, at the point of that bestial faculty becoming an offering through its annihilation in God, if the person offering it should be strong, self-sufficient and able. Or, an expiation, that is, a shielding [of that sin] by means of charity or fasting that will remove that inclination and conceal that configuration from his soul, or by fulfilling what is due to that faculty and being satisfied therewith without [indulging in] the share, for it [that faculty] is a poor thing; or by abstaining from the acts of that faculty in the measure of that share so that such an inclination disappears from it; so that he may taste the evil consequence of his deed. God has pardoned what is past; but whoever offends again, God will take vengeance on him, by means of veiling [him] and privation; God is Mighty: it is not possible to arrive at the gardens of His might bearing impurities of the attributes of the soul, Lord of Retribution, who veils by means of dark configurations, or the making manifest of an attribute [of the soul] or the existence of remnants, as He, exalted be He, said to His Prophet Muḥammad, blessings and peace by upon him: ‘Warn the truthful ones that I am a jealous one’.

Permitted to you is the hunting of the game, of the sea of the spiritual world in the way of gnoses, intelligibles and cognitive shares amidst the celestial bodies of the divine presence, and food from it, in the way of profitable knowledge, the learning of which, for the purposes of transactions and for [the refinement of] character traits, is an obligatory duty, a means of enjoyment, for you, O wayfarers along the path of truth, and for the travellers, those journeying to the Hereafter, seeking to obtain the gains of the everlasting bliss; but forbidden to you is the hunting of the game, on the land of the corporeal world in the way of sensory objects and ego-centric shares. Take God as your shield in your journeying so that you might journey with Him. And make your souls God’s shield [for you] against the issuing from them of preventive evils, and be certain that, to Him you shall be gathered, at the annihilation in the Essence, so expend effort in wayfaring and do not stop because of the impediments behind the veil.

God has appointed, the Kaʿba of the presence of the union, the House, that is forbidden to the entry into it of other [than God], as they say: ‘Majestic is the Truth’s Eminence above that It should serve as a watering-place for every water-seeker; as a rising for mankind, from their true death and a revivification for them thereby and by His life, His power and all of His attributes; and the sacred month, that is, the time of arrival, which is the time of the true pilgrimage in which the manifestation of the attributes of the soul is prohibited; the offering, that is, the soul sacrificially slaughtered in the courtyard of that Kaʿba, and the garlands, and especially the noble and obedient soul that is strong and compliant, for to seek nearness by means of such [a soul] is better and its status upon subsistence and the resurrection through the second existence and the true life shall be more exalted; that, in other words, appointing that presence as a rising for you, is so that you may know, by His knowledge upon your resurrection through it, that God knows, the realities of things in the world of the unseen and the witnessing, and that His knowledge encompasses all things; and since your knowledge cannot encompass His, then:

Know that God is severe in punishment, by veiling the one who manifests himself through some attribute or remnant upon arrival, or alights there by mistake and occupies himself with other than the state of wayfaring, violating the sanctity of His sacraments; [God is] Forgiving, of variegations and lapses, Merciful, in the configuration of perfections and felicities, the measure of which only He knows.

The duty of the Messenger is only, to convey [the Message], not to effect conjunction, and God knows, your secrets and your outward acts, what you reveal, of deeds and character traits, and what you hide, of intentions, knowledge, and states, and whether these are good for you to seek nearness to Him therewith, and whether you are preparing therewith for the encounter with Him or not.

Say: ‘The evil, of souls, deeds, character traits and wealth, and the good, of them, are not equal, in the eyes of God, exalted be He, for good is accepted and brings about nearness and leads to arrival, whereas the evil of these is rejected [and leads] to distance, banishment and privation, even though you should be attracted, to the evil because of its abundance and availability, since it corresponds to the soul and suits its attributes. So take God as your shield for avoiding evil things and selecting what is good. O all you who possess a kernel, that is, an intellect that is pure of the blemishes of estimation and the admixture of the soul’s caprice, so that you might prosper, by being delivered from your souls, their attributes and their evils, and by arriving at God through annihilation in Him,

on the day when God shall gather the messengers, at the source of absolute union, or the source of the union of the Essence, and He will say: ‘What, answer have your communities given to you when you summoned them to Me. In other words, ‘Do you [messengers] have any insight into their [spiritual] levels with regard to the perfections to which they oriented themselves when they followed you?’; they shall say, ‘We have no knowledge, that is, all knowledge belongs to You, comprehensively and in differentiation, and none other than You has any knowledge, because our attributes have been annihilated in Your attributes. You, only You, are the Knower of things unseen’, and so the unseens of our innermost aspects and their innermost aspects all constitute knowledge that is Yours.

[When God said, ‘O Jesus, son of Mary, remember] My favour to you, in the way of special guidance and the station of prophethood and sanctity through [divine] friendship (walāya), and to your mother, in terms of purification, cleansing and election, [when I strengthened you with the Holy Spirit] such that you spoke to people, in the cradle of the body, and in maturity, attaining the light of the grey hairs of perfection by the disengaging from the body and its garments, and when I taught you, the scripture of realities and gnoses that are fixed in the Preserved Tablet by means of reinforcing [you] with the Holy Spirit and the wisdom of [the method of] wayfaring to God by the actualisation of [virtuous] character traits, states, stations, outer disengagement and inner solitude; and [taught you] the Torah of the exoteric forms of knowledge, judgements concerned with acts and the states of the soul and its attributes, as well as the Gospel of the esoteric forms of knowledge in the way of the knowledge of the self-disclosures of the attributes and the rules governing them, and the judgements concerning the states of the heart, its attributes and its deeds; and how you create, out of the clay of the intellect of primordial matter, which is the pure preparedness, by the hand of nurture and practical wisdom, the likeness of, the bird of the heart that flies to the Holy Presence because of its disengagement from its world and [because of] its perfection, by My permission, that is, by My knowledge, My power and My facilitation upon the self-disclosure to you of My attributes of life, knowledge, and power, and [My] vindicating you and calling you to prophethood, and you breathe into it, from the spirit of perfection the life of true knowledge by perfecting [it] and [by] correlation, and it becomes a bird, a perfect disengaged soul flying off to the Holy Side by the wings of love; and you heal the blind, the one veiled from the light of the Truth, and the leper, the one blemished by the sickness of the love of this world and the overpowering of caprice; and you raise, those dead by ignorance from the graves of the body and the earth of the soul, by My permission; and how I restrained the Children of Israel, those veiled from the light of the self-disclosures of the attributes, the ignorant who are opposed to you because of their ignorance of your state and station, from you, when you brought them clear signs, definitive arguments and clear proofs, and those who, were veiled, among them, from the religion of truth, said, “This is nothing but manifest sorcery”, because of their bewilderment regarding it.

And when I revealed to the disciples, that is, [when] I inspired into their hearts, those luminous ones who had cleansed their souls with the water of beneficial things and purgative deeds, until they accepted your call, due to the purity of their souls, and loved you with complete volition, due to their correspondence to you in terms of the light of [their] primordial nature and the purity of [their] preparedness: “Believe in Me, with a true fatih, by affirming the unity of the attributes and [by] effacement, and in My Messenger”, by being mindful of the dues of the self-disclosures of these [attributes] at the level of differentiation; they said, “We believe; bear witness, O God of ours, by Your all-inclusive knowledge that encompasses all things, that we are obedient to You, submitting the existences of our attributes to You.

When the disciples said, when your companions made a request of you, saying: is your Lord able, that is, [is] your witness from the world of Lordship [able] — for the lord of each person is the name that nurtures him and perfects him. Every person worships only what he knows of the world of Lordship and he knows only what he has attained of [an understanding of] the levels of the divinity,^{1Ibn ʿArabī’s discussions of the Essence and the Divinity point out that it is through the divinity that God can be, and indeed is, known, since the Essence is unknowable and is what makes God absolutely transcendent. Put differently, for every aspect, or name, of God there is a correlated object: God is powerful, knower etc. through the correlated objects of this power and this knowledge. Just as there is divinity, there is the object of divinity (maʾlūh, ‘divine thrall’). Only the Essence is outside this principle, since It is the God-Entity Itself (Chittick, 1989: 59ff).} drawing therefrom an effusion of knowledge and drawing down therefrom blessings and draws therefrom spiritual reinforcement, which is why, despite their affirmation and their submission, they said ‘your Lord’ and not ‘our Lord’, since ‘their Lord’ is not able, to send down on us a Table from the heaven?’, a law from the heaven of the world of the spirit that subsumes various types of knowledge, wisdoms, gnoses and judgements, wherein is nourishment for the heart and nutrition for the soul, its life and its tastings. He said: ‘Fear God, beware of Him lest the attributes of your souls manifest themselves, and take Him as your shield with regard to the character traits and acts that issue from you, so that you are delivered from the [evil] consequences of these, are victorious and prosper, for if your faith is realised, you have no need of any new law.

They said, ‘We desire, to profit, from it, and to implement it and draw strength from it, and that our hearts be reassured, because knowledge is the nourishment of the heart and its source of nutrition, and that we may know, your truthfulness in what you inform of your Lord, your prophethood and your authority therein and thereby, and that we may be among the witnesses thereof’, who are present, possessors of knowledge, to inform others who are absent about it, to teach them and to call them to God by it.

that it shall be a celebration for us for the first and the last of us, by command, that is, [that it shall be] a law and a religion referred to in celebration by those in our times from among our correligionists and by those after us who will be from among the Christians, and a sign from You, a token and a knowledge from You by which You might be known and worshipped. And provide for us, that law and beneficial knowledge and guidance, You are the Best of Providers’, providing [us] only with what benefits us and in which our best interest resides.

but whoever disbelieves, [whoever] is veiled from this religion after it is sent down and has become clear, I shall surely chastise him with a chastisement wherewith I chastise no other being from among all the worlds’, by virtue of the path having become clear and the religion and proof having been clarified and their preparedness existing, so that when they deny it they are doing so only out of obstinacy. Chastisement in the case of knowledge is more intense than chastisement in the case of ignorance, since the sensing of the fact that one is veiled from that [truth] necessitates a severe painfulness [in the chastisement].

[‘O Jesus, son of Mary] did you, call people to [worship of] yourself or your mother, or [it means: did you call people] to the station of your heart and your soul. For the one in whom there remains the existence of egoism and the remnants of the soul and caprice, or in whom there is variegation by the existence of the heart and its manifestation in its attribute will call creatures either to the station of his soul or to the station of his heart, and not to the truth. He [Jesus] says, ‘Glory be to You!: an affirmation of the exaltedness of God above [that He should have] partnership and an absolution for him [Jesus] of the existence of any remnants [in him]. It is not mine to say what I have no right to, since I possess no existence in reality and as such it is not mine nor is it right that I should say something that I am not entitled to in reality, as statements, acts, attributes and existence all belong to You [alone]. If I indeed had said it, You would have known it, that is to say, had there issued from me any [such] statement then it would have been by Your knowledge, but there is no existence for that which You do not have knowledge of and there exists only what exists by Your knowledge. You know what is in my soul, encompassing as You do all things and so my knowledge is but a part of Your knowledge; but I do not know what is within Your Self, that is, Your Essence as I do not encompass all things [in my knowledge].

I only said to them, and I only commanded them that which You have charged me with saying and which you have obliged me to [say]: “Worship God, my Lord and your Lord”. In other words, I only called them to the union in the form of differentiation, the relationship of whose lordliness to all is equal. But they fell into error and saw that [lordliness] in only some of the differentiations because of the narrowness of their [spiritual] receptacles. And I was a witness over them, a watcher, present, looking after them and teaching them, whilst I was amongst them, that is, while there remained in me the existence of some remnant, but when You took me [to You], [but when] You annihilated me totally in You, You were Yourself the Watcher over them, given my having been annihilated in You, and You Yourself are Witness over all things, [You are] present; through You a thing comes into existence, for otherwise that thing would not be.

If You chastise them, by maintaining the veil [over them] forever, verily they are Your servants, deserving of the veil and of privation. You are most entitled to dealing with them as You wish, and if You forgive them, by removing the veil, You, only You, are the Mighty, the Powerful One able to do that and Whose might is not compromised by bringing them near or by the removal of their veil, the Wise’, exacting what You exact in the way of chastisement through veiling and privation, or drawing [them] near [to You] through gentleness and forgiveness by Your absolute wisdom.

[God says] ‘This is the day, when your truthfulness shall profit you and the truthfulness of every truthful person [shall also profit him], constituting as this [truthfulness] does the ferment of perfections and the specific quality of the spiritual realm. Theirs will be the Gardens, of the attributes the token of which is the fruit of satisfaction, for satisfaction can only be after the annihilation of will and their will can only be annihilated after theirs are overcome by God’s will which then annihilates theirs. That is why God’s being satisfied with them is mentioned before their being satisfied with Him. In other words, since God, exalted be He, willed that they be pre-eternally in the manifestation-locus of His will and in the locus of His satisfaction, being satisfied with them in terms of locus and as deserving of that [locus], He strips them of their will by appointing His will in its place, giving It to them in place of theirs, so that He is satisfied with them and has satisfied them — that is the great triumph’, that is, the prospering that has an awesome status. Had it been the annihilation of the essence [meant here], this would have been the greatest triumph and the most awesome prospering.

To Him belongs what is in the upper world and in the lower world, both in its exoteric and its esoteric aspect; and all that is in them: His names, His attributes and His acts, and He has power over all things, if He should desire it, He annihilates by the manifesting of His essence, or if He should desire He brings into existence by concealing Himself in His names and attributes.