Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol.

47, 2010

A Bosnian Commentator
on the Fusus al-hikam
Reid Hafizovic
Introduction
Muhyiddin Ibn Arabis Fusus al-hikam is the work of a Muslim
Sufi philosopher, theosopher and highly sophisticated hieratic,
and a native of that irreplaceable Muslim kingdom in southern
Europe known as Andalusia, the loss of which is still mourned.
Not only is this work an inexhaustible locus of inspiration for
the central concerns of Sufi literary works and the entire esoteric tradition of Islam, but it also symbolizes the most elaborate, and still unsurpassed, metaphysics of the imagination ever
developed. It is based on the gnosis and direct spiritual experience of mubashshira or the imaginal vision, accompanied by a
voice from the world of malakut, the world of the living creative
imagination or mundus imaginalis (alam al-amthal). Ibn Arabi
himself, al-Shaykh al-Akbar (Doctor Maximus), is explicit in saying that he received the substance of the book from the Prophet
of Islam, whom he saw in a vision of direct spiritual witnessing (al-shuhud) among other messengers of the Word of God in
Damascus in the latter part of the month of Muharram ah 627,
where they had come together as a true communia spiritualis. As
Ibn Arabi himself says, he wrote down only what the Prophet
of Islam desired him to; he did not describe in minute detail all
the spiritual sapience (adhwaq) and testimony (shuhud) he experienced during this extraordinary spiritual audience.
The fact that the Fusus al-hikam has been the subject of commentary for more than eight centuries is sufficient evidence of
its significance and almost inexhaustible content. It would be
hard to name all those who have sought to interpret it, and
no less difficult to list all the languages into which the book
has been translated and in which lengthy and painstaking
commentaries on and analyses of the work have been written.

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This is testimony not only to the profundity and extreme spiritual complexity of the text, but also suggests that the Fusus
al-hikam surely came into being under the influence of extraordinary spiritual inspiration and illumination, ranging from
ilham (inspiration), kashf (revelation), dhawq (intuitive cognition, taste), fayd (effusion, emanation of divine light), tajalliyat
(self-disclosure, divine theophanies), and al-waridat (spiritual
inspiration) to ilqa (projection of divine light to illuminate the
sufi heart)1 and mushahada (contemplative witnessing through
the eye of the heart). There is a perceptible effort on the part of
Western oriental and Islamic studies, focusing in particular on
the commentaries and analysis of Sufi literary works and their
authors, to understand in detail, in a manner more applicable
to the Western mindset, the forms of inspiration that led to the
composition of the Fusus al-hikam. It is not unusual to find in
such studies examples clearly revealing that the kinds of inspiration referred to above by their Arabic terms are expressed in
the West by metaphorical titles such as Gabriels Wing, sophia
aeterna, LAnge empourpr, Madonna intelligenza, and so on.2

Early Commentators
Writing in different eras and from various parts of the world, the
scholars who have written commentaries on Ibn Arabis Fusus
have not solely confined themselves to the text in isolation
from the historical and spiritual context within which it came
into being, but have been of one mind in placing it into the relevant historical, interpretative and spiritual context within the
history of Islamic philosophy. Putting the Fusus into context,
the first paradigm for this kind of approach was proposed by
Sadruddin al-Qunawi (d.673/1274), who was also the first true
1. Ilqa rabbani projection or cause of the Lords revelation into the
heart of the sufi; see, for example, Ibn Arabis Futuhat, Vol. III, p.457 of
Osman Yahyas edition (Cairo, 1970).
2. Henry Corbin, LImagination creatrice dans le soufisme dIbn Arabi
(Paris, 1958); Islam u Iranu, III (Sarajevo, 2000); Annemarie Schimmel,
Gabriels Wing (Lahore, 2000).

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interpreter of this work by Ibn Arabi, in his famous work, K.

al-Fukuk.3 With an extraordinary understanding of peripatetic
philosophy on the one hand and traditional Islamic scholarship
on the other, Sadruddins approach to the work is all the more
significant and authoritative in the light of his intimacy with
Ibn Arabi, for the Persian al-Qunawi was not only Ibn Arabis
stepson, but also his spiritual heir in the real, literal meaning of
the word. Because of this intimate connection, al-Qunawi was
to become the spiritual guide and director of many students,
and others who joined the path of Sufism, who came to Konya
to hear him lecture.
The first comprehensive commentary of Ibn Arabis Fusus alhikam was compiled by Muayyidduddin al-Jandi (d.700/1300),4
a pupil of Sadruddin Qunawi and one of the second generation
of interpreters of this work by Ibn Arabi. This was followed by
the commentary written by his pupil Abd al-Razzaq al-Kashani
(d.730/1330),5 and the two-volume commentary by al-Kashanis pupil Dawud al-Qaysari (d.751/1350).6 Sadruddin al-Qunawis style is clearly recognizable in each of these commentaries:
indeed, in that of Dawud al-Qaysari not only the masters style
but also the basic conception was borrowed from his works.
Also in this list of well-known interpreters of Ibn Arabis Fusus,
one should not overlook the famous Iranian philosopher, Sufi
and hieratic Haydar Amuli (b.720/1320 in Amul), who wrote an
important commentary on the Fusus entitled Nass al-nusus (The
Text of Texts).7 Haydar Amulis work differs from others in that
he deals with the Fusus in the light of his great Tafsir, bearing
in mind at all times the relationships between both the Quran
and the Prophet of Islam on the one hand, and between the

3. Sadruddin al-Qunawi, Kitab al-fukuk, ms no. 4858, Yusuf Agha Library,

Konya.
4. Muayyid al-Din Jandi, Nafhat al-ruh wa tuhfat al-futuh, ed. Mayil
Harawi (Tehran, 1983).
5. Abd al-Razzaq al-Kashani, Sharh fusus al-hikam (Cairo, 1966).
6. Sharaf al-Din Dawud al-Qaysari, Sharh fusus al-hikam (Tehran, 1981
82).
7. Haydar Amuli, Nass al-nusus (Tehran/Paris, 1988).

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Prophet of Islam and Ibn Arabi on the other. For him, it would
have been almost inconceivable to compile a comprehensive
commentary on the Fusus without constantly drawing analogies and associating this hermeneutic act with the hermeneutic
approach to his great commentary on the Quran. Other commentaries on the Fusus that also deserve mention at this point
are those of al-Nabulusi8 and al-Jami.9

Modern Commentators
The true significance and complexity of the Fusus al-hikam
will become apparent as Western scholars become more familiar with this opus as part of the Muslim written heritage. The
works and ideas of Ibn Arabi and Jalaluddin Rumi will no doubt
occupy a special place in their studies, for their names symbolize the spiritual pinnacle of Sufi literature as a whole and, after
eight centuries, their works are now, paradoxically, the subject
of considerably more interest in the West than they ever were
in the Muslim world. Moreover, their spiritual impact there is
so great that these two giants of Sufi literature are doing more in
the West for the understanding of Islam than the entire Muslim
world, even at its best, can offer nowadays.
The work by the outstanding French orientalist Michel
Chodkiewicz, entitled The Seal of the Saints,10 addresses in detail
the idea of walaya. This is not only an enduring topic within Sufism, and Muslim scholarship in general, but it is also a favourite
of Ibn Arabi, and forms the core of his works, in particular the
Fusus. Michel Chodkiewicz not only introduced this great name
of Muslim spirituality to the cultural public in France but also,
along with his profound insights into the idea of walaya, provided a systematic overview of the technical terms so crucial to
8. Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi, Sharh jawahir al-nusus (Cairo, ah 1303
23).
9. Abd al-Rahman Jami, Naqd al-nusus fi sharh naqsh al-fusus, ed.
W.C. Chittick (Tehran, 1977).
10. Michel Chodkiewicz, Le sceau des saints (Paris, 1958); English trans.
by L. Sherrard, The Seal of the Saints (Cambridge, 1993).

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91

the study of the history of Sufi literature. It is equally important

at this point to refer to the anthological work on Ibn Arabi by
the great Henry Corbin. Corbin was a devotee of the purest form
of spiritual Islam, which he had discovered through the various
works of Ibn Arabi, Jalaluddin Rumi, Ibn Sina (especially his
idea of Eastern philosophy), and those of Suhrawardi, Mulla
Sadra Shirazi and many others. Corbins Creative Imagination in
the Sufism of Ibn Arabi 11 with its careful and systematic elaboration of the spiritual context in which the relationship between
Ibn Arabis thinking and spiritual thought of Iran developed, is
essential reading for any serious student of the history of Sufi
literature, with its careful and systematic elaboration of the spiritual context in which the relationship developed between Ibn
Arabis thinking and the spiritual thought of Iran. After being
engulfed in the quicksands of the Muslim philosophy that followed the death of Ibn Rushd, it was in Iran that the purest
spiritual gnosis of Islam first resurfaced, going on to be developed further by the many schools and philosophical strands of
thought that would bring Muslim philosophizing to its peak in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
During his time at the Royal Philosophical Academy in Tehran
in 1972/1973, together with Henry Corbin and the then President of the Academy, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Professor Toshihiko
Izutsu lectured on the Fusus. Among those whom he, Corbin
and Nasr tutored on the Fusus was a young doctoral student of
philosophy, William Chittick. In addition, Sayyid Jalaluddin alAshtiyani, a prominent professor from the University of Mashhad, also provided much selfless assistance at these lectures;
Ashtiyani had just completed a critical edition of the two-volume commentary on the Fusus by Dawud al-Qaysari, running
to more than a thousand pages.12 This critical edition of the
11. H. Corbin, LImagination creatrice dans le soufisme dIbn Arabi;
English trans. by R. Manheim, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn
Arabi (Princeton, 1969).
12. Muhammad Dawud al-Qaysari al-Rumi [also known as Sharaf al-Din
al-Qaysari, see n.6], Sharh fusus al-hikam, critical edition, introduction and
notes by Sayyid Jalaluddin al-Ashtiyani (Tehran, ah 1375).

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commentary was preceded just a few years earlier, in 1967, by

the publication of a complete critical edition of the Fusus itself,
edited by the eminent Egyptian Professor Abu al-Ala Affifi.
Prior to this came Sufism and Taoism13 by Professor Toshihiko
Izutsu, who was probably the greatest name in Japanese oriental
studies. Although he deals with Ibn Arabis Fusus in its entirety,
his particular interest and the subject he addresses in greatest detail is the linguistic features and nuances in which Ibn
Arabi expressed his fundamental ideas. His work is being carried forward, and expanded upon to cover other aspects of Ibn
Arabis thought, by Professor Yasushi Tonaga, a former student
of Izutsus, who teaches Islamic philosophy at Kyoto University. Professor Tonaga has spent the past two or three academic
years preparing a critical edition of a manuscript by Abdullah
al-Bosnawi, a mid-seventeenth-century scholar who wrote what
is perhaps the finest and most comprehensive commentary on
Ibn Arabis Fusus al-hikam and to whom we shall return in due
course. On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean is another student of Professor Izutsus, Sachiko Murata who, together with
her husband William Chittick (both of whom teach at the State
University of New York), has written an extensive expos of the
complexity and significance of Ibn Arabis work, with particular
reference to the Fusus al-hikam.14
The translation of the Fusus al-hikam into English by Professor Ralph Austin entitled The Bezels of Wisdom,15 is perhaps
one of the finest translations into a European language, as is
the translation into French by Charles-Andr Gilis entitled Le
Livre des Chatons des Sagesses.16 Before this became available, the
13. Toshihiko Izutsu, Sufism and Taoism A Comparative Study of the Key
Philosophical Concepts in Taoism and Sufism (Tokyo, 196667).
14. Sachiko Murata and William C. Chittick, The Vision of Islam (St Paul,
MN, 1994); however, Muratas The Tao of Islam (Albany, NY, 1992) and
Chitticks The Sufi Path of Knowledge (Albany, NY, 1989) are the two books
which directly refer to Ibn Arabis Fusus al-hikam.
15. Ibn al-Arabi, The Bezels of Wisdom, translated with an introduction
and notes by R.W.J. Austin (New York, 1980).
16. Ibn Arabi, Le Livre des chatons des sagesses, III, translated, with
notes and commentary, by Charles-Andr Gilis (Beirut, 1997).

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93

French cultural public had had the opportunity to encounter

part of Ibn Arabis Fusus in the incomplete translation by Titus
Burckhardt entitled La Sagesse des Prophtes.17
It would be a clear omission not to make reference here to
William Chitticks The Sufi Path of Knowledge, given that it is
such a systematic, clear and scholarly account of Ibn Arabis
ideas and provides many in the West with an opportunity of
understanding his writings who would otherwise be unable to
read his works for themselves. Seyyed Hossein Nasr has also
written some significant material on Ibn Arabi, particularly in
his short book entitled Three Muslim Sages,18 which still remains
extremely useful for an understanding of Ibn Arabis ideas. Reference should also be made to the major advances in the field of
Sufi literature made by Professor James Winston Morris, whose
articles on Ibn Arabi and his works19 invoke our admiration, as
do his translations of selected texts from the true opus magnum
(al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya) of Ibn Arabis works. The crowning
achievement in his absorption with the ideas of Ibn Arabi is his
recently published work The Reflective Heart.20

A Seventeenth-Century Bosnian Commentator

Among the many fine commentaries on Ibn Arabis Fusus alhikam is one written by a Bosnian Muslim, by the name of
Abdullah effendi Bonjak Abdi bin Muhammad al-Bosnawi
(d.1054/1644), who was a disciple and shaykh of the BayramiMalami tariqa. Originally composed in Ottoman Turkish, an
enlarged edition, with explanations, was rendered into Arabic.

17. La Sagesse des Prophtes (Lyons, 1955); translated into English by

Angela Culme-Seymour as The Wisdom of the Prophets (Aldsworth, Glos.,
1975).
18. S.H. Nasr, Three Muslim Sages (Cambridge, MA, 1964).
19. J.W. Morris, Ibn Arabi and his Interpreters, Journals of the American
Oriental Society 106 (1986): 53951, 73356; 107 (1987):10119. Morris
has also made numerous contributions to the JMIAS; details are available at
http://www.ibnarabisociety.org.
20. The Reflective Heart (Louisville, KY, 2005).

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The Turkish version has been translated, with some abridgements, into English by Bulent Rauf, in association with R. Brass
and H. Tollemache,21 but with the original wrongly ascribed to
Ismail Haqqi al-Bursevi, the famous author of the tafsir Ruh alBayan and devoted follower of Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi, instead of
to its true author, Abdullah al-Bosnawi.
Shaykh Abdullah al-Bosnawi was born in 992/1584 in Bosnia,
where he received his primary and secondary education before
completing his studies in Istanbul. He then spent several years
in Bursa, acquiring further knowledge of Sufi literature under
the eminent authority of the day Shaykh Hasan Kabaduz, from
whom he received an ijazat-nama (diploma) in irshad (spiritual
guidance by a shaykh). In 1636 he set off on his travels around
Egypt, Syria and Arabia, ending up in Mecca where he performed
the pilgrimage. He took advantage of his travels to write the
enlarged Arabic version of his commentary on the Fusus, probably for his pupils in Syria, Egypt and Medina, who travelled
with him for a time. Later, on his return from the Hijaz, Abdullah al-Bosnawi spent some time in Damascus near the mausoleum of Ibn Arabi, where he single-mindedly dedicated himself
to studying his works. On returning to Istanbul he decided to
visit Konya with the intention of performing a ziyara (pilgrimage) to the tombs of Jalaluddin Rumi and Sadruddin Qunawi.
He was to spend the rest of his life there, and in due course
this was where he fell ill and died. In accordance with his last
wishes, he was buried alongside the tomb of Shaykh Sadruddin
Qunawi. His tombstone bears the epitaph:
This is the tomb of a recluse of Allah on His Earth.
His name is Abdullah, Servant of Allah.
Although he was known in Anatolia by the nickname Abdi,
in Bosnia al-Bosnawi was called al-Ghaibi, his Sufi nickname,
which probably led to his later confusion with another dervish
who had the same Sufi nickname, and who was buried in Stara
21. Ismail Haqqi Bursevis translation of and commentary on Fusus alhikam by Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi, ed. Bulent Rauf et al., 4 vols., Muhyiddin Ibn
Arabi Society (Oxford/Istanbul, 198691).

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Gradika. Following local tradition, having already entered into

Bosnian salnami (annals) this grave was wrongly believed to be
that of al-Bosnawi. According to a note by Professor Demal
C ehajic, the same mistake is to be found in a dissertation by
Safvet-beg Baagic, who equated him with a certain dervish
from Bosnia dubbed Gaibi.22
The only member of his immediate family to whom reference is made is his son Hasan effendi (d.1069/1659), a very erudite man who was a qadi and teacher in Jerusalem. The meagre
biographical details concerning Abdullah al-Bosnawi are compensated for by the considerable quantity of his writings left
to posterity. Of particular note for our purposes is his extensive commentary on Ibn Arabis Fusus al-hikam, the full title
of which is Sharh fusus al-hikam: tajalliyyat arais al-nusus fi
manassat hikam al-fusus,23 or Lifting the Veil from the Brides of
the Divine Revelation on the Sublime Thrones of Wisdom. The
Turkish version of this manuscript has been published twice:
first in Bulak in Egypt in 1252/1836, and then in Istanbul in
1290/1873. The Arabic version has yet to be published. The
first critical edition of the Arabic manuscript of this work of
Bosnawis is being prepared by Professor Yasushi Tonaga, currently the chair of Islamic philosophy at Kyoto University in
Japan. Abdullah al-Bosnawi ended the second volume of his
commentary with a 107-hemistich qasida, a symbol of praise
for the Fusus al-hikam and its author, Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi.
Commenting on al-Bosnawis commentary, the polymath
Haji Halifa says that it is mingled with the text and is a very
good commentary, perhaps the best of all.24 Though scholars
such as Bursali Mehmed Tahir25 claim that al-Bosnawi wrote
22. Demal C ehajic, ejh Abdulah Bonjak Abdi bin Muhamed al-Bosnevi,
FIN (Proceedings of the Faculty of Islamic Studies), 1/1982 (Sarajevo,
1982), pp.7581.
23. Abdullah effendi al-Bosnawi, Sharh fusus al-hikam: tajalliyyat arais
al-nusus fi manassat hikam al-fusus, ms no. 1032, V. arullah ef., Millet
genel Ktphanesi, Istanbul.
24. Haji Halifa, Kashf al-zunnun, II, p.1263
25. B.M. Tahir, Osmanli Muellifleri (1299/1925), I (Istanbul, 1915),

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some sixty works, it should be said that so far more than a hundred treatises have been attributed to him, some long and some
short, in Turkish, Arabic and Persian.
Particular mention should be made here of al-Bosnawis
extensive introduction to his commentary on the Fusus, which
he divided into sections on twelve principles, each one dedicated to one or more matters of importance in the theory of Sufi
literature. The actual incident that brought about the writing
of this separate introductory section was a debate conducted
in the seventeenth century concerning the orthodoxy of Ibn
Arabis precepts. Al-Bosnawi defended the person and works
of Ibn Arabi, and countered with exhaustive and systematic
arguments those who criticized him, reproaching them with
all manner of things. Foremost in this smear campaign were
the fuqaha or experts in jurisprudence, who reduced the entire
spiritual reality of Revelation and the Traditions of the Prophet
from a universal and all-encompassing level to mere rules and
dry legal casuistry. As a result, the once towering corpus of
Muslim thought, which for centuries set the standard of global culture and civilization, has been brought down to what
are regarded today as anaemic, mundane political views based
on legal decisions or fatwas, all of which are highly questionable from a scholarly point of view, often forgotten by the very
people who issued them and increasingly disregarded by those
for whom they were intended.
Against this background of fervent defence of Ibn Arabi, and
systematic explanation and clarification of his teachings, alBosnawi, in the introduction to his commentary on the Fusus,
began by addressing the suggestion that Ibn Arabi personified
the seal of the specific Muhammadian walayat.26 This is a point
of Sufi theory that is discussed in the context of the spiritual
authority of walayat, both general and particular, as one of the

p.60; quoted in D. C ehajic, O jednom filozofskom traktatu ejha Abdulaha,

POF (Contributions to Oriental Philology, Oriental Institute, Sarajevo),
3233/198283 (Sarajevo, 1983), p.66.
26. Abdullah al-Bosnawi, Sharh fusus, fol. 002b009b.

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leading issues that has been a constant preoccupation of Sufi

exegesis and hermeneutics. The only scholars to disagree with
Ibn Arabi on this point were the Shiite theoreticians of Sufism,
or irfan, given that they reproached Ibn Arabi with arrogating
the position of the seal of the specific Muhammadian walaya for
himself, rather than to the Twelfth Imam or Mahdi, to whom
the attribute belongs by the nature of things. Neither Ibn Arabi
nor al-Bosnawi deny the Twelfth Imam: indeed, they explicitly
predict and explain the signs of his second coming, and the
rulership that is his and is yet to be realized.
Aspects of al-Bosnawis Metaphysical Commentary
in his Introduction to the Fusus
Abdullah al-Bosnawi then embarks on a consideration of
the extremely complex and challenging issue that might be
described as the metaphysics of the Divine Essence and Being.27
Like many of his predecessors, he begins, in line with Ibn Arabis
metaphysics of Essence and Being, by setting out the contrast
between
(1) the alam al-ghayb al-mutlaq, the universe of absolute Mystery, which eludes the descending, outflowing vertical of
the self-disclosing Divine Being and is lost in the Ur-Being
(proto-Being, primitive-Being), even though for many Sufi
writers it symbolizes the very summit or point of departure
of this vertical; and
(2) the alam al-shahada, the universe of visible forms and
sensate things, or the world of that which can be witnessed
in the here and now.
Between these two universes is the scale of infinite degrees of
the self-disclosing Divine Being and its presence (al-hadra), a
Being that is one, that only God possesses in origin, absolutely
and without beginning (al-wujud al-mutlaq), for it lends itself to,
bestows and temporarily enters other existences and creatures,
thereby bearing the attribute of relative, contingent being (al-

27. Ibid., fol. 009b011a.

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wujud al-idafi). Al-Bosnawi reflects on the world of absolute Mystery (alam al-ghayb) from two perspectives. One is expressed by
the universe of Deus Absconditus, the intangible, ineffable metacosmic and pre-existent abyss about which human language can
say nothing, for language is helpless to mediate or express that
which is absolute, impersonal, suprapersonal, intangible, inexpressible and ineffable. It is this that al-Bosnawi calls the real
invisible world (alam al-ghayb al-haqiqi). The other perspective
is the universe of the relatively invisible (alam al-ghayb al-idafi)
or the universe of the imaginal Being (al-alam al-dhihni) which
is the abode of hidden realities (al-ayan al-thabita),28 of future
visible worlds. These hidden or concealed realities dwell in the
eternal Divine Knowledge or the Presence of the divine know
ledge (hadrat al-ilm al-ilahi),29 or in the wasteland of Non-being
that is not mere nothing, mere non-existence, but a synonym
for the eternal Divine Knowledge that has not yet subjected
these elements of the Divine Intellect to the divine creative
command (Kun! Be!). This is to say, the worlds and the
universes at the lower levels of the self-outpouring Being do not
come into being through the principle of creatio ex nihilo, but
through that of illumination or emanation (emanatio, al-fayd)
of the existence-bestowing force from the centre of the Divine
Ipseity. Thus, the pure light of the Divine Being, as nur, not as
diya, passes through the mundus imaginalis (alam al-amthal or
alam al-rumuz), the universe of prototypes or hidden realities, so
that the shadows of their subtle forms (suwar latifa) or imaginal vessels (qawabil al-khayaliyya) pour into the world of visible forms and are condensed in the spatial and temporal world
of dark, cold matter. This outpouring is known as tajalliyyat
and zuhurat, which are none other than a cosmic effulgence
under the auspices of the names of the Visible (al-zahir), of the
spiritual meanings of the Divine Names and Attributes in the
loci of their visible manifestation (al-mazahir), also known as
visible space or the existential theatre (al-majla) in which the
existence-bestowing rhythm of the descending, emanating
28. Ibid., fol. 011.
29. Ibid., fol. 011b012a.

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Being of the Divine scale or hierarchies of the universes manifests itself.

The concealed or hidden realities are the individually determined essences of potential existences not yet brought into the
mercy of the real, true Being, but rather that exist in potentia,
in the wasteland of Non-being or the eternal Divine Knowledge
that has not yet placed in actus the creative command Kun!
Be!, Fiat lux! For this reason an alternative, specific name for the
universe of relatively invisible worlds is proposed in al-Bosnawis Sufi theory alam al-ghayb al-imkani, or the potentially
invisible universe from which all future visible existences and
things emerge into view. Whereas one could say of the absolutely invisible world and the invisible world of realities that
they are known only to God, the relatively or potentially invisible world could be said to exist, discernible in its inner structure and its existence-bestowing degree. Al-Bosnawi carries out
a certain gradation concerning the infinite number of Divine
Presences (al-hadarat al-ilahiyya); the first of these he refers to as
hadrat al-ama or the Presence of the cumulus, the pre-existent
nebulosity, the pre-cosmic blindness or ethereal white Cloud
(materia prima, the refined creative dust al-haba). The ideational reality of existences and phenomena from the lower levels of Being are then individually differentiated under the light
of the Divine Names and Attributes, and are visible and recognizable in their ideality or potentiality of the universe of imaginal being from the perspective of the Absolute Mystery, but are
wholly concealed, invisible and indiscernible to the observer
from the lower levels of being, especially for the level of the
cosmic world. The term ama is indeed a traditional one, to be
found in a hadith of the Prophet (a.s.), and denotes the existential level of the Perfect Man (al-insan al-kamil) or Transcendent
Man (al-insan al-mutlaq), or the level of Unicity (ahadiyya) of
the Divine Essence, where the Breath of the Merciful (nafas alrahman) dwells, the absolute imagination, the quiddity of the
barzakh, the boundary between the worlds, the Reality of realities (haqiqat al-haqaiq), and so on.
Abdullah al-Bosnawi goes on to discuss the First Determination (al-taayyun al-awwal), the visible aspect of the pre-existence

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Non-determination (la-taayyun) or pre-cosmic blindness, the

indistinguishable ethereal or white cloud (ama). This is, in
fact, the All-encompassing Existence (al-kawn al-jami) or the
Adamic form of the Muhammadian reality (al-haqiqa al-muhammadiyya), which is a synonym for the Perfect Man in whom all
forms and levels of the manifesting Being or Being in revelation dwell by virtue of the manifestation of the Divine in all its
meanings. The First Determination, as All-encompassing Existence, comprises all the universes, all the Divine Presences and
all the realities of non-contingent (al-haqqiyya) and contingent
(al-khalqiyya) Being. In this All-encompassing Existence, too,
the perspectives of the macro- and the microcosmos permeate
one another. This is to say that the First Determination or Allencompassing Existence, as the supreme Divine creation, the
burnished mirror of the universe, the spirit of pancosmic forms,
is the confluence of the Two Oceans (majma al-bahrayn) the
eternal and the transient, the spiritual and the material, the visible and the invisible with between them the isthmus or universe of the In-between World (alam barzakhi) that both unites
and separates the Oceans, linking the Two Hands of God the
one that gives and the one that takes away, the Hand of Mercy
and the Hand of Wrath so testifying that the Hand that gives
always precedes the Hand that takes, and the Hand of Mercy
precedes the Hand of Wrath. This boundary not only has its own
eschatological meaning but also, indeed primarily, a profound
existential meaning, a meaning for all time. The universe of the
barzakh is not only testimony of the furling of the peacocks
tail, the traditional Sufi symbol for the decline of cosmic time,
but also the symbol of perpetual cosmic effulgences, of the inexhaustible river of the theophanies and epiphanies of the Divine
Names and Attributes. What is more, it is also the supreme
Divine witness to the fact that the destruction of the physical,
material, degradable forms of the macro- and microcosmos does
not entail the degradation of the refined forms of the world,
which are preserved and return to the Lord of the worlds just as
the glorious colours of the peacocks tail remain intact, perfectly
preserved, even when the tail is tightly furled, as are the concealed realities of all beings within the opaque darkness and

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impenetrable silence of the eternal Divine Knowledge beyond

which nothing is omitted, nothing forgotten. Just as the First
Determination or All-encompassing Existence is the quintessence of all the realities of Being, whether reposing in Suprabeing (al-wujud al-mutlaq) or in its dynamic existence-bestowing
motion, so the universe of the barzakh, the separating and unifying boundary-bridge within that All-encompassing Existence,
as a synonym of the Perfect Man (al-insan al-kamil),30 is the sum
of all forms of the innumerable Divine Presences that image
the entire scale of Being and the descending, outpouring vertical of the pancosmic manifestations of the Divine Names and
Attributes.
The Divine Presences (al-hadarat al-ilahiyya) occupy a central
position in Sufi cosmology, and al-Bosnawi therefore accords
immense importance to them in his commentary on the Fusus.
In his view, they are none other than the cosmic or existential
abode of the Divine at each level of the descending, outpouring Being that forms the waves of the endlessly immanent
meanings of the Divine Names and Attributes, which roll out
the Divine Ipseity from their intangible Essence or inexhaustible Hidden Treasure by virtue of the three Divine Names Allah,
Rabb and al-Rahman spanning the degrees from the world of the
All-encompassing Existence (al-kawn al-jami) to the existential
level of the mineral as the lowest existential level within the
Perfect Man.31 Al-Bosnawi expounds the question of the creative command and its actualization rather more systematically
in his treatise entitled The Book of the Unveiling concerning
the Creative Command in the Interpretation of the Last Verse of
the Quranic Sura al-Hashr.32
All the Divine Presences, which are infinite in number as
too are the Divine Names as the abode of the Divine Ipseity
in manifestation are contained in the Adamic forms of the
30. Ibid., fol. 012a013a.
31. Ibid., fol. 011b012a; cf. Ibn Arabi, al-Futuhat al-makkiyya, II.176,
173 (Cairo, 1911); Fusus al-hikam, I.199 (Cairo, 1946).
32. Abdullah al-Bosnawi, Kitab Al-Kashf an al-Amr fi tafsir akhar sura
al-hashr.

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All-encompassing Existence. This Existence is none other than

the Muhammadian reality, the Muhammadian light, the sublime pen, or the Perfect Man in short, the First Creation or First
Determination in which is the plenitude and the inexhaustible
pledge of Divine Love; of the love breath of the Hidden Treasure (al-kanz al-makhfiyy) that resolves to disclose itself by virtue
of selfless, peerless Love for the Muhammadian reality of the
universe, to be known, ever building palaces of being (hayakil
al-wujud) that are mere tokens and mementoes of the existencebestowing Love of the Ahad with which He embraces Ahmad.33
According to al-Bosnawi, Ahmad is not only the most universal
vessel in which dwells the plenitude of the Divine Being: he is
also the absolute, jealously guarded book of the universe (liber
mundi) inscribed by the pen of the Divine Spirit, and the book
of the divine logus (liber revelatus) revealed in sacred languages,
however many of them may have flowed through sacred history. He is the key to all the mysteries that lie on the pages of the
Mother of the Book (umm al-kitab), inscribed in characters (kitab
marqum), the sacro-historical and mundane history of which is
preserved and attested to by the Quran, the Book of all the
Divine huruf, the huruf of the Divine Essence and of the Divine
Being, the book of all existence-bestowing reverberations and
peals of thunder produced by the beating and chant of Gabriels
wing as he hovers above the innermost disposition of Gods
chosen messengers. For the key to all the universes is the Perfect
Man, who is none other than the Beloved of God (habibullah),
who said long ago that he is the plenitude of all the words of
God (jawami al-kalim). The letters and words that al-Bosnawi
classifies as huruf wa kalimat al-ilahiyya (Divine words and letters) and huruf wa kalimat al-wujudiyya (the letters and words of
Being)34 are inscribed in the book of the worlds and the book
of revelation, books united in his being by the Prophet of Islam
as the symbol of the Mother of the Book, the Principial Book,
like two oceans the ocean of Divine Essence and the ocean
of Divine Being. The first group of letters and words symbolize
33. Abdullah al-Bosnawi, Sharh fusus, fol. 014b.
34. Ibid., fol. 012b.

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the spiritual reality of the Divine Names and Attributes, and

of all that emanated from them by virtue of the incessant
Divine creative command not forgetting the hidden realities
that, as infinite potentialities, still dwell in the silence of the
Divine Knowledge and those that are already emerging into the
existence-bestowing light of Being. The second group symbolizes all the recipients within all the Divine Presences, or all the
existences that manifest themselves as diverse, many-coloured,
multiform gems bowled along by the gold-bearing waves of the
river of the Divine Tajalliyyat, whose cascades pour down from
universe to universe, from the universe of the Divine Ipseity
(alam al-dhat) to that of visible forms (alam al-shahada). Just
as the huruf and kalimas on the pages of the sacred text are but
the foam covering the depths of the eternal Divine Knowledge
summed up on the pages of the sacred text, so the entirety of
creatures and existences on the pages of nature are but the froth
rising from the infinite depths of the Divine Being that is in
the essence (lubb) and substance (jawahir) of even the minutest
of created things. Where the foam and the sea simultaneously
touch and part is the invisible, ultrafine boundary (barzakhiyya)
in which the opposing cutting edges of the Visible and the Invisible are blunted, like that which both separates and unites light
and shade, or the Perfect Man and God. It is this very boundary
that is the mirror of both realities, and only this self-mirroring
prevents them from blurring and merging into one another.
The entire gamut of Being is established by the descending,
outpouring Divine Being, while the Adamic form of All-encompassing Existence is revealed and thence each fragment of the
universe establishing it by virtue of the Divine Presences (alhadarat al-ilahiyya) or the Presence of the Names and Attributes,
as a result of which the Divine Being at all times paves the way
back for the All-encompassing Existence and, through it, for
even the minutest existence in the universe, to return home.
This scale of Being is reflected at its most complete in the Perfect Man as the sum of all spiritual realities, of the levels and
presences of the Divine Being, for he is the most perfect model
and image of the ascending sapiential ascent to the Lord. In
him dwell all spiritual states and spiritual stations along which

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every homo viator or salik must make his way in his perennial
sapiential and existential miraj. They are infinite in number,
just as are the Divine Names and Attributes in whose light every
spiritual journey (via purgativa, sayr al-suluk) is realized. The paragon of spiritual realization on that journey is the one who is
All-encompassing Existence and the Perfect Man the Prophet
of Islam, whom the Quran describes as of the finest natural disposition (al-khuluq al-azim), and of whom the prophetic tradition relates that he is the pledge of Divine Love and the reason
for the Divine creative command of all the universes. He offered
us such a paragon or paradigm for our spiritual journey through
his Miraj. The spiritual institution through which our own
miraj is realized is the prescribed five daily prayers, the salah,
performed at the most sensitive and significant points of the
day and night, and the prayer of the heart (dhikrullah) that we
perform voluntarily, with loving hearts, following the rhythm
of our own inner needs and spiritual readiness. Al-Bosnawi
describes our individual spiritual journey to the Divine Presence
through the tradition of the Prophet of Islam concerning the
seven spiritual meanings of the Revelation or the seven hermeneutic perspectives (unzila al-quran ala saba ahruf) with which
one may approach the Quran in part or in whole. This is the
symbol of the seven ahruf, as the Prophet of Islam expressed it,
which are none other than the seven depths or the seven spiritual horizons within which one is able to develop and enquire
into a hermeneutica spiritualis. This is itself the hierohistory of
the individual soul opening up to the Light of the East (mashriq
al-nur) and animating within itself the primordial dawn (crepusculum matutinum) of the most spiritual meanings of the Word of
God in its Quranic or its furqan-ic aspect. In the Quranic metaphor on khal al-nalayn, or the removal of the sandals, alBosnawi recognized the very initiatory form by virtue of which
the individual spiritual quest for the inner meaning of the Word
of God is realized. This metaphor is associated with the events
in the sacred valley of Tuva when Moses stood before the burning Bush. This sacrohistorical event later inspired Ibn Qasi and
Ibn Arabi each to write their own Sufi initiatory treatises (khal
al-nalayn), taking this very Quranic metaphor as their title. The

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inner drama of the individual human soul in its self-mastery

and triumphal march along the path of spiritual ascent, its
own miraj, is reflected through this initiatory narrative, which
al-Bosnawi adopted as his hermeneutic model. This is not a
question of ascending the scale of spiritual states (ahwal) and
stations (maqamat), but of passing from each one of the seven
sacred vales, seven spiritual chambers, or seven spiritual abodes.
One pair of sandals, symbolizing the negative characteristics
or habits to which we are slaves, and which conceal the Face
of God from us, is shed in each of these seven vales. The ultimate outcome, after each act of removing ones sandals, is the
acquisition of a new spiritual physiognomy (tashakkulat) and
the ascent to a new spiritual level or sacrohistorical tropic of
the Word of God in its interiorization and a return to the nodal
space of the innermost human depths of the individual, to put
it in Simnanis terms.
The first spiritual vale is thus the image of the human soul
(nafs) that ceases to be corruptible by desire and concupiscence
two negative energies that yoke the soul to vice and evil and
that is transformed (metanoia, tashakkulat) into pure yearning
and conscious aspiration towards God.
The second spiritual vale is the image of the intellect (aql)
that successfully liberates itself from conceit, vanity, high-flown
fantasies and pernicious spiritual strabismus, and now sees the
burning bush in the sacred vale of Tuva as the flicker of the
luminous heart in which a flame of pure light burns, and as the
sparks of the Divine Spirit within us, ignited by the fluttering of
Gabriels wing, the wings of the malak of the human race, which
does not permit them to be quenched in the obscurity of the
western Sinai of our being.
The third spiritual vale within us is the image of the spirit
(ruh) that is neither of the east (sharqi) nor of the west (gharbi),
but is rather the oriental light (ishraqi), the light from the orient
of our geography of illumination, the hierogeography of our
being. As transcendent, transcending light, it is also free of any
admixture of that which is below its spiritual level.
The fourth spiritual vale in our self-sapiential progress towards
the Divine Presence is the image of our supraconsciousness or

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transconsciousness (sirr), which is no longer concerned with

any kind of relationship between the outward and the inward,
the visible and the invisible. This is to stand at the centre of the
spiritual being at which all the radii from every point on the
perimeter of our physical and our spiritual being converge; the
influence of these is then neutralized and their contradictions
are brought into harmony and transcended.
The fifth spiritual vale consists of an image of the heart (qalb),
the black rose at the centre of our multicoloured, many-flowered
microcosmic rose garden, as Shabistari calls it, where the entire
spectrum of our physical and spiritual being comes to rest. It is
the image of the celestial kaba (bayt mamur) within us, into
which flows the river of the divine tajalliyyat, losing itself in
the luminous ocean of our heart, as the river of the heavenly
hosts merges into the celestial kaba (al-bayt al-mamur), never
to return. It is the na-koja-abad within us, the paradisal soil concealed deep within us, beyond the reach of our physical senses.
Here all our tears and our laughter, our joy and our sorrow, all
the rivers and seas of our physical and spiritual geography lose
themselves, for the vale of the heart within us is the sea of all
our seas, in the silence of which our physical senses ferment and
the disquiet of our spiritual organs finds comfort and ease.
The sixth spiritual vale within us is symbolized by the mental
image of the Divine Presence (al-sura al-ilahiyya) personified in
the First Determination, All-encompassing Existence or Perfect
Man within us that is the trace in the sandy wasteland of our
heart left by the torrent of the Muhammadian spiritual reality flowing in every existence, irradiating it from within and
marking it with its seal. The trace it leaves points the way in
our own spiritual quest for the far side of Mount Qaf, and is but
a foreshadowing or harbinger of that alone which is the true
Perfect Man, the title of the divine creative Command and the
vault and seal on the treasuries of all the universes, the spiritual
aroma that perfumes the microcosmic garden of each individual Muslim, submissive soul.
Lastly, the seventh spiritual vale within us is where Heaven
and Earth meet and touch again, forming the arch of descending, outpouring being, and ascending, sapiential being, the

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Divine Non-determination and the First Determination, the

Utterly Incomparable (Ahad) and the most highly praised of
the human race (Ahmad), with only the barzakh dividing them,
the Ahmadian boundary within us. In the relation of Ahmad to
Ahad, the boundary is our dying and death (mamat), while in
that of Ahad to Ahmad, it is our eternal, intransient life (mahya).
This very boundary prevents any hint of multiplicity from
tainting the One (Ahad), however great the yearning and pangs
of love the separation from the Most Beloved (al-Wadud) may
cause in us, and yet it means life to us, and keeps us in life: as
long as God looks upon us and showers us with the droplets of
His Being, we exist, we live, we are; but whenever we seek to
look upon God and strip the final veil from His Face, we die,
fade away and cease to be.
When we reach the seventh spiritual vale, therefore, at the
end of our spiritual journey, we have reached the spiritual abode
of the Ahmad of our being, at the level of the Perfect Man, in
the chambers of whose heart the knowledge of the Invisible and
the Visible, are united. These are the two indispensable spiritual
sandals, one of esoteric, initiatory knowledge that enables
us, sometimes, to step onto the sacred soil of the Ahad and yet
remain alive, and the other of the exoteric, outward knowledge
that ensures our safe passage through the realm of multiplicity
where only the footprints of the Musa of our being lead towards
the inner promised land of the Ahmad of our being.
This, then, is a simplified summary of what Abdullah alBosnawi sought to convey to us in the introduction to his commentary on Ibn Arabis Fusus al-hikam.