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Todd Lawson
3. Aristotle, The Nichomachean Ethics, Book VIII, trans. W.D. Ross
(Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1908).
4. This is a translation into English of the French translation by Michel
Chodkiewicz of a passage from Ibn al-ʿArabī’s al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, 4
vols. (Būlāq, 1329ah [=1911]; hereafter Fut.), IV:21 in Le Sceau des saints:
prophétie et sainteté dans la doctrine d’Ibn Arabî (Paris: Gallimard, 1986),
p. 91, n.3. For the English translation: Michel Chodkiewicz, Seal of the
saints: prophethood and sainthood in the doctrine of Ibn ʿArabī, trans. Lia-
dain Sherrard (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1993; hereafter Seal),
p. 71, n.39. Earlier, Chodkiewicz cited the famous statement of ʿĀʾisha
(d.678) who, when asked about the Prophet’s nature (khuluq), replied: ‘His
nature was the Qurʾān’. Intimacy with and embodiment of the Qurʾan as
a feature of the awliyāʾ is suggested also in the remark attributed to Dhu’l-
Nūn al-Miṣrī (d.859): ‘The Qurʾan has mingled with their flesh and blood’,
Seal, p. 37, quoting Abū Nuʿaym’s Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ.
Friendship, Illumination and the Water of Life 19
5. Indeed, it may be that the best solution is to domesticate the Arabic
terminology so that it becomes part of the English language as has hap-
pened with Qurʾan, Hadith, sunna, ulama, sura and aya. Thus we could
simply use ‘wali/vali’ without the exoticizing, not to say orientalist, embel-
lishments of the arcane marks of transliteration and italics to refer to a hero
of the Islamic spiritual calling.
6. Abu’l-ʿAlā Affifi, The Mystical Philosophy of Muhyid Din-Ibnul Arabi
(Lahore: Sh. Muḥammad Ashraf, 1979; hereafter Affifi), p. 93.
20 Todd Lawson
7. See William C. Chittick, Divine Love: Islamic Literature and the Path
to God (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), pp. xxvi, 73; and this
author’s The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Metaphysics of Imagina-
tion (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989; hereafter SPK),
p. 4. James W. Morris, The Wisdom of the Throne: An Introduction to the Phi-
losophy of Mulla Sadra (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981; hereaf-
ter Throne), p. 91 points out that ‘sainthood’ as a translation of walāya can
only be considered a ‘rough approximation’. In the same author’s recent
article ‘Ibn ʿArabī’s “Short Course” on Love’, in Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn
ʿArabī Society (JMIAS) 50 (2011): 1–22, ‘friend’ and ‘friendship’ are used
exclusively. See also Hermann Landolt, ‘Walāyah’ in Encyclopedia of Reli-
gion, ed. Mircea Eliade and Charles J. Adams, et al. (New York and London:
Macmillan & Free Press, 1987), vol. 15, pp. 316–23 (hereafter Landolt,
‘Walāyah’). Although the author does sometimes use the words ‘saint’ and
‘sanctity’ for walī/walāya when referring to Sufism, in this comprehensive
general article, ‘saint’ is mentioned last in his list of seven possible mean-
ings of walī (Landolt, ‘Walāyah’, p. 316).
8. Toshihiko Izutsu, Sufism and Taoism: A Comparative Study of Key Philo-
sophical Concepts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983; hereafter
Izutsu, Sufism), p. 272.
Friendship, Illumination and the Water of Life 21
It would not be untrue to say that in one sense Ibn ʿArabī, from
the first to the last line of his work, never spoke of anything other
than sainthood, of its ways and its goals; and that ‘ocean without
a shore’ (to use a formula dear to the Ṣūfīs) will never be charted
in its entirety.13
As is typically the case with Ibn ʿArabī’s ideas and their cor-
responding technical terminology (iṣṭilāḥāt), the source is the
Qurʾan. The key Arabic triliteral root w-l-y bears the general
semantic charge of intimacy, closeness, friendship, loyalty,
authority and protection and occurs 232 times in the Qurʾan;
the most frequent form is the nominal walī, the usual meaning
of which is friend/ally/guardian/protector or heir. (The abstract
verbal noun, walāya, occurs twice: Q.8:72 and Q.18:44; the com-
mon vowelling, wilāya, frequently used for ‘political authority’
of some kind, does not occur in the Qurʾan.) Following this
nominal usage, the 5th form verb tawallā occurs 78 times, the
2nd form wallā occurs 30 times and the interesting and some-
times problematic mawlā (master, protector/dependent relative,
client) occurs 18 times. There is only space here to look at the
13. Seal, p. 15. In this major contribution to Ibn ʿArabī scholarship the
Arabic words walāya and walī are translated as ‘saintship’ and ‘saint’.
Friendship, Illumination and the Water of Life 25
Dost thou not know that God’s is the dominion over the heavens
and the earth, and that besides God you have neither walī nor
helper? Q.2:107
God is Walī unto those who have faith, taking them out of deep
darkness into the light – whereas the awliyāʾ of those who are
bent on denying the truth are the powers of evil that take them
out of the light into darkness deep: it is they who are destined for
the fire, therein to abide. Q.2:257
Behold, the people who have the best claim to Abraham are surely
those who follow him – as does this Prophet and all who believe
[in him] – and God is the Walī of the believers. Q.3:68
14. See Fuṣūṣ, I.53; Bezels, p. 54: ‘…the originated should conform to
all the Names and attributes of the cause [origin], except that of Self-suf-
ficient Being, which does not belong to originated existence, since what
necessary being it has derives [entirely] from other than itself.’
26 Todd Lawson
Behold, your only walī shall be God, and His Apostle, and those
who have attained to faith – those that are constant in prayer, and
render the purifying dues, and bow down [before God]. Q.5:55
‘Verily, my walī is God, who has bestowed this divine writ from
on high: for it is He who protects the righteous.’ Q.7:196
impious owner of the two gardens and his poor but godfearing
companion (18:32ff.), which closes with one of the two Qurʾanic
verses in which al-walāyah actually occurs: it is the rich man who
ends up the loser in spite of the prosperity of his gardens and the
power of his clan, for, ‘Ultimately, the walāyah belongs to God,
the Truth!’ (18:44).
And [as for] the believers, both men and women, they are awliyāʾ
to one another: they [all] enjoin the doing of what is right and
forbid the doing of what is wrong, and are constant in prayer, and
render the purifying dues, and pay heed unto God and His Apos-
tle. It is they upon whom God will bestow His grace: verily, God is
almighty, wise! Q.9:71
Oh, verily, they who are the awliyāʾ of God – no fear need they
have, and neither shall they grieve. Q.10:62
And say: ‘All praise is due to God, who begets no offspring, and
has no partner in His dominion no walī min al-dhull – and [thus]
extol His limitless greatness.’ Q.17:111
Now had God so willed, He could surely have made them all one
single community: none the less, He admits unto His grace him
that wills [to be admitted] whereas the evildoers shall have no
walī and none to succour them [on Judgment Day]. Q.42:8
Friendship, Illumination and the Water of Life 29
Behold, your only walī shall be God, and His Apostle, and those
who have attained to faith – those that are constant in prayer, and
render the purifying dues, and bow down [before God] Q.5:55
(quoted on p. 26).
God is near unto those who have faith, taking them out of deep
darkness into the light – whereas the awliyāʾ of those who dis-
believe (al-ladhīna kafarū) are the powers of evil (al-Ṭāghūt) that
take them out of the light into darkness deep: it is they who are
destined for the fire, therein to abide. Q.2:257
Let not the believers take those who deny the truth as awliyāʾ in
preference to the believers – since he who does this cuts himself
off from God in everything – unless it be to protect yourselves
30 Todd Lawson
against them in this way. But God warns you to beware of Him: for
with God is all journeys’ end. Q.3:28; see also 4:139; 4:144; 5:57
It is but Satan who instils [into you] fear of his awliyāʾ: so fear
them not, but fear Me, if you are [truly] believers! Q.3:175; see
also 4:76; 4:119; 7:27; 7:30
Abū Yazīd Bisṭāmī said: ‘A friend should know as much about you
as God and keep just as quiet.’21
only source for Ibn ʿArabī’s teaching on walāya and the dignity
that he claimed for himself as Seal of Walāya.24 The other major
source was the book by al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī (d.ca.907–12),
the Kitāb khatm al-awliyāʾ. It is in response to the famous set
of unanswered questions composed by this early master that
Ibn ʿArabī’s ideas acquire their distinctive form. The mark of
friendship for Ibn ʿArabī is knowledge (maʿrifa). This is symbol-
ized in him by an actual physical mark or ‘deformity’ which
is mentioned by the prominent and influential Akbarian com-
mentator, Muʾayyad al-Dīn al-Jandī (d.690/1291), the student
of Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qunawī (d.673/1274), son-in-law and close
24. Fut.I:138.
25. Numerous hadith attest to this physical sign, first noticed in the
literature by the monk Bahira when the young Muḥammad (perhaps aged
12) had accompanied the Quraysh caravan to Syria. The story exists in
many versions. For the account from the oldest biography of the Prophet
Muḥammad, see Muḥammad Ibn Isḥāq, The Life of Muḥammad: A Trans-
lation of Isḥāq’s Sīrat Rasūl Allāh, trans. with intro. and notes by Alfred
Guillaume (London: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 79–81. For various
hadith in the so-called ‘orthodox’ collections see, e.g. Bukhari I, 4, no.189
& VII, 70, no.574; Muslim Book 43, no.30: http://sunnah.com/mus-
lim/43/143. There are many more mentions of this bodily ‘deformity’. The
word seal here is, of course, based on the all-important and highly mul-
tivocal Arabic triliteral root kh-t-m, found once in the Qurʾan at Q.33:40:
‘Muḥammad is not the father of any one of your men (rijāl). Rather, he is
the messenger of God and the seal of the prophets (khātam al-nabiyyīn).
And God has full knowledge of all things.’
Friendship, Illumination and the Water of Life 33
29. Julia Kristeva, Tales of Love (New York: Columbia University Press,
1987), p. 70. Etymologically the Greek word σύμβολον ‘symbolon’, is
made up of two ideas – ‘sym’ = ‘together’ and ‘bol’ = ‘to throw’ – means
etymologically: ‘something to be thrown together with its mate to form a
whole.’
30. Seal, p. 172. God must be known in all four names: First, Last, Man-
ifest, Hidden (cf. Q.57:3).
Friendship, Illumination and the Water of Life 35
al-Bīrūnī, and Ibn Sīnā (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1964). The ontic instrumentality of the letters of the Ara-
bic alphabet, the phonic ‘atoms and molecules’ of God’s speech, was, of
course, an intellectual commonplace in Islamic cultural production. We see
its apotheosis in such post Ibn ʿArabī movements as the Hurufis, Bektashis
and Babis. But it also undergirds the entire art and ‘science’ of calligraphy
itself. There is no space here to explore this topic further now.
34. See the excellent example in Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islamic Science:
An Illustrated Study (Westerham, Kent, UK: World of Islam Festival Publish-
ing Company Ltd., 1976), p. 32.
35. The key phrase in this verse is ‘li-taʿārafū’ a subjunctive, second
person verb: ‘that you (collective) may come to recognize each other’ or
‘know each other.’ The triliteral root here, ʿ-r-f, is the source of the words
ʿārif, maʿrifa, ʿirfān and is the verb in the famous hadith qudsi: ‘he who
knows himself knows his lord’ (man ʿarafa nafsahu fa-qad ʿarafa rabbahu).
In Q.49:13, this sixth form of the verb ʿarafa entails mutuality in the action
38 Todd Lawson
For each traveller, the journey’s end depends on the road he has
taken. Some will be spoken to in their own language, others in a
language which is different from theirs. Each will be the heir of
HIERARCHY
There is a structure to friendship in Ibn ʿArabī’s writings. The
basic features which ‘punctuate’ this structure are the various
offices of what is sometimes called the hierarchy of walāya.41
These range from the more or less higher levels of walāya rep-
resented by the Quṭb, his two Imāms, the abdāl, the nuqabāʾ,
the nujabāʾ, the awtād and the afrād; there are also heirs to
each of these 124,000 prophets at any one time living on earth
and such heirs (wurathāʾ/wārith,wurrāth) are primary bearers of
walāya, the chief divine treasure and inheritance of love, pro-
tection, friendship and guidance. And beyond the minimum
42. ‘In phonetics, Arab grammarians use ḥarf, pl. ḥurūf, to mean the
articulations of the Arabic language, the phonemes; they recognize 29
principal articulations (aṣl). The ḥurūf al-hidjāʾ, of course, offer only 28
signs, but it must be borne in mind that alif serves for two: the hamza and
alif layyina.’ Fleisch, H. ‘Ḥurūf al-hidjāʾ’, EI2.
43. Seal, p. 54.
44. The following is heavily condensed from Seal, pp. 95 and 103–15,
from which the quotations are taken.
Friendship, Illumination and the Water of Life 43
The servants whom God loves best are the pious and the hidden.
The malāmiyya are spiritual men (al-rijāl) who have received the
highest degree of sainthood (walāya). There is nothing higher
than them except the station of prophecy. [Their station] is the
one referred to as the Station of Proximity (maqām al-qurba) … No
miracles (kharq ʿādat) are ascribed to them. They are not admired,
because in the eyes of men they are not distinguished by behav-
iour which is ostensibly virtuous … They are the hidden ones, the
pure ones, the ones in this world who are sure and sound, con-
cealed among men … they are the solitary ones (al-afrād).49
SARAYĀN
How exactly is this invisible state administered and given form?
What is its infrastructure and architecture? Ibn Sina (d.1037),
in his Risālat al-ʿishq, explained how love or desire, ʿishq, is
the magnetic power that holds the cosmos and everything in
it together. Dante (d.1321) later told us that love moves the sun
and stars.50 Walāya is loving friendship, but it is not ʿishq (intense
desire). However, it may also hold the world together through
a force other than magnetism, namely sarayān (or sāriya) which
means current, flux, circulation, emanation and permeation. It
implies rhythm and concomitant entrainment. Izutsu referred
to this as Ibn ʿArabī’s ‘favorite image’51 and it turns up in many
different contexts in his writings. It is derived from the Arabic
triliteral root s-r-y from which also come such words as: sarā,
‘to travel by night’, ‘to circulate’, ‘to flow’ (e.g., blood, water
or electric current), ‘to emanate’, ‘to penetrate’, ‘to pervade’,
‘to come into force, apply’, ‘to be valid’. Sarīy is a little brook,
‘sarīya’ is a military raiding party, ‘sāriya’ can, in addition to
50. See the beautiful translation of the last chapter of this ‘epistle’ by
William C. Chittick, Divine Love: Islamic Literature and the Path to God (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), pp. 284–7 and the Foreword by
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, pp. vii–x.
51. Izutsu, Sufism, p. 493.
46 Todd Lawson
The (universal) Life which flows through all things (wa sarat
al-ḥayāt fihi) is called the ‘divine aspect’ (lāhūt) of Being, while
each individual locus in which that Spirit (i.e., Life) resides is
called the ‘human aspect’ (nāsūt). The ‘human aspect’, too, may
52. The preceding definitions are from Hans Wehr, A Dictionary of Mod-
ern Written Arabic, ed. J.M. Cowan (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1971),
q.v. ‘sarā’.
53. Fuṣūṣ, p. 55; see also Fuṣūṣ, p. 181 (Ilyās), p. 196 (Hārūn), and
pp. 219, 221 (Muḥammad). The companion word sāriya occurs three times
with similar meanings: Fuṣūṣ, p. 138 (ʿĪsā), p. 152 (Sulaymān), and p. 177
(Zakariyya).
Friendship, Illumination and the Water of Life 47
[The] Perfect Man [is one] whom God penetrates, mingling with his
faculties and organs … [this mixing] is a pure symbol of the rela-
tionship between Ḥaqq and khalq, whose duality is necessary but
comports no alterity … the relation between them is that between
the color of the water and the color of the vessel that contains it.57
54. Fuṣūṣ, p. 138 (Izutsu’s translation, Sufism, p. 149; I have added some
transliteration).
55. Fuṣūṣ, p. 139. It is puzzling why Izutsu did not mention the signifi-
cance of Jesus as seal of walāya in this discussion. A few lines earlier, he
pointed out the significance of Job and his spiritual suffering for his analysis
of the same ‘flow’ in that chapter; see Izutsu, Sufism, p. 148.
56. Izutsu, Sufism, p. 232.
57. Henry Corbin, Creative imagination in the Ṣūfism of Ibn ʿArabī, trans.
48 Todd Lawson
mouvement (Paris: J. Corti, 1943), p. 19: ‘Nous n’avons donc pas tort … de
caractériser les quatre élements comme des hormones de l’imagination. Ils
mettent en action des groupes d’images. Ils aident à l’assimilation intime de
réel dispersé dans ses formes’ (italics added).
65. For the reflective surface of water, also as a means of access to the
imaginal realm, see Todd Lawson, ‘Shaykh Aḥmad Al-Aḥsāʾī and the World
of Images’, in Shiʿi Trends and Dynamics in Modern Times (XVIIIth–XXth
centuries), ed. D. Hermann and S. Mervin (Beirut: Ergon Verlag, 2010),
pp. 19–31.
66. ‘And if it were not for the permeation of the Real through the
forms of all existent things the world would not have existence.’ (See ibid.
pp. 22–3.)
67. Seal, p. 140.
Friendship, Illumination and the Water of Life 51
68. Jalāl al-Dīn Rumi, from the Masnavi, trans. R.A. Nicholson and
anthologized in Persian Poems: An Anthology of Verse Translations, ed. A.J.
Arberry (Tehran: Yassavoli, 2005), p. 126 (I have replaced ‘Saints’ with
‘Friends’). My thanks to David Hornsby for this quotation.
69. See, for example, the chapter entitled ‘The Water of Life’ in
Izutsu, Sufism, pp. 141–51 as an indication of how the discussion might
be expanded. Of course, one would want to begin with the Qurʾan itself
where water might be thought an unsuspected but major theme as was
suggested for walāya in the Qurʾan by Landolt, mentioned above.
52 Todd Lawson
70. Angela Jaffray, ‘“Watered with One Water”: Ibn ʿArabī on the One
and the Many’, in JMIAS 43 (2008), 1–20.
71. The reader is also directed to the references in the Jaffray article. In
addition, see the ground-breaking semiotic study by a student of Greimas,
Heidi Toelle, Le Coran revisité: le feu, l’eau, l’air et la terre (Damascus: Insti-
tut français d’études arabes de Damas, 1999). Another important title on
this topic is the anthology edited by Elena Lloyd-Sidle and Gray Henry-
Blakemore, Water: Its Spiritual Significance (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2009).
Not without interest for this discussion is Yuri Stoyanov, ‘Islamic and Chris-
tian Heterodox Water Cosmogonies from the Ottoman Period: Parallels
and Contrasts’, in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 64,
no. 1 (January 1, 2001): 19–33. The Tunisian scientist, Mohamed Larbi
Bouguerra, has devoted numerous works in French to the phenomenon,
symbolism and problem of water in today’s world. An introduction to this
engaged and committed oeuvre is his Water: Symbolism and Culture, vol. 5,
Les Rapports de l’Institut Veolia Environnement (Paris: Institut Veolia Envi-
ronnement, 2005). Finally, two articles in the Encyclopedia of the Qurʾān,
6 vols., ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe (Brill: Leiden, 2006): the incisive and
lyrical ‘Water’ by Anthony H. Johns and ‘Waters of Paradise’ by Amira El-
Zein are excellent brief surveys of the Qurʾanic material.
Friendship, Illumination and the Water of Life 53
72. Todd Lawson, ‘Divine Wrath and Divine Mercy in Islam: Their Reflec-
tion in the Qurʾān and Qurʾanic Images of Water’, in Divine Wrath and
Divine Mercy in the World of Antiquity, ed. R.G. Kratz and H. Spieckermann
(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), pp. 248–67.
73. This has a strong resonance with Izutsu’s ‘eternal now’; see Sufism,
p. 493.
54 Todd Lawson
74. Wadād al-Qāḍī, The Primordial Covenant and Human History in the
Qurʾān, ed. R. Baalbaki (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 2006). See
also Gerhard Böwering, The Mystical Vision of Existence in Classical Islam:
The Qurʾanic Hermeneutics of the Sufi Sahl At-Tustari (d.283/896), (Berlin:
de Gruyter, 1980).
75. Todd Lawson, ‘Typological Figuration and the Meaning of “Spir-
itual”: The Qurʾanic Story of Joseph’, in Journal of the American Oriental
Society 132, no. 2 (2012): 221–44.
76. Landolt, ‘Walāyah’, p. 317. See also, in this connection, the illumi-
nating discussion of Ibn ʿArabī’s ‘investiture’ in Mecca (598ah/1202ce) in
Addas, pp. 199–200.
Friendship, Illumination and the Water of Life 55
CONCLUSION
Thus we have in all its sarayānī, hierarchical and architectonic
glory – an invulnerable institution of love, guardianship, pro-
tection and friendship in constant motion (of the type Mullā
Ṣadrā would later make a ‘pillar’ of his philosophy). One can-
not resist speculating whether this invulnerability is intimately
dependent upon invisibility. Whatever the case may be, it is
clear that we have a distinctive, life-enhancing and creative ver-
sion of what in recent years has come to be called a ‘deep state’
(Turkish derin devlet). I trust that Ibn ʿArabī will forgive the
it.79 Thus it may happen that we chance upon such noble souls
from time to time, those who immediately cause us to think of
the luminous reality from which we all acquire being and to be
grateful for it. I close with this brief passage from Muḥammad
Asad’s classic Road to Mecca in which the author is deeply
affected by observing the ‘miracle of life awaking in a plant that
has been watered by chance’:
I wonder how the word ‘saint’ would sound in the ears of Ibn
ʿArabī if more than his legacy were alive today.