2016 Lawson Friendship Watermark PDF

Friendship, Illumination and
the Water of Life1
Todd Lawson
Ibn ʿArabī’s legacy and role in the contemporary world is mul-

tiplex. One is as transmitter, teacher and interpreter (mutarjim2)
of the Qurʾan and its spiritual reality to numberless people
Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 59, 2016

who would have never encountered it otherwise. In this vastly
incomplete discussion there will be a brief survey of what the
Qurʾan and Ibn ʿArabī have to say about walāya, friendship
and the walī/awliyāʾ, friend/friends. Following this is a general
discussion of the way in which friendship functions and circu-
lates both in Ibn ʿArabī’s body of work and in the cosmos as
understood by Ibn ʿArabī. The starting point for understanding
the Qurʾan for Ibn ʿArabī is of course the Prophet Muḥammad
and the imitation of his example (sunna). Such an imitation of
Muḥammad is a discipline of love and intimacy, another word
for walāya. Such an imitation can, and frequently does, produce
1. This is a revised version of a paper presented to the annual meeting

of the Muhyiddin Ibn ʿArabī Society (NA), ‘A Living Legacy: Ibn ʿArabī in
Today’s World’, which took place in New York City at Columbia University,
23–24 October 2015. For the way in which their remarkable harmoniz-
ing of kindness and professionalism made for a truly memorable learning
event, I would like to thank the organizers of that conference, Jane Carroll,
Nick Yiangou and Maren Gleason. I would also like to thank several friends
and colleagues who read earlier drafts of this essay and offered valuable
comments, suggestions or corrections: Jane Clark, David Hornsby, Moojan
Momen, Christopher Buck, Stephen Hirtenstein, Mark Hellaby and Zahra
Sands.
2. Ibn al-ʿArabī, Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, ed. Abū al-ʿAlā Affifi, 2 vols. in 1 (Beirut:
Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1966; hereafter Fuṣūṣ), I:47. Cf. the English transla-
tions: Ibn al-ʿArabī, The Bezels of Wisdom, trans. R.W.J. Austin (New York:
Paulist Press, 1980; hereafter Bezels), p. 45; Ibn al-ʿArabī, The Ringstones of
Wisdom: Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, trans., intro., and glosses by Caner K. Dagli (Chi-
cago: distributed by Kazi Publications, 2004; hereafter Ringstones), p. 2.
18 Todd Lawson
a blurring or, perhaps better, ‘rhyming’ of identity. The question

‘who is who?’ may arise, a question to which frequently the
only unambiguous response can be: it is friendship (walāya)
itself that is the important identity. Such rhyming is seen to be
indicated in the philosophical notion that a friend is another
self and that in a friendship ‘covenant’ each friend acquires the
characteristics of the other friend.3 Today we do not have the
Prophet Muḥammad but we do have the Qurʾan, and according
to Ibn ʿArabī one may participate in this friendship through the
Qurʾan:

He who – among the members of his community who did not
live during his epoch – wishes to see Muḥammad, let them look
at the Qurʾān. There is no difference in looking at it and at God’s
messenger. It is as though the Qurʾān had clothed itself in a form
of flesh named Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib.4
There is no word for saint in the Qurʾan. And there seems

to be no synonym that connotes or denotes ‘saint’ that is used
by Ibn ʿArabī, including those words constructed on the Ara-
bic triliteral root w-l-y. If we look in a modern English–Arabic
dictionary, we will find for ‘saint’ such equivalents as: qiddīs;
walī taqī (devout friend); or even walī min awliyāʾ allāh (friend
of God). This last is clearly something of a back formation in
the present context. All Saints Day in Arabic is usually called
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
ʿīd kullu al-qiddīsīn and a patron saint is al-qiddīs al-shafīʿ.

‘Sanctity’ is qudsiyya or qadāsa, and even ḥurma. But we find
nothing based on the Arabic root w-l-y, at least not enough
to justify the frequent continued translation of derivatives as
‘saint’ and ‘sanctity’ in discussing and studying walāya and
related issues, particularly the important questions about the
exact meaning of the notorious title and rank assumed by Ibn
ʿArabī: khatm al-awliyāʾ/al-walāya or, seal/imprimatur/mark/last
of the Awliyaʾ/Walaya.5 It appears to be an orientalist encroach-
ment. If the primary use of walī in the Qurʾan is as a predicate
or attribute of God (as will be seen below) does it make sense

to qualify God with an idea like ‘sainthood’? Of course, divine
attributes are well known for the semantic slippage that occurs
between God and the human; al-Jabbār is a fine example: for
God it means a benevolent compeller or disposer, for man it
means tyrant. Here is Affifi:
Wilāyah (saintship) according to Ibnul ʿArabī, and, indeed,

according to a great majority of Ṣūfīs, does not mean holiness or
piety, although such characteristics may accidentally be found in
a saint. The distinguishing mark of wilāyah as Ibnul ʿArabī under-
stands it, is ‘gnosis’ (maʿrifah)[.]6
It is important to try to be precise because walāya is the

central value of Ibn ʿArabī’s visionary teaching. As such, and
because it is also an attribute of God, it precedes all other Divine
Names and attributes in order of importance and is, in fact,
that without which there would be no vision or teaching. Ibn
ʿArabī’s source for this at once most precious and most abun-
dant ‘supernatural resource’ is the Qurʾan. As has been pointed
out and emphasized by numerous scholars and serious readers
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
of Ibn ʿArabī, this word walāya is done something of a grave

disservice if we are content to let our translation, whether as
‘sanctity’ or ‘sainthood’, represent it to the exclusion of several
other of its denotations and connotations. William Chittick,
for example, prefers ‘friend’ in speaking of the walī, and rarely,
if ever, translates this word as ‘saint’.7 Toshihiko Izutsu, in his
magisterial Sufism and Taoism, does use the words ‘saint’ and
‘saintship’ with regard to Ibn ʿArabī’s ideas, but qualifies it with
this rather enigmatic comment: ‘In this book I use provision-
ally the words “saint” and “saintship” as the English equiva-
lents of waliy and walayah respectively. Whether the meaning

of the Arabic word waliy is covered by the English word “saint”
is another question..’8
Julian Baldick’s observations here are apposite:
One dominant motif in early Christian spirituality is compara-

tively rare in Sufism: the characteristically Christian veneration of
celibacy. Vööbus notes the use of the root q-d-sh in Syriac, both
to denote sexual continence and, in effect, to designate sanctity
itself. This helps us to understand the absence of the concept
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.
of sainthood in Sufism: as eastern Christians pass from Syriac

to Arabic they will use the term qiddis, ‘saint’, but the Muslims,
along with their refusal to accept the ideal of celibacy, will not.
There are no ‘cut-off points’ in Islam, at which a man is conse-
crated and set apart as a priest, or canonized, or seen as a sanctus,
a saint.9
The problem with the English ‘saint’, ‘sanctity’ and ‘saint-
hood’ is that they tend, perhaps paradoxically, to push other
connotations and denotations out of the semantic field by dint
of their mere presence. It is a philological problem of some
magnitude. ‘Philology’ [the (dry) study of language, grammar,

vocabulary, syntax and morphology] is built upon two Greek
roots philia (love, friendship), and logos (knowledge, science,
study). The definition may be inverted or reversed here as ‘the
study of love’ and perhaps even more accurately and appo-
sitely as ‘the study of friendship’. Many of those who esteem
themselves faithful followers of the teaching of Ibn ʿArabī also
understand the word walāya to mean ‘love’ full stop. In addi-
tion, they add that the word also means loyalty, protection,
guardianship, and, of course, friendship – and, what is more
important, means all of these things at the same time.
The theme of our conference, ‘A Living Legacy: Ibn ʿArabī
in Today’s World’, offers an appropriate occasion to consider
this philological problem at some length with special attention
to the semantic stratum ‘friendship’ that is indisputably there
in the Arabic word walāya. Let us, for the moment, pretend
that the word ‘saint’ does not exist as, for example, is the case
with the Qurʾan. Today’s world, in fact, might be heartened by
such a thought experiment since its deep travail may well be
traced to the wounds that have been steadily inflicted upon it
by an astonishing array of various so-called sanctities that have
competed in ‘sanctity’ throughout the course of human history
(and doubtless pre-history as well). Our world is in dire need of
friends, not saints – at least not in the way this word has come
to be received and experienced in English and other European
9. Julian Baldick, Mystical Islam: An Introduction to Sufism (New York:

New York University Press, 1989), p. 16.
22 Todd Lawson
or North American languages. When we think of today’s world

and Ibn ʿArabī’s Living Legacy we think in the grammatical
mood of the optative. In other words, we hope that there is
more of his legacy abroad in the world than we see or experi-
ence on a regular basis because we consider Ibn ʿArabī to hold
a set of keys, not only to eschatological happiness (for lack of a
better term), but also keys to happiness and contentment here
in this quite troubled world below. And, indeed, he tells us in
several passages that the source of healing and happiness is fre-
quently quite invisible (as we will see below). His various teach-
ings for this second type of happiness seem to rely upon what

Ibn Taymiyya (d.1328) would later refer to as ‘the ecstasy of
obedience’ and what Ibn ʿArabī characterizes as ‘spiritual know-
ledge generated through obedience’.10 The regime, which goes
by the technical name sharīʿa (a word that literally means ‘path
to the water’) frequently strikes us as harsh, demanding and
unrelenting and, frankly obsolete, especially as outsiders look-
ing into Islam. But we eventually realize that if everyone fol-
lowed his teaching then we could all relax to a degree because,
for instance, to be diligently and exemplarily patient – as is
called for by the sharīʿa – with those who are also similarly
committed is not nearly as onerous as it would be (and some-
times is) otherwise.
According to the compelling and distinctive Akbarian logic
that the need creates the supply11 (and is therefore somehow
superior to it!) and because there is still a great yawning need
for human beings to grow up and attempt to embody, perform
and conform to those so-called divine attributes (in reality,
virtues to which humans aspire), such as mercy, forgiveness,
patience, faithfulness, discretion, generosity, wisdom, tender-
heartedness, among many others that were so dear to the heart
and vision of him in whose memory and honor this confer-
ence has been convened, Ibn ʿArabī’s legacy is very much alive
and vibrant. But it is also alive in another more traditionally
understood way, especially if we consider his specific teachings
10. Seal, p. 72; the reference is to Futūḥāt, Chaps. 68 to 72.

11. Fuṣūṣ, I.47 et passim throughout Ibn ʿArabī’s writings.
on walāya which we may understand as ‘hallowed friendship’

(something of a pleonasm) and we bear in mind that its sacred-
ness or holiness derives not from an external ‘anointing’ but
is generated from within the essential divine reality of ‘friend-
ship’ as such.
The world today suffers from numerous economic, social,
spiritual, ecological dislocations and imbalances. Western post-
Enlightenment discussions of friendship, apart from being
quite rare, tend to remain in the key of the secular – a nearly
useless word which will not be mentioned again.12 When we
think of ‘Today’s World’ even the least alert is depressed, not

because of the word ‘world’ (which literally means ‘the time of
humanity’) but because of that other adverb of time: ‘today’.
The world now is frightening and heart-breaking on so many
levels, and not least frightening is the all-important level des-
ignated in high school literature classes as ‘man’s inhumanity
to man’. The capacity for taking advantage of the weakness of
their fellow humans so that the stronger and more powerful
may ‘benefit’, is truly breathtaking. And it appears to become
more breathtaking with every passing day. In such moral chaos,
or wasteland, the idea of sanctity and sainthood is frequently
greeted with derision and mockery. Indeed, all of us, it seems,
have had quite enough sanctity, thank you very much. Its mod-
els and its project appear not to have come close to assuaging
the real problems of living, happiness, justice and peaceful
coexistence here in the sublunar realm however much they
may have succeeded in the eschatological instance.
So, the purpose in what follows is to think of walāya as friend-
ship, not so much as an alternative to sainthood and sanctity
but as an antidote to the anomie and monstrous materialism
of our time; to note its origin in the Qurʾan which necessarily
12. Bennet Helm, ‘Friendship’, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

(Stanford, CA: Metaphysics Research Lab, Center for the Study of Lan-
guage and Information, Stanford University, Fall 2013), pp. 1–40. This fine
article is (tacitly) suggestive of ways in which Ibn ʿArabī’s ideas might con-
nect with contemporary philosophical discourse. Cf. the discussions of the
‘institution’ of friendship or of the ‘commitment’/i.e. covenant of friend-
ship. It also has an excellent bibliography.
24 Todd Lawson
includes a brief survey of its technical usage; and to locate,

with the help of Ibn ʿArabī’s living legacy – his writings and his
thought – its inexhaustible wellspring which, according to this
legacy, is perpetually and endlessly renewing itself through the
spiritual and contralogical calculus of: ‘the more one takes the
more there is’. (Cf. Q.2:25; 14:25; 52:22).
WALĀYA IN THE QURʾAN

The most important study of walāya in Ibn ʿArabī is, of course,
the incomparable book by Michel Chodkiewicz, first published

in French in 1986 and followed by the English translation in
1993. As he says there, it may well be that Ibn ʿArabī actually
spoke of nothing other than walāya throughout his vast writ-
ings:
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’.
nominal walī in more detail. This word occurs 86 times in the

Qurʾan as either the singular, ‘friend’ (walī) or in the plural,
‘friends’ (awliyāʾ). Several different such ‘friends’ are identi-
fied: the prophets, the believers, the enemies of the prophet
and the believers who are described as being friends (awliyāʾ)
amongst themselves. Of primary interest, of course, are those
forty-plus verses which designate God Himself as walī. That is,
in more than half of the verses in which the word occurs the
purpose is to identify God as the true friend and protector of
mankind, of the prophets and of the believers. Thus this word
may be classed amongst those special terms so characteristic of

the Qurʾan and which figure so profoundly in Ibn ʿArabī’s writ-
ings – namely, the Divine Names and attributes. Like all other
Divine Names and attributes – except of course the special one
designated in the Fuṣūṣ as pertaining to God alone: the Self-
sufficient/al-ghanī, (Q.47:38) – it is shared by human beings.14 It
will be helpful to cite a few of these key Qurʾanic texts. Here we
will rely on the translation of Muḥammad Asad, slightly revised
in a very few instances and in which words based on w-l-y are
left untranslated, merely transliterated.
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
‘O my Sustainer! Thou hast indeed bestowed upon me some-

thing of power, and hast imparted unto me some knowledge of
the inner meaning of happenings (taʾwīl al-aḥādīth). Origina-
tor of the heavens and the earth! Thou art walī unto me in this

world and in the life to come: let me die as one who has surren-
dered himself unto Thee, and make me one with the righteous!’
Q.12:101
Behold, they could never be of any avail to thee if thou wert to

defy the will of God for, verily, such evildoers are but awliyāʾ and
protectors of one another, whereas God is the Walī of all who are
conscious of Him. Q.45:19
We do have an excellent study of walāya in general and one for

walāya in Ibn ʿArabī,15 and other specialized studies for Shiʿism,16
15. Landolt, ‘Walāyah’ and Seal respectively, referred to above.

16. The first extended contemplation of walāya in Shiʿism in a Euro-
pean language is the entire oeuvre of Henry Corbin, as exemplified in his
landmark En Islam iranien: Aspects spirituels et philosophiques, 4 vols. (Paris:
Gallimard, 1971). Publications on the Shiʿi dimension of walāya/wilāya
have multiplied vigorously since the 1979 revolution. Recall that Khomeini
himself wrote on the topic in his famous and highly influential theory of
Vilāyat-i faqīh, ‘The divine guardianship of the jurist’, in which he dem-
onstrated to an avid readership that the ruling of a just (12er Shiʿi) legal
scholar was a true reflection of the will of the hidden Imam whose advent
was intensely hoped for and expected as a concomitant of the revolu-
tion itself. The theory was published as R. Khomeini, Ḥukūmah Al-Islāmīyah
(Najaf, 1969). See also M. Muṭahharī and J. Cooper, Wilāyah: The Station
of the Master, 1st edn (Tehran: World Organization for Islamic Services,
1982); T. Lawson, ‘Religious Authority and Apocalypse: Tafsīr as Experi-
ence in an Early Work by the Bāb’, in Unity in Diversity: Mysticism, Messian-
ism and the Construction of Religious Authority in Islam, ed. O. Mir-Kasimov
(Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2014), pp. 39–75. (Other articles in this volume,
Sufism17 and Islamic law,18 but we still do not have an exhaus-

tive treatment of the Qurʾanic uses and contexts of the all-
important Arabic triliteral root w-l-y whose prominent role in
the Qurʾan, as Landolt suggests, represents a major theme of
the book.19
God’s unique position as the most powerful friend and helper

(walī naṣīr) is one of the major themes of Qurʾanic preaching, and
several verses make it clear that those who ‘turn away’ (e.g., 9:74)
and/or ‘are led astray by him’ (e.g., 18:17) have no walī (42:8)
or mawlā (47:11), that is, no one to turn to for help or guidance.
The same message is also conveyed by the parable of the rich but

as the title might suggest, explore aspects of walāya); M.A. Amir-Moezzi,
‘Notes à Propos de La Walāya Imamite (Aspects de l’Imamologie Duo-
décimaine, X)’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 122, no. 4 (2002):
722–41; T. Lawson, ‘The Authority of the Feminine and Fatima’s Place in
an Early Work by the Bab’, in The Most Learned of the Shiʿa: The Institu-
tion of the Marjaʿ Taqlid, ed. L.S. Walbridge (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2001), pp. 94–127; U. Rubin, ‘Apocalypse and Authority in Islamic
Tradition: the Emergence of the Twelve Leaders’, in Al-Qantara 18, no. 1
(January 1, 1997): 11–42, and this author’s earlier ‘Prophets and Progeni-
tors in the Early Shīʿa Tradition’, in Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 1
(1979): 41–65.
17. Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī, Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī, The Concept of Sainthood in
Early Islamic Mysticism: Two Works by Al-Ḥakīm Al-Tirmidhī, trans. B. Radtke
and J. O’Kane (Richmond, UK: Curzon, 1996). Kathryn Virginia Johnson,
‘The Unerring Balance: A Study of the Theory of Sanctity (wilāyah) of ʿAbd
Al-Wahhāb Al Shaʿrānī’ (PhD thesis Harvard 1985) and the two articles
from this research ‘The Unerring Balance of the Law: ʿAbd Al-Wahhab
Al-Shaʿrani’s Reconciliation of Sanctity (wilayah and the Shariʿa) – (parts
1 & 2)’, Islamic Quarterly 41, no. 4 (January 1, 1997): 284–300 & 42,
no. 1 (January 1, 1998): 24–41; R.J.A. McGregor, Sanctity and Mysticism in
Medieval Egypt: The Wafāʾ Sufi Order and the Legacy of Ibn ʿArabī (Albany,
NY, 2004). John Renard, Friends of God: Islamic Images of Piety, Commit-
ment, and Servanthood (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008)
is especially important because it surveys material across communalistic or
sectarian lines and highlights the distinctive universalism inherent in the
idea of walāya.
18. Joseph Schacht, The Origins of Muḥammadan Jurisprudence (Oxford,
UK: Clarendon Press, 1967).
19. Landolt, ‘Walāyah’, p. 316.
28 Todd Lawson
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).
Before moving on to the topic of walāya as friendship in Ibn

ʿArabī, which will necessarily entail something of a summary
of various materials in Seal, I will, in the interests of a more
rounded presentation of the Qurʾanic ‘theory of friendship’,
simply list a few other salient and interesting verses in Asad’s

translation. Once again, the key words are left untranslated.
The believers are ‘friends’ of each other:
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
The friends of God will neither fear nor grieve:
Oh, verily, they who are the awliyāʾ of God – no fear need they
have, and neither shall they grieve. Q.10:62
God, ultimately, has no friend (in the sense of protector or

‘friend in need’):
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
Other than God, there is no friend:
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
Friend as Successor in the ‘Prayer of Zachariah’:
‘Now, behold, I am afraid of [what] my kinsfolk [will do] after I

am gone, for my wife has always been barren. Bestow, then, upon
me, out of Thy grace, the gift of a walī.’ Q.19:5
The Prophet is the friend of the believers:
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).

Friendship and enlightenment, represented by the ability to
correctly interpret reality, are presented as being profoundly
connected in the ‘Prayer of Joseph’:
‘O my Sustainer! Thou hast indeed bestowed upon me something

of power, and hast imparted unto me some knowledge of the
inner meaning of happenings (taʾwīl al-aḥādīth). Originator of
the heavens and the earth! Thou art my walī in this world and in
the life to come: let me die as one who has surrendered himself
unto Thee, and make me one with the righteous!’ Q.12:101
In contrast to what we might call ‘positive’ walāya there are

several instances in the Qurʾan when God condemns ‘negative
walāya’. Thus we read about the ‘friends of Satan’ or Ṭāghūt. We
have already quoted Q.2:257 above because it also mentions
positive walāya:
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
Do not take the kāfirūn as friends:
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
Satan or Satans as friends:
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
The nominal awlā (11 times) has a variety of meanings, none

of which have to do with sanctity or saint. Rather, it can mean
‘nearer’, ‘most worthy’ and ‘woe’. The active participle wāli

occurs once with the meaning of protector and muwālī, also
used once, means ‘turning toward’. The prevailing sense, then,
of the triliteral root w-l-y is that of a relationship of trust and
commitment, and frequently, mutuality: a covenant – between
two or more parties. As protecting friend, God is the prime
example to be emulated. In the Qurʾan, God is never called a
nabī or a rasūl (something that sounds vaguely ridiculous in
any case) but he is called a walī and is thus distinguished as pre-
eminent Friend. The divine quality of walāya, unlike the equally
divine appointed offices of rasūliyya and nabawiyya, is distin-
guished by virtue of its ontological status as, if you will, part of
the divine essence. All three words represent distinctive aspects
of religious authority in Islam. Messengership and prophethood
are restricted to time and place. Given the Qurʾanic citations
examined above, it is very difficult to translate walāya as ‘sanc-
tity’. Walāya as love, friendship and divine authority and pro-
tection continuously radiates from its Source upon all creation
and is, in fact, ‘kneaded’ into the ‘clay of creation’.20 It is thus a
20. On the permeation of creation by walāya, see below the discussion

of the Akbarian technical term sarayān: ‘circulation, permeation, flowing
through’. Other metaphors are sometimes used. For the one mentioned
here, ‘kneading’ divine love into the substance of creation, see Ali Asghar
Seyed-Gohrab, ‘The Erotic Spirit: Love, Man and Satan in Ḥāfiẓ’s Poetry’,
in Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry, ed. L. Lewisohn
(New York: I.B. Tauris, 2010), pp. 107–21, esp. p. 116. See also, e.g., Aḥmad
al-Aḥsāʾī, Rasāʾil fī kayfiyya al-sulūk ilā Allāh (Beirut: Dār al-ʿĀlimiyya, 1414
ah/1993 ce, Bahá’u’lláh, al-Kalimāt al-maknūnah (Rio de Janeiro: al-Nashr
universal value, while messengership and prophethood are not.

Prophethood, according to Islam, ended with Muḥammad, but
walāya continues as long as creation continues. We will return
to this problem below. Let us now look briefly at the way the
concept functions in the writings of Ibn ʿArabī.
WALĀYA IN IBN ʿARABĪ
Abū Yazīd Bisṭāmī said: ‘A friend should know as much about you
as God and keep just as quiet.’21

While Ibn ʿArabī allows that all believers are participants in a
general walāya there is another more restricted type of friend-
ship reserved for a special group.22 Ibn ʿArabī calls the friend of
God: a knower, ‘ʿārif ’; one embarked upon spiritual realization,
‘muḥaqqiq’, one blamed or blameworthy, ‘malāmī’; an heir,
‘wārith’, a sufi, ‘ṣūfī’, a servant/slave, ‘ʿabd’, and a man, ‘rajul’.
It is, incidentally, mistaken here to assign a gender meaning
to rajul, even though frequently a marker of gender in other
contexts. Rajul means ‘valiant’ or ‘steadfast’ or ‘accomplished’
and may be applied to both women and men, as, for example,
when ʿAttār (d.1220) famously designated Rābiʿa (d.801), the
remarkable woman friend of God in early Islam, as a ‘real man’:
someone who stands firm on the path of spiritual achieve-
ment.23 And just as it is mistaken to assign a gender to one of
the usual words for ‘man’ in Arabic, it is also a mistake to assign
a gender to walāya (as it happens, a feminine noun), since it is
equally applicable to qualified persons of either gender. Each of
these words: knower, blameworthy, man and so on, gives a dis-
tinct perspective on Ibn ʿArabī’s ‘doctrine’ of friendship. As we
said, the Qurʾan is the main source, but it is certainly not the
al-Bahāʾiyya fī al-Barāzīl, 152 be/1995 ce), p. 9.

21. Quoted in Lenn Evan Goodman, Jewish and Islamic Philosophy:
Crosspollinations in the Classic Age (New Brunswick, NJ  & Edinburgh: Rut-
gers University Press & Edinburgh University Press, 1999), p. 138.
22. Seal, p. 35.
23. Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1975), p. 426.
32 Todd Lawson
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

disciple of Ibn ʿArabī, and teacher of ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Kāshānī
(d.730/1330). In his commentary on the Fuṣūṣ he says that
Ibn ʿArabī’s station or rank of ‘Seal’ was evident in an actual
physical mark. This was a hollow, the size of a ‘peacock’s egg’
on his back between his shoulders. This physical anomaly is
significant only because it corresponds perfectly with its mate:
the physical seal of prophecy which Tradition records as being
an actual mark or seal on Muḥammad’s back, between his two
shoulders.25 As Chodkiewicz points out, this is a perfect dem-
onstration of the syzygy completed between the exoteric and
the esoteric. The mark of prophethood represents the ẓāhir –
it is swollen and ‘outward’ tending, while the mark of walāya
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.’
represents the bāṭin because, as a declivity, it tends inward.26 The

two bodily marks or signs correspond and fit perfectly with each
other, uniting both seals together in one unified entity. In fact,
this is a mythic illustration of the lexical meaning of wilā and
waliya – two other derivatives of the Arabic triliteral root w-l-y
– which refer to things that are so close that there is no longer
space between them or individual identity, like drops of water.
Two, thus joined, are now one. These two ‘deformities’ speak to
the purpose and reality of symbolism itself. The sources indi-
cate that their respective sizes and locations on the body indi-
cate a ‘perfect match’. That is, if the Prophet Muḥammad and

Ibn ʿArabī were to stand back to back, their respective marks
would be erased inasmuch as they would ‘lock’ them together
in a ‘new creation’ and disappear in the process of connection,
much in the way that atoms of oxygen and atoms of hydrogen
disappear in water. The two, Ibn ʿArabī and Muḥammad, are
now a single being whose vision takes in the full 360 degrees.27
This may be thought a personification of the hermeneutic
principle enunciated by none other than Abū Ḥāmid Ghazālī
(d.1111), who instructed his students to read the ẓāhir and the
bāṭin in perfect harmony or rhythm (bi’l-īqāʿ) and avoid the
grave error of reading only one ‘dimension’ of a text to the
exclusion of the other.28 This is also a perfect example of the
function and form of symbolism: etymologically, a symbolic
‘event’ implies two halves of a whole disk, originally broken in
two but when reunited their perfect fit indicates authenticity
and identity – ‘meaning’. Each half is a symbol of its other half.
It is ‘that broken object, the two halves of which bear witness,
for those holding them, to old bonds between themselves or
26. Seal, p. 143, n.31.

27. Such comprehensive vision is one of the attributes of the Quṭb or
Pole. For this fascinating topos or ‘mytheme’ we have the related images:
the place of the walī is a ‘non-place’, between him and God there is no
‘intermediary’, his face is ‘eternally turned towards God’; the walī is free of
the six directions that determine ordinary perception, see Seal, pp. 80, 96,
98, n.2 and 101, n.36, respectively.
28. Martin Whittingham, Al-Ghazālī and the Qurʾān: One Book, Many
Meanings (New York: Routledge, 2007).
34 Todd Lawson
their families; but it also signifies sign, contract, a signification

that is undecipherable without its counterpart … of the other,
its complement and support, its bestower of meaning.’29
This fitting together after the fashion of the symbol is a prom-
inent motif in the Akbarian noetic and reading of the Qurʾan
which are firmly based on the idea of divine self-manifestation
(tajallī), sometimes referred to as theophany. As such it may be
understood as disclosure and apocalypse (kashf) or recognition
and knowing (maʿrifa, ʿilm):
The world was not created in vain (ʿabathan, Q.23:115), it is not

an illusion (bāṭilan, Q.3:191): it is the theatre of theophanies, it
displays the ‘Hidden Treasure’ to which God compares himself
in a ḥadīth qudsī. [The world: al-ʿālam] is the place where one
acquires that other half of the knowledge of God which is the
essence of sainthood.30
The marks of walāya, the matching physical ‘seals’ on the

persons of both Ibn ʿArabī and the Prophet Muḥammad, have
relevance for and resonance with another set of symbols and
metaphors in Ibn ʿArabī’s vision of friendship, namely the
defining metaphor in the title of his most read book, the Fuṣūṣ
al-ḥikam.
IBN ʿARABĪ’S ALPHABET OF PROPHETS, ISLAMIC

COSMOPOLITANISM AND UNIVERSALITY
We sent not a messenger except (to teach) in the language of his

(own) people, in order to make (things) clear to them. Q.14:4
The Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam is Ibn ʿArabī’s last major writing and, we

may assume, his most mature work, one in which we may
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).
expect to find his teachings on friendship in their most finished

form. The Fuṣūṣ is essentially an extended essay in prophetol-
ogy. Based firmly on the Qurʾan, the main thrust is encapsu-
lated in the title of the work – where the guiding metaphor is
one from the art and craft of jewelry, namely the setting of the
gemstones as in a ring. (The ring itself may also be called a faṣṣ
or even a khātim for that matter, a ‘coincidence’ we may assume
that is not entirely accidental.) In this metaphor, it should be
remembered, the shape of the gem determines the shape of
the setting to a greater degree than would be the case today.
So we have another syzygy in which, again, two interlocking

elements combine in the manner of the above-mentioned sym-
bolism of the two bodily seals, to provide a key to a truth that
far transcends their respective dignities as either gem or setting.
The Gestalt here expresses the truth that each gemstone, which
in this context is a gem of divine virtue (not mineral value),
such as oneness or patience or divinity, or heart, or being, is
given to a particular community in the ‘person’ of a particu-
lar prophet. The bezel or prophetic reality is shaped to receive
the particular divine virtue in the same way the mark of friend-
ship on Ibn ʿArabī’s back was shaped to receive the prophetic
seal on the back of the Prophet Muḥammad. The perfect fit of
the gemstone in the bezel demonstrates another aspect of per-
fect walāya. The lexicographers tell us that the derivation wilā
indicates a closeness between which no space (and therefore no
difference) may be discerned.31 We may also assume that Ibn
ʿArabī wishes us to appreciate that the bezel or prophet is also
‘shaped’ by his particular historical, linguistic and cultural cir-
cumstance as suggested by, for example, al-Fārābī (d.950) in his
famous statement on the ‘oneness of truth’. Another important
aspect of the various chapters of this formidable book is that
each of the titles is constructed in a way that the prophetic real-
ity actually rhymes with the divine virtue it represents.
This ‘rhyme of friendship’ suggests the same kind of identity-
blurring that may occur through the imitation of the Prophet,
mentioned above. But here the blurring of identity is between
31. Lane, E.W., q.v. http://tyndalearchive.com/tabs/lane

36 Todd Lawson
the particular prophet and the Divinity, God, represented by

one of the virtues according to the principal of pars pro toto and
the rhetorical trope of synechdoche. A few of these rhyming
titles are:
The wisdom of divine praise in Noah’s teaching is:
ḥikma subūḥiyya fī kalima nūḥiyya
The wisdom of divine mercy in Solomon’s teaching is:
ḥikma raḥmāniyya fī kalima sulaymāniyya
The wisdom of divine Being in David’s teaching is:
ḥikma wujūdiyya fī kalima dāʾūdiyya

The wisdom of divine uniqueness in Muḥammad’s teaching is:
ḥikma fardiyya fī kalima muḥammadiyya
Furthermore, there are 27 of these bezels described and elabo-
rated in the Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam. Such a number, it has been pointed
out, may be related to the 27th of the month of Ramadan,
which is the Night of Power, the night on which the Qurʾan
was revealed, and the 27th of the month of Rajab, the date of
the miʿrāj or ascension of the Prophet Muḥammad through the
seven heavens to the Lote-tree beyond which there is no pass-
ing, the sidrat al-muntahā.32 It may well be that the number 27
should also be seen as a symbol of totality, the totality of the 28
letters of the Arabic alphabet, which is here, at 27, on the verge
of completion by a single element. It is certainly not uncom-
mon for the number 28 to thus symbolize totality in Islami-
cate philosophy and, more to the point, in Ibn ʿArabī’s writings
themselves. This has been demonstrated in a recent publication
in which the author analyzes the ‘alphabetic’ cosmology of Ibn
ʿArabī, elucidating its 28 levels of existence (marātib al-wujūd)
and coordinating each one with a particular letter of the Arabic
alphabet where each letter corresponds to a spiritual category,
or ‘divine name’, sign of the zodiac, element and so on.33
32. See Seal, pp. 87–8.

33. Naṣr Abū Zayd, Falsafat al-taʾwīl: dirāsah fī taʾwīl al-Qurʾān ʿinda
Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī (Beirut: Dār al-Waḥdah, 1983), pp. 45–149. See
also Seyyed Hossein Nasr, An Introduction to Islamic Cosmology Doctrines:
Conceptions of Nature and Methods Used for Its Study by the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ,
Indeed, it is not uncommon for authors to construct charts

(sing. dāʾira) to illustrate their understanding of such cosmic
resonances. Such a dāʾira showing the correspondences of the
Divine Names with the individual letters of the Arabic alphabet,
among other elements of the cosmos is ascribed to Ibn ʿArabī
himself.34
Thus the Fuṣūṣ, by its very structure, teaches that the rela-
tionship obtaining amongst its prophets is an alphabetic one
in which each element has a specific function and no single
element is more important than another. As a special group
of awliyāʾ (all messengers and prophets are awliyāʾ but not all

awliyāʾ are messengers or prophets) they comprise the ‘linguis-
tic’ elements, the spiritual vocabulary, for the new/old language
and revelation of islām in which every community that has ever
existed has had a prophet and in which each prophet speaks to
their community in that community’s language (Q.14:4). The
Qurʾan, of course, is quite clear: if God had wanted to he could
have made all humanity one single community (Q.11:118).
This he did not do: rather he created humanity in different
colors, speaking different languages (Q.30:22) and as different
nations and tribes, so that mankind could collectively experi-
ence the spiritual awakening entailed in recognizing the com-
mon humanity in each and every group (Q.49:13).35 Such an
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
act of recognition is in reality an act of remembrance/anam-

nesis (dhikr) and revealed knowledge/anagnorisis and aletheia
(maʿrifa, kashf): a reprise of that primal event of recognition
when all were gathered in the presence of God on the Day of
the Covenant, when God posed the question ‘Am I not your
Lord?’ to which all unhesitatingly and unanimously replied
‘Yes indeed!’ (Q.7:172). This language of unity and mutual rec-
ognition is, ultimately, a language of the spirit. This may be
thought dramatized by the way in which the hollow – the ‘seal
of walāya’ – between Ibn ʿArabī’s shoulders also symbolizes the
bezel into which a particular wisdom of a particular prophet

is set and the ‘seal of prophecy’ – the physical ‘seal’ between
the Prophet Muḥammad’s shoulders, represents the gemstone
or jewel of divine virtue. In any case, it is emblematic of the
relationship between a prophet and his community, a prophet
and God, and the walī and Muḥammad: an infinite series or
field of interlocking correspondences and relations – truly, an
ocean without shore, that attests to the reality and veracity of
the vision, as indicated in the much-loved and much-adduced
‘signs verse’ of the Qurʾan: ‘We will show them Our signs in the
cosmos and in their own souls that they might know this is the
Truth’ (Q.41:53).
As all created things are signs leading to the knowledge of
God and all humans are created ‘things’, such multiplicity is as
it should be. The Qurʾan seeks to harmonize or rationalize what
could otherwise be perceived as a ‘chaos’ of religions. And, in
fact, Islam succeeded in ‘domesticating’ this highly various and
potentially confusing chaos through those verses cited above
– and many others. The great medieval achievement of a dis-
tinctively Islamicate cosmopolitanism still holds many lessons
for us today. Ibn ʿArabī was a faithful and virtuoso son of this
of recognition and knowing. Here, as usual, the Qurʾan is very precise:

each group must participate in the act of recognizing the other group in
a gesture of mutuality and equality based on their common heritage from
having once been gathered together on the same ‘plane’ (cf. the plain of
ʿArafat where the covenant was renewed in the Prophet’s farewell Sermon)
at the day of the covenant.
cosmopolitanism. His way of understanding religious and cul-

tural difference is exemplified in what follows.
As Chodkiewicz explains, each language is actually one of
those revelations given to each of the 124,000 prophets and
messengers posited by Islamic teaching. Or, it is perhaps one
of those inspirations that have come down to the much larger
number of ‘friends’ (awliyāʾ) and which ‘determines … a spe-
cific form of knowledge and worship’:
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

the prophet who corresponds to the language he has had spoken
to him. This is why you will hear the People of the Way saying,
‘So-and-so’ is mūsawī [of Moses], or ʿīsawī [of Jesus], or ibrāhīmī
[of Abraham] or idrīsī [of Idris/Enoch].
…
But there are some among them who will be spoken to in two
languages, or three, or four, and so on. Perfect among them is he
who is spoken to in all languages: this is the exclusive privilege of the
Muḥammadan.36
The distinctive Akbarian celebration of difference, otherness,
variety and multiplicity is captured in the following:
If you consider that the worlds invoke God with the same invoca-
tion as you, your unveiling is imaginary, not genuine, and you are
quite simply seeing your own condition in created beings. How-
ever, if you perceive in them the diversity of their invocations,
then your unveiling is genuine.37
The Muḥammadan station is more precisely characterized
when Ibn ʿArabī himself, in the Kitāb al-Isrāʾ, claims that a par-
ticularly pertinent (in the present context) verse of the Qurʾan
36. Seal, p. 170; Chodkiewicz’s translation of an unidentified passage

from either Ibn ʿArabī or Jīlī. (Italics added.) Here, each ‘language’ repre-
sents a particular form of the revelation (waḥy) or inspiration (ilhām) which
descends from God upon the heart of the servant and which determines,
in return, a specific form of knowledge and worship. As we know, however,
the same person can accumulate many inheritances.
37. Seal, p. 155, from Fut.I:147.
40 Todd Lawson
was actually ‘[re]revealed to me (anzala ʿalayya)’, he cites the

verse, after giving precise details of the experience, which are
exact analogues to Muḥammad’s Miʿrāj experience at the Lote-
tree beyond which there is no passing, veiled from God by veils
of light:
God caused to descend upon me [anzala ʿalayya: the verb used

here is used in the Qurʾān of the ‘descent’ of the Revelation] the
verse: ‘Say: we believe in God, and in what has been revealed to
us, and in what was revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob,
the tribes [of Israel] and in what was given to Moses and Jesus… .’
(Qurʾān 3:84). And in this verse he gave me all the verses … and

He made it the key to all knowledge.38
Ibn ʿArabī conceived a ‘global doctrine’ of hallowed friend-

ship and, according to Chodkiewicz, he was the first to do so.
Furthermore, Chodkiewicz suggests that such a conception had
much to do with the prevailing cosmopolitanism of the time, a
cosmopolitanism that elicited other responses from other tem-
peraments, such as Ibn Taymiyya.39 Finally, Chodkiewicz states
succinctly the essence and dramatic appeal of this achievement
in the following words: ‘[T]he Muḥammadan community, in
the person of its saints and at any given moment in its history,
simultaneously recapitulates the “wisdoms” contained in the
successive prophetic revelations which have taken place since
the start of the human cycle, and the modes of spiritual realiza-
tion which correspond to them.’40
The superiority of Islam and Muḥammad, frequently empha-
sized by Ibn ʿArabī, should, therefore, neither surprise nor scan-
dalize us as citizens of a world when ideas of the superiority
of one religion over another seem at best hopelessly obsolete
and/or quaint and dangerous at worst. Indeed, it may be argued
that one of the reasons such superiority is deemed obsolete in
our time is – apparently paradoxically – the living legacy of Ibn
ʿArabī. Such ‘superiority’ resides in the simple fact that it is only
38. Seal, p. 165.

39. Seal, p. 14.
40. Seal, p. 86.
through this Islamic ‘Muḥammadan’ teaching, which, during

Ibn ʿArabī’s lifetime, was only taught by Islam and Muḥammad,
that we can actually observe such universality, a universality
which in time developed into the distinctive and impressive
Islamicate cosmopolitanism mentioned above, but which, until
the time of Muḥammad had simply not existed and therefore
had not been a perspective available to members of the human
race. The ‘alphabet of prophets’, one of the hallmarks of such
cosmopolitanism and universalism, is a shining feature of Ibn
ʿArabī’s teachings about walāya. Each prophet is a bearer of
walāya. This does not mean only those comparatively few 27

prophets mentioned in the Qurʾan or the Fuṣūṣ. The alphabet
of prophets in the Fuṣūṣ is analogous to the Arabic alphabet of
letters whose number is 28 – but, there are many more sounds
than 28 or 29 and we are told by the Islamic Tradition itself
that there are many more prophets than 27 (or 25 or 26). The
alphabet of prophets of the Fuṣūṣ is construed for us by Ibn
ʿArabī, building on the classical tales of the prophets which in
turn take their inspiration from the prophetology of the Qurʾan
and the so-called ‘sectarian milieu’ of the conception, birth and
development of historical Islam. The totality of the 124,000
prophets of Islamic Tradition accounts for the vast cultural and
religious differences recorded by history and scripture.
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
41. For what follows I have relied on Seal, pp. 95–105.

42 Todd Lawson
number of 124,000, we do not know how many there are, even

if we do know that there is only 1 quṭb, 8 nuqabāʾ, 12 nujabāʾ,
40 rajabiyyūn and so on (see below). This expanded alphabet
of prophets represents another iteration of the luminous let-
ter trope in Qurʾanic sciences: the 14 anomalous disconnected
letters at the head of those 29 suras of the Qurʾan.42 This trope
of luminosity is all the more compelling when we recall that,
in fact, according to Ibn ʿArabī’s teaching, the numberless
friends of God are invisible, unknown, anonymous. Their lumi-
nosity is not perceived directly by the senses but felt by the
heart, and thus we have the elements of a universal language of

universality.
Chodkiewicz offers a very clear analysis of the hierarchy,
taken from Chapter 73 of the Futūḥāt which lists 84 classes
of spiritual human, 35 of which have the constant number
of 589 friends. According to Chodkiewicz, the 49 categories
named afterwards represent types and degrees of friendship.
In addition, there are the 70,000 angels and the above-
mentioned heirs of the 124,000 prophets (of which there must
be at least 124,000).43 Very briefly, the hierarchy, after God, is
as follows:44
1 Quṭb (pole, axis, axle): ‘The Pole is both the centre of the
circle of the universe, and its circumference. He is the Mirror of
God, and the pivot of the world.’
2 Imāms (deputy leaders appointed by) the Quṭb.
These three are members of the next category:
4 Awtād (pillars).
7 Abdāl (substitutes: seven for each of the seven climes).
12 Nuqabāʾ (leaders): At Q.5:12 the Qurʾan uses the singular
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.
of this word (naqīb) to refer to the leaders of the 12 tribes of

Israel. The etymology of the word, as Chodkiewicz points out,
carries the sense of ‘seeker’.
8 Nujabāʾ: ‘They possess the secret of the eight lower spheres:
the sphere of the fixed stars and the seven planetary heavens of
Ptolemaic astronomy.’
1 Ḥawārī (disciple): ‘defends religion by sword and convinc-
ing evidence’.
40 Rajabiyyūn: ‘men of Rajab’.
Hierarchies are today unfashionable. This is so, at least partly,

because our understanding of the way in which the cosmos is
constructed has also changed. Ibn ʿArabī lived in and wrote
and spoke to people whose conception of the universe was
hierarchical. Our understanding today of the universe and of
humanity is that of a relational field rather than a hierarchical
one.45 It is interesting to ponder what Ibn ʿArabī might have
written and taught in the context of a relational cosmos rather
than a hierarchical one. Nevertheless, it was a hierarchical world
in which and to which Ibn ʿArabī spoke and his emergent struc-
ture of walāya bears the imprint of this fact of the history of
what we now call ‘science’ and its deep and formative influence
on culture, society and identity.
THE ANONYMITY OF THE FRIENDS

The theory and structure of walāya are such that a single walī
may in fact embody several ranks simultaneously. This fact,
combined with the variety of prophetic inheritances implied
by the ‘economy’ of walāya thus sketched, gives us a charis-
matic system or ‘government’ of ‘inexhaustible richness’ and
dynamism.46 Another distinguishing feature of Ibn ʿArabī’s
45. An interesting and lucid lament of the loss of hierarchy and a

perceived concomitant loss of metaphysics as such is Adrian Pabst, Meta-
physics: The Creation of Hierarchy (Grand Rapids, MI.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub.
Co., 2012).
46. Seal, p. 106.
44 Todd Lawson
profoundly spiritual and universal ‘government of walāya’ is

that its ministers and officials would appear to be largely anon-
ymous and invisible.47 There are numerous reports from the
Prophet and numerous statements from Ibn ʿArabī and other
spiritual masters of Islam which strongly indicate that the most
noble, the most accomplished, of the friends of God are also
unknown, anonymous and inconspicuous. There is no space
here to list these numerous hadith and other statements. For
now, one or two will suffice:
The servants whom God loves best are the pious and the hidden.

When they are away no one misses them, and when they are pre-
sent they are ignored. These are the imāms of good guidance and
the torches of Knowledge.48
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
It is as if Ibn ʿArabī were describing a deep state with a power-

ful ‘spiritual bureaucracy’ (something that strikes us as slightly
oxymoronic) to sustain his world after the soon-to-be-suffered
incredible devastations wrought by the Mongol invasions.
47. Henry Corbin, in his prolific and profound studies of Islamic

thought, insisted on the importance for that tradition of an anonymous
sodality of spiritual heroes which he called Ecclesia spiritualis. See his En
Islam iranien, q.v. Index in vol. 4.
48. Seal, p. 37, translating a hadith quoted by Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh
Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣbahānī (d.1038), in his celebrated and influential Ḥilyat
al-awliyāʾ wa-ṭabaqāt al-aṣfiyāʾ.
49. English trans. of the original French trans. of Fut.I:181 by Claude
Addas, Ibn ʿArabī, ou La quête du soufre rouge (Paris: Gallimard, 1989). The
English translation is in Addas, p. 71.
Those invasions led to the destruction of the geographic heart

and symbol of the dār al-islām, the abode of Islam, and its
administrative centre Baghdad in 1258 – 18 years after the pass-
ing of al-Shaykh al-Akbar. His achievement would place the
heart of Islam safely out of harm’s way, well beyond terrestrial
geography. As is the case with the infamous and sinister deep
state of recent political analysis and notoriety, bureaucracies
and administrative networks do not have to be visible to be
effective. The key to the effectiveness of Ibn ʿArabī’s invisible
dominion is the natural-cum-divine, physical-cum-spiritual law
of permeation or circulation, in Arabic, sarayān, to which we

will now turn.
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
flow and current, connote the mood or atmosphere pervading

a room. Al-Isrāʾ is the word for the Prophet Muḥammad’s para-
digmatic night journey and ascent through the seven heavens
which is derived from the Qurʾanic verse: subḥāna al-ladhī asrāʾ
bi-ʿabdihi min al-masjid al-ḥarām ilā al-masjid al-aqṣā al-ladhī
barāknā ḥawlahu min āyātinā innahu hūwa al-samīʿ al-baṣīr /
Glory be to Him who transported His servant by night from the
Inviolable House of Worship [at Mecca] to the Remote House
of Worship – the environs of which We had blessed – so that
We might show him some of Our signs: for, verily, He alone
is all-hearing, all-seeing.52 (Sūrat al-Isrāʾ, Q.17:1). As Izutsu

indicated, sarayān, sāriya and the verbal sarat (‘to flow’, fem.)
occur frequently throughout the Futūḥāt and the Fuṣūṣ where
the first instance, in the Chapter of Adam, is quite pertinent to
our theme: ‘And if it were not for the permeation of the Real
through the forms of all existent things the world would not
have existence. (Wa law lā sarayāna al-ḥaqq fī al-mawjūdāt bi’l-
ṣūrati mā kāna li-l-ʿālam wujūd.)53 The word occurs another four
times in the Fuṣūṣ; its companion term sāriya occurs three times.
There is no space here to examine these passages in detail, but
it will be important to look at the Chapter of Jesus, however
cursorily, where Ibn ʿArabī introduces the waterlike qualities of
walāya and its circulation (sāriya) throughout existent, created
things. In discussing how the descent of the spirit brings life to
whatever thing it comes to and also underlining the similarity
between water (māʾ) and spirit (rūḥ), he says:
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).
be called ‘spirit’, but only in virtue of that which resides (al-qāʾim)

in it.54
Ibn ʿArabī then emphasizes that Jesus, the seal of universal

walāya, came to be through the combination of two types of
water: physical and spiritual:
Thus did desire pervade Mary (fa-sarat al-shahwa fi Miryam) and

the body of Jesus was created from the actual water of Mary and
the imaginal (or spiritual mutawahham) moisture in the breath of
Gabriel.55

The phenomenon or process is also mentioned by Izutsu who
wrote that being aware of and actually embodying the interpen-
etration and permeation (sarayān) of the Absolute at the high-
est degree possible is one of the characteristics of the Perfect
Man.56 The idea of interpenetration and permeation as a suit-
able aspect of walāya-as-friendship is made more compelling by
looking at another word for friend, khalīl. Corbin pointed out
in his Creative Imagination that Ibn ʿArabī chose the name ‘Abra-
ham’ – known to the Islamic Tradition through the Qurʾan as
the ‘friend of God’ (khalīl Allāh, cf. Q.4:125) as a symbol of the
Perfect Man because the word takhallala – a derivative of the
same Arabic triliteral root from which the word khalīl (friend)
derives, means to ‘permeate, mix, interpenetrate’ – that is:
[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
This is an expression of the interconnectedness of being

through divinity which posits that the ‘divine Ipseity (huwiyya)
is diffused in all manifested beings; for within all beings, God
has a Face which is His own.’58
Thus it would seem that the members of this invisible edifice
of friendship are key instruments (power and purification sta-
tions, if you will) in the circulation of walāya throughout the
cosmos; they are the arteries of the body of the world through
which divine friendship circulates and, as such, are a prime
example of the way in which so-called ‘secondary causes’ are to
be understood. Divinity, by means of walāya, circulates as ‘liquid

electricity’. Thus, through the spiritual laws of the coincidentia
oppositorum59 divinity enlivens and circulates ‘within second-
ary causes and not through them (ʿinda’l-asbāb lā bi’l-asbāb)’.60
Such circulation is symbolized in the circumambulation of the
Kaʿba and explains how the Pole, the Quṭb, is connected to eve-
rything in the world: ‘The Pole is both the centre of the circle
of the universe, and its circumference. He is the Mirror of God,
and the pivot of the world. He is bound by subtle links to the
hearts of all created beings and brings them either good or evil,
neither one predominating.’61
Here we have another example of reversal or paradox in
which that which is eternal and stable is really mutability, flux
and movement. Heraclitus would be pleased. He would also be
pleased because through such permeation and constant flow
all of the various oppositions are resolved, dissolved and even
reversed. In short, the fearful symmetry of our lives is shown to
Ralph Manheim (Princeton, 1969), p. 315. Thus is Abraham, as khalīl, the

host par excellence to the divine influx, offering another angle from which
to understand the important motif of philoxeny.
58. Seal, p. 177, n.28, translating Jīlī.
59. Izutsu, Sufism, pp. 148, 153; Corbin, Creative Imagination, pp. 35–6
and 157ff. Chittick, SPK, q.v. index, opposites (coincidence of). For the
Qurʾanic foundation of this noetic ‘trope’, see Todd Lawson, ‘Duality,
Opposition and Typology in the Qurʾan: The Apocalyptic Substrate’, in
Journal of Qurʾanic Studies X (2008), 23–48.
60. Seal, p. 110.
61. Seal, p. 95, translating from Ibn ʿArabī’s Kitāb manzil al-quṭb.
be ephemeral while the substance of our lives, walāya, is shown

to be timeless and permanent. As Ibn ʿArabī says about one of
the stations of the path in which ‘straightness’ is actually seen
as circular: ‘If you do not stop at that point … you will come to
know the rules of taking and giving, of contraction and expan-
sion, and you will learn how to preserve the heart from con-
suming itself to death. You will also see that all paths go in a
circle and that not one is straight…’.62
So the straight path is circular. It is the path of sarayān: flux,
circulation and permeation. To close this section I will quote
from a pre-modern follower of Ibn ʿArabī who applied the

Shaykh’s teachings to the specific and distinctive requirements
of Shiʿi Islam. But his words on sarayān help us understand this
technical feature of the ‘resource mobilization’ of friendship:
The Perfect Man is God’s word and God’s light and God’s spirit and
God’s veil. This reality flows through the cosmos (al-ʿālam) just as
the point flows through and permeates all the letters and bodies,
or the way the ‘idea of 1’ flows through and in all the numbers, or
the way the letter alif flows through all the words, or the way the
most holy name circulates and permeates all the names.63
POWER AND LIGHT

When we read about this process of sarayān today our imagina-
tions are more likely to associate sarayān with electricity than
with water. A sign of the modern age, one supposes. This, in
a sense, is highly immaterial: water or electricity, or both at
once. However, the instrumentality of the imagination in aid-
ing understanding is not immaterial. The imagination is that
without which spiritual knowledge cannot be conveyed. The
use of water by Ibn ʿArabī to explicate his theory of Being is a
perfect example of the observation that the ‘elements are the
hormones of the imagination’.64 They cause the imagination to
62. Seal, p. 158, translating from Ibn ʿArabī’s Risālat al-anwār.

63. Rajab Bursī (d.1411), Mashāriq al-anwār al-yaqīn fī asrār Amīr
al-muʾmīn (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Aʿlamī li’l-Maṭbūʿāt, 1970), pp. 31–2.
64. Gaston Bachelard, L’Air et les songes: essai sur l’imagination du
50 Todd Lawson
‘move’. Thus the identification of Friendship with water may

be thought of as one of the teachings of Ibn ʿArabī, for whom
nothing is ever merely imaginary but always imaginal: spirit-
ually substantial.65 It is also a perfectly timely one, especially
when drinkable and healthy water has become much less taken
for granted with the growing awareness that however transpar-
ent and common or inconspicuous it might be – especially to
those who live where it is abundant – it is the most valuable
resource on our planet: that without which there is nothing,
exactly as Ibn ʿArabī speaks of the circulation of divine mercy, a
constituent of walāya, in the above quotation.66 It is like those

awliyāʾ in the hadith: forgettable, unremarkable, nondescript
‘transparent’ members of a group whom, Muḥammad’s words
assure us, are the true friends of God. In the Qurʾan, recall, all
things are made from water (Q.21:30). Thus Chodkiewicz, in
speaking of the Akbarian Mantle, employs a metaphor that is
more than a metaphor when he says of the special charisma
that is the legacy of Ibn ʿArabī in our world today: ‘Hence the
importance of the khirqa akbariyya, whose course, like that of an
underground river, may suddenly surface for a while into the
light of day, and leave the imprint of Ibn ʿArabī on one of the
branches of an existing ṭarīqa’.67
Physical water is, of course, under siege. It would appear that
there is an intimate link between the ecology of the imaginal soul
and the physical realm. It also seems clear that such a link has
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.
long been recognized by the Islamic sapiential Tradition. These

beautiful lines from Rūmī (d.1273) could not be more clear:
There is a Water that flows down from Heaven

To cleanse the world of sin by grace Divine.
At last, its whole stock spent, its virtue gone.
Dark with pollution not its own, it speeds
Back to the Fountain of all purities;
Whence, freshly bathed, earthward it sweeps again,
Trailing a robe of glory bright and pure.
This Water is the Spirit of the Friends,
Which ever sheds, until itself is beggared,

God’s balm on the sick soul; and then returns 
To Him who made the purest light of Heaven.68
Much more could be said about the spiritual significance of

water and its imaginal value for deepening our understanding
of walāya.69 For this water seems to symbolize synesthesia: taste,
sight (its luminosity, something we have not touched upon, is
a major feature of its ‘hormonal’ quality: recall the saying of
the Prophet, as in ‘gazing upon three things brings peace to the
soul: a beautiful face, the color green and water’). Touch is obvi-
ously important, as is smell. The actual ‘waterlike’ liquid sound
of the word walāya is also evocative. (Indeed flowing water may
in fact be responsible for the idea of ‘rhythm’ itself.) Numerous
Qurʾanic verses orchestrate this Wassermusik by linking such
words as walī, awliyāʾ, walāya, mawlā and mawālī with taʾwīl
(interpretation, understanding), awlā (preeminence), al-awwal
(the first), ūli (owners, masters) and so on. Water and liquids in
the Qurʾan, like walāya, has so far not been thoroughly studied.
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
Recently, a beautiful meditation on the topic has opened many

avenues for further exploration.70 Not least among the valuable
insights offered here is the manner in which the author uses the
theme of water in the Qurʾan and in Ibn ʿArabī to illustrate the
Akbarian principle of aḥadiyyat al-kathra: the inherent oneness
of the multiple and various. On this score alone, water would be
a perfect metaphor for walāya (a topic not broached). However
the article does elucidate what one might call the ‘sacramental
status of water’ under several key categories: water as life, waters
of trial and death, water as knowledge, water as sharīʿa, water
as love, and finally water as purification. It seems clear that an

entire book could be devoted to each of these topics.71
In the meantime, let us proceed to our conclusion by way of
the isomorphism of the heart of the believer with the divine
Throne and the all-important topic of covenant, ʿahd, mīthāq.
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.
THE COVENANT BETWEEN THE HEART

AND THE THRONE
The Qurʾan tells us that all things are made from water (Q.21:30),
that water may be a sign of divine mercy or divine wrath,72 it
is a sign of God, and also, that it brings life to things that have
died (Q.2:164 et passim). Most significantly, in this context, the
divine Throne, which is vaster than all creation (‘His Throne
comprises (wasiʿa) the heavens and earth’ Q.2:255) is estab-
lished on water/wa kāna ʿarshuhu ʿalā al-māʾ (Q.11:7). Further-
more, ‘the All-compassionate sat Himself upon the Throne’ and

everything in creation belongs to Him (Q.20:5–6). If we think
of these verses along with the beloved hadith qudsi, quoted
many times by Ibn ʿArabī: ‘Heaven and earth contain Me not,
but the heart of My faithful servant contains Me’, then we must
conclude that the heart is also established on water. Then the
idea begins to come into focus that water is also a metaphor
for consciousness itself: the ‘substance’ shared perpetually and
unceasingly between God and his creatures. The homologation
or isomorphism between the Throne of God and the heart of
the servant or walī is complete when we consider that both the
throne and the heart are supported and nourished by water, the
water of walāya. For the believer water represents the primary
vision of sarayān, circulation and flow. Without the element it
would be impossible to understand the idea of permeation of
the divine throughout all existent things. The idea of move-
ment is perfectly illustrative of our theme.
Movement within a movement that may be thought to have
begun on the Day of the Covenant (Q.7:172) and through
which that primordial moment, in which both consciousness
and history have been set in motion, is ever present.73 The cov-
enant remains perpetually alive precisely because it continues
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
to circulate through all creation, enlivening, guiding and illu-

minating. Thus through the flow of walāya, which also means
loyalty and faithfulness, the primordial bond between God and
humanity, which entails what is in some way an even more pri-
mordial bond uniting an incredibly various yet single human-
ity, is perpetuated and renewed. The covenant is an exceedingly
powerful theme in the Qurʾan and in the Islamic imaginaire.
In a sense, it has been argued, all agreements and all pacts are
typologically connected to it.74 This would be especially true
of those several agreements recorded in the earliest biogra-
phy of the Prophet or referred to in the Qurʾan.75 Landolt has

pointed out the covenantal implications and tonality of walāya
in describing the pact between a Sufi master and a disciple as a
‘performance’ or ‘dramatic remembrance’ of the pact (ṣulḥ) of
al-Ḥudaybīyah, itself a typological iteration of the primordial
covenant, which represented a stage in the consolidation of the
Prophet’s special authority (walāya):
It culminates in the solemn pledge of allegiance (mubāyaʿah)

made to him in lieu of God in 628 at al-Ḥudaybīyah (Q.48:9–10).
The ceremonial contract of allegiance (bayʿah) made with his suc-
cessors – caliphs, imams, and later also Ṣūfī shaykhs – all of whom
would claim wilāyah of a certain kind, was to reiterate this charis-
matic basis of Islam symbolically.76
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.
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

mention of this sinister and cynical feature of modern political
culture in the service of the important insight: that just because
an institution is cloaked and invisible does not mean that it
is inconsequential, feckless or of no interest or purpose, and
that a deep or charismatic state of the type we are discussing
would seem to be a divinely ordained counterpart.77 The doc-
trine of walāya does indeed seem to presuppose that the world
is divided into two camps.78 Should it not also occupy the ener-
gies, thoughts, prayers and hearts of all those concerned (and
perhaps even visible) souls who dwell on earth in these dark
and savage times? For the vision of such a deep and indestructi-
ble refuge of divine mercy and love we are in the eternal debt of
al-Shaykh al-Akbar who, through his own spiritual struggle and
accomplishment, has bequeathed to us a dār al-amnāʾ – a most
secure abode – through which walāya flows and illumines and
will continue to do so as long as the cosmos exists. If friendship
is water and the elements are the hormones of the imagination,
the Divine Names are also the hormones of the soul. Movement
is a defining emblem of Islamic spiritual life: ḥaraka baraka as
the well-known Arabic saying has it, ‘movement is blessing’.
The ‘partisans of walāya’ are legion, even if we are not sure
who they are. But, being not sure who they are does not impinge
upon the agency or efficacy of walāya which, like water, cannot
but bestow and enhance life, being in fact synonymous with
77. Cf. Corbin’s ecclesia spiritualis.

78. Landolt, ‘Walāyah’, p. 317.
56 Todd Lawson
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’:
We had stopped for our noonprayer. As I washed my hands, face

and feet from a waterskin a few drops spilled over a dried-up tuft
of grass at my feet, a miserable little plant yellow and withered
and lifeless under the harsh rays of the sun. But as the water trick-

led over it a shiver went through the shrivelled blades, and I saw
how they slowly, tremblingly, unfolded. A few more drops, and
the little blades moved and curled and then straightened them-
selves slowly, hesitantly, trembling … I held my breath as I poured
more water over the grass tuft. It moved more quickly, more vio-
lently, as if some hidden force were pushing it out of its dream
of death. Its blades – what a delight to behold! – contracted and
expanded like the arms of a starfish, seemingly overwhelmed by
a shy irrepressible delirium, a real little orgy of sensual joy: and
thus life re-entered victoriously what a moment ago had been as
dead. Entered it visibly, passionately, overpowering and beyond
understanding in its majesty.80
I wonder how the word ‘saint’ would sound in the ears of Ibn
ʿArabī if more than his legacy were alive today.
79. Jaffray, ‘“Watered with One Water’”, 6–8.

80. Quoted in Lloyd-Sidle and Henry-Blakemore, Water: Its Spiritual Sig-
nificance, p. 68.

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Friendship, Illumination and

the Water of Life1

Ibn ʿArabī’s legacy and role in the contemporary world is mul-

Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 59, 2016

1. This is a revised version of a paper presented to the annual meeting

a blurring or, perhaps better, ‘rhyming’ of identity. The question

Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 59, 2016

There is no word for saint in the Qurʾan. And there seems

ʿīd kullu al-qiddīsīn and a patron saint is al-qiddīs al-shafīʿ.

Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 59, 2016

Wilāyah (saintship) according to Ibnul ʿArabī, and, indeed,

It is important to try to be precise because walāya is the

of Ibn ʿArabī, this word walāya is done something of a grave

Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 59, 2016

One dominant motif in early Christian spirituality is compara-

of sainthood in Sufism: as eastern Christians pass from Syriac

Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 59, 2016

9. Julian Baldick, Mystical Islam: An Introduction to Sufism (New York:

or North American languages. When we think of today’s world

Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 59, 2016

10. Seal, p. 72; the reference is to Futūḥāt, Chaps. 68 to 72.

on walāya which we may understand as ‘hallowed friendship’

Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 59, 2016

12. Bennet Helm, ‘Friendship’, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

includes a brief survey of its technical usage; and to locate,

WALĀYA IN THE QURʾAN

Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 59, 2016

nominal walī in more detail. This word occurs 86 times in the

Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 59, 2016

‘O my Sustainer! Thou hast indeed bestowed upon me some-

Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 59, 2016

Behold, they could never be of any avail to thee if thou wert to

We do have an excellent study of walāya in general and one for

15. Landolt, ‘Walāyah’ and Seal respectively, referred to above.

Sufism17 and Islamic law,18 but we still do not have an exhaus-

God’s unique position as the most powerful friend and helper

Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 59, 2016

Before moving on to the topic of walāya as friendship in Ibn

Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 59, 2016

The friends of God will neither fear nor grieve:

God, ultimately, has no friend (in the sense of protector or

Other than God, there is no friend:

Friend as Successor in the ‘Prayer of Zachariah’:

‘Now, behold, I am afraid of [what] my kinsfolk [will do] after I

The Prophet is the friend of the believers:

Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 59, 2016

‘O my Sustainer! Thou hast indeed bestowed upon me something

In contrast to what we might call ‘positive’ walāya there are

Do not take the kāfirūn as friends:

Satan or Satans as friends:

The nominal awlā (11 times) has a variety of meanings, none

Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 59, 2016

20. On the permeation of creation by walāya, see below the discussion

universal value, while messengership and prophethood are not.

WALĀYA IN IBN ʿARABĪ

Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 59, 2016

al-Bahāʾiyya fī al-Barāzīl, 152 be/1995 ce), p. 9.

Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 59, 2016

represents the bāṭin because, as a declivity, it tends inward.26 The

Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 59, 2016

26. Seal, p. 143, n.31.

their families; but it also signifies sign, contract, a signification

The world was not created in vain (ʿabathan, Q.23:115), it is not