In the Name of God, the All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate. And may God's blessings be upon our master and prophet Muḥammad and upon his pure and immaculate Family.

This work is a translation of four treatises composed by the master ʿAllāmah Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ṭabāṭabāʾī (may God have mercy upon him), dealing in turn with the Unity of the Divine Essence (tawḥīd dhātī), the Most Beautiful Names (al-asmāʾ al-ḥusnā) and the Acts of God Most Glorious, and the intermediaries between Him and the world of nature. As the venerable author himself notes at the end of each treatise, these were written in the lunar Hijrī years 1356 and 1357 [c. 1937–1938 CE], with their final redaction completed in 1361 AH [c. 1942 CE].

The esteemed author, with consummate mastery of both the rational and the transmitted sciences (al-ʿulūm al-ʿaqliyya wa al-naqliyya), first establishes the topics under discussion by reasoned demonstration, and then adduces abundant Qurʾānic verses and traditions in confirmation and as transmitted proof. In one chapter the rational arguments are set out, and in the chapter that follows the transmitted evidence — both Qurʾānic verses and ḥadīth — is adduced; thereby he displays the complete harmony between reason (ʿaql) and revelation (waḥy).

The book is of particular importance from both sides: originality and innovation are evident both in some of its demonstrations (as the noble author himself remarks in certain places) and in the way it draws fine and subtle points from the transmitted evidence.

The first treatise speaks of the true unity of existence (al-waḥda al-ḥaqqa li-l-wujūd) and of the absolute (iṭlāqī) Oneness of the Most Holy Essence of God. It establishes that that pure Essence is utterly free from every nominal or attributive determination (taʿayyun ismī wa waṣfī) and from every conceptual delimitation (taqayyud mafhūmī) — bound by no qualification whatsoever, not even by absoluteness itself. He then confirms this by adducing numerous Qurʾānic verses and traditions.

In an essay appended to the Treatise on Tawḥīd, the venerable author seeks to establish that Islam has been the foremost of all traditions in the matter of tawḥīd and has surpassed all others — since the tawḥīd of Islam, which is precisely this absolute Oneness, is the highest and culminating degree of tawḥīd. He then expounds the fruits and consequences of this perspective for moral cultivation (tarbiya) and self-purification (tazkiya).

The second treatise speaks of the Names and attributes of the Real Most High (ḥaḍrat al-Ḥaqq), which are the very determinations (taʿayyunāt) of His holy Essence. A range of questions touching on the Divine Names is raised and discussed in this treatise.

The third treatise discusses the Divine Acts (al-afʿāl al-ilāhiyya) and their corollaries — such as the question of qaḍāʾ wa qadar (decree and apportionment), badāʾ (the appearance of new factors in the divine plan), felicity and wretchedness (saʿāda wa shaqāwa), compulsion and delegation (jabr wa tafwīḍ), divine guidance and leading-astray (hidāya wa iḍlāl), divine willing and intent (mashīʾa wa irāda), the testing and the gradual drawing-on of the heedless (tamḥīṣ wa istidrāj), and other matters of the same order.

The fourth treatise speaks of those beings that are intermediaries of grace (wāsiṭa-yi fayḍ) between the Most High and the material world. It begins by establishing the fourfold worlds of being — Lāhūt (the World of Divinity), Jabarūt (the World of Omnipotence), Malakūt (the World of Sovereignty), and Nāsūt (the World of Humanity / the material) — and continues with discussion of the veils (ḥujub), the Pen (al-qalam), the Tablet (al-lawḥ), the Throne (al-ʿarsh), the Footstool (al-kursī), the heavens and the earth, the angels (malāʾika), and the devils (shayāṭīn).

It should be said that the text of this book has been composed in a highly condensed style; the respectful reader must therefore be patient and forbearing in apprehending its content, and must accompany his reading with careful attention and reflection. This, of course, is not peculiar to the present work but is evident throughout most of the venerable author's writings.

In closing I must record my thanks and appreciation to the eminent scholar Ḥujjat al-Islām wa al-Muslimīn Mr. Ṣādiq Lārījānī, who helped me resolve a number of obscurities in the text, and likewise to the worthy scholar Ḥujjat al-Islām Mr. Muḥsin Aḥmadī, who assisted in identifying the sources of certain traditions. May God Most High grant them — and this humble servant — the grace of service to beloved Islam.

In the Name of God, the All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate. He is God — mighty is His Name. All praise belongs to God, the Lord of the worlds; and may blessings and peace be upon His drawn-near friends, Muḥammad and his Pure Household.

In the abode of being, a single, necessarily-existent (wājib al-wujūd) being is realized which embraces every attribute of perfection. Muslims and other followers of the monotheistic religions have set forth solid and well-known demonstrations for proving His existence and His attributes; here, at the level of our own reflection, we shall establish the reality of this meaning over the course of several chapters.

The Sophist says: "The world is empty and illusory." The Philosopher says: "There are realities existing outside [the mind]." One must reflect upon what each of these two asserts. Although the Philosopher's claim does not amount to a fully worked-out exposition, we nevertheless understand both what we ourselves are saying and what they are saying. By terms such as al-aṣīl ("the genuinely real"), al-wāqiʿ ("what actually obtains"), what-is-in-actuality, al-ḥaqīqa ("reality"), al-wujūd ("existence"), and the source of effects (manshaʾ al-āthār), we mean precisely that which we shall establish over against the Sophist.

Existence (wujūd) is a genuinely real reality, and there is no other for it outside [itself]; for whatever would be other than it would be empty and void. Existence, then, is a pure and unmixed (ṣirf wa khāliṣ) reality. The consequence is that whatever we take to be a "second" alongside it can only be it again — because if it were something else, or distinguished from it by some additional thing, it would be empty and void. Hence supposing a "second" for existence is impossible. The reality of existence is therefore One, and its unity is the true unity (waḥda ḥaqqa), as has already been stated.

From this it becomes clear that the reality of existence possesses every real perfection — indeed, is itself that perfection.

And since existence is, in its very essence, the contradictory of nonexistence and that which excludes it, its essence is such that nonexistence can neither attach to it nor be predicated of it. Existence, therefore, is a reality that is in itself necessary-of-existence. The reality of existence is, accordingly, in itself and in every respect, wājib al-wujūd: possessing all the attributes of perfection and free of every defect and every privation.

It is self-evident that every concept is, in itself, distinct from every other concept. As a consequence, the application (inṭibāq) of a given concept to a particular instance (miṣdāq) is, of necessity, nothing other than some manner of delimitation (taqyīd) of that instance — a fact whose necessity becomes plain on a moment's reflection. The logical converse of this proposition is that the application of any concept to an instance which is in itself unbounded (nāmaḥdūd) is in some way posterior to the rank of that instance's own essence. This kind of posteriority is precisely the posteriority of determination (taʿayyun) to non-delimitation (iṭlāq).

From the other side, it is clear that the rank of the predicate is posterior to the rank of the subject. Since the Necessary Existence (wujūd wājibī) is pure and unmixed, it is unbounded; and consequently it stands beyond every kind of nominal or attributive determination and every kind of conceptual delimitation — indeed, it is even beyond this very ruling. This holy Reality, then, is absolute with respect to every supposed determination, and is bound by no qualification whatsoever, not even by the qualification of being absolute. (Reflect carefully here.)

The content of what has been set out in the previous chapters appears repeatedly in the Book [the Qurʾān] and the Sunna. These attestations may be grouped under the following heads.

[There are] numerous verses indicating that "to God belongs whatever is in the heavens and the earth" [Qurʾān 2:284 and elsewhere], and "to God belongs the kingdom of the heavens and the earth" [Qurʾān 5:120 and elsewhere], and "to Him belongs whatever dwells in the night and the day" [Qurʾān 6:13]. For it is clear that this ownership (milkiyya) is not the conventional, supposititious ownership (milkiyya iʿtibāriyya) that human beings have devised for the regulation of their social affairs; it is rather a real relation. And in real relations one term (the related, al-mansūb) must, in its very existence, have an essential dependence upon the other term (that to which it is related, al-mansūb ilayh).

And, by my life, if there were in the entire Book of God only these two verses — "And We did not create the heavens and the earth and what is between them in play. We created them only in truth (bi-l-ḥaqq), but most of them know not." [Qurʾān 44:38–39] — that would suffice for the free-thinking human being to grasp the realities of these meanings.

The substance of the matter is this: if a human being detaches himself from the adornments of this world, turns his back upon the goods of this base life, gathers his concerns into a single concern, and sets the face of his soul toward his Lord — entering the precincts of the holy world — then he witnesses, with direct vision, that all the ends and hopes and longings of those who pursue this world (rulership, eminence, leadership, ministerial office, prestige, ties of kinship, lineage, and ancestry, and the contraries of all these, and a thousand similar things) are nothing but matters of fancy: play, diversion, and the chattels of delusion [cf. Qurʾān 3:185].

He likewise finds that the diverse kinds of pleasures, blessings, and enjoyments toward which people incline, after which they strive, and for which they expend their very lives — these too are merely vanities (awhām) to which God, the Glorified, has harnessed the people of this life until the time of that decreed matter arrives. And God has a determined affair which He shall surely bring about.

When such a human being sees that God, the Glorified, ascribes to Himself in His Book and on the tongues of His Messenger and His friends such attributes as al-Raḥmān (the All-Merciful), al-Raḥīm (the All-Compassionate), al-Khāliq (the Creator), al-Mālik (the Sovereign), al-ʿAzīz (the Mighty), al-Ḥakīm (the Wise), al-Ghafūr (the Forgiving), al-Shakūr (the Appreciative), and says: "To Him belongs every most-beautiful Name, and He is exalted above every ugliness and deficiency" — knowing as he does that these attributes are real matters and stable relations and connections — then, drawing upon the subtlety of his native disposition (qarīḥa) and the soundness of his discernment (dhawq), he comes to certitude that these relations are simply modes of the dependence of the essences of beings upon God the Glorified, while God Himself subsists by His own Essence (qāʾim bi-dhāt).

And then the truth that God the Glorified is, by virtue of His own Essence, the Witness over every thing reinforces this realization: "Does it not suffice with your Lord that He is over every thing a Witness?" [Qurʾān 41:53]

Demonstration, in turn, confirms this realization. A real relation that holds at the level of a thing's very essence — such as God's act of creation and His ownership of the thing's essence — must be realized at the level of that essence itself. And since such relations are relational existences (wujūdāt rābiṭa), they cannot be realized without their two terms; the other term of the relation (the related-to, al-mansūb ilayh) is therefore necessarily present in the very essence of the thing. Of necessity, then, one of the two must be dependent upon the essence of the other — for otherwise the two would be one, which is impossible. Hence God's ownership of beings is just this: the manner in which the substance and essence of those beings stand by God and depend upon Him. The same applies to all the other relations and meanings of this kind. (Reflect carefully here.)

[There are] numerous traditions indicating that the Unity of God is not a numerical unity (waḥda ʿadadiyya). Al-Ṣadūq (may God have mercy upon him) reports in Kitāb al-Tawḥīd, al-Khiṣāl, and Maʿānī al-Akhbār, with a connected chain from Shurayḥ b. Hāniʾ, that on the day of the Battle of the Camel a Bedouin stood before the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him) and asked: "Do you say that God is One?" The people rushed at him, saying: "Man! Do you not see that the Commander of the Faithful's heart is pulled in every direction?" Then the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him) said:

"Let him be! What this Bedouin wants from us is precisely what we want from these people." Then he said: "O Bedouin! The statement that God is One falls under four classes — two of which are not permissible regarding God, exalted is He, and two of which are valid concerning Him.

As for the two that are not permissible: when one says 'one' meaning thereby a [unit in the] series of numbers, this is impermissible — for what has no second does not enter into the series of numbers. Do you not see that he who says 'God is the third of three' has fallen into unbelief? Likewise when one says 'He is one of the people,' meaning thereby a species of a genus, this is also impermissible, because it would be assimilation [tashbīh], and our Lord is too great and exalted for that.

As for the two that are valid concerning Him: when one says 'He is One — He has no likeness among things,' such is our Lord. And when one says 'He, exalted is He, is one in meaning' — meaning thereby that He admits of no division in existence, in intellect, or in imagination — such is our Lord, exalted is He."

Shaykh al-Ṣadūq (may God have mercy upon him) reports in Kitāb al-Tawḥīd with a connected chain from Hārūn b. ʿAbd al-Malik that Imām Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) was questioned about tawḥīd, and replied: "He, exalted is He, is established (muthbat) and existent — not nullified, and not enumerated (lā maʿdūd)."

In a sermon of the Nahj al-Balāgha it is said: "One — but not by number"; and in another: "One — but not of the [series of] number"; and in yet another: "Whoever bounds Him has counted Him."

In sum, this content occurs in numerous traditions and sermons, and it makes plain that the Existence of God, exalted is He, is pure and unmixed, and that no existence eludes it [cf. Qurʾān 34:3]. For if alongside His existence there were anything else upon which the meaning of "existent" truly held, then enumeration would self-evidently apply to them and one would say "this is one, and that is the second." Hence, alongside the Existence of God the Glorified there is no existence except as dependent upon — and standing by — His existence. As reported in the ḥadīth of Mūsā b. Jaʿfar (peace be upon them both): "God was, and there was nothing with Him; and He is now as He was."

In the Tawḥīd, Maʿānī al-Akhbār, and the Iḥtijāj it is reported from Hishām [b. al-Ḥakam] that Imām al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), replying to a heretic who had asked "What is God?", said: "He is a thing, but unlike [other] things. By my saying 'a thing' return to the affirmation of a meaning — He is a thing in the very reality of thinghood, except that He is no body and no figure."

Other traditions on God's unity are reported in the Tawḥīd, al-Amālī, and other ḥadīth compendia, with connected chains, from Imām al-Riḍā (peace be upon him), who said in one of his sermons: "He is One — but not in the sense of [a unit in] number; manifest — but not in the sense of direct contact [graspable by the senses]; self-disclosing — but not in such a way as to be seen; hidden — but not in the sense of being separate [from things]."

In Kitāb al-Tawḥīd, with a connected chain from ʿAmmār b. ʿAmr al-Naṣībī, it is reported: "I asked Imām al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) about tawḥīd, and he said: 'One; Self-Sufficient (ṣamad); Pre-Eternal; Eternally Self-Sufficient. He has no shadow (ẓill) that holds Him in being — rather He preserves all things from annihilation by means of their shadows. He knows the unknown, and is known by every ignorant person. He is utterly unique (fardānī): His creation is not within Him, nor is He within His creation.'"

The meaning of "preserving by shadow" is that God the Glorified gives subsistence to things by means of quiddities (māhiyyāt) and determinations (taʿayyunāt); in other words, He manifests Himself in [these] loci of self-disclosure (maẓāhir) under the guise of various quiddities, while in His Essence He has no qualification or determination whatsoever.

In some traditions concerning the primordial nature (ṭīna), the meaning of ẓill is explained — as in the report transmitted in the Tafsīr of ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm and the Tafsīr of al-ʿAyyāshī, on the authority of ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad al-Juʿfī and ʿUqba, in which Imām al-Bāqir (peace be upon him) said: "Then He raised them up in the shadows." The narrator asked: "And what are these shadows?" He replied: "Have you not seen your own shadow in the sun — something that is, yet is not a thing?"

This is precisely the [class of] quiddities, or borrowed and accidental existences. In one of the sermons of ʿAlī (peace be upon him) it is said: "His signs are His proof, and His existence is His own affirmation; knowledge of Him is His Unity; and His Unity is His distinction from His creation; and the ruling of this distinction is the otherness of an attribute — not the otherness of separation." This statement is at once the most precious and the most concise pronouncement upon tawḥīd, and bears upon the subject with full eloquence.

In the Nahj al-Balāgha, and in al-Tawḥīd with a connected chain from Imām al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), it is reported that the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him), addressing Dhiʿlib, said: "He is within things, but not by way of admixture; and He is outside them, but not by way of separation."

Al-Ṣadūq in al-Tawḥīd reports with a connected chain from Muslim b. Aws that ʿAlī (peace be upon him) said: "Rather, He is within things — without any 'how' (bilā kayfiyya)." This content, and others closely related to it, has come down in sermons and traditions in mutawātir (mass-transmitted) fashion.

[There are also] traditions that negate the attributes from the most holy Essence of God — traditions which in fact restate what we set out in Chapter 3. As, for example, the saying in the Nahj al-Balāgha: "The beginning of religion is the recognition of Him; the perfection of recognition of Him is assent to Him; the perfection of assent to Him is His Unity; the perfection of His Unity is sincerity (ikhlāṣ) toward Him; and the perfection of sincerity toward Him is the negation of attributes from Him."

And in another sermon: "The first act of worship of God is the recognition of Him; the foundation of His recognition is His Unity; and the ordering principle (niẓām) of His Unity is the negation of attributes from Him."

This content is found in many traditions, and other ḥadīths interpret these reports — making clear that what is meant by "the attributes negated from the most holy Essence" is not merely the originated attributes (al-ṣifāt al-ḥādītha); rather, any attribute whatsoever that brings with it some kind of limitation, or is other than the Essence, is to be negated of Him.

Al-Masʿūdī in Ithbāt al-Waṣiyya reports that ʿAlī (peace be upon him) said in the course of a sermon: "Glory be to You! You have filled every thing, and You stand apart from every thing. Nothing is empty of You, and You are the Doer of whatever You will. Blessed are You, O You — every object of apprehension is among Your creatures, and every bounded thing is among Your handiworks."

This content is widespread in the sermons of ʿAlī (peace be upon him), of Imām al-Riḍā (peace be upon him), and in the words of the other Imāms (peace be upon them all). It is clear that the attribute itself carries with it a kind of limitation and determination, and is itself a concept which is apprehended. (Reflect carefully.)

In al-Tawḥīd, on the authority of ʿAbd al-Aʿlā, it is reported that Imām al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) said: "He is named by His Names — therefore He is other than His Names; and the Names are other than Him; and the qualified is other than the qualification."

His saying "the qualified is other than the qualification" points to the fact that the otherness intended is the otherness which the concept of an attribute necessarily entails on the side of its instantiation — not that the verbal expressions of His Names are other than Him.

Of the same order is the tradition that the late al-Ṣadūq reports with two chains in Maʿānī al-Akhbār: "The meaning of 'Allāhu Akbar' is that God is too great to be qualified."

Among the further traditions bearing on what has been said is a ḥadīth reported in Uṣūl al-Kāfī and in Kitāb al-Tawḥīd, on the authority of Ibrāhīm b. ʿUmar, that Imām al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) said:

"Verily God, blessed and exalted is He, created a Name — by letters that are unvoiced; by an utterance that is unspoken; as a person yet not embodied; in the manner of likeness yet not qualifiable; in [the manner of] color yet undyed; the regions [of space] are negated of it; bounds are kept far from it; the sense of any imaginer is veiled from it; concealed yet not under any veil. He made it a complete Word consisting of four parts together — none of them prior to another. He manifested three of these on account of His creation's need of them, and He kept one of them concealed: that is the hidden, treasured Name. By these three Names that have been manifested — and these manifested ones are: 'Allāh,' 'Tabāraka,' and 'Subḥān' — God, exalted is He, made subject to each one of these Names four pillars (so that there are twelve pillars in all); then for every pillar He created thirty Names which are acts ascribed to it. They are: al-Raḥmān, al-Raḥīm, al-Malik, al-Quddūs, al-Khāliq, al-Bāriʾ, al-Muṣawwir, al-Ḥayy, al-Qayyūm, ‹He whom slumber and sleep do not seize›, al-ʿAlīm, al-Khabīr, al-Samīʿ, al-Baṣīr, al-Ḥakīm, al-ʿAzīz, al-Jabbār, al-Mutakabbir, al-ʿAlī, al-ʿAẓīm, al-Muqtadir, al-Qādir, al-Salām, al-Muʾmin, al-Muhaymin, al-Bāriʾ, al-Munshiʾ, al-Badīʿ, al-Rafīʿ, al-Jalīl, al-Karīm, al-Rāziq, al-Muḥyī, al-Mumīt, al-Bāʿith, al-Wārith. These Names — together with the Most Beautiful Names completing the count of three hundred and sixty — are branches of those three Names; and those three are pillars; and the one Name remains hidden, treasured, veiled by these three manifested Names. Such is the meaning of God's words: ‹Say: Call upon Allāh or call upon al-Raḥmān; whichever you call upon, to Him belong the Most Beautiful Names› [Qurʾān 17:110]." [Translator's note: the Arabic block as printed in Shīrwānī's Persian edition passes directly from al-Mutakabbir to al-Bāriʾ; the seven Names al-ʿAlī through al-Muhaymin are restored following the standard text of al-Kāfī (bāb ḥudūth al-asmāʾ); the al-Nuʿmān Arabic edition includes these seven Names but itself omits al-Ḥakīm.]

This noble ḥadīth, without need of further commentary, makes evident the posteriority of the Divine Names to the rank of the essential non-delimitation [of God]; and it contains, in addition, abundant principles of the science of the Names — the descent of one Name from another, and the dependence of created beings upon those Names.

A ḥadīth reported in Kitāb al-Irshād and elsewhere from the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him): "Truly God is too exalted to be veiled from anything, or for anything to be veiled from Him."

And a tradition reported in Kitāb al-Tawḥīd with a connected chain from Yaʿqūb b. Jaʿfar al-Jaʿfarī, in which Mūsā b. Jaʿfar (peace be upon them both) said: "Between Him and His creation there is no veil other than His creation itself. He is veiled without there being any veil that veils, and concealed without any concealment that conceals."

In this tradition, two matters are joined: first, that God's manifestation and self-disclosure are by means of things; and second, that He is concealed by those very same things. This is a subtle meaning, and it comes back to this: His hiddenness is by reason of the very intensity of His manifestation.

From what has gone before it has become clear that absolute tawḥīd (tawḥīd iṭlāqī) is too elevated and too sublime to be put into words; and the ḥadīth says: "Whoever asks about tawḥīd is ignorant; and whoever answers him is a polytheist."

Tawḥīd in this sense — namely, absolute tawḥīd (tawḥīd iṭlāqī) — is among those matters whose successful establishment has been granted only to the followers of the way of Islam; in this the holy way of Islam has surpassed the religions and revealed laws of the past. For the evident purport of what has come down to us from them concerning tawḥīd is the rank of Oneness-of-Determination (maqām al-wāḥidiyya) — namely, that God Most High is the Necessary Essence in whom all the attributes of perfection are gathered.

Hence the loftiest pronouncement on tawḥīd that has reached us from previous creeds and from the words of the divine sages is no more than what was set out in Chapter 2. And God guides whom He wills to a straight path.

In His Name, exalted. In this section we intend to expound that what the holy religion of Islam summons to is the highest degree of tawḥīd, and along the way we shall set out its fruit, in three chapters.

Before entering the discussion, attention must be paid to this point: since tawḥīd is a relational concept (mafhūm iḍāfī), its meaning shifts as its object (mutaʿalliq) shifts. In this discussion we may take three things as the possible objects of tawḥīd: (1) the Essence (dhāt); (2) the Name (ism) — which is the Essence taken together with some attribute; (3) the Act (fiʿl).

Tawḥīd, accordingly, has three stages: essential tawḥīd (dhātī), nominal tawḥīd (asmāʾī), and active tawḥīd (afʿālī) — meaning that every thing, in respect of its essence, its names, and its acts, stands by and depends upon God the Glorified.

We have learned that the demonstration set forth in Chapter 3 entails that every kind of conceptual determination and instantial delimitation lies far from the rank of the Essence of God the Glorified, and that no distinction whatsoever — not even the distinction generated by this very ruling — has any way into that rank. From this it is clear that our use of expressions such as "rank" or "level" of that [Essence] is figurative and is unavoidable [given the limits of language].

It follows from this that essential tawḥīd in the sense of recognition of the Essence itself is impossible; for recognition (maʿrifa) is a relation between knower and known, and in that rank all relations fall away. In reality every recognition that attaches to Him attaches to His Name, not to His Essence. No one comprehends Him with knowledge [Qurʾān 20:110]. The meaning of the saying "Recognition is proportionate to the capacity of the recognizer" is precisely this: imagine a bowl being filled from the water of the sea — the bowl seeks the sea, but receives no more than its own capacity holds. It is also clear that He stands beyond the snare of expression.

From this it becomes plain that the highest degree of tawḥīd is precisely "essential tawḥīd"; for the perfection of tawḥīd is proportionate to the bounds and qualifications negated of the most holy Essence, and in essential tawḥīd every determination and distinction — whether real or conventional, even tawḥīd itself — is denied. God the Glorified says to His Prophet: "And that to your Lord is the final end." [Qurʾān 53:42]

We have learned that the upshot of the demonstration set forth in Chapter 2 of [the previous] treatise is that Allāh — exalted is His Name — is the Essence which contains every perfection and is free of every defect, and that every one of His attributes is identical with His Essence. This is precisely the heritage of the previous religions, the call of the earlier prophets, and the substance of what comes down to us from the divine philosophers of Egypt, Greece, Persia, and other lands. It is the very content set forth by the great Islamic philosophers — by the Second Teacher (Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī), by the Chief of Thinkers (Abū ʿAlī Ibn Sīnā), and by Ṣadr al-Mutaʾallihīn [Mullā Ṣadrā] in his books.

The principle Mullā Ṣadrā founded is: "Existence (wujūd) is a single graded reality (ḥaqīqa tashkīkiyya), the levels of which differ in intensity and weakness. Its weakest level is prime matter (hayūlā); its strongest and most intense level is the Necessary Existence — unlimited in power and perfection. All these levels are realized — yet in comparison with the highest level, the Necessary, their existence is relational (rābiṭ) and non-independent: they are neither subjects nor predicates of any judgment, but, rather, are obliterated and extinguished in the light and radiance of the Necessary Existence."

From all this it becomes plain that the establishment of the most perfect degree of God's tawḥīd belongs to the singular features of the holy way of Islam — and this is precisely the Muḥammadan station (maqām muḥammadī), distinctive to Muḥammad and his pure Household (peace be upon them all), and an inheritance for those of his Community who attain to the station of walāya.

The essential tawḥīd set out [above] is a matter that the human being attains by complete and simple witnessing (shuhūd). For man, by the requirement of the principle of fiṭra (innate disposition), apprehends his own existence through his very self, and likewise apprehends that every determination arises from some non-delimitation (iṭlāq) and unconditionedness — since the witnessing of the determinate is nothing other than the witnessing of the absolute.

He likewise witnesses that every determination — whether in itself or in another — is in essence dependent upon and resting upon non-delimitation; as a consequence, every determination is dependent upon and stands by complete and perfect non-delimitation. He further finds in himself the obligation of humility, submission, and exertion — submission of his determination to its non-delimitation — and also [finds in himself the recognition of] the goodness of good things and the badness of bad things; and he likewise apprehends that moral obligation (taklīf) requires exposition (i.e. requires a prophetic communication). These three matters are nothing other than essential tawḥīd, absolute walāya, and universal prophethood; and the way of Islam is that which rests upon these three completely and perfectly:

"So set your face toward religion as a ḥanīf — the natural disposition (fiṭra) of God upon which He has fashioned humankind. There is no altering God's creation." [Qurʾān 30:30]

In Kitāb al-Tawḥīd, with a connected chain from al-ʿAlāʾ b. al-Faḍīl, it is reported: I asked Imām al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) about the verse "the natural disposition of God upon which He has fashioned humankind"; the Imām said: "[The fiṭra upon which God has constituted humankind] is tawḥīd."

In the Tafsīr of ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm, with a connected chain from Imām al-Riḍā, from his father, from his grandfather (peace be upon them all), Imām al-Bāqir (peace be upon him) is reported to have said concerning the verse "the natural disposition of God upon which He has fashioned humankind": "It is: There is no god but God, Muḥammad is the Messenger of God, ʿAlī is the Commander of the Faithful — to here extends tawḥīd."

The noble Messenger (peace be upon him and his Family) said: "I have been sent to perfect the noble traits of character."

And God the Glorified says: "He makes lawful for them the wholesome things and forbids them the impure." [Qurʾān 7:157]

Abundant transmitted evidence establishes that the laws of religion turn upon the axis of these three matters [tawḥīd, walāya, and nubuwwa].

The deployment of this simple fiṭra in this pure way has yielded astonishing fruits in the two domains of moral dispositions (malakāt) and acts (afʿāl) — fruits without precedent in any of the previous religions. As regards moral dispositions: because the disposition itself is a [form of] cognition, and the Perfect Human Being sees nothing but God the Glorified, and it is not fitting for one who treads the path of perfection to turn his attention to anything other than the Real (glory be to Him), there remains no substrate for the blameworthy traits — self-conceit, arrogance, ostentation (riyāʾ), seeking-renown (sumʿa), cowardice, miserliness, love of position, reliance upon the world, and so on. In this case the noble traits come to be realized by God and for God (bi-Llāh wa li-Llāh). (Reflect carefully.)

By my life, there is a vast difference between the case in which a person purges the base trait of cowardice from himself by reason of his not turning his attention to anything other than the Real — for in that case there is nothing left to fear — and the case in which he simply relies upon God in the removal of what he fears, and thereby drives fear away from himself, as is the apparent purport of the [exoteric] revealed laws.

There is likewise a great distance between that path and the one taken by the moralist-philosopher who argues: what one fears is a possible occurrence whose existence and non-existence are equally probable; if a man admits fear into himself by giving preference to the probability of its existence, this is preference without a preferring factor — which is itself blameworthy; or who says: cowardice is a blameworthy trait in the eyes of people, and they do not praise it. The same kind of difference holds in other cases. Yet despite all this, the pure way of Islam has employed all these paths in its teachings.

What is reported in the Tafsīr of [ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm] al-Qummī within the Ḥadīth of the Miʿrāj points to this very meaning: The Messenger of God (may God's blessings and peace be upon him and his Family) said: "O Lord, You have given Your prophets distinctions; give me also." God said: "And I have indeed given to you. Among what I have given you are two phrases from beneath My Throne: 'There is no power and no strength save in God,' and 'There is no refuge from You except unto You.'"

As regards acts: [the holy way] confined permission (ibāḥa) to the necessities of life, in accord with what fiṭra requires; then, in matters small and great, it gave to those acts a divine orientation; and then it extended this method to every dimension of life — places, varying times, the states of health and sickness, of wealth and poverty, of life and death and other conditions, and all acts — until it became a way that preserves tawḥīd in the very midst of multiplicity (preserving Oneness within this multiplicity), and preserves this multiplicity (in the very diversity of its members) within tawḥīd. So count this a treasure, for, by God, this is a blessing not equaled by the seven mighty heavens, the cradling earth, and the mountains set as pegs [cf. Qurʾān 78:6–7, 12].

In the Name of God, the All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate. Praise belongs to God, the Lord of the worlds; and blessing and peace be upon His drawn-near friends — especially Muḥammad and his Pure Household.

In the Risāla on Tawḥīd we learned that God the Glorified is that Pure Being (al-wujūd al-ṣirf) which possesses all the perfections of existence. Therefore, whatever we suppose to be other than Him proves to be identical with Him, and accordingly He has a unity that is identical with His Essence — a unity such that any second supposition concerning Him is impossible. In that station, then, there is no multiplicity and no differentiation, and there is no mode of determination (taʿayyun) — whether by way of a concept (mafhūm) or a concrete instance (miṣdāq), in the sense of being limited by a hypothetical boundary or limit — that has any place there. Rather, every determination one might consider, whether conceptual or concrete, will be posterior to that station.

Because that Essence comprehends within itself the very reality of all existential perfections, it is qualified by all of them; consequently, it is named by them all, and they are His Names — for the Name is the Essence itself considered together with some of its attributes.

Therefore, by the consideration of His Essence alone, without consideration of anything else, He is qualified by those perfections and named by them; and the concepts corresponding to them are abstracted (muntazaʿ) from His Essence without taking anything else into account.

In sum: at that level, other determinations and qualifications appear, and other concepts are abstracted, which are joined to the first class — concepts such as: creating, bestowing sustenance, mercy, generosity, grace, bringing back, originating, giving life, causing to die, raising up, gathering, dispersing, and other Names. These concepts are the Names of the Acts (al-asmāʾ al-fiʿliyya), whose rank is after the Essence and the essential Names; and they are taken from the station of Act (maqām al-fiʿl).

One remaining point: although these Names are abstracted from the station of Act, their abstraction is by reference to the relation and link obtaining between the Act and the Essence; were it not so, these Names would not be truly predicable of the Essence.

We know that all perfections of being are realized for the Essence of God, and that He is transcendent above the privations that have a non-existential aspect. Consequently, in that station the negative attributes (al-awṣāf al-salbiyya) will be like the positive ones, with this difference: that since these attributes have a non-existential aspect, they do not subsist there as such; rather, they are abstracted in some manner from something other than themselves, and in fact they signify the negation of a negation, which reverts to the affirmation of being.

From what has preceded, it has become clear that the Names of God the Glorified, for all their multiplicity, are primarily divided into the essential Names (al-asmāʾ al-dhātiyya) and the Names of Act (al-asmāʾ al-fiʿliyya); in a second classification, into affirmative (thubūtiyya) and negative (salbiyya); and likewise into particular (khāṣṣ) and universal (ʿāmm).

The transmitted evidence (al-adilla al-naqliyya) likewise indicates what has preceded. There are abundant Qurʾānic verses and traditions establishing the essential, actual, affirmative, and negative Names — there is no need to enumerate them here, especially since some of them, God willing, will be cited in the coming chapters.

In Chapter 1 we learned that the Most Holy Essence of God is characterized by purity (ṣirāfa) and unrestrictedness (iṭlāq) and is transcendent above any kind of determination — whether conceptual or concrete — including unrestrictedness itself. And since this very fact is itself a kind of determination — one which erases every determination and rolls up the spread of every multiplicity — it will be the first Name and the first determination. This is the stage called the Station of Aḥadiyya. After this, the affirmative determinations appear, the first of which is affirmation itself, for He is He; and this is Identity (huwiyya). Then the further determinations become manifest as follows:

From the standpoint that this complete reality is present to itself and possesses itself, the determination of Knowledge (ʿilm) appears. From the standpoint that it is the complete principle of all existential perfections, the determination of Power (qudra) is manifest. From the conjunction of Power and Knowledge, the determination of Life (ḥayāt) is manifested; and then the further determinations appear from the joining together of the simple determinations.

From this exposition it becomes clear that there is a kind of ordering (tarattub) among the Divine Names, by virtue of which some of them are derivative upon others.

From this it is also evident that the supposition of any kind of potency, contingency, change, or alteration in that station is impossible: for by reason of His pure being, He possesses every supposable existential perfection; consequently He is pure actuality (fiʿliyya maḥḍa). Therefore, just as He is Necessary by Essence, He is Necessary in every respect (wājib al-wujūd min jamīʿ al-jihāt). It must be noted, however, that this discourse applies only to the pure Necessary Being which possesses essential independence — not to contingent being (al-wujūd al-imkānī); for contingent being, owing to its being an effect, is relational (rābiṭ), and its very existence is in something other than itself, and so it cannot be made the subject of judgments such as the necessity of existence, self-reliance, and the like.

Therefore, in witnessing the quiddity of an existent, we are in fact witnessing the true Necessary Being to the extent that this quiddity subsists in It; and this is precisely what we mean when we say: "The contingent being is the manifestation (ẓuhūr) of the Necessary in it; and the contingent is the locus of manifestation (maẓhar) of the Necessary; therefore He is Light."

It also becomes evident that any supposed thing whose quiddity stands equally to existence and non-existence is, in the realization of its essence and being, in need of God the Glorified; and likewise its essential properties — whatever they may be — stand in need of God the Glorified, even though that thing be the intermediate cause of those properties and even though those properties be such that, if the intellect were to consider them, it would find that thing to necessitate them. Just as the number four — which is a number — stands in need of God in its very being, so it stands in need of Him in being even, in being twice two, in being the square of two, and in its other properties — even though all those properties are by means of the number four and the number four necessitates them. Therefore the Essence of God the Glorified, alone, is the Source of every contingent being, and this is His Necessary Power (al-qudra al-wājibiyya). For "power" understood as the equipoise between acting and refraining — that is, the possibility of either side, being or non-being — is impossible in His case, since He is necessary in every respect. Therefore He is essentially the Source of every existent according to what befits the essence of that existent.

He is, therefore, actually the principle of the coming-to-be of every actual existent, and actually the principle of the coming-to-be of every potential existent — indeed, [He is] potency and possibility themselves. With the outpourings of being (fuyūḍāt al-wujūd) and the blessings of theophany and manifestation, He brings to realization the essences of all things and their properties. From this, too, it becomes clear that the Most Holy Essence of God exists for Himself and is present to Himself; there is no veil between Him and His Essence, and all perfections subsist for His Essence. So in the station of His Essence He is the Knower of His Essence, of His attributes, and of all the existents that emanate from His Essence — and this is Essential Knowledge (ʿilm dhātī).

And since it has been proved that the bringing-into-being of existents takes the form of His manifestation in the rank of essence and in the receptacle of their identity, it is established that every perfection, beauty, and goodness belongs to God the Glorified and is realized in Him. Goodness and beauty are nothing other than the fullness of the being of a thing and of its perfections and properties; therefore, the Most Holy Essence is qualified by all the attributes of excellence (ḥusn) and beauty (jamāl).

These Most Beautiful Names and lofty attributes, although they have multiple concepts, have only one concrete instance (miṣdāq) — and that instance is the Most Holy Essence itself; for, as we have learned, the supposition of duality in that station is impossible, so every aspect (ḥaythiyya) in the Essence is identical with every other, and all the aspects are identical with the Essence. Therefore God the Glorified, qua Knower, is Existent; and qua Existent, is Knower; with the same Life He is Powerful, and with the same Power He is Living, and so on — this is the Unicity of the Essence (wāḥidiyya al-dhāt); so He, just as He is Aḥad (Singular), is Wāḥid (One).

From all that has been said, it becomes clear that God the Glorified, by the Aḥadiyya of His Essence, erases and effaces all multiplicities; then, while preserving His Unity, He descends (tanazzul) to the Station of the Names, and through this descent the conceptual (not concrete) multiplicities appear; and then, by His manifestation in the loci of manifestation of contingent existents and by His making them manifest, He descends to their ranks — and it is at this stage that the concrete multiplicities are aroused.

By way of example: if you reflect upon your own attributes, you will find that you are knowing while you are yourself; you are powerful while you are yourself; you are hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling, and touching, while you are you. Therefore none of your attributes is outside of you; and this is the unity of your attributes in your essence.

Now if you turn back upon yourself, you observe that you are yourself, and there is nothing there but you; though you have many attributes, they are at this stage effaced and invisible — and this is the station of the Aḥadiyya of your essence.

If you then go further, and consider the imaginal rank (al-martaba al-khayāliyya) which is spread out over particular imaginal forms, and after that you imagine your own particular imaginal forms; and then if you descend to the rank of acts and consider yourself together with them — you will know that all of them subsist in you and depend on you and are not devoid of you. And if you reflect well and carefully on this example, you will be able to grasp the conclusion of the foregoing demonstrations.

In what has preceded, the transmitted evidence corresponds with reason. We shall make this point clear, to a certain extent, in the course of several discussions (mabāḥith).

The Names that occur in the Glorious Qurʾān and bear a descriptive meaning are as follows:

A: Ilāh (Object of worship), Aḥad (Singular), Awwal (the First), Ākhir (the Last), Aʿlā (the Most High), Akram (the Most Generous), Aʿlam (the Most Knowing), Arḥam al-Rāḥimīn (the Most Merciful of the merciful), Aḥkam al-Ḥākimīn (the Most Just of judges), Aḥsan al-Khāliqīn (the Best of creators), Ahl al-Taqwā (Worthy of being feared), Ahl al-Maghfira (Worthy of granting forgiveness);

B: Bāriʾ (the Maker), Bāṭin (the Hidden), Badīʿ (the Originator), Barr (the All-Beneficent), Baṣīr (the All-Seeing);

T: Tawwāb (the Oft-Returning);

J: Jabbār (the Restorer / the All-Compelling), Jāmiʿ (the Gatherer);

Ḥ: Ḥakīm (the All-Wise), Ḥalīm (the Forbearing), Ḥayy (the Living), Ḥaqq (the Real / the Truth), Ḥamīd (the All-Praised), Ḥasīb (the Reckoner), Ḥafīẓ (the Preserver), Ḥafiyy (the Solicitous);

Kh: Khabīr (the Aware), Khāliq (the Creator), Khallāq (the Ever-Creator), Khayr al-Mākirīn (the Best of stratagem-makers), Khayr al-Rāziqīn (the Best of providers), Khayr al-Fāṣilīn (the Best of separators), Khayr al-Ḥākimīn (the Best of judges), Khayr al-Fātiḥīn (the Best of openers), Khayr al-Ghāfirīn (the Best of forgivers), Khayr al-Wārithīn (the Best of inheritors), Khayr al-Rāḥimīn (the Best of those who show mercy);

Dh: Dhū al-ʿArsh (Lord of the Throne), Dhū al-Ṭawl (Lord of bounty), Dhū Intiqām (Lord of retribution), Dhū al-Faḍl al-ʿAẓīm (Lord of mighty grace), Dhū al-Raḥma (Lord of mercy), Dhū al-Quwwa (Lord of strength), Dhū al-Jalāl wa al-Ikrām (Lord of Majesty and Generosity);

R: Raḥmān (the All-Beneficent), Raḥīm (the Merciful), Raʾūf (the All-Compassionate), Rabb (the Lord), Rafīʿ al-Darajāt (Exalter of ranks), Razzāq (the All-Provider), Raqīb (the Watcher);

S: Samīʿ (the All-Hearing), Salām (the Source of Peace), Sarīʿ al-Ḥisāb (Swift in reckoning), Sarīʿ al-ʿIqāb (Swift in retribution);

Sh: Shahīd (the Witness), Shākir (the Appreciative), Shakūr (the All-Appreciative), Shadīd al-ʿIqāb (Severe in retribution), Shadīd al-Miḥāl (Mighty in stratagem);

Ṣ: Ṣamad (the Eternally Self-Sufficient upon whom all depend);

Ẓ: Ẓāhir (the Manifest);

ʿAyn: ʿAlīm (the All-Knowing), ʿAzīz (the All-Mighty), ʿAfuww (the Pardoner), ʿAlī (the High), ʿAẓīm (the Tremendous), ʿAllām al-Ghuyūb (the All-Knower of the unseen), ʿĀlim al-Ghayb wa al-Shahāda (Knower of the unseen and the witnessed);

Gh: Ghaniyy (the Self-Sufficient), Ghafūr (the Oft-Forgiving), Ghālib (the Victorious), Ghāfir al-Dhanb (Forgiver of sins), Ghaffār (the Ever-Forgiving);

F: Fāliq al-Iṣbāḥ (the Cleaver of dawn), Fāliq al-Ḥabb wa al-Nawā (the Cleaver of grain and date-stone), Fāṭir (the Originator), Fattāḥ (the Opener);

Q: Qawiyy (the Strong), Quddūs (the All-Holy), Qayyūm (the Self-Subsisting), Qāhir (the Subduer), Qarīb (the Near), Qādir (the Powerful), Qadīr (the All-Powerful), Qahhār (the Ever-Subduer), Qābil al-Tawb (Acceptor of repentance);

K: Karīm (the Generous), Kabīr (the Great);

L: Laṭīf (the Subtle / Gracious);

M: Malik (the King), Muʾmin (the Granter of security), Muhaymin (the Guardian), Mutakabbir (Possessor of greatness), Muṣawwir (the Fashioner of forms), Majīd (the Glorious), Mujīb (the Responsive), Mubīn (the Manifest), Mawlā (the Patron), Muḥīṭ (the All-Encompassing), Muqīt (the Sustainer), Mutaʿālī (the Most Exalted), Muḥyī (the Life-Giver), Matīn (the Firm), Muqtadir (the Omnipotent), Mustaʿān (He whose help is sought);

N: Naṣīr (the Helper), Nūr (the Light);

W: Wahhāb (the Bestower), Wāḥid (the One), Walī (the Patron / Friend), Wāsiʿ (the All-Embracing), Wakīl (the Trustee), Wadūd (the Loving).

These are one hundred and seventeen Names that occur in the Divine Book in the language of description. There are also other instances that are close to the same idiom — namely:

"Indeed, We are its preservers." [Qurʾān 15:9]

"Upholding equity." [Qurʾān 3:18]

"We shall surely take vengeance." [Qurʾān 32:22]

"And He it is who gives life and causes death." [Qurʾān 23:80]

In al-Tawḥīd and al-Khiṣāl, with his chain of transmission from Sulaymān b. Mihrān ← Jaʿfar b. Muḥammad ← his fathers ← ʿAlī (peace be upon him), it is reported that the Messenger of God (may God's blessings and peace be upon him and his Family) said: "God has ninety-nine Names; whoever comprehends them all enters Paradise. They are: Allāh, Ilāh, Wāḥid, Aḥad, Ṣamad, Awwal, Ākhir, Samīʿ, Baṣīr, Qadīr, Qāhir, ʿAlī, Aʿlā, Bāqī (the Abiding), Badīʿ, Bāriʾ, Akram, Ẓāhir, Bāṭin, Ḥayy, Ḥakīm, ʿAlīm, Ḥalīm, Ḥafīẓ, Ḥaqq, Ḥasīb, Ḥamīd, Ḥafiyy, Rabb, Raḥmān, Raḥīm, Dhāriʾ (the Maker), Razzāq, Raqīb, Raʾūf, Rāʾī (the Seer), Salām, Muʾmin, Muhaymin, ʿAzīz, Jabbār, Mutakabbir, Sayyid (Master), Subbūḥ (the All-Pure), Shahīd, Ṣādiq (the Truthful), Ṣāniʿ (the Maker), Ṭāhir (the Pure), ʿAdl (the Just), ʿAfuww, Ghafūr, Ghaniyy, Ghiyāth (the Succourer), Fāṭir, Fard (the Singular), Fattāḥ, Fāliq, Qadīm (the Pre-eternal), Malik, Quddūs, Qawiyy, Qarīb, Qayyūm, Qābiḍ (the Withholder), Bāsiṭ (the Expander), Qāḍī al-Ḥājāt (the Fulfiller of needs), Majīd, Mawlā, Mannān (the Most Bountiful), Muḥīṭ, Mubīn, Muqīt, Muṣawwir, Karīm, Kabīr, Kāfī (the Sufficient), Kāshif al-Ḍurr (the Remover of harm), Witr (the Singular), Nūr, Wahhāb, Nāṣir (the Helper), Wāsiʿ, Wadūd, Hādī (the Guide), Wafiyy (the Faithful), Wakīl, Wārith, Bāʿith (the Resurrector), Barr, Tawwāb, Jalīl (the Majestic), Jawād (the Bestower), Khabīr, Khāliq, Khayr al-Nāṣirīn (the Best of helpers), Dayyān (the Reckoner), Shakūr, ʿAẓīm, Laṭīf, Shāfī (the Healer)."

Shaykh al-Ṣadūq (may God have mercy upon him) writes in al-Khiṣāl: "This report has reached me by various paths and with differing wordings."

These two reports each undertake to enumerate all the Names of God Most High, but they differ in the Names they enumerate — and beyond this, some Names that do not occur in the Noble Qurʾān are mentioned (such as Sayyid, Ṣāniʿ, Jamīl, Qadīm, etc.), while certain Names that do occur in the Qurʾān are missing (such as Dhū al-Jalāl wa al-Ikrām, Dhū al-Ṭawl, Rafīʿ).

Furthermore, the word Allāh is mentioned in the second report as one of the Names, while in the first report it is set apart from them and identified as the one-hundredth Name.

There is no doubt that the concepts in which these noble Names are used in the Noble Qurʾān correspond to their external referents; and other usages follow upon the Qurʾānic usage. There is no doubt that God the Glorified possesses real, existential perfections and attributes — and from them, or from some of them, these Qurʾānic expressions have lifted the veil, expressions that, whether in single words, compounds, or whole sentences, contain these Names; and all of them are by way of praise, glorification, and the expressing of His perfection.

Therefore, to construe all these Names as nothing more than negations of defect is far from the path of moderation, and a deviation whose falsity is testified to by conscience. Beyond this, such a construal would entail, first, that all the essential perfections revert to non-existence and that the Essence is empty of any subsisting perfection — a position negated by abundant proofs; and second, apart from any existential perfection, [such attributes] would not constitute any perfection or distinction, for the same is true of the absolutely non-existent.

Therefore all the Names contain affirmative, non-negative meanings. Furthermore, these concepts are of the same genus as those meanings and concepts that we grasp and reason about. It is not — as some have stated and committed themselves to — that all these Names are either single-term metaphors or figurative similitudes. For from the sentence "ʿAlī knew" and the sentence "God knew," we understand one thing — namely, that the known is clear before the knower. The fact that we know that ʿAlī's awareness is only through the mental form that is present to him, and that such a form is impossible in God's case (since there is no "mental" there), pertains to the concrete instance (miṣdāq) of knowledge and does not bring about any change in the concept. Therefore the concept is one concept, and the peculiarities of the concrete instance have no role in the concept — and this is a true doctrine, the doctrine of the people of truth.

The general rule, then, in the explanation of the Names of God the Glorified and His attributes, is that we strip their concepts of the peculiarities of the concrete instance — in other words, of the dimensions of non-being and defect.

This is precisely what is yielded by the explanations of the Imāms (peace be upon them) in their khuṭbas and discourses. In al-Tawḥīd and Nahj al-Balāgha it is reported that ʿAlī (peace be upon him) said in the course of a khuṭba: "Verily my Lord is subtle in subtlety, but is not described as 'subtle'; great in greatness, but is not described as 'great'; mighty in might, but is not described as 'mighty'; majestic in majesty, but is not described as 'gross'; before everything, yet none is said to be before Him; after everything, yet there is no 'after' for Him; He has willed all things without any 'concern,' is sharply perceiving without 'cunning,' is in all things without commingling with them and without being separate from them; manifest, but not in the manner of physical contact; self-disclosing, but not by way of beginning a vision; distant, but not by any distance; near, but not by being adjacent; subtle, but not by being a body; existing, but not after non-existence; an agent, but not under compulsion; a determiner of measures, but not by motion; a willer, but not by deliberation; hearing, but not by an instrument; seeing, but not by a tool."

This kind of interpretation of the Divine Names is abundant in the words of the Imāms of guidance, and in many traditions both suspension of attribution (taʿṭīl) and anthropomorphic likening (tashbīh) are forbidden.

We have learned that the attributes of God the Glorified are the pure and unalloyed form of every existential perfection and exist in Him truly — not by way of metaphor or figure. As for others, because their very essences exist by way of accidence upon His Being, their attributes are likewise [accidental]. Therefore, all real existential attributes free of any defect are exclusively God's, and all the attributes of others are predicated of them accidentally (bi-l-ʿaraḍ).

This truth emerges from the majority of the usages of these Names in the Noble Qurʾān, such as the following verses:

"And He is the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing." [Qurʾān 42:11]

"And He is the All-Wise, the All-Aware." [Qurʾān 6:73]

"To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and on the earth. Who is there to intercede with Him except by His leave?" [Qurʾān 2:255]

"He knows what is before them and behind them, and they do not encompass anything of His knowledge except what He wills." [Qurʾān 2:255]

"You have, besides God, neither friend nor helper." [Qurʾān 2:107]

And He said: "And it is He who makes [men] laugh and weep; it is He who causes death and gives life; it is He who creates the two mates — the male and the female — from a drop of seed when emitted. Upon Him is the second creation; and it is He who enriches and gives possessions." [Qurʾān 53:43–48]

And the verse: "And Moses chose seventy men from his people for Our appointed time." [Qurʾān 7:155]

The above verse expresses the truth that on that Day, all secondary causes are severed and pass away; and when the secondary causes are cut off and the [ascribed] relations are abolished, no basis remains for the supposition — as one supposes in this world — that an existential perfection has been taken from another. Then only God remains, and no existent is ascribed to anything except to Him; the other ascriptions become void.

He then invalidates the supposed real (independent) character of those perfections and affirms their derivative character: "The Day when they shall come forth, nothing of them being hidden from God: 'Whose is the Sovereignty today?' — 'God's, the One, the Subduer.'" [Qurʾān 40:16]

And: "Then it shall be said to them: 'Where are those you used to make partners with God?' They will say: 'They are lost to us; nay, we used not to invoke anything previously.' Thus does God lead the unbelievers astray." [Qurʾān 40:73–74]

And: "My wealth has not availed me; my authority has gone from me." [Qurʾān 69:28–29]

All of these verses make clear that the perfections of the Names belong to God independently, and to others derivatively.

Yes — sometimes God combines His description of Himself with the description of creatures (insofar as He has bestowed something upon them) and places them within the same single description; in these cases the description must be taken in its general sense, encompassing both the independent and the derivative. This occurs in fourteen places in the Qurʾān where a Name is given in the form of the elative (afʿal al-tafḍīl): Aʿlā (the Most High), Akram (the Most Generous), Aʿlam (the Most Knowing), Arḥam al-Rāḥimīn, Aḥkam al-Ḥākimīn, Aḥsan al-Khāliqīn, Khayr al-Mākirīn, Khayr al-Rāziqīn, Khayr al-Fāṣilīn, Khayr al-Ḥākimīn, Khayr al-Fātiḥīn, Khayr al-Ghāfirīn, Khayr al-Wārithīn, and Khayr al-Rāḥimīn.

By these expressions God establishes for Himself a superiority and preeminence. He is preeminent over what He has created in respect that these attributes, though present in others as well, are present in Him independently and in others derivatively. Hence He is more deserving of exaltation, knowledge, and generosity, intenser in mercy, truer in judgment, more excellent in creating, better in stratagem, and so on — unlike others, in whom these attributes are accidental, fragile in foundation, mingled with defects, and bound up with the darknesses of contingency.

The same point (the indication of shared attributes) can be drawn from Names that are in intensive form (ṣīghat al-mubālagha), such as Tawwāb, Jabbār, Khallāq, Razzāq, ʿAllām al-Ghuyūb, Ghaffār, Quddūs, Qayyūm, Qahhār, Wahhāb. Names such as Shakūr, Ghafūr, Tadbīr, Mutaʿālī, and Raḥmān are sometimes also counted in this category. In these names there is an indication of the intensity of these attributes in God the Glorified, and of the fact that — by virtue of the multiplicity of their objects — they encompass all existents.

The majority of these Names contain affirmative concepts, but among them an order obtains, the summary of which has already been given. The detail is as follows: the Most Holy Essence is not composed of intellectual, imaginative, or external parts; therefore His Essence is simple, and in this respect He is Aḥad (the Singular).

The word Aḥad in affirmative sentences is used only of God the Glorified — as in the noble verse "Say: He is God, the Singular" [Qurʾān 112:1] — and one does not say "Aḥad came to me" [in the affirmative]. In negative sentences, however, it is also used of others — as in "I saw no one (aḥadan)", by which one is denied, and two are denied, and many are denied. But if one says "I saw no one (wāḥidan)", only the seeing of one is denied, not of two or many.

God the Glorified, in respect that He has no partner, no consort, and no offspring, and in respect that all His Names have one and the same concrete instance — which is His Most Holy Essence — even though their concepts differ, is Wāḥid (the One).

In respect that His Essence is fixed in itself, for itself, and in every condition, He is al-Ḥaqq (the Real).

If [His knowledge] is referred to the unseen, He is ʿAllām al-Ghuyūb (the All-Knower of the unseen). If it is referred to both the unseen and the witnessed, He is ʿĀlim al-Ghayb wa al-Shahāda (the Knower of the unseen and the witnessed).

God the Most Exalted — in that He is the Source of others (since His Essence is identical with Being and is Pure Being, and whatever is supposed other than Him begins from Him and ends in Him) — is Qādir (the Powerful) and Qadīr (the All-Powerful). The Powerful, in that He bestows being without any external requirement or compulsion, is Raḥmān (the All-Beneficent).

And in that He loves whatever His mercy attaches to, He is Wadūd (the All-Loving). In that, in delivering His mercy, He expects no recompense, He is Karīm (the Generous). The Generous, in that He gives a beautiful reward to the one who praises Him, is Shākir and Shakūr (the Appreciative, the All-Appreciative). And in that He does not hasten to punish one who has done evil to Him, He is Ḥalīm (the Forbearing).

In that He encompasses all things and nothing is empty of Him, He is al-Awwal (the First) — for every thing begins from Him; and al-Ākhir (the Last) — for every thing ends in Him; and al-Ẓāhir (the Manifest) — for every thing becomes manifest through Him; and al-Bāṭin (the Hidden) — for every thing finds its subsistence in Him.

If a supposed resistance is imagined from the side of the object of power and the exercise of power and encompassment from Him, He is Muqtadir (the Omnipotent). If punishment be added to that, He is Dhū Intiqām (the Lord of retribution). One who possesses all these attributes is Majīd (the Glorious). And when such a description is reflected back upon His Essence, He is Mutakabbir (the Possessor of greatness).

In that, after bringing existents into being, He creates what causes their continuance and subsistence, He is Razzāq (the All-Provider). In that His giving brings about no defect in Him, He is Wāsiʿ (the All-Embracing). In that He has appointed times for His bestowals, He is Muqīt (the Sustainer).

In that He is the life-giver, He is Muḥyī. In that He is the fashioner of forms, He is Muṣawwir. In that all of these are an act of beneficence from Him, He is Barr (the All-Beneficent). In that the manifestation of whatever is in being is from Him, He is Nūr (the Light) and consequently Mubīn (the Manifest). In that everything belongs to Him and He manages them, He is Malik (the King) and Dhū al-ʿArsh (Lord of the Throne).

God the Glorified said: "God — there is no god but He, the Living, the Self-Subsistent" [Qurʾān 2:255]. This verse, in addition to expressing tawḥīd, encompasses all the affirmative Names.

This is how some Names are derived from others, the manner of their arrangement, and the way of their descent. With careful reflection you may find other semantic relations among them, beyond those we have indicated, which yield further Names.

This is one of those luminous traditions which, despite its brevity, expounds the following points: (1) the nature of the reality of the Names and the dependence of the reality of some of them upon others by way of manifestation (ẓuhūr) and concealment (buṭūn); (2) the manner of their multiplicity, and the multiplicity of particular Names by way of the relations of the universal Names; (3) the manner of the creature's need for them — which is essential need and existential dependence upon them; (4) that this ordering and descent is a real matter, not a mere lexical or literary convention.

It thus becomes clear that what is meant by the hidden Name in the treasury is the Station of Aḥadiyya; for it is that station which has been veiled by the three Names — Allāh, Tabāraka, Subḥān — which correspond to Identity, Beauty, and Majesty respectively. The reason is that creatures, in the realization of their essences, attributes, and acts, stand in need of these three aspects (Identity, affirmative attributes, and negative attributes); but were they considered in relation to the Station of Aḥadiyya, nothing of their essences or properties would remain.

The Imām (peace be upon him), at the opening of his discourse, also names Him — the Glorified — by these three Names: "Allāh, Tabāraka wa-Taʿālā…" — and then he interprets the noble verse, "Say: Call upon Allāh, or call upon al-Raḥmān: whichever you call upon, to Him belong the Most Beautiful Names" [Qurʾān 17:110], in the sense that one Name is veiled by the three Names, and the other Names are derivative upon these three veiling Names. This shows that the referent of the pronoun in "to Him belong the Most Beautiful Names…" is the very hidden Name in the treasury, that is, the pronoun refers to Him — the Glorified — qua possessing this singular determination; for invocation (duʿāʾ) is a kind of attention, and one can only direct attention to that which has some kind of determination and clarity. God the Glorified declared that all the Most Beautiful Names belong to Him and that He may be called by whichever of them; therefore, He may be called by all the Names that possess any kind of determination — and the One who is called is the Essence, qua being named by these Names; and these Names subsist in that Essence; and that Essence has no relation to anything except by way of one determination. Now, since all determinations are presupposed on the side of the invocation, there remains one determination, which is identical with unrestrictedness and indeterminacy — and this is the Station of Aḥadiyya, where the wayfarers of His path arrive at the end of their passage through the ranks of the Names and pitch the tents of their abode (reflect carefully).

In some supplications we read: "By Your Concealed, Treasured Name, the Living, the Self-Subsistent" — and this points to the very matter just explained. By reflection upon what has been said, you can derive other points from this noble ḥadīth; and God is the Guide.

We have learned that the Essence of Him — the Glorified — is the very true external Identity (huwiyya) by which every other identity in the external world subsists and is manifest. Hence it becomes clear that the three pronouns used for address, speech, and absent reference — namely Thou, I, and He — are among the Names of God. They are Names for that Identity in respect, respectively, of being addressed, of speaking, and of being free of both.

God the Glorified said: "There is no god but Thou; glory be to Thee." [Qurʾān 21:87]

"Thee alone do we worship, and from Thee alone do we seek help." [Qurʾān 1:5]

"He is God; there is no god but He." [Qurʾān 59:22]

It is widely said that the Names of God Most Exalted are tawqīfī (restricted to what is revealed in the Sacred Texts), and this is counted among the assured matters. Now the Name meant here is not the Name in its real sense — that is, the Essence considered with some attribute — for if it were, the tawqīfī status of the Names would have no clear meaning. Rather, what is meant is the verbal Name, which is in fact a name of a Name.

Therefore the meaning of tawqīfī status is either: that it depends upon a general legal license, or that it depends upon a particular legal license. Hence the rule may be construed in two ways:

(1) The commonly understood meanings of words are not free of aspects of defect and deficiency — though words differ in this respect, as in ighwāʾ, makr, ḥīla, iḍlāl, or kabīr, jasīm, and the like; and our reason is unable to grasp the Names worthy of that Most Holy Essence and to distinguish them from what is unworthy of Him. Hence for the application of any name to Him, the permission and license of the Lawgiver is required; and because human intellect is unable to give detailed exposition in each case, whatever expression is to be applied to God as a Name must come from the side of the Sacred Law.

It appears that what most who appeal to the tawqīfī rule have in mind is the first sense, but that sense is incorrect, by reason of the verse "To God belong the Most Beautiful Names" [Qurʾān 7:180], the verse "God — there is no god but He; to Him belong the Most Beautiful Names" [Qurʾān 20:8], and the verse "Say: Call upon Allāh, or call upon al-Raḥmān; whichever you call upon, the Most Beautiful Names are His" [Qurʾān 17:110], and other verses whose context does not admit construing the lām as the lām of previous reference; rather, the apparent purport is that the lām is for the generic. And since it has come over a plural word, it conveys comprehensiveness and indicates that every excellent Name belongs to God Most Exalted — as previously explained.

Moreover, the obvious requirement of the [first] formulation is that one would have to suspend judgment concerning every meaning that is applied to Him by way of an expression — whether such application be in the form of a single term and naming, or in the form of a description, or in the form of an account by a sentence or complete utterance.

A further proof is that in another report — the one we cited earlier from Uṣūl al-Kāfī on the creation of the Names — three hundred and sixty Names are stated; indeed, the apparent purport of that report is that the Most Beautiful Names are not restricted to those Names — like al-Raḥmān, al-Raḥīm, and al-Malik — that function as names, but that they extend also to sentences in which the words taken together convey a meaning worthy of God. For in that report, expressions such as "Tabāraka wa Subḥāna, lā taʾkhudhuhū sinatun wa lā nawm" are counted among the Most Beautiful Names. And if such sentences can be counted among the Most Beautiful Names, then the other sentences applied to God the Glorified in the ḥadīth corpus, the khuṭbas, the homilies, and the supplications must also be counted among the Most Beautiful Names. These expressions, given the diversity of their occurrences, are such that, upon investigation, one attains certainty that this kind of application and description does not depend upon the prior occurrence of a specific scriptural text; the only point that must be observed concerning them is that they not be conjoined with the affirmation of any defect or anything contrary to perfection.

We have learned that the Names of God are the very reality of the perfections of being, and that there is a specific order among them, with some arising out of others. It is clear that the Name from which another Name arises has a greater scope, a higher rank, and a greater effect than the Name that arises from it. If we follow this chain from below upward, we shall arrive at a Name which is the Greatest of the Names, to which terminate all the existential effects established for the Names in the world of being.

The traditions and supplications transmitted with sound chains from the Imāms (peace be upon them) which establish the existence of the Greatest Name (al-ism al-aʿẓam) reach the level of tawātur (mass-transmitted concurrence); and given their abundance, there is no need to cite them in this brief work. What is important is to note this: if one reflects upon the traditions and supplications, and the effects attributed to the Greatest Name in these traditions, it becomes clear that the Greatest Name is a Name upon which every kind of effect is consequent — bringing-into-being, annihilation, originating, returning, creating, sustaining, giving life, causing death, gathering, dispersing, joining, separating — in short, every kind of transformation, particular or universal. It is clear that these effects are not consequent upon the verbal Name — which is a perishing sound, an accident dependent on the points of articulation — but arise from the side of meaning; and yet not in the sense that the Name is, say, a mental imaginative form, for such a form is just like an utterance, and it is moreover annulled in its concrete external referent. Beyond all this, this matter — whatever it may be — has its effect by external being itself, and it is impossible for such an external being to enter the mind.

Therefore the Name in question is an external, real Name — that is, the Essence considered with a certain attribute. So that Name is one of the ranks of the Most Holy Essence — indeed, the highest and most exalted of those ranks; and this is what is meant by the Greatest Name of God that occurs in the words of the Infallibles.

In Baṣāʾir al-Darajāt, ʿAmmār al-Sābāṭī reports: "I said to Abū ʿAbd Allāh [al-Ṣādiq] (peace be upon him): 'May I be made your ransom — I would love for you to inform me of the Greatest Name of God Most Exalted.' He said to me: 'You will not be able to bear it.' When I insisted, he said: 'Then stay in your place,' and he rose and entered the house. After a short time, he called to me: 'Come in.' I entered, and he said to me: 'What is it?' I said: 'Tell me about it — may I be made your ransom.' Then the Imām (peace be upon him) placed his hand upon the ground, and I saw that the house was spinning around me; a tremendous matter seized me, [a strange state took hold of me,] and I was about to perish. The Imām laughed, and I said: 'May I be made your ransom — that is enough for me; I do not want it.'"

In Baṣāʾir al-Darajāt a similar incident is also reported between ʿUmar b. Ḥanẓala and Imām al-Bāqir (peace be upon him).

Likewise, in Baṣāʾir al-Darajāt, al-Barqī reports that Imām al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) said: "God set His Greatest Name upon seventy-three letters. He gave to Adam twenty-five letters of it; He gave to Abraham eight letters; He gave to Moses four letters; He gave to Jesus two letters by which he revived the dead and healed the one born blind and the leper; and He gave to Muḥammad (may God's blessings and peace be upon him and his Family) seventy-two letters; and one letter He veiled, so that what is in Him would not be known by anyone, while He knows what is in the consciousness of His servants."

Once we have understood that the human soul can be annihilated (fanāʾ) in one of the ranks of the Essence — in which case nothing remains but that rank — the meaning of these traditions becomes clear; and if a spoken expression were really at issue, its case in being answered would be just like that of the other expressions of supplication.

It also becomes clear that what is meant by "letters" in the ḥadīth is not the letters of the alphabet — and this is certain; for in that case, the concealment of [the seventy-third letter] would be unintelligible. And what occurs in another tradition — "The letters of the Greatest Name are scattered throughout the Qurʾān; the Imām gathers them and calls upon God by them" — confirms this.

In ʿUyūn Akhbār al-Riḍā and the Tafsīr of al-ʿAyyāshī it is reported: "Bismillāh al-Raḥmān al-Raḥīm is closer to the Greatest Name of God than the black of the eye is to its white."

From this also becomes clear the meaning of what has been transmitted from the Infallible Imāms (peace be upon them) — namely, that they are the Most Beautiful Names and the Greatest Name of God. This is also yielded by the tradition we cited earlier from Uṣūl al-Kāfī.

In light of that ḥadīth and of what is reported in the traditions on the Veils (ḥujub), it is understood that the concealment of the Greatest Name, and its being reserved in the knowledge of the unseen, is solely because of its very lack of determination, which makes it impossible for anyone to attain it except in the state of annihilation (fanāʾ); and in that state, no trace of the creature remains: "The kingdom on that Day belongs to God" [Qurʾān 22:56]. Perhaps what is meant by God's having reserved one letter for Himself is this very point. And God knows best.

Treatise on the Divine Acts. In the Name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate. Praise belongs to God, Lord of the Worlds, and may God's blessings and peace be upon His near-drawn friends — especially Muḥammad and his Pure Family.

In this treatise we shall discuss, in summary form, the acts (afʿāl) of God the Glorified and what is reckoned among their derivatives — such as the question of qaḍāʾ and qadar (decree and determination), badāʾ (apparent alteration), saʿāda and shaqāwa (felicity and wretchedness), jabr and tafwīḍ (compulsion and delegation), and other matters akin to them, such as guidance and misguidance, will and volition, tamḥīṣ (winnowing) and istidrāj (gradual seizure), wrath, sorrow, and the like. And God is the One whose aid is sought.

In the Treatise on the Divine Names we established by demonstration that every act which is realized in the world of being — once one removes from it the aspects of deficiency, and purifies it of the contaminations of matter, potency, and contingency, and, more generally, of all privative (ʿadamī) aspects — is the act of God the Glorified. Indeed, since non-existence and every privative thing — qua privative — has no real existence in the external world (for in the external world there is nothing but existence and its states and effusions), it follows that in the external world there is no act whatsoever except the act of God the Glorified. This is a truth upon which both demonstration (burhān) and immediate spiritual taste (dhawq) converge.

The Qurʾānic verses and the ḥadīths also affirm what we said in the preceding chapter — for example, the noble verse: "That is God, your Lord, the Creator of everything" [Qurʾān 40:62].

And the verse: "God is the Creator of everything" [Qurʾān 39:62].

From this verse we learn that evils, qua evils, are privative matters. We added the qualification "qua evils" because, just before the above verse, He said: "If a good thing befalls them, they say, 'This is from God,' but if some evil befalls them, they say, 'This is from you.' Say: 'All is from God.' What is the matter with these people that they barely understand any saying?" [Qurʾān 4:78].

In Uṣūl al-Kāfī and other ḥadīth collections, with multiple chains of transmission, it is reported from Imām al-Riḍā (peace be upon him) that God said:

"O son of Adam! By My will it is that you can will for yourself whatever you will. By My power it is that you discharge My obligations. By My favor it is that you have the ability to disobey Me. I made you hearing, seeing, and able. Whatever good befalls you is from God, and whatever evil befalls you is from yourself; and this is because I am more fitting [to be ascribed] your good works than you are, and you are more fitting [to be ascribed] your evil works than I am — for I am not questioned about what I do, but they are questioned."

This ḥadīth qudsī contains all that we said earlier. In sum, all acts — as has been stated — are from God; and even setting that perspective aside, all acts, qua good, are His act.

Group One — Acts pertaining to creation. The acts of God the Glorified in the various sectors of creation and its sustenance — which is His undertaking of what creation and its diverse aspects require. As, for example, in the following verses:

"Say: 'Do you indeed disbelieve in Him who created the earth in two days, and assign to Him equals? That is the Lord of the Worlds.' And He set firm mountains above it, and blessed it, and decreed in it its sustenances in four days, equal for those who ask. Then He directed Himself toward the heaven, while it was smoke, and said to it and to the earth, 'Come, willingly or unwillingly.' They said: 'We come willingly.' So He completed them seven heavens in two days, and revealed in each heaven its command. And We adorned the lower heaven with lamps, and as a guard. That is the determination of the All-Mighty, the All-Knowing" [Qurʾān 41:9–12].

And other verses that include various kinds of acts: speaking (qawl), uttering (kalām), fashioning of forms (taṣwīr), subjugating and making obedient (taskhīr), writing (kitāba), exhorting (tawṣiya), causing to grow (inbāt), driving forward (sawq), giving to drink (siqāya), and the like.

Group Two — Acts pertaining to felicity and wretchedness. The acts of God Most Exalted concerning saʿāda (felicity) and shaqāwa (wretchedness) and the matters annexed to them:

"Whoever desires this fleeting world — We hasten to him in it whatever We will, for whomever We wish; then We assign him Hell, in which he is to roast, condemned and rejected. And whoever desires the Hereafter and strives for it as it should be striven for, while he is a believer — those, their striving is gratefully received. To all — to these and those — We extend of the bestowal of your Lord; and the bestowal of your Lord is never withheld" [Qurʾān 17:18–20].

These verses, in general, indicate that the divine outpouring and aid embrace both groups and both inclinations.

"Have you not seen that We sent the satans against the disbelievers, inciting them with [furious] incitement?" [Qurʾān 19:83].

"Whomever God wills to guide, He expands his breast to Islam; and whomever He wills to lead astray, He makes his breast tight and constricted, as though he were climbing up into the sky. Thus does God lay defilement upon those who do not believe" [Qurʾān 6:125].

And there are still other verses which report that God the Glorified takes them out from the light and abandons them in layered, terrifying darknesses; that He makes the mirage of foulness and evil seem to them in beautiful and pleasing forms; that He sets fetters upon their necks; that He bars what is before them and behind them; that He renders them blind, deaf, and dumb; that He overturns their hearts and their sights; that He makes their hearts narrow and constricted, so that they have no room for the truth; that He provides them with companions from among the satans and friends from among the iblīses; that He drives them forward step by step, granting them respite, and then casts them into the abode of perdition — Hellfire — and how evil a resting-place!

The like of these verses has also come concerning the people of felicity.

"Had We willed, We could have given every soul its guidance; but the word from Me is true: I shall surely fill Hell with the jinn and humankind altogether" [Qurʾān 32:13].

"When We will to destroy a town, We command its affluent ones [to obey], and they transgress in it; thus the word becomes due against it, and We destroy it utterly" [Qurʾān 17:16].

"No affliction befalls the earth, or your own selves, but it is in a Book, before We bring it into being. That is easy for God" [Qurʾān 57:22].

The existents of the world of being — after the Most Holy Essence of God and His Names and Attributes — have three ranks.

These ranks, in keeping with the demonstration set forth in the Treatise on the Intermediaries (Risālat al-Wasāʾiṭ), are: the world of pure intellect (ʿālam al-ʿaql al-mujarrad), the world of similitudes (ʿālam al-mithāl), and the world of matter (ʿālam al-mādda). As we explained in that treatise, the ordering of each of these worlds upon the other is of the kind of the ordering of effect upon cause and of the deficient existent upon the complete existent.

It follows that the form of whatever is realized in the world of matter and bodies corresponds to the forms in the world of similitudes; and likewise the forms of the world of similitudes correspond to what is in the world of pure intellect. Thus the order present in the lower world is firmly realized in the higher world, without any change or alteration finding its way to it. For an existential realization in a lower world requires a cause in a higher world; and that cause, once realized, will not change — because what actually is does not change from what it is. So a thing whose being-actual is itself liable to alteration is not actual. Therefore, the cause's being susceptible to alteration while the effect is realized and existent entails either contradiction of the hypothesis or an impossible reversal (inqilāb). The result is that the order of being in every world is established in the world prior to it in an unchangeable manner.

Now, since the existence of the events that occur in the world of bodies attains its completion by means of matter, those events — whatever they may be — require a prior preparedness (istiʿdād) borne by some matter.

Preparednesses and possibilities multiply with the multiplicity of the aspects prepared for (i.e., that into which matter is capable of being transformed); they are realized serially within prior corporeal existents. The farther the preparation-bearing matter is from the phenomenon prepared for (mustaʿaddala), the less the determinacy and specification of that phenomenon within the prepared matter; and the greater its indeterminacy and abstraction, and the more numerous its possible relations to the things that can come to be in it. The closer the prepared matter draws to that phenomenon, the greater becomes the determinacy and specification of that phenomenon — until the preparedness reaches completion and becomes qualified by existence.

At this point, no indeterminacy remains in it; its determinacy and individuation are complete, and its altering from the state in which it is is impossible.

From what has been said it becomes clear that what bars change at the stage of complete existence is precisely complete existence itself — that by virtue of which the effects of the thing are predicated of it. For the existence of a thing is the thing itself; and if we have presupposed the thing itself — say, man — then it is impossible that it be transformed away from itself: that is, the very supposition of man and his actualization in his proper station (let this be carefully noted).

It must be recognized that this is other than the changes and transformations that occur in this world. For man's transformation into dust and the like, for instance, is not a transformation in the existence of the human form; it is, rather, the removal of the existence of man from the matter and the substitution of the form of dust in its place.

In reality, then, the change has befallen the matter — whose completeness is by way of its form. But no change has occurred in the existence of the form; it has, rather, been annulled and ceased to be. In reality, one existential time has ended and the time of another existence has begun.

Therefore, all the existents of which the corporeal world is composed and upon which its order has settled are — from this perspective — fixed and untransformable. They are susceptible to change only relative to one another by way of comparison, not in themselves.

For example: the sperm-drop, qua sperm-drop, neither is itself susceptible to change, nor — qua an existent preparedness — is its preparedness for becoming a man or another body susceptible to change, nor is its matter, qua matter that bears that preparedness, susceptible to transformation. Yes — if we consider matter relative to the forms that come to be in it, it is capable of being actualized through one of them; the nearest of these may, for instance, be the human form. The upshot is that this corporeal order, with all its parts, is an unchangeable order — like that of the worlds of similitude and pure intellect — with this difference: that contained within it there is yet another order which receives change, whose potency does not, however, affect its actuality.

Since it has been demonstrated that the world of similitude contains the order of this world with all its details, and that the world of pure intellect, in turn, contains the details of the world of similitude, we conclude that the details of the order of the material world are, in the worlds of similitude and pure intellect, of two kinds: one susceptible to change in the rank of its actualization in the material world; the other not susceptible to change in any wise. And since the world of similitude is a replica and image of the world of pure intellect, the fixity of this judgment — in both its parts — is in reality realized there (let this be carefully noted).

From the totality of what has been said, we conclude that the existence of phenomena is preceded by two ranks: a rank that admits no failure and is not susceptible to change — this we call the definitive decree (al-qaḍāʾ al-ḥatmī); and a rank that does admit failure and change — like the rank of requisites, deficient causes, and preparednesses — this we call qadar (determination), which admits erasure and confirmation — and this is precisely what badāʾ is.

It also becomes clear that this division applies to whatever admits composition in its existence; whereas with respect to that which does not admit composition — such as the pure immaterial existents — there is only qaḍāʾ and nothing more.

The religious texts also affirm what we said above. Some of the relevant Qurʾānic verses we have already cited; we shall now turn to some of the ḥadīths.

In al-Maḥāsin, Hishām b. Sālim reports that Imām al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) said: "When God wills a thing, He determines it (qaddarahu); when He has determined it, He decrees it (qaḍāhu); and when He has decreed it, He puts it into effect (amḍāhu)."

In the same book it is reported that Abū al-Ḥasan [al-Riḍā or al-Kāẓim] (peace be upon him) said to Yūnus: "O Yūnus! Do not speak of qadar." Yūnus said: "I do not speak of qadar — but I say: Nothing comes to be except what God has willed (arāda) and wished (shāʾa) and decreed (qaḍā) and determined (qaddara)." The Imām said: "This is not how I say it. I say: Nothing comes to be except what God has wished and willed and determined and decreed." Then he said: "Do you know what mashīʾa (wishing) is?" He said: "No." He said: "It is His attention turned to the thing." He said: "Do you know what irāda (will) is?" He said: "No." He said: "It is the completion of the wishing." He said: "Do you know what qadar is?" He said: "No." He said: "It is the measurement — from length, breadth, and duration." Then he said: "When God wishes a thing, He wills it; when He has willed it, He determines it; when He has determined it, He decrees it; and when He has decreed it, He puts it into effect."

In another report: "This is the stage that admits no turning back."

The end of this report addresses the question of badāʾ; its beginning points to what we said — namely, that qaḍāʾ and qadar are two ranks of being — although they may also, from another perspective, be reckoned among the ranks of knowledge, as has been alluded to in other reports. For example, the report al-Ṣadūq (may God have mercy on him) cites in al-Tawḥīd from al-Mufassir: that Imām al-Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī (peace be upon him) said, in describing the attributes of God: "He is not unjust in His decree; creatures are submissive to that which He knows, and they pass through what He has inscribed in the Concealed Book; they do not act contrary to what He knows of them, nor do they will anything other than that."

Many reports likewise establish that qaḍāʾ and qadar attach to acts of disobedience as well — not, however, in the respect that they are disobedience.

The Imām (peace be upon him) — to establish qadar, which is precisely the effective bearing of God the Glorified upon the details of existents (man among them) and upon the issuance of their acts — argued from the divine attributes and their priority over acts. For the priority of mercy requires that it bring forth what it requires; and mercy requires a thing to which it may attach. Likewise, the attribute of forgiveness requires sin, so that forgiveness may have something on which to fall — as the ḥadīth says: "Were it not that you sin, God would take you away and bring a people who sin."

The end of the ḥadīth alludes to the fact that the will of God the Glorified is in every case dominant and overpowering. Although the Imām did not explicitly say so, the substance of his words shows that he was speaking under the appropriate divine attributes — power (qudra), overpowering (qahr), and kingship (mulk) — as is shown by another saying of his:

The Imām said: "What God opens to people of mercy, none can hold back; and what He withholds, none can release." The man said: "O Commander of the Faithful, we asked you only about the capacity (istiṭāʿa) by which we stand and sit." He said: "A capacity which you possess with God, or apart from God?" The people fell silent and could find no answer.

The Imām said: "If you say you possess it with God, I shall execute you; and if you say you possess it apart from God, I shall execute you!" They said: "Then how shall we say it, O Commander of the Faithful?" He said: "You possess it through Him who possesses it independently of you. If He bestows it upon you, that is from His giving; and if He strips it from you, that is from His trial. He is the One who owns what He has given you to own, and is empowered over that for which He has empowered you. Have you not heard what the servants say when they ask Him for movement and power, when they say: 'There is no movement and no power save by God'?"

The late al-Ṣadūq, in al-Tawḥīd, reports from Zurāra that he heard Imām al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) say: "Just as the manifest blessings are from God — Mighty and Majestic — and He has bestowed them upon you, so too is evil from yourselves — even though His qadar has run upon it."

This ḥadīth has the same purport as the preceding one. The upshot is that bringing-into-existence — like existence itself — belongs independently to God; consequently, and by means of God, it belongs to others. The following ḥadīth also affirms the same meaning:

In Uṣūl al-Kāfī and al-Tawḥīd, al-Muʿallā reports that the Imām (peace be upon him) was asked about the knowledge of God. He said:

"He knew, and He wished, and He willed, and He determined, and He decreed, and He put-into-effect; so He put into effect what He decreed, and He decreed what He determined, and He determined what He willed. By His knowledge, wishing came to be; by His wishing, will; by His will, determination; by His determination, decree; by His decree, putting-into-effect. Knowledge precedes wishing, wishing is second, will is third, and determination falls upon decree by way of putting-into-effect.

Therefore, for God — Blessed and Exalted — there is badāʾ with respect to that which He knows, whenever He wishes, and with respect to that which He has willed for the determination of things; but once decree falls together with putting-into-effect, there is no longer badāʾ.

Knowledge is in the known prior to its being; wishing is in the wished thing prior to its existence; will is in the willed thing prior to its standing; determination of these knowables is prior to their being detailed and connected, in concrete actuality and in time. Decree-with-putting-into-effect is the fixed, among the determinate beings — those endowed with bodies, perceived by the senses — possessors of color, smell, weight, measure; everything that crawls and walks of human, jinn, bird, beast, and the rest of what the senses perceive. So for God — Blessed and Exalted — there is badāʾ with respect to that which has no concrete instance; once the concrete, comprehended, perceived instance occurs, there is no badāʾ. And God does what He wills.

By knowledge He knew the things before their being; by wishing, He recognized their attributes and limits and originated them before manifesting them; by will, He distinguished their selves in their colors and attributes; by determination, He measured out their sustenances and recognized their first and last; by decree, He made manifest their places to people and guided them to them; and by putting-into-effect, He laid out their causes and made manifest their state. That is the determination of the All-Mighty, the All-Knowing."

From this ḥadīth the whole of what we said in the preceding chapter is corroborated. It expounds the locus of qaḍāʾ and qadar, and indicates that the locus of badāʾ is qadar — indeed, it is also a corroboration of that division.

Al-ʿAyyāshī, in his Tafsīr, reports from Imām al-Bāqir (peace be upon him) that Imām al-Sajjād (peace be upon him) said: "Were it not for a single verse in the Book of God, I would tell you what will come to pass until the Day of Resurrection." I said to him: "Which verse?" He said: "God's saying: 'God effaces what He will and confirms; with Him is the Mother of the Book' [Qurʾān 13:39]."

A similar report is given in al-Tawḥīd from the Commander of the Faithful. The reports establishing badāʾ are more than can be cited; we omit them for the sake of brevity.

This report alludes to the following verses: "God does whatever He wills" [Qurʾān 14:27].

"To Him belongs praise in the first and the last; to Him belongs the rule" [Qurʾān 28:70].

"For every appointed term there is a writing" [Qurʾān 13:38].

It must be understood that the reports in this section — like those on saʿāda and shaqāwa, jabr and tafwīḍ — are of three kinds: one kind sets forth the reality of the matter; the second speaks to people at the level of their surface comprehension and stops there; and the third warns against entering into such matters — like the saying of the Imām (peace be upon him): "It is a dark road; do not tread it."

In Tafsīr al-Qummī, it is reported that Imām al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) was asked: "Is there a station between jabr (compulsion) and qadar (delegation)?" He said: "Yes." They asked: "What is it?" He said: "It is one of the secrets of God."

It is clear that their answers are pitched to the level of comprehension and understanding of the questioners and listeners — with all the variation they have.

The species that possess an immaterial soul (nafs mujarrada) become immaterial — though at the beginning of their existence they are purely material species. Their essence, by substantial motion (ḥaraka jawhariyya), is then transformed and becomes immaterial in the imaginal mode (mujarrad khayālī), and stops at that level — or, by further substantial motion, passes beyond it and becomes universal intellective immaterial (mujarrad ʿaqlī kullī); this latter holds, of course, only of some human individuals. So all these species are corporeal in coming-to-be and spiritual in continuation. Hence the species possessed of soul are — contrary to the view of all the earlier philosophers, including the sages of Egypt, Greece, and other regions, and even the ancient sages of Islam — intermediate species.

Among these, man specifically — and some animals which may be annexed to him — is an intermediate species containing within it a vast multitude of species, whose forms the soul takes upon itself once it has become immaterial; the soul stops at that stage, or passes beyond it to the level of intellective forms and stops there.

And since the return (ʿawd) is like the beginning — or, in a sense, identical with it — the ultimate species to which man ascends and at which he comes to rest is the very rank from which he descended, although there is a difference between these two ranks (that of beginning and that of return) which we shall touch upon. These principles were articulated solely by Ṣadr al-Mutaʾallihīn (may his soul be sanctified), who established them by demonstration.

After these introductory remarks, we say: experience shows that there is a complete correspondence between the bodily constitutions and temperaments, on the one hand, and character traits (akhlāq), on the other. Character is precisely the engrained dispositions (malakāt) — i.e., the cognitions deeply rooted in the soul, which, by repetition of states, come to be in the soul of man and take root, to the point where they can no longer be effaced. Experience also establishes that upbringing — especially upbringing by way of suggestion — is effective in shaping character. This shows that the effect of bodily characteristics in the formation of character is not absolute and inevitable; it is rather at the level of a strong disposition. Yet character does reach a stage at which it can no longer be effaced.

Accordingly, the soul first comes to be by way of the substantial motion of the body — namely, when the imagination begins to function. At this stage the soul is intensely tinged with the body's coloration, but this coloration has not yet reached the stage at which it cannot be effaced. Then there is the soul together with what lies before it: kinds of upbringing, items of knowledge, beliefs, and events through which it comes into contact and engagement. The soul, in continuous motion, traverses one path after another, and various states and beliefs are heaped upon it; some bring others in their wake, until they take root in it and become its constant companions.

It is precisely by this psychic form that human beings come to be distinguished from one another — and this is the diversification of souls. So if this form is the form of felicity, the soul, in the barzakh, is set on the path of felicity; if it is the form of wretchedness, it falls on the path of wretchedness; if its immateriality is barzakhī (imaginal), it stops at that stage; if it is above that, it passes beyond.

One point remains, namely: the perfection of every effect, and the goal (ghāya) of its existence, is the existence of its cause. It is impossible for an effect, in its perfective motion, to exceed the perfection of the cause of its existence, or the rank in which the cause is. On the other hand, it is also impossible for the effect, in its perfective motion, to traverse all the existential ranks of its perfection without arriving at the rank of its cause — i.e., without arriving at the stage at which the cause stands beyond — for otherwise the hypothesis would be contradicted. Likewise, it is impossible for an immaterial cause among the vertical chain of causes to fail to attain its goal in the act, since by hypothesis these causes are immaterial and fixed, and no change finds its way to them; their effects, in the very respect in which the cause is unchangeable, are issued from them. Hence, the supposition that their goals, or the goals of their effects, fail to be realized is an impossible supposition.

From these premises we conclude that a thing, in its return, comes to rest at precisely the rank from which it received its determination in its essence; and above it stands its cause.

Therefore every thing returns to its beginning. The beginning and the return differ, however, in that the return branches into two parts — the abode of felicity and the abode of wretchedness — whereas the beginning has no such two branches: it is only the abode of felicity and nothing else. But let it be understood that the primordial felicity is the all-encompassing felicity, not the particular felicity that has wretchedness as its opposite. Hence there is no contradiction between this primordial felicity, the determination of the wretched human's essence from it, and his return to that rank — yet beginning and return remain one (let this be carefully noted).

We have said earlier that the intellective order present in the world of immaterial existents, the imaginal order present in the world of similitudes, and one of the two aspects of the corporeal order present in the world of bodies are an unchangeable order. Therefore, the determination of the corporeal species — and man among them, who is corporeal in coming-to-be — in whatever form it occurs, whether wretchedness or felicity, will be the very form of his return.

This is how essential felicity and wretchedness must be expounded — not in the way that the apparent meaning of the expressions suggests, which would entail the nullification of the effect of upbringing, the futility of religious obligation, the collapse of the system of revealed law, and, in sum, the nullification of punishment, retribution, and reward. And God is the Guide.

It must be known that everything set forth in this chapter is demonstrated. We have, however, omitted the demonstration of some of the points — owing to the length of their premises and their dependence upon other questions — and have contented ourselves with stating the demonstration of some of what has gone before.

The religious texts, too, affirm what we said. For the verses cited in Chapter 2 — though they describe God's wrath against the people of wretchedness, His leading them astray from the path of guidance, His contrivance against them, and His various manipulations in their consciences — yet, on careful return to those verses, we find that God's acts and His manipulations in them are because of the evils and wickedness that exist in them themselves, and are in reality the consequence of their iniquity, disbelief, and rebellion:

"God does not guide the iniquitous people" [Qurʾān 9:80].

The cutting-off of the blessing of guidance from one who has turned his back upon it — and likewise his being abandoned in his straying — is in no way contrary to the universality of divine justice or to the all-encompassing nature of His mercy. The cause and occasion of all these punishments and inducements of wretchedness are the people themselves. The same goes for Satan and the misguidance of the unfortunate wretched at his hands: this is not because Satan has any essential authority over them, but because they themselves, by reason of their own inner straying, followed him and empowered him over themselves.

In the Noble Qurʾān, God recounts the speech of Iblīs thus: "He said: 'My Lord! Because You have led me astray, I shall surely embellish [evil] for them in the earth and I shall lead them all astray — except those of Your servants who are sincere [chosen] (al-mukhlaṣīn).' He said: 'This is a straight path [leading] to Me. Over My servants you have no authority, except those who follow you of the misguided'" [Qurʾān 15:39–42].

Elsewhere He recounts the speech of that accursed one on the Day of Resurrection, addressed to the misguided: "Satan will say, when the matter is decreed: 'God promised you a true promise; I made you a promise but broke it. I had no authority over you, except that I called you, and you responded to me. So do not blame me; blame yourselves. I cannot help you, nor can you help me. I deny that you associated me [with God] before. For the wrongdoers there is a painful punishment.'" [Qurʾān 14:22].

In these statements, Iblīs himself lays the burden of sin upon the misguided, and identifies the cause of their punishment as their own wrongdoing — not their following him and responding to his call. All of this is a referring of the matter back to the essence (dhāt) — i.e., it indicates that the source of their misery is themselves.

God the Glorified recounts the confession of this truth on the lips of the wrongdoers themselves: "Our wretchedness overcame us" [Qurʾān 23:106].

And He said: "Say: Everyone acts according to his own makeup" [Qurʾān 17:84].

"O people! Your insolence is only against yourselves" [Qurʾān 10:23].

Therefore, whenever man intends to perform some act or aims at some object, the matter does not pass outside the bounds of his own essence; in reality, he intends and wills some form, beautiful or ugly, of the forms of his own soul. This is a truth, for, as has been demonstrated in its place, the perfective goal is for the agent, and the act is among the aspects, modes, and qualities of the agent. Since this is so, the ugly and vile forms that the wretched essence acquires increase, grow, and pile up — until they make the people blind, deaf, overturn their hearts, embellish before them everything that bars them from God's path, settle defilement upon their hearts and make those hearts a refuge for satans, and so on with the other matters God has promised concerning them. All of this is because of the movement of their essence within these darknesses and its being clothed in these veils of obscurity. God the Glorified says: "So those who have done wrong shall have a portion [of sin and punishment] like the portion of their companions" [Qurʾān 51:59]. [The Arabic at this point in the printed edition mistakenly repeats Q 2:9; Shīrwānī's rendering corresponds to Q 51:59, which is supplied here.]

So by their essential wretchedness they tread the path of Hell: "Whoever turns away from the remembrance of his Lord — He shall lead him into a grievous chastisement" [Qurʾān 72:17].

They continue along this course, traversing — by way of the deeds that they have themselves prepared — one stage after another, until they reach the abode of perdition and fall into Hell, what an evil resting-place!

What we said above is confirmed by several groups of ḥadīths, some of which we cite below:

1. Shaykh al-Ṣadūq (may God have mercy on him), in the Amālī, reports from Imām al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) that the Messenger of God (may God's blessings and peace be upon him and his Family) said:

"The wretched is the one who was wretched in his mother's womb, and the felicitous is the one who was felicitous in his mother's womb."

2. In Qurb al-Isnād, al-Bazanṭī reports that Imām al-Riḍā (peace be upon him) said in the course of a ḥadīth:

"The sperm-drop remains in the womb thirty days, then becomes a clinging clot (ʿalaqa) thirty days, then a lump (muḍgha) thirty days, then formed and unformed thirty days; and when the four months are completed, God — Blessed and Exalted — sends to it two creating angels, who give it form, and write down its sustenance, its term, its being wretched or felicitous."

3. In al-Tawḥīd and al-Maḥāsin, Ibn Ḥāzim reports that Imām al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) said:

"God — Mighty and Majestic — created felicity and wretchedness before He created His creatures. So whoever God has known to be felicitous, He never hates; and if such a one does an evil deed, He hates the deed, not him. And whoever God has known to be wretched, He never loves; and if such a one does a righteous deed, He loves the deed, but hates him — because of what he comes to in the end. So when God loves something, He never thereafter hates it; and when He hates something, He never thereafter loves it."

4. Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Ṣaffār, in Baṣāʾir al-Darajāt, reports from Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh that Imām al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) said:

The Messenger of God preached to the people and then raised his right hand, closing his fist, and said: "Do you know what is in my hand?" They said: "God and His Messenger know best." He said: "In it are the names of the people of Paradise, and the names of their fathers and tribes, until the Day of Resurrection." Then he raised his left hand and said: "O people! Do you know what is in my hand?" They said: "God and His Messenger know best." He said: "In it are the names of the people of the Fire, and the names of their fathers and tribes, until the Day of Resurrection." Then he said: "God has decreed and acted with justice; God has decreed and acted with justice; a party in Paradise and a party in the Blaze."

The same content is also reported in al-Maḥāsin.

1. Shaykh al-Ṣadūq (may God have mercy on him), in ʿIlal al-Sharāʾiʿ, reports from Abū Isḥāq al-Laythī that Imām al-Bāqir (peace be upon him) said:

"Tell me, O Ibrāhīm, of the sun when it rises and its rays appear in the lands: is the ray separate from the disk?" I said: "In the state of rising, it is separate." He said: "Is it not so that when the sun sets, that ray rejoins the disk and returns to it?" I said: "Yes." He said: "Just so does everything return to its stock, its substance, and its root."

This same content has been repeatedly given by way of analogy in the traditions of ṭīna (clay/native constitution), and subtle meanings are concealed in it.

2. In the Amālī and the Tafsīr of al-Qummī, it is reported [from Imām al-Bāqir (peace be upon him)] that he said:

"When He created them, He created them as believer and disbeliever, as wretched and felicitous; and so they return on the Day of Resurrection — guided and astray … 'As He brought you forth at first, so will you return' [Qurʾān 7:29]. Whoever God created wretched on the day He created him, returns to Him in like fashion as wretched; and whoever God created felicitous on the day He created him, returns to Him in like fashion as felicitous. The Messenger of God said: 'The wretched is he who was wretched in his mother's womb, and the felicitous is he who was felicitous in his mother's womb.'"

This category includes a multitude of reports which, with their varied formulations, indicate that the root and substrate of the felicitous and the wretched, and the primal source from which they were created and from which they began (which is denoted by ṭīna — "native clay/constitution"), are different. The ṭīna of the people of felicity is from the world of light, Paradise, ʿIlliyyīn, the pure earth, and sweet, palatable water — all of which, as we shall point out, return to one matter. The ṭīna of the people of wretchedness is from the world of darkness, Fire, Sijjīn, the impure, briny earth, and bitter water — and again, all return to one matter. The reports also indicate that all the kinds of felicity and wretchedness, good and evil, encountered in the course of one's movement from the original homeland until the return back to it, are effects of the very ṭīna from which one was created — and you will never find any alteration in the divine custom*.

What these reports set forth is derived from verses, some of which we cite: "As He brought you forth at first, so will you return — a party He guided, and a party for whom misguidance has been confirmed" [Qurʾān 7:29–30].

This verse states the truth that, just as they are two groups in their return, so too they were two groups at the beginning. He then says:

And God the Glorified says: "Every community shall be summoned to its own book" [Qurʾān 45:28].

"Whoever desires might — to God belongs all might. To Him ascends the good word, and the righteous deed raises it; and as for those who plot evils — for them is a severe punishment, and the plotting of those — it shall come to nothing" [Qurʾān 35:10].

"God created you from dust, then from a sperm-drop, then made you pairs. No female bears or brings forth save by His knowledge; and no long-living person has his life prolonged, nor is anything diminished from his life, but it is in a Book. That is easy for God" [Qurʾān 35:11].

"The two seas are not equal: this one fresh, sweet, palatable to drink; and that one salt, bitter. Yet from each you eat fresh meat and bring forth ornaments to wear; and you see the ships cleaving through it" [Qurʾān 35:12].

"It is He who let the two seas flow — this one fresh, sweet; that one salt, bitter — and set between them a barrier, a forbidding ban. It is He who created from water a human being, and made him kindred by birth and marriage. Your Lord is ever powerful" [Qurʾān 25:53–54].

These two verses make plain that the common deeds found in all cases (as has come in the preceding verses), after their being mingled in this world, will soon be separated, and each will return to its kind and root — as God the Glorified says: "Foul women are for foul men, foul men are for foul women; good women are for good men, and good men are for good women" [Qurʾān 24:26].

He then recounts the speech of the people of Paradise: "And they shall say: 'Praise be to God who has fulfilled His promise to us and made us inherit the earth, that we may dwell wherever in Paradise we please. How excellent is the reward of those who labor!'" [Qurʾān 39:74].

He also said: "God has promised to believing men and believing women gardens beneath which rivers flow, abiding therein, and goodly dwellings in the gardens of Eden" [Qurʾān 9:72].

"It is He who sends the winds bearing good tidings before His mercy. When they bear heavy clouds, We drive them to a dead land, and there We send down the water, and bring forth thereby every kind of fruit. Likewise We bring forth the dead, perhaps you will be reminded. The good land — its vegetation comes forth by the leave of its Lord; but that which is foul brings forth nothing save sparsely. Thus do We turn about the signs for a people who give thanks" [Qurʾān 7:57–58].

"Verily We created them from a cleaving clay" [Qurʾān 37:11].

So examine carefully what we have said, and ponder the various dimensions and features of the speech. Know that the speech of God is one; speech is not altered with Him; He speaks the truth and guides to the path of truth — and we revolve around this single, unitary principle. Praise be to God.

[After citing the relevant verses, we now turn to citing some of the ṭīna-related reports:]

2. Shaykh al-Ṭūsī (may God have mercy on him), in his Amālī, reports from Yaḥyā b. ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Ḥasan, from his father, and from Jaʿfar b. Muḥammad (peace be upon him), from his father, from his grandfather (peace be upon him), that the Messenger of God (may God's blessings and peace be upon him and his Family) said:

"In Paradise there is a spring sweeter than honey, softer than butter, colder than snow, more fragrant than musk; in it is a ṭīna from which God — Mighty and Majestic — created us, and from which He created our Shīʿa. Whoever is not of that ṭīna is neither of us nor of our Shīʿa; and that is the covenant (mīthāq) upon which God — Mighty and Majestic — took the walāya (allegiance) of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (peace be upon him)."

ʿUbayd says: I mentioned this report to Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī (peace be upon them). He said: "Yaḥyā b. ʿAbd Allāh has spoken truly to you; my father reported to me from my grandfather, from the Messenger of God, the very same."

3. Shaykh al-Ṣadūq, in ʿIlal al-Sharāʾiʿ, reports from Zayd al-Shaḥḥām that Imām al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) said:

"God — Blessed and Exalted — created us from a light originated from a [higher] light, which light was firmly placed in a ṭīna from the highest of ʿIlliyyīn; and He created the hearts of our Shīʿa from that of which He created our bodies, and He created their bodies from a ṭīna below that. So their hearts incline toward us, because they were created from that of which we were created." He then recited: "Nay! The book of the righteous is in ʿIlliyyīn; and what will make you know what ʿIlliyyīn is? An inscribed book, witnessed by those brought near." And: "God — Blessed and Exalted — created the hearts of our enemies from a ṭīna of Sijjīn, and created their bodies from a ṭīna below that, and created the hearts of their followers from that of which their bodies were created. So their hearts incline toward them." Then he recited: "The book of the wicked is in Sijjīn; and what will make you know what Sijjīn is? An inscribed book. Woe on that Day to the deniers."

4. Shaykh al-Ṣadūq (may God have mercy on him), in ʿIlal al-Sharāʾiʿ, reports from Ḥabba al-ʿUranī that ʿAlī (peace be upon him) said:

"God — Mighty and Majestic — created Adam from the surface of the earth: of it is briny, of it is salty, and of it is good and pure. So too among his progeny are the righteous and the corrupt."

5. In Nahj al-Balāgha, it is reported that Mālik b. Raḥīya said: We were in the presence of the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him) when the diversity among people was discussed. The Imām (peace be upon him) said:

"What has divided them are the origins of their ṭīna. For they were a piece taken from briny earth and from sweet, from rough soil and from soft. To the degree their earths are near, they are near; to the degree their earths differ, they differ. So one of fair countenance is deficient of intellect, one of tall stature is short on aspiration, one of pure deed is ugly of aspect, one shallow of bottom is far in fathoming, one of known native disposition is unknown of imported character, one wandering of heart is scattered of mind, one fluent of tongue is sharp of soul."*

6. In al-Maḥāsin, it is reported from Zurāra that Imām al-Bāqir (peace be upon him) said:

"God — Blessed and Exalted — before creating creatures, said: 'Be a sweet water, that I may create from you My Paradise and the people of My obedience.' And He said: 'Be a salty, briny water, that I may create from you My Fire and the people of My disobedience.' Then He commanded them to mix. From this, the believer comes to beget the disbeliever and the disbeliever the believer. Then He took the clay of Adam from the surface of the earth and rubbed it severely; suddenly they were like motes, crawling. He said to the Companions of the Right: 'To Paradise, in peace!' and He said to the Companions of the Fire: 'To the Fire — and I do not care!'"

These are some examples of the reports concerning ṭīna; they comprise five modes of expression, and the reports in each group are numerous. As has become clear, they all return to one matter.

These reports — which are numerous — establish that God the Glorified set forth the covenant (mīthāq) before the felicitous and the wretched, and took from them the acknowledgement of His Lordship, of the firmness of the Truth, and of the vanity of the false — as some verses of the Noble Qurʾān point out [namely, al-Aʿrāf 172–173]:

"And when your Lord took from the children of Adam, from their loins, their seed, and made them bear witness against themselves: 'Am I not your Lord?' They said: 'Yes indeed; we bear witness' — lest you say on the Day of Resurrection, 'We were heedless of this,' or say, 'It was our fathers who associated others [with God] before us; we were but their seed coming after them — will You then destroy us for what those vain-actors did?'" [Qurʾān 7:172–173]

Therefore the phrase "from the children of Adam, from their loins" is by way of taghlīb (subsuming under the more inclusive term), and includes Adam (peace be upon him) and what comes forth from his loins, as well as what comes forth from the loins of his offspring who issued from his loins.

Hence, in the ḥadīth commentaries on this verse, it is reported: "God brought forth from the loins of Adam his children until the Day of Resurrection." This taghlīb is meant to indicate that the mediation of some people in the coming-to-be of others is being attended to — yet these differences have no effect on the completeness of the proof against them and their acknowledgement of God's Lordship. This sets the stage for the latter part of the verse: "Or [lest] you say, 'It was our fathers who associated others before us, and we were but their seed coming after them.'" (Let this be carefully noted.)

Now, if the locus of this taking and bearing-witness were this very worldly life, the phrase "They said: Yes indeed; we bear witness" would be by way of the language of state (lisān al-ḥāl); the "taking" of them would be their being brought into being through generation; and "and made them bear witness against themselves: Am I not your Lord?" would be His showing them to themselves with all the signs in the souls (āyāt anfusī) that prove the existence of God and His unity. Their acknowledgement, by the language of state, of God's unity would then be the consequence. The verse would, in sum, mean: "God the Glorified created human beings in this world and dispersed them in it, and by showing them the signs in their own selves and disclosing their need for a single Lord and Director, He made them witnesses against themselves; their hearts acknowledged these signs and what they indicate of God's existence, and they said by the language of state: 'Yes, we have testified.'"

But the context (siyāq) of these verses shows that the taking of all human beings and the making them bear witness is only to cut off two pleas by which human beings might argue on the Day of Resurrection — when they see the punishment and the secondary causes are stripped from them. Those two pleas are: (1) "We were heedless of this matter," and (2) "Even though we were not heedless, the sin is from our fathers; since we were their children, we followed them in the shirk they committed — will You destroy us on account of the deeds of those wrongdoers?"

The purport of the verse is therefore: this taking and making to witness is only that heedlessness (or its effect) be removed, and that the effect of following on account of birth be done away with — even if the follower is not heedless. Now it is clear that the second end is not in fact achieved by this taking and witness-making: for once heedlessness is removed, the excuse — whatever it may be — is removed, and nothing else cuts off the excuse. So the addition of any further end to the first would render the speech defective — and the speech of God the Glorified is exalted above any such defect. And if we make the clause "lest you say on the Day of Resurrection" the end of "and made them bear witness," and make the clause "or [lest] you say, 'It was our fathers who associated'" the end of "and when your Lord took" — the deficiency of the speech is multiplied. For the meaning would then become: "Your Lord took the children of Adam from their loins and separated them from one another, so that some — by reason of not being separate from others — might not be followers of others, lest on the Day of Resurrection they say: 'Those who associated were our fathers; why then do You punish us?'" The deficiency here is that, once the children are not separated [from their fathers in the realm of taking], there is no father–son relation in play.

Therefore, the locus of the witness-making cannot be the abode of worldly life. The verse "Or [lest] you say, 'It was our fathers who associated'" shows that there was a locus in which, had the children not been distinguished from their fathers, mere following would have been effective: the act of shirk would have been a single act, committed by the fathers, not by the children — to such a degree that the children, on the Day of Resurrection, would say: "We were attached to our fathers and existed by their entailment; the act of shirk was their act — what then occasioned, after our being separated from them and our existences distinguished, our being punished?" God the Glorified reports that He cast a separation between them in that locus, so they would have no excuse. And the verse "lest you say on the Day of Resurrection, 'We were heedless of this'" is an argument from heedlessness of the testimony in that locus; hence its judgment must be unchangeable — that is, it must go back to the essence and to the mode of existence, so that it may, in a uniform manner, run through worldly life and constitute the cause of their wretchedness. So this heedlessness is an essential heedlessness on their part of the Lordship of God; and their testimony is an essential testimony and existential vision (ruʾya wujūdiyya); and their bearing witness against themselves is an essential testimony and unveiling of their own reality — that they are, in their very essence, nothing, void, and dependent on God.

Hence, after "and made them bear witness against themselves," God says: "Am I not your Lord?" — using the term Rabb in the sense of the owner who directs and manages. He did not say "and He said: Am I not your Lord?" — because the clause "and made them bear witness against themselves" and the clause "Am I not your Lord?", on the interpretation given, have one and the same meaning.

Hence, the substance of the verses under discussion comes back to this: "There is a station and a locus other than the worldly locus, in which the individuals of humanity were distinguished from one another. God brought them out of communion and oneness and made them many and diverse; He made Himself known to them by making them known and showing them to themselves — so they witnessed Him and acknowledged His Lordship. Were it not for this episode, in this world heedlessness would overtake them and they would never become muwaḥḥids (those who profess God's unity)." (Let this be carefully noted.) For one who in that locus submitted and became a muwaḥḥid has no road to shirk; and one who in that locus committed shirk will inevitably be a mushrik in this world — as the verse "They could not believe in what they had denied before" [Qurʾān 10:74] indicates.

The six verses that follow the verses under discussion are in the very context of the meaning we set forth — the last of them being verse 179 of al-Aʿrāf: "We have created for Hell many of the jinn and humankind: they have hearts with which they do not understand, eyes with which they do not see, ears with which they do not hear; they are like cattle — nay, more astray; they are the heedless" [Qurʾān 7:179].

The end of this verse looks back to the earlier verses, and indicates that heedlessness befalls the findings of the heart, the seeings of the eye, and the hearings of the ear — but the soul's vision of itself and of its Lord is never veiled.

The verses "And when your Lord took …" indicate that in that locus, although it required their testimony to His Lordship, it was nevertheless not empty of muwaḥḥid and mushrik. So a kind of tawḥīd and shirk has its source there. The expression mubṭilīn (those who falsify), used of the mushriks at the end of these verses, indicates the aspect of their branching off: namely, that what made them — with their being muwaḥḥid — fall into shirk was their nullifying (despite the testimony of their souls). Perhaps for this reason these two matters are elsewhere expressed as willingly and unwillingly (ṭawʿan wa karhan): "To Him submits whoever is in the heavens and the earth, willingly or unwillingly, and to Him they shall be returned" [Qurʾān 3:83].

He also said: "Then He directed Himself toward the heaven, while it was smoke, and said to it and to the earth: 'Come, willingly or unwillingly.' They said: 'We come willingly.' So He completed them seven heavens" [Qurʾān 41:11–12].

This taking and witness-making is what al-Aḥzāb 7 expresses as mīthāq (covenant): "And when We took from the prophets their covenant — and from you, and from Noah, and Abraham, and Moses, and Jesus son of Mary; We took from them a binding covenant — that He might question the truthful of their truthfulness" [Qurʾān 33:7–8].

The end of the verse indicates that the covenant was taken so that truthfulness might be sought from the truthful; the locus of this is therefore this world, not the next — so the locus of the mīthāq is prior to this world (let this be carefully noted).

The verses from which this meaning may be drawn are many; and many ḥadīths, of which one may even claim tawātur, in commentary on these verses, set forth the very same meaning. We cite some of them:

1. ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm, in his Tafsīr, reports from ʿAbd Allāh b. Muskān: I asked Imām al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) about the verse "And when your Lord took …" — was that episode by way of direct vision (mushāhada)? The Imām said:

"Yes — and so recognition (maʿrifa) was fixed in them, but the locus they forgot — and they shall remember it. Were it not for that, no one would know his Creator or his Sustainer. Some of them in the Realm of Particles acknowledged with their tongues but did not believe with their hearts; God said of these: 'They could not believe in what they had denied before.'"

2. Shaykh al-Ṣadūq (may God have mercy on him), in ʿIlal al-Sharāʾiʿ, reports from Ḥabīb that Imām al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) said:

"God — Blessed and Exalted — took the covenant of the servants while they were shadows (aẓilla) prior to the appointed time. Those souls that recognized one another clave together, and those that did not recognize one another parted company."

3. In Tafsīr al-ʿAyyāshī, from ʿAbd Allāh al-Juʿfī, and likewise in ʿIlal al-Sharāʾiʿ, from ʿAbd Allāh al-Juʿfī and ʿUqba, it is reported that Imām al-Bāqir (peace be upon him) said:

"God — Mighty and Majestic — created creation. He created the one He loved out of what He loved, and what He loved was that He should create him from the clay of Paradise; and He created the one He hated out of what He hated, and what He hated was that He should create him from the clay of the Fire. Then He raised them up in shadows (ẓilāl)."

I asked: "What are ẓilāl?" He said: "Have you not seen your own shadow in the sun — something, but at the same time not [yet] a [substantial] thing? Then from among them He raised up the prophets, who called them to acknowledge God — and that is His saying, 'If you ask them who created them, they will surely say: God' [Qurʾān 43:87]. Then they called them to acknowledge the prophets — and some denied, some acknowledged. Then they called them to our walāya — and, by God, those whom God loved acknowledged it, and those whom He hated denied it. That is His saying: 'They could not believe in what they had denied before.'"

Reminder. Since there is ordering and a causal relation between good deeds, as well as among bad deeds — so that some are consequent upon others — and since both groups of deeds terminate in felicitous or wretched essences, there are two modes of argument for reward and punishment. Both have been employed in the speech of God the Glorified. He says in one place: "They could not believe in what they had denied before" [Qurʾān 7:101]. And in another: "That [punishment of yours] is because you took the signs of God in mockery and the worldly life deceived you" [Qurʾān 45:35]. Both modes of argument are also used in rational discourse when adducing the cause of good or evil acts.

We have seen that there are two orders: one fixed, into whose parts no change finds entry; the other changeable, with non-fixed parts. We have also seen that the existence of one of these two orders does not nullify the existence of the other; nor does it interfere with it. Hence the misimpression is dispelled: namely, that the priority of qaḍāʾ and qadar, the necessary occurrence of what God has inscribed in the Preserved Tablet (which is shielded from change and alteration), and the inevitability that every existent reaches what its essential felicity or wretchedness requires — these are matters incompatible with the validity of religious obligation and the consequent reward and punishment. For true obligation requires true choice (ikhtiyār), in virtue of which doing the act and omitting it are both possible; whereas, given the necessity of the realization of events — which begins with God the Glorified and reaches the act, forming an unbroken chain of mutually-dependent links, all of which exist necessarily and inevitably — there remains no effect for choice; nor does it suffice to make doing-or-omitting permissible for the agent, because the existence of one of the two sides is necessary and definite. Hence, one of two things must be elected and the other denied:

(1) First option — to deny qadar (which is precisely God's prior effective influence in acts) and to say that, prior to the act, God has only an ineffective awareness of acts. Hence acts are the creature's creation, even though the secondary causes and powers by which they come about are God's creation. This is the view held by a group of Muʿtazilites, called tafwīḍ (delegation).

(2) Second option — to accept qadar and to hold that the effect of choice is null and true obligation is futile. This view has a number of consequences: the legitimacy of obligating to what is beyond capacity, the compulsion of man in his acts, the denial of rational good and evil (ḥusn wa qubḥ ʿaqlī), the denial of purposes and ends, and the like. In the technical idiom, this is called jabr (compulsion); the Mujabbira are those who accept it.

But we have seen that there is no contradiction between those two stages: qadar does not interfere with ikhtiyār, and each has its own vessel and container. These groups have failed to combine the true divine knowledges with what the natural material causes require — though, in the view of rational people, the existence of choice and agentive power is what validates religious obligation, and they entertain no doubt of its existence; for they can clearly see the difference between the movements of a healthy man and the trembling of a sick man, between the stillness of a man with sound limbs and that of a paralytic, while at the same time they have no doubt that, when all the causes upon which the existence of an act depends are realized, the occurrence of the act becomes inevitable.

We have explained that there are two orders: one fixed, with fixed and abiding parts in which no change can find entry; the other material, whose subsistence is by way of possibility, potency, and preparedness, which is changeable and variable. Man is one of its parts, and his relation to his acts is such that doing and not doing are both possible for him — and that is precisely choice (ikhtiyār). The choosing of acts proceeds on the basis of good and evil, consequences and ends, and human acts depend in their realization on these matters — just as material substances, by way of their preparednesses, find the possibility of moving and changing to this end or that end, and the determination of the end is realized only through the encompassing of the kind of preparednesses appropriate to that end and the nullification of the preparednesses for the other end. Often one side is brought to completion, but the other side stands opposed to it, interferes with it, prevails over it, and nullifies it. The only difference between man and other material substances is in knowledge and awareness.

Man, once the other causes are in place, chooses on the basis of knowledge; whereas in inanimate substances other factors determine one or the other side, and knowledge — qua having this kind of effect — would be one of those factors. Indeed: what is the difference, in principle, between the source of burning that is in fire and the source of acting that is in man (i.e., complete will)? And what is the difference between firewood that burns once kindled and the man who laughs by his will? And yet at the same time the relation of man to doing and not doing is a contingent relation; both are permissible for him, and this is precisely the criterion for the validity of religious obligation and the consequent reward and punishment. What we have said is in the highest clarity; we shall therefore content ourselves with this much in this chapter.

It must be known that there is here another perspective — under which the very subject-matter of these debates dissolves: the unitarian perspective (naẓar-i tawḥīdī) set forth throughout these treatises. From this perspective, all acts belong to Him, just as the Names and the essences belong to Him; so there is no act for any other than God — and the subject-matter for the question of jabr or tafwīḍ never arises (let this be carefully noted).

The religious texts, too, affirm what we said. We refer to some of them in this chapter:

1. It is reported from the Infallibles (peace be upon them): «لا جَبْرَ وَ لا تَفْویضَ بَلْ أَمْرٌ بَیْنَ الأَمْرَیْنِ» — "There is no compulsion (jabr) and no delegation (tafwīḍ); rather, an affair between the two affairs." This expression has been transmitted with various chains from the Infallible Imāms.

"God — Mighty and Majestic — is more merciful to His creatures than to compel them to sins and then punish them for them; and God is more mighty than to will a thing and have it not come to pass." The narrator says: "They were asked: 'Is there a third station between jabr and qadar?' They said: 'Yes — wider than the distance between heaven and earth.'"

3. In al-Tawḥīd, from Hishām b. Sālim, from Imām al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him):

"God — Blessed and Exalted — is more noble than to lay upon people what they cannot bear; and God is more mighty than that there should be in His dominion that which He does not will."

In other reports it is also stated: "The Qadarīs wished to qualify God by justice — and therefore came to believe in tafwīḍ, oblivious to the fact that, by this belief, they were negating God's sovereignty."

4. In al-Ṭarāʾif it is reported: A man asked Jaʿfar b. Muḥammad (peace be upon them) about qaḍāʾ and qadar. The Imām said:

"What you can blame the servant for is from him; what you cannot blame the servant for is from the act of God. God Most Exalted says to the servant: 'Why did you disobey? Why were you iniquitous? Why did you drink wine? Why did you commit fornication?' — these are the servant's act. He does not say: 'Why did you fall ill? Why did you become short? Why did you become white? Why did you become black?' — for these are from the act of God Most Exalted."

5. Also in al-Ṭarāʾif: Faḍl b. Sahl asked Imām al-Riḍā (peace be upon him) in the presence of al-Maʾmūn: "Are they compelled?" The Imām said:

"God is more just than to compel His creatures and then to punish them." He said: "Then are they at liberty?" He said: "God is more wise than to leave His servant unattended and remit him to himself."

The substance of the reports in this section is mass-transmitted (mutawātir), reducing to a few themes — of each of which we have given an example. In these reports, the Imāms (peace be upon them) have argued by two modes: (i) argument from the requirements of God's Names and Attributes — such as mercy, might, generosity, justice, and overpowering — and likewise from qaḍāʾ and qadar; (ii) argument from good and evil and other matters required by the intellect and the way of rational people. In some reports they have fallen silent — as in the report al-Ṣadūq (may God have mercy on him) cites in al-Tawḥīd from Mihzam, in which Imām al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) said:

The Imām's abstention here is out of gentleness and compassion toward the narrator. God is the Helper.

From what has been said, the manner of expounding and interpreting the other acts which God the Glorified ascribes to Himself becomes clear — for example: wishing (mashīʾa), will (irāda), guidance (hidāya), misguidance (iḍlāl), winnowing/purifying (tamḥīṣ), gradual seizure (istidrāj), wrath (ghaḍab), and sorrow (asaf). These acts are abstracted from the mode of existence of beings — which itself is the act and effusion of God. By way of explanation: that which God has brought into existence, since it has not been the result of any necessity, ignorance, or unawareness, becomes the source from which wishing and will are abstracted in regard to God; and the existence of that being is willed and intended.

From those matters that lead a group to the path of felicity, God's guidance is abstracted; and if it leads a group to misguidance, the concept iḍlāl is drawn from it — but in a sense that does not entail any deficiency in God. From the realization of one thing after another, in such a way that the latter is suited and harmonious with the former and completes it, the concept tawfīq (succor, divine assistance) is taken; and if it is such that the latter phenomenon prevents some of the effects of the prior one, the concept khidhlān (forsaking) is abstracted. And from the bringing-into-being or sustaining of a thing in a manner harmonious with felicity and conducive to it, the concept of baraka (blessing) is drawn.

What leads to the separating of the wretched from the felicitous, and the foul from the pure, is the source of the abstraction of tamḥīṣ (winnowing), imtiḥān (testing), and the like — not in a sense that would entail ignorance on God's part, but in the sense of the completion of the proof and the manifestation of wisdom. And the matters that bring about the increase of the wretched man's wretchedness and its growth — such as various blessings after disobedience and rebellion — are the source of the abstraction of istidrāj (gradual seizure), kayd (contrivance), and the like.

From the calamities and hardships that sins bring in their train, the concept of ghaḍab (wrath) is drawn; from the cases of persistence and insistence on sin and rebellion, the concept of asaf (sorrow) is abstracted. In all these cases the concept is taken purified of any aspect of deficiency. We have explained in the Treatise on the Most Beautiful Names that, from another demonstrative perspective, the acts of God may be ranked alongside His essential attributes.

The verses and ḥadīths on this subject exceed counting.

With regard to mashīʾa, there are many verses indicating that the wishing of God the Glorified is dominant over the wishing of others — indeed, that their wishing is consequent upon His wishing. God says: "You do not will save as God wills" [Qurʾān 76:30].

The late al-Ṣadūq, in al-Tawḥīd, reports from Abū Saʿīd al-Qammāṭ that Imām al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) said: "God created wishing before things; then He created things by means of wishing."

He also reports from Muḥammad b. Muslim that Imām al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) said: "Wishing is originated (muḥdatha)" — i.e., God's wishing is an originated phenomenon.

Reports that establish the originated character of wishing and its being one of the attributes of act are numerous.

There are likewise many verses in the Qurʾān regarding irāda, the apparent purport of which is that irāda is an attribute of act. God says: "When We will to destroy a town, We command its affluent ones, and they transgress in it; then the word becomes due against it, and We destroy it utterly" [Qurʾān 17:16]; and: "His command, when He wills a thing, is only that He says to it 'Be,' and it is" [Qurʾān 36:82]. And there are many such verses.

Shaykh al-Ṣadūq, in al-Tawḥīd and ʿUyūn Akhbār al-Riḍā, reports from Ṣafwān: I said to Imām al-Riḍā (peace be upon him): "Tell me about the will of God and the will of mankind." The Imām said:

"In the creature, will is the inner intention and what appears to him afterward of the act. As for will on the part of God — Mighty and Majestic — His will is His bringing-into-being and nothing else. For He does not deliberate, does not form an intent, does not reflect; these attributes are negated of Him, and they are among the attributes of the creature. So God's will is the act itself — nothing else. He says to a thing 'Be,' and it is — without utterance, without a tongue speaking, without thought; and there is no modality for it, just as there is no modality for Him."

There are many reports — perhaps reaching the level of tawātur — establishing that will is one of the attributes of act.

Kalām (speech) and kalima (word) are a complete meaning in the respect that it is signified by an utterance or by some other instrument of conveying meaning. Hence the term is used in varied ways in the Qurʾān: "And God spoke directly to Moses" [Qurʾān 4:164]; "And their hands shall speak to Us" [Qurʾān 36:65]; "Thus has the word of your Lord come due against the disbelievers — that they are inmates of the Fire" [Qurʾān 40:6]; "His Word, which He cast to Mary, and a Spirit from Him" [Qurʾān 4:171] (i.e., Jesus son of Mary is the divine Word and a Spirit from the realm of divinity, sent to Mary). And so on.

In general: since the existence brought into being from God the Glorified gives word of the attributes of God which mediate in its creation, or of the purpose God has had in originating it — and thus signifies what is intended and what is in the inner intention — that very existence becomes a word, speech, narration, saying, and the like. Therefore God's word and His speech are nothing other than act and origination — which is precisely existence.

Shaykh al-Ṭūsī (may God have mercy on him), in his Amālī, transmits from Abū Baṣīr that Imām al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) said:

"God — exalted is His Name — has eternally been knowing by His essence, while there was no known; and He has eternally been powerful by His essence, while there was no object of power." I said: "May I be made your ransom — has He likewise eternally been speaking (mutakallim)?" He said: "Speech is originated. God — Mighty and Majestic — was, and was not speaking; then He originated speech."

The same content is also given in other reports.

Concerning riḍā (pleasure) and ghaḍab (wrath), it is reported in al-Tawḥīd and the Amālī from ʿUmāra: I asked Imām al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him): "O son of the Messenger of God, does God have pleasure and wrath?" The Imām said: "Yes — but not as they are found in the creature. God's wrath is His punishment; God's pleasure is His reward."

Concerning guidance and misguidance, it is reported in al-Maḥāsin from Sulaymān that Imām al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) said:

"O Sulaymān! You have a heart and ears. When God wills to guide a servant, He opens the ears of his heart; and when He wills otherwise for him, He seals the ears of his heart, so that he is never thereafter set aright. That is His saying — Mighty and Majestic: 'Or have their hearts locks upon them?' [Qurʾān 47:24]"

Concerning abandonment and istidrāj (taking unawares by gentle stages), in Uṣūl al-Kāfī, it is reported from Samāʿa: I asked Imām al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) about the verse "We shall lead them on by degrees from where they do not know" [Qurʾān 7:182]. The Imām said:

"It is the servant who commits a sin, and then a blessing is renewed to him along with that sin, which blessing distracts him from seeking forgiveness for that sin."

This content is repeatedly transmitted; the reports on the attributes of act are many, and we have contented ourselves with this much for the sake of brevity and to keep with the manner of the preceding chapters.

In al-Tawḥīd and Maʿānī al-Akhbār, it is reported from Imām al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) regarding the verse "And when they grieved Us, We took vengeance upon them" [Qurʾān 43:55]:

"God — Blessed and Exalted — does not grieve as we grieve. But He has created for Himself friends (awliyāʾ) who do grieve and rejoice; they are creatures, governed by Him; He has made their pleasure His own pleasure and their indignation His own indignation. This is because He has made them callers to Himself and guides to Him; and so they have become as such. It is not that the matter actually reaches God in the way it reaches creatures — but this is the meaning of what He said. He has also said: 'Whoever insults a walī of Mine has openly fought Me and called Me to battle.' And He has said: 'Whoever obeys the Messenger has indeed obeyed God' [Qurʾān 4:80]. And He has said: 'Those who pledge allegiance to you are pledging allegiance to God' [Qurʾān 48:10]. And all of this and its like is according to what I have told you. So too with pleasure and wrath, and other things resembling them."

This ḥadīth is among the comprehensive traditions that furnish a general criterion concerning another kind of God's acts. The criterion is this: any act, of any agent whatsoever, in the case where the agent is not considered (because of his being annihilated and effaced in the divine act) — as in the acts of the prophets and the purified friends of God — and likewise where the doer of the act is removed from view and nothing but God remains for the act — as in the episode of Moses (peace be upon him) with the tree of al-Ṭūr— and, in general, every act that has no [other] agent, is reckoned as an act of God the Glorified. This general rule is derived from the principles set forth at the beginning of the treatise, and many primary and secondary difficulties are resolved by it. And God is the Guide.

In the Name of God, the All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate.

Praise belongs to God, Lord of the worlds, and blessing and peace upon His drawn-near friends — especially Muḥammad and his pure Household.

This writing is a condensed treatment of the intermediaries (wasāʾiṭ) between God the Glorified and the world of nature — intermediaries which the Most Sacred Essence has brought into being one after another — according to what may be reached by demonstration, what unveiling and witnessing (kashf wa-shuhūd) confirm, and what is understood from the apparent purport of the religious texts (Book and Sunnah). And God is the Helper.

It was established in the Treatise on Tawḥīd that all contingent phenomena found in the external world are effects and theophanies (maẓāhir, places of manifestation) of the Necessary Existence, which is pure and unalloyed reality. Hence all of them subsist by Him; and so all these existents have higher and more excellent realization at the level of the unmixedness of that Existence, without any taint of deficiency or non-being. And since that reality is pure and unalloyed, these existents are His Names — their concepts varied but their referent one — and these are precisely the Names and Attributes. It was also established that the Names and Attributes are the principles of the realization of beings, with all their varied aspects and scattered facets.

That was the relation of the Names to the beings below them. But among the Names themselves there is also an order, in accordance with the relations that obtain among their concepts. For it is plain that, for example, creation (khalq) is consequent upon power (qudra); and power is consequent upon knowledge and life (ʿilm wa-ḥayāt), and so on. And since — as was set forth in the Treatise on Tawḥīd — pure existence, which is unbounded in every respect, is in itself free of all attributes both negatively and affirmatively, while being-attributed is itself a kind of determination (taʿayyun), this meaning will precede the other determinations — though the Necessary Essence is pure of this also.

Hence it was established that the first determination — i.e., the first Name — is precisely non-determination (lā-taʿayyun), which in the technical vocabulary of the gnostics is called the station of Aḥadiyya (oneness-as-such); and after it come the other determinations. It was also established that, in this respect, no distinction obtains between the essential Names and the actual Names that are taken from the station of act — although they do differ in this: that the essential Name is realized in the station of essence absolutely, whereas the mode of existence of an actual Name follows the mode of existence of its source of abstraction. (Note carefully.)

We now say: As has been established in the general matters (umūr ʿāmma), every natural substance has specific acts that are referred to the species-form of that nature, and specific affections that are referred to its matter. By way of illustration, take an existing human in the external world — who has human acts and material bodily affections. It is evident, on the one hand, that the absolute human — whose absoluteness itself is no constraint upon it — is realized in the external human individual.

That is the nature which, taken in itself, is universal and unrestricted, true of every supposed individual of human, and whose relation to all human acts and affections is uniform.

Just so, on the other side, the human-with-human-acts is necessarily realized in the individual man. That is the nature which, taken in itself, is not universal but particular, yet remains removed from matter and its affections, while at the same time the acts present in the material individual of human accompany it.

Therefore, if we consider a material, natural, substantial being, three aspects are realized there: (1) a substantial existence that is abstracted and free both from being bound to matter and from the rulings that go with matter; (2) a substantial existence that is free from matter but not from the rulings that go with matter; (3) a material substantial existence. And these three are exactly what the philosophers call immaterial existence (wujūd mujarrad), imaginal existence (wujūd mithālī), and material existence (wujūd māddī).

And it must be known that the imaginal level of human existence may rightly be attributed with the acts that are realized at the material level of his existence — for were it otherwise, attribution by acts at that level would be impossible. Hence between that level of existence and those acts some sort of relation obtains. And since the discussion is about existence — and the existence of a relation, on account of its non-self-subsistent character, is realized only with the realization of its two terms — those acts will in some manner be present at the imaginal level, like its reflection. And since the imaginal level in itself is necessarily prior to the level of acts, there obtains between them an existential priority and posteriority. There will accordingly be, between the imaginal existence and the level of acts, an arrangement by way of rank, causality, effect, manifestation, and locus-of-manifestation — and they will be two ranks among the ranks of the appearance of existence.

By a discussion like that above, it becomes clear that the same relation obtains between immaterial existence and imaginal existence.

All the foregoing concerned those matters present at the level of nature peculiar to each species; and the like runs in regard to matters realized in more than one species, or in all species of natural beings. Hence it has become clear that above the level of nature there are two further levels: the level of immateriality (tajarrud) and the level of the imaginal (mithāl).

From all that has gone before it follows that in the abode of existence there are four universal worlds, ordered according to the intensity of existence, each patterned upon the other:

First — the world of the Names and Attributes, which is called ʿālam al-Lāhūt (the world of divinity).

Second — the world of complete immateriality, named the world of Intellect, Spirit, and Jabarūt (omnipotence).

Third — the world of the imaginal (ʿālam al-mithāl), also called the world of imagination (khayāl), the suspended forms (muthul muʿallaqa), the barzakh (interworld), and the Malakūt (kingdom).

Fourth — the world of nature, called the ʿālam al-Nāsūt (the human/sensible world); and it also has other names.

In theistic philosophy (al-falsafa al-ilāhiyya), several demonstrations have been adduced that establish the foregoing; but the demonstration we have given here is sufficient for those of careful insight, God willing.

The Book and the Sunnah regard the Divine Names as the intermediaries in the descent of existence. If you look carefully into the divine Book, you will find that — in the verses of tawḥīd (such as those in Sūrat al-Raʿd, al-Ḥadīd, al-Ḥashr, and elsewhere, and likewise the Verse of al-Sukhra [Qurʾān 7:54], the Throne Verse [Āyat al-Kursī, Qurʾān 2:255], and many other verses besides) — God gives the reason for specific Names by way of general Names. And you will find that, when He speaks of creating and sustaining existence, of the various forms of effusion and bestowal, and likewise in the stage of return (such as death, the barzakh, resurrection, and the like), God the Glorified gives the reason by way of Names whose meaning is suited to each of these matters. You may meet with this in more than five hundred verses — to the point that, even in the legislative-considerative level (such as the imposing of religious obligations), this same feature obtains.

And if you reflect carefully upon the relations between the Names and what is below them, you will be guided from the properties of the Names to many of the modes of the descents of existence; and conversely. You will then attain immeasurable knowledge — if you are among those upon whom God has bestowed two portions of His mercy and granted a light by which they may walk.

So too the Sunnah: the many supplications that have come to us from the Prophet (God bless him and his Family and grant them peace) and his Infallible Household are full of Names and Attributes. Among the longer supplications, there is hardly one in which we do not encounter such utterances as: "O God, I ask You by Your Name with which You did such and such"; "I ask You by Your Majesty with which You did such and such"; "by the radiance of Your Face in whose light everything stands lit"; "and by Your Names that have filled the supports of every thing."

Likewise, petition by means of Names suited to the request: for example, the Name al-Razzāq (Provider) when asking for sustenance, the Name al-Ghafūr (Forgiver) when seeking forgiveness, and so on.

Indeed, you may say: such petitions are innate to humanity. For you do not see anyone — when seeking cure and well-being — say "O You who cause to die! O You who take revenge! Heal this sick one!" Rather, he says: "O Bestower! O Compassionate! O Tender! O Healer! O Granter of well-being!" and the like. If you investigate carefully, you will see that this lofty, luminous meaning is among the necessities of this pure religion — but distraction from what is worthy of attention, and preoccupation with trivialities, has prevented people from realizing this and benefiting from its merits.