As for keeping company with ahdāth—beardless youths—and with people of innovation who have introduced praiseworthy practices into religion that the Lawgiver has acknowledged among us:
The knower considers beardless youths in respect of smoothness, without growth upon their cheeks, like a smooth rock. Barren earth, mardāʾ, is earth without vegetation. They remind him of the station of stripping away and of being more recently with their Lord than an older person. Revealed law has observed this concerning rain. The nearer something is to coming into being, the nearer its indication, the greater its sanctity, and the more abundant the reasons for mercy toward it than toward an older person distant from this station.
They are ahdāth in this sense because they have recently been with their Lord. Their companionship recalls their new origination so that His beginninglessness, exalted is He, may be distinguished through it. This is a sound inward application and a path that leads. If the sense is instituting practices, it is supported by His sayings, “No newly occurring reminder comes to them from their Lord” [al-Anbiyaʾ 21:2], and, “No newly occurring reminder comes to them from the All-Merciful” [al-Shuʿaraʾ 26:5], blaming those who do not receive it with acceptance. This is the knowers’ perspective. As for aspirants and Sufis, keeping company with youths is forbidden to them because animal desire overcomes them on account of the intellect God placed opposite it. Were it not for intellect, natural desire would be praiseworthy.
As for women, the knowers’ consideration of them and of receiving assistance from them is that their longing for women is the whole’s longing for its part, like the desolation
Notes
Translator’s note TN4069-1: Ahdāth links youths with new origination and introducing practices. Murdān, beardless youths, is also linked with mardāʾ, barren or bare earth. The statement making intellect’s opposition relevant to animal desire’s blameworthiness is retained as supplied.
