The Meccan Revelations

Manuscript volume 14 · Page 84

Konya manuscript

Open Arabic sourceOpen English translation

Arabic

بان لك معنى ترك الصبر.

الباب السادس والعشرون ومائة في معرفة مقام المراقبة

كن رقيبا عليه في كل شأن

فهو سبحانه عليك رقيب‏

في حضور وغيبة لشئون

و لذا لي في كل حال نصيب‏

فإذا ما أتى أوان فراغ

لا أبالي وإن ذا لعجيب‏

المراقبة نعت إلهي، لنا فيه شرب، قال تعالى: ﴿وكانَ الله عَلى كُلِّ شَيْءٍ رَقِيباً﴾ [الأحزاب: 52]، وهو قوله: ﴿ولا يؤوده حِفْظُهُما﴾ [البقرة: 255]، يعني السموات، وهو العالم الأعلى، والأرض، وهو العالم الأسفل، وما ثم إلا أعلى وأسفل، وهو على قسمين: عالم قائم بنفسه، وعالم غير قائم بنفسه.

فالقائم بنفسه جواهر وأجسام، وغير القائم بنفسه أكوان وألوان، وهي الصفات والأَعْراض، فعالم الأجسام والجواهر لا بقاء لهما إلا بإيجاد الأَعْراض فيهما، فمتى لم يوجد فيهما العرض الذي به يكون بقاؤها

English

the meaning of leaving patience has become clear to you.

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Six: On Knowing the Station of Watchfulness

Be watchful over Him in every affair,

for He, glory be to Him, is watchful over you,

in presence and absence, for affairs.

Thus I have a share in every state.

When the time of being free comes,

I do not care: this is wondrous.

Watchfulness is a divine description in which we have a draught. He, exalted is He, said, “God is watchful over everything” [al-Ahzab 33:52]. It is His saying, “Preserving them does not weary Him” [al-Baqara 2:255], meaning the heavens, the higher world, and the earth, the lower world. There is only higher and lower. It has two divisions: a world subsisting in itself and a world not subsisting in itself.

What subsists in itself consists of substances and bodies. What does not subsist in itself consists of modes of being and colors, namely attributes and accidents. The worlds of bodies and substances persist only through accidents being brought into existence within them. If the accident is not brought into being within them—one through which they have continuance

Notes

Translator’s note TN4146-1: “Being free” renders farāgh in the poem. No further object of that freedom or cessation is supplied. The following prose describes perpetual divine creation and preservation. “Subsisting in itself” distinguishes substances and bodies from attributes and accidents while retaining the stated dependence upon God.

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Cairo source reference

Ibn al-Arabi, The Meccan Revelations — Manuscript volume 14 · Page 84 — https://www.futmak.com/english/konya/pages.php?id=4146&text=both