those who draw near to them. When I witnessed this scene, I recited the poem that begins:
The angels descended by night upon my heart,
and circled around it like the circle of a bracelet,
guarding against the accursed one’s casting in, when he sees
the sciences of the unseen descending manifestly upon the heart.
Such is God’s protection at a stage like ours,
and His safeguarding of the messengers, without doubt.
The complete poem is mentioned at the beginning of Chapter 330 of this book. The ordering of this chapter is what we have mentioned concerning the ranks of the breaking of customary patterns. Among its wonders are the human being’s joining spiritual beings in taking on likenesses, spiritual beings’ joining humans in form, and the appearance from them of a form resembling the form in which they take on a likeness.
He says, exalted is He: “He appeared to her as a well-formed human being” [Maryam 19:17]. He is called a spirit, just as Gabriel is a spirit, and brings the dead to life as Gabriel does. Ibn Abbas said: “Gabriel, peace be upon him, has never trodden any place upon the earth without that place coming to life.” For this reason the Samaritan took a handful from his trace when he recognized him as he came to Moses,
Notes
Translator’s note TN955-1: The poem places qalb, “heart,” beside the same written consonants read as qulb, “bracelet.” The circular image is rendered through the latter sense; see Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿArab, root q-l-b.
