XXXVIII

The Tarjuman al-Ashwaq, by Ibn al-Arabi, tr. Reynold A. Nicholson, [1911], at sacred-texts.com

XXXVIII

1. The dearest place on God's earth to me after Ṭayba and Mecca and the Farther Temple is the city of Baghdán. ¹

2. How should I not love the (City of) Peace, since I have there an Imám who is the guide of my religion and my reason and my faith?

3. ’Tis the home of a daughter of Persia, one whose gestures are subtle and whose eyelids are languid.

4. She greets and revives those whom she killed with her looks, and she conferred the best (gift) after beauty and beneficence.

COMMENTARY

1. 'Ṭayba' (Medina), i.e. the station of Yathrib from which they return with utter failure to attain to true knowledge of the most glorious God, as Abú Bakr said, 'perception is

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the incapacity to achieve perception.' This involves seeing God in everything.

'Mecca,' i.e. the perfect heart which contains the Truth.

'The Farther Temple' (Jerusalem), i.e. the station of holiness and purity.

'Baghdán,' i.e. Baghdád, because it is the abode of the Quṭb, in whom is the perfect manifestation of the form of the Divine presence.

3. 'A daughter of Persia,' i.e. a form of foreign wisdom (###), connected with Moses, Jesus, Abraham, and other foreigners of the same class.

'Whose eyelids are languid,' i.e. she is tender and merciful.

4. 'The best (gift) after beauty and beneficence': Gabriel said, 'Beneficence (###) consists in thy worshipping God as though thou wert seeing Him,' and he added, 'for if thou seest Him not, yet He sees thee.' Hence 'the best gift' after beneficence is God's vision of thee.

Footnotes

122:1 Baghdán is one of the seven various spellings of Baghdád.