مكتبة كتيبة محمّد بن نصير Muhammad bin Nusayr's Library Bibliothèque de Muhammad bin Nusayr کتابخانه کتیبه محمد بن نصیر

مَكْتَبَةُ كَتِيبَةِ مُحَمَّدِ بْنِ نُصَيْرٍ

Al-Usayfir - Muhammad ibn Shu‘ba al-Harrani

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We said: "Yes."

He said: "And is Allah [composed of] disconnected and connected letters?"

We said: "Yes."

He said: "Whoever claims that the letters of 'Allah' are Allah (the Ultimate Goal/End), he has disbelieved; and whoever claims that the letters of 'Ali' are Allah, he has disbelieved."

We said: "Explain this to us."

He said: "Indeed, the name of 'Ali' consists of three letters, yet the Meaning (Al-Ma'na) is One. It [the Meaning] is contrary to the Name. The 'Thing' is the Body1, and the 'Meaning' is the Light from which the Body originated. The 'End/Goal' of the Thing is the Soul (Al-Nafs), because the Soul is the light of the Body. The Spirit (Al-Ruh) resides in the Soul, not in the Body.

Allah is manifest as a veil within a veil; had He appeared in a single veil, He would have been known by every passerby.

Footnotes

1Regarding his saying: "The Thing is the Body" He intended that it is a thing you perceive, which is the manifestation that serves as a sign of existence.Note: Every body is a "thing," but not every thing is a body; there are metaphysical things that do not have dimensions like a body.His saying: "The Meaning is the Light from which the Body originated": Meaning that the form of Subtlety (Lutf) appeared from the form of Subjugation (Qahr)—"Light upon Light."His saying: "The End of the thing is the Soul, for the Soul is the light of the Body": Meaning the ultimate point of the movement of the thing (the body) is the Luminous Soul, of which the Knower said: "It is the Greatest Veil," for it is the light of the Body (the Form)."The Spirit is in the Soul, not in the Body": Meaning the Power (Al-Qudra) resides in the Luminous Soul, not in the spatial/localized body."Allah is manifest as a veil within a veil": Meaning the Form is the veil of the Power. It is also permissible to say: (The veils are the Light, the Radiance, and the Shadow). We must recognize that this segmentation is conceptual/relative from our perspective—not from the perspective of the Essence—intended only to facilitate understanding.
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