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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"Statement of Creed"

Sayyid Abu Shu’ayb—peace be upon him—said in the Book of the Likeness and the Form (Kitab al-Mithal wa al-Surah). The Likeness [Mithal] of Allah is other than Allah, and the Form1 [Surah] is other than the Likeness, and the Likeness is other than the Form. It has been narrated in the report that Allah created Adam in His Likeness and His Form2, then He caused His Spirit and His Soul to flow into him, given that every Name is known, and every manifest thing is created, "and every attribute is other than the Described One." However, you, through your intent, your intellect, and your gnosis, know that he whom people say is (Ali) is Allah3.

[He is] the One who manifests how He wills4 and where He wills, and He was not absent from His heaven by His witnessing of His earth.

Footnotes

1The "Form" and the "Likeness" are two terms indicating the (Name [Ism]). Thus, the "Form" is the Speaking Imam, and the "Likeness" is the one laid upon the bier. The meaning is that the Exalted is the Lord of the Form, [both] its silent and its speaking [aspects], and He does not appear by the Name, but appears as the Name upon the removal [of the veil].
2Allah created Adam in the example of His Form from the intended aspects: the Intellectual Form, not the corporeal form. For the First Shadow is called the (Intellect), the Second is called the (Universal Soul), the Third is called the (Universal Word), and the Fourth is called the (Universal Form). The First Form is (Universal Heat), the Second is (Universal Moisture), the Third is (Universal Coldness), and the Fourth is (Universal Dryness). To these four natures belong four persons: (Fire, Air, Water, and Earth). All these branches, shadows, forms, natures, and persons branched out from the Divine Manifestations—which are (Knowledge, Power, Will, and Instinct/Fitra) sent forth for the Breath necessitating the life of the creation and their uprightness to witness what appears of the gleams of the illuminations of the Lordly Presence. Thus, man became created in the example of the Form that gathers the Universal Forms, the Universal Meanings, the Universal Realities, and the Universal Secrets. For this reason, it was said: "Indeed, Allah created Adam in the example of His Form."
3And Allah shows an appearance in His Will in every genus of the genera and [in] number, calling them and conversing with them face-to-face [Mukafaha] by the Essence. As for the Name, "He begets not, nor is He begotten," nor is He a "thing" limited by a boundary, nor is He "nothing" that was, such that the negation of a denier would negate Him.
4Indeed, He the Exalted (appeared from the perspective of Him being Perfection, and we saw Him from the perspective of us being incapacity and fatigue).
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