Muḥammad ibn al-ʿArabī, d.

1240 CE / 638 AH, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkīyah

Introduction
The Openings Revealed in Makkah (al-Futūḥāt al-Makkīyah) is the record of what was shown to
Ibn al-ʿArabī ‘etched in light’ in the body of the mysterious Youth at the Kaʿ bah in Makkah. He
was instructed to write down with his companions, including Umm al-Dalāl (‘mother of Dalāl’)
what he saw. The result was over ten thousand manuscript pages, with over seven thousand lines
of poetry, addressed to the reader and listener, with each chapter commencing with the
encouragement to ‘Learn!’. Ibn al-ʿArabī’s mission is to convey what was Divinely provided to
him: that every facet of Islam – belief systems, rituals, laws, virtues, states, chapters of the
Qurʾān, experiences at meeting places with the Divine, and stations of felicitous behavior –
reveals the universal message of the pre-eternal Light of Muḥammad (also called the Pen and the
First Intellect) for all humankind, in every age, language, and religion, from Adam and Eve to the
last person born.
To understand Ibn al-ʿArabī’s position with regard to this universal message, we need to
understand the cosmos, geometry, and human history from which he works. The cosmos is the
projection screen of the Divine’s look into the mirror – at each moment. As with the flip-book or
movie, each frame, each being, is lit up in one moment by Divine being; it then fades and goes
out. Then the Divine looks again with being, and each frame is lit up again (Q 55:29). The process
is very rapid, far faster than the 15 frames per second that seem to human beings to present a
continuous reality. This cosmos is the screen projection of a shadow play, but the shadow is not a
projected plane (two dimensions); rather, it is a projected volume (three dimensions). This means
the projector is coming from ‘beyond’, from a higher dimension. If we take this cosmos as a
three-dimensional sphere projected from a hypersphere, we are ‘in’ a three-dimensional surface.
Ibn al-ʿArabī uses the Qurʾanic concept of ‘in the Earth’ throughout his work. The
geometry of this situation is one in which all humanity is ‘in’ the Earth. Consider small, circular
Flatlanders in a large flat circle of cloth, all ‘in’ the planar surface of that circle. From our
perspective, we say that every Flatlander is an individual, but they are also in the whole cloth.
Similarly, we can speak of individual human beings who are ‘in’ the surface of a whole cloth
called the Earth. We are from Earth, in Earth – and, Ibn al-ʿʿal-aIArabī says, our bodies are the one

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body of the vast Earth. ‘This indicates to you that your body is the vast Earth, an earth of your
worship of God.’1
The human history of this is one in which the Earth, the human body, the clay of Adam-
Eve, is created to be a mirror for the Divine; this body is fashioned from the two hands of God,
created flush against the image of al-Raḥmān and breathed into by al-Raḥmān. The articulate
soul of this body is the Light of Muḥammad. And so Ibn al-ʿArabī speaks of humanity as a whole
cloth. The folds and ridges of this cloth cast shadows, and we think these shadows, us, are
isolated individuals. But when Muḥammad, ṣallallāhu ʿalayhi wasallam,2 arises on the Day of
Judgment to be ‘the master of the people all together’, this Earth (body) will flatten and ‘no
unevenness will be visible’ (Q 20:107) to the eye. At that moment, when the Earth, this human
body, this cloth, is flat, no shadows will be cast and it will be clear to all that this is, and has
always been, one cloth, a single humanity – and, moreover, one perfect humanity who is
Muḥammad, ṣallallāhu ʿalayhi wasallam.
In this context, Ibn al-ʿArabī asks at one point which sensory faculty we are, in the image
(ṣūrat, feminine) that is the vast body of humanity: Are we her seeing? Are we her smelling? Are
we her tasting? He then says that he has already taught the reader (listener) which faculty of this
image he is.
We now examine six passages from The Openings Revealed in Makkah to learn which
faculty of this image Ibn al-ʿArabī is.

Translation
Muḥammad ibn al-ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkīyah, from the critical edition by A
ʿ bd al-
ʿAzīz Sulṭān al-Manṣūb, published by the Majlis al-aʿala lil-thaqāfah, El Gabalaya Street,
Opera House, El Gezira, Cairo, 2010/1431, in twelve volumes.

1 [Here, Ibn al-ʿArabī will explain that to understand how we perceive and sense, we must
understand what we are perceiving and sensing. The process of perception is the same

1
Book 24, Chapter 355, 8:447
2
This is the prayer, ‘Peace and blessings of God be upon him.’

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mechanism as the process of becoming; and the process of becoming is the Divine imperative Be!,
which makes the entity become (Q 16:40). He cites Dhūʾl-Nūn’s statement, ‘It is as if I hear it
always!’ Everywhere Dhūʾl-Nūn looks, Ibn al-ʿArabī is saying, he sees the Divine imperative
making entities become. The key word here is translated ‘power-to-accomplish’.]

Book 3, Chapter 35, 1:621

God has made this as an alert for us: that there is then no truth that Divine power-to-accomplish f
(feminine) does not penetrate into, contrary to what the people of intellectual examination presume. In
fact, this truth is God’s setting of her flush against this (image with the imperative Be! making it become).
And (it is an alert) that this truth is that the things whose perception is linked to power-to-accomplish are
not perceived based on this image (e.g. eye) being sight and nothing else (e.g. hearing); God is saying, No,
it is Our setting (of her flush against the image). Thus, one perceives the entirety of the known objects, all
of them, by means of a single truth (not various faculties), when the True so wishes. This is why we
stated, ‘A perceptive faculty turns unexpectedly to that which typically is not the one to perceive’ (e.g. the
blind person perceiving color through touch, or someone smelling something and ‘seeing’ what it is).

Book 3, Chapter 35, 1:623 ff

Now we return, and I say, With every single one of the family of God, there will be a situation where God
has made a knowing of things for this person in the entirety of their faculties, or in a specific faculty itself,
as we have established: either in the smell, and one is a possessor of knowledge of the breaths (which all
come from al-Raḥmān); or in perspective, so one says one is a possessor of perspective; or in striking, and
this is part of the subject of touching, along a special path – this is why we allude to this by the presence
of ‘cool fingers’.3 The possessor of this (or that) adjective by which the known object is obtained is given
an affiliation: you say, he is a possessor of this or that.
As we have established, the adjective (descriptor, e.g. a black painting) is the described object itself
(the painting), in this topic and chapter – I mean, the personal adjective. Just as the meaning returns,
about which one says, ‘It (e.g. the color black) does not stand by itself’ (and must be ‘in’ or descriptive
of something else, e.g. a painting); – so, in this way, the image which is the ‘thing by which it is known’
returns to an idea. This is in order for you to verify for yourself the idea (meaning) and its cleaving to
3
From the ḥadīth, ‘He put the palm of His hand between my shoulder-blades, so that I found the coolness of His
fingers in my breast; then the brilliant shining (tajallī) of everything radiated to me, and I knew.’

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the ‘thing by which it is known’ (e.g. the idea of black cleaving to the painting) – just as these ideas
cleave together. Thus, there begins to be, based on their cleaving together, a dhāt f (essence, self)
standing up by herself (e.g. a black painting). You say about her: ‘a body’, ‘a man’, ‘a horse’, ‘a plant’ –
so understand.

Now, the possessor of knowledge of taste begins to taste, and the possessor of knowledge of smell to
smell; and the meaning of this is that one does to something else what the taste does if one is a
possessor of tasting, or what the smell does if one is a possessor of smelling. Thus, the something has
been glued and made to adhere, virtually, to its meaning (idea); and it begins to become, in itself, a
meaning by which the perceiver of the things perceives – just as the viewer looking at the mirror
perceives things which are not perceived in this state, only in the mirror. (That is, you may see
someone behind and to the left of you when you are looking at the mirror.)

The teacher Abū Madyan had a child from a black woman, and Abū Madyan was a possessor of
sight. This child – he was a child of seven years – would look out and say, ‘I see on the sea in such-and-
such a place a boat, and such-and-such has happened there.’ Then, after some days, this boat would
arrive in Bajāyah (Algeria), the city this child was in – the matter turning out to be just as the child had
said. So they would ask the child, ‘How do you see?’ He would say, ‘With my eye.’ Then he would say,
‘No, rather I see with my heart.’ Then he would say, ‘No, rather I see by my father. When he is present,
and I look at him, I see this that was reported to you; and when he is absent from me, I do not see any
of it.’

It has come in a true report from God about the creature who approaches to God through extra
devotions until He loves it, that He says, ‘And when I love it, I become the hearing by which it hears,
and the sight by which it sees’; the ḥadīth continues.4 By Him, one hears and sees and speaks and
strikes and runs. This is the meaning of our statement: ‘The verified one returns to be like an ideational
image of whatever one was verified (and validated) to be.’ Thus, you look at your parents in the same
way as human beings look with their eyes into the mirror – so understand. (Their image is ‘you’
because you came from them, but they are not you; and in the mirror, it is you, it is not you, and it is

4
This is a standard way of ending a ḥadīth without quoting the whole text.

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not not you.) In this way is the possessor of one of the paths of these faculties. You combine the all into
a single one; and you see by means of every faculty, and you hear by means of every faculty, and you
smell by means of every faculty – and this is the fullest and most complete aggregation (of things to be
perceived).

2 [From the verse Q 2:31, ‘He taught Adam all the names,’ Ibn al-ʿArabī explains that every
Divine adjective (attribute, quality) is here also on the ‘side’ of humanity. So, the preparation of
Adam to learn all the names involves a correlation of Divine to creation; in the same way, the
means of perception – light – involves a correlation of Divine to creation.]

Book 24, Chapter 360, 8:513

Learn, God assist you, that the matter provides this: if not for the light, nothing would be
perceived – not any known object, not any sensed object, not any imaginal object at all. The
names set down for the capacities (such as seeing and hearing) are differentiated flush against the
light. According to the general population, they are names for the capacity; and according to the
ʿārifīn (the ones who recognize the Divine everywhere), they are names for the light by which
something is perceived. When you perceive objects having sounds, you call this light ‘hearing’;
and when you perceive objects sighted, you call this light ‘seeing’; and when you perceive
tangible objects, you call this that was perceived ‘touching’. It is this way with imaginal objects
(also). Thus, it is the capacity of touching, nothing else, and smelling, and tasting, and imagining,
and memory (one of the non-sensory ‘senses’), and understanding, and reflecting, and image-
making; and everything by which occurs a perception is simply the light.

As for the objects perceived: if not for the fact that they were themselves prepared (prepped, as
laboratory instruments) to receive the perception of the one perceiving them, they would not be
perceived. They have perceptible manifestations toward the perceiver, and at this moment the
perception is connected to them. The site of perceptible manifestation is light, so necessarily each
object perceived will have a correlation to the light; by this correlation it is readied and prepared
to be perceived. So, every object known has a correlation to the True; and the True is the Light,
so every object known has a correlation to the Light. Therefore, by means of the Light you

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perceive the impossible;5 and if not for a manifestation of the impossible, and its ability to receive
– because of what it is flush against in itself (e.g. the attribute of hearing, to hear the Be! making
it become) in order to become a site of perception – you would not perceive it (the previously
impossible).

3 [These senses that perceive by means of light are also not mono-focal; the activity of one of the
senses does not take the other senses away from perceiving this light.]

Book 19, Chapter 285, 7:147

It is just as you can hear during the state of observing, in the state of assailing, in the state of
coming to someone’s aid, in the state of touching, in the state of smelling, in the state of eating.
And not one sense is preoccupied to the extent of being unaware of what remains, given the
oneness of the (act of) perceiving. In the same way, from one perspective, is the blessing and,
from one perspective, the sorrowing. Thus, it is joy/sorrow and it is profit/loss – until one enters
the Garden. And this is one of the strangest visions; and only a few will find it in this abode, (a
few) among the family of the Path – on account of the lack of kashf (revelatory disclosure) in
most and the verification of the truth these few have, and on account of the paucity of
knowledge of all of this in most. And God speaks the True, and hu (He) is the guide to the way
(Q 33:4).

4 [The name al-muʾmin, which includes meanings of security, safety, secure faith, and
trustworthiness, is applied to the True and to creation. But since the two are utterly dissimilar –
‘There is nothing like Him’ (Q 42:11) – there must be an intermediary for them to interact: here,
to see each other in the mirror. This intermediary is the name al-rabb, the Cherisher. The
interaction here is the One acting from behind the one, the human being. The word for acting
from behind is khalīfah, derived from min khalf, from behind.
Other key words are as follows: kummal (the intensive, or frequentative form of kāmil) –
‘exercising completeness’, ‘intensely complete’, ‘reiterating in completeness’; akh (from ākhīyah,
tie loop set in the ground) – ‘sibling’. In a ḥadīth of Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī: ‘The likeness of the
5
There is only being, which God alone has, and enabled being (the possible), which is given to what was previously
impossible (having no being).

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muʾmin and īmān (secure faith, same root) is the likeness of the horse in his ākhīyah; he wheels
about, and then he returns to his ākhīyah. Indeed, the muʾmin is absent-minded, but then he
returns to īmān (secure faith).’]

Book 25, Chapter 369, 9:158

Now, if you ask, ‘How would I know about myself, whether I am someone who is kummal, or
someone merely animated who is called a human being?’ - We say, God bless you for the
question you asked! Learn that indeed you, you will not know if you are ‘flush against the image’
as long as you do not know his ṣallallāhu ʿalayhi wasallam word, ‘The muʿmin is a mirror of
one’s sibling.’ The muʾmin sees himself in his sibling’s mirror, and the other sees himself in him;
and this is only in the Presence of the Divine name al-muʿmin. He said, Indeed, the muʾminūn
are siblings ( Q 49:10). And ‘the (name) muʾmin is kathīr (many, generous, abundant) to his
sibling,’ just as he is wāḥid (one) to himself.6

So, one learns that the Divine names, all of them, are like the muʾminūn (pl.); they are siblings.
So make peace among your siblings (Q 49:10) – meaning, when they are mutually discordant. For
example, the Exalter and the Abaser, and the Harmer and the Benefactor. Besides the names
confronting each other, these other names are siblings delighting with heart-dilation in each
other. And it is only the name m (masculine) al-rabb (the Cherisher) who makes peace among
the names, because he is the peacemaker; and the muʾmin (the Divine name al-muʾmin) is also a
peacemaker in the place he is a mirror.7

If you see yourself in this way, you may know that you are a khalīfah (one ‘behind whom’ the
One acts) among the khulafāʾ (pl.), based on what you see in the image (reflected). This is why
the merely animated human has no (such) mirror; even if he has the shape of a mirror, there has
been no brightening and no burnishing. Corrosion and tarnishing stain have spread over the

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The (creation) muʾmin is many to his siblings; there are many of them. But the (Divine) muʾmin is One to Himself;
there is only One Divine muʾmin.
7
While there is ‘loving similarity’ between True and creation, there is not always harmony. Here, the creation
muʾmin may be discordant vis-à-vis the Divine muʾmin. Only the names al-rabb and al-muʾmin can be peacemakers
between True and creation.

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surface of the mirror, so it does not accept the image of the Observer; a mirror is so called only
with the vision (of the Divine therein).

5 Book 24, Chapter 355, 8:448

Therefore, everyone in being, all created beings, worships God according to the unseen (i.e. they
do not see Him) – except the complete human muʾmin, because this one worships Him according
to the seen (i.e. one sees Him). And the slave is not complete except through faith (īmān, cf.
muʾmin; and ‘My heavens and My Earth are not vast enough for Me, but the heart of My slave
who has faith is’). He has the glistening light; no, he is the glistening light that erases all
darkness. Now, when one worships Him according to the seen, one sees hu as the entirety of
one’s faculties. So none but He stands in one’s worship f, and it is not fitting that any but He
stand in her. And now, after all, there is no one who reaches this station except the human-based
muʾmin, because one is a muʾmin only by means of one’s Cherisher (because this name makes
peace among potentially discordant entities, here the creation muʾmin and the Divine muʾmin) –
because He exalted is (the Divine name) al-muʾmin.

6 Book 22, Chapter 346, 8:267-8

So recognize, my friend, your position vis-à-vis this human being-based image f, she of which
Muḥammad ṣallallāhu ʿalayhi wasallam is her spirit and her articulate soul. Are you one of her
faculties? Or a site for her faculties? And of the faculties, which one are you? Are you her sight?
Or her hearing? Or her smelling? Or her grasping? Or her tasting? And yes, by God, I have
taught you which faculty of this image I am; all praise belongs to God for this.

And do not presume, my friend, that my being singled out in this image by something that
corresponds to the sensory faculty in the human being – actually, in the animal! – that this is a
deficiency in me, a place lower than the spirit-based faculty. No, do not so presume! In fact, the
sensory faculties are the most complete of the faculties, because they have the (Divine) name ‘the
One Who Dispenses Bounties Perpetually’. You see, they dispense bounties perpetually to the
spirit-based faculties, that which (i.e. the raw material) they use to function and that by means of

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which they have their mental life – for example, imagination, reflection, guarding (in memory),
image-making, fantasy, and intellect. All of these faculties use the solid matter (raw material)
provided by these sensory faculties.

This is why God says about the one among His creatures He loves, ‘I become the hearing by
which it hears, and the sight by which it sees.’ Now, He cites the forms that are sensory; He says
nothing about the spirit-based faculties at all. He does not lower Himself to the level of the spirit-
based faculties! You see, their position is one of dependence on the senses (e.g. memory is based
on sensory experience), and the True will never descend to the position of someone depending on
another. The senses are dependants on God, not depending on others. Therefore, He descends to
the one who is dependent on Him – He shares (cf. shirk) with no one! He provides the senses rich
independence. So the senses: they are the ones taken from and received from. But they
themselves do not take from the rest of the faculties (i.e. the spirit-based faculties); they take only
from God. Now, recognize the high vantage position of the senses and the true value of the
senses: that the senses are exactly the entity of the True! 8 This is why the configuration in the
Hereafter is completed only by the presence of the senses and the sensed, because they are
completed only by the True. So, the faculties of the senses are actually the khulafāʾ (sg. khalīfah,
‘behind whom’ God sees, or hears, and so on) in the true dimension, in the earth of this
configuration based on God.

Do you see hu (non-gendered here) – how hu characterizes Itself as hu being hearing, seeing,
speaking, living, knowing, powering, desiring? All of these are adjectives (qualities) having their
impress and effect in the sensory object; and human beings perceive by their senses these sensory
faculties established in them. And hu does not describe Itself as thinking or reflecting or
imagining – none of the rest of the spirit-based faculties: no, (describing Itself) only with what
the senses share in.

Therefore, be alerted to what I am calling your attention to, lest your dear heart be broken when
I bring you down to the alighting place of the sense-based faculties, broken because the senses

8
Because ‘I become (the exact entity) of its hand with which it grasps’.

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are mean and contemptible – according to you! – while the intellect is noble (or so you think).
No, I am teaching you here that the high vantage point and the nobility - this is all in the senses;
and that you are unaware of your situation and your true value. Therefore, if you know your
self, you know your Lord. It is just as your Lord knows you and knows the universe by His
knowing His own Self. And you are His image! So inevitably you will share with hu in this
knowing, and you will know hu based on your knowing of your self.

This is a subtle point arising from Messenger of God ṣallallāhu ʿalayhi wasallam when he said,
‘Who recognizes his self, recognizes his Lord.’ You see, the matter concerning knowledge of the
True comes by means of the universe m knowing his self. This is a match with His word, We
shall show them Our signs in the far horizons and in their own selves (Q 41:53). He cites two
configurations: a configuration of the image of the universe m in the far horizons, and a
configuration of his spirit, in His word, and in their own selves. Therefore, you are a human
being, single, possessing two configurations, until clarified for them – clarified for the ones who
are seeing – is that hu is the True (Q 41:53) – meaning that when the seer is seeing, seeing what
hu is seeing, it is in fact the True, none else. So consider, my friend, how subtle and graceful is
Messenger of God ṣallallāhu ʿalayhi wasallam to his mother community! And how beautiful is
what he teaches them (us), and how smoothly he makes a path for them (us)! How gracious is the
teacher, the path-maker! May God make us (me) among the ones who walk along his bending
way, until I catch up and reach him! Amīn! by His tremendous Majesty!

So now, if you possess keen understanding, I have gestured to you what the matter truly is; no,
in fact I have clearly explained this to you. And yes, I have taken on the burden for you
concerning this, what they have attributed to me – the ones who reject what I have alluded to
concerning this issue. They are blind, ones who know but the outer things in the life of this
world, but of the End of things they are heedless (Q 30:7). By God! If not for this statement (that
they know ‘but the outer things’), I would have judged against them that they are blind to the
outer things of this world as well as to those of the Hereafter, just as God judged against them as
lacking hearing, despite their hearing, in His word addressed as a prohibition: Nor be like those
who say, ‘We hear’, but they listen not (Q 8:21) – this, despite the fact that they hear, He negates

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that they are listening. It is the same way with the knowledge of these (blind ones) of the outer
things of this world, knowing by means of what their senses are perceiving – that is, the sensed
matters, but nothing else. You see, the True is not their hearing and not their seeing.

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