Chapter Eight: On the Conclusion and the Counsel

at every moment of the moments of this remembrance (dhikr) certain that everything other than God is vain and passing away, and that God is the One who remains.

Then, when he persists in the remembrance for a time, the love of God becomes manifest to him; then he yearns for the meeting with God; then he rejoices at the arrival at God. And this is the degree of the friends of God (awliyāʼ), and it is not attained by acquisition (kasb), in the view of one who holds it. As for what lies beyond it — the servant’s being God’s beloved and an intercessor with God — in it there is no acquisition and no choice: [God chooses messengers from among the angels]. O God, help us to remember You and to thank You and to worship You well.

Gate Eight: On the Conclusion and the Counsel

Know — may God strengthen you with His help and sustain you in His keeping — that deeds go by their endings. A man works the work of the people of Paradise until there is between him and it the space of two bows’ length or the measure of a spear; then the decreeing outstrips the contriving, and destiny overcomes caution and warning, and he works the work of the people of the Fire and dies upon it, and so alights in the abode of perdition. And another works the work of the people of the Fire until there is between him and it the measure of a span or the distance of a fathom; then he works the work of the people of Paradise, and the deeds are sealed upon it, and he is raised to the abode of permanence — as the sound report has conveyed.

Then my own condition is a lesson for those possessed of understanding and a proof against the Lord of lords (thus), the Causer of causes. For in the smallness of my years weakness took hold of me, on account of sicknesses that prolonged my keeping to my place and a multitude of pains that transformed my bones, until my flesh grew thin and my bone grew fine. And my father, amid the folds of my weakness — though there was in me weakness enough — would lay upon me a charge that would crumble stones, and in it I did not split the staff against him. So I would perform offices of repetition, evening and morning, beyond the capacity of strong and healthy children, until I had memorised al-Bulghah and al-Maṣādir while I was ten years old. Then he had me memorise al-Lumaʻ and Nuzhat al-ṭarf and the Maqāmāt, and much poetry (shiʻr), before the season of the sprouting of hair (shaʻr). Then he occupied me with the study of jurisprudence for a short while, since it was his intention to teach me a great deal of medicine, because of the dying down and the obscurity that had befallen the jurists, and because he saw the greatness of the need of the living for physicians. So he had me memorise the Questions of Ḥunayn and the Murshid of Ibn Zakarīyāʼ, while you would see me with the eye · · · yāwashkalāzaryā [1]. Then he had me read the Dhakhīrah of Thābit ibn Qurrah, while from hardship I was in a bitter life, seeing in death the greatest gladness. And when I reached the age of maturity in my years and came to hold the judgement over myself, I abandoned study root and branch, out of the extremity of my weariness, and I kept company in the market with folk and people over whom ignorance prevailed; and I opened a shop next to my father’s and traded in it for a time. I was like a prisoner set free, and I became like a madman enraged. You would see me loathing occupation with knowledge, and in the trade a brisk and spirited horseman. Then my father said to me one night: whatever you have done and whatever you have busied yourself with, you must inevitably come to have a standing in knowledge; and I have been shown that in this present time. And know that in my own childhood I was the contrary of your nature and the opposite of your doing: my father would command me to keep company with the people of the market, while I yearned for the masters of knowledge; so I kept company with the merchants because of the constraint laid upon me, and at times I would slip away to learning and would find the sharpest pain at missing it. And the love of learning remained in my heart until your mother conceived you, and then concern for you turned me away from the seeking of knowledge; the seeking left me and my heart inclined to the amassing of wealth. So I said within myself: the seeking part of me is this that has separated from me. And I discerned by physiognomy that the pregnancy was with a male (dhakar) who would live and would have a name remembered (dhikr). And when part of my discernment proved true and a male child came to me and lived, for all the many illnesses, and reached maturity and the symptoms departed, I said: my discernment must prove true in what remains. And for this reason I bore hard upon you in my teaching of you and in my drilling. Then he sent me travelling to Ibn Hubal the physician, that I might read the Qānūn with him; but a party of men made me desire occupation with the arts of opinion. And in that time ʻAlāʼ al-Dīn al-Ṭāwūsī was at Hamadān, the goal of men and the place where the saddles are set down; he had mastery of dialectic and excelled in disputation, so I journeyed to him and studied under him. Then a company urged me to travel to Khurāsān, to learn the principles and to speak upon the intelligibles; so I made for the Imām Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, who was the unique man of the age and the kinds of whose sciences passed all reckoning. I found hardship in the journey and stayed with him for a time. My father contrived one thing and my Lord decreed another; and I busied myself with other than medicine, and God placed in it my good and its good.

So look how my condition was in what has passed, and how God decreed my occupation with the affair of judgement; and made dear to me the roots of the revealed law and its branches, and made hateful to me the chapters of natural science and its superfluities; and busied me with the recitation of His Book, and with the understanding of the subtleties of His address, and the establishing of His judgements, and the interpreting of His speech. So may God, exalted be He, make the ending good.

And know that some suspicion is a sin, and that the shunning of what angers the Lord is a binding duty. So do not think ill of a word that has come out of your brother’s mouth while you can find for it a bearing in the good. And do not loose your tongue concerning one who has passed away save with good, and keep the mention of him general. And say: God knows best in what state he went out from his world; his affair is to God, and perhaps He will have mercy upon us and upon him. And do not be like some who know nothing of anything, and from whose tongue no one is safe, dead or alive. You see such a man devoid of knowledge, scant in works, the sinner of the folk, long in hope, supposing that Paradise was adorned for none but him and that the degrees were appointed for none but such as he. So out of his own ignorance he pronounces the masters of knowledge unbelievers, and disparages the station of him in whom excellence lies, and of its people. I take refuge in God from Satan; and praise be to God, and blessing upon our master Muḥammad and his family. The book is completed.

Its printing was completed on the thirteenth of the month of Shawwāl, the year ١٣٤٧, and ٢٤ Ādhār, the year ١٩٢٩

— Notes —

[31] (1) A blank in the original, the measure of two letters. ahamm