The author's preface to the glosses

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

Now then, after praise to His Patron and blessing upon His Prophet: when I had finished the refining of the epistle entitled al-Zawrāʼ — which comprises select portions of the realities and the cream of the subtleties, and which is among the singular things of the age, since it contains secrets whose veil had not been drawn back until now, indeed virgins 'whom no man nor jinn has touched before them,' and which was summary and knotty, its recalcitrant passages resisting some of the seekers and its concealed matters staying hidden from most who looked into it — there asked of me one of those sincere in the quest, adorned with the fine points of good breeding, a man whose conduct is praised, whose inward self is fragrant and whose insight has been purified (may God make him, as his name has it, lofty upon the ascents of the heights, and deliver him as one saved from the resolves that cut a man off from the high places), that I should write upon it glosses (ḥawāshī) which would lift its coverings from it. So I answered his request and helped him to what he hoped for, and I confined myself to the measure strictly necessary for making its contents understood; nor did I venture, save on rare occasions, upon a detailed exposition of what lies within its folds, for that is a grave affair, calling for the most devout application and a surpassing detachment, and perhaps it will be made feasible at a second turn, when the mind is unencumbered. And I laid it down as a condition upon myself in these glosses, after the pattern of the original, that I should confine myself to what newly arrives (al-wāridāt al-jadīdah) and should not go chasing after remote matters already come down. God it is who guides to the evenness of the road; in His hand are the reins of verification (taḥqīq), and He is worthy to verify the hope of those who hope. The first thing I say is that this epistle has a story behind it. It is that I saw, in the outskirts of Dār al-Salām, near the bank of al-Zawrāʼ, the Commander of the Faithful and the prince-bee of those who profess God's oneness, ʻAlī — may God be pleased with him and ennoble his face — in a long annunciatory dream (mubashshirah), the upshot of which was that he, may God ennoble his face, was turned toward me with the gaze of solicitude and was attending to my affair by way of safekeeping. This became a motive in me to compose an epistle inscribed with his exalted name, seeking blessing through him, and to recite it at his holy garden-tomb at the time of the honour of visiting him and of anointing my eyes with the fine dust of his threshold. I was of two minds about fixing the aim of that epistle: at one time I would resolve to write it on ascertaining the quiddity of knowledge, on account of the aptness of the Prophet's saying, peace be upon him, 'I am the city of knowledge and ʻAlī is its gate'; at another something else would cross my mind; and none of these notions settled, until God, exalted be He, granted me the felicity of kissing the holy al-Ghazwīnīyah threshold and the holy Ḥaydarī shrine — upon the Prophet and upon him who dwells there be blessing and peace. Then, after my return, one of my companions who are prepared for the grasp of the realities — a man possessed of a limpid apprehension and a surpassing mind, generous in traits and dispositions, fair in name and in what that name names, who had read with me the book Ḥikmat al-Ishrāq of the most eminent shaykh and most venerated sage Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī, and to whom, in the midst of that book's investigations, I used to expound a portion of the things that occur unbidden to the mind (al-sawāniḥ) and dictate some of the glimmerings (al-lawāʼiḥ) — asked me to gather these for him in an epistle. So his asking became the motive for my embarking upon this epistle, and its aims gathered in my mind in less than an hour. I was oblivious of that first intention until I had completed it; and when I looked into it after its completion, I found it to be the very thing that had been aimed at. So I became certain that the breaths of divine succour