in its entirety.
This is the inward application for those who hold that wiping the whole head is obligatory. Headship pervades it all because it bears these faculties, each in a different place within it. The wiping is accomplished through humility and by raising the head toward God. When the wiping covers the whole head, there is for each faculty a particular wiping suited to its claim. By the wiping particular to it, he restrains it, thus extending the wiping to the entire head.
Someone who holds that the head has a head set over it sees the matter as with governors: their authority goes back to the sovereign, for he appointed them. Each governor sees that above him is another governor higher than himself, with authority over his own authority. So it is with the form-giving faculty, which has authority over the imaginative faculty. The former presides over the latter, although the imaginative faculty itself has headship. Those among the scholars who take this view hold that part of the head is to be wiped, giving their attention to what is highest.
(Wiping Part of the Head and Humbling Oneself in Intimate Address)
Our companions then disagree as to what this part is. Each knower speaks according to the perception of the ranks of these faculties that God has given him, in keeping with what he sees and how he applies it inwardly. He begins to wipe in this act of worship, which is a matter of humbling oneself and removing grandeur and haughtiness through humility and servanthood. For in the purification of worship he seeks connection with his Lord. The one praying is in the station of intimate address to his Lord, and this is the connection sought through purification.
When someone invested with might and headship enters the presence of the one who conferred that might and headship upon him, he relinquishes his headship and humbles his might before the might of the one whose presence
Notes
Translator’s note TN1377-1: The form-giving faculty (al-quwwah al-muṣawwirah) and the imaginative faculty (al-quwwah al-khayāliyyah) are named separately. The author uses their ordering to illustrate how one faculty can preside over another that itself has authority.
Translator’s note TN1377-2: Raising the head renders iqnāʿ. In his later treatment of the term (page ID 9973), Ibn al-Arabi explicitly explains it as raising the head and couples it with humility before God.
