A Dais and a Locus of Self-Disclosure: The Lover Is Described as Sighing Much
This is His saying, “Abraham was much-sighing, forbearing” [al-Tawba 9:114]. The Real is described, through His name the All-Merciful, as possessing a breath through which He gives relief to His servants. In that breath the world appeared. For this reason He made the world’s formation through the saying “Be.” A letter is a sectioning of air: air generates it, but is not it, for the letter appears only when air is interrupted. Air is breath. Thus air among the elements is nature’s breath, and it receives letters, namely the sounds appearing within it when it blows.
The manifest letters in those sounds are hāʾ and hamza, the furthest places of articulation. They are adjacent to the heart, the first throat letters—indeed, chest letters—and the first letter formed by one breathing. This is sighing, through its nearness to the heart, the place from which breath issues and is sent forth. All letters appear from it, just as the world appears through formation from the saying “Be.” This is a wondrous mystery I shall mention in the chapter on nafas, with the fāʾ vowelled a, God willing.
When the Real discloses Himself from the lover’s heart and the eye of insight looks toward Him, since the heart encompasses the Real, the lover sees the blame cast upon this natural constitution, although it contains these divine mysteries and appeared in the cosmos from the All-Merciful’s breath. It is blamed and its worth unknown, so he sighs much over this wounding matter, because of
Notes
Translator’s note TN4740-1: Nafas, ‘breath,’ is distinguished by its a vowel from nafs, ‘self/soul.’ The account of letters, air, and their articulation is retained as the author gives it.
