intelligible and sensible existents.
(The Men of the Vantage Point and the Station of the Malāmiyyah)
The men of the vantage point are those who possess disposition in the divine Names. Through the Names they bring down from them whatever God wills; this belongs to no others. Through them they also bring down everything under the disposition of the other three kinds of men: the men of the limit, the inward, and the outward. These are the greatest men, and they are the Malāmiyyah. All this lies within their power, yet none of it appears upon them. Among them are Abu al-Suʿud and others.
They and the common people are alike in their outward helplessness and their observance of ordinary customs. Abu al-Suʿud was distinguished among these men—indeed, he was one of the greatest of them. According to what Abu al-Badr told us face to face, he heard him say: “Among the men of God is one who speaks concerning an inward thought while not being with that thought”—that is, he has no knowledge of its possessor and does not intend to make that person known.
When Umar al-Bazzaz, Abu al-Badr, and others described this shaykh’s state to us, we saw that it accorded with the states of this lofty class of the men of God. Abu al-Badr told me: “He often used to recite a verse, and we heard no other verse from him. It was:
“He planted his foot firmly in the pool of death—and told it, ‘Before the hollow of your sole lies the Gathering.’”
He used to say: “It is nothing but the five prayers and waiting for death.” Beneath these words lies great knowledge. He also used to say: “The man of the path with God Most High is—
Notes
Translator’s note TN752-1: The Malāmiyyah are the concealed saints discussed in Chapter 23. The saying about an inward thought distinguishes speaking in correspondence with someone’s thought from intending to identify its possessor. The verse’s image of the sole and the Gathering is compressed; its spatial wording is retained without adding a narrative about the speaker.
