The Meccan Revelations

Manuscript volume 31 · Page 154

Konya manuscript

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Arabic

ويسمى المتعدي جاهلا وتعديه جهلا، وهي الحدود الذاتية للأشياء، وإنما أضيفت إلى الله؛ لأن العلم بها إنما حصل لنا من جانب الله، حيث أعطانا من القوة التي هي قوة العقل والنظر ما نصل بها إلى العلم بهذه الحدود.

ولأن الأمور التي نحدها ما هي بأمر زائد على ما ظهر في المظاهر المعقولة والمحسوسة، وما ظهر إلا الحق، وذٰلك الظاهر في العقل أو الحس هو الذي نحده، وليس إلا الله، فهي حدود الله.

(الاشتراك والفصل المقوم)

وقد تشترك المحدودات في أمور وتتميز بأمور، فما تميزت به من الفصول فهو حدها المميز لها عن الذي شاركها، وما وقع به الاشتراك والتميز كله حد لها، فمن تعدى هذه الحدود ﴿فَقَدْ ظَلَمَ نَفْسَهُ﴾ [الطلاق: ١] بظلم يسمى جهلا وقلبا للحقائق.

وقلب الحقائق إما أن يقلبها عينها كلها، وإما أن يقلبها من حيث فصولها المقومة لها، وكيف ما كان فقد تعدى حدود الله وجهل، فحد الخالق بما هو حد للمخلوق، فقلب الأمر في عينه كله، وقد حد الإنسان بالفصل المقوم للفرس، فقد غلط وجهل بعضا وعلم بعضا، فأولئك هم الجاهلون حقا، كما هو في تعدى

English

The one transgressing is called ignorant, and his transgression ignorance. These are the intrinsic limits of things. They are ascribed to God only because our knowledge of them came from God's side, when He gave us the faculty of intellect and reflection through which we attain knowledge of these limits.

Furthermore, the affairs we define are nothing additional to what appears within intelligible and sensory loci of manifestation. None has appeared but the Real. What appears within intellect or sense is what we define, and it is none but God. They are therefore God's limits.

(Sharing and the Constitutive Differentia)

Things defined may share some features and be distinguished through others. The differentiae through which they are distinguished constitute the limit distinguishing them from what shares features with them. Everything through which sharing and distinction occur is their limit. Whoever transgresses these limits ﴿has wronged himself﴾ [al-Ṭalāq 65:1] with a wrong called ignorance and reversing realities.

Reversing realities may reverse their entire entity, or may reverse them through their constitutive differentiae. However it is done, one has transgressed God's limits and been ignorant. He defines the Creator through what defines the creature, reversing the whole affair in its very entity. He may define the human being through the horse's constitutive differentia, erring, ignorant of something and knowing something. Those are truly the ignorant, just as in transgressing

Manuscript imageManuscript volume 31 · Page 154

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Cairo source reference

Ibn al-Arabi, The Meccan Revelations — Manuscript volume 31 · Page 154 — https://www.futmak.com/english/konya/pages.php?id=9212&text=both