2a Adam and the polishing of the mirror (from the chapter of Adam, Fusus al-

hikam)

The Real wanted to see the essential realities of His most beautiful Names1, whose
number cannot be counted – or if you like you may say, He wanted to see His own
Essence – in an all-inclusive created being that encompasses the [whole] order
because it is qualified by existence, and in which He could manifest His mystery to
Himself. A thing’s vision of itself by itself is not like its vision of itself in something
else, which acts like a mirror for it. For [a mirror] can show [the thing] itself in a form
which is provided by the place of vision, something that could not appear to it without
the existence of this place and its revealing itself to it.

The Real brought into existence the whole universe as an indistinct and
undifferentiated being, within which there was no spirit. So it was like an unpolished
mirror. Now it is part of the Divine rule that He never arranges2 a place without it
being able to receive a divine spirit, which He designates [in the Quran] as breathing
into him3. This is nothing but the coming-about of this undifferentiated form’s aptitude
to receive the constant effusion of Self-revelation, which has neither beginning nor
end. The only other aspect is that which receives [the revelation], which can only
come into being from His most holy Effusion. So the whole affair is from Him, both its
beginning and its end, and to Him the whole affair returns4, just as it begins with Him.

The order necessitated the polishing of the mirror of the universe. Adam became the
same as the clarity of this mirror and the spirit of this form; and the angels became
some of the powers of this form, that is, the form of the universe, which in Sufi
terminology is called the ‘Great Human’. The angels became for it like the spiritual
and sensory powers that exist in the human constitution.

This [all-inclusive created being] which was mentioned above is called ‘human
being’5 and ‘vicegerent’6. His humanness is due to the inclusiveness of his

1
By tradition the ‘Names’ of God are enumerated as the 99 Most Beautiful Names.
2
Ar: sawwā, ‘to put in order, arrange, make level or smooth or equal’. It implies that the ‘place’ is
harmoniously proportioned and well-formed. It could be more loosely translated as ‘He never creates
a receptacle…’
3
Referring to the story of the creation of Adam in Q.15:29: ‘when I have formed him and breathed into
him of My Spirit, fall down in prostration to him’..
4
Q.11:123: ‘To God belongs the unseen of the heavens and the earth, and to Him the whole affair
returns.’ Some translators give this verse as ‘All that exists returns to Him’.
5
Ar. insān. This important concept in Arabic refers to a reality beyond gender, and applies to all
human beings.
constitution and to his encompassing all the realities. He is to the Real as the pupil is
to the eye, through which observing happens – and [here] this signifies vision7. That
is why he is called human being, for through him the Real looks upon His creatures
and mercifies them8. So he is the human being who is both originated and eternal,
the [first] appearance who is both everlasting and perpetual, and the Word who both
distinguishes and unifies.

The world is completed by his existence, for he is to the world like the bezel of a
signet-ring is to the ring [as a whole]. He is the place of the engraved inscription [on
a seal-ring] and the mark by which the King places a seal upon His treasury. He is
called vicegerent (khalīfa) because of this, for He preserves His creation through
him, just as the seal preserves His treasuries. As long as the King’s seal is on them,
no one will dare to open them without His permission. He appointed him as
vicegerent in preserving the universe, and the universe will continue to be preserved
as long as this Complete Human remains in it. Do you not see that if he leaves and
[the seal] is removed from the treasury of this [immediate] world, the treasure which
the Real has placed there will not remain in it? What is in it will depart, with some
parts joining up with others, and the [whole] affair will be transferred into the world to
come. Then [the Complete Human] will be the seal upon the treasury of the other
world forever.

2b The Perfect Human in the world (from the introduction to Abdullah Bosnevi’s
Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ)

The universe only became ‘human’ through the existence of the Human Being who is
at the level of the expressive self, and the expressive self only became perfect and
complete through the Divine Form.
6
The Arabic khalīfa primarily means one who has been appointed to be in the place of someone who
preceded him, i.e. a successor or deputy (e.g. Abu Bakr, the first caliph, described himself as the
khalīfa of the messenger of God). We might say that the khalīfa is the second of two. Here it refers to
the Quranic account of Adam’s creation: ‘And [recall] when your Lord said to the angels “I am going to
put on the earth a khalīfa”’ (Q 2:30).
7
Ibn ʿArabī uses two words for seeing here: naẓar (observing, looking) and baṣar (vision with the
outer or inner eye, which is also related to the divine Name the Seer, al-baṣīr). The reason he equates
naẓar with vision is because in the language of philosophers it means ‘reflection’ or observing with the
mind.
8
The primary meaning of ‘mercifying His creatures’ for Ibn ʿArabī is that with this quality God gives
existence to every created being, by saying ‘Be’ (kun) to their request to come into existence.
Compassionate Mercy (raḥma) is universal and encompasses everything – ‘He embraces all things in
mercy and in knowledge’ (Q 40:7).
 This is why the Messenger, who is the equivalent of the expressive self in the
universe and its spirit, brought together the perfection through the manifesting of the
Divine Form in him in all its plenitude.

The form of the world is like a well-formed body, and the Messenger with the
Divine Form is like the spirit within it.