<div><div><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/-NWvc0NENng?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0" frameborder="0" width="728" height="409"></iframe></div></div><p></p><div><div><div><p>Spiritualrelief's Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><div><div></div><div></div></div></div></div><p>Ruzbihan Baqli was born in Pasa, in the Persian province of Fars, in 1128. As a young man he ran a vegetable shop — the surname <em>Baqli</em> means “the grocer,” and it stayed with him for the rest of his life. At fifteen, an experience he never fully described in prose seized him so completely that he walked away from the shop and never returned. He went into the wilderness. He came back a different man.</p><p>By the time he settled in Shiraz, he was teaching publicly. Disciples gathered. He preached at the great mosque. He wore a patched cloak. He fasted. He saw things — by his own account, every day and every night for the rest of his life — that he later spent decades trying to put into words.</p><p>He died in Shiraz in 1209. His tomb is still there.</p><p>He left several books. The two largest are his visionary diary, the <em>Kashf al-Asrar</em> (the Unveiling of Secrets), and the <em>Sharh-e Shathiyat</em> — the <em>Commentary on the Ecstatic Sayings</em>. The <em>Sharh</em> is a defense of the great early Sufis — particularly Bayazid al-Bistami and Husayn ibn Mansur Hallaj — against the jurists who called them heretics and, in Hallaj’s case, killed them. To call it a <em>defense</em> makes it sound like a legal brief. It is not. It is a piece of high Persian prose-poetry that begins with the praise of God in a register so dense it has to be read slowly, twice, and even then will still escape you.</p><p>This Substack series will work through the <em>Sharh-e Shathiyat</em> movement by movement. Five episodes. Each one will be the corresponding piece of the text, translated from the Persian, set down with as little commentary as possible.</p><p>What follows is Movement One — the Muqaddima, the book’s opening invocation. The praise of God beyond all attributes, and the prayers upon the prophets that close the chapter. It is what Ruzbihan wrote before he wrote anything else. Before the autobiography, before the cosmology, before the defense of the saints. He started here.</p><p>Read it slowly.</p><div><hr></div><h3>The Praise</h3><p>Praise be to that Lord whose Essence and Attributes — without beginning, without ending — are sanctified beyond the alternation of ages and the vicissitudes of time and place; who, before the imposition of names like <em>eternity-without-beginning</em> and <em>eternity-without-end</em>, was already hallowed beyond <em>late</em> and <em>early</em> in the world of being and of accidents. His being is a being not bound by the calendars of moments, and his existing is not the existing-together of created things. He is the First, but not by the description of <em>first causes</em>. He is the Last, but not by the description that resembles other last things. He is Manifest, but not in the form of imaginings. He is Hidden, but not veiled by the screens of secondary causes and idle thoughts. His being subsists by his own being. The beauty of his attributes is everlasting through the majesty of his Essence.</p><p>When you say <em>Essence</em>, you do not say so in the manner of an obscured self. When you say <em>Attributes</em>, you do not name parts and divisions of him outside of him. Separation and conjunction belong to the cause of being; familiarity and estrangement belong to the attributes of <em>between</em> and <em>beside</em>. Being takes no spouse in oneness, and <em>between</em> and <em>beside</em> know nothing but the attributes of contingency. Accidents and substances are the reflections of his actions; the celestial sphere and the heavenly bodies are flecks of his agency. The majesty of his Essence stoops to no fleck of attribute. The unveiling of his attributes accepts no shore but the seas of glory. The elements and the disposings of the intellects, with their bodies and their spirits, are the smallest crumbs from the cabinets and storehouses of his kingdom and dominion. The witnesses, the witnessed, the engendered things, the heavenly orbs, and the horizons are scraps of carpet from the gardens of his omnipotence.</p><p>Pure is that Lord whose seeing is necessary for being, whose knowledge is the requirement of beautiful artistry. His living is the standing-up of the world. His will is the bringing-forth of the existence of Adam. His omnipotence is the testimony of the Existing-Things. His speech is the being of the addressed-ones. He is the Hearer before the heard, not by ear or by an ear’s instrument. He is the Seer before the seen, not by the senses or their conventions.</p><blockquote><p><em>Glory be to him who has hallowed himself in his holiness with sanctity and grandeur, and exalted himself in his greatness with dominion and might, and is blessed in his majesty with kingship, and exalted in his beauty with divinity and omnipotence.</em></p></blockquote><div><hr></div><p>Magnificent is that Mighty One around whose candle of lordship the active intellect is a moth, and in whose prison of decree and destiny the passive soul is a captive. The first intellect is a beginner-pupil at the school-table of his inspiration; the soul is the treasurer and steward of the orders of his court. The bird of well-being is plumeless before the dread of his cunning. In this boundless field, who has the strength to be his rider? Does the horse of the celestial sphere not run on the road of dominion to gather the harvest of his decrees? Does Saturn not drink the venom of his wrath from the cups of fate? Does the dawn each morning not raise the canopy of the light of his power as its head? Does the moon, each month, not eat the venom of the tail of his Scorpio from before its head and tail? In the constellations of his heaven, the brides of the planets paint with the abundance of his kingdom. The golden buckets are drawn up each daybreak by silver wheels.</p><blockquote><p><em>Glory be to him of brilliance and permanence, of glory and grandeur.</em></p></blockquote><p>Before the gaze of the unveiling of his unicity, the mouths of <em>kāf</em> and <em>nūn</em> sit silent under the stamping-foot of his strength. The praise of the eloquent in the description of his might has, before the perfection of his omnipotence, become the very sightlessness of <em>kāf</em>. In the substance of nature, the panels of the stars in the sky of orbiting heavens have, by the awe of his glory, turned dark green from the impressed traces of his light. The opposing elements, beneath the wheel, have struck their truce by his wisdom; in the meadows of bodies, by his power, they have woven the union of the contradictories.</p><div><hr></div><p>Praise be to that grace whose oddness is no oddness in his omnipotence, whose strangeness is no strangeness in his kingdom. Holy is the One in whose persistence is the omnipotence of pre-eternity, whose face is the very depth of the eternity of his love, whose abundance is the gift of his wisdom, whose descent is the very eye of his mercy — with the appearance of the manifestation of the lights of the attribute of his pre-eternity and the everlastingness of his being-the-First. The going-forth of the appointed-portion in the knowledge of his decree and destiny is the nearness and the union of his prayer-for-blessing. His laughter, well-pleased in the majesty and beauty of his Essence —</p><blockquote><p><em>Glory be to him beyond what those of innovation, the misguided likeners, have hinted at, and hallowed be his Essence and Attributes beyond what the divestors and disbelievers have indicated. To him belong the most beautiful Names, and he is the Mighty, the Wise.</em></p></blockquote><p>It is that Pre-Eternal whose soul-bestowing-souls of gnosis are bewildered in the throne-room of his glory before reaching the depth of the eternity of his beauty; whose lovers are wandering, weeping in the desert of his oneness, from the desire of his beauty and the perfection of his essential being. The intellects of those who possess understanding are wandering, thirsty in the mirage of his gnosis. The secrets of those who possess unification are, in the bank of the river of the sea of solitude, in the very midst of bewilderment from the strikings of the surges of the flashings of the spirit of eternity and everlastingness.</p><p>The spirits of the prophets, on the wing of arrival and the might of being-chosen, fly into the air of <em>He-ness</em> — out of themselves, into the breath of the secrets of <em>Be!</em> — and the hearts of the chosen, on the meadow of the visit of pre-eternity, are like the soul of the soul, untying themselves from the chains of yearning. There is no heart that reaches the depth of pre-eternity, no intellect that sips a drop from his oceans. The mirror of the gnostics is the eye of the holiness of his unveiling. The rosebush in the eye of those whose heart he has stolen is the meadow of his intimacy. The horizons of gnosis are the description of the One-Known to the gnostic. The risings of the suns of pre-eternity are the lover of his beautiful face. The sea of his oneness has no shore for the gnostic. There is no riding-beast for the heaped burdens of the cares of the bewildered. <em>Annihilation in annihilation</em> is the way of the travellers of the kingdom; <em>subsistence in subsistence</em> is the wealth of the brave-ones of the dominion.</p><div><hr></div><p>Praise be to that Pre-Eternal who is the apportioner-of-shrewdness to the shrewd, and the bestower of strength to the powerless. The heart is the circle on the point of the upright pre-eternity. The Throne and the Footstool, with both worlds, in the awe of his lord-of-majesty-ness, are the beginning of nothingness. Generation and corruption are two armies of his act. Origination and return are the wrath and the grace of him toward the people of the world. The riding-beast of the universal intellect is rendered slack-paced by the might of his Essence. The universal soul, in the perfection of his proof, becomes narrow-fielded. Comprehension and imagination together with thought write the line of the falsified knowledge in the school-room of his dominion. Sense and analogy, at the threshold of his actions, are thieves on the night of separation. The soul of the soul, with the intellect of the intellect, is the ladder and the road of his command and his prohibition.</p><p>When you have passed beyond these explanations — that which is beyond your apprehension is the depth of the might of his Essence — the eyes of the gnostics are made drunk by the face of his Essence. The soul of the deniers turns its hand from the seeing of his attributes.</p><blockquote><p><em>Glory be to him in whose floodings of glory the secrets of those-who-have-arrived are dissolved, in whose praise for his perfection the tongues of the describers are reduced to silence, in whose seas of permanence the spirits of the firmly-rooted are submerged, beneath the dominion of whose grandeur the bodies of the truthful are extinguished.</em></p></blockquote><div><hr></div><p>The light of that majesty made drunk the lovers with the wine of his arrival, and made wandering the longers with the audition of his attribute. So that, from being-overwhelmed, they cried out and uncovered the buried secrets, and made signs and expressions out of the abstruse, unknown sciences. And in <em>being</em> they spoke ecstatic sayings, and they tore the veil of the world of knowledge, and they stepped off the high-road of the conventions, and they made the very <em>being-Lord</em> manifest to the world.</p><p>They did not speak from servanthood; they began from <em>I-ness</em>. And in <em>unification</em> they spoke of <em>the lordship of the lord</em>. So the jealousy of pre-eternity exercised its sovereignty over them. The grandeur of pride made them bearers of trial. But the world became the sword of their love, and the horizons became their groom and servant. He himself made them famous through love and saintship. He himself made them precious by gnosis and by sufficiency.</p><blockquote><p><em>Glory be to him who has ennobled his saints with the unveiling of secrets, and praise be to him who has dignified his chosen-ones with the witnessing of lights.</em></p></blockquote><div><hr></div><h3>The Prayers Upon the Prophets</h3><p>Mercy be upon the messengers and the celebrated prophets — peace and blessings be upon them — and may God’s prayer be upon Muhammad, the most noble of the messengers and the prophets, the imam of the envoys and the saints —</p><p>— and upon <strong>Adam</strong>, the original of his creation and the caliph of his kingdom in the world, — and upon <strong>Seth</strong>, his elect and his messenger, — and upon <strong>Idris</strong>, his prophet and his trustee, — and upon <strong>Noah</strong>, his rescued one, — and upon <strong>Hud</strong>, the strange one of his messengership, — and upon <strong>Salih</strong>, the precious one of his prophecy, — and upon <strong>Abraham</strong>, his intimate friend, — and upon <strong>Isaac</strong>, the truthful one of the promise, — and upon <strong>Ishmael</strong>, his sacrifice, — and upon <strong>Jacob</strong>, the saddened one of his testing, — and upon <strong>Lot</strong>, the famous of his message, — and upon <strong>Jonah</strong>, the imprisoned one of his jealousy, — and upon <strong>Joseph</strong>, the witness of his beauty, — and upon <strong>Shu’ayb</strong>, the longing one for meeting him, — and upon <strong>Moses</strong>, his speech-partner, — and upon <strong>Aaron</strong>, the helper of the speech-partner, — and upon <strong>David</strong>, his lover, — and upon <strong>Solomon</strong>, the king of his sovereignty and his messengership, — and upon <strong>Ezra</strong>, the sign of his lordship, — and upon <strong>Job</strong>, the patient one of his testing, — and upon <strong>Zechariah</strong>, the elder of his addressers, — and upon <strong>John</strong>, the manifestation of his being-known, — and upon <strong>Jesus</strong>, his word and his pure spirit, — and upon <strong>Khidr</strong>, the treasury of his innate knowledge, — and upon <strong>Elijah</strong>, the elect of his secret, — and upon <strong>the Seal of the Prophets</strong>, his beloved messenger.</p><div><hr></div><h3>End of Movement One</h3><p>This is the end of the Muqaddima — the threshold of the book.</p><p>What follows in the <em>Sharh</em> is <em>the beginnings of my states, and my desire to compose this book</em> — Ruzbihan’s own initiatic autobiography, the chapter where the <em>I</em> enters. That will be Part 2 of this series.</p><p>After that:</p><blockquote><p><strong>Part 3</strong> — <em>Am I Not Your Lord?</em> — the cosmological masterpiece of Chapter 2, the litany at the Day of <em>Alast</em>, the descent of the holy spirits from the screens of pre-eternal acts</p><p><strong>Part 4</strong> — <em>The Three Birds</em> — the second half of Chapter 2, the great taxonomy of how the spirits fell into different lights and became the bird of divestment, the bird of unification, and the bird of holiness</p><p><strong>Part 5</strong> — <em>The Trial of the People</em> — the great catalog of the persecution of the prophets and saints, from Adam to Hallaj</p></blockquote><div><hr></div><p><em>Translated from the Persian by James King for SpiritualRelief, working from Henri Corbin’s critical edition (Bibliothèque Iranienne, Tehran 1981).</em></p><p><em>The video version of this Muqaddima — set to music, with the text read aloud — is on the SpiritualRelief YouTube channel. The full series will be released over the coming months. Subscribe here to read each part as it lands.</em></p>
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