📘 (Alif. Lam. Mim. Do men imagine that they will be left (at ease) because they say, We believe, and will not be tested with affliction?) [29:1-2]. Said al-Sha�bi: �These verses were revealed about some people in Mecca who embraced Islam. The Companions of the Prophet, Allah bless him and give him peace, in Medina wrote to them saying that their faith and embracing of Islam will not be accepted from them until they emigrate from Mecca. For this reason, they left Mecca with the intention of joining Medina. However, the idolaters caught up with them and harmed them. These verses were, therefore, revealed about them. The Muslims of Medina then wrote back and said to them that such-and-such verses were revealed about you. Those Muslims in Mecca said: �We will leave and fight whoever follows us�. They left Mecca and were pursued by the idolaters. Fighting ensued between them; some were killed and some escaped safe. Allah, exalted is He, therefore revealed about them (Then lo! Thy Lord�for those who become fugitive after they had been persecuted�) [16:110]�. Said Muqatil: �This verse was revealed about Mihja�, the client of �Umar ibn al-Khattab, who was the first Muslim to be killed at the Battle of Badr. �Amr ibn al-Hadrami struck him with a bow which killed him. The Prophet, Allah bless him and give him peace, said on that day: �The master of all martyrs is Mihja�. He will be the first one of this community to be called to the gate of heaven�. His wife and parents were distraught because of his death, and so Allah, exalted is He, revealed about them these verses, explaining that they had to suffer trials and hardship for the sake of Allah, exalted is He�.

📘 (Of mankind is he who saith: We believe in Allah�) [29:10]. Said Mujahid: �This verse was revealed about some people who declared faith with their tongues. However, when Allah tested them with trials or calamities regarding their own persons, they succumbed�. Said al-Dahhak: �This verse was revealed about some Meccan hypocrites who displayed faith but showed their belief in idolatry whenever they were harmed�. �Ikrimah also reported that Ibn �Abbas said: �This verse was revealed about the believers who were expelled to Badr by the idolaters and so they renounced their faith. It is about these people that the verse (Lo! As for those whom the angels take (in death) while they wrong themselves�) [4:97] was revealed�.

📘 Have they not seen how God originates creation, then makes it return? In terms of the outwardness, originating creation and making it return are this world and the next world. In terms of the inwardness, these allude to the changing of the moments and the recurrence of states for the possessors of hearts. Sometimes they are in contraction, sometimes expansion, sometimes awe, sometimes intimacy. For a time absence dominates over them, for a time pres- ence; for a time intoxication, for a time sobriety; for a time subsistence, for a time annihilation. When the servant is in contraction and awe, he manifests servanthood by craving forgiveness and fearing punishment, just as the Exalted Lord said: “They were supplicating Us in eagerness and dread” [21:90]. Then, when he steps into the world of expansion, he sees the marks bearing witness to intimacy. He is freed from his own power and strength and disengaged from his own desires and aims. He lives in the opening of disengagement and his aspiration's goal and kiblah becomes desiring His face [6:52]. In this state his soul will be like what Shiblī said because of drunkenness and selflessness: “At the resurrection, everyone will have an antagonist, and I will be Adam's. Why did he make my road steep so that I was held back by the mud?” When he was in expansion he spoke like that, and when he was in contraction he used to say, “My abasement suspends the abasement of the Jews.” Once again he would be given over to expansion and intimacy such that he said, “Where are the heavens and the earths that I may carry them on one of my eyelashes?” This then is the meaning of the recurrence of the states alluded to by originating and making return. The proof text of this in the exalted Qur'an is His words, “You shall surely ride stage after stage” [84:19], that is, state after state. Part of the conduct and traveling of MuṣṬafā was that one day he would say, “I am the master of Adam's children.” Then in the state of contraction he would say, “I do not know what He will do with me or with you. Would that MuḤammad's Lord had not created MuḤammad!” Again, in the state of intimacy, he would say, “I am not like any of you-I spend the night at my Lord; He gives me to eat and drink.

📘 Do the people reckon they will be left to say, “We have faith,” and not be tried? Do the people reckon they will be left simply to claim to have faith without trial being demanded from them? That will never happen, for the worth of every man lies in his trial. So when the mea- sure of someone's meaning is more, the measure of his trial will be more. The Prophet said, “Surely the people most severely tried are the prophets, then the next best, then the next best.” He also said, “When God desires good for a people, He tries them.” The lordly likeness from the Presence of Lordhood is this: Trial from Our threshold is a robe of honor for the friends. Whoever seeks a level above others in the station of friendship will smell more of the rose of tribulation in the pleasure-garden of the friends. If you want to know this, then look at the state of that master of Adam's children, the one emulated by the folk of the Shariah, and the foremost and chieftain of the folk of the Haqiqah. When that paragon walked into this street, he was not left without heartache and grief for an hour. If he sat for a while cross-legged, the address would come, “Sit like a servant!” If once he put a ring on his finger, the whip of rebuke would come down: “What, did you reckon that We created you aimlessly?” [23:115]. If once he placed his foot on the ground boldly, the command would come, “Walk not in the earth exultantly” [17:37]. If one day he said, “I love ʿāÌisha,” he would see what he saw. When his trial reached the extreme from the words of the hypocrites, he complained inwardly to God. He was addressed: “O paragon, when someone's heart and spirit witness Me, does he complain of trial?” All the venom in the treasuries of the Unseen was poured into one cup and put in his hand, and then a curtain was lifted from his secret core. It was said, “O MuḤammad, drink this venom while contemplating My beauty! And be patient with thy Lord's decree, for surely thou art in Our eyes” [52:48]. Were the Beloved's hand to pour poison for me, poison from His hand would be sweet. * Your curse, O Friend, is my praise and laudation, Your iniquity my justice, Your cruelty loyalty.

📘 He chastises whom He will and has mercy on whom He will. When He wants He acts with justice toward someone and drives him away from His kindness, and when He wants He acts with bounty toward him and calls him to His gentleness. All is tied to His beginningless will, and He issues the decree without any cause. It is not that He shows bounty toward someone because of his obedience, nor that He acts with justice toward someone because of his disobedience. That is a work that was taken care of in the Beginningless, a decree that went out as God wanted. The Pir of the Tariqah said, “Alas for the apportioning that has gone before me! Alack for the words spoken by the Self-Seer! What profit if I live happily or distraught? I fear what the Power- ful said in the Beginningless.” He chastises whom He will through abandonment and He has mercy upon whom He will through giving the success of beautiful doing. He chastises whom He will through ingratitude and He has mercy upon whom He will through faith. He chastises whom He will through dispersion of the heart and He has mercy upon whom He will through the togetherness of aspiration. He chas- tises whom He will by casting him into the darkness of self-governance and He has mercy upon whom He will by giving him to witness the flow of predetermination. He chastises whom He will by his love for this world and being held back from it and He has mercy upon whom He will by his renunciation of it and its expansion for him. He chastises whom He will by His turning away from him and He has mercy upon whom He will by His turning toward him.

📘 You will not be disablers in earth or in heaven, and you have no friend or helper apart from God. You will not be disablers in earth or in heaven. On the contrary, everything turns around in His grasp, and He brings to pass for them the decrees of His predetermination-whether they deny or voice His tawḤīd, whether they turn toward Him or away from Him.

📘 And those who disbelieve in the signs of God and the encounter with Him-they have lost hope in My mercy. In this world the punishment of the unbelievers is completed when they lose hope in God's mercy. To the faithful He says, “No matter how many foolish things you have done and how much you have sinned, despair not of God's mercy [39:53].” Know that the influence of God's mercy for the servants is greater than the influence of His wrath. In the Qur'an, there are more mentions of the attributes of mercy than the attributes of wrath. In the report has come, “My mercy takes precedence over My wrath.” Mercy and wrath are both attributes of the Real, and it is not permissible for you to say that one is before and the other after, or that one is more and the other less. If you say that one is more, then the other must be decreased; if you say one is before, than the other must be newly arrived. Hence, what is meant by this is mercy's influence. In other words: “The influence of My mercy overtakes the influence of My wrath.” It is because of the influence of His wrath that the unbelievers have despaired of His mercy, such that He says, “they have lost hope in My mercy.” It is because of the influence of His mercy that the faithful hope for His forgiveness and place their hearts on His mercy, such that He says, “They hope for God's mercy” [2:218]. The unbeliever who has despaired of God's mercy with his idol before him is like a spider who builds a house, frail and without outcome. It has no foundation to keep it in place, walls for refuge, or roof to cover it. It is of no use in cold or in heat. It is so frail and weak that with the slightest wind it moves up and down and is ruined. This is the likeness of the idol-worshipper. He fancies that he is doing something or that he has a refuge: They were reckoning that they were doing beau- tiful artisanry [18:104]. They reckon that they are on to something [58:18]. “He who hopes that the mirage is water will only remain long enough to know that it was an imagining.”

📘 Whoso hopes to encounter God, God's term is coming, and He is the Hearing, the Knowing. When someone passes his life hoping for Our encounter, We will permit him to gaze upon Us and he will be delivered from absence and separation. And He is the Hearing of the moans of the yearners, the Knowing of the longing of the enraptured lovers. The price of seeing the Friend is the spirit. If you find that for one hundred thousand spirits, that is cheap. Who is more victorious than the servant who sees the Friend face-to-face? Hoping to see the Friend is the attribute of the Men. Great is the aspiration of the eye that wants to see You- is it not enough for an eye that You see him who sees You? Wait until tomorrow, when the servant will sit at the table of everlastingness, drinking the wine of union. He will see blessedness, nearness, and the most beautiful and will arrive at hearing, drink- ing, and seeing. This is just what the Exalted Lord says: “Faces that day will be radiant, gazing upon their Lord” [75:22-23]. The faces of the faithful and the self-purifiers, the faces of the sin- cerely truthful and the witnesses, will be like glowing moons, shining suns, garden violets, fragrant jasmine, red anemones, flashing lightning, rising suns, the vast paradise. On whom will these faces be gazing? They will be gazing upon their Lord, upon their creator, upon their nurturer. What is the attribute of that day? The day of proximity and union, the day of kindness and bounteousness, the day of giving and bestowal, the day of gazing on the Possessor of Majesty. In hoping for this station the yearners dedicated their bodies, and for the sake of this way station the passionate put rings in their ears. The recognizers will have three eyes in vision: The eye of the head will see, and that is for pleasure. The eye of the heart will see, and that is for recognition. The eye of the spirit will see, and that is for contemplation. He will fill the eye of the head with the light of bounty, the eye of the heart with the light of proximity, and the eye of the spirit with the light of finding.

📘 (And how many an animal there is that beareth not its own provision!) [29:60]. Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Tamimi informed us> Abu Muhammad ibn Hayyan> Ahmad ibn Ja�far al-Jamal> �Abd al-Wahid ibn Muhammad al-Bajali> Yazid ibn Harun> Hajjaj ibn Minhal> al-Zuhri (who is �Abd al-Rahman ibn �Ata�)> �Ata�> Ibn �Umar who said: �We went out with the Messenger of Allah, Allah bless him and give him peace, and walked with him until he entered one of the fields of the Helpers and started picking dates and eating them. He said: �O Ibn �Umar, why do you not eat?� I said: �I do not feel like it, O Messenger of Allah!� He said: �As for me, I do feel like it; this is the fourth morning in which I did not taste any food. And if I wish, I can pray to my Lord to grant me the like of the kingdoms of Chosroes and the Caesar. What will you do then, O Ibn �Umar, when you live among people who store their provision for a year and when certainty is weakened?� By Allah, we did not leave [our place] until this verse was revealed (And how many an animal there is that beareth not its own provision! Allah provideth for it and for you. He is the Hearer, the Knower)�.

📘 (We have enjoined on man kindness to parents�) [29:8]. The commentators of the Qur�an said: �This was revealed about Sa�d ibn Abi Waqqas. When the latter embraced Islam, his mother Hamnah said to him: �O Sa�d, I heard that you have renounced your old religion. By Allah, I will not take shelter under any roof to protect me from the sun and wind, nor will I eat or drink, until you disbelieve in Muhammad and revert to your old religion�. Sa�d was the dearest of her sons to her, but he refused to do as she wanted. For three days, his mother did not eat, drink or take shelter under the shade until it was feared that she may perish. At that point, Sa�d went to the Prophet, Allah bless him and give him peace, and complained to him. Allah, exalted is He, revealed as a response this verse as well as the verse in Surah Luqman [31:14] and the verse in Surah al-Ahqaf [46:15]�. Abu Sa�id informed us> Abu Bakr al-Ghazi> Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Hamdan> Abu Ya�la> Abu Khaythamah> al-Hasan ibn Musa> Zuhayr> Simak ibn Harb> Mus�ab ibn Sa�d ibn Abi Waqqas> his father who said: �This verse was revealed about me. Umm Sa�d [his mother] swore that she will never speak to me, eat or drink, until I disbelieve in Islam. She did this for three days until she passed out from exhaustion. Allah, exalted is He, then revealed (We have enjoined on man kindness to parents�)�. This was narrated by Muslim from Abu Khaythamah.