acc. to `Ali bin Abi Tâlib (kAw)
On the subject of knowing
the Lord of the universe, al-Numan bin Saad said: "I was in the city
of Kufa, visiting the Prince and Commander of the Believers, Ali bin
Abi Talib, when Nawf bin Abdullah came to see him and said: 'O Amir
al-Mu'minin, there are forty Jews at the door requesting to see
you.'Ali replied: 'Let them in.' When the visitors stood before him,
their spokesman said: 'O Ali, describe to us your Lord who is in the
heavens, how is that, how was He before, when was He; and what is
He.
Ali immediately
straightened up his sitting posture, and he replied, 'Hearken to me
and do not worry! You need not to ask anyone else beside me about
this subject! Ali then added:
'My
Lord was there first, and
nothing ever existed besides Him. He did not commence from what or
was intermingled with what! His attributes cannot be fixed or
limited. He is not an apparition that can be pursued or delimited,
nor is He veiled to be contained. He did not issue from what was
not, and thus He is not an occurrence.
Exalted
and most glorious is the Creator and Maker of everything, Lord of
the universe, Whose divine majesty is most awesome and beyond having
to explicate His essence to His creation, and instead, we say (as He
described Himself, Qur'an 57:3) that He was there from the
beginningless beginning, and He is the eternal without end. He is
not subject to changes, nor is He affected by what He causes to
change.
How
can He be described by an occurrence He created, and how can His
divine being be limited to the best fathom of the greatest
rhetoricians of all times. He did not emerge from something else
that can lead one to assume His manifestation, nor did He emanate
from anything else that brought Him into being. He is without how,
and He is closer than one's jugular vein, and yet, He is beyond
description in the widest perceivable realms.
Not
a single glaring of anyone of His entire creation combined is ever
hidden to Him, nor the sequence of any uttering or a sound is ever
veiled to Him or is unperceived by Him, and neither is a single
progression of any toddler obscure to His divine knowledge, and nor
is the stretch of the tiniest step taken by any of His creation in a
dark gloomy night, or at any depth or layer of this world not
visible by Him. The brilliant moon in its fullness does not veil His
magnificent effulgent presence, nor can the radiant sun and the full
gamut of its rays brighten and make His presence more luminous. The
orderly changing stretches of the nights and what they bring, and
the prolongation and shortening of the daylight hours are within His
knowledge, for He alone has the knowledge of what He wills to exist,
and the wisdom behind their alterations.
He is the omniscient Lord
Who is full of knowledge of every space, time, sequence, duration
and term. The time allotted for the existence of His creation is
predetermined solely by Him, and boundaries are not His attributes.
He did not create things from preexisting matters nor from elements
that were known before Him; rather, He created everything from
inception, He made their nature perfect for their respective needs,
and He fashioned everything and rendered it its best complementary
form. Exalted is He in His glory, for there is nothing that can
prevent or limit His reach, nor can anything interfere in His will.
He does not benefit from the obedience of His creation, and He is
swift in answering their prayers. The countless myriads of angels in
the heavens as well as the two earths are subservient to Him.
His knowledge of the
annihilated beings and past souls is as intricate as His knowledge
of the ever-expanding universe and changing lives. His knowledge
encompasses everything in the highest heavens and what is in the
deepest layers of the earth. He knows everything. He distinguishes
the multitude of sounds He created, and each of them stands distinct
from the others before Him. Languages do not preoccupy Him. He is
the All-Hearing Lord and without the extremities of a body, and He
alone manages the entire universe, and He is the All-Seeing Lord,
the Living, and the sole Sustaining power behind the entire
existence. Glory be to Him, He spoke to Moses with words without the
need for limbs or tools, nor lips nor through the vibration of a
uvular sound. Exalted is He beyond ascription of mechanical
attributes. He who alleges that our Lord is limited is indeed
ignorant of the Creator who is worshipped in the heavens and on
earth. The one that imagines Him contained within boundaries will
live his life confused and mixed up.
Instead, it is God
Almighty, Allah , who encompasses everything. Therefore, if you
are troubled, and if you have gone to the extend of asking questions
to describe the Merciful Lord, seeking an explanation beyond what He
already revealed about Himself, inquiring in excess of the manifest
proof of His sovereignty, then describe to me the archangels
Gabriel, Michael, or Isrâfîl. How can you? Thus, if you are
incapable of describing the created (angels), then how can you
describe the Creator? What you can understand is limited to
recognizing the attributes and the essence of perceived matters, but
when it comes to describing the One Whom no slumber nor sleep can
seize, you will surely fail. To Him belongs what the two earths, the
heavens and all what they embody, and He is the Lord of the
magnificent throne." (Also narrated by al-Nu'mân and Ishâq)
• Also on this subject,
Ahmad bin Abi al-Hawwâri narrated that `Ali bin Abi Tâlib, God bless
his countenance, said: "I would not be happy if I had died as an
infant, and if I entered paradise without experiencing this life and
growing up to know my Lord."
• `Ali bin al-Hussain
narrated that his grandfather `Ali, God be pleased with both of
them, said: "Among people, the most true in their advice, and the
unsurpassed in their knowledge of who is God, are those who have the
most love and reverence for the people of Lâ ilâha il Allah (Surely
there is no god other than Allah)."
• Yahya Ibn Abi Kathâr
narrated that the companions once asked `Ali, God bless his
countenance: "Should we guard you?" He replied: "One is best guarded
by his own destiny."
From:
Hilyat-ul Awliya, Abu
Na`im al-Asfahâni
The Beauty Of The Righteous And The Ranks Of The Elite
