{"collection":"Islam","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/isl/taa/taa41.htm","path":"isl/taa/taa41.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/isl/taa/taa41.htm","text":"The Tarjuman al-Ashwaq, by Ibn al-Arabi, tr. Reynold A. Nicholson, [1911]\n1. The dearest place on God's earth to me after \u1e6cayba and Mecca and the Farther Temple is the city of Baghd\u00e1n. 1\n2. How should I not love the (City of) Peace, since I have there an Im\u00e1m who is the guide of my religion and my reason and my faith?\n3. \u2019Tis the home of a daughter of Persia, one whose gestures are subtle and whose eyelids are languid.\n4. She greets and revives those whom she killed with her looks, and she conferred the best (gift) after beauty and beneficence.\n1. '\u1e6cayba' (Medina), i.e. the station of Yathrib from which they return with utter failure to attain to true knowledge of the most glorious God, as Ab\u00fa Bakr said, 'perception is\nthe incapacity to achieve perception.' This involves seeing God in everything.\n'Mecca,' i.e. the perfect heart which contains the Truth.\n'The Farther Temple' (Jerusalem), i.e. the station of holiness and purity.\n'Baghd\u00e1n,' i.e. Baghd\u00e1d, because it is the abode of the Qu\u1e6db, in whom is the perfect manifestation of the form of the Divine presence.\n3. 'A daughter of Persia,' i.e. a form of foreign wisdom (###), connected with Moses, Jesus, Abraham, and other foreigners of the same class.\n'Whose eyelids are languid,' i.e. she is tender and merciful.\n4. 'The best (gift) after beauty and beneficence': Gabriel said, 'Beneficence (###) consists in thy worshipping God as though thou wert seeing Him,' and he added, 'for if thou seest Him not, yet He sees thee.' Hence 'the best gift' after beneficence is God's vision of thee.\n122:1 Baghd\u00e1n is one of the seven various spellings of Baghd\u00e1d.","title":"The Tarjuman al-Ashwaq: Translation and Commentary: XXXVIII","type":"page"}