May Allah have mercy on the servant to whose hands this epistle comes—who does not greet it with denial, but rather turns to his Lord in utter need, beseeching Him night and day to unveil the truth; who studies the revealed texts concerning the divine attributes, ponders with his reason the manner in which they were sent down, the purpose for which they were revealed, and what the Creator intends His creatures to learn from them. When Allah opens such a person’s heart, he realises that their only aim is to know the Lord, exalted is He, through them; to turn toward Him by means of them; and to affirm them for Him in their full, real sense, befitting His majesty and greatness—without forced interpretation or negation, without probing into how or likening Him to anything, without rigidity or hesitation. In this is a message sufficient for the reflective and an adequate proof for the insightful, if Allah so wills.
The author—may Allah have mercy on him and reward him well—then explained the effect that this creed produces in the heart of the one who believes it:
‘When a servant is certain that Allah is above the heaven, exalted over His Throne without confinement and without modality, and that He is, at this very moment, exactly as He was in pre-eternity with respect to His attributes, his heart gains a qiblah (fixed orientation) for his prayer, his devotion, and his supplication. Whoever does not know that his Lord is above His heavens upon His Throne remains lost, unable to discern the direction of the One he worships. Even if he acknowledges that Allah hears, sees, and ever-was, that knowledge—without this certainty—is incomplete.
But the one who knows that the God he worships is above all things, when he enters the prayer and pronounces the opening takbīr, turns his heart toward the Throne, declaring his Lord far removed from confinement and affirming His oneness just as He was one in His timeless pre-existence. He understands that spatial directions belong to us and are necessitated by our created nature; we can only point toward our Lord in His beginningless eternity by means of them because we are originated beings, and every originated being, when pointing, must point in a direction. Thus his indication falls toward his Lord in a manner befitting His greatness, not in accordance with what the servant himself imagines.
He believes that, though exalted, Allah is close to His creation—present with them through His knowledge, hearing, and seeing, through His encompassing power and will—while His very essence is above all things, above the Throne. Whenever his heart senses this during prayer or supplication, it becomes radiant, illuminated by the lights of gnosis and faith; the rays of divine grandeur reflect upon his intellect, spirit, and soul, so his breast expands, his faith is strengthened, and he declares his Lord free of the attributes of the created—such as confinement or indwelling. In that moment he tastes something of what the foremost, those brought near, have tasted.
By contrast, one who does not know the direction of the One he worships is left bewildered; a simple shepherd girl would know Allah better than he, for she said, “He is in the heaven,” having understood that He is above the heaven, since the preposition “in” can, in Arabic, carry the meaning of “above.” Whoever