101 Hadith Qudsi by pImam ibn Arabi

hadith and ibn ¡arabi
The two works are, however, quite different in approach: while Ghazål¨ is
concerned with establishing a metaphysics of light, Ibn ¡Arab¨ provides a
work of great depth and simplicity by collecting together Divine Sayings. 18
The Mishkåt is the only book in the vast body of Ibn ¡Arab¨’s writings that
is speci¥cally dedicated to ¢ad¨th quds¨. As he explains at the beginning, he
compiled this collection as a way of conforming to two ¢ad¨th:
According to Ibn ¡Abbås, the Messenger of God, may God give him
blessings and peace, said: “Whoever preserves for my community
forty ¢ad¨th of the Sunna, I shall be his intercessor on the Day of
Resurrection.” According to Anas ibn Målik, the Messenger of God,
may God bless him and give him peace, also said: “Whoever preserves
for my community forty ¢ad¨th of which they stand in need, God shall
put him down as learned and knowing.”
He then explains that since man stands more in need of the other world than
of this one, he will provide two collections of forty ¢ad¨th with a further
section of twenty to make it up to one hundred, with an extra one to respect
the Divine “Singleness” (witr). This again conforms to a well-known ¢ad¨th:
“God is Odd/Single and loves the odd.”
The 101 ¢ad¨th of the Mishkåt al-anwår thus fall into three sections. The
¥rst forty each have a full, unbroken chain of transmission which goes back to
God through the medium of the Prophet Muhammad (al-a¢ådith al-musnada).
The second forty, entitled khabar (which means “news” or “information”), go
back to God without a complete chain via the Prophet (al-a¢ådith al-marf¬¡a),
and are mostly taken from well-known collections such as those by Muslim
or Tirmidh¨. Seven of these are drawn from a long tradition on the Abodes
of the Resurrection, reported by al-Naqqåsh (d. 351/962). The ¥nal section
of twenty (al-a¢ådith al-mursala) are drawn from similar books, with the last
¢ad¨th given a direct chain. This tripartite division explains why the work
has come to be known under various titles.
At the end of the last section Ibn ¡Arab¨ specifies when the Mishkåt was
written down:
This third part was completed, and with it the whole work, in the
Sacred Precinct of Mecca in the afternoon of Sunday, the third day of
the month of Jumåda al-åkhira, in the year 599 [16 February 1203].
18. Ghazål¨’s work is altogether more theoretical in nature, though based upon the
same Quranic verse and the same principle of Muhammadian light: “If the heavenly lights
from which the earthly lights become kindled have a hierarchy such that one light kindles
another, then the light nearest the First Source is more worthy of the name ‘light’ because
it is highest in level” (al-Ghazål¨, The Niche of Lights, pp.|13–14).
97