101 Hadith Qudsi by pImam ibn Arabi

Appendix
care taken in the transmission, both oral and written, of ¢ad¨th and ¢ad¨th
quds¨ springs naturally and directly from revering the light which ¦owed
from and through the Prophet.
For Ibn ¡Arab¨ the reception of a ¢ad¨th did not end with his being able to
repeat it correctly word for word. He gave himself unreservedly to the service
implied in the words of the Quranic verse: “If you love God, follow me [the
Prophet] and then God will love you.” In a passage in his R¬¢ al-quds Ibn
¡Arab¨ describes his responses to another extraordinary vision which he had in
Mecca. It concludes:
I thanked God for having given me victory over my soul (nafs) and
said: “O my soul, by the power of Him who gave you a nature inclined
to rebellion and made you susceptible to all kinds of blameworthy
traits, I swear I shall not leave you in peace until you live up to the
teachings of the Book of God and the Way of the Prophet.” 28
God says, in the ninety-¥rst ¢ad¨th reported in this book, “… and when I
love him, I become his hearing with which he hears, his sight with which he
sees, his hand with which he grasps, and his foot with which he walks.” This
points to the complete ful¥lment of the potential of the human being, and
the taste of this is the essence of the gift which this book represents.
28. R¬¢ al-quds, p.|23; R. Boase and F. Sahnoun, “Excerpts from the Epistle on the Spirit
of Holiness (Risålah R¬h al-Quds)”, p.|55. For further details, see Hirtenstein, Unlimited
Merci¥er, p.|155.
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