The Ninety-Nine Names

His chapter on the Names (ch. 558) opens with a startling rule. He reads the verse "O people, you are the needy ones, in need of the Real" (Q 35:15) and draws this from it:

فَكُلُّ مَا يُفْتَقَرُ إِلَيْهِ فَهُوَ اسْمٌ لِلّٰهِ تَعَالَى إِذْ لَا فَقْرَ إِلَّا إِلَيْهِ

"Everything that is needed is a name of the Real, since there is no need except for Him." (Fut. IV.196, ch. 558)

So your need is not a failure. It is a pointer. Needing peace points to al-Salām, Peace. Needing someone to listen points to al-Samīʿ, the Hearing. Needing a way out points to al-Fattāḥ, the Opener. Each need, followed all the way down, ends at a Name.

The same chapter begins with a short poem. It pictures the Names as a ladder that "rises and falls", blown by winds from the south and the north (أرى سلم الأسماء يعلو ويسفل). Then comes a line that turns the whole thing inward:

فَأَعْيَانُنَا أَسْمَاؤُهُ لَيْسَ غَيْرَهَا

"Our very selves are His names, nothing else." (Fut. IV.196, ch. 558)

You don't only call on the Names. In his picture, you are one of the ways a Name shows itself. A patient person is patience appearing. A generous friend is generosity with a face. When you notice a quality in someone, you are, in his language, seeing a Name walk across the room.

Asked which Name came first in shaping things, Ibn Arabi answers without hesitating:

الْوَهَّابُ هُوَ أَوَّلُ اسْمٍ ظَهَرَ أَثَرُهُ فِي الْأَعْيَانِ الثَّابِتَةِ

"al-Wahhāb, the Giver, is the first Name whose trace appeared in the fixed entities." (Fut. II.57, ch. 73)

Before you were anything, you were given to. The first touch of the Real on what would become you was a gift: not a test, not a demand. وهّاب wahhāb is an intense form: not "one who gives" but "one who gives and gives". When the day feels like one long demand, it can help to remember that the first word spoken over you was here, take this.

In the Fuṣūṣ, right after the green glass, Ibn Arabi asks a playful question: "Where is the Forgiving, compared with the Outward and the Inward? Where is the First, compared with the Last?" (فأين الغفور من الظاهر ومن الباطن، وأين الأول من الآخر, Fus. 104, Yūsuf). Each Name has its own work. And yet:

فَقَدْ بَانَ لَكَ بِمَا هُوَ كُلُّ اسْمٍ عَيْنُ الِاسْمِ الْآخَرِ ، وَبِمَا هُوَ غَيْرُ الِاسْمِ الْآخَرِ

"So it has become clear to you how each Name is the very other Name, and how it is other than it." (Fus. 104, Yūsuf)

Think of one person being a parent, a colleague and a friend: three ways of being present, one person. On a hard day the Real might meet you as the Strong or as the Gentle. It is the same Real.

Ibn Arabi notices that things speak even when silent. A wilted plant says "water". A slumped friend says "I'm tired". He puts it plainly:

فَلَا لِسَانَ أَفْصَحُ مِنْ لِسَانِ الْأَحْوَالِ

"There is no tongue more eloquent than the tongue of states." (Fut. I.436, ch. 69)

And for those who know, "all of existence is words of the Real that never run out" (الوجود كله كلمات الله لا تنفد أبدا, Fut. I.436). Your mood this morning, the weather, the traffic: each is a word in that endless speaking. Learning the Names is learning to read the sentence your day is writing.

Ibn Arabi gives the whole path a one-line definition: "taking on the character traits of the Real is Sufism" (فالتخلق بأخلاق الله هو التصوف, Fut. II.267, ch. 165). He sets it inside the Qur'an's image of the trust, الأمانة al-amāna (Q 33:72). Everything around you, he says, is placed in your hands as a trust, so that you give each thing its due, as the Real "gave each thing its making" (Q 20:50). If you carry it well, you are the Sufi (Fut. II.267, ch. 165; paraphrase).

Sufi teachers after him kept this phrase, taking on the Names, as one of the plainest ways to say what the whole path is.