Shaykh Muhammad Wafa: The One said, From every side I am
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"The One said, From every side I am the First as the Merciful and the Last in Humanity; the Apparent in creation, and the Hidden in truth. So he who knows Me thus and realizes Me in all this, I have gathered his last into his first, and numbered his apparent among his hidden, so that he becomes pre-existent without an end to his first, and becomes everlasting without an external to his internal."
(Shaykh Muhammad Wafa’ QAS)
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Quote Source and Recommended Reading:
'Sanctity and Mysticism in Medieval Egypt: The Wafa Sufi Order and the Legacy of Ibn Arabi'
By Richard J. A. McGregor (Author)
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Description:
Using the original writings of two Egyptian Sufis, Muhammad Wafa' and his son 'Ali, this book shows how the Islamic idea of sainthood developed in the medieval period. Although without a church to canonize its "saints," the Islamic tradition nevertheless debated and developed a variety of ideas concerning miracles, sanctity, saintly intermediaries, and pious role models. In the writings of the Wafa's, a complete mystical worldview unfolds, one with a distinct doctrine of sainthood and a novel understanding of the apocalypse. Using almost entirely unedited manuscript sources, author Richard J. A. McGregor shows in detail how Muh\ammad and 'Ali Wafa' drew on earlier philosophical and gnostic currents to construct their own mystical theories and notes their debt to the Sufi order of the Shadhiliyya, the mystic al-Tirmidhi, and the great Sufi thinker Ibn Arabi. Notably, although located firmly within the Sunni tradition, the Wafa's felt free to draw on Shi'ite ideas for the construction of their own theory of the final great saint.
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