4.4.4.1  Days of Other Orbs

Ibn al-Arabi then extends the meaning of the normal day as described above to the spheres of all planets and stars, and even to symbolic spheres of spirits and divine Names, where he calls the period for the full revolution of each particular orb: the day of that specific orb. In this way there are shorter days and longer days, depending on the relevant orb: ‘When Allah caused the isotropic orb to rotate ... and made its full cycle a complete day (the normal day) without day-time and night-time. So Days are different: some Days are a half-cycle, some Days a full cycle, some Days twenty eight cycles (days); and some are more than that, (all the way up) until the ‘Day of ascending ways’ (of 50,000 years, described in the Quran, 70:4), or less than that (all the way down) until the ‘Day of event’; so the scale of Days change between those two (extremes of the) Days.’ [III.433.35]

There is no maximum limit to the Day that one can count [I.292.17], but there is a minimum limit. The maximum limit is the Age, which is one unique day that doesn’t repeat and has no day-time and night-time [III.202.5], but the Age is infinite, whereas the smallest Day is the “singular day” or the “Day of event” [I.292.16], which is that Day in which Allah is upon one task [55:29]. From the meaning of the singular day as the time in which Allah creates by one single act every entity in the world, we can generalize to all other days: the Day of every orb is the time in which that orb affects every entity in the world, by making a full revolution.

Again we should not confuse between the revolution of the planet, such as the Earth, around its axis in respect to the Sun, and in respect to distant stars that are appropriately considered fixed. In astronomy, the first revolution is called a rotational day, while the second is called the sidereal day. The sidereal day is the time the Earth takes to rotate 360 degrees, in relation to distant stars. This equals, in modern calculations, 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.09 seconds, while the mean solar day is 24 hours. The Earth actually rotates 360.98 degrees in 24 hours; the difference is caused by the Earth’s orbital motion around the Sun. Similarly all other planets or orbs have their own respective sidereal and orbital days. Also, the Moon completes a cycle around the Earth once every 27.3 days, with reference to distant stars, so this is the sidereal lunar month. The normal lunar month used in Islamic calendar calculations, though, is the time interval between new Moons as observed from Earth, which equals 29.5 days; this is called the synodic lunar month. Therefore, the Moon’s Day, if calculated by Ibn al-Arabi’s approach to the Earth’s sidereal day, should be the sidereal lunar month, which is equal 27.3 days. But Ibn al-Arabi insists that the lunar month equals twenty eight days exactly.

Ibn al-Arabi made it clear in several places in his Meccan Revelations [I.141.17, III.549.3] and other books that the fixed stars are not actually fixed at all, but that we can’t notice their motion from Earth due to the large distance, because our age is too short to notice their motion despite their very high speed, an observation well confirmed by modern cosmology. Therefore when we say ‘the day is the period of motion of fixed stars’, we now know today that this apparent motion is caused by the motion of the Earth and not those stars, but since we move with the Earth, we think that the stars are moving. Indeed the actual motions of the orbs of stars have much longer periods, as is well known in modern astronomy. Actually, Ibn al-Arabi, following the accepted cosmological theories of his day, differentiates between two kinds of motion of the celestial orbs: natural or intrinsic motion and forced or extrinsic motion: ‘The smallest Day is that which we count as the motion of the circumferential orb in whose day the night-time and day-time are manifest. This is the shortest day for the Arabs (in their language), and it corresponds to the largest orb, because it rules everything inside it. The motion of everything inside this orb in the day-time and night-time is a forced motion by this orb, through which it forces (a movement of) all the orbs that it surrounds. And each one of these orbs also has a natural (inherent) motion. Therefore, every orb below the surrounding orb has two motions at the same time: a natural motion and a forced motion, and each natural motion in every orb has specific day which is measured in terms of the days of the surrounding orb.’ [I.121.25]

As in the case of the material orbs of stars and planets, Ibn al-Arabi adds that every spirit and every divine Name of Allah has its own Day. That is because every spirit and divine Name has effects on the world beneath it. So when they complete a full revolution around the world, without actual material motion but with regard to their respective effects on every entity, then this is their Day. This can only be understood when we take the re-creation principle, described in section 2.1, into account; so the corresponding cosmic Day for every entity is its specific re-creation rate with respect to the point of space where it is measured. With respect to the Earth, the whole world is re-created every day of Event, which is equal to the single Day that is the moment as we mentioned in section 4.3, but because other orbs and all other physical and metaphysical entities have their own relative motion, or change, each have their own corresponding day.

In other words, and as conclusion to the physical meaning pf these relative days, the minimum day, that corresponds to the indivisible moment, is measured with respect to the observer’s own frame of reference, as he is considered not moving with respect to himself. The length of this indivisible moment is different for other orbs or entities which have their own intrinsic motion, and generally the farther they are the longer their day will be, because they will take more time to revolve.