4.4.8  Divine Origin of Days

Because Allah, Who is described by the seven fundamental Attributes mentioned in section 4.7, created the world according to His own Image [II.395.25], “the Days had to be seven due to these (seven) Attributes and their rules, so the world appeared living, knowing, able, willing, hearing, seeing and speaking” [II.438.19]. Therefore, Ibn al-Arabi concludes, that each Day of the seven Days of the divine Week has to be based on one of these seven basic divine Attributes.

Since time itself is an imaginary attribute that is used to compare the chronological order of moving things, the day is actually a measure of the motion of the orb of the Sun, or more precisely the Isotropic Orb. And since motion is created by Allah, by creating events in the world, there are seven fundamental creative motions, or Days of events, described in section 4.3, each of which is originated from or ruled by one of these seven divine Attributes, and further associated with specific astronomical and astrological positions and figures apparently involved in the cosmological manifestations of those divine influences: ‘... (the motion of) the Day of Sunday was from the (divine) Attribute of Hearing, ... and the motion of the Day of Monday was from the Attribute of Living, ... and the motion of the Day of Tuesday was from the Attribute of Seeing, ... and the motion of the Day of Wednesday was from the Attribute of Willing, ... and the motion of the Day of Thursday was from the Attribute of Ability, ... and the motion of the Day of Friday was from the Attribute of Knowledge, ... and the motion of the Day of Saturday was from the Attribute of Speaking.’ [II.438.7]

This relation between the seven Days and the seven main divine Attributes is not arbitrary. We notice that Sunday, which is the first day of the week, and in the creation, was from the Attribute of Hearing. This is because Allah started the creation on this day, and the first thing that is needed for the thing to be created is hearing, in order to hear Allah’s creative command ‘Be’ [II.401.28]. Ibn al-Arabi states that everything can hear before it actually appears in the world, because everything has some sort of existence or determination in the foreknowledge of Allah before He actually creates it [II.400.7]. By hearing the command of Allah, the manifest world or cosmos starts to gain real existence after it had been existing in the fore-knowledge of Allah. Therefore the world appears in existence as hearing, living, seeing, willing, able, knowing, and speaking; but it gains these attributes one by one in a special sequence that starts by hearing and ends by speaking but not necessarily in the same order, due to the intertwining of those divine influences that will be explained in section 4.10.3.

As Ibn al-Arabi points out, we can also notice a similar sequence in the first stages of the development of the fetus and child’s life: s/he acquires the first six attributes before birth, while speaking is acquired afterwards. This can be compared to the creation of the world by Allah Who created the Heavens and the Earth and all that is between them in six Days, from Sunday to Friday [IV.11.30], then He mounted on the Throne, on Saturday [25:59, IV.11.31], with Saturday being associated with the divine Speaking. As Ibn al-Arabi indicates in this regard [III.108-9], Allah also says: The All-Merciful, (He) taught the Quran, (then He) created the Human Being, (then He) taught him speaking [59:1-4], which indicates again that speaking came last.

So for Ibn al-Arabi, the creation of the world, like that of the fetus, is completed in six Days: these correspond to the six directions: (up, down, right, left, front, back), and then on the Seventh Day (Saturday) it, both the world and the human being, continue living, changing from one state to another. That is why Ibn al-Arabi calls Saturday as the Day of eternity as we shall see further in section 4.8.7. Like the genesis of each human being, although we don’t clearly recognize it, the world, with all what it include, appeared living, knowing, able, willing, hearing, seeing and speaking [II.438.19] in seven divine Days.

Because of the importance of the Days of the Week of divine creation in Ibn al-Arabi’s cosmology, he writes about them at length in the Meccan Revelations and other books. In his mysterious book “al-Tanazzulat al-Mawsiliyya” (“The Spiritual Inspirations at Mosul, Concerning the Secrets of Prayers and the Original Days”), he devoted the last ten chapters to these divine Days and their relations with the heavenly orbs and the seven planets. However, it is not easy at all to extract information from this book because he intentionally used a very difficult language full of signs and secrets. Nevertheless, some of his sayings there provide very useful information when we compare them to his statements in other books. For example, right in the full title of that book, we are led to understand that there are original Days, as opposed to the normal witnessed days on Earth. We shall discuss in more detail the different types of days that Ibn al-Arabi introduces and talks about there, but let us first outline the significance of each day of the original Days of divine creation, which are the Days of (divine) Events, and not our normal witnessed days of the week.

The orb of the ‘fixed stars’, including the constellations of the zodiac and the lunar mansions, is the second orb after the outermost Isotropic Orb, but it is the first physical orb, because the Isotropic Orb doesn’t have any distinguishing features or stars. Ibn al-Arabi shows that “Allah created the Day in the first orb, and then defined it in the second orb, which is the orb of the fixed stars” [Ayyam al-Shaan, 6]. That is because the motion of the Isotropic Orb can’t be defined for the world beneath it, because there is no reference point to assign a beginning or an end to this motion. However, in the zodiac orb there is such a reference point: the twelve Signs or zodiacal constellations. So we can say that the days were first defined in the zodiac orb, and each day represents a full cycle of this orb as observed from the Earth [III.548.31]. However, Ibn al-Arabi clearly showed that this orb doesn’t actually move as we observe it [II.441.33, I.141.17, III.549.3], but that we see it moving because of the motion of the Earth around its center [I.123.17, II.677.21, III.548.31].

Ibn al-Arabi takes the first degree in Gemini as the reference point to start counting the cosmic ‘Days’ of creation, and he claims that this initial motion of time in creation started when this point was matching the divine ‘Foot’ in the ‘Pedestal’ above the Isotropic Orb: ‘Let it be known to you that this Name (“the All-Sufficient”) made this orb isotropic with no planets in it: all its parts are the same, and it has a circular shape where you can’t distinguish a beginning or an end to its motion, thus it has no edge. By the existence of this orb the seven days came to exist, and so months and years; but these (particular durations of) times were not determined in it until Allah created, inside this orb, other signs (galaxies, stars and planets) which determined these times.

This orb determined only one Day, which is a single cycle (of this orb) beginning at the place of the (divine) ‘Foot’ in the Pedestal. So it was determined from above. The duration of this cycle is called a Day. But nobody except Allah knows (the actual length of) this Day, because of the fact that all the parts of this orb are the same, so (nobody knows) the beginning of its motion. And the beginning of its motion was when the first degree of Gemini, which is an orb (whose influence is associated with the lower material element) of air, was matching this Foot.

Hence the first Day that appeared in the world was by the first degree of Gemini, and this Day is called ‘the one’ (Sunday). When this specific point of this orb, which is known only to Allah, returned to match this Foot of the Pedestal, a full cycle, of the total orb (and its contents), was completed and all the parts of this (isotropic) orb matched with the (initial) place of the Foot from the Pedestal. So this motion came over every degree, minute, second, and less than that of this orb. Thus, the places came into being and the existence of the single indivisible localized monad (of all manifest creation) was determined from the motion of this orb.’ [II.437.29]

That was the motion of the initial Day of the Sun (Sunday): ‘... then, at the end (of this initial Day), there began another motion, also from the middle, until that (second motion) reached its end, like the first motion, together with the entirety of what (that sphere) contains of the (smallest) parts and the individual entities that are composed of those parts, because (that sphere) is quantitative. This second motion is called Monday. And so on till it completed seven periodical motions; everyone is determined by a divine Attribute. And the (fundamental) divine Attributes are seven, not more, which made the Age not more than seven (distinctive) Days.’ [II.438.3]

Since each Day of the divine Week is ruled by a specific divine Name, it has to have a special significance related to this particular Name. This distinctive relation is not so apparent in the normal ‘circulated’ days, as it is for the original Days of Events as they were created by Allah: