[191] Mohi-eddin, “he who makes religion revive and flourish,” is a surname borne by several Muselman doctors. The above-mentioned is Mohi-eddin Ibn al Arabi, born in Kordua, in Spain, of an Arabian family, called Tayí, in the year of the Hejira 560 (A. D. 1164). He studied in the academy of Seville, and then visited Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, where he heard the most distinguished Shaikhs of his time. He became the founder of a mystic school from which, among other remarkable disciples, the great Maulana Jelal-eddin Rumí issued; he is called “the Pole of the mystic world.” He died in the year of the Hejira 638 (A. D. 1240), in his seventy-sixth year, and was buried at the foot of mount Cassius, near Damascus, where his sepulchral monument is still well preserved. He left thirty-three works, which are enumerated by Baron von Hammer, the illustrious historian of the Ottoman empire.—(See vol. II. pp. 490. 657 of the German work.)
The Muselmans in India revere, under the name of Mohi-eddin, a saint, son of Zangui and Bibí Fatima, called also Shaikh Saddo. He lived at Sambhal, in Rohilkunt, according to others, at Amroha, in the province of Delhi, where his tomb still exists. There the devotees assemble every year, on the 11th day of the 2nd Rabiâ (the 4th month of the Arabian year) and celebrate the saint’s memory, by particular fatihas, “prayers,” addressed to him, and other acts of devotion.—(See Mémoire sur les particularités de la Relig. Muselm. dans l’Inde, par M. Garcin de Tassy, pp. 46-54.)
[192] See hereafter an explanatory [note] upon Enka.
[194] A work already quoted (vol. I. p. 82) composed by Mahmud Shebisterí. His native place was Shebister, distant eight parasangs (about twenty-eight miles) from Tabriz, near which place he was buried in A. D. 1320. He wrote the Gulshen-raz three years before his death, as an answer to fifteen questions addressed to him by the great Shaikh Hussein, of Khorassan, who died A. D. 1318, one year after the composition of the just-mentioned most celebrated didactical work upon the doctrine of the Súfis.
[195] حضرت غيب مضاف.
[196] حضرت مضاف غير.
[197] حضرت شهادت مطلقه. Shahádet, interpreted in common acceptation by “testimony, attestation, witnessing, confession, evidence,” is translated by Silvestre de Sacy, in a note of Jorjáni (see a subsequent note), by “assistance.” It takes in the terminology of Súfis, a meaning varying according to the particular opinion of their sects; thus it coincides sometimes with “presence,” whether with the qualifications of attentive expectation, whether with that of perfect intuition.
[198] حضرت جامعه.
[199] This is a very abstruse doctrine. To throw more light upon it, I shall subjoin the explanation given by Jorjáni upon this subject, according to the French translation of Silvestre de Sacy (see Not. et Ext. des MSS., vol. X. p. 66): “The five divine presences are: 1. the presence of the absolute absence (or mystery); its world is the world of the fixed substances in the scientific presence (see pp. 223, 224, [note 2]). To the presence of the absolute mystery is opposed:—2. the presence of the absolute assistance; its world is that named Aalem al mulk (that is, the world of the throne or seat of God, of the four elemental natures); 3. the presence of the relative absence; this is divided into two parts: the one, 3. nearer the presence of the absolute mystery; the world of which is that of spirits, which belong to what is called jabrut and malkut, that is, of intelligences and of bare souls; the other: 4. nearer the presence of the absolute assistance; and the world of which is that of models (images), called Aalem al mulkut; 5. the presence which comprises the four preceding ones; and its world is the world of mankind, a world which reunites all the worlds, and all they contain.” This statement differs somewhat from that of our text; to exhibit and to develop, in all their variations, the systems of Súfism is far beyond the compass of these notes, and would require a separate work.