6.3. The World of Letters:

Also yet another important symbolic analogy between the metaphysical macrocosm and more familiar human realities, which again runs throughout the Futuhat, is the 'world of letters'. Ibn Arabi considers the letters of the Arabic alphabet given their central place in the culminating divine revelation of the Qur an to constitute in themselves 'a real world like us', since they are servants of Allah just like ourselves [I.58.13]. He begins his detailed explanation of their symbolic metaphysical and cosmological functions in a long section in the opening chapter of the Futuhat. As he explains there, the Arabic letters also have symbolic hierarchy similar to the spiritual hierarchy of the prophets and the saints. Thus they also have Pole, which is the letter alif ( ), the first letter of Arabic alphabet; two imams (Leaders), which are the two other vowel letters waw ( ) and ya ; four awtad (Pillars), which are the letters alif ( ), waw ( ), ya ( ) and nun ( ), that together provide the essential Arabic grammatical indications ( alamat al-i rab); and seven abdal (Substitutes), which are the letters alif ( ), waw ( ), ya ( ), nun ( ), and the three key pronoun markers ta ( ), kaf ( ) and ha ( )] [I.78.18]. But the important facts about the metaphysical relations between the world, the Single Monad and the Greatest Element are particularly clearly developed in Ibn Arabi's teaching here regarding the metaphysical dimension of this world of letters. Thus he clearly states that:

For the totality of the letters (like the world) may be deconstructed into the alif (corresponding to the Pole and the Single Monad) and put together from it (the letter or sound) alif, but it can not be deconstructed into (any of) them. However it too can be deconstructed in our symbolic estimation into its spiritual principle (ruhaniyya), which is the (primordial) 'Point' (of Greatest Element) although (in fact) the one can not be (further) deconstructed.[111]

[I.78.23]

Here again the 'Greatest Element' is assumed to be the underlying principle or substrate of all creation and manifestation.

As we've mentioned on several earlier occasions, Ibn Arabi often attributes his source for some of the most important metaphysical knowledge about the world to the spiritual Pole Idris ('mudawi al-kulum'). In describing the relation between the originary 'Point' of the 'Greatest Element' and all the manifest cosmos, in chapter 15 of the Futuhat, this Pole tells him:

The world (physical cosmos) exists between the circumference and the point (of the earth at its centre), arranged according to the levels (of its orbs) and the smallness and greatness of the orbs. And (he said) that the sphere that is closer to the circumference is wider than that which is inside, so its day is longer, its space is larger, its tongue is more fluent and it is closer to realizing strength and purity. And what goes down to the (material, earthly) elements is less than this (high) level, on down to the sphere of the earth. But each part in every circumference matches what is below it and what is above it with its (whole) entity: no one is greater than the other, despite the fact that one is larger and one is smaller! And all match the point with their entities and that Point, despite its smallness, matches the parts of the circumference with its (whole) essential reality ( ayn).

[I.154.22]

It is worth mentioning here, as a modern analogy to this earlier symbolism, that one of the most compelling consequences of Quantum Mechanics is that everything in the physical world of 'particles' can also be expressed as waves that have different wavelengths. Electrons for example though they are particles have a wavelength. Even the earth has a distinctive wavelength. When the mass of the body/particle becomes larger its wavelength becomes smaller. So the wavelength becomes even larger for massless particles such as photons (light).