1. What is Time?

To start with, Ibn Arabi declares that time is an imagined attribute that does not exist on its own; it has no separate physical or non-physical entity. He argues that 'time in relation to us is like eternity in relation to Allah, and since eternity is a negative attribute[29] that does not exist on its own, so time in relation to the contingent world or the entire cosmos is (also) an imagined attribute that does not exist.' [I.291.28]

In his major book al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya, he says: 'we showed in this book and in our book "The Time" (al-zaman) (OY, #838) that time is something that has no (real) existence' [I.490.17]. Although this last book is not found today, Ibn Arabi's concept of time is developed in quite detailed fashion in the Futuhat, though it is scattered all around the book and not placed in specific parts, including even those chapters 59, 291 and 390 whose titles relate directly to time.

The concept of time is needed to compare the sequence of events or motion, but real existence is only attributed to the thing that actually moves, not to the abstractions of motion, time or space in which motion is observed:

And time and space are also a consequence of natural bodies, but time is something imagined that does not exist (in itself), but is introduced by the motion of orbs and localized things when we ask about them 'when'. So time and space do not exist in reality, but existence is to the things that move and still.

[II.458.1]

This is not only to say that 'motion', 'space' and 'time' do not have real physical existence, but they do not even exist separately in an abstract way: their existence is a mere illusion; it is only a projection of the human imagination (wahm).

It is not very easy to deny the existence of time, space and motion, since they are widely encountered in our experience of everyday life. However, Ibn Arabi is not the first one to propose this. We shall see below that Aristotle gives a very simple proof that time is not real. The real existence of motion and space, however, are far more unusual and intricate to disprove. Perhaps only Zeno (b. ca. 488 BC) was brave enough to postulate the illusion of motion, and he composed many related riddles that are still logically unsolvable. The main idea behind Ibn Arabi's mysterious conceptions here is his controversial theory of the oneness of being, which we shall discuss throughout this book, especially in Chapter V. But clearly, if we suppose that the 'real' existence in the world is uniquely one, there would be no meaning to motion, and hence to time and space; or at least they would have to be redefined. We shall discuss in Chapter VII that Zeno's paradoxes can be easily resolved according to Ibn Arabi's profound view of time under his theory of the oneness of being.

Coming back to time, we can say that it can be very easily shown that it is in fact imaginary. Aristotle says in his Physics that 'time consists of two parts, one of which has existed (and gone, i.e. the past), the other does not yet exist (i.e. the future), so how can something exists which is composed of what does not exist?' (Lettinck 1994: 348)

So if there is a real existence to time it will be in the present (the 'now'), not the past or the future. Aristotle then gives another argument that also the 'now' is not time. The present is not time, but it is rather a point in imaginary time, like a point on the line; although the line is composed of points, still each point is not a line.[30] Likewise time is the sum of all present moments that exist only one by one, and each one present moment (alone) is not time. Time therefore is the mind's projection on the continuous presence from the future to the past through the present.

Similarly, Ibn Arabi gives a straightforwardly profound meaning of time. In the title of chapter 390 of the Futuhat, he says: 'the time of a thing is its presence' [III.546.16]. Then he explains that the time of the Lord is the 'servant' and the time of the servant is the Lord (al-rabb), [III.547.31], because the Lord deserves this name by the servant, since He would not be called 'Lord' if there are no servants to worship Him; likewise the servant deserves this name by (his relation to) the Lord. In the same way, when we say for example: ' Amr is the son of Zaid', this means, according to Ibn Arabi, that the time of the fatherhood of Amr is the sonhood of Zaid, and vice versa. Or in Ibn Arabi's own words: 'the time of the father is the son, and the time of the son is the father' [III.547.36]. That is why Ibn Arabi named this chapter (390) as: 'the time of a thing is its presence, but I am out of time and You are out of time, so I am Your time and You are my time'. This means: 'I am Your presence and You are my presence'.

'Time' in the usual common sense is actually a tool used by our perception to chronologically classify the events or motion of objects; it would not have any meaning without motion or change. This is why we do not feel time while we are asleep; we have to look for some kind of a standard reference motion (the sun, the moon, the stars, or a watch) in order to realize how much of time has elapsed since we went into deep sleep. Time, therefore, has no real absolute meaning; it is only used relative to something in order to describe its state of existence. This is why Ibn Arabi sometimes uses the words 'time' and 'state' as synonyms, as when he says: 'as you like (you can) say from the time of its existence, or the state (hal) of its existence' [II.281.11].

So the real meaning of time is reduced to the existence of the world in the 'present moment', which has no duration or extension, because the future and the past are mere imagination. If we know that, Ibn Arabi declares, there is no problem to go along with people and say that 'time' is the daytime and night, or that it is a duration taken by the motion of objects, or it is comparing an event to another when someone asks about it by 'when?', because these definitions have been widely used and they are correct in relation to time, in the common sense [III.548.7]. As Ibn Arabi says in chapter 59 of the Futuhat, which is titled 'on knowing existing and assumed time': people have used the word 'time' (zaman)[31] in many different ways: most philosophers, for example, use it as the duration taken by the motion of orbs. Muslim theological scholars, on the other hand, use it to compare between events. But generally zaman in Arabic means the night-time (layl), and the daytime (nahar). Also Ibn Arabi himself sometimes uses the word zaman to mean the daytime and night [I.141.5]. But this is more than just a convention, because as we shall see below and in the following chapter, the (divine) 'day' (yawm) is for him the main indivisible unit of time. So if time has any real existence it exists as the divine 'days' (of each real instant), not as the hours or seconds we conventionally use. It is also worth mentioning here that, unlike the day (yawm) or daytime (nahar) and the night (layl), the word 'time' (zaman or zaman) was never used in the Qur an.

Despite the fact that he considers time to be imagined and having no real existence, Ibn Arabi stresses that it is one of the four 'mothers (fundamental principles) of existence': the formable monad (al-jawhar al-suwari),[32] the accidental form (al- arad),[33] time (al-zaman) and space (al-makan).[34] Everything else in the manifest world is combined of these four parameters [III.404.22]. He also argues that those four parameters together with another six categories that are derived from them: (fa il, munfa il, idafa, wad , adad, kayf) are enough to describe the state of everything in the world. Together these make up the familiar ten Aristotelian categories: i.e., substance (jawhar), quantity (kamm), quality (kayf), relation (idafa), time (mata), place (ayna), situation or position (wad ), possession (lahu), or state (jidda), passion (yanfa il) and action (yaf al) although the meaning of jawhar here is of course radically different from its usual Aristotelian usage, reflecting in this case the kalam inspiration of Ibn Arabi's terminology (EI², VI: 203, 'Al-Makulat', and: EP, II: 46, 'Categories'). Yet those four 'mothers of existence', including the formable monad, in Ibn Arabi's distinctive conception of the oneness of being, are nothing but imaginary forms or reflections of the unique 'Single Monad' (al-jawhar al-fard) which is the only thing that can be described as having a real existence: all other things in the world are different forms of this Single Monad, including 'vision and the visible, hearing and the heard, imagination and the imaginable, thinking and the thinkable, etc' [III.404.12]. This latter concept reflects Ibn Arabi's controversial theory of the oneness of being.

The importance of understanding the reality of time is, therefore, to provide the link between the actual unity of this Single Monad and the apparent multiplicity of the witnessed world. That is why Ibn Arabi says that:

the knowing of time is a noble knowing through which eternity (al-azal) is truly known. But only the Solitary Sages[35] among 'the True Men' know it (eternity). This (reality) is known as 'the First Age' (al-dahr al-awwal) or 'the Age of ages' (dahr al-duhur). From this eternity (al-azal), time comes into existence.

[I.156.34-157.1]

Therefore, we may summarize that time as we ordinarily experience it is defined by motion, and motion is defined by the different positions of the formable monads, and those monads are different states (times or instances) or forms of the Single Monad, which alone has a real existence.