5. The Significance of Each Day of the Divine Week:
Because of the importance of the Days of the Week of divine creation in Ibn Arabi's cosmology, he writes about them at length in the
Futuhat 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 a lot of information from this book because he intentionally used a very difficult language full of signs and secrets. However, 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 Arabi introduces and talks about there in the following chapter IV, but what we shall now outline in the remainder of this chapter relates mostly to the 'original' Days of divine creation, which are 'the Days of (divine) Events', and not our normal witnessed days of the week.
To begin with, because each Day of the divine Week is ruled by a specific divine Name, it has to have a special significance related to this Name. This distinctive significance is not so apparent in the normal, 'circulated' days as it is for the original Days of Events as they were created by Allah. We shall first outline here the divine significance of each Day of the Week in the process of creating the macrocosm of the heavens and the earth and also the microcosm of the theomorphic human being (insan).
In addition to those general verses in Qur an in which Allah states that He 'created the Heavens and earth in six days and then He mounted on the Throne,' (Qur an: 7:54, 10:3, 11:7, 25:59, 32:4, 50:38, 57:4) there are some details about what He created each Day in the verses at the beginning of the Sura Fussilat (41:9-12). These verses were explained further in one hadith where the Prophet Muhammad said:
Allah, the cherished and the glorified, created the first Day (event) in Sunday; and the earth was created on Sunday and Monday; and on Tuesday and Wednesday the mountains were created, the rivers were cleft, fruits were planted and in each earth its food was determined,
then turned He to the heaven when it was smoke, and said unto it and unto the earth: Come both of you, willingly or unwillingly. They said: We come, obedient.
So He completed them seven heavens in two Days and inspired in each heaven its mandate (41:11-12), on Thursday and Friday; and the last of creation was in the last hours of Friday, and when it was Saturday there was no creation in it.
[Kanz: 15120]
So here we will briefly outline what Ibn Arabi has to say about the significance in the creation of both the world and the human being of each Day of the original Days of the divine Week of creation:
The science of Time is a noble science, that reveals the secret of Eternity. Only the Elites of Sages may ever come to know this secret. It is called the First Age, or the Age of ages, from which time is emerging.
