5.7. The Seventh 'Day of Rest' (al-sabt, Saturday) as the 'Day of Eternity':

As for the last dayd Ibn Arabi says that 'the motion of Saturday was created from the (divine) Attribute of Speaking (kalam), so everything in the existence glorifies in thanks of its Creator, but we do not understand their glorification [II.438.16]. Obviously Ibn Arabi is referring here to the verse 'the seven heavens and the earth, and all beings therein, declare His glory: there is not a thing but celebrates His praise; and yet ye understand not how they declare His glory! Verily He is Oft-Forbearing, Most Forgiving!' (17:44). We shall also see in section VII.8 that the world essentially is the 'words' (i.e., the vibrations) generated by its entities on the smallest scale. This is true for whatever we hear, see, smell, taste and everything physical all are the 'words' spoken by the entities of the world. This seems to cope very well in accordance with the recent theory of Superstrings.

Elsewhere Ibn Arabi says:

Saturn (Kaywan) is in the seventh sphere from the earth, and this heaven was created by the (self-disclosure of the) divine Name 'the Lord' (al-Rabb). Allah created this heaven, its planet and the 'Day of Rest' (al-sabt, Saturday) in the lunar mansion of the constellation Khirtan (also called al-Zabra, and it is the eleventh mansion of the twenty eight moon mansions), and He made it a dwelling place for the prophet Abraham.

[paraphrasing II.442.21]

Saturday bears a very important and unique meaning for Ibn Arabi, since he considers it to be the Day of eternity. This concept is initially mysterious, but extremely important, since Ibn Arabi mentions it many times in the Futuhat and other books and considers it as an undisputable fact.

In his al-Tanazzulat al-Mawsiliyya, he asserts that: 'Saturday passes through the existent things like number does in the countable things, permanence in the permanent things, and standing in the standing things; it is not non-existing nor existing, and not present nor absent.' (Al-Tanazzulat Al-Mawsiliyya: 339)

This description is also like the strange properties of the 'Universal Reality' (haqiqat al-haqa iq, 'the Reality of Realities') that he introduces to connect the divine properties of the Real with the properties of the Creation. By way of clarification, he then goes on to explain that:

The whole world (as kinds and species, including metals, elements, plants, animals, angels, jinn and humans) from its beginning to its end was formed in six Days, from the beginning of (the night) of the First Day until the end of the Day of Gathering (Friday), and there only remains Saturday for changing from one state to another and from one rank to another, and for transmutation from one being to another, constantly. That is why the 'rulers' (in terms of higher astrological/cosmological influences) on this Day are cold and dryness (so that they will be able to hold the picture in imagination in order to feel the continuous presence, as will be discussed in section V.6), and among the planets: Saturn. So this Day alone was a circumferential orb whoever moves in it will know the Identity, the Attributes, the Actions and the Effects.

[I.61.13]

This alludes to the three types of divine Names: the Names of Essence (asma' al-dhat), the Names of Descriptions or the Attributes (asma' al-sifat) and the Names of Actions (asma' al-af al) [I.423.20, I.67.28; K. al-Masa il: 97] and the 'Effects' here are the entire Creation. So Ibn Arabi says that the one who moves with the orb of Saturday will know the Real and the Creation. This is in fact the description of the spiritual 'Pole' like Ibn Arabi himself who is therefore 'out of time' (see also section II.7), because he already knows that he witnesses the real Day of Saturday.

Ibn Arabi even explicitly calls Saturday the 'Day of Eternity' (yawm al-abad: al-abad being eternity considered as extending eternally 'into the future', as opposed to al-azal or 'beginningless eternity') quite often in his writing. For example, in the Futuhat he says:

And so the Day of Eternity starts which is Saturday (al-sabt), and al-sabt means 'rest'; it is the seventh Day, and it has no end. No sense of weariness touched the Creator in creating what He did. So Saturday was the Day of being finished with the creation of the levels of the world, but there still remains for Allah the creation of what this world requires of the states (for every individual creature), which are eternally endless and without limit.

[III.192.20]

He also named chapter 53 of al-Tanazzulat al-Mawsiliyya: 'On the Inner (Spiritual) Knowing that Saturday is the Day of Eternity, and it is the Day of Transmutations'. Saturday, therefore is the 'Day of Rest' (as its name in Arabic, al-sabt, also indicates), because Allah has finished the creation (of all the cosmos and human being) on Friday, so that there remained nothing new to be created except for the endlessly changing states of all the creatures in time.

Thus Ibn Arabi affirms that:

Allah created the world in six Days; He started on Sunday and finished by Friday, and no sense of any exhaustion touched Him; nor did He get weary from creating the creatures. So when it was the seventh Day of the week and He had finished creating the world, He looked like someone who is taking a rest from weariness. So He reclined and put one leg over the other and said: 'I am the King', as narrated in the prophetic sayings, so this Day is called al-sabt, which means 'the Day of Rest'. It is the Day of Eternity, because in this Day the individuals of every species are formed in the world and in the hereafter.

There are only seven Days, and each Day has a ruler (wali) designated by Allah. So when the matter/Command ended up on Saturday, Allah assigned it to a ruler with the ability to stabilize and fix, so he can stabilize the forms (of all the creatures) in the 'Dust' (al-haba , of the barzakh or divine Imagination). So the daytime (nahar) of this Day i.e., the Day of Eternity is for the people of the Gardens, and its night-time is for the people of the Fire: so there is no evening (end) for its daytime, and its night-time has no morning.

[IV.11.30]

Then Ibn Arabi mentions the story of his encounter with the (spirit of) al-Sabti (lit.: 'the Saturday man') who is Muhammad, son of the famous Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid, whom he met him in Mecca one Friday while circumambulating the Kaaba, and asked him:

I knew that you were called al-Sabti because you worked every Saturday for what you ate during the rest of the week so why did you choose Saturday from the rest of the days of the week?

Al-Sabti replied:

This is a very good question. I knew that Allah started creating the world on Sunday and finished on Friday, and on Saturday He reclined and put one leg over the other and said: 'I am the King'; that is what I heard in narrations when I was in this world. So I swore to work like that.

[IV.11.35, see also Al-Tanazzulat Al-Mawsiliyya: 340]

So he worked on Saturday and rested (to devote himself to worship Allah) in the other six days. So Allah's work of the creation was done in the six Days from Sunday to Friday, and the 'Day of Eternity' is for us to work and develop through the path leading to our ultimate destination.

On the other hand, the fact that the seventh Day was created through the divine Attribute of Speaking reminds us that the very First Day was created through the divine Attribute of Hearing. Ibn Arabi typically points out that this all together is like a circle: since the world is created through divine Speaking (the Command 'Be'), so the creatures first needed hearing in order to hear that existentiating Command. Because human beings are at least potentially uniquely created in the fully theomorphic Image of Allah, He granted them something of the Attribute by which He creates things, so they in turn can create through 'speaking': these are, for example, the meanings one creates in the soul of the hearer when one speaks. And because creation is in the end a divine act, the Prophet Muhammad says that 'Allah is by the tongue of every speaker' [Kanz: 7842; see also: IV 187.19, IV.292.32]. So this brings us back to the initial receptive state of 'Hearing', because everything in the world is at the end perceived through vibrations, even the visible and other things. Therefore, the creation takes place always, at every moment in time and in every point of space. In terms of the same divine creative cycle of the seven Days explained above, the world is re-created every moment in six Days (from Sunday to Friday) and displayed on the seventh Day (Saturday). Indeed in terms of Ibn Arabi's famous theory of the oneness of being, the speaker is in fact Allah, and the hearer is also nothing other than Allah [II.367.16]. Ibn Arabi frequently expresses this paradoxical reality in language referring to the forms of the ritual prayer, as when he says: 'Thus Allah says by the tongue of his servant (as he says during the prayer) 'Allah hears who praised Him'; and then the servant says 'Our Lord, to Thee is the Praise!', not to me' [II.367.14]. Also he concludes: 'You praise Yourself (on the tongue of every speaker), and You hear Your words. Because the Praise is only for Allah and by Allah, [I.112.32, alluding to Qur an 1:1].

One final aspect of Saturday is that Ibn Arabi also describes it as 'the fruitless Day' (al-yawm al- aqim; 22:55), which is a result of its being the Day of Eternity:

Now the fruitless is that from which nothing is born, so it does not have a birth of its kind. So (Saturday) is called 'fruitless' because at the end there is no Day after it, and this refers to Saturday from the (divine creative) Week, which is the Day of eternity. Its daytime is all light for the people of the Gardens eternally, and its night-time is all darkness for the people of Gehenna, also eternally.

[III.564.22]