4.4.8.7  Saturday

The motion of Seventh ‘Day of Rest’, Saturday, was created from the divine Attribute of Speaking, so everything in the existence glorifies in thanks of its Creator, but we don’t understand their glorification [17:44, II.438.16].

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

In his al-Tanazzulat al-Mawsiliyya, he asserts that Saturday passes through the existent things like number does in the countable things. This description is also like the strange properties of the ‘Universal Reality’, or the ‘Reality of all 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 or cosmological influences) on this Day are coldness and dryness... 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 means that the creation, at all times, are living in this Seventh Day, but the riddle is how we can at the same time still experience the other Days of the week, including Saturday itself? Ibn al-Arabi himself remarks that “it is rather amazing that the Days, among which is Saturday, are (all) happening in Saturday; because it is one of these Days and they are appearing in it’ [II.444.7]. But he says that this is ultimately plausible, and he gives the striking example from the famous divine saying describing Adam when Allah showed him his progeny, including himself, in His Hand, while at the same time he was outside looking on at that [II.444.14]. In the Meccan Revelations he also says: ‘So (after Friday) the Day of Eternity starts, which is Saturday, (whose name in Arabic) means ‘rest’; it is the seventh Day, and it has no end. Yet no sense of weariness touched the Creator in creating what He did, but Saturday was the Day of being finished with the creation, of all the levels of the world, yet there still remains for Allah that He creates the states that this world requires (for every individual creature), which are eternally endless and without limit.’ [III.192.20]

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 al-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 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” [IV.187.19, IV.292.32]. 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 sensations.

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 al-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].

One final aspect of Saturday is that Ibn al-Arabi also describes it as ‘the fruitless Day’, which is a result of its being the Day of Eternity: ‘The “fruitless” is that from which nothing is born, so it does not have a birth of its kind. So Saturday is 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 day-time 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]