The Single Monad Model of the Cosmos

Because Allah created (the perfect) Human Being 'according to His Image' [I.163.20], these same divine Attributes are potentially manifest in every fully human person (such as Adam and the prophets). Also, as Ibn Arabi says, Allah created the world and everything in it on the image of (the Perfect) Human Being [II.652.25], and so the world with the Human Being is 'on the Image of the Real' but without the Human Being it would not have this perfection [III.343.25]. So these same attributes should be available and essential in the world as well. That is why, he explains, the numbers four and seven play a central role in the world: the four elements in nature (earth, water, air, and fire, already mentioned in his poem opening this chapter), the four time-cycles, the seven heavens, the seven days, and so on. The two cosmologically fundamental four-fold groups that emerged out of the four 'mother' Attributes (Life, Ability, Will and Power) that are the four aspects of the divine Presence of the Essence (al-Dhat) are the four earthly elements (earth, water, air and fire) and the primordial cosmological principles of the Intellect, Soul, Dust and Nature, as in Figure III.1.

This quadratic cosmological rule was also reflected in relation to time. Therefore, Ibn Arabi points out, there are four main time cycles within the domain of manifest nature: the day, the week, the month and the year. These four natural time cycles have their origin in the effects of those four elements of Nature (fire, air, water, earth) that are originally derived from the above-mentioned four principial divine Names ('the mothers'). As Ibn Arabi says:

and time is restricted to the year, month, week and day. Time is divided into four divisions because the natural seasons are four, because the origin of the existence of time is Nature, whose level is below the (universal) Soul and above the 'Dust' (haba ) that philosophers call the Universal Matter (hayula). The influence of this (principial) quaternity (tarbi ) in Nature is from the influence of the (same principle of) quaternity in the divine influences from (the fundamental Names) Life, Knowledge, Ability and Will. For by these four (Names), godship is confirmed for the God.

So the quaternity (first) became manifest in Nature. Then the (divine) Command descended until the (principle of quaternity) appeared in the 'biggest time' (cycle), which is the year, so that it was divided into the four seasons: spring, summer, autumn and winter. This was brought about by the motion of the sun through the stations (of the zodiac), which have been divided by Nature into their (seasonal) divisions according to the (natural) elements that are the 'basic principles' (of fire, air, water and earth)

[chapter 390, III.548.17]