the noun‘ajabwith rejection of that which is perceived strange or abnor-
mal, he associates the verb with chaotic temptation and delight. He adds
that“the attribution of‘ajabto God is considered to be metaphorical
because the causes of things are not hidden from Him andta’ajjub(the
feeling of wonder) arises from things whose causes are hidden and have not
been discerned.”^47 Thus wonder was a desirable aesthetic quality because it
produced a reminder of the divine in a space beyond comprehension,
conceived above that of mere reason.
Dreams and imagination allowed access to this domain beyond reason.
The cosmology of ibn Arabi depends onbarzakhas the intermediary
between absolute Being (God) and non-being. This becomes manifest in
a world divided into three realms: the world of the unseen (‘alam al-ghayb)
abstract meanings, inhabited with angelic forms and spiritual beings; the
world of the‘seen’(alam al-mithal), of corporal beings, senses, and sensible
forms and bodies that we inhabit; and the world of imagination (‘alam al-
khiyal) that mediates between the two. As summarized by Akkach:
It is the place where the spirituality‘unseen’is integrated into the corporeality of
the‘seen’to create the imagination. It is the ontological level at which spirits
manifest matrices, and abstract meanings take on their bodily forms. The world of
imagination is the world of dreams where everything is real yet, like a phantom,
untouchable and unreachable. Imaginable forms, like dreams, have an apparitional
or phantasmal quality: they are perceivable, meaningful forms physical presence.
They are neither purely sensible nor purely abstract. Like an image in a mirror, it is
visible, yet not there; it is visible but without a body; and like an illusive mirage, it
exists but can never be reached.^48
Similarly, Mulla Sadra (1571–1640), central in the integration of
Suhrawardian Illuminationist philosophy with Twelver Shi’a theology,
builds on the thought of a follower of ibn Arabi, Dawud ibn Mahmud al-
Qaysari (d. 1350), to differentiate between the‘formal unveiling’and the
‘intellectual unveiling’of the believer. The former takes place through the
‘innerfive senses,’including hearing revelation as articulated speech, a
ringing bell, or a bee buzzing. The latter involves the immediate appear-
ance of the unseen realities to the perceivers, either through intuition or
through direct divine revelation.^49
Barzakhthus undermines oppositions and enables recognition beyond
our physical, sensory world. Although impenetrable, it holds the key to
meaning. Much as the Derridian supplement unlocks the apparently equal(^47) Saba, 2012 : 196. (^48) Akkach, 1993. (^49) al-Kutubi, 2013 : 39.
196 The Transcendent Image