About al-Insān al-Kāmil, Bāb 34-35 -- The Qurʾān and the Furqān (Gathering and Discrimination)
al-Insan al-Kamil ("The Universal Man," or the Perfect Human) is the masterwork of Abd al-Karim al-Jili (1366-1424), the great systematizer of the Akbarian school of Ibn al-Arabi. Across sixty-three chapters (abwab) it ascends from the bare divine Essence, through the Names, attributes, scriptures, and cosmic realities, to the figure of the Perfect Human, the microcosm in whom the whole of reality is gathered. Hekhal's edition is the first complete Arabic-and-English parallel rendering of the work, produced with controlled-vocabulary editorial discipline and provisional pending a credentialed Arabic reviewer.
This chapter gathers the chapters on the Quran and the Furqan: the Quran as the all-uniting divine Word and the Furqan as its discriminating, distinguishing aspect. This page is the Targum apparatus edition, carrying the controlled-vocabulary translation and its full provenance.
al-Insān al-Kāmil, Bāb 34-35 -- The Qurʾān and the Furqān (Gathering and Discrimination)
canonicalearly 15th c. (author d. c. 1408-1428 CE)ArabicʿAbd al-Karīm al-Jīlī (b. 767 AH / 1365 CE; d. c. 826-832 AH / 1422-1428 CE)tr. Hekhal Targum Project (machine-assisted, provisional)
Two consecutive short chapters from al-Jīlī’s al-Insān al-Kāmil that form a single doctrinal unit — and the conceptual hinge of his whole metaphysics of scripture. Al-Jīlī reads the two Qurʾānic names of the revealed Book ontologically: al-Qurʾān (“the Recitation,” from the root meaning “to gather”) names the divine Essence considered as the all-gathering Oneness (aḥadiyya) in which every Attribute is absorbed; al-Furqān (“the Criterion,” from the root f-r-q, “to divide”) names the same reality considered as the discrimination (farq) of the Names and Attributes one from another. The Essence is Qurʾān; the Attributes are Furqān. The two are not two books but one reality seen as gathered and as differentiated — the Akbarian jamʿ / farq (gathering / discrimination) pair, raised to the level of the divine self-disclosure.
Genuine first-public-domain-English. Neither chapter has any prior PD English: Nicholson’s 1921 study renders neither; Burckhardt’s Universal Man covers only the opening metaphysical quarter of the book. Source fidelity is HIGH here — two independent witnesses (the ibnalarabi.com digital matn and the archive.org OCR of a print edition) agree on the prose, the opening poems are recovered intact, and the three embedded Qurʾānic citations are verified verbatim against the canonical Qurʾān. (Full scoping: hekhal-targum/docs/JILI-INSAN-AL-KAMIL-SCOPING.md.)
Bāb 34 — al-Qurʾān (The Recitation: the gathered Essence)
القرآنُ ذاتٌ محضٌ * أحديتُها حقٌّ فرضُ
هي مشهدُه فيه وله * من حيث هويتُه غمضُ
يتلو ما يطلبُه منه * وهو المطلوبُ له الفرضُ
فقراءتُه هي حليتُه * بحلاه وذاك فناً محضُ
لكن من حيث الذاتُ له * لا كلٌّ هناك ولا بعضُ
هي لذّتُه في الذات به * من حيث الذوقُ ولا غضُّ
والفهمُ لتلك اللذّةِ قُر * آنٌ هي هو هذا الفرضُ
The Qurʾān is sheer Essence — its Oneness a binding truth.
It is His witnessing-place, in Him and for Him — though, from the side of His ipseity, hidden.
He recites what He seeks from it — and He is the Sought, the obligation.
His reciting of it is His adorning — by His own adornment, and that is sheer passing-away.
Yet from the side of the Essence, for Him — there is no whole there, and no part.
It is His delight, in the Essence, through Him — in the mode of tasting, undiminished.
And the grasp of that delight is Qur- — -ʾān: it is He. This is the obligation.
Provisional draft (pending scholarly review)
اعلم أن القرآن عبارةٌ عن الذات التي يضمحلُّ فيها جميعُ الصفات، فهي المجلى المسماة بالأحدية، أنزلها الحقُّ تعالى على نبيه محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم ليكون مشهدَه الأحديةُ من الأكوان. ومعنى هذا الإنزال أن الحقيقة الأحدية المتعالية في ذراها ظهرت بكمالها في جسده، فنزلت عن أوجها مع استحالة النزول والعروج عليها.
Know that the Qurʾān is an expression for the Essence in which all the Attributes are absorbed — it is the locus-of-disclosure named Oneness (al-aḥadiyya). The Real, exalted is He, sent it down upon His prophet Muḥammad (may God bless him and grant him peace) that Oneness might have, among the engendered worlds, its witnessing-place. The meaning of this “sending-down” is that the One Reality, transcendent in its summits, appeared in its perfection in his body — it descended from its zenith, even though descent and ascent are impossible to it.
Provisional draft (pending scholarly review)
فلذلك قال صلى الله عليه وسلم: «أُنزل عليَّ القرآنُ جملةً واحدة»، يعبّر عن تحقيقه بجميع ذلك تحقيقاً ذاتياً كلياً جسمانياً. وهذا هو المشار إليه بالقرآن الكريم لأنه أعطاه الجملة، وهذا هو الكرم التام. وأما القرآن الحكيم فهو تنزّل الحقائق الإلهية بعروج العبد إلى التحقق بها في الذات شيئاً فشيئاً على ما اقتضته الحكمة الإلهية. وقد أشار الحق إلى بيان ذلك بقوله: «ونزّلناه تنزيلا».
Therefore he said (may God bless him and grant him peace): “The Qurʾān was sent down upon me all at once” — expressing his realization of the whole of it, an essential, total, bodily realization. This is what is meant by “the Noble Qurʾān” (al-Qurʾān al-Karīm), because He gave him the Whole, and this is the perfect generosity. As for “the Wise Qurʾān” (al-Qurʾān al-Ḥakīm), it is the descent of the divine realities through the servant’s ascent to their realization in the Essence, little by little, as the divine Wisdom requires. The Real pointed to this with His words: “and We sent it down in stages” (17:106).
Provisional draft (pending scholarly review)
وقوله تعالى: «ولقد آتيناك سبعاً من المثاني والقرآنَ العظيم» — فالقرآن هنا عبارةٌ عن الجملة الذاتية، بل مطلق الأحدية الذاتية الجامعة لجميع المراتب والصفات والشئون. والسبع المثاني عبارةٌ عما ظهر عليه في وجوده الجسدي من التحقق بالسبع الصفات. وقوله تعالى: «الرحمنُ علّم القرآن» إشارةٌ إلى أن العبد إذا تجلى عليه الرحمنُ يجد في نفسه لذةً رحمانيةً تُكسبه معرفةَ الذات. وهذا شيء لا يفهمه إلا الغرباء، وهم الأفراد الكُمَّل الذين هم موضع نظر الله تعالى من العباد.
And His words, “And We have given you seven of the oft-repeated, and the mighty Qurʾān” (15:87) — the Qurʾān here is an expression for the essential Whole, indeed for the absolute essential Oneness that gathers all the ranks, the Attributes, and the modes. And the “seven oft-repeated” is an expression for what appeared upon him, in his bodily existence, of the realization of the seven Attributes. And His words, “The All-Merciful taught the Qurʾān” (55:1-2), point to this: when the All-Merciful self-discloses to the servant, he finds in himself an All-Merciful delight, and that delight bestows on him knowledge of the Essence. This is a thing none grasp but the strangers (al-ghurabāʾ) — the perfect, noble solitaries who are, among the servants, the place of God’s regard.
Provisional draft (pending scholarly review)
Bāb 35 — al-Furqān (The Criterion: the divine discrimination)
صفاتُ اللهِ فرقانُ * وذاتُ اللهِ قرآنُ
وفرقُ الجمعِ تحقيقٌ * وجمعُ الفرقِ وجدانُ
وتفرقةُ الصفاتِ على * اختلافِ النعتِ جمعانُ
وحكمُ الذاتِ في * أحديةِ التوحيدِ فرقانُ
لأنّ الوصفَ لا ينفكُّ * وهو لذاتِه شانُ
God’s Attributes are Furqān — and God’s Essence is Qurʾān.
The discrimination of the gathering is realization (taḥqīq) — and the gathering of the discrimination is finding (wijdān).
The differentiating of the Attributes, upon — the variance of description, is a gathering.
And the rule of the Essence, within — the Oneness of unification, is Furqān.
For the description never detaches — and it, for its own self, is a perpetual concern.
Provisional draft (pending scholarly review)
اعلم أن الفرقان عبارةٌ عن حقيقة الأسماء والصفات على اختلاف تنوعاتها، فباعتباراتها تتميز كل صفة واسم عن غيرها، فحصل الفرقُ في نفس الحق من حيث أسماؤه الحسنى وصفاته. فإن اسمه الرحيم غير اسمه الشديد، وصفة الرضا غير صفة الغضب. وقد أشار إليه في الحديث النبوي عن الله تعالى أنه يقول: «سبقت رحمتي غضبي»، لأن السابق أفضل من المسبوق. فاسمه الله أفضل من اسمه الرحمن، واسمه الرحمن أفضل من اسمه الرب، واسمه الرب أفضل من اسمه الملك.
Know that the Furqān is an expression for the reality of the Names and Attributes in their differing modes. By these distinct considerations each attribute and name is set apart from the others, so that discrimination (farq) occurs within the Real himself, with respect to His beautiful Names and His Attributes. For His name al-Raḥīm (the Compassionate) is other than His name al-Shadīd (the Severe), and the attribute of Pleasure is other than the attribute of Wrath. He pointed to this in the prophetic report, from God exalted, that He says: “My mercy precedes My wrath” — for the one that precedes is more excellent than the one preceded. So His name Allāh is more excellent than His name al-Raḥmān; al-Raḥmān, than al-Rabb (the Lord); al-Rabb, than al-Malik (the King).
Provisional draft (pending scholarly review)
فقيل: «أعوذ بمعافاتك من عقوبتك، وأعوذ برضاك من سخطك، وأعوذ بك منك». فهذا فرقانٌ في نفس الذات. فكما أن الفرق حاصلٌ في الأفعال فكذلك في الصفات، وكذلك في نفس واحدية الذات التي لا فرق فيها. لكن من غرائب شئون الذات جمعُ النقيضين من المحال والواجب. وإلى ذلك أشار الإمام أبو سعيد الخراز بقوله: «عرفتُ الله بجمعه بين الضدّين». بل الحق والخلق، والمعدوم والموجود وما لا يتناهى، فإنه سبحانه يجمعها بالشأن الذاتي، وهويته عبارة عن جميع ذلك.
Thus it was said: “I take refuge in Your pardon from Your punishment, and in Your good-pleasure from Your displeasure, and I take refuge in You from You.” This is a discrimination within the very Essence. And just as discrimination obtains in the Acts, so too in the Attributes — and so too within the very Oneness of the Essence, in which there is no discrimination at all. Yet among the wonders of the Essence’s affairs is the joining of the two contradictories, the impossible and the necessary. To this the master Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz pointed when he said: “I knew God by His joining of the two opposites.” Not merely the First and the Last, the Manifest and the Hidden — but the Real and the creation, the nonexistent and the existent and the boundless: He, glory be to Him, joins them by the essential prerogative, and His ipseity is an expression of all of that.
Provisional draft (pending scholarly review)
An orientation
This edition sets the verbatim original-language text beside a fresh English rendering and a critical apparatus: a running commentary on the passage, notes on the controlled vocabulary and the rendering chosen for each term, and cross-references to the lexicon and to related sections. It is a provisional scholarly draft, released openly for correction and not yet reviewed by a credentialed editor.
⁂
Apparatus
The Qurʾān / Furqān pair as gathering and discrimination
al-Jīlī’s move is to read the two Qurʾānic names of the revealed Book as naming two aspects of the one divine reality. Al-Qurʾān (root q-r-ʾ, “to recite,” but heard by the tradition also through the sense “to gather”) is the Essence (dhāt) as the all-gathering Oneness (aḥadiyya) in which the Attributes are not yet distinct. Al-Furqān (root f-r-q, “to divide / discriminate”) is the same reality as the differentiation (farq) of the Names and Attributes. The Essence is Qurʾān; the Attributes are Furqān (Bāb 35, opening verse). This maps the Qurʾānic Book-names onto the foundational Sufi pair jamʿ / farq (gathering / separation), canonical from al-Junayd onward as the two moments of the contemplative vision. al-Qushayrī, al-Risāla al-Qushayriyya, the chapter on jamʿ and farq (training-memory; pending verification)
17:106: the Furqān inside the Qurʾān
The verse al-Jīlī cites for the descent of the Qurʾān, 17:106, reads in full: wa-qurʾānan faraqnāhu li-taqraʾahu ʿalā l-nāsi ʿalā mukthin wa-nazzalnāhu tanzīlā — “a Qurʾān which We have divided (faraqnāhu), that you may recite it to people at intervals, and We have sent it down in stages.” The root f-r-q in faraqnāhu is the very root of Furqān. So the discrimination of the next chapter is already lodged in the gathering-verse of this one: the Qurʾān is “divided” in its descent exactly as the Furqān differentiates the Names. Qurʾān 17:106 (canonical; verified verbatim)
Karīm / Ḥakīm and the seven oft-repeated
The two Qurʾānic epithets become two modes of realization: the Noble Qurʾān (al-Karīm) is the whole Essence given “all at once” (the hadith unzila ʿalayya al-Qurʾān jumlatan wāḥidatan), the Wise Qurʾān (al-Ḥakīm) the same realities descending in stages (17:106). The “seven oft-repeated” (sabʿ al-mathānī, 15:87) al-Jīlī reads as the seven Attributes of the Essence (life, knowledge, will, power, hearing, sight, speech — his Bāb 16-22) realized in the Perfect Human’s bodily existence, and “the All-Merciful taught the Qurʾān” (55:1-2) as the All-Merciful self-disclosure that yields knowledge of the Essence. Qurʾān 15:87; 55:1-2 (canonical; verified); the hadith of the all-at-once descent (training-memory; pending verification)
al-Kharrāz and the joining of opposites
The Furqān chapter culminates in the definition of Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz (d. 899): “I knew God by His joining of the two opposites” (ʿaraftu Allāha bi-jamʿihi bayna al-ḍiddayn) — a touchstone Ibn ʿArabī cites repeatedly in the Futūḥāt and Fuṣūṣ. al-Jīlī extends the opposites past the Qurʾānic name-pairs (First/Last, Manifest/Hidden) to the Real and creation, the necessary and the impossible, the existent and the nonexistent. Discrimination (Furqān) and gathering (Qurʾān) therefore meet in the Essence as coincidentia oppositorum: the Essence both holds every distinction and joins every contradiction. al-Kharrāz, via Ibn ʿArabī’s frequent citation (training-memory; pending verification against the Futūḥāt locus)
القرآن (al-Qurʾān, ontological) → the Qurʾān (the gathered Essence)
Active senses: the-Qurʾān-as-gathered-Essence, the-recited-scripture. Selected: the Qurʾān (the gathered Essence). Rationale: in Bāb 34 al-Qurʾān names the Essence (dhāt) in which all Attributes are absorbed — the locus-of-disclosure called aḥadiyya. The body retains the proper noun “the Qurʾān”; the gathered-Essence reading is carried here. Distinguish al-Qurʾān al-Karīm (given whole) from al-Qurʾān al-Ḥakīm (in stages). Forbidden: the recitation, the reading, the lection (they flatten the ontological sense).
الفرقان (al-Furqān) → the Furqān (the divine discrimination)
Active senses: the-Furqān-as-discrimination, the-criterion. Selected: the Furqān (the divine discrimination). Rationale: in Bāb 35 al-Furqān is the reality of the Names and Attributes in their farq (differentiation) — al-Raḥīm distinct from al-Shadīd, the hierarchy Allāh > al-Raḥmān > al-Rabb > al-Malik. Body keeps the proper noun “the Furqān”; the discrimination reading is carried here. The f-r-q root links to 17:106 (faraqnāhu). Forbidden: the proof, the distinction, the salvation.
جمع (jamʿ) → gathering
Active senses: gathering, union. Selected: gathering. Rationale: the contemplative-ontological gathering-into-unity, contrasted with farq. Bāb 35: “the discrimination of the gathering (farq al-jamʿ) is realization, and the gathering of the discrimination (jamʿ al-farq) is finding.” Render the jamʿ/farq pair consistently so the chiasmus survives. Forbidden: collection, assembly, combination, aggregation.
فرق (farq) → discrimination
Active senses: discrimination, separation, differentiation. Selected: discrimination. Rationale: the differentiating vision of the many-as-distinct, contrasted with jamʿ; the f-r-q root underlies Furqān and Qurʾān 17:106. Forbidden: difference, division, distinction, dispersion.
No public-domain predecessor exists
As with Bāb 32, the Comparison surface is empty of a predecessor — a genuine first-public-domain-English (the catalog’s second). Neither chapter appears in Nicholson’s Studies in Islamic Mysticism (1921, PD, which treats al-Jīlī thematically and is weighted to the Names and Bāb 60) nor in Burckhardt’s Universal Man (copyrighted; opening ~quarter only). Full landscape in hekhal-targum/docs/JILI-INSAN-AL-KAMIL-SCOPING.md.
Fidelity note (stronger than Bāb 32): this pair was prepared from two witnesses — the ibnalarabi.com digital matn (supervised by Dr. Mohammed Ali Haj Yusuf) and the archive.org OCR of a print edition — which agree on the prose, with the opening poems recovered intact from the digital witness and the three Qurʾānic citations verified verbatim against the canonical Qurʾān. Verification caveat: “no complete English exists” is well-attested but not exhaustively verified; the two hadith and the al-Kharrāz saying are training-memory pending print verification.
Kabbalah: the gathered and the differentiated Name
The Qurʾān/Furqān pair — one reality as all-gathering Essence and as differentiated Names — has a structural sibling in the Kabbalistic relation between Ein Sof (the infinite, undifferentiated, beyond name) and the sefirot / the differentiated divine Names through which it discloses. The “joining of opposites” in the Essence parallels the Kabbalistic coincidence of din and ḥesed (severity and lovingkindness) gathered in the higher unity — and al-Jīlī’s hierarchy of Names (Allāh > al-Raḥmān > …) parallels the ordered emanation of the sefirot from the hidden source. Cross-tradition relation: shared-gathered-vs-differentiated-divine.
Christian apophatic: the coincidentia oppositorum
al-Kharrāz’s “I knew God by His joining of the two opposites,” which crowns Bāb 35, is the Islamic-mystical form of the coincidentia oppositorum that runs from Pseudo-Dionysius (the Names that must be both affirmed and denied of the God beyond names) through to Nicholas of Cusa’s De docta ignorantia (God as the coincidence of opposites grasped only in learned unknowing). The Essence that both holds every farq and is sheer jamʿ is the same problem the apophatic tradition meets at the summit. Cross-tradition relation: shared-coincidence-of-opposites.
Within the Akbarian corpus
The aḥadiyya / wāḥidiyya distinction load-bearing here is the same that governs the Fuṣūṣ I (Fass Adam) and the Risāla al-Aḥadiyya; the jamʿ/farq pair and the joining-of-opposites are the engine of Ibn ʿArabī’s whole tanzīh/tashbīh dialectic (the Fass Nūḥ). al-Jīlī’s reading of the Qurʾān as the Essence-gathering is his systematization of what the Fuṣūṣ performs.
Source-text attestation: HIGH (two-witness). Witness 1: archive.org OCR of a print edition (AlInsanAlKamilByAbdulKarimAlJiliArabic, lines 4144-4257). Witness 2: ibnalarabi.com digital matn (kamil.php?id=37,38, supervised by Dr. Mohammed Ali Haj Yusuf). The two agree on the running prose; the opening poems are taken from witness 2 (legible where the OCR garbled them). The three embedded Qurʾānic citations (17:106, 15:87, 55:1-2) are verified verbatim against the canonical Qurʾān (api.alquran.cloud quran-uthmani). Both witnesses cached under corpus/source_attestations/jili-insan-al-kamil/. Caveat per the cunning register: witness 2 can over-expand abbreviated Qurʾānic incipits; here the Qurʾānic content is minimal and independently verified, so the risk is low.
Audit harness: the Python drift / registry / citation tools were not run (the rank_bm25 RAG dependency is unavailable). In-session self-audit per Path B: controlled-vocabulary selected_senses used throughout (jamʿ “gathering” not “collection”; farq “discrimination” not “difference”; aḥadiyya kept distinct from wāḥidiyya); the four new lexicon pages referenced with the -proposed suffix (not yet authored on the Hekhal site); the two hadith and the al-Kharrāz saying are training-memory pending verification, the Qurʾānic citations verified.
Status: machine-assisted; not deployed; pending editor sign-off before any flip to verified and before publication. Four glossary entries staged at v0.7; four Hekhal lexicon pages proposed (not yet authored).
Tradition
islamic-sufism
Language
Arabic
Period
early 15th c. (author d. c. 1408-1428 CE)
Attribution
ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Jīlī (b. 767 AH / 1365 CE; d. c. 826-832 AH / 1422-1428 CE)
The underlying text is in the public domain by age. The original-language text is reproduced verbatim from an openly-licensed digital transcription (credited on the page), and this English rendering and its apparatus are a provisional scholarly draft, released openly for correction and not yet reviewed by a credentialed editor.
Cite this page
Stable URLs are part of the editorial commitment. This address will not change.
ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Jīlī (b. 767 AH / 1365 CE; d. c. 826-832 AH / 1422-1428 CE). "al-Insān al-Kāmil, Bāb 34-35 -- The Qurʾān and the Furqān (Gathering and Discrimination)." Hekhal: An Open Reference for Esoteric Tradition. Last modified May 2, 2026. https://hekhal.org/texts/jili-insan-al-kamil-bab-34-35-quran-furqan-targum.
ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Jīlī (b. 767 AH / 1365 CE; d. c. 826-832 AH / 1422-1428 CE). 2026. "al-Insān al-Kāmil, Bāb 34-35 -- The Qurʾān and the Furqān (Gathering and Discrimination)." Hekhal: An Open Reference for Esoteric Tradition. https://hekhal.org/texts/jili-insan-al-kamil-bab-34-35-quran-furqan-targum.
ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Jīlī (b. 767 AH / 1365 CE; d. c. 826-832 AH / 1422-1428 CE). "al-Insān al-Kāmil, Bāb 34-35 -- The Qurʾān and the Furqān (Gathering and Discrimination)." Hekhal: An Open Reference for Esoteric Tradition, May 2, 2026, hekhal.org/texts/jili-insan-al-kamil-bab-34-35-quran-furqan-targum.
ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Jīlī (b. 767 AH / 1365 CE; d. c. 826-832 AH / 1422-1428 CE). (2026). al-Insān al-Kāmil, Bāb 34-35 -- The Qurʾān and the Furqān (Gathering and Discrimination). Hekhal: An Open Reference for Esoteric Tradition. https://hekhal.org/texts/jili-insan-al-kamil-bab-34-35-quran-furqan-targum
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title = {{al-Insān al-Kāmil, Bāb 34-35 -- The Qurʾān and the Furqān (Gathering and Discrimination)}},
year = {2026},
publisher = {{Hekhal: An Open Reference for Esoteric Tradition}},
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Author
ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Jīlī (b. 767 AH / 1365 CE; d. c. 826-832 AH / 1422-1428 CE)
Title
al-Insān al-Kāmil, Bāb 34-35 -- The Qurʾān and the Furqān (Gathering and Discrimination)