Fakhr-al-Din Iraqi Quotes

It speaks to me in the silence of this one
then through the words of that one speaking;
it whispers to me through an eyebrow raised
and the message of an eye winking.

I saw my Lord with the eye of the Lord. I asked 'Who art Thou?' and He answered 'Thou.

Love courses through all things. . . . No, It is all things. How deny It when nothing else exists? What has appeared – if not for Love – would not have been. All has appeared from Love, through Love, and Love courses through it. . . . No, all of it is Love. (p. 84)

They look, they see, but do not comprehend.
They take no pleasure in the View, For to enjoy it one must know through the Truth of Certainty What he is seeing, through Whom, and why.

The world has spilled Love's secret — when could music ever hold its tongue?
Every atom babbles the mystery — Listen yourself, for I'm no tattletale!

Expressions are many but Thy loveliness is one;
Each of us refers
to that single Beauty.

La ilaha illa'l-'ishq

The more I gaze
at Your face, the more
my eyes incline
toward Your vision
like one who dies of thirst
by the ocean shore,
lips to the wave,
thirstier and thirstier.

When Ibn al-Arabi and his followers speak of „Being,“ they do not mean the Being of God as opposed to that of the creatures, or vice versa. They mean Being as such, in all the forms it may take, without exception. For them the „science of Being“ is the science of all sciences, since nothing but Being is. If someone can understand this science, he has understood the principle of everything. To grasp the nature of Being Itself is to grasp the nature of all that exists. „Love“ is one of the primary attributes of Being, which means that whatever exists must participate in it, just as it must participate in Being. To understand the nature of Love and its myriad self-manifestations is to grasp the nature of Being Itself, for the two are in fact one. (p. 27)

The Lama‘at of Iraqi belongs to a particular type of Sufi literature in which the purest doctrines of gnosis (al-ma‘rifah) were expressed in the language of love (al-mahabbah).

Like the sun I brighten each atom's cheek;
I cannot be pinpointed: I am too manifest.
I speak with every tongue, listen with all ears,
but marvel at this: My ears and tongue are erased. Since in all the world only I exist
above and below, no likeness of me can be found.

Love the phoenix cannot be trapped
nor in heaven or earth can it be named;

no one has yet discovered its address:
its desert holds not a single footprint.

The world drains the last drops from its cup
though itself it is not outside the glass;

dawn and dusk I caress its face, its tresses,
though where it is no day or night exists.

Morning-breeze, if you pass its lane
I have no message for it but this:

My repose, who are my very life, without you
I can take no single breath at ease.

The Beloved's Loveliness owns a hundred thousand faces; gaze upon a different fair one in every atom; for She needs must show
to every separate thing
a different aspect
of Her beauty.

Love the phoenix cannot be trapped
nor in heaven or earth can it be named;
no one has yet discovered its address:
its desert holds not a single footprint.

Before this there was one heart
but a thousand thoughts
Now all is reduced to "There is no God but God."