The Highest Council

Read alone, this bāb looks like a collection of reports about angels. Read with the two before it, an ordered argument emerges. And the joints are at the level of wording, not merely of subject - which is what makes it worth noticing:

• Bāb 1 defined governance: موافقةً للنظامِ الذي تَرْتَضِيه حِكْمَتُه، مُفْضِيةً إلى المصلحةِ التي اقتضاها جُودُه. The question: what is governance?
• Bāb 2 gave the vessel in which meanings put on bodies - تتمثّل فيه المعاني. That is: where does governance take form?
• Bāb 3 (this one) says the highest council تتلقّى من ربها استحسانَ النظام الصالح - and that this knocks at باباً من أبواب الجُودِ الإلهي. That is: who administers governance?

Order and bounty - both words come from bāb 1's definition, and both return here in the description of the council's work. And bāb 2's key verb تمثّل also returns in this bāb, precisely in the account of prophecy: ويوجب تمثُّلَ علومٍ … في قلبه - knowledge takes form in the prophet's heart.

The bāb begins with the Qur'an, and the verse states two offices plainly:

One: يسبّحون بحمد ربهم ويؤمنون به - turning toward their Lord. Two: ويستغفرون للذين آمنوا - seeking forgiveness for the believers. Later in the bāb Shah Waliullah will expound both of these clauses, and they are for him the council's first and second office. The verse is not brought for blessing - it is the structure.

The explanation of the name comes later, where he counts their gatherings:

The footnote gives the lexical senses: النَّدِيّ: المجلس and المَلأ: الجماعة. So these are names of an assembly, not of a place. "The highest council" pulls the mind toward a celestial level or location; the word is really about those who gather. Hence the hadith "في الرفيق الأعلى" and the supplication "اجعلني في النديِّ الأعلى" - make me one of that assembly.

Then the hadiths. The most structural of them maps the journey of a report:

Separate the two movements, because this is the beauty of the hadith:

1. The glorification descends - beginning with the bearers of the Throne, then those adjacent to them, then downward, until it reaches the people of this lowest heaven.
2. The question ascends - ماذا قال ربكم؟ Those below ask those above.
3. The report comes down again - فيخبرونهم, and so, passing rank by rank, the news reaches the lowest heaven.

So the order is not mere proclamation - there is asking in it too. And in another narration the words of the answer are الحقَّ، وهو العليُّ الكبيرُ.

The second instance of the same structure is the hadith of love, set out in Plate II below: God loves a servant, calls Jibrīl, Jibrīl loves him, then a call goes out in heaven, the people of heaven love him - and then acceptance is laid down for him on earth. And hatred works in exactly the same way. What is settled in the highest council appears here as an event.

One hadith in this bāb puts the claim of the whole book into your hand. The Prophet dozed in prayer, and in the dream was asked: فيمَ يَخْتَصِمُ الملأُ الأعلى؟ - "about what does the highest council dispute?" Look at the answer:

Consider what the highest of all assemblies turns out to be discussing: walking on foot to the congregations. Sitting on in the mosque after the prayers. Completing the ablution - and at that, حينَ الكريهاتِ, when it is irksome. Feeding people. Gentle speech. Praying at night while others sleep.

Having listed the hadiths he gives an ordered summary: اعلمْ أنه قد استفاضَ من الشرعِ - "know that the following has come down widely from the law". Seven points:

1. Prayer and curse are themselves a cause. Those servants of God who are أفاضل الملائكة ومُقرَّبو الحضرة pray for whoever reforms and disciplines his own soul and works at reforming people - and that very prayer becomes a cause of his good; and they curse whoever disobeys God and works corruption, and that curse becomes a cause of his harm.
2. سُفَراء بين الله وبين عباده - they are envoys between God and His servants. (Footnote: سفراء: جمع السفير، وهو الرسول.)
3. Inspiration - but as a cause. This point shows his carefulness: وأنهم يُلهِمون في قلوب بني آدم خيراً؛ أي يكونون أسباباً لحدوث خواطرِ الخيرِ فيهم، بوجهٍ من وجوهِ السببيةِ. They are not independent agents producing the thought - they are causes "by one of the modes of causality".
4. They have gatherings - whence the three names (see section 2).
5. The assembly is not closed. وأنَّ لأرواحِ أفاضلِ الآدميين دخولاً فيهم ولُحوقاً بهم - the souls of the best of men enter among them and join them. The proof is the Qur'an (the verse of النفس المطمئنة) and the hadith رأيتُ جعفرَ بن أبي طالبٍ مَلَكاً يطيرُ في الجنةِ مع الملائكةِ.
6. وأنَّ هنالك ينزلُ القضاءُ - the decree descends there, and that matter is determined which is alluded to in فيها يُفْرَقُ كلُّ أمرٍ حكيمٍ (al-Dukhān 4 - that is, on the Night of Decree).
7. وأنَّ هنالك تَتَقَرَّرُ الشرائعُ بوجهٍ من الوجوهِ - the revealed laws are settled there. This sentence is the hinge of the entire mabḥath.

After this the text gives a division: اعلمْ أنَّ الملأَ الأعلى ثلاثةُ أقسامٍ - the highest council is of three kinds.

Separate the three, because they are three routes to one assembly:

• Kind 1 - created for the purpose. "The Real knew that نظامَ الخيرِ depended on them, so He created luminous bodies بمنزلةِ نارِ موسى - after the manner of Moses' fire - and breathed noble souls into them." The word order appears yet again (see section 1).
• Kind 2 - risen from the elements. A temperament came about in the subtle vapours of the elements which required the outpouring of lofty souls - souls that fiercely reject الألواث البهيمية, the animal defilements.
• Kind 3 - men who climbed. "Human souls whose origin is near the highest council; they kept performing saving deeds that bring about joining them, until they cast off the cloaks of their bodies, and were then threaded onto their string and counted among them."

Stop at the image in the third: طَرَحَتْ عنهم جلابيبَ أبدانِها - the body is a cloak, and it is thrown off. Palanpuri's footnote glosses this same word (حين يتخفَّف, when one dies and the soul parts from the body) - so his edition carries the same sense.

This is the highest point of the bāb. First a unity forms:

The lights of the finest among them gather and become "as though one thing". Multiplicity there turns into unity. And that unity is named the Enclosure of Holiness. (In this connection الروح is mentioned, along with the report describing many faces and tongues - but the footnote itself states that this report is not soundly established from ʿAlī, and that al-Rāzī criticised it. So do not take it as a proof.)

And now the passage that is the key to the whole book:

The words worth dwelling on:

• إجماع - the footnote glosses it as عزم, firm resolve (not the juristic "consensus").
• حِيلة - a contrivance, a way found. Keep away from the pejorative sense the word can carry; here it means an arrangement.
• الدواهي المعاشية والمعادية - footnote: maʿāshiyya = worldly, maʿādiyya = otherworldly calamities. Deliverance from the disasters of both abodes.
• بتكميل أزكى خَلْقِ الله يومئذٍ - by perfecting the purest of God's creation at that time. That is, the prophet.
• تَمَثُّل علوم … في قلبه - and knowledge takes form in his heart. Bāb 2's verb, in its place.

Miracle is placed at this same level: وتَتَجَدَّدُ هنالك بركاتٌ لم تُعْهَدْ في العادةِ، فتُسمَّى بالمعجزاتِ - "there blessings arise which are not customary, and these are called miracles." Bāb 2's خرق العادة finds its place here: a miracle is not a lawless event but the effect of a higher rule.

The last part of the bāb concerns the rank below the highest council - the footnote names them الملأ السافل. Their felicity did not reach the level of the first; so their perfection was made to consist in this, that تكونَ فارغةً لانتظارِ الأمرِ - that they stay empty, awaiting the command. And when something trickles down, they rush toward it as birds and beasts rush at their natural promptings.

Here Shah Waliullah adds a fine qualification which the footnote opens up: they act upon natural things في تضاعيفِ حركاتِها - that is, not in the essences of things but in the folds of their motions. Then three examples follow, all of them very concrete:

A fisherman casts a net into the river. Troops of angels come: into the heart of this fish one thing, into that one flight; one rope draws in, another spreads out. And they do not know why they are doing it - they merely follow what was put into them.

The second example: two armies fight. The angels furnish the hearts of one side with courage and steadiness - بأحاديثَ وخيالاتٍ يقتضيها المقامُ, by thoughts and imaginings that the occasion calls for - and inspire them with stratagems of victory, and assist them in archery and the like; and into the hearts of the other side, the contrary qualities - ليَقْضِيَ اللهُ أمراً كان مفعولاً.

And opposite all of them: وبإزاءِ أولئك آخرون … نفوسٌ ظُلمانيةٌ، هم الشياطينُ، لا يزالون يَسْعَون في الأضدادِ - opposite them are others, dark souls, the satans, who are forever at work at the contrary.