was a hidden treasure. i was not known. now i longed to be

Shaykh Ahmed abdur Rashid April 11, 2013 www.circlegroup.org Thursday Suhbat

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Words of Love from a Qur’anic Perspective: Hubb, Eshq, and Wadd

Examining the Roots of Words for Mystical Meanings

Everyone who has studied Tasawwuf eventually comes across the hadith quds: “I

was a hidden treasure. I was not known. Now I longed to be known, so I created

creation and creatures so that I might be known by them. Another variation is:

“…so that they might come to love Me.” Some people say it’s daif; most people of

Tariqah say it’s a hadith quds. What concerns us tonight is the term love. I want to

come back to the discussions on love, if I might.

There are many, many Arabic and mostly Qur’anic terms to express love, and I will

get to that. Often it is represented by the root hibb. In the hadith I quoted, the word

“I loved” “hababtu.” It has two meanings in Arabic lexography that form one word:

love / hubb, or habba/grain of seed. According to Shaykh al-Akbar Ibn Araby (ra), he

like many others says, love cannot be clearly defined. He says the following, which I

think is very interesting and important:

Definitions of love have been proposed. But I do not know anyone who has been

able to define what it is, itself. One cannot even imagine that it is worthwhile

giving them. Whoever might try to define it can only do so by means of the fruits

is produces, the traces that it leaves, and the consequences that are inherent in

it since it remains a quality of the perfect and the inaccessible power that is

Allah Swt.

Certainly, it is reasonable to assume that this quotation of his, with regard to the

impossibility of defining love, is found in the roots of that hadith quds I quoted. In

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fact, it has been noted by some scholars that it is only possible to define something

according to two perspectives or points of view: first is a kind of Aristotelian, logical

way in which things are defined by means of their class or specific differences. Allah

and love cannot be placed in any class, and is not subject to any specific difference.

So it can’t be defined from that point of view. Or, according to another more recent

way of thinking, the definition of a reality is done by reference to another reality

metaphorically or analogically, which allows your mind to bring them together in

the sense of a definition, though it is not actually being defined.

At the level of tawhid or oneness, or the essential sense of unity, the relationship

with Allah is fallacious. It doesn’t exist. If there is only Allah, there is no relationship

with Allah. That relationship can only be understood by the degree of distance we

have from Allah’s presence, because we have a sense of our self being distant from

Allah. No matter how many times you say there is only Allah, and unity is unity, still

you feel distant from Allah, don’t you? So how do you envision that? How do you

relate to that? You relate in terms of some sort of universal manifestation of Allah

Swt. Then you see love is also envisioned by relationships and the effects it has, the

necessity it causes, the means by which one discerns its pathway, or what it has left

behind, or the way one apprehends it; consequently, love is something you can sort

of hypothesize, but never really define. You can experience it, but in relationship to

something else, even its loss, or its changing state.

Even though it’s not defineable, it can be considered as something that is very real

and internal. Indeed, it’s like a jedhb/an internal attraction which allows a kind of

aspect of Divine reality or being, or another human being, to exemplify or

exteriorize the possibilities in the sense that you have a seed / hibb, and you don’t

know what’s in that seed unless you are an agronomist, until it is put into certain

circumstances where it begins to exteriorize its potentiality. By looking at the seed,


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you don’t necessarily know what it’s going to be. Even beyond that, when it

becomes fully developed, as a tree perhaps, it may be capable of reproducing itself

or producing a fruit in the image of its own self, which can begin the cycle again. It is

intimately bound to that cycle: the seed, the tree, the fruit; the seed, the tree, the

fruit.

From this kind of lexical understanding of Arabic, and Qur’anic perspective, hubb is

a loving seed, in the sense that it has a kind of seminal, gestational, germinative,

generative kind of reality, which is inseparable from its Divine origin or Divine life.

The movement that it has within us and between us is something seeded in us by

Allah, and Divine in its own nature. So mahabbat is a kind of pattern in which this

whole concept of love is built and actualized. This term hubb, used to signify love,

has a generic meaning and also its nuances. In the Futuwwat al Maqiyya, Ibn Araby

(ra) said, “This station (maqama) of love has four different names.” Hubb, which we

talked about, is the seminal, original love from the seed, whose purity he says

penetrates the heart. And whose “limpidity is not subject to any accidental changes.”

In other words, you are not going to change its character. It’s a seed; it produces

what it is.

Then there is wadd. Wadd is affection. That is the faithful attachment we have to

the love. A Divine Name is related: al-Wadud. It means, constantly loveable. The

word implies that a person is faithful to the attachment to that love. One has those

Divine characteristics, that faithful attachment to that love or to the Divine. It also

means to remain constant. As a noun, it is used in another way: to refer to anything

that is fixed in the earth, attached to the earth. This is a kind of Divine attachment.

Then there is eshq, the kind of out of control, emotional, distraught, extreme,

overwhelming love, that comes from the same word “eshaq,” which is also a term


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used for a kind of plant called bindweed. It winds itself around whatever support it

can find. It succeeds in eventually smothering the tree it winds itself around, like

kudzu, causing the object it is holding onto to absolutely disappear eventually. This

term eshq is not Qur’anic; it is not used in Qur’an. It is used by the poets.

Then hawah, which is that momentary, spontaneous love, unexpected passion of

love; rising seemingly out of nowhere and expressing itself suddenly. Hubb / love,

haba/ grain or seed: these two meanings cannot be separated from each other.

Love produces a seed, the seed develops. The effect of the seed of love produces

love, which produces a seed, etc. It is inseparable.

Eshaq grows in a spiral. Eshq represents that love that ascends in a form but is

constantly moving and asserting. It belongs to the spirit. It is the story of Majnun

and Leila, always moving; always seeking, always trying to attain that which cannot

really be attained. But this word “wadd” is also interesting when it comes to

understanding love.

Wadd is a nail, peg, or stake. Wadd is also love. This love that is designated by the

word “wadd” is a kind of faithful love that is like when you nail something, it is solid.

You make a table out of pegs; the pegs expand and contract with the table. It doesn’t

get loose. It’s the best way of building, You get the word “hawudd” from it, meaning

passion, and also love. That love is a surge of love that comes. It is not

uncontrollable like eshq, but it is like an ocean breaking upon it.

Here you have four names, and four different connotations of love; yet, in

translation, we use one word for it… the weakness of that word. Shaykh al Akbar

points out that the third aspect of love he qualifies by eshq is that ascending


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movement. It grows, ascends. The word hawudd signifies also something that falls

from above to below.

You have the movement of eshq, and then hawudd, which falls from above to below,

from Allah Swt, and gives rise to the word that means air or atmosphere. The

blowing of the Divine breath, for example, into the womb of Maryam is a breath of

love / passion placed inside of her womb. It is also a Divine love that comes

breathing from above to below. It circulates within, and begins the whole process of

circulation and mitosis and meiosis of life, spontaneously. I will give an example of

his own poetry. (Reads in Arabic)

O ban tree of the valley, show us a branch or some twigs that can be compared

with her tenderness. A zephyr breeze tells us of the time of youth spent at Hajar

or Mina.

He uses in this poem the Arabic roots that are linked to love in the hadith quds that I

read. He gives an etymological kind of analogy to the word of love by describing a

situation, using the letters and roots in Arabic of the words for love. Those of you

who read Arabic can see it. It’s almost what we call abjad, writing a poem with

letters that mean something else. It’s not just the cleverness of doing that. The point

that I believe he is trying to make is the multi-dimensional complexity of love. Love

tells a story, or many stories. As you perceive it, it has its meaning. It doesn’t have

only one meaning. When you mix the roots of these words together, the message is

something other than just the message. The message is the complexity of love, the

dimensionality of it, the changeability of it, the different faces of it. (Reads the poem

again)


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O ban tree of the valley, show us a branch or some twigs that can be compared

with her tenderness. A zephyr breeze tells us of the time of youth spent at Hajar

or Mina.

The zephyr’s breeze is the dynamic breath. The plant is the seed. The disclosure of

the branch of the tree of the valley is the disclosure of love. Are you getting an

understanding of how that works? I’ll give you part of his tafsir on it. He says,

It’s a matter here of the propensity of the created being to orient him or herself

toward the Real by saying, indeed the attraction (mayl) I have for you my

Beloved, and the grace that you accord me, come from an inclination (mayl or

isharat) of the presence of the Real towards You, and the blessing which it

confers, and the manifestation of its light affect you.

Many years ago, those of you who can remember and aren’t in a state of early

dementia, I used to tell you that love was an answer to a call, not a call itself. It is a

permission. When you love someone, and they love you, you are giving them

permission to accept your love, and they are giving you permission to accept their

love. It’s not just back and forth; it’s a permission that is given. You should

contemplate that. He’s saying there is a propensity of Allah to be inclined toward

you, to call you, and for your inclination toward the Divine presence to have a path.

Now you can also understand why most Sufi poetry is love poetry, and it’s directed

toward Allah. Then he goes on and says,

For attraction / maylaq toward her is due to iftikar /need, and derives benefit

/istifada, while her attraction / malha toward you is due to ghinah /

sufficiency, and bestowing benefit / ifada. Now there is no relationship except

through contrast /nakeet.


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What attracts the Beloved to the Lover is not exactly the same thing that attracts the

Lover to the Beloved. What is expected from the Lover to the Beloved is not exactly

what the Lover expects from the Beloved. That makes perfect sense, because the

love of Allah toward us is not equal to our love toward Allah. It’s not the same,

though we call it “love.” In this poem, fanan meaning branch, is connected itself to a

root fa-nun-nun, which gives the word fann. The plural of fann, funūn, means

category, class, or species. It indicates different ways of knowledge, of

understanding and levels of knowledge. The expression in the poem, “long twigs,”

contains, he says, the meaning of “a flexible stick or cane, or bough / kadib that

moves with the wind or pressure. This tree is dynamic and moves just like the love

of the Lover to the Beloved.

The word “curve” is often used in poetry like the “curve of the eyebrow.” It means

affection, fondness. Ibn Araby says it refers to the divine inclination or sympathy

implied in the mercy or tajalliyat-e-bāri ta’la, the irradiating love which is all-

encompassing and everywhere, the ocean of love, the universal “mutlaqa.” It

embraces everything, even though you might not see it. You do feel it in some way,

because you feel attractions. Allah says in Qur’an, “And My irradiating love

embraces everything.”

All these commentaries deal with the love of Allah, love for the Beloved, Ibn Araby

explains the Divine and the created reality by using these very interesting roots in

Arabic morphology. Perhaps one of the reasons he does that, if you want to take a

scholarly approach, is to explain that the roots in Arabic have very profound

meaning. If he explains this example, he’s basically telling you that whatever you are

reading in the Qur’an, you really ought to go much deeper into it. Not just poetry,

though poetry is a means. Perhaps, the primary significance of all this is that you


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have to distinguish between the essential meaning of something and the common

usage of it. We do it all the time. You don’t even know you do it.

The Lover says to the Beloved. The husband says to the wife (especially after a few

years of marriage – note this), “Do you love me?” “Of course.” “How do I know?”

They ask you a question there is no answer to; there is no way of defining it “Well, I

buy you things.” “Well, my father or my friend used to buy me things.” You are only

two degrees off from an argument, anyway. “How much do you love me?” “How can I

answer that? I love you with all my heart.” “What does that mean? You say ‘I love

you’ to everyone.” “I love you as much as you love the children.” It’s always good for

a man to say that. Note that. Because mothers love their children more than

anything… you are learning something tonight, I hope.

There are questions that can’t be answered, but we try to bring it into common

usage. Then there is the cultural evolution of language that takes place also, which

most people don’t realize, because it’s cultural. Cultural things are assumptions.

People assume that you understand something because it’s your culture. When you

speak to someone of another culture, they assume you understand it because it’s

their cultural understanding, and they don’t understand why you don’t understand

it. Maybe one of your relatives says to you, “I’m saying it in Urdu. You are hearing it

too American.” People will say that. “You are not thinking like an Urdu / Farsi /

Arabic speaker. It’s what we say in (Urdu, Farsi, Arabic.)” You can’t translate it.

Culturally, if you evolve away from that root, you stop catching the nuances.

Here in Ibn Araby, you have an example of someone who is very carefully saying

something, and takes the pains to use the proper Arabic roots. You can see the

incredible richness of it, if it is pointed out. He tries to let his reader share in that

experience, and tries to get you to understand that these roots, especially with the


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roots of the word of love, have such dynamic capacity in them that you can probably

spend the rest of your life just looking at the roots of those words and how they are

used in Qur’an and in poetry, and learn a lot. For example, if you take some words

we use all the time, like kalam, dhikr, adhkar, nafas, nafs, rahman, rahīm, hubb, hibb –

they are all linked in a very complex way, purposefully, evolutionarily, voluntarily

and involuntarily to a process of love. Because of that, Allah Swt have given

different names, essential names that are brought into the understanding so that the

seed / hibba of love develops in an internal and external way, a macroscopic and

microscopic way that shows the Tree of the Divine.

Why is it that we say that tree is the tree of love? Because of the Tree of Life: nafs /

nafas, self / breath. Or kalam or kalām. Kaf-lam-mim means to wound; also,

uttering, and articulating. It gives rise to two different nouns: kalam / wound, and

kalām / word, speech. What is the connection between wound and speech? The

word, when it is manifest, implies sacrifice and universal suffering. So Allah Swt

externalizes His Word by breathing out (nafas), or uttering the infinite possibilities

contained in His wisdom and knowledge. Just like when a person is wounded, like

with a knife, their blood escapes from the contained body. Unlike the wound and

the blood, Allah’s words are inexhaustible.

If all the trees on earth were pens (aqlam), and the seas were swelled by

the seven seas of ink, the Words of Allah would not be exhausted.

Indeed, Allah is Powerful and Wise. Qur’an.

This is because Allah is One. He wounds His creation; He cracks open that which is

contained as One, and makes many of it. There is only Allah, and then there is the

manifestation of all creation. This creation, like the blood, is exhaustible; but the

Creator is inexhaustible. Everything in this creation will pass. It is through these


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cracks or wounds that Allah makes the words come out, words that never stop

coming because they are His words. They are inexhaustible. And the instrument or

channel through which this is going to be conveyed into manifestation are the

Divine words articulated by the Name of Allah, by remembering Allah: dhikr.The

bearer of the loving seed created by the breath, written by the pen, in the act of

creating this self’s manifestation, channeled through the pen, channeled through the

dhikr, these words are the endless meanings of the Names of Allah Swt.

If we look at the word dhikr, the root of dhaw-kaf-rah has two meanings. One is to

sharpen to a point, to make masculine, to give birth, usually to males. It refers to the

male human being. It also means to remind and mention, to remember, invoke, or

chant, as we know. Articulating the Divine Names of Allah, each name is like a seed.

Each name comes from the Divine consciousness. It has a power. It is first

articulated by Allah, and then sent forward in the way I just described. It has a

characteristic, quality, and attribute. It has the power to generate or re-generate.

The word dhakar is a male term, which inter-penetrates the Divine manifestation,

that being female in this case. Now you have the male, with the female being inter-

penetrated (the womb or the matrix, and the universal feminine principle / untha)

by planting the seed that keeps the process going.

That’s just the Islamic way of looking at it. If you want the Hindu way of looking at

it, you would be looking at the Shiva linga and the yoni. Every mystical path has

discovered this incredible link between love and the roots of the terminology of the

words that describe it, create the image of it, create the analogies to it, that are

implanted – literally – within us. The seed constructs us and revivifies, over and

over again, in the human being, but is exhaustible. There are only a certain number

of eggs in every female, but the process itself is eternal. This attraction in love you

could say is a biological attraction to perpetuate or regenerate the human race. Sure,


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it is in the sexual sense, but it is something else. It is the primary, not just

motivation, but the primary Word, Sound, Utterance of Allah Swt: Hu.

This attraction transpires, but between individuals, it is not harmonized. It has to

become resonant. We call it falling in love, friendship, or attraction. When it is

harmonized or resonant, it revivifies. What happens? “My heart is moved by that

person.” Everything in the body gets ready, so to speak, for this process to continue,

which is a Divine utterance. This is why in Islam we say that at the moment of

conception, you should be uttering certain du’ā. Allah speaks of this in the Holy

Qur’an: “He is no other than a dhikr for the world’s creatures. We sent down

the dhikr (and now you know it doesn’t just mean remembrance) and We shall

certainly preserve it.” Does it mean just preserving the words “to remember?”

No. The complementary of these principles is:

O human beings! We have created you from male (dhakar) and a female

(untha). (Qur’an)

Those Divine words that are spoken by Allah Swt, impregnating the dhikr and

conveyed by the Divine Will or Intention, are all brought to life by the breath.

When? Nafas ar rahmat: by the breath of life, of His Mercy. Now you see how

breath enters into it. When does it become “real?” When is it brought to life? When

the fetus can take a breath: nafas. What happens then? The self/nafs becomes

implanted in the being. The Prophet (sal) said, “I feel the breath of the All-

radiating Love coming from Yemen (meaning coming from the right).” The term

for breath / nafas and the term for nafs / self come from that same root, meaning

breath, relaxation, sighing, opening, soul, that which is precious. The influence can

be positive or negative.


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The second term He uses is rahmat: all-radiating love and mercy. It comes from the

root to have mercy, but it’s also the root that means to die in childbirth. Ah, what a

circle! What a few words can do! The deeper meaning is to radiate with love. The

noun rahīm means uterus, womb, blood, relationship. Now you see the relationship

between mercy, radiating love, that which is precious. The loss of which is the most

painful thing to the mother, and the gaining of which establishes the relationship

that means a lot. Think back in time to tribal times and what blood relationships

meant. The noun rahma has a feminine meaning. Now we are talking about

something that is real and also the universal womb that contains everything and

gives birth. Now, do you have a male or a female Allah? You don’t have either.

Everything is contained within Allah, which is why in Arabic you don’t have male

and female in the same sense that you have it in other languages.

Please take from it the fact that you should always read the Qur’an with a dictionary

near you, and try to understand why things are meaningful to you. Because when it

becomes cultural, it becomes translated into the much more material, objectified

reality of human beings, which is not to cast aspersions on anyone or any

relationship, but it is much more material and objectified. If you can grasp where it

comes from, you are really at the cusp of understanding the importance of silsila

also. You are understanding relationship in the spiritual birthing realm of the silsila

tariqah. Shar’īah you know.

Tariqah is a manifestation of this same kind of love relationship, out of which this

knowledge comes into the minds of Ibn Araby and others, which reveals a truth

about your own life and your own attractions. If you can remember where they

come from, you don’t lose that attraction, but you share the source of that attraction

with the ones that you love. This in turn means that you learn that you don’t harm

those you love, that you are merciful toward those you love, that you are


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compassionate and just toward those you love. You seek to love all people. You

don’t discriminate by color, race, or religion or anything like that. You see where

Sufism grows from this.

This is not religion; this is Sufism within the core of Islam. The core of Islam lies in

the Qur’an, and the core of the Qur’an lies in the kalam, the core of the words. The

core of the words lies in the eternal utterances of Allah Swt. The core of that lies in

the splitting open, by His Will, His Oneness to manifest. This is why the veracity of

Sufism is so important. This is the true Islam –beyond form. It is not excluding

form, but ‘beyond’ meaning at the core. So try to make one prayer in your life with

this in your mind. If you don’t expose people to that truth… it’s not about exposing

them to the religion and getting more and more Muslims or more and more

Catholics or whatever… they become less and less aware of the core of the essence

of the Truth, and it becomes just form.

You can’t blame people from turning away from form if the form is meaningless, and

if it’s only cultural. “I do it because my father and mother do it.” “I believe because I

was brought up to believe.” All you have to do is read the text, and go into the

morphology to become a believer. Who could create anything so complex and so

clear? You? Me? Ibn Araby? He can explain it, but he can’t create it. People send

their kids to madrasas to learn Arabic, to recite it or speak it, but they don’t learn the

morphology. It’s better that you don’t know Arabic and take a dictionary and learn

the morphology, than it is to learn Arabic but not the morphology. Really, it’s better.

At least you are mining the diamonds; you are not just owning the land that has the

diamonds in it, and you have no idea that there are diamonds in it. Do you get it? I

hope so. You have to make a bigger effort. All of us who are parents wish we could

have made a bigger effort. Asalaam aleikum.

was a hidden treasure. i was not known. now i longed to be

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