How Does God Appear? Tajallī — the Theory of Divine Self-Disclosure in Shāh Ismāʿīl Shahīd's ʿAbaqāt

On a dark night in the desert, Moses sees a fire, and from a tree he hears: "I am God." Scripture says God rose over the Throne, that He descends every night, that He laughs, is pleased and is angry. Yet the same scripture says: nothing is like Him. Shāh Ismāʿīl Shahīd of Delhi (1779–1831), grandson of Shāh Walī Allāh, answers with one Arabic word: tajallī, self-disclosure. This film follows the second part of his Arabic work ʿAbaqāt, twenty-eight short chapters on the tajalliyāt, step by step, quoting the pages of Manāẓir Aḥsan Gīlānī's Urdu translation on screen. We follow him from the ground up: the two relations of effacement and likeness (sun, mirror and wall; the man in a dream); the angry man whose words fly like arrows; the parable of the king's mirror, and the mirrors that do not count; the material and formal faces of a tajallī and the man who calls the king's decree "only ink on paper"; why the bold statements of scripture are real, not metaphor; the sun behind red glass (likeness and transcendence at once); one sun and a thousand windows (the Throne is never empty); meaning, word and writing; the cosmos as one Great Person with the Throne as its heart; why prayer and intercession work; the lamp in the mist (Ḥaẓīrat al-Quds); the image-human; the prayer times; dreams, and the light-fire of the bush; and his closing map of the philosophers' terms. Episode 2 of 4 on ʿAbaqāt. Previous: Are You Free? (free will and destiny). Next: the ladder of the soul. Chapters 0:00 How Does God Appear? 0:42 One word: tajallī 1:16 The mirror on the wall 1:51 Words like arrows 2:23 The king's mirror 2:58 Not every mirror 3:34 Ink on paper? 4:16 Real, not metaphor 4:54 The red glass 5:31 One sun, many places 6:01 Meaning, word, writing 6:35 The Great Person 7:10 Why prayer works 7:41 The lamp in the mist 8:17 The human image 8:54 Why these prayer times? 9:23 Dreams and the fire 9:57 Disclosed, and beyond Sources quoted • Shāh Ismāʿīl Shahīd, ʿAbaqāt, Urdu translation by Manāẓir Aḥsan Gīlānī (Idāra-e Islāmiyāt, Lahore), Pointer 2 (Tajalliyāt), pp. 164–239 — page images shown from pp. 164, 167, 172, 175, 180, 192, 193, 220, 232, 236, 238 • Shāh Walī Allāh, al-Lamaḥāt, as quoted in ʿAbaqāt p. 193 • Qurʾān 28:30; 20:5; 42:11; 7:143; 50:16; 31:27; 55:29; 22:18; 17:78 (as cited or alluded to in ʿAbaqāt) • Hadiths of the nightly descent; of the Prophet's dream of his Lord placing His hand between his shoulders; and "God created Adam in His image" — as cited in ʿAbaqāt pp. 188–190, 227; the report that Imām Aḥmad saw God about a hundred times in dreams, as cited on p. 235 #Tajalli #Theophany #ShahIsmailShaheed #Abaqat #ShahWaliullah #IslamicPhilosophy #Kalam #Tasawwuf #Theology #Sufism