The theological pairing of beauty and majesty as complementary opposites is present in early Sufi literature and is linked to the notion of the unity of God, tawḥīd (to make one). This builds on the systematic attempt by theologians and Sufis to map God’s many names in the Qur’an to the primary name of God, Allāh, the “union” or “gathering of opposites” (jamʿ al-aḍdād).
Majesty refers to all attributes and names that instill a sense of distance, awe, and reverence. Beauty refers to all attributes and names that instill a sense of proximity, intoxication, and love. These were mapped onto other similar pairs, such as gentleness (luṭf) and severity (qahr) or mercy (raḥma) and wrath (ghaḍab), to show that God is simultaneously the same and different, near and far, first and last. With the pre-eminence of the identification of God with Being (wujūd) itself, particularly after the career of the philosopher Ibn Sīnā (d. 428/1037), the notion that existence was fundamentally a series of complementary opposites whose resolution could only be found in God and God’s loci of manifestation became a hallmark of Islamic thought well beyond Sufi discourse.
Astarabadi draws heavily on this application of Sufi metaphysics to Islamic monarchy in an introductory section titled “Praise of the King of Islam, the Possessor of Victory, Sultan Burhān al-Haqq wa-l dawla wa-l dīn (The Proof of the Real, the Realm, and Religion), Ahmad ibn Muhammad, may God make his caliphate and sultanate endure.”
In this section, he first remarks that God, “the Absolute King” (pādishāh-i ʿalā al-iṭlāq), made all “just kings his caliphs and representatives” in the Qur’an. He then builds on the popular hadith, “the Sultan is the shadow of God (ẓill Allāh) upon earth to which every oppressed person turns,” remarking that “by ascribing to [the Sultan] the name of the Essence (al-dhāt), he [the Prophet] has alluded that the relationship of all existent things to the king is like the relationship of all the Names to the name Allah.”
The Essence is a term that refers to the inner reality of God beyond any name, entification, or delimitation. It is the presence to which all of God’s names point. The Arabic name Allah is the name of the Essence, and thus the name to which all other names refer, including opposing names. As mentioned above, it is the meeting place of all names and the “gatherer of opposites.” To be a “shadow” of an all-encompassing “gatherer of opposites,” the king had to gather, in his own being, the traits of God. Through this, he would in turn unite, encompass, and gather the opposites of his kingdom. In this respect, the entirety of the hierarchical order of the world, Astarabadi clarifies, reaches its summit in the person of the king from whose being everyone benefits in respect to their own capacity. For him, just and pious kings are second only to the Prophet.
This exposition from Astarabadi derives from the work of Ibn al-ʿArabi. Ibn al-ʿArabi writes in his magnum opus, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya (“The Meccan Openings”), that:
God has placed in the elemental world (al-ʿālam al-ʿunṣurī) a creation like the celestial governing angels, among whom there are the messengers, the vicegerents, the sultans, the kings, and the governors of the affairs of the world. God has placed between the spirits of the celestial governors and those whom He has made governors on the earth correspondences (munāsibāt) and threads (raqāʾiq) that extend from those [celestial] governors through justice, pure of any admixture, free of any fault. The spirits of the earthly governors receive from them in respect to their own preparedness (istiʿdād). Whoever’s preparedness is beautiful and strong receives this command (amr) in its own form, pure and purified, and is a ruler of justice and an imam of bounty. But whoever’s preparedness is debased, receives this pure affair and reduces it to his own shape: debased and ugly. He is a ruler of injustice and a deputy of oppression and miserliness, and he has no one to blame but himself.
Ibn al-ʿArabi makes it doubly clear not only that God’s messengers and vicegerents are in the same category as kings and worldly rulers, but that the relationship between worldly rulers and celestial governors exists regardless of how the worldly ruler rose to power. What distinguishes worldly rulers from one another is their preparedness, istiʿdād, which also means capacity or capability, and which Astarabadi tellingly used to distinguish Burhan al-Din in regard to his own study of Ibn al-ʿArabi. “He read many books about that science [associated with the works of Ibn al-ʿArabi],” wrote Astarabadi, “solving its ambiguities and difficulties with the aid of the Holy Effusion and his own pure preparedness (istiʿdād), opening thereby the gates of Felicity (saʿāda) and Goodness.”
Preparedness is a key technical term in this discussion and refers to a spiritual fertility that allowed the king to bear the effects of cosmic realities. Gaining it was only possible through following Sufi practice in order to refine and purify himself, struggling against his desires, and ridding himself of blameworthy character traits. The established metaphor by the fourteenth century for how this happened was alchemy, mentioned most famously in Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad al-Ghazālī’s (d. 1111) Kīmiyā-yi Sa`ādat (The Alchemy of Felicity).
Ghazali differentiates between worldly alchemy and inner alchemy, comparing the transmutation of base metals into gold with the transmutation of beastly natures into angelic ones. This latter transmutation, he writes,
is more deserving of the name alchemy because the difference between copper and gold is only a matter of yellowness, and the fruit of that other alchemy is just worldly comfort; how long does the world last? How far is the difference between beastly attributes and angelic attributes—which extends from the lowest of the low to the highest of the high? The fruit of this alchemy is everlasting felicity which has no end, and its blessings have no end . . .
Ghazali’s spiritual alchemy in turn influenced Ibn al-ʿArabī, who names an important chapter of the Futuhat, “The Alchemy of Felicity.”
This chapter is the main influence on Burhan al-Din’s aforementioned Arabic treatise, The Elixir of Felicities.
In it, Ibn al-ʿArabi does not distinguish between worldly and inner alchemy; rather, he stresses that they are one and the same. Alchemy, he writes, is a science that is concerned with “measures and weights in relation to all that can be measured or weighed, whether of corporeal bodies or meanings, sensible or intelligible, and their ruling power (sulṭān) in regards to transmutations (istiḥāla), that is, the change of states in relation to the single entity. It is a natural, spiritual, and divine knowledge.”
Its primary aim is the return of all things, whether natural or spiritual, to their most perfect state—goldness (dhahabiyya). It does this through the elixir.
The knowledge of alchemy is knowledge of the elixir. It has two parts, by which I mean its action. One is bringing forth an essence from the beginning like the mineral gold. The other is eliminating defect and illness like artifactual gold that is joined to the mineral gold – like the configuration of the next world and this world in seeking equilibrium (iʿtidāl). Know that all the minerals return to one root. This root, in its essence, seeks to join the degree of perfection, which is goldness.
Things deviate from this original state because of the secondary causes and accidents of the created world, causing some of the four elements to dominate over the rest. These bring that perfect original equilibrium (iʿtidāl) into imbalance and cause things to appear as something else. The quickest way to return to that state is to gain access to the elixir, an alchemical substance which either creates gold or removes the impediments that prevent the original golden nature of a thing from appearing. Ibn al-ʿArabi clarifies that this original nature and equilibrium are “the path” (al-maḥajja) that leads to “the Perfect Golden Virtuous City" (al-madīna al-fāḍila al-dhahabiyya al-kāmila) in which “none can be transmuted to what is less perfect.” By using a term associated with political philosophy, “the Virtuous City,” Ibn al-ʿArabi makes it clear that the alchemy of felicity has political implications.
This is also clear in the opening poem of the section:
The elixirs are a proof (burhān) that indicate
the alterations and changes in existence.
When the elixir of solicitude (iksīr al-ʿināya) is cast
upon the enemy, in a measured scale
in that very moment he will emerge sincerely from enmity
to friendship (wilāya) in rule and measure
The elixir thus refers to something that brings out the true nature of someone or something. And while natural alchemy returns things to their golden nature, the golden nature of humans, their original perfection, is “vicegerency” (khilāfa), the Qur’anic notion of human responsibility over earth whose political implications are a primary concern for Ibn al-ʿArabi.
Know that the sought perfection for which the human being was created is vicegerency. Adam took it through the ruling property of Divine Solicitude (al-ʿināya al-ilāhī). This is a station that is more exclusive than messengerhood among the messengers, because not every messenger is a vicegerent since the degree of messengerhood is specific to conveying the message, for God has said, “the messenger only has to convey the message” (Q 5:99). It does not include ruling control over an opponent (al-taḥakkum fī al-mukhālif). . . . When God gives him control over those to whom he has been sent, this is called “making someone a vicegerent” (istikhlāf) and “vicegerency.” The messenger is a vicegerent, but not everyone who was sent with a message also ruled. When he is given the sword and he effectuates the Act (al-fiʿl), he then has perfection, and he brings to manifest the authority (sulṭān) of the Divine Names (al-asmāʾ al-ilāhiyya). He thus gives and holds back, raises and abases, gives life and gives death, benefits and deprives, and makes manifest the Contrary Names (al-asmāʾ al-taqābul) along with prophecy (al-nubuwwa), this is inescapably so. If he makes manifest ruling control without prophecy, then he is a king, not a vicegerent. No one is a vicegerent except for he whom the Real has made a vicegerent over His servants, not one who has been raised up by the people and to whom they have pledged allegiance, bringing him forward for and over themselves. This is the degree of perfection.
Here we see that, for Ibn al-ʿArabi, manifesting the opposing names of God is an essential element of rule, but such a rule cannot be achieved except through “the Divine Solicitude,” which he also calls “the Divine Specification” (al-ikhtiṣāṣ al-ilāhī).
Simply put, it is something that can only be gifted by God to whomever He wills, and only such a rule is granted the elixir. The most a human can do is perfect their preparedness (and its adjacent principle “receptivity,” qābiliyya), which allows them, according to Ibn al-ʿArabi, to receive God’s commands directly: “Know that the soul, in respect to its essence, is ready to receive the preparedness (istiʿdād) for what is to be extracted from it by the Divine Edicts (al-tawqīʿāt al-ilāhiyya). . . . This is because the souls were created from a single mineral.”
It is these Divine Edicts that lead to the differences between those who are destined to be messengers, messengers and vicegerents, or vicegerents only (that is, kings). By perfecting preparedness and receptivity, a human being is capable of receiving the Divine Edicts and harnessing the elixir.
The process of perfecting preparedness and receptivity is the same process described by Ghazali above—it is the process of removing “blameworthy” or “beastly” attributes so as to actualize their opposites, the character traits of God.
These attributes are the aforementioned Names of God and, in Ibn al-ʿArabi’s cosmology in particular, are the root of every existent thing. For Ibn al-ʿArabi, the only real distinguishing factor between things is in the degree to which they manifest and gather these names in their own being. And the most perfect locus of manifestation is that being whose preparedness exceeded that of all others, the Prophet, the one who was a messenger and a vicegerent, and whose being gathers and encompasses all things and displays their apparent contradictions in perfect equilibrium (iʿtidāl). Burhan al-Din himself clarifies this in the Iksir, where he writes that “Muhammad is a gatherer in reality, and the form of his rank of equilibrium . . . [brings together all other levels] in his perfect, all-gathering, and all-encompassing reality.”
Muhammad is the primary locus of God’s name Allah, whose significance was already highlighted in relation to kings being shadows of the name Allah. Like that name, his being gathers all levels of reality. Since Ibn al-ʿArabi and other Sufis connect Muhammad directly to kingship (as the most perfect messenger and vicegerent who ruled), to be a just king is to be a Muhammad-like king who is in perfect equilibrium. This connection between justice and equilibrium is clear in Arabic where ʿadl (justice) and iʿtidāl (equilibrium) have the same root (linked to the image of the scales of justice).
In fact, Burhan al-Din’s Iksir is devoted to explicating, under the rubric of Ibn al-ʿArabi’s Alchemy of Felicity, how all the rituals of Islam aim to return the human being to perfect alchemical equilibrium. Only by achieving this state can a king be second to the prophets, and thus a locus for the “gatherer of opposites.” In terms of kingly action, this alchemical equilibrium was between beauty and majesty, and was enacted through their feasting and fighting.
Astarabadi drew on all of these theories in both his narrative and, most clearly, his choice of title. This identification of beauty and majesty with feasting and fighting is rooted in the Persian poetry of the Sufi Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (d. 672/1273), a major influence on Burhan al-Din and Astarabadi:
From him, feasting (bazm) has beauty (jamal).
From him, fighting (razm) has majesty (jalal).
In both feasting and fighting, [he is] the grace of the world, darling.
In this respect, he marks the full explicit connection of feasting and fighting (and by extension, sword and pen) to the presence of God himself, whereas before him, it was usually a reference to human kings.
When I come fighting (razm) at the time of battle,
he is the guardian of the ranks and the commander of the army.
When I come feasting (bazm) at the time of joy,
he is the cupbearer, the minstrel, and the cup.
In fact, Rumi makes full use of the language of kingship for praising his own beloveds, the human loci of God whose names fill his poetry.
But this appropriation of the language of kingship allowed kings to use the Sufi turn to their own ends. Burhan al-Din is a clear example of this. Astarabadi relates that before he took power, Burhan al-Din used the art of bibliomancy to divine a fortune from Rumi’s divan in a court gathering, opening to a poem that perfectly illustrates the convergence of these different discourses. It reads, in part:
Whatever that king (khusraw) does, he does sweetly (shīrīn),
like a fig tree that only gives figs.
Wherever he recites a sermon on two opposites,
he marries them together like milk and honey.
The fountain of life flows with his breath;
the dead come alive when he reads their last rites.
Don’t you know? Whoever is his bird,
Will turn, through felicity (saʿādat), his eggs into gold.
From now on I’ll stop, I’ll pray in secret,
But how will it remain secret once the king says “Amen?”
While Rumi’s poem is about God and God’s friends, its use of the language of alchemical monarchy and its capacity to unite opposites allowed Burhan al-Din to use it as a sign for his own political project. As Sufis adapted the language of monarchy for their own end, kings and their courtiers in turn used the vocabulary of Sufism to legitimize their status as embodied shadows of God. In so doing, they sought to directly connect to the embodied lights of God and the true vicegerents, Sufi saints, whether through living saints or through their presence as mediated and preserved in shrines, books, or other objects.
Beyond his personal affiliation with Sufism and scholarship, Burhan al-Din’s decade-long legitimacy problem helps explain his decision to study Ibn al-ʿArabi and focus on scholarly production. In these writings, he found a method to become a true and legitimate king without being appointed by another ruler or being born to a royal line: observing and following the alchemy of Sufism so as to acquire what Ibn al-ʿArabi called “the elixir of solicitude,” a means to turn enemies into friends. It is clear that, in his case, the elixir was found in his books. His literary production and the textual garment Astarabadi wove for him, Bazm wa Razm, including their visual appearance, manifest his strategies for convincing others that he was unique among kings of his age, transformed through his own preparedness and receptive capacity. And as a garment for a living shadow of God, Bazm wa Razm cycles between Burhan al-Din’s feasting and fighting to depict him as a perfect equilibrium of the two. Even the structure of the book reflects this: after its introduction, its narrative features twenty-four cycles of feasting and fighting, always in succession. The use of twenty-four, twelve passages of feasting and twelve of fighting, further illustrates how vital equilibrium was to this notion of kingship.
To underscore that this was a cycle between majesty and beauty, Astarabadi himself states, writing at the transition between a fighting and a feasting section, that Burhan al-Din “turned from burning enmity towards setting the feast alight, switching the garment of majesty for the garment of beauty.”
Astarabadi’s garment, Bazm wa Razm, becomes the medium through which Burhan al-Din’s equilibrium between the garments of majesty and beauty is stitched together. By producing books couched in the cosmology of Sufism, he could argue for his own divine sanction and alchemical nature. In this way, he proved his status as an alchemical king: an elixir that spread beauty and majesty (produced works of art and knowledge) wherever it was sovereign. This, I argue, is why Burhan al-Din took such a personal interest in the production of scholarly works, poetry, and adorned manuscripts. His interest in being portrayed as a “shadow of God” animates both the content and the appearance of Bazm wa Razm as preserved in Aya Sofya 3465.