Tafsir of Al Imran 3:27

Wulūj (entering) originally means entry, and īlāj (causing to enter) means insertion. It is used metaphorically for the increase of the time of the day within the night and vice versa, according to the rising and setting points in most lands. This has been narrated from Ibn Abbas, al-Hasan, and Mujahid. The fact that day and night are always equal at the equator does not detract from this, because the increase and decrease within them are sufficient in most cases. Al-Juba’i said: "The meaning of causing one of them to enter the other is the creation of each one immediately following the other." The first view is closer to the literal wording. Under either interpretation, the apparent meaning of "night" and "day" is the night and day of takwir (folding/wrapping), which are the two well-known to the common people who understand the apparent sense of the speech. Beyond that, there are the days of salkh (stripping/peeling) known to the Arifin (the gnostics), and the sha’ni (state-related) days of ilaj (entering) that the wise scholars comprehend.

There is no day among the days known to the common people—those defined from sunrise to sunrise, or from sunset to sunset, or from their meridian passage—but that it contains within it three hundred and sixty days. Thus, the length of the [cosmic] day is three hundred and sixty degrees, because the entire celestial sphere appears in it, and movement encompasses it. This is the corporeal day.

Within it is the spiritual day, in which intellects take their knowledge, insights take their visions, and spirits take their secrets, just as bodies in this corporeal day take their nourishment, growth, development, health, illness, life, and death. The days, in terms of their manifest rulings in the world emanating from the active power of the Universal Soul, are seven, from Sunday to its end. These days have a spirituality that holds rulings over spirits and intellects, emanating from the ’Allamah (All-Knowing) power of the Truth, by which the heavens and the earth stand, and which is the Divine Word. Upon these seven rotating days, the sphere of inquiry revolves.

We say: Allah the Exalted said regarding the manifest, sensible days: "(He wraps the night over the day and wraps the day over the night)." He then clarified two realities by way of wisdom, saying in another verse: "(And a sign for them is the night; We strip from it the day)." This signaled that the night is the root, and the day was a "ghayb" (hidden reality) within it, then it was stripped out. The meaning of "stripping" (salkh) is not the meaning of "wrapping" (takwir). Therefore, the night of every day must be known from its other [part] so that every garment may be attributed to its wearer, every branch returned to its root, and every son attached to his father.

In the noble verse, He revealed another reality, saying: "(You cause the night to enter into the day, and You cause the day to enter into the night)." He thus established a metaphorical marriage between night and day, since things are born from both of them together. He emphasized this meaning by saying: "(He covers the night with the day)." For this reason, each of them is both a cause of entry and a recipient of entry; each is a root and a spouse to the other. Whatever is born in the day, its mother is the day and its father is the night, and whatever is born in the night, its mother is the night and its father is the day.

The ruling of ilaj (entering) is not the same as the ruling of salkh (stripping). Salkh only occurs at the time when the day returns from being a cause of entry and a recipient of entry, and the night likewise—except that He mentioned one salkh and did not mention the other salkh due to the [distinction between] manifest and hidden, hidden and manifest, spirit and body, letter and meaning, and the like. Ilaj is entirely spirit, and takwir is the body of this ilaji (entering) spirit. That is why He repeated "night and day" in ilaj just as He repeated them in takwir. This is in the world of the body; in the world of the spirit, the wrapping of the day is for the entering of the night, and the wrapping of the night is for the entering of the day.

The salkh came as a single instance for the manifest for those who possess it. The non-Arabs and the Arabs have differed regarding the primacy of which of the two wrapped entities is over the other. The non-Arabs give precedence to the day over the night, and their time is solar; for example, the night of Saturday for them is the night whose morning is Sunday. The Arabs give precedence to the night over the day, and their time is lunar; those are "those in whose hearts He has written faith." Thus, the night of Friday for them is the night whose morning is Friday, and they are closer to knowledge than the non-Arabs, for the salkh supports them in this view. However, they did not know the [full] ruling, so they attributed the night to other than its day, as the followers of the sun did. This is because their common people only know the days of takwir. But the Arifin (the gnostics) of this station, the heirs of the prophets, know what is beyond that—the days of salkh and the sha’ni days of ilaj.

Since the days are "a thing," and every thing has a manifest and a hidden, a hidden and a manifest, a spirit and a body, a sovereignty and a kingdom, a subtle and a dense, they said: "The day is day and night in correspondence to the hidden and the manifest." The days are seven, and for every day, there is a day and a night of its own kind. The day is the shadow of that night and is in its image because it is its root—it is inserted within it, stripped from it by the Divine Breath. Allah the Exalted used the term absolutely in the verse of salkh and did not clarify which day was stripped from which night, and He did not say, "from such and such night was stripped such and such day," so that those to whom Allah has inspired their right guidance may comprehend it and attain the decisive judgment.

Based on what is understood from the language according to lunar calculation, it is that from the night of Sunday, Allah stripped the day of Wednesday; from the night of Monday, the day of Thursday; from the night of Tuesday, the day of Friday; from the night of Wednesday, the day of Saturday; from the night of Thursday, the day of Sunday; from the night of Friday, the day of Monday; and from the night of Saturday, the day of Tuesday. He placed between every night and its stripped day three nights and three days, making them six, which is your creation possessing [six] directions. The nights belong to the bottom, north, and behind; the days belong to the top, right, and front. A person cannot be a day and a light—whose sun rises and whose earth shines through him—until he is stripped of the night of his lust, and he does not turn to the One who does not face the directions until he distances himself from the directions of his structure. They only assigned this proportion due to the participation in the manifest state to veil the divine wisdom at the hands of those appointed over the hours.

In the sha’ni (state-related) ilaji day, they also consider a night and a day. It is, according to them, twenty-four hours in which the "state" has become unified, so only one meaning emanates within it, and it varies in the existents according to their readiness. Therefore, He, the Exalted, said: "(Every day He is in a state [sha’n])," and He did not say "in states (shu’un)." His use of the indefinite is for magnification, which becomes manifest through the difference in recipients and the multiplication of individuals. So, the hours of that day are under one ruling and one gaze, and one entity whom He has placed—who does not reside in His dominion except what He wills—and He has undertaken it and specified it with that movement and made it an "emir" (commander) in that. The True Disposer is Allah, not that entity as such.

The sha’ni day is that whose hours are all equal. Whenever they are deficient, it is not a single day. This is not found in the days of takwir, nor in the days of salkh, except rarely. We sought that in the ilaji days and found it complete therein. Allah the Exalted sent the verse of ilaj and did not say: "(You cause the night) whose morning is Sunday to enter into Sunday, nor the day whose evening is the night of Monday to enter into Monday." Thus, it is not strictly required that the night of Sunday be the night of takwir nor the night of salkh. Rather, the unity of the day is sought for the sake of the unity of the "state." One looks only to the unification of the hours and the Ruler, the One Who is appointed by the One (the Absolute). The ilaji day is composed of the first hour of the night of Thursday, the second hour of it, the third of the day of Thursday, the tenth of it, the fifth of the night of Friday, the twelfth of it, the seventh of the day of Friday, the eighth of the night of Saturday, the ninth of it, the fourth of the day of Saturday, the eleventh of it, and the sixth of the night of Sunday. These are the hours of its night.

As for the hours of its day from the days of takwir: the first of the day of Sunday, the eighth [of the night of Sunday], the third of the day of Monday, the tenth of it, the fifth of the day of Monday, the twelfth of it, the seventh of the night of Tuesday, the second of the day of Tuesday, the ninth of it, the fourth of the night of Wednesday, the eleventh of it, and the sixth of the day of Wednesday. These are twenty-four hours, manifest like the sun for the sha’ni ilaji Sunday, all like a single breath because they are from a single source. And so you say regarding the rest of the days until seven days are completed, distinguished from one another, with some entered into others—their day into their night, and their night into their day—for the wisdom of birth and reproduction, just as the one ruling runs through the days, and this is shown by the days of takwir.

Our master, the Greatest Sheikh (may his secret be sanctified), has mentioned "the state" in every day in his treatise called Al-Sha’n al-Ilahi (The Divine State). Perhaps, if Allah the Exalted wills, I will mention that at the verse of the Exalted: "(Every day He is in a state)." These days are also different from the "Day of the Likeness," which is the life of the world, and the "Day of the Lord," and the "Day of the Ascending Stairways," and the "Day of the Moon," and the "Day of the Sun," and the "Day of Saturn," and the "Day of Aries." Every planet and sign has a day, and all of that has been mentioned in Al-Futuhat. We have only touched upon this amount—even though exhaustiveness in explaining the school of the people is not strange in this book—to teach some students of knowledge what the night and day are, since they have formed wrong ideas due to their ignorance regarding a discussion we held. This is sufficient for him who lends an ear and is a witness. So, praise be to You, O Allah, for what You have taught, and thanks be to You for what You have bestowed.

Those who believe in the generality of the metaphor said: The meaning is that You bring forth animals from sperm, and sperm from animals; the palm tree from the seed, and the seed from the palm tree; the good from the wicked, and the wicked from the good; the scholar from the ignorant, and the ignorant from the scholar; the intelligent from the dull, and the dull from the intelligent, and so on. It is not necessary from the verse that every living thing must be brought forth from a dead thing and every dead thing from a living thing, so as to necessitate an infinite regression at the beginning, because the furthest the verse implies is that Allah is the One who possesses this attribute. As for whether He does not create anything except from a thing, that is not [required], as is not hidden.

The mention of these great actions that bewilder the intellects and their attribution to Him, the Exalted, is a proof that the One who is capable of that is not incapable of stripping the kingdom from the non-Arabs and humbling them, and giving it to the Arabs and honoring them. Rather, it is easier for Him than everything easy. This has been preceded by that which points to the excellence of this verse. Ibn Abi al-Dunya narrated from Mu’adh bin Jabal, who said: "I complained to the Prophet (may Allah exalt him and grant him peace) about a debt I had. He said: 'O Mu’adh, do you wish that your debt be paid?' I said: 'Yes.' He said: '(Say: O Allah, Owner of the Sovereignty, You give the sovereignty to whom You will, and You take the sovereignty away from whom You will...) [to the end of the verse]. Rahman of this world and the Hereafter and their Merciful One, You give of them to whom You will and withhold from them from whom You will. Pay my debt for me, for even if you had the earth filled with gold, it would be paid for you.'" In a narration by al-Tabarani, the verse is complete.