The Secret Behind the Fall of Adam (Ahmed Sam'ani Part 1)

I intend to write about, mostly copy, from the book Sufism by William Chittick some very powerful lessons in a few installments. The intention is that perhaps someone will benefit from reading this material and make a small prayer for me.

William Chittick has introduced Ahmad Sam’ani, a Shafi scholar from Merv who was born in 1140. His works were first published in 1989. Unfortunately, there are many outstanding works of scholarship out there that have been neglected. William Chittick uses Sam’ani’s work “The Refreshment of the Spirits: Explaining the Names of the All-Opening King” to discuss core beliefs of the Muslim faith in his book: Sufism.

Chittick discusses the fall of Adam:

“When Adam was in paradise, he had not fully realized the meaning of all the names that God had taught him. He knew the names of beauty and mercy, but not the names of majesty and wrath. The fact that God is both, All Merciful and Wrathful demands that both paradise and hell exist.”

He then quotes Ahmad Sam’ani:

“If We were to let you stay in the Garden, Our attribute of Severity would not be satisfied. So, leave this place and go down to the furnace of affliction and the crucible of distance" 

“O Adam, come out of paradise and go into this world. Lose your crown, belt, and cap in the way of love! Put up with pain and affliction. Then tomorrow, We will bring you back to this precious homeland and this domicile of subsistence, with a hundred thousand robes of gentleness and every sort of honor, as the leader of the witnesses and in the presence of the one hundred and twenty and some thousand prophets, the possessors of purity and the sources of chosenness. Then the creatures will come to know that just as We can bring Adam’s form out of paradise through the attribute of severity, so also We can bring him back through the attribute of gentleness.” 

“Tomorrow, Adam will go into paradise with his children. A cry will rise up from all the particles of paradise because of the crowding. The angels of the World of Sovereignty will look with wonder and say, “Is this that same man who moved out of paradise a few days ago in poverty and indigence?”

“ …Suffer a bit of trouble, then in a few days, take the treasure!”