The Two Unities
Ahad vs. wahid: In Surah al-Ikhlas (112), the divine is described as ahad — singular, unique, without peer or parallel. Ibn ‘Arabi read this as the supreme statement of ahadiyya: at the level of ahad, the divine cannot even be called ‘one’ in the numericable sense (since ‘one’ implies the possibility of two, three, etc.). The divine ahad is the unspeakable singularity before all relation. The wahid (as in la ilaha illa huwa — ‘there is no god but He’) belongs to the wahidiyya level: the divine as the unique holder of all divine attributes, the one who has knowledge, will, power, hearing, sight.
Tanzih within tanzih: The distinction protects against a subtle error: many Islamic theologians perform tanzih (transcendence-affirmation) at the wahidiyya level — they affirm that Allah’s knowledge is not like human knowledge, His power not like human power, etc. But at the ahadiyya level, the tanzih is more radical: even the affirmation of ‘knowledge’ (however negated in comparison to human knowledge) is itself a form of conceptual capture. Ahadiyya is the level at which even divine attributes must be transcended.
See also: Tawhid Divine Unity, Al Tajaliyyat, Al Hulul, Tawil Esoteric Interpretation, Ilm Al Batin
Ismaili Tanzih
Absolute transcendence: The Ismaili philosophical tradition (represented by Abu Yaqub al-Sijistani, Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani, and Nasir-i Khusraw) developed the doctrine of tanzih mutlaq (absolute transcendence) that parallels Ibn ‘Arabi’s ahadiyya: at the highest level, Allah transcends even existence and non-existence (since both categories are human conceptual impositions); He transcends even unity (since ‘one’ is a number, and numbers are human concepts). This radical tanzih is not atheism but hyper-theism — a refusal to let any human concept, however elevated, capture the divine. The Imam’s ‘ilm is the exclusive channel through which the otherwise unknowable divine makes itself accessible to human understanding.
See also: Imamah, Ilm Al Imam, Tawil Esoteric Interpretation, Tawhid Divine Unity, Ilm Al Batin, Understanding Walayah
See also: Tawhid Divine Unity, Al Tajaliyyat, Al Hulul, Tawil Esoteric Interpretation, Ilm Al Batin, Imamah, Ilm Al Imam, Understanding Walayah