God, there is no god except Him, in existence. So no matter what is worshipped other than Him, the worship that [actually] takes place is of Him alone, whether it is known or not, since there is no worshipped [being] nor exsitent except He; the Living, whose life is His very essence and all that is living lives only through His life; the Eternal Sustainer, is the One who subsists in Himself, and all that subsists does so through Him; were it not for His subsistence, nothing in existence would subsist. [It] seizes Him not, somnolence and drowsiness, as it does living creatures without their intending it, which can only be [the case] for one whose life is accidental, so that nature overwhelms him with an essential state seeking calm and rest and a replacement for the dissolution (taḥlīl) of the waking state. But as for Him whose life is His very Essence, that [state] is not possible for Him. He has made it clear that His life is not an accident in His words: neither sleep. For sleep is incompatible with a life being essential as it is the thing that most resembles death, which is why it is said that sleep is the brother of death. He who has no sleep on account of His Essence - because of it being precluded that His life is other than His Essence - undergoes no somnolence, since somnolence constitutes one of its [sleep's] preludes and effects. [It is] similar to when one says, 'He does not laugh, not even astonished'. His saying slumber seizes Him not, neither sleep, is an explanation of His being the Eternal Sustainer. To Him belongs all that is in the heavens and the earth: their fate is in His hand; He does with them as He pleases. Who is there that shall intercede with Him save by His leave? Since everything belongs to Him and it is through Him that the one who speaks through Him speaks and with His speech, so how can they speak without His permission and His will? He knows, what is before them and what is after them, so how [can He not know] about them and their state? In other words, His knowledge encompasses all times and all individuals and all states, and thus He knows who is worthy of intercession and who is not worthy of it. And they encompass nothing of His knowledge save such as He wills, that is, [except for] what His will has required that He teach them. Thus the knowledge of every knower is something of His knowledge manifested in that locus, in the manner related by the angels when they said: we do not have any knowledge except that which You have made us know [Q. 2:32].
His seat, that is, His knowledge, embraces the heavens and the earth, since the kursī is place where knowledge is, which is the heart, as Abū Yazīd al-Bas?āmī, may God have mercy on him, said, 'If the world and everything in it a thousand thousand times over were located in some corner of the heart of the gnostic, he would not notice it, because of the extent of its [that heart's] embrace'. That is also why al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī said that His seat (kursī) is His throne (ʿarsh), drawing upon his [the Prophet's] saying, peace be upon him: 'The heart of the believer derives from the throne of (ʿarsh) God'. [The term] kursī in the classical language is a small ʿarsh, not larger than the seat on which a person sits: the heart is likened to it in order to convey an image in the imagination of its greatness and [the extent of] its embrace. As for the greater glorious throne, it is the First Spirit. The representation of both [the ʿarsh and the kursī] and their image in the witnessed [world] are [respectively] the greatest sphere and the eighth [sphere] which encompasses the seven heavens and all that is in them. [It] wearies Him not, that is, the preserving of them, does not weigh Him down, because they do not exist without Him such that the bearing of them [should then] weary Him. Rather, the whole of the supra-sensory world (ʿālam maʿnawī) is His esoteric aspect and the formal world (ʿālam ṣuwarī) is His exoteric aspect: these have no existence except through Him and are none other than Him. He is the High, in rank, whom nothing surpasses and who surpasses everything and overwhelms it through [its] annihilation; the Tremendous, the quintessence of whose greatness cannot be conceived. Any greatness that might be conceived in the case of a given thing is but a percolation of His greatness. Every great thing is so [only] because of a portion and a tremendous share that it receives from His greatness. Absolute greatness belongs exclusively to Him; indeed all greatness belongs to Him and no other has any share in it. This [verse] is the greatest verse in the QurÌān because of the magnitude of what it demonstrates.