disgust, it has from earliest times been accepted by everyone and even become proverbial that repeated recitation of the Qur’an, far from inducing disgust and weariness in men of sound heart and pure taste, on the contrary increases its sweetness.

The Qur’an demonstrates, moreover, such a freshness, youth and originality, that even though it has lived for fourteen centuries and passed through many hands, it retains its freshness as if it had only just been revealed. Every century sees the Qur’an enjoying a new youth, as if it were addressing that century in particular. Similarly, scholars of every branch of learning, even though they keep the Qur’an constantly at their side in order to benefit from it, and perpetually follow its method of exposition, see that the Qur’an maintains the originality of its style and manner of explanation.

F i f t h P o i n t : One wing of the Qur’an is in the past, and one is in the future, and like its root and one wing are the agreed truths of the former prophets, and it confirms and corroborates them, and they too confirm it with the tongue of unanimity, so too all the true Sufi paths and ways of sainthood whose fruits like the saints and purified scholars, who receive life from the Qur’an, show through their vital spiritual progress that their blessed tree is living, effulgent, and the means to truth, and who grow and live under the protection of its second wing, testify that the Qur’an is