Note 186 — Chapter XII
David Shea translation
The word وقت, wakt, “time,” has a technical signification.—According to Jorjáni, it means: “Your state, that is, that which is required by your actual disposition, and is not produced by design.” Shehab eddin Omar Sohrawerdi (who died A. D. 1234) says: “Time is what dominates man; man is not dominated by any thing more than by his time; for time is like a sword, it executes its decrees and cuts. By time is therefore meant what comes forcibly upon a man without being the fruit of his action; so that, subject to its power, he is constrained to conform to it. It is said: ‘Such a one is under the dominion of time,’ that is, he is retired from things which are his own, and transported to things which belong to God.”