Tajalli تجلي

Tajalli (تجلي, “self-disclosure,” “manifestation”) is the Akbarian term for the act by which the divine reality discloses itself in form, name, or contemplative experience. The doctrine holds that the cosmos is the perpetual tajalli of the divine names: each created thing is the locus of a particular divine self-disclosure, and the totality of creation is the unfurled vocabulary of the Real. Tajalli is therefore not a single event but the continuous metaphysical structure of created existence.

In contemplative usage, tajalli also names the discrete moments of theophany the Sufi mystic encounters, the “lifting of the veil” in which a particular divine name or attribute discloses itself directly. The two senses are not separable: contemplative tajalli is the conscious experience of what is metaphysically always the case. The Akbarian school’s tajalli doctrine takes the Quranic theophany at Mount Sinai (Q 7:143, “And when his Lord disclosed Himself [tajalla] to the mountain, He made it crumble”) as the paradigm: divine self-disclosure both makes manifest and dissolves the locus of disclosure.

Etymology

From the Arabic root j-l-w (ج-ل-و), “to make clear,” “to reveal,” “to polish.” The fifth-form verb tajallā carries the sense of “to disclose oneself,” and the verbal noun tajallī names that act of self-disclosure. The Quranic occurrence at 7:143 fixes the term’s theophanic sense and is the controlling reference for all subsequent Sufi technical use.

Cross-tradition resonance

Tajalli stands very close to the Kabbalistic Sefirot understood as divine self-disclosures: the cosmos as the structured manifestation of a divinity that is otherwise unmanifest. The Greek theophania tradition (Pseudo-Dionysius’s hierarchies as ranked theophanies) is a structural cousin, and Eriugena’s theophania doctrine in Latin Christianity carries the term forward into a Western mystical theology that Akbarian tajalli would recognize.

Primary sources

• Quran 7:143: the Sinai theophany, locus classicus.
• Ibn Arabi, Fusus al-Hikam: tajalli as the metaphysical structure of created existence.
• Ibn Arabi, al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya: extended treatment of the divine names as loci of tajalli.

Scholarly literature

• Chittick, The Self-Disclosure of God: book-length English exposition built around the term.
• Chodkiewicz, Seal of the Saints: tajalli’s role in Akbarian sainthood doctrine.

Hekhal Editorial. "Tajalli." Hekhal: An Open Reference for Esoteric Tradition. Last modified May 2, 2026. https://hekhal.org/lexicon/tajalli.

Hekhal Editorial. 2026. "Tajalli." Hekhal: An Open Reference for Esoteric Tradition. https://hekhal.org/lexicon/tajalli.

Hekhal Editorial. "Tajalli." Hekhal: An Open Reference for Esoteric Tradition, May 2, 2026, hekhal.org/lexicon/tajalli.

Hekhal Editorial. (2026). Tajalli. Hekhal: An Open Reference for Esoteric Tradition. https://hekhal.org/lexicon/tajalli

@misc{hekhal-lexicon-tajalli-2026,
  author       = {{Hekhal Editorial}},
  title        = {{Tajalli}},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {{Hekhal: An Open Reference for Esoteric Tradition}},
  url          = {https://hekhal.org/lexicon/tajalli},
  urldate      = {[date accessed]}
}