Al-Jīlī was born in 767 A.H., as he himself says in one of his verses, and died in 811 A.H. He was not a prolific writer like S̱ẖaiḵẖ Muḥy al-Dīn ibn ‘Arabī whose mode of thought seems to have greatly influenced his teaching. He combined in himself poetical imagination and philosophical genius, but his poetry is no more than a vehicle for his mystical and metaphysical doctrines. Among other books he wrote a commentary on S̱ẖaiḵẖ Muḥy al-Dīn ibn ‘Arabī's al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiya, a commentary on Bismillāh, and the famous work Insān al-Kāmil (printed in Cairo). Essence pure and simple, he says, is the thing to which names and attributes are given, whether it is existent actually or ideally. The existent is of two species:-- (1). The Existent in Absoluteness or Pure existence--Pure Being--God. (2). The existence joined with non-existence--Creation--Nature. The Essence of God or Pure Thought cannot be understood; no words can express it, for it is beyond all relation and knowledge is relation. The intellect flying through the fathomless empty space pierces through the veil of names and attributes, traverses the vasty sphere of time, enters the domain of the non-existent and finds the Essence of Pure Thought to be an existence which is non-existence--a sum of contradictions.[152:1] It has two (accidents); eternal life in all past time and eternal life in all future time. It has two (qualities), God and creation. It has two (definitions), uncreatableness and creatableness. It has two names, God and man. It has two faces, the manifested (this world) and the unmanifested (the next world). It has two effects, necessity and possibility. It has two points of view; from the first it is non-existent for itself but existent for what is not itself; from the second it is existent for itself and non-existent for what is not itself. [152:1] Insān al-Kāmil, Vol. I, p. 10. Name, he says, fixes the named in the understanding, pictures it in the mind, presents it in the imagination and keeps it in the memory. It is the outside or the husk, as it were, of the named; while the named is the inside or the pith. Some names do not exist in reality but exist in name only as "‘Anqā" (a fabulous bird). It is a name the object of which does not exist in reality. Just as "‘Anqā" is absolutely non-existent, so God is absolutely present, although He cannot be touched and seen. The "‘Anqā" exists only in idea while the object of the name "Allāh" exists in reality and can be known like "‘Anqā" only through its names and attributes. The name is a mirror which reveals all the secrets of the Absolute Being; it is a light through the agency of which God sees Himself. Al-Jīlī here approaches the Isma‘īlia view that we should seek the Named through the Name.