Origin of Multiplicity of Divine Names in View of Islamic Mystics

All Names of Beauty belong to God the Exalted. Divine Names are mediation for emanation from the Truth and the ground for all sorts of multiplicity found in the scheme of being. How multiple Names manifest from sheer and pure Being and how the identity of Divine Attributes and Essence should be explained are among the most profound problems in mysticism. The present article is an attempt to give a typology of Divine Names and Attributes and their posterior nature to His Essence, offering an interpretation of the identity of Attributes and Essence and the ways Muslim mystics presented in analyzing the plurality of Names. Rational analysis of manyness of Names, reduction of these Names to essential knowledge of God, understanding plurality in terms of their objects and effects and finally analyzing multiplicity of Names as plurality of vision and manyness of spiritual wayfaring are four different ways by mystics for analysis of the origin of multiplicity. To the author each of these ways is a proper response to that question.