Al-Dawāʾ
الدواءDefinition
The cure — the spiritual remedies prescribed by divine revelation and prophetic guidance to heal the diseases of the heart. Ibn al-Qayyim's profound insight is that the entire architecture of Islamic practice — prayer, fasting, dhikr, charitable giving, repentance, pilgrimage — constitutes a divinely engineered medical system for the soul. Each act of worship addresses specific pathologies of the heart. The cure is always proportionate to the disease, always available, and always effective when applied correctly. The believer's task is not to invent remedies but to understand why the divinely prescribed ones work and to apply them with sincerity.
As understood in the classical tradition of Ibn al-Qayyim and the scholars of his school.
How the scholars use Al-Dawāʾ.
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"with a Q, consists of horses owned by the Sultan, stationed every four miles. The footpost has intervals of one mile, with three stages within it, called the Dawa, with a D and a W, which is a third of a mile, while a mile is called a Kurova, with a K and a R. Each third of a mile has an inhabited village outside, which are three domes where men sit ready to move. They tie their waists, each holding a rod about two arms' length with copper bells at the top. When the courier departs from the city, he holds the letter high in one hand and the jingling rod in the other, running with all his might. As soon as the men in the domes hear the sound of the bells,"
— Ibn Battuta, Volume Two: From India to the Lands of the West · playable in the free preview
Appears in
1 book in the library
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