Al-Sijn
Definition
Al-sijn — the prison — is the place where Yusuf spent years after being falsely accused by Zulaykhah, despite his innocence being effectively established even before he was imprisoned. Ibn Kathir notes the extraordinary spiritual fact: Yusuf chose prison over sin, saying 'My Lord, prison is more beloved to me than what they are calling me to.' Far from being merely a place of suffering, the prison became Yusuf's school of patience, his platform for da'wah to his fellow inmates, and the context in which his gift of dream interpretation would eventually reach the Pharaoh. Ibn Kathir reads the prison not as a divine abandonment of Yusuf but as a divine positioning — placing him exactly where he needed to be to rise from slave to minister in one moment.
As understood in the classical tradition of Ibn Kathir and the scholars of his school.
How the scholars use Al-Sijn.
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"upon him would be — just as He sent him this message — to reinforce him with some of His soldiers and servants, one who would help him to freedom, break down the door of his prison and undo his chains: then, if He does this for him, He has perfected His blessing upon him; and if He leaves him, He has not wronged him nor withheld from him any right that was his, for His praiseworthiness and His wisdom required that He withhold and leave him in his prison — all the more so when he knows that the prison is His prison, and that this enemy who imprisoned him is a possession of His and a servant among"
— Ibn al-Qayyim, al-Fawāʾid — Points of Benefit, Volume One
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"making Allah alone the beloved, worshipped, and sought after in one's heart. For someone in such a state, the world is a prison because it prevents them from beholding their beloved, and death is liberation from this prison and a return to the beloved. What then of the state of one whose only beloved is Allah, and who has longed for Him intensely, yet remains held back from Him, until they are freed from their prison and can be with their beloved, established in eternal security?"
— Imam al-Ghazali, Book 36: The Book of Love, Longing, Intimacy, and Contentment
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"until he meets his Lord, who then releases him from the prison into the widest and sweetest of open spaces. But whoever will not endure these two confinements, and flees from them into the open field of his desires, will find that this earns him a dreadful imprisonment when he departs from this world. For everyone who leaves this world either escapes from prison or goes to prison. And success is from God alone."
— Ibn al-Qayyim, al-Fawāʾid — Points of Benefit, Volume One
Appears in
1 book in the library
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