Volume Two

What is Volume Two of Madārij al-Sālikīn?

Madārij al-Sālikīn is Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyyah's map of the spiritual journey, written in the 14th century by a scholar known for his work on the soul, love, the traps of the ego and the nature of the heart. The work is arranged as a series of stations, each one a stage the soul passes through on its way to Allah, and each drawn from the verse 'You alone we worship, and You alone we ask for help.' Volume Two is the middle of that journey. Its question is what each station is: what the word means, what the Qur'an says about it, and how the early scholars understood it.

The volume opens with the Station of Humble Submission. Ibn al-Qayyim begins with the verse 'And give good tidings to the humble', then reads the verses that explain who the humble are: those whose hearts tremble when Allah is mentioned and who are patient under what afflicts them. He traces the root word to a low place in the earth and gathers the early interpreters: the humble ones, the one at peace with Allah, the sincere worshippers, those with tender hearts, those who do not wrong others and do not retaliate when wronged. All of these, he concludes, come back to two meanings, humility and tranquillity with Allah.

The opening also shows Ibn al-Qayyim's method. A station is named, anchored in the Qur'an, tested against the early commentators, and then set beside the words of the author of 'The Stations' (al-Manāzil), the earlier text on the stations that Ibn al-Qayyim is explaining. The reader is asked to slow down and take each station on its own terms, learning what a word like humility means in the original language before asking what it means in the heart. Tranquillity with Allah, the second meaning he draws out, is described as turning to Allah and resting with Him.

Last updated 2026-09-11