Ibn al-Qayyim
شمس الدين محمد بن أبي بكر ابن قيم الجوزية
Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah
- Birthplace
- Damascus, Syria
- Madhhab
- Ḥanbalī
- Reference
- Wikipedia ↗
Madārij al-Sālikīn — the classical map of the spiritual journey — and a vast body of work on the soul, love, the traps of the ego, and the nature of the heart.
Ibn al-Qayyim was the lifelong student of Ibn Taymiyyah. He was imprisoned alongside his teacher, studied under him, and after Ibn Taymiyyah's death, carried the Ḥanbalī reformist tradition into a softer and more interior register. His prose is unlike most classical scholars — fiery, personal, poetic, plain-spoken.
Madārij al-Sālikīn is his magnum opus: a commentary on al-Anṣārī's short Sufi treatise, expanded into a sixty-seven-station map of the spiritual life. Each station — yaqaẓah, tawbah, muḥāsabah, maʿrifah — is given its own chapter and filled with Qurʾan, hadith, poetry, and Ibn al-Qayyim's own hard-won experience.
- Madārij al-Sālikīn (Ranks of the Divine Seekers)
- Zād al-Maʿād (Provisions for the Hereafter)
- Al-Dāʾ wa al-Dawāʾ (The Disease and the Cure)
- Iʿlām al-Muwaqqiʿīn (fiqh + uṣūl)
- Rawḍat al-Muḥibbīn (The Garden of the Lovers)
Ibn al-Qayyim is the classical author most often read in private by Muslims seeking words for what they already feel. Madārij al-Sālikīn is the standard against which Arabic devotional prose is measured.
Ibn al-Qayyim, from the books.
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"If the soul is poor, its poverty will affect the heart, disturbing its wealth. Thus, the wealth of the soul completes and perfects the wealth of the heart. The heart's wealth originates from the wealth of the soul. From the heart, wealth reaches the soul, and from the soul, poverty, harm, and hardship reach the heart. Now, the شَيْخ defined the wealth of the soul with three things: First, its steadfastness on what is desired, which is the Truth, the Exalted."
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"of a known form from the soul and its establishing in the outer world. If what is fixed in the soul corresponds to the reality as it truly is, then it is sound knowledge. Yet often there arise and settle in the soul forms that have no real existence, and the one who has fixed them within himself supposes them to be knowledge, when in truth they are merely posited and have no reality. Most of people's knowledge is of this kind. And what does correspond to reality in the outer world is of two sorts: a sort by whose perception and knowledge the soul is perfected — and that is knowledge of God, His names, His attributes, His acts, His books, His command, and His prohibition;"
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"He—may اللّٰه have mercy on him—has a work on this subject, in which he elaborated on it in about twenty different ways, but this is not the place to mention them. The purpose here is to discuss patience, its reality, its levels, and its rank. And اللّٰه is the one who grants success. §§U0007§§ Chapter: Types of Patience Patience by اللّٰه, for اللّٰه, and with اللّٰه Chapter: Types of Patience Patience is of three types: patience by اللّٰه, patience for اللّٰه, and patience with اللّٰه."
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"Patience is of three types: patience by اللّٰه, patience for اللّٰه, and patience with اللّٰه. The first type is patience through seeking help from Him, recognizing that He is the one who grants patience. As اللّٰه says in the القُرْآن: "And be patient, and your patience is not but through اللّٰه." This means that if He does not grant you patience, you will not be patient."
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"This too is not repentance from repentance, but rather repentance from the lack of repentance. The portion of repentance that exists is an act of obedience that should not be repented from, while the missing portion is what requires repentance. Repentance from repentance can only be understood in one of these two ways."
