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tions.^53 He seems to be in agreement thus far with al-Anṣārī al-Harawī’s
own comments on hope. The latter identified it as an act of opposition
to God. This vision is supported by al-Tilimsānī who explains that the
hope for felicity may be opposed to God’s plan. God, he tells, is the
owner of all and He only can steer His creation as He wants. There-
fore hope can be an audacious act against God’s decree.^54 Instead the
worshipper should surrender to God’s decree and find satisfaction in
his fate. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya has identifed the passage in his com-
mentary on the passage as one of al-Anṣārī’s ecstatic ravings (shaṭaḥāt).
Going against al-Anṣārī’s assessment our Ḥanbalī author calls it one
of the most important abodes, a qualification that it shares with fear
(khawf) and love (maḥabba).^55 He points to the interconnectedness of
the three aspects. By nature, he remarks, every person that loves knows
what fear and hope is. He hopes to find his beloved, and fears that he
may disappear out of his sight.
2.3. Divine DeceptionAl-Tilimsāni gave attention to al-Anṣārī’s definition of the second
degree of fear, a stage of the abode reserved for the privileged who
spent time in mystic contemplation. In one of al-Anṣārī’s typologies
of this abode mention is made of Divine deception (makr). Makr, the
deception created by God to test His servants on the sincerity of their
intention and faith, does usually not abstain from mainstream Sufism’s
terminology. It is a notion that manifests itself in different ways. The
fear for makr can be every believer’s concern to be worried and scared
about the day when he gives his last breath. Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī
describes the fear of makr as the anxiety about the khawātim al-aʿmāl,
the final culmination to the servant’s work. The worshipper lives in
fear that eventually he will be confronted by a negative balance or that
he will die with a deficient sense of tawḥīd or even in plain unbelief
due to an incomplete faith that has been flawed overtime be it heretic
or alien ideas, by which the intentionality of his faith is diverted from
God to a substitute, sometimes without even being aware of this. In
this sense Divine deception gives also way to the fear that after a long
53 This is also al-Qāshānī’s’s conclusion, al-Qashānī, Laṭāʾif al-iʿlām, vol. 1, p. 482.
54 Al-Tilimsānī, Sharḥ manāzil al-sāʾirīn, folio 25.
55 See Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s list of traditions and Koran quotes that underline
the importance of rajāʾ, Ibn al-Qayyim, Madārij al-sālikīn, vol. 2, pp. 42–43.
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