Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s Manipulation of Sufi Terms 117
In the Manāzil al-sāʾirīn, in the abode of qabḍ the servant is “seized”
by God and belongs to the selected or chosen servants, the so-called
ḍanāʾin. As al-Harawī indicated, there are three types of the chosen.
First of all there is the group God wants to protect, the few people
that He severs from their surroundings. He made them go in reclusion
(khalwa) or made them roam far away from their town (siyāḥa). They
shun other people’s company and are reticent in their contacts with
people, as if the inhabitants of this world have nothing in common
with them. A second group consists of those saints who live among
men but whose spiritual states are dissimulated and unknown to peo-
ple. To the outward world they appear as common people, but their
status with God is sure and their spiritual states sound. For the monist
al-Tilimsānī we find in the third group the mystics God has caused to
pass away from their formal existence and who stand as a result nearer
to God. A sort of annihilation takes place that is not accompanied by
feelings of alienation or terror. Al-Tilimsānī tells that God located their
ecstatic feelings and spiritual states in their heart so that they have by
their innate qualities a better understanding of them.^73
Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya did not adopt the Sufi terminology of
qabḍ and basṭ. First of all, according to him, the verse that was used
by al-Anṣārī in the introduction to the station is not appropriate. The
passage is sūrat al-furqān verse 48: “And then We seize it to Ourselves,
drawing it gently” (thumma qabaḍnāhu ilaynā qabḍan yasīran). The
direct object of the verb qabaḍa refers to the shadow mentioned a verse
earlier Ibn al-Qayyim explains and has nothing to do with constriction
of men by God.^74 God spoke of the shadow that could be extended or
restricted at His will.^75 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya agreed with some of
the Sufi definitions of qabḍ with regard to the ḍanāʾin. If al-Harawī
refers to the people for whom God has a special treatment (the so-
called ḍanāʾin), he says, the author is correct. The ḍanāʾin are God’s
favourites, but Ibn al-Qayyim does not treat them as a mystical elite
73 Al-Tilimsānī, Sharḥ manāzil al-sāʾirīn, folio 111.
74 Koran (25:47): “Hast thou not regarded thy Lord, how He has stretched out the
Shadow?” Both translations are borrowed from Arthur J. Arberry’s interpreta-
tion, Arberry, Arthur J.: The Koran Interpreted, London 1980, p. 60.
75 Ibn al-Qayyim, Madārij al-sālikīn, vol. 3, p. 305. Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī, however,
used qabḍ and basṭ in its Koranic context, with reference to the time of private
worship in wird from the first prayer until sunrise. The shadow that was cast on
the believers who are concentrated in prayer, will be constrained by God in his
grip (qabḍ), after which he lets the sun shine out (basṭ), al-Makkī, Qūṭ al-qulūb,
vol. 1, p. 40.
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