Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s Manipulation of Sufi Terms 97
al-lahfān min makāyid al-shayṭān (Assistance to the One who Yearns
to Escape from Satan’s Entrapments)^9 is entirely devoted to all ideolo-
gies and creeds that promote consciously or unconsciously polythe-
ism. In this work Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya proposes a demonology
that discerns one mechanism at work in all cults other than “main-
stream” Islam.^10 This mechanism can be explained as satanic plotting.
Satan takes advantage of human ignorance and tries to lure away the
worshippers from the straight path that leads to God. To this end Satan
employs different stratagems. At one time he contaminates the true
cult with erroneous ideas or he introduces rituals that give great appeal
for the common and the educated alike. Satan corrupts the rituals pre-
scribed by God and substitutes them with practices that are visually
more attractive and that soothe the mind, ear and eye. People of learn-
ing, on the other hand, are misled by doctrines that are intellectually
challenging (philosophy, kalām, the Sufi notion of unification with
God expressed in monism and others). Sometimes the association with
the devil is plain and obvious, in other cults, he explains, the associa-
tion is far more subtle and difficult to perceive. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziy-
ya portrayed the history of the polytheistic cults as a process where
original pure precepts of religion were deformed, which led ultimately
to a new religion or the worshipping of new deities. Sufi saint cults
belonged in his opinion to that category.
His probably most important work on Sufism and spirituality in
general is the Madārij al-sālikīn. It is a commentary on the Manāzil
al-sāʾirīn (The Abodes of the Spiritual Travellers), composed by the
Ḥanbalī Sufi Abū Ismāʿīl al-Anṣārī al-Harawī (d. 481/1089), a work
that left a tremendous impact on the development of Sufi thought and
that was especially hailed as a valuable contribution to the develop-
ment of the terminology of the mystic path.^11 Al-Anṣārī al-Harawī’s
9 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad: Ighāthat al-lahfān min
maṣāyid al-shayṭān, ed. by M. Bayūmī, Cairo 1996.
10 For a brief discussion on Ibn al-Qayyim’s “demonology” in the Ighāthat
al-lahfān, see Perlman, Moshe: Ibn Qayyim and the Devil, in: Studi orientalis-
tici in onore di Giorgio Levi Della Vida 2 (1956), pp. 330–337.
11 Serge de Beaurecueil devoted a considerable part of his research to al-Anṣārī’s
life and works. A series of articles has been published in Mélanges de l’institut
dominicain d’études orientales. With regard to this article we would like to
refer to de Beaurecueil, Serge: Esquisse d’une biographie de Anṣārī, in: Mélang-
es de l’institut dominicain d’études orientales 4 (1957), pp. 95–140, Mélanges
de l’institut dominicain d’études orientales 5 (1958), pp. 47–113, Mélanges de
l’institut dominicain d’études orientales 6 (1959), pp. 387–402. Also an article
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