102 Gino Schallenbergh
tical sense in the Sufi manuals.^21 Following Ibn Taymiyya’s example
Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya generalised terms that had a specific mean-
ing for Sufis and stripped them of its Sufi connotations.^22 Moreover
he elected the words that occur in the Koran and gave them more
importance than some of the non-Koranic terms that were introduced
in the Sufi manuals. Doing so he retraced these words to the Koranic
context. When Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya discusses the term maʿrifa, for
example, a word that is usually translated as gnosis, he tries to give a
definition of ʿārif, that stays remote from the conventional Sufi under-
standing. ʿĀrif, he explains, is he who knows God, His attributes and
His actions and who as a consequence devotes his actions to God with
conviction. If the worshipper succeeds in this field, he looses his repre-
hensible qualities (awṣāf madhmūma) and becomes patient in his ser-
vitude, even when afflictions befall him. His supplications ascend up to
God only and his intentions are unflawed by the incorrect opinions of
men inspired by their spiritual states and ecstasies. Such person, thus
Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, deserves to be called ʿārif, although others
received the title by tradition. An important element of knowledge, in
Ibn al-Qayyim’s use of the word, is that the ʿārif is always aware of the
absolute dissimilarity (mubāyana) between God and men. The ʿārif is
aware of God’s transcendent existence.^23
1.3. Ibn al-Qayyim’s Critique of Sufi ElitismIbn Qayyim al-Jawziyya was opposed to Sufis who laid claim to eso-
teric knowledge pretending thereby to be superior to the ʿulamāʾ and
other members of the Islamic community. Like Ibn Taymiyya he did
not reject the possibility that God gives special knowledge about things
to some men and not to others, but in his opinion it is hardly a feature
that gives a person more merits than others. As Ibn al-Qay yim sees it
21 Ibn al-Qayyim, Madārij al-sālikīn, vol. 3, p. 353.
22 In the opening lines of his letter to al-Manbijī for example, Ibn Taymiyya speaks
of dhawq and wajd in very general terms, and identifies wajd as the “finding”
(wujūd) of faith in the heart, while he describes dhawq as the emotionally com-
mitted taste of faith. He is silent on the mystic connotation so often attached to
these terms. The fact that he wrote these remarks in the introduction of the let-
ter is undoubtedly inspired by the wish to demarcate his own position on such
terms from al-Manbijī’s. Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ al-rasāʾil wal-masāʾil, vol. 1,
p. 170.
23 Ibn al-Qayyim, Madārij al-sālikīn, vol. 3, p. 356.
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