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hayba with ijlāl, a word that approximates in meaning awe and that is
mentioned in the Koran. As for the greater persistence of awe compared
to fear and hope, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya agrees that fear dissipates in
paradise, while hayba remains. But it does not diminish the importance
of the abode, he remonstrates, because also other lofty virtues that are
essential to the Islamic creed cease to exist in the hereafter. He gives for
example jihad that he calls one of the most exalted obligations of Islam,
but one that is not perpetuated in the hereafter.^39 As to fear’s comple-
mentary sensation of hope, on a higher plan in Sufi imagination, hope
is present with the masters of spiritual exercise (arbāb al-riyāḍāt) in the
wish to gain greater knowledge and piety. The masters aspire to leave
behind the habits of the carnal soul. This is necessary to arrive to a puri-
fied concern and a pure spiritual moment. Doing so, they hope to grasp
the meaning of the revealed law to its full extent and at the same time
to be protected from even the slightest sign of curiosity for all that pro-
cures pleasure. To al-Tilimsānī it entails the purification of the heart in
order to activate its receptiveness towards a moment of contemplation.
Ibn al-Qayyim connects hope to the desire to understand God’s plan
behind the formal prescriptions of Divine law.^40
2.2. Fear, Hope and Mystic ContemplationFear in its most basic expression is in general to many mystics a senti-
ment that belongs to the religiousness of common servants. In the elit-
ist spiritual tripartition the common are outranked by the privileged
and on a still higher level by the privileged of the privileged, for whom
fear and hope take a different turn. Ibn al-ʿArīf identified fear as the
absence of all certainty. Therefore it is in his assessment an abode of
the common. The privileged do not have a share in fear because they
find sufficient certainty of faith in their desire to mystical contempla-
tion. Therefore Ibn al-ʿArīf indicated that a person immersed in mystic
vision goes beyond the abode of fear and enters in the expanse of inti-
macy (uns), because vision brings intimacy, while fear leads at its best to
constriction (qabḍ), one of the other abodes in the Manāzil al-sāʾirīn.^41
Whereas the likes of Ibn al-ʿArīf and in particular the monists went as
39 Ibn al-Qayyim, Ṭarīq al-hijratayn, pp. 308–309.
40 Al-Tilimsānī, Sharḥ manāzil al-sāʾirīn, folio 26; and Ibn al-Qayyim, Madārij
al-sālikīn, vol. 2, p. 56.
41 Ibn al-ʿArīf, Maḥāsin al-majālis, pp. 39–40.
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