134 Y. Tzvi Langermann
asserts^28 that he will there provide “more than one hundred proofs”
in favour of the view of the Sunna that the spirits that depart from
the body are “self-standing entities that rise up and go down, join and
disengage, etc.”.^29 Scholars have noticed this passage and speculated as
to the meaning of the reference.^30 However, as far as I know, no one
has realized that the discussion Ibn al-Qayyim refers to there is found
in masʾala 19 of Kitāb al-Rūḥ. One finds in that chapter 100 proofs for
the assertion that “humanity” is “a body different in its quiddity from
sensible body, [and also] luminous, supernal, etc.”. The terminology
is of course quite different from that found in the cross-reference, but
the idea is very much the same: spirit, soul, the essence of humanity,
whatever one wishes to call it, is a substance, a self-standing body, dif-
ferent from earthly bodies, and by no means merely an “accident” (in
the Aristotelian sense) of the earthly body. It may also be noticed that,
as part of the very long title of the nineteenth query, one finds the fol-
lowing: Mā Ḥaqīqat al-nafs...wa-hal hiya al-rūḥ am lā? A question
of this sort is appropriate for a work entitled Fī Maʿrifat al-rūḥ wal-
nafs, and it would fit into the well-established genre of inquiries into
the difference (if there is any) between the two terms. Yet this issue
is not addressed in the nineteenth query. The twentieth query, how-
ever, is devoted entirely to the question, whether soul and spirit are
“one thing, or two things, distinct from one another.” Whatever Ibn al-
Qayyim may have intended to publish as kitābunā al-kabīr fī maʿrifat
al-rūḥ wal-nafs, large chunks of it appear to have been included in
Kitāb al-Rūḥ.
The composite nature of Kitāb al-Rūḥ may also be seen, per-
haps paradoxically, from the recent publication of its final section
(masʾala 21) as a separate volume by one Abū Ḥudhayfa Ibrāhīm b.
Muḥammad.^31 The 21st query discusses the three souls recognized by
Muslim tradition (al-ammāra, lawwāma, muṭmaʾinna, respectively the
commanding, the rebuking, and the serene; see the conspectus below).
28 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Kitāb al-Rūḥ, p. 44.
29 Ibid., p. 44.
30 A reference in exactly the same words is found in Ibn al-Qayyim’s Miftāḥ dār
al-saʿāda; Abū Zayd takes this to be a reference to our Kitāb al-Rūḥ and there-
fore proof for its authenticity. In his bio-bibliography, item 48 (pp. 258–259), he
lists al-Rūḥ wal-nafs as a separate work, no copy of which is known, and which
Ibn al-Qayyim refers to three times in Kitāb al-Rūḥ.
31 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad: al-Furūq al-nafsiyya
bayn ṣifat al-nafs al-ṭayyiba wal-khabītha, ed. by Abū Ḥudhayfa Ibrāhīm b.
Muḥammad, Ṭantā n. d.
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