Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya

[4] Of humble origin, Ibn al-Qayyim's father was the principal (qayyim) of the School of Jawziyya, which also served as a court of law for the Hanbali judge of Damascus during the time period.

[13] Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya wrote a lengthy spiritual commentary on a treatise written by the Hanbali Sufi Khwaja Abdullah Ansari entitled Madarij al-Salikin.

Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya refers to Ansari with the honorific title "Sheikh al-Islam" in his work Al-Wabil al-Sayyib min al-Kalim al-Tayyab.

[1][15] Ibn al-Qayyim died at the age of 60 years, 5 months, and 5 days, on the 13th night of Rajab, 751 AH (September 15, 1350 CE), and was buried besides his father at the Bab al-Saghīr Cemetery.

"[21] Attorney and author Sadakat Kadri states that, "as a matter of straightforward history, torture had originally been forbidden by Islamic jurisprudence.

[22] Some of his major works, such as Madārij, Ṭarīq al-hijratayn (Path of the Two Migrations) and Miftāḥ dār al-saʿāda (Key to the Joyous Dwelling), "are devoted almost entirely to Sufi themes," yet allusions to such "themes are found in nearly all his writings,"[22] including in such influential works of spiritual devotion such as al-Wābil al-Ṣayyib, a highly important treatise detailing the importance of the practice of dhikr, and his revered magnum opus, Madārij al-sālikīn (The Wayfarers' Stages), which is an extended commentary on a work written by the eleventh-century Hanbalite saint and mystic Abdullah Ansari, whom Ibn al-Qayyim referred to reverentially as "Shaykh al-Islām.

Some scholars have compared Ibn al-Qayyim's role to that of Ghazali two-hundred years prior, in that he tried "rediscover and restate the orthodox roots of Islam's interior dimension.

[23] For example, he felt that the pervasive and powerful influence the works of Ibn Arabi had begun to wield over the entire Sunni world was leading to errors in doctrine.

As a result, he rejected Ibn Arabi's concept of wahdat al-wajud or the "oneness of being,[23] " and opposed, moreover, some of the more extreme "forms of Sufism that had gained currency particularly in the new seat of Muslim power, Mamluk Egypt and Syria.

"[23] That said, he never condemned Sufism outright, and his many works bear witness, as it has been noted above, to the immense reverence in which he held the vast majority of Sufi tradition.

As a matter of fact, Ibn al-Qayyim did not condemn the ecstatic Sufis either, regarding their mystical outbursts as signs of spiritual "weakness" rather than heresy.