Ranks of the Divine Seekers

This is an unabridged, annotated, translation of the great Damascene savant and saint Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya's (d. 751/1350) Madåarij al-Salikåin. Conceived as a critical commentary on an earlier Sufi classic by the great Hanbalite scholar Abåu Ismåa°åil of Herat, Madåarij aims to rejuvenate Sufism's Qur'anic foundations. The original work was a key text for the Sufi initiates, composed in terse, rhyming prose as a master's instruction to the aspiring seeker on the path to God, in a journey of a hundredstations whose ultimate purpose was to be lost to one's self (fanåa') and subsist (baqåa') in God. The translator, Ovamir (°Uwaymir) Anjum, provides an extensive introduction and annotation to this English-Arabic face-to-face presentation of this masterpiece of Islamic psychology --