Sura Faatiha

﴿ٱهۡدِنَا ٱلصِّرَٰطَ ٱلۡمُسۡتَقِیمَ﴾ — “Guide us to the straight path” [al-Fātiḥah 1:6]

A complete, unabridged translation of Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyyah’s treatment, with key insights and lessons

Source note (attribution flag): This is a compiled treatment from the corpus of Imām Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyyah (d. 751 AH). The material on how to ask for guidance, the ten ranks of divine speech/guidance, and the four ranks of hudā together with the celebrated excursus on hidāyat al-ḥayawān (the guidance of animals) is drawn from his works on al-Fātiḥah and on qadar — most of the animal-guidance and “four ranks” material is characteristic of Miftāḥ Dār as-Saʿādah and Shifāʾ al-ʿAlīl, while the “ten ranks of divine address” material parallels his Tafsīr / Madārij. Exact paragraph-by-paragraph sourcing is not certain in this compiled form, so it is flagged here rather than asserted. Ḥadīth gradings reported by Ibn al-Qayyim (e.g. “at-Tirmidhī said: ṣaḥīḥ”) are preserved as he gives them; reported anecdotes (“it was related to me…”) are translated as such.

1 · Contemplating one’s poverty and the five ranks of guidance

Then he reflected on his desperate need and utter poverty, which leads to His words ﴿ٱهۡدِنَا ٱلصِّرَٰطَ ٱلۡمُسۡتَقِیمَ﴾ — the substance of which is: knowing the truth, intending it, willing it, acting upon it, remaining firm upon it, calling others to it, and bearing patiently the harm of those called. By completing these five [graded] levels guidance is completed, and whatever is deficient in them is a deficiency in one’s guidance.

And because the servant is in dire need of this guidance — outwardly and inwardly, in everything he undertakes and everything he leaves — [his need spans several categories]:

Matters he has already done other than upon guidance, whether in knowledge, action, or will: he needs to repent of them, and his repentance from them is itself a [form of] guidance.
Matters he has been guided to in principle but not in detail: he needs guidance to their particulars.
Matters he has been guided to from one angle but not another: he needs the completion of guidance in them, so that guidance is perfected for him and he is increased in guidance upon his guidance.
Matters in which he needs to obtain, in his future, the like of the guidance he obtained in his past.
Matters he holds a belief about contrary to what they truly are: he needs a guidance that abrogates that belief from his heart and establishes its opposite in him.
Matters of guidance he is capable of, but no will to do them has been created for him: he needs, for the completion of guidance, the creation of a will by which he performs them.
Matters he is incapable of performing, even while willing them: he needs, in his guidance, to be made able upon them.
Matters he is neither able to perform nor willing for: he needs the creation of both ability and will for him, so that guidance may be completed for him.
Matters he is already carrying out upon guidance — in belief, will, and deed: he needs steadfastness upon them and their continuation.

[Because all of this is so,] his need to ask for guidance is the greatest of all needs, and his poverty toward it is the most severe of all poverties. So the Merciful Lord made this petition obligatory upon him every day and night, in the most excellent of his states — namely the five prayers — repeated multiple times, on account of the intensity of his necessity and poverty toward this object of request.

Key insights & lessons

Guidance is not a single act but a layered process: knowledge → intention → will → action → steadfastness → calling → patience. A deficiency at any stage is a deficiency in one’s guidance overall.

Repentance is a category of guidance, not separate from it. To turn back from a wrong path is to be re-guided.

The servant’s need is mapped exhaustively across the past, what is known vs. unknown, what is willed vs. unwilled, what is within ability vs. beyond it. The petition ﴿ٱهۡدِنَا﴾ covers every one of these gaps.

The reason this duʿāʾ was made a pillar of every unit of every obligatory prayer is precisely the permanence and severity of the need — it is recited “in the most excellent of states.”

2 · Guidance is asked of the only One who possesses it

His words ﴿ٱهۡدِنَا ٱلصِّرَٰطَ ٱلۡمُسۡتَقِیمَ﴾ contain a request for guidance from the One who is able upon it and in whose Hand it lies: if He wills He grants it to His servant, and if He wills He withholds it from him.

Guidance is knowing the truth and acting upon it. Whomever Allah does not make knowing of the truth and acting upon it has no path to becoming guided. So He, Glorified, is uniquely alone in the guidance that necessitates being-guided — the guidance that is never absent once given — which is His making the servant willing of guidance, loving it, preferring it, acting upon it. This guidance belongs neither to a nearest angel nor to a sent prophet. It is the guidance about which He said: ﴿إِنَّكَ لَا تَهْدِي مَنْ أَحْبَبْتَ وَلَٰكِنَّ اللَّهَ يَهْدِي مَن يَشَاءُ﴾ “You do not guide whom you love, but Allah guides whom He wills” [al-Qaṣaṣ 28:56] — together with His words: ﴿وَإِنَّكَ لَتَهْدِي إِلَىٰ صِرَاطٍ مُّسْتَقِيمٍ﴾ “And indeed you do guide to a straight path” [ash-Shūrā 42:52], which is the guidance of calling, teaching, and direction.

This [latter] is the guidance by which Thamūd were guided, yet “they preferred blindness over guidance” — and it is that of which He said: ﴿وَمَا كَانَ اللَّهُ لِيُضِلَّ قَوْمًا بَعْدَ إِذْ هَدَاهُمْ حَتَّىٰ يُبَيِّنَ لَهُم مَّا يَتَّقُونَ﴾ “Allah would never lead a people astray after He has guided them, until He has made clear to them what they should beware of” [at-Tawbah 9:115]. He guided them with the guidance of clarification by which His proof was established against them, yet He withheld from them the guidance that necessitates being-guided — the one whose recipient is never led astray. That [withholding] is His justice toward them; this [establishing the proof] is His wisdom. He gave them that by which the proof stands against them, and withheld from them that of which they were not deserving and which did not befit them.

Key insights & lessons

The whole passage rests on the two-guidance distinction, foundational to Ahl as-Sunnah’s doctrine of qadar:

Hidāyat al-bayān / ad-daʿwah (guidance of clarification and calling) — this the Prophet ﷺ possesses (﴿وَإِنَّكَ لَتَهْدِي﴾). It establishes the proof but does not compel guidance.

Hidāyat at-tawfīq (guidance of enabling) — making the heart will, love, prefer, and act. This belongs to Allah alone (﴿إِنَّكَ لَا تَهْدِي﴾), “not to a nearest angel nor a sent prophet.”

Thamūd are the proof-text: they received the first kind (“We guided them”) and still rejected it (“preferred blindness”), showing that bayān is a condition, not a cause that compels.

The withholding of compelling guidance from those who reject the clear proof is framed as ʿadl (justice); the granting of clarification is ḥikmah (wisdom) — neither is arbitrary.

3 · Guidance is knowledge of the truth with intent and preference

Guidance is knowledge of the truth together with intending it and preferring it over its opposite. The guided one is the one who acts upon the truth, willing it. It is the greatest of Allah’s blessings upon the servant — and for this reason He commanded us to ask Him for guidance to the straight path every day and night in our five prayers.

For the servant is in need of:

Knowing the truth that pleases Allah in every outward and inward movement.
Then — once he knows it — the One who inspires him with the intent of the truth, placing its will in his heart.
Then the One who gives him the power to act upon it.

It is well known that what the servant is ignorant of is many times over what he knows; that everything he knows to be true, his soul does not readily comply with willing; and that even if he willed it, he would be incapable of much of it. So he is compelled, at every moment, toward a guidance that pertains to the past, the present, and the future:

As for the past: he needs to take account of himself over it — whether he was upright in it, so that he thanks Allah for it and persists in it, or whether he departed from the truth in it, so that he repents to Allah Most High from it, seeks His forgiveness, and resolves not to return.
As for guidance in the present: it is sought of him, for he is “the son of his moment” (ibn waqtihi); he needs to know the ruling of what he is presently engaged in — whether it is correct or erroneous.
As for the future: his need for guidance is even more evident, so that his journey may be upon the path.

When this is the nature of guidance, it is known that the servant is the most desperately in need of it of all things, and that the corrupt objection which some people raise — namely, “If we are already guided, what need have we to ask Allah to guide us? Is this not seeking to obtain what is already obtained?” — is the most corrupt of objections and the furthest from correctness. It is proof that its speaker has not grasped the meaning of guidance, nor comprehended its reality and referent. That is why some who attempted to answer it strained to say: “The meaning is: keep us firm upon guidance and make it last for us.”

But whoever has fully grasped the reality of guidance and the servant’s need for it knows that what he has not yet attained of it is many times over what he has attained; that he is at every moment in need of a renewed guidance — especially since Allah Most High is the Creator of the acts of hearts and limbs, so the servant at every moment needs Allah to create for him a specific guidance. Then, even if [that guidance is created], unless Allah averts from him the impediments and deflectors that prevent the effect of guidance and divert it, he will not benefit from the guidance and its purpose will not be completed for him — for a ruling is not sufficed merely by the existence of its cause; rather, there must also be the absence of its impediment and negator.

And it is known that the servant’s whisperings, his passing thoughts, and the appetites of misguidance in his heart are each an impediment to the reaching of guidance’s effect. If Allah does not avert them from him, he will not be guided with a complete guidance. So his needs for Allah’s guidance are bound to his very breaths — and it is the greatest of the servant’s needs.

Key insights & lessons

The objection “why ask for guidance if we already have it?” is dismantled by three facts: (1) the unknown vastly exceeds the known; (2) the soul resists willing even what it knows; (3) even when willing, it is often incapable. Guidance is therefore needed continuously, not once.

“Ibn waqtihi” — the servant is “son of his moment”: guidance is needed for past (muḥāsabah + tawbah or shukr), present (knowing the ruling of one’s current act), and future (the journey ahead).

The “keep us firm” answer is treated as a weak fallback — accurate but betraying a shallow grasp. The deeper answer: guidance must be renewed at every instant because Allah creates the acts of hearts continuously.

Crucial uṣūl point: a cause (muqtaḍī) is not enough — the impediment (māniʿ) must also be removed. Whisperings and appetites are māniʿ to guidance’s effect; their removal is itself part of being guided.

4 · Allah taught His servants how to ask for guidance

Since asking Allah for guidance to the straight path is the noblest of requests and attaining it the most honorable of gifts, Allah taught His servants the manner of asking it, and commanded them to put forward, before their request, His praise (ḥamd), His extolment (thanāʾ), and His glorification (tamjīd) — then to mention their servitude (ʿubūdiyyah) and their affirmation of His oneness (tawḥīd).

These are two means (wasīlatān) to their object of request:

A means by His names and attributes, and
A means by their servitude to Him.

These two means are such that a supplication accompanied by them is scarcely ever rejected. They are corroborated by the two means mentioned in the two hadiths of the Greatest Name (al-Ism al-Aʿẓam) which Ibn Ḥibbān related in his Ṣaḥīḥ, and Imām Aḥmad and at-Tirmidhī:

The first: the hadith of ʿAbdullāh b. Buraydah from his father, who said: The Prophet ﷺ heard a man supplicating, saying: “O Allah, I ask You by [the fact] that I bear witness that You are Allah, there is no god but You, the One (al-Aḥad), the Eternal Refuge (aṣ-Ṣamad), who did not beget nor was begotten, and there is none comparable to Him.” He ﷺ said: “By the One in whose Hand is my soul, he has asked Allah by His Greatest Name — the one by which, when He is called, He answers, and when He is asked, He gives.” At-Tirmidhī said: a ṣaḥīḥ hadith.

This is a tawassul to Allah by His tawḥīd, and by the supplicant’s testimony of His oneness, and the establishment of His attributes indicated by the name aṣ-Ṣamad — which is, as Ibn ʿAbbās said: “The Knowing One whose knowledge is complete, the Able One whose ability is complete.” In another narration from him: “He is the Master in whom every kind of mastery is complete.” Abū Wāʾil said: “He is the Master whose mastery has reached its utmost.” Saʿīd b. Jubayr said: “He is the One perfect in all His attributes, deeds, and words” — and [the testimony] of negating any resemblance or likeness to Him by His words ﴿وَلَمْ يَكُن لَّهُ كُفُوًا أَحَدٌ﴾ “and there is none comparable to Him.”

This is the very creed of Ahl as-Sunnah — and tawassul by belief in it, and bearing witness to it, is the Greatest Name.

The second: the hadith of Anas — that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ heard a man supplicating: “O Allah, I ask You by [the fact] that to You belongs all praise, there is no god but You, the Bestower (al-Mannān), Originator of the heavens and the earth, Possessor of Majesty and Honor, O Living (Ḥayy), O Sustainer (Qayyūm).” He ﷺ said: “He has asked Allah by His Greatest Name.” This is a tawassul to Him by His names and attributes.

And al-Fātiḥah has gathered both means: the tawassul by praise, extolment, and glorification of Him; and the tawassul to Him by servitude and tawḥīd of Him. Then came the request for the most important of all requests and the most successful of desires — namely guidance — after the two means. So the one who supplicates with it is worthy of being answered.

The like of this is the Prophet’s ﷺ supplication which he would make when he rose to pray at night, related by al-Bukhārī in his Ṣaḥīḥ from the hadith of Ibn ʿAbbās: “O Allah, to You belongs all praise, You are the Light of the heavens and the earth and whoever is in them; and to You belongs all praise, You are the Sustainer (Qayyūm) of the heavens and the earth and whoever is in them; and to You belongs all praise, You are the Truth (al-Ḥaqq), Your promise is true, the meeting with You is true, Paradise is true, the Fire is true, the Prophets are true, the Hour is true, and Muḥammad is true. O Allah, to You I have submitted, in You I have believed, upon You I have relied, to You I have turned, by You I have disputed, and to You I have referred for judgment. So forgive me what I have sent before and what I have left behind, what I have concealed and what I have declared. You are my God, there is no god but You.” He mentioned the tawassul to Him by His praise and extolment and by his servitude to Him — then asked Him for forgiveness.

Key insights & lessons

The architecture of duʿāʾ is taught by al-Fātiḥah itself: praise + tawḥīd/ʿubūdiyyah first, request second. The two means (by His names/attributes; by servitude) almost guarantee the answer.

The two Greatest-Name hadiths map onto these two means: Buraydah’s hadith = tawassul by tawḥīd (and the attributes packed into aṣ-Ṣamad); Anas’s hadith = tawassul by names and attributes (al-Mannān, al-Ḥayy, al-Qayyūm…).

The classical glosses on aṣ-Ṣamad are preserved: completeness of knowledge and power (Ibn ʿAbbās), utmost mastery (Abū Wāʾil), perfection in all attributes/acts/words (Saʿīd b. Jubayr).

Ibn al-Qayyim explicitly frames affirming and witnessing these attributes as “the very creed of Ahl as-Sunnah” — and identifies that affirmation as the Greatest Name.

The Prophet’s ﷺ night-prayer duʿāʾ (Bukhārī, from Ibn ʿAbbās) is given as the model: it opens with sustained ḥamd + tawḥīd and only then asks forgiveness.

5 · The ten ranks witnessed within “ihdinā”

Then, from “ihdinā,” he witnesses ten ranks which, when they are gathered, guidance is attained for him:

The first rank — the guidance of knowledge and clarification (ʿilm and bayān): that He make him knowing the truth, perceiving it.
The second: that He make him able upon it — for otherwise he is not able by himself.
The third: that He make him willing of it.
The fourth: that He make him acting upon it.
The fifth: that He make him firm upon that and continue him upon it.
The sixth: that He avert from him the impediments and the opposing accidents.
The seventh: that He guide him within the path itself with a special guidance — more particular than the first — for the first is guidance to the path in summary, while this is guidance within it and in its stations, in detail.
The eighth: that He make him witness the objective within the path and alert him to it, so that he keeps it in view as he travels, turning toward it, not veiled from it by the means.
The ninth: that He make him witness his own poverty and necessity toward this guidance — above every necessity.
The tenth: that He make him witness the two deviant roads that swerve from its road: the road of the people of [divine] wrath — those who turned from following the truth deliberately and obstinately; and the road of the people of misguidance — those who turned from it out of ignorance and straying. Then he witnesses the gathering of the straight path into a single road upon which are all the prophets of Allah and His messengers and their followers among the truthful (ṣiddīqūn), the martyrs (shuhadāʾ), and the righteous (ṣāliḥūn).

This is the gathering upon which the messengers of Allah and their followers stand. Whoever attains this gathering has attained the straight path. And Allah knows best.

Key insights & lessons

This ten-rank scheme is the internalized anatomy of the single petition ﴿ٱهۡدِنَا﴾: it moves from knowledge → ability → will → action → steadfastness → removal of impediments → detailed in-path guidance → keeping the objective in view → witnessing one’s poverty → distinguishing the two deviant roads.

Note the deliberate echo of al-Fātiḥah’s ending: the two deviant roads are al-maghḍūb ʿalayhim (wrath — deviated knowingly/obstinately) and aḍ-ḍāllīn (misguided — deviated through ignorance). Wrath = corruption of will; misguidance = corruption of knowledge.

The destination is “a single road” gathering prophets, ṣiddīqūn, shuhadāʾ, ṣāliḥūn — directly recalling an-Nisāʾ 4:69.

6 · The sixth position: guidance as bayān then tawfīq — two independent guidances

The sixth position, from His words ﴿ٱهۡدِنَا ٱلصِّرَٰطَ ٱلۡمُسۡتَقِیمَ﴾: Guidance is clarification and demonstration (al-bayān wa-d-dalālah), then enabling and inspiration (at-tawfīq wa-l-ilhām) — the latter coming after clarification and demonstration. And there is no path to clarification and demonstration except by way of the messengers. So when the clarification, demonstration, and instruction occur, there follows upon it the guidance of tawfīq: the placing of faith in the heart, making it beloved to it, adorning it within the heart, and making the servant prefer it, content with it, desiring it.

These are two independent guidances; success (falāḥ) is not attained except by both. They comprise: making known to us what we did not know of the truth, in detail and in summary; inspiring us with it; making us willing to follow it outwardly and inwardly; then creating for us the power to carry out what guidance requires in word, deed, and resolve; then making that last for us and keeping us firm upon it until death.

From here is known the servant’s necessity of asking for this petition above every necessity — and the falsity of the saying of the one who says: “If we are already guided, how do we ask for guidance?” For what is unknown to us of the truth is many times the known; and what we do not will to do — out of negligence and laziness — is the like of, or more than, or less than, what we do will; and what we are not able to do of what we will is likewise; and what we know in summary but are not guided to its particulars is a matter beyond enumeration. We are in need of the complete guidance. So whoever has all these matters perfected for him, his asking for guidance is an asking for establishment and harmony (tathbīt and wiʾām).

Guidance has yet another rank — the last of its ranks: the guidance on the Day of Resurrection to the road of Paradise, which is the Ṣirāṭ that leads to it. Whoever is guided in this abode to Allah’s straight path — the one with which He sent His messengers and revealed His books — is guided there to the straight path leading to His Paradise and the abode of His reward.

And to the measure of the firmness of the servant’s foot upon this Ṣirāṭ which Allah has set up for His servants in this abode, will be the firmness of his foot upon the Ṣirāṭ set over the surface of Hell; and to the measure of his travel upon this Ṣirāṭ will be his travel upon that one. Among them is he who passes like lightning; among them he who passes like a glance; among them he who passes like the wind; among them he who passes like a fast-galloping rider; among them he who runs; among them he who walks; among them he who crawls; among them is the one scratched but delivered; and among them is the one cast headlong into the Fire. So let the servant gauge his travel upon that Ṣirāṭ from his travel upon this one — feather for feather (ḥadhwa al-qudhdhati bi-l-qudhdhah), a recompense matching: ﴿هَلْ تُجْزَوْنَ إِلَّا مَا كُنتُمْ تَعْمَلُونَ﴾ “Are you recompensed except for what you used to do?” [an-Naml 27:90].

And let him look at the doubts (shubuhāt) and appetites (shahawāt) that obstruct his travel upon this straight path — for they are the hooks on the two sides of that Ṣirāṭ, snatching him and obstructing his passage over it. If they are many and strong here, so too they are there: ﴿وَمَا رَبُّكَ بِظَلَّامٍ لِّلْعَبِيدِ﴾ “And your Lord is not unjust to the servants” [Fuṣṣilat 41:46].

So the request for guidance comprises the attainment of every good and safety from every evil.

Key insights & lessons

Two independent guidances, both required for falāḥ: (1) bayān/dalālah — which comes only through the messengers; (2) tawfīq/ilhām — placing faith in the heart, adorning it, making it beloved and preferred.

For the already-guided, the petition becomes a request for tathbīt and wiʾām (firmness and harmony) — answering, again, the “why ask?” objection from a different angle than §3.

The eschatological mirror: the dunyā-Ṣirāṭ (the religion) and the ākhirah-Ṣirāṭ (over Hell) are the same path measured twice. Your speed and firmness there mirror your speed and firmness here — “feather for feather.”

Shubuhāt and shahawāt (doubts and appetites) are literally the kalālīb (hooks) on the sides of the Hereafter’s Ṣirāṭ. The two great obstacles to guidance — corruption of knowledge (doubts) and corruption of desire (appetites) — recur as a unifying theme.

7 · The ranks of special and general guidance — ten ranks

The first rank: Allah’s direct speech (taklīm) to His servant

The first rank is the rank of Allah, Mighty and Majestic, speaking to His servant while awake, without intermediary — directly from Him to him. This is the highest of its ranks, as He spoke to Mūsā b. ʿImrān (the blessings and peace of Allah be upon our Prophet and upon him). Allah Most High said: ﴿وَكَلَّمَ اللَّهُ مُوسَىٰ تَكْلِيمًا﴾ “And Allah spoke to Mūsā with [direct] speech” [an-Nisāʾ 4:164].

In the beginning of the verse He mentioned His revelation to Nūḥ and the prophets after him; then He singled out Mūsā from among them with the announcement that He spoke to him. This indicates that the speaking that occurred for him is more particular than the absolute revelation (waḥy) mentioned at the verse’s start. Then He emphasized it with the true verbal noun (al-maṣdar al-ḥaqīqī) — which is the maṣdar of kallama, namely taklīm — to lift the misconception entertained by the Muʿaṭṭilah, the Jahmiyyah, the Muʿtazilah, and others — that it was [merely] inspiration, or a sign, or a conveying of an inner mental meaning by something other than speech. So He emphasized it with the maṣdar that conveys the verification of the relation and the removal of any supposition of metaphor (majāz).

Al-Farrāʾ said: “The Arabs name whatever reaches a person ‘speech’ (kalām), by whatever route it reaches; but they do not ‘verify’ it with the maṣdar. So when they verify it with the maṣdar, it can only be the reality of speech — like irādah (will): one says ‘so-and-so willed a willing (arāda irādatan),’ meaning the reality of will; and one says ‘the wall willed (arāda al-jidār)’ [i.e. was about to fall], but one does not say ‘a willing (irādatan),’ because it is metaphor, not reality.” This is his statement.

Allah Most High said: ﴿وَلَمَّا جَاءَ مُوسَىٰ لِمِيقَاتِنَا وَكَلَّمَهُ رَبُّهُ قَالَ رَبِّ أَرِنِي أَنظُرْ إِلَيْكَ﴾ “And when Mūsā came to Our appointed time and his Lord spoke to him, he said: My Lord, show me [Yourself] that I may look at You” [al-Aʿrāf 7:143]. This speaking is other than the first speaking with which He sent him to Pharaoh: in this second speaking he asked to see [Him], not in the first; in it he was given the Tablets; and it was upon an appointment from Allah to him — whereas the first speaking was not upon an appointment. In it [the first], Allah said to him: ﴿يَا مُوسَىٰ إِنِّي اصْطَفَيْتُكَ عَلَى النَّاسِ بِرِسَالَاتِي وَبِكَلَامِي﴾ “O Mūsā, I have chosen you above mankind by My messages and by My speech” [al-Aʿrāf 7:144] — i.e. by My speaking to you, by the consensus (ijmāʿ) of the Salaf.

He, Glorified, has informed in His Book that He called him (nādāhu) and conversed intimately with him (nājāhu). The call (nidāʾ) is from afar; the intimate converse (nijāʾ) is from near. The Arabs say: when the [vocal] cord is raised, it is nidāʾ or nijāʾ. His father Ādam said to him in his dispute with him: “You are Mūsā whom Allah chose with His speech and whose Torah He wrote for you with His Hand?” Likewise the people of the [Standing] Place will say to him when they seek from him the intercession to his Lord; and likewise in the hadith of the Night Journey (Isrāʾ) regarding seeing Mūsā in the sixth heaven — or the seventh, according to the difference of narration — it says: “that was on account of his being favored with the speech of Allah.”

Were the speaking that occurred for him of the same genus as what occurred for other prophets, there would be no meaning to this singling-out of him in these hadiths, nor would he be called Kalīm ar-Raḥmān (“the one spoken to by the Most Merciful”). Allah Most High said: ﴿وَمَا كَانَ لِبَشَرٍ أَن يُكَلِّمَهُ اللَّهُ إِلَّا وَحْيًا أَوْ مِن وَرَاءِ حِجَابٍ أَوْ يُرْسِلَ رَسُولًا فَيُوحِيَ بِإِذْنِهِ مَا يَشَاءُ﴾ “It is not for any human that Allah should speak to him except by revelation, or from behind a veil, or that He sends a messenger to reveal by His permission what He wills” [ash-Shūrā 42:51]. So He distinguished between the speaking of revelation, the speaking by sending a messenger, and the speaking from behind a veil.

Key insights & lessons

The highest rank of guidance is direct divine speech, awake, without intermediary — exemplified by Mūsā ﷺ, hence Kalīm ar-Raḥmān.

The grammatical argument is decisive against the deniers of God’s real speech: the maṣdar taklīmā “verifies” the verb and forecloses metaphor. Al-Farrāʾ’s rule — arāda al-jidār (“the wall willed,” metaphorical) takes no maṣdar, whereas real willing does — is the proof.

Two distinct taklīm events for Mūsā are distinguished: the first (commissioning to Pharaoh, no appointment) and the second (at the appointed time, request to see Allah, the Tablets given).

Nidāʾ vs. nijāʾ: calling from afar vs. intimate converse from near — both affirmed of Allah’s address to Mūsā.

ash-Shūrā 42:51 sets the three modes of divine address to humans: revelation, from behind a veil, via a messenger — framing the ranks that follow.

The second rank: the waḥy specific to the prophets

Allah Most High said: ﴿إِنَّا أَوْحَيْنَا إِلَيْكَ كَمَا أَوْحَيْنَا إِلَىٰ نُوحٍ وَالنَّبِيِّينَ مِن بَعْدِهِ﴾ “We have revealed to you as We revealed to Nūḥ and the prophets after him” [an-Nisāʾ 4:163]; and He said ﴿وَمَا كَانَ لِبَشَرٍ أَن يُكَلِّمَهُ اللَّهُ إِلَّا وَحْيًا أَوْ مِن وَرَاءِ حِجَابٍ﴾ [ash-Shūrā 42:51].

So He made waḥy in this [Shūrā] verse one of the divisions of speaking (taklīm), while He made it in the verse of an-Nisāʾ a counterpart (qasīm) to speaking. That is by two considerations: it is the counterpart of the special speaking which is without intermediary, and it is a division of the general speaking which is the conveying of meaning by multiple routes.

Waḥy in the language is rapid, hidden notification. In its verb one says waḥā and awḥā. Ruʾbah said:

“The fixed-place inspired to it [stability] and so it became stable.”

And it is [several] divisions, as we shall mention.

Key insights & lessons

Waḥy occupies a hinge position: it is both a species of taklīm (Shūrā) and a counterpart to it (Nisāʾ) — reconciled by distinguishing special taklīm (no intermediary) from general taklīm (conveying meaning by many routes).

The lexical root of waḥy: rapid, hidden notification (al-iʿlām as-sarīʿ al-khafī) — a definition Rajib’s One-Word Series readers will recognize as the kind of root-sense ar-Rāghib and the lexicographers prize.

The third rank: sending the angelic messenger to the human messenger

[Here Allah] reveals to him, from Allah, what He has commanded to be conveyed to him.

These three ranks are specific to the prophets and do not occur for others.

Then this angelic messenger may take the form of a man for the human messenger, whom he sees plainly and who addresses him; he may see him in the form upon which he was created; and the angel may enter into him and reveal what he reveals, then depart from him (yafṣim ʿanhu, i.e. withdraws). All three occurred for our Prophet ﷺ.

Key insights & lessons

The third rank — angelic mediation of revelation — completes the trio of prophet-only ranks (taklīm, waḥy, angelic messenger).

Three modes of the angel’s coming are noted, all experienced by the Prophet ﷺ: appearing as a man, appearing in his created angelic form, and “entering” the Prophet during revelation before withdrawing (faṣm).

The fourth rank: the rank of taḥdīth (being divinely addressed in the heart)

This is below the rank of special waḥy, and is below the rank of the ṣiddīqūn, as it was for ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb (may Allah be pleased with him), as the Prophet ﷺ said: “Among the nations before you there were muḥaddathūn [people spoken to]; if there is any in this nation, then it is ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb.”

I heard Shaykh al-Islām Taqī ad-Dīn Ibn Taymiyyah (may Allah have mercy on him) say: He affirmed decisively that they existed among the nations before us, but he made their existence in this nation contingent upon the conditional “if (in)” — even though it is the most excellent of nations — because of the need of the nations before us for them, and the self-sufficiency of this nation from them through the perfection of its Prophet and his message. So Allah did not make the nation, after him, in need of any muḥaddath, nor mulham (inspired one), nor possessor of kashf (unveiling), nor of manām (dream-vision). This contingency is for the perfection and self-sufficiency of the nation, not for any deficiency in it.

The muḥaddath is the one in whose innermost secret and heart something is “spoken,” and it turns out as he was told.

Our Shaykh said: The ṣiddīq is more perfect than the muḥaddath, because by the perfection of his ṣiddīqiyyah and his following [of the Messenger] he is self-sufficient from taḥdīth, inspiration, and unveiling — for he has surrendered his heart entirely, his secret, his outer and his inner, to the Messenger, so he is made self-sufficient by him from anything coming from himself.

He said: This muḥaddath used to present whatever was “spoken” to him against what the Messenger brought: if it agreed with it, he accepted it; otherwise he rejected it. So it is known that the rank of ṣiddīqiyyah is above the rank of taḥdīth.

He said: As for what many of the people of fancies and ignorance say — “My heart told me, from my Lord” — it is true that his heart told him something, but from whom? From his shayṭān, or from his Lord? When he says “My heart told me from my Lord,” he is ascribing the report to one whom it is not known told him — and that is a lie.

He said: The muḥaddath of the nation [ʿUmar] never used to say that, nor did he utter it a single day of his life. Allah protected him from saying it. Rather, his scribe once wrote: “This is what Allah has shown the Commander of the Believers, ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb,” and ʿUmar said: “No — erase it and write: This is what ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb has seen [i.e. opined]. If it is correct, then it is from Allah; and if it is an error, then it is from ʿUmar, and Allah and His Messenger are free of it.” And he said regarding the kalālah [inheritance ruling]: “I say in it by my opinion; if it is correct, then it is from Allah, and if it is an error, then it is from me and from Shayṭān.”

This is the speech of the muḥaddath, by the testimony of the Messenger ﷺ. Yet you see the Ittiḥādī (incarnationist-unionist), the Ḥulūlī, the licentious “ecstatic dancer” (shaṭṭāḥ), and the samāʿī — brazenly proclaiming with effrontery and fabrication: “My heart told me, from my Lord.” So look at the difference between the two speakers, the two ranks, the two statements, the two states — and give every possessor of a right his right; do not make the counterfeit and the pure one and the same thing.

Key insights & lessons

Taḥdīth is real but subordinate: below waḥy, below ṣiddīqiyyah. The muḥaddath is “spoken to” inwardly and it proves true — yet he tests it against the Sunnah and rejects whatever conflicts.

Ibn Taymiyyah’s precise reading of the hadith: the “if there is any…” is conditional not because this ummah is deficient, but because it is self-sufficient through the completeness of the Prophet ﷺ and his risālah — earlier nations needed muḥaddathūn; this one does not.

The ṣiddīq outranks the muḥaddath because he has surrendered his whole heart to the Messenger and so needs nothing from himself.

The decisive boundary marker: ʿUmar — the paradigm muḥaddath — never said “my heart told me from my Lord.” He insisted: if right, from Allah; if wrong, from me (and Shayṭān). The pretenders who do claim direct heart-to-Lord transmission are liars, ascribing a report to a source unverified.

The closing maxim is a methodological gem: “give every possessor of a right his right; do not make the counterfeit (az-zaghal) and the pure (al-khāliṣ) one and the same.” — i.e. neither deny genuine ilhām nor accept fraudulent claims to it.

The fifth rank: the rank of ifhām (granting [special] understanding)

Allah Most High said: ﴿وَدَاوُودَ وَسُلَيْمَانَ إِذْ يَحْكُمَانِ فِي الْحَرْثِ إِذْ نَفَشَتْ فِيهِ غَنَمُ الْقَوْمِ وَكُنَّا لِحُكْمِهِمْ شَاهِدِينَ ۝ فَفَهَّمْنَاهَا سُلَيْمَانَ وَكُلًّا آتَيْنَا حُكْمًا وَعِلْمًا﴾ “And [mention] Dāwūd and Sulaymān, when they judged concerning the field — when the people’s sheep grazed in it [at night] — and We were witness to their judgment. So We gave Sulaymān understanding of it; and to each [of them] We gave judgment and knowledge” [al-Anbiyāʾ 21:78–79].

He mentioned these two noble prophets and praised them both with knowledge and judgment, yet singled out Sulaymān with [special] understanding (fahm) in this particular case.

ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, when asked, “Did the Messenger of Allah ﷺ single you out with anything apart from the people?” said: “No — by the One who split the seed and created the soul — except an understanding (fahm) Allah grants a servant in His Book, and what is in this scroll” — and in it was al-ʿaql (blood-money), the ransoming of the captive, and that a Muslim is not to be killed for [the killing of] a disbeliever.

In the letter of ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb to Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī (may Allah be pleased with them both): “And [exercise] understanding, understanding (al-fahma al-fahma), in what is submitted to you.”

So understanding is a blessing from Allah upon His servant, and a light Allah casts into his heart, by which he recognizes and grasps what others do not grasp or recognize — so he understands from the text what others do not, despite their being equal in memorizing it and in grasping the basic sense of its meaning.

Understanding from Allah and His Messenger is the emblem of ṣiddīqiyyah and the diploma of prophetic friendship (walāyah). In it the ranks of the scholars have varied — so much that a thousand may be counted against one. Look at the understanding of Ibn ʿAbbās when ʿUmar asked him — and those present from the people of Badr and others — about the Sūrah ﴿إِذَا جَاءَ نَصْرُ اللَّهِ وَالْفَتْحُ﴾ [an-Naṣr 110:1], and what Ibn ʿAbbās was singled out with in understanding from it: that it was Allah’s announcement to His Prophet of [the nearness of] himself — informing him of the presence of his appointed term — and ʿUmar’s agreement with him upon that, while it was hidden from the other Companions. Ibn ʿAbbās at that time was the youngest of them in age. Where do you find in this Sūrah the announcement of his term — were it not for the special understanding?

This becomes so subtle that it reaches ranks beyond which the understandings of most people fall short — so that, alongside the text, one needs something else, and self-sufficiency by the texts does not occur for him; whereas for the possessor of [true] understanding, he needs nothing alongside the texts other than them.

Key insights & lessons

Ifhām is the granting of fahm — a light cast into the heart — by which one person extracts from a text what another, who memorizes the very same text, cannot. The decisive variable is not memory but God-given understanding.

The proof-texts: Sulaymān singled out in the field case (though both he and Dāwūd had ḥukm + ʿilm); ʿAlī‘s “except a fahm Allah grants”; ʿUmar‘s charge to Abū Mūsā — “al-fahma al-fahma.”

Ibn ʿAbbās and Sūrat an-Naṣr is the showcase: the youngest in the gathering grasps that the sūrah quietly announces the Prophet’s ﷺ approaching death, and ʿUmar concurs while the rest miss it. Fahm, not seniority, decides.

Fahm is “the emblem of ṣiddīqiyyah and the diploma of prophetic walāyah” — and explains why, among equally-learned scholars, “a thousand may be counted as one.”

The sixth rank: the rank of general clarification (al-bayān al-ʿāmm)

This is the making evident of the truth and distinguishing it from falsehood by its proofs, evidences, and signs — such that it becomes witnessed to the heart as the eye witnesses visible things.

This rank is the proof of Allah against His creation — by which He punishes no one and leads no one astray except after its reaching him. Allah Most High said: ﴿وَمَا كَانَ اللَّهُ لِيُضِلَّ قَوْمًا بَعْدَ إِذْ هَدَاهُمْ حَتَّىٰ يُبَيِّنَ لَهُم مَّا يَتَّقُونَ﴾ “Allah would never lead a people astray after having guided them, until He has made clear to them what they should beware of” [at-Tawbah 9:115]. So this misleading is a punishment from Him for them, when He had made it clear to them and they did not accept what He clarified, nor act upon it — so He punished them by leading them astray from the guidance. Allah has never led anyone astray except after this clarification.

When you understand this, you understand the secret of qadar (sirr al-qadar), and many doubts and confusions in this matter fall away from you, and you come to know Allah’s wisdom in leading astray whom He leads astray of His servants. The Qurʾān declares this plainly in more than one place:

﴿فَلَمَّا زَاغُوا أَزَاغَ اللَّهُ قُلُوبَهُمْ﴾ “So when they deviated, Allah caused their hearts to deviate” [aṣ-Ṣaff 61:5];
﴿وَقَوْلِهِمْ قُلُوبُنَا غُلْفٌ ۚ بَلْ طَبَعَ اللَّهُ عَلَيْهَا بِكُفْرِهِمْ﴾ “…and their saying ‘Our hearts are wrapped’ — rather, Allah has sealed them on account of their disbelief” [an-Nisāʾ 4:155]. The first is disbelief of obstinacy (kufr ʿinād); the second is disbelief of [sealed] nature (kufr ṭabʿ).
﴿وَنُقَلِّبُ أَفْئِدَتَهُمْ وَأَبْصَارَهُمْ كَمَا لَمْ يُؤْمِنُوا بِهِ أَوَّلَ مَرَّةٍ وَنَذَرُهُمْ فِي طُغْيَانِهِمْ يَعْمَهُونَ﴾ “And We will turn away their hearts and their sights, just as they refused to believe in it the first time; and We will leave them in their transgression, wandering blindly” [al-Anʿām 6:110]. So He punished them for abandoning faith in it when they had become certain of it and verified it — by turning their hearts and sights away, so that they were not guided to it.

Reflect on this position with the fullest reflection, for it is a tremendous position.

Allah Most High said: ﴿وَأَمَّا ثَمُودُ فَهَدَيْنَاهُمْ فَاسْتَحَبُّوا الْعَمَىٰ عَلَى الْهُدَىٰ﴾ “As for Thamūd, We guided them, but they preferred blindness over guidance” [Fuṣṣilat 41:17]. This is guidance after clarification and demonstration — and it is a condition (sharṭ), not a cause (mūjib) [that compels]: for if it is not joined by another guidance after it, the perfection of being-guided is not attained by it — and that [other] is the guidance of tawfīq and ilhām.

This bayān is of two kinds: clarification by the heard, recited signs (al-āyāt al-masmūʿah al-matluwwah), and clarification by the witnessed, seen signs (al-āyāt al-mashhūdah al-marʾiyyah). Both are evidences and signs of Allah’s oneness, His names, attributes, and perfection, and of the truthfulness of what His messengers reported about Him. That is why He calls His servants, by His recited signs, to reflect upon His witnessed signs, and urges them to contemplate these and those. This clarification is what the messengers were sent with, and which was assigned to them and to the scholars after them — and after that, Allah leads astray whom He wills. Allah Most High said: ﴿وَمَا أَرْسَلْنَا مِن رَّسُولٍ إِلَّا بِلِسَانِ قَوْمِهِ لِيُبَيِّنَ لَهُمْ ۖ فَيُضِلُّ اللَّهُ مَن يَشَاءُ وَيَهْدِي مَن يَشَاءُ ۚ وَهُوَ الْعَزِيزُ الْحَكِيمُ﴾ “We sent no messenger except in the tongue of his people, that he might make [things] clear to them; then Allah leads astray whom He wills and guides whom He wills, and He is the Mighty, the Wise” [Ibrāhīm 14:4]. So the messengers clarify, and Allah is the One who leads astray whom He wills and guides whom He wills, by His might and wisdom.

Key insights & lessons

This is the rank that unlocks “the secret of qadar.” Ibn al-Qayyim’s resolution: Allah only leads astray after clarification has reached and been rejected. Misguidance is punishment for refusing accepted, verified truth — not arbitrary withholding from the innocent.

The Qurʾānic pattern is consistent: deviation comes first from the servant (“when they deviated…”), then God’s turning of the heart (“…Allah caused their hearts to deviate”). The sequence preserves both divine justice and the servant’s responsibility.

Two kinds of kufr are distinguished from two verses: kufr ʿinād (obstinate disbelief — aṣ-Ṣaff 61:5) and kufr ṭabʿ (disbelief of a sealed nature — an-Nisāʾ 4:155).

Thamūd recurs as the standing proof that bayān/hidāyah of demonstration is a sharṭ, not a mūjib — a condition, not a compelling cause.

The two registers of āyāt: recited (masmūʿah/matluwwah — the Qurʾān) and witnessed (mashhūdah/marʾiyyah — creation). The recited āyāt summon us to contemplate the witnessed āyāt — the methodological seed of the long animal-guidance section to come (§9).

The seventh rank: special clarification (al-bayān al-khāṣṣ)

This is the clarification that necessitates the special guidance — a clarification accompanied by concern (ʿināyah), enabling (tawfīq), election (ijtibāʾ), and the severing of the causes and materials of abandonment (khidhlān) from the heart — so that guidance is never absent from it whatsoever. Allah Most High said regarding this rank: ﴿إِن تَحْرِصْ عَلَىٰ هُدَاهُمْ فَإِنَّ اللَّهَ لَا يَهْدِي مَن يُضِلُّ﴾ “Though you strive for their guidance, Allah does not guide whom He leads astray” [an-Naḥl 16:37]; and He said: ﴿إِنَّكَ لَا تَهْدِي مَنْ أَحْبَبْتَ وَلَٰكِنَّ اللَّهَ يَهْدِي مَن يَشَاءُ﴾ “You do not guide whom you love, but Allah guides whom He wills” [al-Qaṣaṣ 28:56]. So the first clarification is a condition; this one is a compelling cause (mūjib).

Key insights & lessons

The crux of the whole guidance-doctrine in one line: general bayān (rank 6) is a sharṭ; special bayān (rank 7) is a mūjib. The first can be rejected (Thamūd); the second never fails because it comes wrapped in ʿināyah, tawfīq, ijtibāʾ, and the cutting-off of the causes of khidhlān.

﴿إِنَّكَ لَا تَهْدِي مَنْ أَحْبَبْتَ﴾ belongs here (rank 7), while ﴿وَإِنَّكَ لَتَهْدِي﴾ belongs to rank 6 — the same Prophet ﷺ “guides” (clarifies) yet “does not guide” (cannot compel hearts). The apparent contradiction dissolves once the two ranks are separated.

The eighth rank: the rank of ismāʿ (causing [the heart] to hear)

Allah Most High said: ﴿وَلَوْ عَلِمَ اللَّهُ فِيهِمْ خَيْرًا لَّأَسْمَعَهُمْ ۖ وَلَوْ أَسْمَعَهُمْ لَتَوَلَّوا وَّهُم مُّعْرِضُونَ﴾ “Had Allah known any good in them, He would have made them hear; and [even] had He made them hear, they would have turned away in aversion” [al-Anfāl 8:23]. And He said: ﴿وَمَا يَسْتَوِي الْأَعْمَىٰ وَالْبَصِيرُ ۝ وَلَا الظُّلُمَاتُ وَلَا النُّورُ ۝ وَلَا الظِّلُّ وَلَا الْحَرُورُ ۝ وَمَا يَسْتَوِي الْأَحْيَاءُ وَلَا الْأَمْوَاتُ ۚ إِنَّ اللَّهَ يُسْمِعُ مَن يَشَاءُ ۖ وَمَا أَنتَ بِمُسْمِعٍ مَّن فِي الْقُبُورِ ۝ إِنْ أَنتَ إِلَّا نَذِيرٌ﴾ “The blind and the seeing are not equal, nor darkness and light, nor shade and heat, nor are the living and the dead equal. Indeed Allah causes to hear whom He wills, but you cannot make those in the graves hear; you are only a warner” [Fāṭir 35:19–23].

This ismāʿ is more particular than the ismāʿ of [conveying] the proof and the message — for that is attained for them, and by it the proof was established against them; but that is the hearing of the ears, while this is the hearing of the hearts. For speech has a wording and a meaning; and it has a relation and attachment to the ear and the heart. So the hearing of its wording is the portion of the ear, and the hearing of the reality of its meaning and intent is the portion of the heart. He, Glorified, negated from the disbelievers the hearing of the intended meaning — the portion of the heart — and affirmed for them the hearing of the wordings — the portion of the ear — in His words: ﴿مَا يَأْتِيهِم مِّن ذِكْرٍ مِّن رَّبِّهِم مُّحْدَثٍ إِلَّا اسْتَمَعُوهُ وَهُمْ يَلْعَبُونَ ۝ لَاهِيَةً قُلُوبُهُمْ﴾ “No new reminder comes to them from their Lord except that they listen to it while they play, their hearts diverted” [al-Anbiyāʾ 21:2–3].

This [outer] hearing benefits the hearer only by the establishment of the proof against him, or by enabling him toward it; but the purpose of hearing, its fruit, and what is sought from it is not attained with the heart’s diversion, heedlessness, and aversion. Rather, the hearer leaves saying to the one present with him: ﴿مَاذَا قَالَ آنِفًا﴾ “What did he just say?” — ﴿أُولَٰئِكَ الَّذِينَ طَبَعَ اللَّهُ عَلَىٰ قُلُوبِهِمْ﴾ “Those are the ones upon whose hearts Allah has set a seal” [Muḥammad 47:16].

The difference between this rank and the rank of ifhām is that this one occurs only by way of the ear, whereas the rank of ifhām is more general [in its means] — so [ismāʿ] is more particular than the rank of fahm from this angle; while the rank of fahm is more particular from another angle — namely, that it attaches to the intended meaning, its entailments, attachments, and allusions. The rank of samāʿ turns upon the conveying of the intended [meaning] of the address to the heart, and upon this hearing follows the hearing of acceptance.

So it is, therefore, three [grades of] hearing: the hearing of the ear, the hearing of the heart, and the hearing of acceptance and response (qabūl and ijābah).

Key insights & lessons

Ismāʿ (Allah’s “causing to hear”) is hearing of the heart, not of the ear. The disbelievers fully hear the words (ear) yet are deaf to the meaning (heart) — Allah negates the latter and affirms the former (al-Anbiyāʾ 21:2–3).

Outer hearing only establishes the proof or enables it; it does not yield hearing’s fruit while the heart is “diverted” (lāhiyah). Hence the disbeliever leaves the gathering asking “What did he just say?” (Muḥammad 47:16).

The careful comparison: ismāʿ is narrower than fahm in means (ear-only) but fahm is narrower in object (it reaches entailments, allusions).

Three grades of hearing: ear → heart → acceptance/response. Guidance is only complete at the third.

The ninth rank: the rank of ilhām (inspiration) — the station of the muḥaddathīn

Allah Most High said: ﴿وَنَفْسٍ وَمَا سَوَّاهَا ۝ فَأَلْهَمَهَا فُجُورَهَا وَتَقْوَاهَا﴾ “By the soul and the One who proportioned it, and inspired it [with discernment of] its wickedness and its piety” [ash-Shams 91:7–8]. And the Prophet ﷺ said to Ḥuṣayn b. al-Mundhir al-Khuzāʿī when he embraced Islam: “Say: O Allah, inspire me with my right guidance (rushdī), and protect me from the evil of my soul.”

The author of al-Manāzil [al-Harawī al-Anṣārī] made inspiration the station of the muḥaddathīn. He said: it is above the station of firāsah (perceptive insight), because firāsah may occur rarely, and may be difficult for its possessor at a [given] time, or resist him; whereas ilhām occurs only in a settled, ready station (maqām ʿatīd).

I [Ibn al-Qayyim] say: Taḥdīth is more particular than ilhām. For ilhām is general to the believers in proportion to their faith — so every believer has been inspired by Allah with his rushd by which his faith was attained. As for taḥdīth, the Prophet ﷺ said of it: “If there is any in this nation, then it is ʿUmar” — meaning, among the muḥaddathīn. So taḥdīth is a special ilhām, and it is the waḥy to other than prophets — whether to the mukallafīn, as in His words ﴿وَأَوْحَيْنَا إِلَىٰ أُمِّ مُوسَىٰ أَنْ أَرْضِعِيهِ﴾ “We inspired the mother of Mūsā: nurse him” [al-Qaṣaṣ 28:7] and His words ﴿وَإِذْ أَوْحَيْتُ إِلَى الْحَوَارِيِّينَ أَنْ آمِنُوا بِي وَبِرَسُولِي﴾ “And when I inspired the disciples: believe in Me and in My messenger” [al-Māʾidah 5:111]; or to non-mukallafīn, as in His words ﴿وَأَوْحَىٰ رَبُّكَ إِلَى النَّحْلِ أَنِ اتَّخِذِي مِنَ الْجِبَالِ بُيُوتًا﴾ “And your Lord inspired the bee: take homes in the mountains…” [an-Naḥl 16:68]. All of this is waḥy of inspiration (waḥy ilhām).

As for his [al-Harawī’s] making it above the station of firāsah: it was argued against him that firāsah may occur rarely (as mentioned), and the rare has no [general] ruling; and it may resist its possessor and be difficult for him, not complying with him — whereas ilhām occurs only in a settled, ready station, meaning the station of nearness and presence (al-qurb wa-l-ḥuḍūr).

The verified conclusion in this is: each of firāsah and ilhām divides into a general and a special; the special of each is above the general of the other; and the general of each may occur often, while its special occurs rarely. But the correct distinction is this: firāsah may be connected to a kind of acquisition and earning (kasb wa-taḥṣīl); whereas ilhām is a pure gift (mawhibah mujarradah), attained by no acquisition whatsoever.

Key insights & lessons

Ilhām is general — every believer is inspired with the rushd that produced his faith (ash-Shams 91:8). The Prophet ﷺ taught even the new convert to ask for it.

Taḥdīth = a special ilhām, and is identified as “waḥy to other than prophets” — extending to mukallafīn (Mūsā’s mother; the disciples) and even non-mukallafīn (the bee). All such waḥy is waḥy ilhām, categorically distinct from prophetic waḥy.

Ibn al-Qayyim refines al-Harawī: both ilhām and firāsah split into general/special; the special of one outranks the general of the other. The clean dividing line: firāsah can be acquired/earned; ilhām is a pure gift, unattainable by any effort.

The tenth rank: the true dream (ar-ruʾyā aṣ-ṣādiqah)

It is a part of prophethood, as is established from the Prophet ﷺ that he said: “The true dream is one part of forty-six parts of prophethood.”

It has been said concerning the reason for this particular figure: the very beginning of revelation was the true dream, and that lasted for half a year; then it transferred to waking revelation for the span of twenty-three years, from when he was sent until he passed away (the blessings and peace of Allah be upon him). So the ratio of the period of dream-revelation to that is one part of forty-six. This is excellent — were it not for what came in the other authentic narration: “that it is one part of seventy parts.”

It has been said, in reconciling the two: that this is according to the state of the dreamer — for the dream of the ṣiddīqūn is from forty-six, while the true dream of the generality of believers is from seventy. And Allah knows best.

The dream is the beginning of revelation; its truthfulness is in proportion to the truthfulness of the dreamer; and the most truthful of people in dream is the most truthful of them in speech. Near the approach of [the end of] time, it scarcely errs — as the Prophet ﷺ said — and that is because of the distance from prophethood and its traces, so the believers are compensated by the dream. As for the time of the strength of the light of prophethood, in the manifestation and strength of its light there is what suffices over the dream.

The like of this is the karāmāt (miracles of the friends of Allah) that appeared after the era of the Companions and did not appear among them — because of their self-sufficiency from them by the strength of their faith, and the need of those after them for them due to the weakness of their faith. Imām Aḥmad explicitly stated this meaning. ʿUbādah b. aṣ-Ṣāmit said: “The dream of the believer is a speech by which the Lord speaks to His servant in sleep.” The Prophet ﷺ said: “Nothing remains of prophethood except the bearers of glad tidings (al-mubashshirāt).” It was said: “And what are the mubashshirāt, O Messenger of Allah?” He said: “The righteous dream which the believer sees or which is seen for him.”

When the dreams of the Muslims concur (tawāṭuʾ), they do not lie. The Prophet ﷺ said to his Companions when they were shown the Night of Decree in the last ten [nights]: “I see that your dreams have concurred upon the last ten; so whoever among you seeks it out, let him seek it in the last ten of Ramaḍān.”

The dream, like kashf (unveiling), is of [three sorts]: merciful (raḥmānī), of the self (nafsānī), and satanic (shayṭānī). The Prophet ﷺ said: “Dreams are three: a dream from Allah, a dream of grieving from Shayṭān, and a dream from what a man tells himself while awake, then sees in sleep.” And the one that is among the causes of guidance is specifically the dream that is from Allah.

The dreams of the prophets are revelation (waḥy), for they are protected from Shayṭān — and this is by the agreement of the nation; that is why al-Khalīl [Ibrāhīm] proceeded to slaughter his son Ismāʿīl (peace be upon them both) on account of a dream. As for the dreams of others, they are presented against the explicit revelation: if they agree with it [they are acted upon], otherwise they are not.

If it is said: “What do you say if a dream is true, or [the dreams] concur?” — We say: when it is like that, it is impossible for it to contradict the revelation; rather, it can only be conforming to it, alerting to it, or alerting to the subsumption of a particular case under its ruling which the dreamer did not [previously] recognize as being subsumed within it, so the dream alerts him to that.

Whoever wishes his dream to be confirmed [as true], let him strive for truthfulness, eat the lawful, preserve the command and prohibition, sleep upon complete purity facing the qiblah, and remember Allah until his eyes are overcome — for then his dream will scarcely lie at all.

The most truthful of dreams is the dream of the pre-dawn hours (al-asḥār) — for it is the time of the divine descent, the nearness of mercy and forgiveness, and the stilling of the devils. Its opposite is the dream of late evening (al-ʿatamah), at the spreading of the devils and the satanic spirits. ʿUbādah b. aṣ-Ṣāmit (may Allah be pleased with him) said: “The dream of the believer is a speech by which the Lord speaks to His servant in sleep.”

The dream has an angel appointed over it, who shows the servant [things] in parables suited and resembling to him — striking them for each person according to his measure. Mālik said: “The dream is, of revelation, a [form of] revelation.” He forbade interpreting it without knowledge, and said: “Do you trifle with the revelation of Allah?”

For the mention of the dream, its rulings, its details, and the methods of its interpretation, there are dedicated treatises; mentioning them here would take us beyond the objective. And Allah knows best.

Key insights & lessons

The true dream is “one part of prophethood” — and the two figures (1/46 and 1/70) are reconciled either by the ratio of the Prophet’s ﷺ dream-revelation period to his total revelation, or by the rank of the dreamer (ṣiddīqūn → 1/46; general believers → 1/70).

A profound historical principle: dreams and karāmāt intensify as prophetic light recedes. The Companions needed neither much because their faith was strong; later generations are compensated with them for their weaker faith (Imām Aḥmad affirmed this).

Three kinds of dream (raḥmānī, nafsānī, shayṭānī) — only the raḥmānī (from Allah) is a means of guidance. Prophets’ dreams are protected revelation (hence Ibrāhīm acting on his); everyone else’s must be tested against explicit revelation and can never truly contradict it.

Practical protocol for truthful dreams: truthfulness, lawful food, guarding the commands/prohibitions, sleeping in purity facing qiblah, dhikr until sleep. Best time: al-asḥār (pre-dawn — time of divine descent, stilled devils); worst: al-ʿatamah.

Mālik’s warning frames the ethics of taʿbīr: “The dream is a form of revelation — do you trifle with the revelation of Allah?” Don’t interpret without knowledge.

8 · The servant’s need to ask Allah to guide him to the straight path

The soundness of the heart (salāmat al-qalb) is not completed for the servant absolutely until he is safe from five things:

Shirk that contradicts tawḥīd;
Bidʿah that opposes the Sunnah;
Shahwah (appetite) that opposes the command;
Ghaflah (heedlessness) that contradicts dhikr (remembrance);
Hawā (caprice) that contradicts abstraction and sincerity (tajrīd and ikhlāṣ).

These five are veils between [the servant] and Allah — and beneath each one of them are many kinds, comprising individual instances beyond enumeration.

For this reason the servant’s need — rather, his necessity — has intensified, that he ask Allah to guide him to the straight path: there is nothing he is more in need of than this petition, and nothing more beneficial to him than it.

For the straight path comprises knowledge, will, deeds, and abstentions (turūk) — outward and inward — flowing over him at every moment. The particulars of the straight path the servant may know, and may not know; what he does not know may be more than what he knows; and what he knows he may be able upon, and may not be able upon — and it remains the straight path even if he is incapable of it; and what he is able upon, his soul may will it and may not will it — out of laziness, negligence, or the standing of an impediment, and the like; and what he wills he may do and may not do; and what he does, he may carry out with the conditions of sincerity (ikhlāṣ) and may not; and what he carries out with the conditions of sincerity, he may carry out with complete following (mutābaʿah) and may not; and what he carries out with following, he may remain firm upon and may have his heart turned away from it. All of this is occurring and pervasive among creation — so [some are] reckoned little [in it] and [some] reckoned much.

It is not in the servant’s nature to be guided to [all] that — rather, when he is left to his own nature, it is interposed between him and all of that. This is the overturning (irkās) by which Allah overturned the hypocrites for their sins — returning them to their nature and what their souls were created upon, of ignorance and wrongdoing (jahl and ẓulm).

The Lord, Blessed and Most High, is upon a straight path in His decree and destiny, His prohibition and command. He guides whom He wills to a straight path by His grace and mercy, and His placing of guidance where it is fit; and He turns whom He wills away from His straight path by His justice and wisdom, for the unfitness of the receptacle (al-maḥall) — and that is the requisite of His straight path which He is upon. So when the Day of Resurrection comes, He sets up for His creation a straight path that brings them to Him — for He is upon a straight path.

He set up for His servants, from His command, a straight path; He called them all to it as a proof from Him and justice; and He guided whom He wills of them to traversing it as a blessing from Him and grace — and He did not depart, by this justice and this grace, from His straight path which He is upon. So when the Day of meeting Him comes, He sets up for His creation a straight path that conveys them to His Paradise; then He turns away from it whomever He turned away [from it] in the world, and keeps firm upon it whomever He kept firm upon it in the world — a manifest light running before them and on their right hands in the darkness of the Gathering — and He preserves their light for them until they have crossed, just as He preserved faith for them until they met Him. And He extinguishes the light of the hypocrites when they are most in need of it — just as He extinguished it from their hearts in the world.

He sets up the deeds of the sinners along the two sides of the Ṣirāṭ as hooks and thorns that snatch them — just as they snatched them in the world from uprightness upon it. He makes the strength of their travel and their speed in proportion to the strength of their travel and speed in the world. He sets up for the believers a Pool (ḥawḍ) from which they drink, corresponding to their drinking from His revealed law in the world; and He deprives of drinking from it there whoever was deprived of drinking from His law and religion here.

So look at the Hereafter as though it were before your very eyes, and contemplate Allah’s wisdom in the two abodes — you will then know with certain knowledge, in which there is no doubt: that the world is the tillage of the Hereafter, its prelude and its specimen; and that the stations of people in [the Hereafter] of felicity and wretchedness are according to their stations in this abode in faith and righteous deeds — and their opposites. And with Allah is enabling-grace (tawfīq).

So among the greatest punishments of sins is departure from the straight path in this world and the Hereafter.

Key insights & lessons

Five veils block soundness of heart, each the inverse of a pillar of the religion: shirk (vs. tawḥīd), bidʿah (vs. Sunnah), shahwah (vs. command), ghaflah (vs. dhikr), hawā (vs. ikhlāṣ). A practical self-audit.

The staircase of obstacles between the servant and the straight path is laid out exhaustively: known/unknown → able/unable → willing/unwilling → doing/not → with ikhlāṣ/without → with mutābaʿah/without → firm/turned-away. At every step the petition ﴿ٱهۡدِنَا﴾ is needed.

“It is not in the servant’s nature to be guided” — left to himself he reverts to jahl and ẓulm (the irkās of the hypocrites). This is the anthropological ground for why guidance must be granted, not self-generated.

The recurring affirmation: Allah Himself is “upon a straight path” — His guiding (by grace) and His turning-away (by justice, for the unfit receptacle) are both expressions of that straightness. Neither violates it.

The grand dunyā/ākhirah correspondence, drawn out point-by-point: the Ṣirāṭ over Hell, the believers’ preserved light vs. the hypocrites’ extinguished light, the deeds-as-hooks, and the Ḥawḍ as the mirror of drinking from the Sharīʿah. “The world is the tillage of the Hereafter, its prelude and its specimen.”

9 · A comprehensive discourse: on guidance and misguidance, their ranks, and what of them is within the creature’s power and what is not

This doctrine is the heart of the chapters of qadar and its questions. For the most excellent thing Allah destines for His servant, and the most magnificent thing He apportions to him, is guidance; and the gravest thing by which He tests him and decrees upon him is misguidance. Every blessing falls short of the blessing of guidance, and every calamity falls short of the calamity of misguidance.

The messengers of Allah, from the first of them to the last, and the Books revealed upon them, agreed: that He, Glorified, leads astray whom He wills and guides whom He wills; that whomever Allah guides, none can misguide, and whomever He misguides, none can guide; that guidance and misguidance are in His Hand, not in the servant’s hand; and that the servant is the one who goes astray or the one guided — so the guiding and misguiding are His act and decree, while the being-guided and going-astray are the servant’s act and acquisition (kasb).

There is no avoiding, before plunging into the verification of that, the mention of the ranks of guidance and misguidance in the Qurʾān. As for the ranks of guidance, they are four:

The first — general guidance: the guiding of every soul to the interests of its livelihood and what sustains it. This is the most general of its ranks.
The second — guidance in the sense of clarification, demonstration, teaching, and calling to the servant’s interests in his return [to Allah / the Hereafter]. This is specific to the mukallafīn (the legally accountable), and is more particular than the first and more general than the third.
The third — the guidance that necessitates being-guided: the guidance of tawfīq, Allah’s willing guidance for His servant, His creating the motives of guidance and its will and the power upon it for the servant. This guidance none is able upon except Allah, Mighty and Majestic.
The fourth — guidance on the Day of Return to the road of Paradise and the Fire.

Key insights & lessons

The single most consequential statement of the section: guidance is the greatest of all gifts; misguidance the gravest of all trials. Everything else ranks beneath them.

The four-rank scheme is the master map: (1) general (all creatures, livelihood) → (2) bayān/daʿwah (mukallafīn only) → (3) tawfīq (Allah alone) → (4) eschatological (to Paradise/Hell). Ranks 2 and 3 are the famous daʿwah vs. tawfīq pair; the section now expands each in turn.

The creed-line all messengers and Books agree upon: hidāyah and iḍlāl are His acts; ihtidāʾ and ḍalāl are the servant’s kasb. This holds the middle between Qadariyyah (who deny rank 3) and Jabriyyah (who deny the servant’s act) — both refuted later in the section.

The first rank in detail: ﴿قَدَّرَ فَهَدَىٰ﴾ and ﴿أَعْطَىٰ كُلَّ شَيْءٍ خَلْقَهُ ثُمَّ هَدَىٰ﴾

As for the first rank, He, Glorified, said: ﴿سَبِّحِ اسْمَ رَبِّكَ الْأَعْلَى ۝ الَّذِي خَلَقَ فَسَوَّىٰ ۝ وَالَّذِي قَدَّرَ فَهَدَىٰ﴾ “Glorify the name of your Lord, the Most High, who created and proportioned, and who destined and guided” [al-Aʿlā 87:1–3].

He mentioned four matters: creation (al-khalq), proportioning (at-taswiyah), destining (at-taqdīr), and guidance (al-hidāyah). He made proportioning the completion of creation, and guidance the completion of destining.

ʿAṭāʾ said: “‘created and proportioned’ — He made what He created in the best [form]” — its witness being His words ﴿الَّذِي أَحْسَنَ كُلَّ شَيْءٍ خَلَقَهُ﴾ “who perfected everything He created” [as-Sajdah 32:7]. The perfection of His creation includes its proportioning and the mutual proportion of its creation and parts, such that there occurs among them no disparity disrupting harmony and balance. So al-khalq is the bringing-into-being, and at-taswiyah is its precise crafting and the perfecting of its creation.
al-Kalbī said: “He created every possessor of a soul, gathering its creation and proportioning it — with the two hands, the two eyes, the two legs.”
Muqātil said: “He created for every beast what is fit for it of [its] creation.”
Abū Isḥāq said: “He created man upright.” This is by way of example, otherwise creation and proportioning encompass man and others — He said ﴿وَنَفْسٍ وَمَا سَوَّاهَا﴾ “By the soul and the One who proportioned it” [ash-Shams 91:7], and ﴿فَسَوَّاهُنَّ سَبْعَ سَمَاوَاتٍ﴾ “…and proportioned them into seven heavens” [al-Baqarah 2:29] — so proportioning encompasses all His creation: ﴿مَا تَرَىٰ فِي خَلْقِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ مِن تَفَاوُتٍ﴾ “You see no disparity in the creation of the Most Merciful” [al-Mulk 67:3].

Whatever disparity and lack of proportioning is found goes back to the non-bestowal of proportioning upon the creature — for proportioning is an existential matter connected to influence and origination, so whatever of it is absent is due to the absence of the Creator’s will for proportioning, and that is a privative matter, sufficed by the mere non-origination and non-influence. So reflect on that, for it removes from you the difficulty in His words ﴿مَا تَرَىٰ فِي خَلْقِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ مِن تَفَاوُتٍ﴾: the disparity occurs by reason of the non-willing of proportioning — just as ignorance, deafness, blindness, dumbness, and muteness are sufficed [in their occurrence] by the mere non-willing of their creation and origination. The full treatment of this comes — if Allah wills — in the chapter of the entry of evil into the [divine] decree, in connection with the Prophet’s ﷺ words: “…and evil is not [attributed] to You.”

The point is: every creature — its Creator, Glorified, has proportioned it in the rank of its creation, even if proportioning eluded it from another angle that was not created for it.

Key insights & lessons

Al-Aʿlā 87:1–3 pairs creation ↔ proportioning and destining ↔ guidance: taswiyah completes khalq; hidāyah completes taqdīr. Guidance is thus woven into the very fabric of how creatures are made.

A subtle theodicy point: apparent “disparity/defect” (tafāwut) is privative — it results from the non-bestowal of proportioning, not from a positive defective creation. Like blindness or deafness, it needs only the absence of the will to create the perfection. (Ibn al-Qayyim defers the fuller treatment to his chapter on evil and qadar — “evil is not [attributed] to You.”)

Several Salaf glosses on khalaqa fa-sawwā are preserved (ʿAṭāʾ, al-Kalbī, Muqātil, Abū Isḥāq) — Abū Isḥāq’s “created man upright” treated as example, since the verse spans all creation.

The meaning of taqdīr and hidāyah in the first rank

As for destining and guidance:

Muqātil said: “He destined — He created the male and the female — and guided the male to the female, how to come to her.”
Ibn ʿAbbās, al-Kalbī, and likewise ʿAṭāʾ said: “He destined of offspring what He willed, then guided the male to the female.” The author of an-Naẓm chose this view, saying: “The meaning of ‘guided’ is the guiding of the male to come to the female, how to come to her” — because the coming of the males of animals to their females differs, due to the difference of forms, creation, and shapes; so, were it not that He, Glorified, ingrained in every male the knowledge of how to come to the female of its kind, it would not be guided to that.
Muqātil also said: “He guided it to its livelihood and pasture.”
as-Suddī said: “He destined the term of the fetus in the womb, then guided it to come out.”
Mujāhid said: “He guided man to the path of good and evil, felicity and wretchedness.”
al-Farrāʾ said: “‘He destined’ — and ‘guided’ and ‘misguided’ — He sufficed, by mentioning one of the two, [for] the other.”

I [Ibn al-Qayyim] say: the verse is more general than all of this, and the weakest of the views in it is the view of al-Farrāʾ — since what is intended here is the general guidance to the interests of the animal in its livelihood, not the guidance of faith and the misguidance by His will. It is the counterpart of His words ﴿رَبُّنَا الَّذِي أَعْطَىٰ كُلَّ شَيْءٍ خَلْقَهُ ثُمَّ هَدَىٰ﴾ “Our Lord is the One who gave everything its creation, then guided” [Ṭāhā 20:50] — for the giving of creation is its bringing-into-existence externally, and the guidance is the teaching and demonstration of the way of its subsistence, and what preserves and sustains it.

What Mujāhid mentioned is an example on his part, not an interpretation matching the verse — for the verse encompasses the guidance of all animals: the articulate and the dumb, the bird and the beast, the eloquent and the non-speaking. Likewise the view of the one who said it is the guidance of the male to the female is also an example, and is one single instance of the instances of guidance which none can enumerate but Allah. Likewise the view of the one who said He guided it to the pasture — for that is among the [instances of] guidance: for guidance to latching onto the teat when it emerges from its mother’s belly; guidance to recognizing its mother rather than others, so that it follows her wherever she goes; guidance to seeking what benefits it of pasture rather than what harms it; and the guidance of birds, beasts, and animals to the wondrous acts that man is incapable of — like the guidance of the bee to traversing the paths in which its pastures lie, despite their divergence, then returning to its homes among the trees, mountains, and what the children of Ādam plant…

Key insights & lessons

Ibn al-Qayyim’s verdict on the mufassirūn: each Salaf gloss (male-to-female, livelihood, fetus’s exit, good/evil) is a valid example but too narrow as the meaning. The verse’s true scope is the universal guidance of every creature to the interests of its existence and survival.

al-Farrāʾ’s view is judged weakest — reading “guided” as implying “guided and misguided [in faith]” — because the context is natural/livelihood guidance, not faith guidance.

The pivot point: ﴿أَعْطَىٰ كُلَّ شَيْءٍ خَلْقَهُ ثُمَّ هَدَىٰ﴾ — giving creation = bringing into existence; guidance = teaching the way of subsistence. This sentence launches the great excursus on the guidance of animals (hidāyat al-ḥayawān) that follows — the recited āyah summoning contemplation of the witnessed āyah, exactly as established in rank 6 (§7).

The guidance of animals (hidāyat al-ḥayawān) — the witnessed signs of the Lord

The bee — among the most wondrous of guidance

The matter of the bee in its guidance is among the most wondrous of wonders. For it has a commander and director — the yaʿsūb (the queen/chief) — which is larger in body than all the bees, and the finest of them in color and shape. The female bees give birth at the onset of spring, and most of their offspring are females; and whenever a male falls among them, they do not leave it among them — rather, they either drive it out or kill it — except a small group of them that are around the king, because the male among them does not work or earn anything.

Then the mothers and their young gather around the king, and he goes out with them to the pasture — among the orchards, gardens, groves, and meadows — by the most direct and nearest of roads, so they gather their sufficiency from it; then the king returns with them. When they reach the hives, he stands at their door and lets no male nor any foreign bee enter; and when their entry is complete, he enters after them. The bees take up their seats and places, and the king begins the work, as though teaching it to them: the bees take to the work and rush to it, and the king leaves the work and sits to one side, where he watches the bees.

The bees set about producing the wax from the gum of the leaves and blossoms. Then the bees divide into groups: a group keeps to the king and does not leave him, neither working nor earning — these are the king’s retinue from among the males; a group prepares and fashions the wax — wax being the dregs of the honey, in which there is a sweetness like the sweetness of the fig; the bees have a severe care for it, above their care for the honey — so the bees clean it, purify it, and free it of whatever mixes with it of their droppings and the rest; a group builds the houses; a group carries water upon their backs; and a group sweeps the hives and cleans them of dirt, carcasses, and dung. When they see among themselves a despicable, idle bee, they cut it off and kill it, lest it spoil the rest of the workers and infect them with its idleness and despicableness.

The first thing built in the hive is the king’s seat and house — so they build him a square house resembling a couch and throne, upon which he sits, and around which a group of bees encircle, resembling commanders, servants, and intimates, who do not leave him. The bees place before him something resembling a basin, into which is poured the purest honey they can manage, filling the basin with it — that being food for the king and his retinue.

Then they set about building the houses upon equal lines, as though they were lanes and quarters. They build their houses hexagonal, with equal sides, as though they had read the book of Euclid — so that they came to know the most fitting of shapes for their houses! For the objective of building dwellings is firmness and capacity — and the hexagonal shape, above all other shapes, when its parts are joined one to another, becomes a round shape like the roundness of a millstone, in which there remain no gaps nor crevices; and one part reinforces another until it becomes a single, well-fixed layer, into which the heads of needles cannot penetrate between its houses.

So blessed is He who inspired it to build its houses with this firm construction, which mankind is incapable of producing the like of! For [the bee] knew that it needed to build its houses out of shapes characterized by two qualities:

The first: that its angles not be narrow, so that the narrow spot would not remain unused.
The second: that those houses be shaped such that, when joined one to another and the space is filled with them, none of it is left wasted.

Then it knew that the shape characterized by these two qualities is the hexagon alone — for triangles and squares, even though the space can be filled with them, their angles are narrow; and as for the other shapes, even though their angles are wide, the space is not [fully] filled with them — rather, empty, wasted gaps remain between them. But the hexagon is characterized by both qualities. So He, Glorified, guided it to build its houses upon this shape — without ruler, instrument, or model to imitate — while the most skillful of the children of Ādam is unable to build a hexagonal house except with great tools.

So blessed is He who guided it to travel the paths of its pastures upon its [own] strength, and to come to them submissively — not resisting it nor straying from them — and to gather the finest and most delicate of what is in the pasture, and to return to its empty houses and pour into them ﴿شَرَابٌ مُّخْتَلِفٌ أَلْوَانُهُ فِيهِ شِفَاءٌ لِّلنَّاسِ ۚ إِنَّ فِي ذَٰلِكَ لَآيَةً لِّقَوْمٍ يَتَفَكَّرُونَ﴾ “a drink of varying colors, in which is healing for people. Indeed in that is a sign for a people who reflect” [an-Naḥl 16:69].

When it finishes building the houses, it goes out hungry (empty-bellied), ranging over plain and mountain, and eats from the lofty sweetness atop the heads of flowers and the leaves of trees, then returns full-bellied. He, Glorified, placed in their mouths a ripening heat that ripens what they have gathered, so it returns it as sweetness and ripeness; then they disgorge it into the houses; and when they are filled, it seals them and stops up their openings with refined wax. When those houses are filled, it heads to another place — if it finds one — and makes houses in it, doing as it did in the first houses.

When the air turns cold, the pasture fails, and it is barred from earning, it keeps to its houses and nourishes itself from the honey it stored. In the days of earning and striving, it goes out at daybreak and ranges in the meadows, each group of them employed in what pertains to it. When evening comes, it returns to its houses.

When the time of their return comes, a doorkeeper of them stands at the door of the hive, with helpers; every bee wishing to enter, the doorkeeper smells it and inspects it — and if it finds from it a foul odor, or sees upon it a smear of filth, it bars it from entering and sets it aside until all have entered. Then it returns to those set aside, barred from entry, and inspects them and examines their states a second time: whoever it finds has alighted upon something stinking or impure, it cuts in two; and whoever’s offense is slight, it leaves outside the hive. This is the doorkeeper’s practice every evening.

As for the king, it does not go out of the hive much, except rarely — when it desires recreation it goes out, and with it the commanders of the bees and the servants, and it circles in the meadows, gardens, and orchards for an hour of the day, then returns to its place. Among the wonders of its affair is that, sometimes, harm befalls it from the bees, or from the owner of the hive, or from his servants — so it becomes angry and goes out of the hive and distances itself from it, and all the bees follow it, leaving the hive empty. When its owner sees that and fears that the bees will be taken and go to another place, he contrives to recover it and seek its pleasure: he locates its place to which it has gone, recognizing it by the gathering of bees upon it — for they do not leave it, and gather upon it until they become a cluster upon it. When it goes out in anger, it sits upon a raised spot on the tree, and the bees circle around it and join to it until it becomes like a ball. So the bee-keeper takes a spear or a long reed and ties to its head a bundle of fragrant, clean, sweet-smelling plants, and brings it near the king’s place — having with him either a lute, a flute, or some instrument of music, which he plays while bringing that herbage near — and he does not cease in that until the king is pleased; and when it is pleased and its anger departs, it springs and alights upon the bundle, and its servants and the rest of the bees follow it; so its owner carries it to the hive, and it descends and enters — it and its troops.

The bees alight upon no carcass, animal, nor [human] food. Among the wonders of their affair: they kill the tyrannical, corrupting kings and do not yield obedience to them. The small, gathered-bodied bees are the honey-makers, and they strive to fight the long, little-benefit [bees] and to drive them out and banish them from the hives — and when they do that, the honey is improved. They take care to kill whatever they wish to kill outside the hive, to guard the hive from its carcass. Among them is a kind of little benefit, large body, between which and the honey-makers there is war: it heads for them and ambushes them and opens upon them their houses, and seeks their destruction; and the honey-makers are extremely vigilant and guarded against it — so when it assaults them in their houses, they contend with it and force it to the doors of the houses, where it becomes smeared with honey and cannot fly. The long-lived eater does not escape them — and when the war ends and the fighting cools, they return to the slain, carry them, and cast them outside the hive.

We mentioned that the king does not go out except occasionally; and when it goes out, it goes out among crowds of the young and the youths. When it resolves to go out, it remains, the day before or two days before, teaching the young and assigning them their stations and ranks; then it goes out, and they go out with it in an order and arrangement which it has arranged with them, from which they do not depart. When males are born to it, it knows that they will seek the kingship — so it sets each one over a group of the young; and no king of them kills another king, because of the corruption, destruction, and dispersal of the subjects that would result from that. When the owner of the hive sees that the kings have multiplied in the hive and fears the bees’ dispersal because of them, he contrives against them and takes all the kings except one, and confines the rest with him in a vessel, leaving with them of honey what suffices them — so that, when some affliction, illness, or death befalls the appointed king, or it is corrupting and the bees kill it, he takes one of those confined ones and sets it in its place, lest the bees remain without a king and their affair fall into disarray. Among the wonders of its affair: when the king goes out for recreation, with it the commanders and troops, and weariness sometimes overtakes it — so the young carry it.

Among the bees are noble workers that have striving, resolve, and exertion; and among them are base, lazy ones of little benefit, preferring idleness — so the noble ones constantly drive these off and banish them from the hive and do not dwell with them, fearing that they would infect their noble ones and corrupt them.

The bee is among the most delicate and purest of animals — that is why it does not cast its droppings except while flying — and it loathes stench and foul odors. Its young and virgins are more watchful, more striving than the elders, less stinging, and finer in honey; and its sting, when it stings, is less harmful than the sting of the elders.

Because the bee is among the most beneficial and blessed of animals, it has been singled out from the revelation (waḥy) of the Lord Most High and His guidance with what nothing else shares with it; and because what comes out of its bellies is the material of healing from ailments and the light that shines in darkness — like the guides among mankind — it has the most enemies, and its enemies are among the least beneficial and blessed of animals. This is the way (sunnah) of Allah in His creation, and He is the Mighty, the Wise.

Key insights & lessons

The bee section is a sustained meditation on inspired (ilhām) order: the division of labor (wax-makers, builders, water-carriers, sweepers, doorkeeper, retinue), the kingship/yaʿsūb, the recovery ritual, the policing of idlers and corrupt kings — all without instruction, instrument, or model.

The hexagon argument is the intellectual centerpiece: the cell must satisfy two geometric conditions — no narrow wasted angles and complete tiling of the plane with no gaps. Triangles/squares tile but waste in narrow angles; wider polygons don’t tile; only the hexagon satisfies both. “As though they had read the book of Euclid” — yet the bee builds it “without ruler, instrument, or model,” where the most skilled human needs tools. The design points past the designed to the Designer.

The Qurʾānic anchor is woven in directly: ﴿شَرَابٌ مُّخْتَلِفٌ أَلْوَانُهُ فِيهِ شِفَاءٌ لِّلنَّاسِ﴾ (an-Naḥl 16:69) — the sign is “for a people who reflect.”

The closing sunnah: the most beneficial/blessed creature (yielding shifāʾ and nūr) is singled out with divine inspiration and beset by the most enemies — a pattern Ibn al-Qayyim reads as a law of creation (cf. the guides among mankind).

Attribution note: this is classical natural-historical observation (much of it traceable to al-Jāḥiẓ and earlier ʿajāʾib literature), marshalled by Ibn al-Qayyim as contemplative evidence (āyāt mashhūdah), not as a zoological treatise; read it as tafakkur, not modern entomology.

The ant — among the most guided of animals

This ant is among the most guided of animals, and its guidance is among the most wondrous of things. For the small ant goes out of its house and seeks its food — and even if the road is far for it — when it obtains it, it carries it and drives it along crooked, distant roads of ascent and descent, in the utmost ruggedness, until it reaches its houses, where it stores its provisions at the time of possibility. When it stores them, it heads for what among them would sprout, and splits it into two halves so that it will not sprout; and if it would sprout even when split in two, it splits it into four. When moisture reaches it and it fears rot and spoilage upon it, it waits for a sunny day, then goes out with it and spreads it at the doors of its houses, then returns it to them. And no ant feeds from what another has gathered.

Sufficient as to the guidance of the ant is what Allah, Glorified, related in the Qurʾān of the ant whose speech Sulaymān heard, and her address to her companions in her saying: ﴿يَا أَيُّهَا النَّمْلُ ادْخُلُوا مَسَاكِنَكُمْ لَا يَحْطِمَنَّكُمْ سُلَيْمَانُ وَجُنُودُهُ وَهُمْ لَا يَشْعُرُونَ﴾ “O ants, enter your dwellings, lest Sulaymān and his troops crush you while they do not perceive” [an-Naml 27:18].

She opened her address with the call (nidāʾ) which is heard by the one addressed; then she brought the ambiguous noun; then she followed it with what fixes it — the generic noun — intending generality; then she commanded them to enter their dwellings, so that they take refuge from the army; then she informed of the cause of this entering — namely, the fear that the harm of the troops would befall them, and Sulaymān and his troops would crush them; then she excused the Prophet of Allah and his troops, [saying] that they do not perceive [the ants]. This is among the most wondrous of guidance.

Reflect on how Allah, Glorified, magnified the affair of the ant by His words ﴿وَحُشِرَ لِسُلَيْمَانَ جُنُودُهُ مِنَ الْجِنِّ وَالْإِنسِ وَالطَّيْرِ فَهُمْ يُوزَعُونَ﴾ “And gathered for Sulaymān were his troops of jinn, men, and birds, and they were [marching] in ranks” [an-Naml 27:17]. Then He said ﴿حَتَّىٰ إِذَا أَتَوْا عَلَىٰ وَادِ النَّمْلِ﴾ “until, when they came upon the valley of the ants” [27:18] — so He informed that they all passed over that valley, and it indicates that that valley was known for ants, like the valley of the lions and the like. Then He informed of what indicates the acute sagacity of this ant and the fineness of her knowledge, where she commanded them to enter their own dwellings specific to them — for she and the ants knew that each group of them has a dwelling which none but they enter. Then she said ﴿لَا يَحْطِمَنَّكُمْ سُلَيْمَانُ وَجُنُودُهُ﴾, joining his name and person and identifying him by both, and identifying his troops and their leader. Then she said ﴿وَهُمْ لَا يَشْعُرُونَ﴾ — as though she joined between excusing the harm of the army by their being unaware, and blaming the nation of ants for not taking their precaution and entering their dwellings. That is why the Prophet of Allah smiled, laughing at her words — and it is indeed a place of wonder and smiling.

Az-Zuhrī related, from ʿAbdullāh b. ʿAbdullāh b. ʿUyaynah, from Ibn ʿAbbās, that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ forbade the killing of the ant, the bee, the hoopoe, and the shrike (ṣurad). In the Ṣaḥīḥ, from Abū Hurayrah, from the Prophet ﷺ: “An ant bit one of the prophets, so he ordered the ant-colony and it was burned. Allah revealed to him: ‘Because an ant bit you, you burned a nation of nations that glorifies [Allah]? Why not a single ant?'”

Hishām b. Ḥassān mentioned: that the household of al-Aḥnaf b. Qays suffered hardship from the ants, so al-Aḥnaf ordered a chair to be placed by two ovens, and he sat upon it and bore witness [to faith], then said: “Either you desist, or I shall burn you and do such and such.” He said: and so they departed.

ʿAwf b. Abī Jamīlah related, from Qasāmah b. Zuhayr, who said: Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī said: “Everything has masters — even the ants have masters.” Among the wonders of its guidance is that it knows its Lord — that He is above His heavens, upon His Throne — as Imām Aḥmad related in the Book of Asceticism (az-Zuhd) from the hadith of Abū Hurayrah, raising it: “A prophet of the prophets went out with the people seeking rain. He encountered an ant raising its legs to the sky, supplicating, lying on its back. He said: ‘Return, for you have been answered'” — or “you have been given rain through other than yourselves.” This report has several chains; aṭ-Ṭaḥāwī related it in at-Tahdhīb and others.

Imām Aḥmad said: …“Sulaymān b. Dāwūd went out seeking rain and saw an ant lying on its back, raising its legs to the sky, saying: ‘O Allah, we are a creature of Your creation; we have no escape from Your watering and Your sustenance. So either water us and sustain us, or destroy us.’ He said: ‘Return, for you have been given rain through the supplication of other than you.'”

It was related to me that an ant went out of its house and came upon a piece of a locust, and tried to carry it but could not, so it went off and came back with helpers to carry it with it. He said: but [the narrator] had lifted that from the ground — so [the ant] circled in its place and did not find it, and they departed and left her. He said: then he set it [back] down — so she returned, attempting to carry it, and could not, so she went off and brought them; [again he] lifted it — so she circled and did not find it, and they departed. He said: she did this several times; and on the last time, the ants formed a ring, set her in its center, and cut her apart limb by limb.

Our Shaykh [Ibn Taymiyyah] said — and this story had been related to him — “This ant: Allah, Glorified, has ingrained it upon the ugliness of lying and the punishment of the liar.”

The ant is among the most avid (greedy) of animals — its avidity is proverbial. It is mentioned that Sulaymān (the blessings and peace of Allah be upon him), when he saw the avidity of the ant and the intensity of its hoarding of food, summoned an ant and asked her: “How much does an ant eat of food each year?” She said: “Three grains of wheat.” So he ordered her to be cast into a glass flask, and the mouth of the flask sealed, and placed with her three grains of wheat, and left her for a year — after she had said [that]. Then he ordered the flask opened at the end of the year, and he found one grain and a half. He said: “Where is your claim that your provision each year is three grains?” She said: “Yes — but when I saw you preoccupied with the affairs of your own kind, I reckoned what remained of my life, and found it more than the appointed span [you set], so I confined myself to half the provision and kept the [other] half in reserve, for the preservation of my life.” So Sulaymān marveled at the intensity of her avidity. This is among the most wondrous of guidance and gift.

Of its avidity: it toils through the length of summer and gathers for winter — knowing of itself the difficulty of seeking in winter and the impossibility of earning in it. Despite its weakness, it is mighty in strength — for it carries many times its own weight and drags it to its house. Among the wonders of its affair: if you take a dry coriander-seed and bring it near your nose, you smell no scent for it; yet when you place it on the ground, the ant comes to it from a distant place — and if it is unable to carry it, it goes and brings a row of ants who carry it. So how did it find the scent of that from the depths of its house? It perceives by smell from afar what others perceive by sight or hearing. It comes from a far place to a spot where a person ate and where crumbs of bread or the like remain, and carries it off — even if it is larger than itself; and if it is unable to carry it, it goes to its burrow and comes with a band of its companions, who come like a black thread, one following another, until they cooperate in carrying and transporting it. It comes to an ear of grain and smells it: if it finds it to be wheat, it cuts it, tears it, and carries it; and if it finds it barley — no. It has true smell, distant resolve, intense avidity, and boldness in attempting to transport what is many times its weight. The ants have no leader or chief that directs them — as the bees do — except that they have a scout that seeks provision: when it stands upon it, it informs its companions, and they go out together, each ant striving in the welfare of the collective, not embezzling from the grain anything for itself apart from its fellows.

Among the wonders of its affair: when a man wishes to guard against the ant — lest it fall into honey or the like — he digs a hollow and sets water around it, or takes a large vessel and fills it with water, then places that thing in it; so the one that circles around it cannot reach it, and instead climbs the wall and walks upon the ceiling until it is over that thing, then casts itself upon it — and we ourselves have tested this. Once a craftsman heated a ring (collar) with fire and cast it on the ground to cool, and it happened that the ring enclosed some ants — so [an ant] headed in [all] directions to get out, but the blaze of the fire reached it, so it kept to the center, the middle of the ring — and that became a center for it, the farthest place from the circumference.

Key insights & lessons

The ant’s practical sciences: long-haul foraging, storage, splitting grains to stop germination (in two, or in four if needed), drying stores in the sun against rot, the ethic that “no ant eats from another’s gathering.”

The Qurʾānic ant (an-Naml 27:18) is read as a model of eloquent address (balāghah): nidāʾ → ambiguous noun → generic noun (for generality) → command (enter) → cause (lest crushed) → excuse (they do not perceive). She names Sulaymān and his troops, excuses the prophet, and implicitly blames her own nation. Hence the Prophet Sulaymān’s smile.

The chain of prophetic prohibitions (killing ant, bee, hoopoe, shrike) and the burnt-colony hadith (“…a nation that glorifies [Allah] — why not a single ant?”) ground the ethic of not destroying ummahs that have their own tasbīḥ. (Gradings as Ibn al-Qayyim gives: the burnt-colony hadith is in the Ṣaḥīḥ via Abū Hurayrah; the istisqāʾ ant-reports he flags as having “several chains,” with takhrīj by Aḥmad in az-Zuhd and aṭ-Ṭaḥāwī — i.e. treat the istisqāʾ narrations as reports with multiple turuq, not as conditions of ʿaqīdah.)

The ant “knows its Lord is above His heavens upon His Throne” — Ibn al-Qayyim deploys the istisqāʾ narration in service of his ʿaqīdah of ʿuluww (a theological reading the reader should note is his framing of the report, flagged here as such).

Two reported anecdotes (clearly marked by Ibn al-Qayyim as “it was related to me”): (1) the ant punished by its colony for false report (Ibn Taymiyyah: God “ingrained it upon the ugliness of lying”); (2) Sulaymān and the ant in the flask (the half-ration reckoning) — read as ʿibrah/ḥikmah, not ḥadīth.

The closing observations — smell over sight, carrying many times its weight, the scout system, the ring-trap “center” — all serve the same end: tafakkur in the witnessed signs.

The hoopoe (al-hudhud) — and its knowledge of water beneath the earth

This hoopoe is among the most guided of animals, and the most discerning of the places of water beneath the earth — which none but it sees. Among its guidance is what Allah related of it in His Book: that it said to the Prophet of Allah, Sulaymān — when [Sulaymān] had missed it and threatened it — and when it came to him, it forestalled with the excuse before Sulaymān could warn it of punishment, and addressed it with an address by which it stirred him to listen to it and accept from it, saying ﴿أَحَطتُ بِمَا لَمْ تُحِطْ بِهِ﴾ “I have encompassed [in knowledge] what you have not encompassed” — and within this is [the implication]: that I have come to you with a matter I have come to know with utmost knowledge, such that I encompassed it, and it is a tremendous report of significance. That is why it said ﴿وَجِئْتُكَ مِن سَبَإٍ بِنَبَإٍ يَقِينٍ﴾ “and I have come to you from Sabaʾ with certain news” [an-Naml 27:22].

The nabaʾ is the report that has [great] significance, to the knowledge of which souls eagerly aspire. Then it described it as a nabaʾ yaqīn — certain news, no doubt or suspicion in it. So this is a prelude before its informing the Prophet of Allah of that news — which emptied the heart of the one informed to receive the report, and necessitated for him the complete longing to hear and know it. This is a kind of eloquent opening (barāʿat al-istihlāl) and stirring address.

Then it unveiled the reality of the report, an unveiling corroborated by the proofs of corroboration, saying: “Indeed I found a woman ruling them.” Then it informed of the affair of that queen — that she is among the mightiest of kings, having been given of everything that a king might fittingly be given. Then it increased in magnifying her affair by mentioning her throne upon which she sits, and that it is a great throne. Then it informed him of what would call them to heading for them and raiding them in their own home-ground — after calling them to Allah — saying: ﴿وَجَدتُّهَا وَقَوْمَهَا يَسْجُدُونَ لِلشَّمْسِ مِن دُونِ اللَّهِ﴾ “I found her and her people prostrating to the sun apart from Allah” [an-Naml 27:24].

And it dropped the conjunction (the particle of connection) from this sentence and brought it independent, not conjoined to what preceded — to signal that it is the intended [point], and what precedes is a preface for it. Then it informed of the one who misled them, who drove them to that — namely Shayṭān’s adornment of their deeds for them, until he barred them from the straight path, which is prostration to Allah alone. Then it informed that this barring came between them and guidance and prostration to Allah, to whom alone prostration is fitting. Then it mentioned, of His acts, Glorified — the bringing-forth of the hidden (al-khabʾ) in the heavens and the earth: that is what is hidden in them of rain, plants, minerals, and the kinds of what descends from the sky and what comes out of the earth. In the hoopoe’s mention of this particular matter of the Lord’s acts there is a signal of what Allah singled it out with — the bringing-forth of the water hidden beneath the earth.

The author of al-Kashshāf [az-Zamakhsharī] said: “In [mentioning] the bringing-forth of the hidden there is an indication that it is from the speech of the hoopoe — for its ‘engineering’ and its knowledge of water beneath the earth, that being by inspiration from the One who brings forth the hidden in the heavens and the earth. Magnificent is His power and subtle His knowledge. The signs of every person — by craft, or by some art of knowledge — scarcely escape the one of perceptive insight (firāsah) who looks by the light of Allah, in his appearance, his speech, and his bearing. No human works a work except that Allah casts upon him the cloak of his work.”

Key insights & lessons

The hoopoe is a study in rhetorical strategy: it forestalls punishment with its excuse, then deploys a barāʿat al-istihlāl — ﴿أَحَطتُ بِمَا لَمْ تُحِطْ بِهِ ۖ وَجِئْتُكَ مِن سَبَإٍ بِنَبَإٍ يَقِينٍ﴾ — to empty the listener’s heart and create longing before delivering its report.

Balāghah note (settled, not speculative): the dropping of the conjunction before ﴿وَجَدتُّهَا وَقَوْمَهَا يَسْجُدُونَ لِلشَّمْسِ﴾ signals that this (their sun-worship) is the intended core, and all prior detail (the queen, the throne) is preface to it — a clear istiʾnāf function.

az-Zamakhsharī’s reading (flagged as his bayānī inference): the hoopoe’s mention of al-khabʾ (the hidden) points to its God-given gift for sensing subterranean water — “by inspiration from the One who brings forth the hidden.” The closing line is striking: “No human works a work except that Allah casts upon him the cloak of his work” — i.e. one’s inner reality eventually shows on the surface to the people of firāsah.

The dove/pigeon (al-ḥamām) — among the most wondrous of animals in guidance

This dove is among the most wondrous of animals in guidance — so much so that ash-Shāfiʿī said: “The most intelligent of birds is the dove.” The carrier pigeons (barīd al-ḥamām) are those that carry letters and dispatches — and sometimes the value of one bird of them exceeds the value of a slave or servant, because the purpose attained by it is attained neither by a slave nor by any other animal: for it goes and returns to its place from a distance of a thousand leagues (farsakh) or less, conveying the reports, purposes, and aims upon which the weighty affairs of kingdoms and dynasties depend.

Those entrusted with its affair take tremendous care of its lineages: they distinguish between its males and females at the time of mating, transferring the males from their females to others, and the females from their males; and they fear for them the corruption of their lineages and their conceiving from other than [the intended mate]; and they ascertain the soundness of their routes and their locale. They do not trust that the female be spoiled by a male of the common doves, so that hybridity (hujnah) would afflict her. Those who manage their affair do not guard the wombs of their [own] women, nor take precaution for them, as they guard the wombs of their doves and take precaution for them! Those in charge of that have rules and methods which they observe with the utmost care — to the point that, if they see a fallen dove, its pedigree, lineage, and town are not hidden from them. They esteem the one of experience and knowledge [of doves], and their souls are generous to him with abundant reward.

They choose, for carrying the letters and dispatches, the males of them, saying: “It is more longing for its home, on account of its female; it is stronger of back, sturdier of body, and better in guidance.” And a faction of them choose the females for that, saying: “The male, when it travels and its absence lengthens, longs for the females and yearns for them — so it may see a female on its road and its coming, and cannot be patient from her, and abandons the journey and inclines to fulfilling its want from her.” Its guidance is in proportion to teaching, habituation, and settling [it to its home].

The dove is described with blessing and affection (uns) toward people: it loves people, and people love it; it grows familiar with the place and is firm upon the covenant and loyalty to its owner — even if he mistreats it — and returns to him from far distances; sometimes it is barred and leaves its homeland for ten years, yet remains firm upon loyalty, until, when it finds an opportunity and capacity, it returns to it.

The dove, when it wishes to mate, is extremely gentle with the female: it begins by spreading its tail and lowering its wing, then draws near the female and coos to her, kisses her, and woos her, puffs itself up and raises its breast — then a kind of infatuation overtakes it. The female, in that, lets down her wing and shoulder to the ground; and when it fulfills its want from her, the female mounts it — and this is in nothing of the animals but it. When the male knows that it has deposited in the female’s womb that from which the offspring will be, it and the female head to seek reeds, grass, and small twigs, and they fashion from it a nest, weaving it an interlocking weave, in a spot the size of the dove’s body; and they make its edges raised and projecting, lest the eggs roll off it — a fortress for the brooder. Then they revisit that spot and take turns at the nest, warming it and sweetening it, removing its first nature and introducing into it another nature, derived and extracted from the nature of their bodies and scent — so that, when the egg falls, it falls in a place most resembling the wombs of doves, and of a [right] measure of heat, cold, softness, and firmness.

Then, when labor strikes her, she hastens to that place and lays the eggs in it. If a crashing thunderclap frightens her, she casts the egg short of that place she had prepared — like the woman who miscarries from fright. When she lays the eggs in that place, the two of them keep taking turns at brooding, until the brooding reaches its term and its days are complete, [the egg] cracks open over the chick, and the two assist it in its emergence. They begin first by blowing air into its throat until its crop widens — knowing of themselves that the crop is too narrow for food — so the crop widens after being closed, and opens after being sealed. Then they know that the crop, though it has widened somewhat, at first cannot bear food — so they feed it with their saliva mixed with food, in which is the strength of taste. Then they know that the nature of the crop is too weak to bear food continuously, and that it needs strengthening and fortifying to have some firmness — so they pick from the fields the soft, tender grain and feed it to the chick; then, after that, they feed it the grain that is stronger and harder, and they do not cease to feed it grain and water by degrees, in proportion to the strength of the chick — and it seeks that from them — until, when they know it has become able to peck, they restrain it somewhat, so that it needs to peck and gets accustomed to it. And when they know that its lung has strengthened and grown, and that if they wean it a complete weaning it will manage pecking and provide for itself, they strike it when it asks them to feed it, and refuse it. Then that wondrous mercy is removed from them, and they forget that established tenderness, when they know it has become able to manage itself and earn. Then they begin the work anew upon that same order.

The dove resembles people in most of its natures and ways: among its females is one that desires none but her mate; among them another that “does not repel the hand of a toucher”; another not attained except after persistent seeking; another that is mounted from the first instant and first seeking; another that has a known mate yet allows another male upon her if her mate is absent, not refraining from whoever mounts her; another that allows one who suffices her in place of her mate, while [her mate] sees and witnesses the two and she does not care for his presence; another that propositions the male and calls him to herself; a female that mounts [another] female and rubs against her; a male that mounts [another] male and forces it — every state found in people, their males and females, is found in the dove. Among them is one that does not lay; and if it lays, it spoils the egg — like the woman who does not want a child lest it distract her from her affairs. Among the female doves is one that, when any male whatsoever presents itself to her, hastens fleeing and never complies with other than her mate — like the free, chaste woman. Among them is one that takes a female to enjoy, then moves from her to another; and likewise the female agrees with a male other than her mate and moves from him — even if they are all in one cote. Among them is one over which two males or more contend: she sets them all against each other, until, when one of them overcomes his fellow and subdues him, she inclines to him and turns from the subdued. In the hadith: that the Prophet ﷺ “saw a dove following a [female] dove, and said: ‘A devil following his she-devil.'” Among them is one that feeds only its own chicks; and among them is one of such reaching compassion and mercy that it feeds its chicks and others.

Among the wonders of its guidance: when it carries the dispatches, it travels the roads far from villages and people’s places, lest one who would bar it confront it; rather it comes to the waters that people do not frequent. Among its guidance also: when it sees people in the air [i.e. other birds], it recognizes which kind it wants [to avoid] and which kind is its opposite, and contrives its action to be safe from it. Among its guidance: at its first rising, it is heedless and passes between the vulture and the eagle, between the carrion-vulture and the falcon, between the crow and the hawk — and [learns to] recognize who seeks it and who does not seek it; and if it sees the peregrine (shāhīn), it is as though it sees deadly poison, and bewilderment seizes it as it seizes the sheep at the sight of the wolf, or the donkey at the sight of the lion.

Among the dove’s guidance: the male and the female share the affair of the chicks — brooding, rearing, and sponsorship fall to the female, while procuring food and feeding fall to the male; for the father is the provider for the household and earner for them, and the mother is the one who conceives, bears, and nurses.

Among the wonders of its affair is what al-Jāḥiẓ mentioned: that a man had a pair of clipped-wing doves and a pair of flying doves, and the flying pair had two chicks. He said: “I had opened for the two [flying ones] a window at the top of the chamber for entry and exit, and they fed their chicks. Then the sultan imprisoned me suddenly, and I grieved over the clipped pair with the utmost grief, not doubting they would die, since they could not get out of the window and had nothing to eat or drink. When I was released, I had no concern but for the two: I opened the room and found the chicks had grown, and found the clipped pair in the best state! I marveled — and before long the flying pair came, and the clipped pair drew near to their mouths, begging from them as the chick begs — and the two fed them.” So look at this guidance: when the two clipped ones saw the chicks’ gentleness with the parents, and how they begged from them when hunger and thirst grew severe, they did as the two chicks did — and mercy reached the two flying ones, so they fed them as they feed their own chicks.

The like of that is what al-Jāḥiẓ and others mentioned. Al-Jāḥiẓ said — “and it is a well-known matter among us in Basra” — that when the engulfing plague (aṭ-ṭāʿūn al-jārif) struck, it overtook the people of a house, so the people of that quarter did not doubt that none of them remained. They went to the door of the house and shut it. There had remained a small suckling infant whom they had not noticed. After a time, one of the heirs of the people [of the house] moved into it and opened the door; when he reached the courtyard of the house, behold — a child playing with the pups of a bitch that had belonged to the people of the house! This alarmed him; then before long a bitch — that had belonged to the people of the house — approached, and when the child saw her he crept to her and she let him at her teats, and he suckled them. For when the child’s hunger grew severe and he saw the bitch’s pups suckling at her teats, he crept to her, and she had compassion on him — so when she gave him drink once, she made it constant for him, and he kept seeking. “This is not far-fetched” — and what is more wondrous than it: for the One who guided the newborn to suck its thumb the hour it is born, then guided it to latch onto the nipple of a breast with no prior habituation — as though it had been told, “this is the storehouse of your food and drink” with which you have, as it were, always been familiar.

Key insights & lessons

The dove draws Ibn al-Qayyim’s longest “social” treatment because it “resembles people in most of its natures and ways” — a mirror for human virtue and vice (loyalty vs. fickleness, chastity vs. wantonness, mercy vs. neglect). It is ʿibrah, not zoological catalogue.

The breeders’ irony is a moral barb: people guard their doves’ lineages more scrupulously than their own families’ — a rebuke aimed squarely at human priorities.

The chick-rearing sequence is a precise lesson in graduated nurture: widen the crop by blowing → saliva-softened food → soft grain → harder grain → restrain to force self-feeding → wean and even strike it off — then the tenderness is withdrawn by design once independence is reached. A template for parenting and pedagogy (compatible with Rajib’s teaching frame).

The two al-Jāḥiẓ reports (clipped doves fed by the flying pair; the plague-orphan suckled by the bitch) are offered as ʿajāʾib illustrating innate mercy and inspired sustenance — capped by the deepest sign of all: the newborn’s instinct to suckle, with no prior habituation. That instinct is the cleanest evidence of hidāyah ʿāmmah.

Attribution flags: the “devil following his she-devil” line is presented as a prophetic report by Ibn al-Qayyim (verify grading independently before citing as ḥadīth); the al-Jāḥiẓ narrations are explicitly adab/ʿajāʾib literature, not ḥadīth.

More wonders: the rooster, the mukkāʾ bird, and the stratagems of beasts

In His guiding the animal to its interests is what is more wondrous still. Among that: the young rooster, when it encounters a grain, does not eat it until it distributes it [calling the hens]; but when it grows old and aged, it eats it without distributing. As al-Madāʾinī said: “Iyās b. Muʿāwiyah passed by a rooster pecking grain and not distributing it, and said: ‘This must be aged — for the young rooster distributes grain so that the hens gather around it and partake of it; but the aged one has had its desire spent, so it has no concern but for itself.'” Iyās said: “The [young] rooster takes the grain and shows it to the hen until it drops it from its mouth [for her]; the aged one swallows it and does not cast it to the hen.”

Ibn al-Aʿrābī mentioned, said: “A mukkāʾ bird [a small lark-like bird] ate the egg of [another] bird, so the [parent] mukkāʾ kept chirping and flying above its head and drawing near it, until — when it opened its mouth and lunged at it — it threw a thorn (ḥasakah) [into its mouth], which lodged in its throat until it died.” And Abū ʿAmr ash-Shaybānī recited concerning that the saying of al-Asadī:

“If you saw me wretched and stripped bare — yet many a time has the mukkāʾ killed a serpent.”

The guidance of animals to the interests of their livelihood is like the sea — speak of it without restraint! Among the wonders of its guidance: the fox, when it is filled with fleas, takes a tuft of wool in its mouth, then heads for shallow water and descends into it little by little, until the fleas climb up to the [tuft of] wool — then it casts it into the water and comes out. Among the wonders of its affair: a wolf had eaten its young — and the wolf had [its own] cubs, and there was a pit (zubyah) nearby — so the fox proceeded and cast itself into [the pit], and dug in it a tunnel through which it would exit; then it headed for the wolf’s cubs and killed them, and sat aside awaiting the wolf. When [the wolf] came and recognized that it was [the fox’s] doing, [the fox] fled before it, [the wolf] pursuing it — so [the fox] cast itself into the pit, then went out through the tunnel; and the wolf threw itself in after it but did not find it, and could not get out — so the people of the area killed it.

Among the wonders of [the fox’s] affair: a man had two hens; [the fox] hid from him, snatched one of them, and fled; then it worked out a scheme to take the other: it showed itself to its owner from afar with something resembling a bird in its mouth, and tempted him to recover [the first hen] by leaving it and fleeing — so the man thought it was the [stolen] hen, and hurried toward it, while the fox slipped past him to its sister [the other hen], seized her, and went off. Among the wonders of its affair: it came to an island with birds on it and worked out a scheme to take something from them, but could not; so it went and brought a bundle of grass and cast it into the watercourse leading toward the birds — they were frightened of it; and when they realized it was grass, they returned to their places. It repeated that a second, third, and fourth time, until the birds grew used to it and were no longer alarmed; then it took a larger bundle, entered into it, and crossed over to the birds — and the birds did not doubt it was of the same kind as what preceded, so they were not startled by it; so it pounced on one of them and ran off with it.

Among the wonders of the wolf’s affair: it confronted a man who intended to kill it — but it saw with him a bow and arrow, so it went and brought the skull-bone of a camel in its mouth and advanced toward the man, and whenever the man shot an arrow at it, it warded it off with that bone, until it exhausted his arrows; and when [the wolf] saw the arrows spent, it found one to assist it [against the wolf] in driving [it] off.

Among the wonders of the monkey’s affair is what al-Bukhārī mentioned in his Ṣaḥīḥ, from ʿAmr b. Maymūn al-Awdī, who said: “I saw, in the Jāhiliyyah, a male and female monkey [that] had committed fornication; so the monkeys gathered upon them and stoned them both until they died.“ These monkeys established the ḥadd of Allah when the children of Ādam had abandoned it!

And these cattle — their dullness is proverbial. Yet the Prophet ﷺ informed: “While a man was driving a cow, he mounted it, and it said: ‘I was not created for this.’ The people said: ‘Glory be to Allah — a cow that speaks!’ He said: ‘I believe in this — I and Abū Bakr and ʿUmar'” — though the two were not [present]. Then he said: “And while a man was tending sheep of his, a wolf attacked one of them and snatched it; the man rescued it from it, and the wolf said: ‘You rescued this from me — but who will be for it on the day of the [wild] predator (yawm as-sabuʿ), the day it will have no shepherd but me?’ The people said: ‘Glory be to Allah — a wolf that speaks!’ The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: ‘I believe in this — I and Abū Bakr and ʿUmar'” — though the two were not [present].

Among the guidance of the donkey, which is among the dullest of animals: a man travels on it and brings it to his lodging from afar on a dark night, and it recognizes the lodging; and when it is set loose it comes [back] to it; and it distinguishes between the voice [that signals] halting and the voice [that signals] spurring on to travel.

Among the wonders of the mouse’s affair: when it drinks from the oil at the top of a jar, and it diminishes, and reaching it becomes hard for it, it goes and carries water in its mouth and pours it into the jar until the oil rises, and it drinks it. The physicians claim that the enema (clyster) was taken from a long-beaked bird: when defecation becomes difficult for it, it goes to the salt sea and takes [water] from it with its beak and gives itself an enema with it, so the excrement comes out quickly.

This fox, when hunger grows severe, it puffs itself up and throws itself in the open desert as though it were a carcass — so the birds circle upon it [thinking it dead], and it shows no movement or breath, so [the bird] does not doubt it is dead — until, when it pecks with its beak, it springs upon them and crushes them with the crush of death. This weasel and hedgehog, when they eat vipers and snakes, head for the river ṣaʿtar (wild thyme) and eat it as an antidote (tiryāq) for that. Among the wonders of the fox’s affair: when it encounters the hedgehog, [the hedgehog] turns its back to it on account of its spines, and gathers itself until it becomes a ball of spines; so the fox urinates upon its belly — from the root of its tail to its jaws — and when the urine reaches it, paralysis (relaxation) overtakes it and it spreads out; so the fox flays it from its belly and eats its flesh.

Many of the intelligent learn, from the dumb animals, matters that benefit them in their livelihood, manners, craft, war, prudence, patience. The guidance of the animal is above the guidance of most people. Allah Most High said: ﴿أَمْ تَحْسَبُ أَنَّ أَكْثَرَهُمْ يَسْمَعُونَ أَوْ يَعْقِلُونَ ۚ إِنْ هُمْ إِلَّا كَالْأَنْعَامِ ۖ بَلْ هُمْ أَضَلُّ سَبِيلًا﴾ “Or do you think that most of them hear or reason? They are but like cattle — rather, they are more astray in [their] way” [al-Furqān 25:44]. Abū Jaʿfar al-Bāqir said: “By Allah, He did not stop at likening them to cattle, until He made them more astray of way than them.”

Key insights & lessons

The rooster vignette is a moral mirror on generosity and self-interest: the young rooster summons others to share the grain; the aged one, his vigor spent, eats alone. Iyās b. Muʿāwiyah’s celebrated firāsah reads the bird’s age off its conduct.

The recurring lesson across fox, wolf, monkey, mouse: animals possess stratagem, justice, mercy, and prudence that shame human heedlessness — culminating in al-Furqān 25:44 and al-Bāqir’s gloss: many people are “more astray than cattle.”

The monkey-stoning report (Bukhārī, via ʿAmr b. Maymūn) is given as Ibn al-Qayyim cites it — “they established the ḥadd of Allah when the children of Ādam had abandoned it.” (Reader note: this is a Companion-era observation in the Ṣaḥīḥ, much discussed by ḥadīth scholars; cite it as Ibn al-Qayyim does, in its ʿibrah function.)

The talking-cow / talking-wolf hadith (Bukhārī/Muslim) is preserved with its striking refrain — the Prophet ﷺ affirming the unseen report “I and Abū Bakr and ʿUmar,” though they were absent — a testament to īmān bi-l-ghayb.

Attribution flag: the various fox/wolf/mouse/hedgehog stratagems are natural-history ʿajāʾib (al-Jāḥiẓ-type material), offered for tafakkur; the physicians’ “enema from a bird” is reported as a claim (“the physicians claim”), not asserted as fact.

“Who taught you all this?” — the lioness, and Ibn al-Aʿrābī’s catalogue of instinct

Among the guidance of the female beast of prey (lioness): when she has delivered her cub, she lifts it up into the air for [several] days, fleeing with it from the specks (small ants) and ants — for she delivers it like a piece of flesh, and so she fears the specks and ants for it; and she does not cease lifting it and setting it down and moving it from place to place until it grows strong.

Ibn al-Aʿrābī said: It was said to a shaykh of Quraysh, “Who taught you all this — when only the people of [long] experience and earning know its like?” He said: “Allah taught me, just as He taught the dove to turn her eggs over, so as to give both sides their share of her brooding” — out of fear of the earth’s nature [harming] the egg if it were to remain on a single side.

And it was said to another: “Who taught you persistence in [pursuing] a need and patience upon it, even if it proves stubborn, until you attain it?” He said: “The One who taught the dung-beetle (khunfusāʾ): when it climbs the wall it falls, then climbs, then falls — many times over — until it carries on climbing [successfully].”

And it was said to another: “Who taught you to set out early for your needs at the first of the day, never neglecting it?” He said: “The One who taught the bird to go forth hungry every dawn in pursuit of its provision — near or far — never wearying of it, nor fearing what may befall it in the air and on the earth.”

And it was said to another: “Who taught you stillness, guardedness, and feigning death until you seize your quarry — and when you have seized it, you spring like the lion’s spring upon its prey?” He said: “The One who taught the [cat] wakefulness: to lie in wait at the mouse’s hole, neither moving nor twisting nor twitching, as though it were dead — until, when the mouse comes out to it, it springs upon it like the lion.”

And it was said to another: “Who taught you patience, fortitude, endurance, and restlessness [for work]?” He said: “The One who taught Abū Ayyūb [the camel] its patience under heavy loads and burdens, the walking and the toil, the harshness of the camel-drivers and their beating — the weight and the whole burden on its back, the bitterness of hunger and thirst in its liver, the strain of fatigue and hardship filling its limbs — and none of that turns it aside from patience.”

And it was said to another: “Who taught you the beauty of preferring [others over yourself] and open-handed giving?” He said: “The One who taught the rooster: it comes upon the grain on the ground while it has need of it, yet does not eat it — rather it summons the hens and calls them urgently until one of them comes and picks it up, while he is gladdened by that, his soul content with it. And when much grain is set before him he scatters it here and there even if there are no hens present, because his nature has grown accustomed to giving and generosity, so that he reckons it baseness to keep the food to himself alone.”

And it was said to another: “Who taught you this contrivance in seeking provision and the ways of attaining it?” He said: “The One who taught the fox those stratagems which the intelligent are too weak to know and to do — and they are more than can be recounted.”

Key insights & lessons

The frame is a rhetorical tamthīl of instinct as divine instruction: each human virtue (persistence, early diligence, ambush-patience, endurance, generosity, cunning) is traced back to an animal that was taught it directly by Allah — so that “Allah taught me” is the only honest answer to “who taught you?” This is the practical payoff of the whole excursus: all the guidance distributed through creation is the fingerprint of one Teacher.

The dove turning her eggs, the dung-beetle’s repeated climb, the dawn-foraging bird, the lion-still cat, the patient camel (Abū Ayyūb), and the generous rooster function as mirrors for the seeker: the same nature that perfects the beast in its sphere is the model for the human in ṣabr, tawakkul, himmah, and īthār.

The lioness lifting her cub away from ants is offered as maternal instinct as designed protection — a fully witnessed āyah of taqdīr fa-hadā at the level of a single newborn.

Attribution flag: these are adab/natural-history vignettes (Ibn al-Aʿrābī and the ʿajāʾib tradition), carried for their ʿibrah (moral lesson), not as ḥadīth; Ibn al-Qayyim deploys them as illustrations of the Quranic principle, and they should be read in that register.

“And who taught…” — the lion, fox, bear, elephant, and the rest

And who taught the lion, when it walks and fears that its track will be traced and it be hunted, to efface the trace of its gait with its tail? And who taught it to come to its cub on the third day from its birth and blow into its nostrils — for the lioness delivers it as a cub like a dead thing, and she ceases not to guard it until its father comes and does that to it? And who inspired the noble and high-born among lions that it eat only from its own prey, and that when it passes the prey of another it does not approach it, even though hunger drives it hard?

And who taught the lion to humble itself before the righteous one (al-birr) and lower itself to him when the two meet, until [the righteous one] obtains from it what he seeks? And among its wonders: when something among the beasts of prey proves stubborn against it, it summons the lion, and [the beast] answers it with the obedience of a slave to his master; then it commands it, and it crouches before it, and [the lion] urinates in its ears — so when [the lion] wills that of the beasts, they yield to it in obedience and submission.

And who taught the fox, when hunger grows severe upon it, to lie on its back and draw its breath inward into its body until it swells, so that the onlooker supposes it a carcass — and [a bird] falls upon it, whereupon it springs on whichever of them has reached the end of its term? And who taught it, when a fissure or wound befalls it, to come to a known dye/pigment, take some of it, and place it on its wound like a salve?

And who taught the bear, when a gash befalls it, to come to a plant it has known — and which the herb-gatherer is ignorant of — and treat itself with it, so that it heals?

And who taught the female elephant, when the time of her delivery draws near, to come to water and deliver in it — for she, unlike [other] animals, delivers only standing, because her joints are unlike the joints of [other] animals and she is tall, and she fears to drop it on the ground so that it would crack or split; so she comes to water reaching her middle and delivers it into it, and it becomes for it like a soft bed and a gentle cushion?

And who taught the fly, when it falls into a liquid, to shield itself with the wing that bears the disease and not the other?

And who taught the dog, when it sights the gazelles, to know the ailing from the rest and the male from the female — so that it makes for the male, despite knowing that its [the male’s] running is fiercer and its bound longer, and leaves the female with her lesser speed? Because it has known that the male, when it runs a heat or two, becomes blocked by its urine — and every animal, when its fright grows severe, is overtaken by retention — and when the male is blocked it cannot urinate amid the severity of running, so its running slackens and the dog catches it; whereas the female casts out her urine by reason of the width of the [genital] aperture and the ease of the outlet, so her running persists. And who taught it, when the snow has clothed the earth, to scrutinize the thin spot that has sunk in, so that it knows beneath it is the burrow of a hare, and it digs it up and hunts it — knowing that the heat of [the hare’s] breath melts some of the snow so that it thins?

And who taught the wolf, when it sleeps, to make sleep take turns between its two eyes: it sleeps with one until, when the other grows drowsy, it sleeps with that one and opens the [previously] sleeping one? — until one of the Arabs said:

He sleeps with one of his two eyes and guards with the other against death — so he is wakeful while asleep.

And who taught the sparrow, when its chick falls, to cry for help — so that no sparrow in its vicinity remains but comes, and they fly around the chick and stir it with their movements and rouse in it strength, resolve, and motion, until it flies off with them? One of the hunters said: “Often I would see the sparrow on the wall and gesture with my hand as if to throw at it, and it would not fly; and often I would stoop to the ground as if to pick something up, and it would not stir; but if I touched with my hand the least pebble or stone or date-stone, it would fly off before my hand could reach it.”

Key insights & lessons

This catalogue presses a single thesis to its edge: every creature is fitted with exactly the knowledge its survival requires — the lion effacing its track, the elephant birthing in water, the dog reading the male gazelle’s urine-retention, the wolf’s half-sleeping vigilance — none of it learned, all of it designed.

The series is argumentative, not merely decorative: each “who taught…?” is a rhetorical demand whose only answer is Allah, driving home the first rank of guidance (“He gave each thing its creation, then guided”) at the granular level of instinct.

The wolf’s verse (“wakeful while asleep”) and the sparrow’s communal rescue carry transferable moral lessons — vigilance amid ease, and mercy that rallies the community to lift the fallen.

Attribution flag: these are ʿajāʾib al-makhlūqāt observations (the hunter’s anecdote is explicitly first-person testimony — “one of the hunters said”); some, like the elephant and the fly’s “diseased wing,” reflect the natural history of the era and are best received as signs prompting tafakkur rather than as verified zoology. Their force is theological, not veterinary.

“And who taught…” — the dove again, the carrier-pigeon, the spider, the gazelle, the jerboa, the cheetah, the stag

And who taught the dove, when she has conceived, that she and the father set about building the nest, and that they raise for it edges resembling a wall; then they warm it and generate in it another nature; then they turn the eggs over across the days? And who apportioned between the two of them the brooding and the toil — so that most of the hours of brooding fall to the female, and most of the hours of bringing food fall to the father? And when the chick emerges, the two know that its crop is too narrow for food, so they blow into it blast after blast until its crop widens; then they feed it saliva, or something before food — and it is like the colostrum (laba) for the infant; then they teach [recognize] that the crop needs tanning (curing), so they feed it, from the base of the walls, something between salt and earth, by which the crop is cured; and once it is cured they feed it grain; and when they know it can manage to pick [for itself], they withhold the feeding by degrees; and when its strength is complete and it [still] asks them for upkeep, they strike it [away].

And who taught the pair, when [the male] desires to mate, that the male begins with wooing — so the female flees from him a little to let him taste the sweetness of union; then she yields herself to him; then she withholds somewhat, that his seeking and love may intensify; then she sways and feigns languor and shows him her bending [curves] and displays her beauties; then there occurs between them, of flirtation and passion and kissing and sipping, what is witnessed by the eye?

And who taught the carrier-pigeon (al-mursalah) among them, when it travels by night, to take its bearings from the bellies of the valleys, the watercourses, the mountains, the quarters from which the wind blows, and the rising and setting of the sun — taking direction from these and other [signs] when it strays; and once it knows the way, it passes like the wind?

And who taught the labb — a kind of spider — to cling to the ground and gather itself in, so that the fly supposes it heedless of it, then it springs upon it with the spring of the cheetah? And who taught the spider to weave that fine, sturdy web, and to set at its top a thread by which it suspends [itself], so that when the mosquito is entangled in the web it lowers itself to it and hunts it?

And who taught the gazelle that it enters its lair only backward, so as to face with its eyes whatever it fears for itself and its fawn? And who taught the cat (sinnawr), when it sees a mouse in the ceiling, to raise its head as though gesturing to it [to come down] by the rafter, then gesture to it to return — intending only to bewilder it so that it slips and falls?

And who taught the jerboa (yarbūʿ) to dig its house in the slope of the valley, where it rises above the watercourse, so as to be safe from the digger’s pounding and from the running of water; and to deepen it; then to make in its corners several doors, placing between them and the face of the earth a thin partition — so that when it senses harm it opens one of them with the least effort and exits through it? And because it is much given to forgetting, it digs its house only beside a mound or a rock, as a marker for the house when it strays from it.

And who taught the cheetah (fahd), when it grows fat, to conceal itself — because movement is heavy upon it — until that fatness is gone, and then it appears? And who taught the stag (ayyil), when its antler falls, to conceal itself — because its weapon has gone — and to grow fat thereby; then, when the growth of its antler is complete, to expose itself to the sun and wind and increase in movement so that its flesh firms and the fat that impedes it from running passes away?

This is a very wide chapter — and there suffices for it the saying of Him, Glorified: ﴿وَمَا مِن دَابَّةٍ فِي الْأَرْضِ وَلَا طَائِرٍ يَطِيرُ بِجَنَاحَيْهِ إِلَّا أُمَمٌ أَمْثَالُكُم ۚ مَّا فَرَّطْنَا فِي الْكِتَابِ مِن شَيْءٍ ۚ ثُمَّ إِلَىٰ رَبِّهِمْ يُحْشَرُونَ ۝ وَالَّذِينَ كَذَّبُوا بِآيَاتِنَا صُمٌّ وَبُكْمٌ فِي الظُّلُمَاتِ ۗ مَن يَشَإِ اللَّهُ يُضْلِلْهُ وَمَن يَشَأْ يَجْعَلْهُ عَلَىٰ صِرَاطٍ مُّسْتَقِيمٍ﴾ “And there is no creature on the earth, nor a bird that flies with its two wings, but [they form] communities like you. We have neglected nothing in the Book. Then unto their Lord they will be gathered. And those who deny Our signs are deaf and dumb, in darknesses. Whom Allah wills, He sends astray; and whom He wills, He places upon a straight path” [al-Anʿām 6:38–39].

Key insights & lessons

The dove’s graduated weaning — crop-widening by breath, colostrum-like saliva, then a salt-and-earth “tanning” of the crop, then grain, then withholding “by degrees,” then a final striking-away — is held up as a complete, instinctive pedagogy of independence; the explicit division of labor (brooding to the mother, foraging to the father) is read as designed apportionment.

The carrier-pigeon’s night navigation by valleys, watercourses, wind-quarters, and the sun’s rising/setting is a striking pre-modern description of celestial-and-terrain orientation — offered as instinctive guidance through the dark.

Spider, gazelle, cat, jerboa, cheetah, stag: each vignette pairs a survival problem with a fitted solution (ambush, facing the threat, multi-exit burrow with a marker against forgetfulness, concealment during vulnerability) — the cumulative weight landing on al-Anʿām 6:38: “communities like you.”

al-Anʿām 6:38 anchors the whole excursus theologically: animals are umam (nations) with their own modes of knowing, gathered to their Lord — and the verse pivots (6:39) straight back to Allah’s guiding and misguiding, returning the reader to the thesis of §9.

Attribution flag: the mating description and the “tanning of the crop” are ʿajāʾib-tradition natural history; the jerboa’s “forgetfulness” and the stag’s seasonal concealment are observational lore of the period — carried, again, for tafakkur and as signs, not as settled biology.

The dogs are “a nation,” and the tafsīr of ﴿إِلَّا أُمَمٌ أَمْثَالُكُمْ﴾

The Prophet ﷺ said: “Were it not that dogs are a nation among the nations, I would have ordered them killed.” This bears two faces:

The first: that it is a report about a matter not possible to carry out — namely that dogs are a nation that cannot be made extinct owing to their multitude on the earth; so [the sense is] were it possible to eliminate them from the earth, I would have ordered them killed.

The second: that it is like His [the Prophet’s] saying [in the ant report], “Is it because a single ant stung you that you burned a whole nation of those that glorify [Allah]?” — so it is a nation created with wisdom and benefit, and to eliminate and extinguish it would contradict that for which it was created. And Allah knows best what His Messenger intended.

Ibn ʿAbbās, in the narration of ʿAṭāʾ, said concerning ﴿إِلَّا أُمَمٌ أَمْثَالُكُمْ﴾ “but communities like you”: “He means: they know Me, declare My oneness, glorify Me, and praise Me” — like His saying ﴿وَإِن مِّن شَيْءٍ إِلَّا يُسَبِّحُ بِحَمْدِهِ﴾ “and there is nothing but glorifies His praise,” and like His saying ﴿أَلَمْ تَرَ أَنَّ اللَّهَ يُسَبِّحُ لَهُ مَن فِي السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ وَالطَّيْرُ صَافَّاتٍ ۖ كُلٌّ قَدْ عَلِمَ صَلَاتَهُ وَتَسْبِيحَهُ﴾ “Do you not see that to Allah glorify [all] who are in the heavens and the earth, and the birds with wings outspread? Each has known its prayer and its glorification.” And it is indicated by His saying ﴿أَلَمْ تَرَ أَنَّ اللَّهَ يَسْجُدُ لَهُ مَن فِي السَّمَاوَاتِ وَمَن فِي الْأَرْضِ وَالشَّمْسُ وَالْقَمَرُ وَالنُّجُومُ وَالْجِبَالُ وَالشَّجَرُ وَالدَّوَابُّ﴾ “…and the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains, the trees, and the moving creatures,” and by His saying ﴿وَلِلَّهِ يَسْجُدُ مَا فِي السَّمَاوَاتِ وَمَا فِي الْأَرْضِ مِن دَابَّةٍ﴾, and by ﴿يَا جِبَالُ أَوِّبِي مَعَهُ وَالطَّيْرَ﴾ “O mountains, repeat [Allah’s praises] with him, and the birds [too],” and by ﴿وَأَوْحَىٰ رَبُّكَ إِلَى النَّحْلِ﴾, and by ﴿قَالَتْ نَمْلَةٌ يَا أَيُّهَا النَّمْلُ﴾, and by Sulaymān’s words ﴿عُلِّمْنَا مَنطِقَ الطَّيْرِ﴾ “We have been taught the speech of birds.”

Mujāhid said: “‘Communities like you’ — distinct classes, known by their names.”

Az-Zajjāj said: “‘Communities like you’ — in that they are resurrected.”

Ibn Qutaybah said: “‘Communities like you’ — in seeking nourishment, pursuing provision, and guarding against perils.”

Sufyān b. ʿUyaynah said: “There is no human on the earth but in him is a likeness of the beasts.” So among them is one who tears as the lion tears; among them one who lopes as the wolf lopes; among them one who barks as the dog barks; among them one who struts as the peacock struts; among them one who resembles the swine — which, if food is cast to it, disdains it, but when a man rises from his excrement, laps at it. For that reason you find among humans one who, were he to hear fifty pieces of wisdom, would not retain a single one of them; yet if a man erred [in something base], he would relate it and memorize it.

Al-Khaṭṭābī said: “How excellent is Sufyān’s interpretation of this verse and the wisdom he derived from it!” — and that is because speech, when its ruling does not run smoothly with its outward sense, requires recourse to its inward sense. Allah has informed [us] of the existence of a likeness between the human being and every bird and beast; and that is impossible from the standpoint of [bodily] creation and form, and absent from the standpoint of speech and cognition — so it must be directed to a likeness in natures and character. And if the matter is so, then know that you are in fact consorting with beasts and predators; so let your caution toward them and your distancing from them be in accordance with that. [End of al-Khaṭṭābī’s words.]

Key insights & lessons

The dog hadith is read two ways, both preserving the dignity of the umam: either it states an impossible-to-execute hyperbole (dogs cannot be exterminated), or it parallels the ant-burning rebuke — extermination would defeat the very ḥikmah and maṣlaḥah for which the creature was made. Ibn al-Qayyim closes with becoming restraint: “Allah knows best what His Messenger intended.”

The tafsīr of “communities like you” is laid out across four complementary glosses: likeness in tasbīḥ/maʿrifah (Ibn ʿAbbās, with a chain of supporting āyāt on universal glorification and prostration), in being named classes (Mujāhid), in resurrection (az-Zajjāj), and in seeking sustenance and avoiding harm (Ibn Qutaybah) — i.e., the “likeness” is in worship, ontology, eschatology, and instinct, not in form.

Sufyān b. ʿUyaynah’s istinbāṭ turns the verse into moral anthropology: since bodily likeness is impossible, the “likeness” is in character — the lion-like, wolf-like, dog-like, peacock-like, and swine-like temperaments latent in people — yielding al-Khaṭṭābī’s practical counsel: read the beast in the man, and calibrate your caution accordingly.

Attribution flag: the glosses are reported tafsīr (Ibn ʿAbbās via ʿAṭāʾ; Mujāhid; az-Zajjāj; Ibn Qutaybah; Sufyān b. ʿUyaynah; al-Khaṭṭābī’s appraisal). Sufyān’s reading is openly a bāṭinī (inner-sense) taʾwīl justified by the impossibility of the literal — Ibn al-Qayyim and al-Khaṭṭābī mark it as istinbāṭ ḥikmah, an extracted wisdom, not the verse’s primary lexical meaning.

The closing catalogue of contrasting natures — and the proof of the Maker

And Allah, Glorified, has made some of the beasts an earner and contriver, and some a truster (mutawakkil) who does not contrive. Some of the insects store up their year’s sustenance for themselves, and some rely upon the trust that there is for it, every day, the measure of its sufficiency — a provision guaranteed and a matter decreed. Some hoard, and some do not earn at all. Some of the males support their young, and some do not know their young in the least. Some of the females care for their young and never pass beyond them, and some lay their young and care for the young of others; some do not know their young once it has become independent of them, and some never cease to know it and incline tenderly to it.

And He has made some animals orphaned from the side of their mothers, and some orphaned from the side of their fathers. Some do not seek offspring, and some exhaust their concern in pursuit of it. Some know kindness and are grateful for it, and to some that is nothing at all. Some prefer [others] over themselves, and some, when it gains what would suffice a whole nation of its kind, will not let one approach it. Some love mating and do it much, and some do it only once a year. Some confine themselves to their own mate, and some will not stop at any female — even were it its mother or its sister. Some of the females yield themselves to none but their mate, and some refuse no hand that touches. Some are familiar with the children of Ādam and find comfort with them, and some are wild toward them and flee in the utmost fleeing. Some eat only what is wholesome, and some eat only filth, and some combine the two. Some harm only one who has gone to excess in harming it, and some harm one who does not harm them. Some are rancorous, never forgetting an injury, and some do not remember it at all. Some do not grow angry, and some — their anger grows so fierce that it must be appeased until it is content. Some possess knowledge and acquaintance with subtle matters that most people are not guided to, and some have no acquaintance with any of that at all. Some find the foul repugnant and recoil from it, and to some the fair and the foul are alike. Some accept teaching swiftly, and some only after long [effort], and some do not accept it in any way.

All of this is among the most indicative of proofs of the Maker who made them, Glorified, and of the perfection of His craft, the wonder of His governance, and the subtlety of His wisdom. For in what He has deposited in them of marvels of cognition, recondite stratagems, fine governance, and patient deliberation toward what they intend, there is that which makes mouths speak forth in glorification and fills hearts with knowledge of Him, of His wisdom and His power — and by which every rational one knows that it was not created in vain, nor left to no purpose; and that He, Glorified, has in every created thing a dazzling wisdom, a manifest sign, and a decisive proof indicating that He is the Lord of everything and its Sovereign; that He is the One who alone possesses every perfection, apart from His creation; and that He is over all things Powerful and of all things Knowing.

Key insights & lessons

This antithetical litany (“some… and some…”) is Ibn al-Qayyim’s summation device: by ranging the full spectrum of opposed instincts — hoarder vs. truster, devoted parent vs. indifferent, grateful vs. oblivious, self-preferring vs. monopolizing, chaste vs. indiscriminate, gentle vs. rancorous — he shows that the variety itself is the argument: diversity this fine and this deliberate cannot be authorless.

The contrast of kasūb (earner) vs. mutawakkil (truster) quietly re-touches the tawakkul theme: even within the animal kingdom Allah has modeled both the one who stores and the one who relies on the daily guaranteed portion — neither pattern is an accident.

The conclusion names the payoff explicitly: these instincts are adall ad-dalāʾil — among the strongest evidences — of the Maker, His itqān (precision of craft), tadbīr (governance), and ḥikmah (wisdom); creation “makes mouths speak forth in tasbīḥ.” The animal excursus thus closes by folding back into tawḥīd ar-rubūbiyyah.

Reader note: the entire excursus, from the bee to this catalogue, has served one structural purpose in the larger argument — to exhibit the first rank of guidance (the general hidāyah paired with khalq) so vividly that the reader feels the force of “He gave each thing its creation, then guided.” Ibn al-Qayyim now returns to that verse directly.

Return to ﴿أَعْطَىٰ كُلَّ شَيْءٍ خَلْقَهُ ثُمَّ هَدَىٰ﴾ — Pharaoh’s challenge and the glosses

Let us return to what drove us to this place — namely, the discourse on the general guidance that is the companion of creation in indicating the Lord, Blessed and Exalted, His names, His attributes, and His oneness. Allah said, informing about Pharaoh that he said: ﴿فَمَن رَّبُّكُمَا يَا مُوسَىٰ ۝ قَالَ رَبُّنَا الَّذِي أَعْطَىٰ كُلَّ شَيْءٍ خَلْقَهُ ثُمَّ هَدَىٰ﴾ “‘So who is the Lord of you two, O Mūsā?’ He said: ‘Our Lord is He who gave each thing its creation, then guided [it].'” [Ṭāhā 20:49–50].

Mujāhid said: “He gave each thing its creation — He did not give the human the creation of the beasts, nor the beasts the creation of the human.” And the statements of most exegetes turn upon this meaning. ʿAṭiyyah and Muqātil said: “He gave each thing its form.” Al-Ḥasan and Qatādah said: “He gave each thing its fitness (ṣalāḥ)” — the meaning being: He gave it, of creation and forming, what makes it fit for that for which it was created, then guided it to that for which it was created, and guided it to what makes it thrive in its livelihood, its food, its drink, its mating, its movement, and its conduct. This is the correct view, upon which the bulk of the exegetes stand — so that it is the counterpart of His saying ﴿قَدَّرَ فَهَدَىٰ﴾.

Al-Kalbī and as-Suddī said: “He gave the man the woman, the he-camel the she-camel, and the male the female of its kind.” As-Suddī’s wording: “He gave the male the female like its creation, then guided [it] to copulation.” This view is the choice of Ibn Qutaybah and al-Farrāʾ. Al-Farrāʾ said: “He gave the male of mankind a woman like him, and the ewe a ram, and the bull a cow; then He inspired the male how to come to her.” Abū Isḥāq [az-Zajjāj] said: “This interpretation is permissible, because we see the male of an animal coming to the female though it has never seen a male come to a female before it — so Allah inspired it that and guided it to it.” He said: “And the first view comprehends this meaning, because if He guided it to its welfare, then this is included within welfare.”

I [Ibn al-Qayyim] say: The proponents of this [male-female] view have shortchanged the verse of its meaning, for its meaning is grander and greater than what they mentioned. His saying “each thing” refuses this interpretation: to restrict “each thing” to the males and females of animals specifically is impossible and without warrant. How can the angels, the jinn, those of the children of Ādam who do not marry, and those animals that do not mate, be made to issue from this expression? And how can the animal that the male comes to be called “its creation” [i.e., “its [own] creation belonging to it”]? And where is the counterpart of this in the Qurʾān? — for He, Glorified, when He intended to express this meaning that they mentioned, expressed it with the most indicative and clearest phrase, saying ﴿وَأَنَّهُ خَلَقَ الزَّوْجَيْنِ الذَّكَرَ وَالْأُنثَىٰ﴾ “and that He created the two mates, the male and the female.” So to carry His saying ﴿أَعْطَىٰ كُلَّ شَيْءٍ خَلْقَهُ﴾ upon this meaning is not sound — so ponder it.

And in the verse is another view, stated by aḍ-Ḍaḥḥāk, who said: “‘He gave each thing its creation’ — He gave the hand its grasping, the foot its walking, the tongue its speech, the eye its sight, and the ear its hearing.” The meaning of this view: He gave each limb among the limbs what it was created for — and “creation” (khalq) upon this is in the sense of the object created (mafʿūl), i.e., He gave each limb its created [faculty] which He created for it; for these meanings are all created by Allah, deposited in the limbs. This meaning, though sound in itself, [does not exhaust the verse], for the verse’s meaning is more general; and the [first] view is the [correct] one — that He, Glorified, gave each thing its creation, particular to it, then guided it to that for which it was created; and there is no creator besides Him, Glorified, and no guide other than Him. So this creation and this guidance are among the signs of [His] Lordship and His oneness — and this is the manner of the proof brought against the enemy of Allah, Pharaoh.

For that reason, when Pharaoh knew that this was a decisive argument with no point of attack in it by any path, he turned aside to a corrupt question about [something already] reported, and said: ﴿فَمَا بَالُ الْقُرُونِ الْأُولَىٰ﴾ “Then what is the case of the former generations?” — that is, what of the former generations who did not acknowledge this Lord and did not worship Him, but rather worshipped idols? The meaning being: were what you say true, it would not have been hidden from the former generations, and they would not have neglected it. So he confronted [Mūsā], by way of objection, with what he himself and others witness of the traces of the Lordship of the Lord of the worlds — and Allah’s enemy opposed it with the unbelief of the deniers and the shirk of the polytheists. And this is the way of every falsifier; for which reason this became a scale in [Pharaoh’s] heirs: they oppose the texts of the prophets with the sayings of the heretics, the apostates, the brood of the philosophers, the Sabians, the sorcerers, the innovators of the Ummah, and the people of misguidance among them.

So Mūsā answered his objection with the finest answer, saying: ﴿عِلْمُهَا عِندَ رَبِّي فِي كِتَابٍ ۖ لَّا يَضِلُّ رَبِّي وَلَا يَنسَى﴾ “Its knowledge is with my Lord, in a Record; my Lord neither errs nor forgets” — that is, the deeds of those generations, their unbelief and their shirk, are known to my Lord; He has enumerated and preserved them and deposited them in a Record, and He will requite them for it on the Day of Resurrection. He did not deposit it in a Record out of fear of forgetting and straying — for He, Glorified, neither strays nor forgets. Upon this, the “Record” here is the Record of deeds. Al-Kalbī said: “He means by it the Preserved Tablet (al-Lawḥ al-Maḥfūẓ)” — and upon this it is the Record of the prior decree (qadar); the meaning then being that He, Glorified, knew their deeds and wrote them with Him before they did them. So this would be part of the completion of His saying “He who gave each thing its creation, then guided” — so ponder it.

Key insights & lessons

Ibn al-Qayyim ranks the glosses: the jumhūr reading — “He gave each thing the creation/form/fitness suited to its purpose, then guided it to that purpose” — is declared the correct view and the exact counterpart of ﴿قَدَّرَ فَهَدَىٰ﴾, making khalq + hudā the universal pattern.

He rebuts the narrow al-Kalbī/as-Suddī/Ibn Qutaybah/al-Farrāʾ “male-to-female” reading with four lexical-logical objections: (1) “each thing” cannot be squeezed down to mating pairs; (2) it would exclude angels, jinn, the unmarried, and non-mating animals; (3) calling the mate “its creation” is unnatural; (4) the Qurʾān expresses the mating idea elsewhere and plainly (an-Najm 53:45), so this verse means something larger.

aḍ-Ḍaḥḥāk’s “limbs” reading (hand→grasp, eye→sight) is accepted as sound in itself (with khalq taken as mafʿūl) but judged too narrow for a verse whose scope is general.

Pharaoh’s tactic is named as a perennial type: when met with a decisive cosmological argument, the falsifier dodges into a “corrupt question” (“what about the former generations?”) — opposing prophetic evidence with the mere fact of widespread disbelief. Ibn al-Qayyim flags this as the inherited “scale” of all mubṭilūn.

Mūsā’s reply models the right epistemics: the former nations’ deeds are known and recorded with a Lord who “neither errs nor forgets” — the “Record” read either as the register of deeds or (per al-Kalbī) the Lawḥ Maḥfūẓ of prior qadar, the latter tying the answer back into “gave… then guided.”

Attribution flag: the glosses are reported tafsīr (Mujāhid; ʿAṭiyyah; Muqātil; al-Ḥasan; Qatādah; al-Kalbī; as-Suddī; Ibn Qutaybah; al-Farrāʾ; az-Zajjāj; aḍ-Ḍaḥḥāk). The “correct/incorrect” verdicts and the four-point rebuttal are Ibn al-Qayyim’s own tarjīḥ (preponderation), reasoned from the word “kull shayʾ” and Quranic usage — settled lexical argument, not mere preference.

How the Qurʾān pairs creation with guidance

He, Glorified, in the Qurʾān, often joins creation and guidance together — as in His saying in the first sūrah He sent down upon His Messenger: ﴿اقْرَأْ بِاسْمِ رَبِّكَ الَّذِي خَلَقَ ۝ خَلَقَ الْإِنسَانَ مِنْ عَلَقٍ ۝ اقْرَأْ وَرَبُّكَ الْأَكْرَمُ ۝ الَّذِي عَلَّمَ بِالْقَلَمِ ۝ عَلَّمَ الْإِنسَانَ مَا لَمْ يَعْلَمْ﴾ “Recite in the name of your Lord who created — created man from a clinging clot. Recite, and your Lord is the Most Generous, who taught by the pen — taught man what he knew not” [al-ʿAlaq 96:1–5]; and His saying ﴿الرَّحْمَٰنُ ۝ عَلَّمَ الْقُرْآنَ ۝ خَلَقَ الْإِنسَانَ ۝ عَلَّمَهُ الْبَيَانَ﴾ “The Most Merciful taught the Qurʾān, created man, taught him the [power of] articulate expression” [ar-Raḥmān 55:1–4]; and His saying ﴿أَلَمْ نَجْعَل لَّهُ عَيْنَيْنِ ۝ وَلِسَانًا وَشَفَتَيْنِ ۝ وَهَدَيْنَاهُ النَّجْدَيْنِ﴾ “Did We not make for him two eyes, and a tongue and two lips, and guide him to the two highways [of good and evil]?” [al-Balad 90:8–10]; and His saying ﴿إِنَّا خَلَقْنَا الْإِنسَانَ مِن نُّطْفَةٍ أَمْشَاجٍ نَّبْتَلِيهِ فَجَعَلْنَاهُ سَمِيعًا بَصِيرًا ۝ إِنَّا هَدَيْنَاهُ السَّبِيلَ إِمَّا شَاكِرًا وَإِمَّا كَفُورًا﴾ “Indeed We created man from a mingled drop, to try him, so We made him hearing and seeing. Indeed We guided him to the way — [to be] either grateful or ungrateful” [al-Insān 76:2–3]; and His saying ﴿أَمَّنْ خَلَقَ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضَ وَأَنزَلَ لَكُم مِّنَ السَّمَاءِ مَاءً فَأَنبَتْنَا بِهِ حَدَائِقَ ذَاتَ بَهْجَةٍ﴾ “Or He who created the heavens and the earth and sent down for you rain from the sky, by which We caused to grow gardens of delight…” — the verses — then He said: ﴿أَمَّن يَهْدِيكُمْ فِي ظُلُمَاتِ الْبَرِّ وَالْبَحْرِ﴾ “Or He who guides you in the darknesses of the land and the sea?” [an-Naml 27:60, 63].

For creation is the granting of external, concrete existence (al-wujūd al-ʿaynī al-khārijī), and guidance is the granting of cognitive, mental existence (al-wujūd al-ʿilmī al-dhihnī). So this is His creating, and this is His guiding and teaching.

Key insights & lessons

Ibn al-Qayyim gathers a chain of five Quranic pairings (al-ʿAlaq, ar-Raḥmān, al-Balad, al-Insān, an-Naml) to establish a settled pattern: wherever Allah names His creating, He tends to name His guiding/teaching alongside it — the two are the recto and verso of His grace.

The closing formula is the conceptual key to the whole first rank: khalq = bestowing a thing’s existence in the world; hudā = bestowing its existence in the mind/knowledge (its know-how, its orientation, its instruction). The creature is thus brought into being and taught how to be.

This reframes “guidance” at its most general as epistemic endowment — from the infant’s latch to the bee’s hexagon to the believer’s bayān — all of it the Lord furnishing creatures with the knowledge their existence requires.

Note: with this, Ibn al-Qayyim completes the first of the four ranks of guidance (the general hidāyah) and turns to the second.

The second rank of guidance: guidance of direction and clarification (hidāyat al-irshād wa-l-bayān)

The second of the ranks of guidance is the guidance of direction and clarification for the legally accountable (al-mukallafīn). This guidance does not necessitate the attainment of tawfīq and the following of the truth — even though it is a condition in it, or part of the cause; and that does not necessitate the attainment of the conditioned and the caused. Rather, the requisite may fail to produce [its effect] — either for want of the cause’s completion, or for the presence of an impediment. For this reason Allah said: ﴿وَأَمَّا ثَمُودُ فَهَدَيْنَاهُمْ فَاسْتَحَبُّوا الْعَمَىٰ عَلَى الْهُدَىٰ﴾ “And as for Thamūd, We guided them, but they preferred blindness over guidance” [Fuṣṣilat 41:17], and He said: ﴿وَمَا كَانَ اللَّهُ لِيُضِلَّ قَوْمًا بَعْدَ إِذْ هَدَاهُمْ حَتَّىٰ يُبَيِّنَ لَهُم مَّا يَتَّقُونَ﴾ — so He guided them with the guidance of clarification and indication, yet they were not guided; so He misguided them as a punishment for abandoning [right] guidance at the first, after they had come to know the guidance and turned away from it; so He blinded them to it after He had shown it to them.

This is His way, Glorified, with everyone upon whom He bestows a favor and who then is ungrateful for it: He strips it from him after it had been his portion and share — as He said: ﴿ذَٰلِكَ بِأَنَّ اللَّهَ لَمْ يَكُ مُغَيِّرًا نِّعْمَةً أَنْعَمَهَا عَلَىٰ قَوْمٍ حَتَّىٰ يُغَيِّرُوا مَا بِأَنفُسِهِمْ﴾ “That is because Allah would not change a favor He had bestowed upon a people until they change what is in themselves” [al-Anfāl 8:53]; and He said of the people of Pharaoh: ﴿وَجَحَدُوا بِهَا وَاسْتَيْقَنَتْهَا أَنفُسُهُمْ ظُلْمًا وَعُلُوًّا﴾ “And they rejected them [Our signs], though their souls were convinced of them, out of injustice and arrogance” [an-Naml 27:14] — that is, they rejected Our signs after they had become certain of their soundness. And He said: ﴿كَيْفَ يَهْدِي اللَّهُ قَوْمًا كَفَرُوا بَعْدَ إِيمَانِهِمْ وَشَهِدُوا أَنَّ الرَّسُولَ حَقٌّ وَجَاءَهُمُ الْبَيِّنَاتُ ۚ وَاللَّهُ لَا يَهْدِي الْقَوْمَ الظَّالِمِينَ﴾ “How shall Allah guide a people who disbelieved after their belief and [after] they had witnessed that the Messenger is true and clear proofs had come to them? Allah does not guide the wrongdoing people” [Āl ʿImrān 3:86].

This guidance is the one He affirmed for His Messenger where He said ﴿وَإِنَّكَ لَتَهْدِي إِلَىٰ صِرَاطٍ مُّسْتَقِيمٍ﴾ “And indeed you guide to a straight path”; and He negated from him the guidance that necessitates — which is the guidance of tawfīq and ilhām — by His saying ﴿إِنَّكَ لَا تَهْدِي مَنْ أَحْبَبْتَ﴾ “You do not guide whom you love.” For this the Prophet ﷺ said: “I was sent as a caller and a conveyor, and nothing of guidance belongs to me; and Iblīs was sent as an adorner and a tempter, and nothing of misguidance belongs to him.” Allah said: ﴿وَاللَّهُ يَدْعُو إِلَىٰ دَارِ السَّلَامِ وَيَهْدِي مَن يَشَاءُ إِلَىٰ صِرَاطٍ مُّسْتَقِيمٍ﴾ “And Allah invites to the Home of Peace and guides whom He wills to a straight path” [Yūnus 10:25] — so He joined, Glorified, between the general guidance and the special: He made the invitation general — as an argument, by His will and justice — and He singled out the guidance [for some] — as a favor, by His will and bounty.

This rank is more special than the one before it, for it is a guidance that pertains specifically to the mukallafīn, and it is Allah’s argument against His creation, by which He does not punish anyone until He has established it upon him. Allah said: ﴿وَمَا كُنَّا مُعَذِّبِينَ حَتَّىٰ نَبْعَثَ رَسُولًا﴾ “And We never punish until We have sent a messenger” [al-Isrāʾ 17:15]; and He said: ﴿رُّسُلًا مُّبَشِّرِينَ وَمُنذِرِينَ لِئَلَّا يَكُونَ لِلنَّاسِ عَلَى اللَّهِ حُجَّةٌ بَعْدَ الرُّسُلِ﴾ “Messengers as bringers of good tidings and warners, so that mankind would have no argument against Allah after the messengers” [an-Nisāʾ 4:165]; and He said: ﴿أَن تَقُولَ نَفْسٌ يَا حَسْرَتَا عَلَىٰ مَا فَرَّطتُ فِي جَنبِ اللَّهِ وَإِن كُنتُ لَمِنَ السَّاخِرِينَ ۝ أَوْ تَقُولَ لَوْ أَنَّ اللَّهَ هَدَانِي لَكُنتُ مِنَ الْمُتَّقِينَ﴾ “Lest a soul should say, ‘Oh, my regret over what I neglected regarding Allah, and I was indeed among the mockers’ — or it should say, ‘If only Allah had guided me, I would have been among the righteous'” [az-Zumar 39:56–57]; and He said: ﴿كُلَّمَا أُلْقِيَ فِيهَا فَوْجٌ سَأَلَهُمْ خَزَنَتُهَا أَلَمْ يَأْتِكُمْ نَذِيرٌ ۝ قَالُوا بَلَىٰ قَدْ جَاءَنَا نَذِيرٌ فَكَذَّبْنَا وَقُلْنَا مَا نَزَّلَ اللَّهُ مِن شَيْءٍ إِنْ أَنتُمْ إِلَّا فِي ضَلَالٍ كَبِيرٍ﴾ “Every time a company is cast into it, its keepers ask them, ‘Did there not come to you a warner?’ They will say, ‘Yes, a warner had come to us, but we denied and said, “Allah has not sent down anything; you are in nothing but great error”‘” [al-Mulk 67:8–9].

If it is said: How does His argument stand against them when He has prevented them from guidance and stood between them and it? — It is said: His argument stands against them by His leaving them free between themselves and the guidance, the prophets’ clarification to them, and their showing them the straight path until it is as though they witness it with the eye; and He set up for them the means of guidance, outward and inward, and did not stand between them and those means. As for the one among them who is prevented from those means — by loss of intellect, or smallness [of age] without discernment, or by being in a region of the earth that the call of His messengers has not reached — He does not punish him until He establishes His argument against him. So He did not prevent them from this guidance, nor stand between them and it. Yes — He cut off His tawfīq from them, and did not will from Himself to aid them and to turn their hearts toward Him; so He did not stand between them and what is within their power, even though He stood between them and what is not within their power — namely His own act, His will, and His tawfīq — for that is not within their power, and it is what they were prevented from and stood between. So ponder this place and know its worth — and Allah is the One whose help is sought.

Key insights & lessons

The second rank’s defining property: it is a guidance that clarifies without compelling — a condition or partial cause of being rightly guided, but not its guarantee. Thamūd were “guided” in this sense (shown the way) yet “preferred blindness.”

The withdrawal of a misused favor is named as a divine sunnah (al-Anfāl 8:53): guidance once spurned can be stripped as punishment — “they preferred blindness… so He blinded them.” The Pharaonic case (an-Naml 27:14) sharpens it: rejection against inner certainty is “injustice and arrogance.”

The two āyāt about the Prophet ﷺ are again paired to fix the doctrine: he guides (irshād/bayān, al-Qaṣaṣ’ “you guide to a straight path”) but does not guide (tawfīq, “you do not guide whom you love”) — echoed by the hadith “a caller and a conveyor… nothing of guidance belongs to me.”

This rank is the ḥujjah (binding proof): a battery of verses (al-Isrāʾ 17:15; an-Nisāʾ 4:165; az-Zumar 39:56–57; al-Mulk 67:8–9) establishes that no one is punished before a messenger/warning reaches them — with explicit exemption for the one who cannot reach the means (the insane, the non-discerning child, the unreached).

The pivotal theodicy answer: Allah’s argument is just because He blocks people only from what is not in their power (His own tawfīq, will, act), never from what is in their power (responding to the clear means He laid before them). He withholds aid; He does not bar the door. Ibn al-Qayyim flags this as a “place to know the worth of.”

Attribution flag: the hadith “I was sent as a caller and a conveyor…” is cited by Ibn al-Qayyim in its doctrinal function (caller vs. compeller); reader may note ḥadīth scholars discuss its chains, but its content is corroborated by the explicitly Quranic dāʿī/muballigh framing (al-Qaṣaṣ 28:56, Yūnus 10:25). The fine distinction between what is in the servant’s power and what is not is Ibn al-Qayyim’s (Ashʿarī-adjacent kasb) framing, offered as the resolution of the ḥujjah objection.

The third rank of guidance: guidance of tawfīq and ilhām — and the creation of the will that necessitates the act

The third of the ranks of guidance is the guidance of tawfīq (divine enablement) and ilhām (inspiration), and the creation of the will that necessitates the act. This rank is more special than the one before it. It is the one in whose denial the ignorant of the Qadariyyah went astray — and the salaf of the Ummah and the people of the Sunnah among them cried out against them from every region of the earth, age after age, down to our present time.

But the Jabriyyah wronged them and did not deal justly with them — just as [the Qadariyyah] wronged themselves — by denying the means and the powers, denying the act of the servant and his ability and that he should have any influence in the act at all. So [the Jabriyyah] were not guided to the [correct] statement of these [the Sunnah], but rather increased them in misguidance upon their misguidance and in clinging to what they were upon. And this is the way of the falsifier when he is summoned by another falsifier to abandon his school for [the caller’s own false] statement and school — like the Christian when he summons the Jew to the Trinity, the worship of the cross, and that the Messiah is a complete god, uncreated, and the like of that falsehood which he himself holds.

This rank necessitates two things: the first, the act of the Lord, Most High — which is the guiding (al-hudā); the second, the act of the servant — which is the being guided (al-ihtidāʾ), and it is the effect of His act, Glorified. So He is the Guide, and the servant is the guided. Allah said: ﴿مَن يَهْدِ اللَّهُ فَهُوَ الْمُهْتَدِ﴾ “Whom Allah guides — he is the [rightly] guided” [al-Aʿrāf 7:178]. And there is no path to the existence of the effect save through its complete cause: if His act does not occur, the servant’s act does not occur. For this Allah said: ﴿إِن تَحْرِصْ عَلَىٰ هُدَاهُمْ فَإِنَّ اللَّهَ لَا يَهْدِي مَن يُضِلُّ﴾ “If you are eager for their guidance — [know that] Allah does not guide whom He sends astray” [an-Naḥl 16:37] — and this is explicit that this guidance does not belong to him ﷺ, even were he eager for it, nor to anyone other than Allah; and that when Allah misguides a servant, no one has any path to guiding him, as He said: ﴿مَن يُضْلِلِ اللَّهُ فَلَا هَادِيَ لَهُ﴾ “Whom Allah sends astray — there is no guide for him” [al-Aʿrāf 7:186].

And He said: ﴿مَن يَشَإِ اللَّهُ يُضْلِلْهُ وَمَن يَشَأْ يَجْعَلْهُ عَلَىٰ صِرَاطٍ مُّسْتَقِيمٍ﴾ [al-Anʿām 6:39]; and He said: ﴿أَفَمَن زُيِّنَ لَهُ سُوءُ عَمَلِهِ فَرَآهُ حَسَنًا ۖ فَإِنَّ اللَّهَ يُضِلُّ مَن يَشَاءُ وَيَهْدِي مَن يَشَاءُ ۖ فَلَا تَذْهَبْ نَفْسُكَ عَلَيْهِمْ حَسَرَاتٍ﴾ “Then is one to whom the evil of his deed has been adorned so that he sees it as good [like one rightly guided]? Indeed Allah sends astray whom He wills and guides whom He wills; so let not your soul be consumed over them in regrets” [Fāṭir 35:8]; and He said: ﴿أَفَرَأَيْتَ مَنِ اتَّخَذَ إِلَٰهَهُ هَوَاهُ وَأَضَلَّهُ اللَّهُ عَلَىٰ عِلْمٍ وَخَتَمَ عَلَىٰ سَمْعِهِ وَقَلْبِهِ وَجَعَلَ عَلَىٰ بَصَرِهِ غِشَاوَةً فَمَن يَهْدِيهِ مِن بَعْدِ اللَّهِ ۚ أَفَلَا تَذَكَّرُونَ﴾ “Have you seen the one who takes his desire as his god, and Allah sends him astray upon knowledge and seals his hearing and his heart and puts a veil over his sight? Then who will guide him after Allah? Will you not be reminded?” [al-Jāthiyah 45:23]; and He said: ﴿لَّيْسَ عَلَيْكَ هُدَاهُمْ وَلَٰكِنَّ اللَّهَ يَهْدِي مَن يَشَاءُ﴾ “Not upon you is their guidance, but Allah guides whom He wills” [al-Baqarah 2:272]; and He said: ﴿وَلَوْ شِئْنَا لَآتَيْنَا كُلَّ نَفْسٍ هُدَاهَا﴾ “Had We willed, We would have given every soul its guidance” [as-Sajdah 32:13]; and He said: ﴿أَفَلَمْ يَيْأَسِ الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا أَن لَّوْ يَشَاءُ اللَّهُ لَهَدَى النَّاسَ جَمِيعًا﴾ “Have those who believed not [come to] know that, had Allah willed, He would have guided all of mankind?” [ar-Raʿd 13:31]; and He said: ﴿فَمَن يُرِدِ اللَّهُ أَن يَهْدِيَهُ يَشْرَحْ صَدْرَهُ لِلْإِسْلَامِ ۖ وَمَن يُرِدْ أَن يُضِلَّهُ يَجْعَلْ صَدْرَهُ ضَيِّقًا حَرَجًا كَأَنَّمَا يَصَّعَّدُ فِي السَّمَاءِ﴾ “So whomever Allah wills to guide, He expands his breast to Islam; and whomever He wills to send astray, He makes his breast tight and constricted, as though he were ascending into the sky” [al-Anʿām 6:125].

And the people of the Garden said: ﴿الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ الَّذِي هَدَانَا لِهَٰذَا وَمَا كُنَّا لِنَهْتَدِيَ لَوْلَا أَنْ هَدَانَا اللَّهُ﴾ “Praise be to Allah who guided us to this; and we would never have been guided had Allah not guided us” [al-Aʿrāf 7:43] — and they did not mean that some of the guidance is from Him and some is from them; rather, the guidance is entirely from Him, and had He not guided them, they would not have been guided.

And He said: ﴿أَلَيْسَ اللَّهُ بِكَافٍ عَبْدَهُ ۖ وَيُخَوِّفُونَكَ بِالَّذِينَ مِن دُونِهِ ۚ وَمَن يُضْلِلِ اللَّهُ فَمَا لَهُ مِنْ هَادٍ ۝ وَمَن يَهْدِ اللَّهُ فَمَا لَهُ مِن مُّضِلٍّ ۗ أَلَيْسَ اللَّهُ بِعَزِيزٍ ذِي انتِقَامٍ﴾ “Is not Allah sufficient for His servant? And they threaten you with those besides Him. And whomever Allah sends astray — for him there is no guide; and whomever Allah guides — for him there is no misguider. Is not Allah Mighty, Owner of retribution?” [az-Zumar 39:36–37]; and He said: ﴿وَمَا أَرْسَلْنَا مِن رَّسُولٍ إِلَّا بِلِسَانِ قَوْمِهِ لِيُبَيِّنَ لَهُمْ ۖ فَيُضِلُّ اللَّهُ مَن يَشَاءُ وَيَهْدِي مَن يَشَاءُ ۚ وَهُوَ الْعَزِيزُ الْحَكِيمُ﴾ [Ibrāhīm 14:4]; and He said: ﴿وَلَقَدْ بَعَثْنَا فِي كُلِّ أُمَّةٍ رَّسُولًا أَنِ اعْبُدُوا اللَّهَ وَاجْتَنِبُوا الطَّاغُوتَ ۖ فَمِنْهُم مَّنْ هَدَى اللَّهُ وَمِنْهُم مَّنْ حَقَّتْ عَلَيْهِ الضَّلَالَةُ﴾ “And We certainly sent into every nation a messenger, [saying], ‘Worship Allah and avoid false gods.’ And among them were those whom Allah guided, and among them were those upon whom misguidance was [deservedly] decreed” [an-Naḥl 16:36]; and He said: ﴿يُثَبِّتُ اللَّهُ الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا بِالْقَوْلِ الثَّابِتِ فِي الْحَيَاةِ الدُّنْيَا وَفِي الْآخِرَةِ ۖ وَيُضِلُّ اللَّهُ الظَّالِمِينَ ۚ وَيَفْعَلُ اللَّهُ مَا يَشَاءُ﴾ [Ibrāhīm 14:27]; and He said: ﴿كَذَٰلِكَ يُضِلُّ اللَّهُ مَن يَشَاءُ وَيَهْدِي مَن يَشَاءُ ۚ وَمَا يَعْلَمُ جُنُودَ رَبِّكَ إِلَّا هُوَ﴾ [al-Muddaththir 74:31]; and He said: ﴿يُضِلُّ بِهِ كَثِيرًا وَيَهْدِي بِهِ كَثِيرًا ۚ وَمَا يُضِلُّ بِهِ إِلَّا الْفَاسِقِينَ﴾ “He sends astray thereby many and guides thereby many — and He sends astray thereby none but the defiantly disobedient” [al-Baqarah 2:26]; and He said: ﴿يَهْدِي بِهِ اللَّهُ مَنِ اتَّبَعَ رِضْوَانَهُ سُبُلَ السَّلَامِ وَيُخْرِجُهُم مِّنَ الظُّلُمَاتِ إِلَى النُّورِ بِإِذْنِهِ وَيَهْدِيهِمْ إِلَىٰ صِرَاطٍ مُّسْتَقِيمٍ﴾ “By it Allah guides those who pursue His pleasure to the ways of peace, and brings them out of darknesses into the light by His permission, and guides them to a straight path” [al-Māʾidah 5:16].

Key insights & lessons

The third rank is the heart of the qadar question: guidance as tawfīq — Allah’s willing the servant’s guidance and His creating the motives, the will, and the ability for it — a guidance “that none but Allah is able to do.”

Ibn al-Qayyim positions the Sunnah as the balanced middle: against the Qadariyyah (who deny that this enabling guidance is Allah’s to give) and against the Jabriyyah (who over-correct by denying the servant’s real act, power, and causal taʾthīr altogether). The cross-falsifier analogy (Christian summoning Jew) is his verdict on “fixing” one error with another.

The rank entails two real acts: the Lord’s hudā and the servant’s ihtidāʾ — the latter a genuine effect of the former. “Whoever Allah guides — he is the guided.” This preserves both divine sovereignty and human agency (the kasb middle).

A wall of explicit verses (an-Naḥl, al-Aʿrāf, al-Anʿām, Fāṭir, al-Jāthiyah, al-Baqarah, as-Sajdah, ar-Raʿd, az-Zumar, Ibrāhīm, al-Muddaththir, al-Māʾidah) is marshaled to show the doctrine is not inferential but textually saturated: guiding and misguiding are repeatedly assigned to Allah’s mashīʾah.

The people of Paradise’s testimony (al-Aʿrāf 7:43) is read precisely: not “some from Him, some from us,” but guidance entirely from Him — the believer’s gratitude is total, not partial.

Note on balance: “He sends astray thereby none but the fāsiqīn” (al-Baqarah 2:26) and “misguidance was decreed [upon those who earned it]” (an-Naḥl 16:36) are kept in view — divine iḍlāl is consistently tied to the servant’s own fisq/ẓulm, which is the justice-side that answers the Qadarī worry without conceding their denial.

Why the servant must ask daily — Ibn Taymiyyah’s words, and ﴿شِرْعَةً وَمِنْهَاجًا﴾

And He, Glorified, commanded all His servants to ask Him for their guidance to the straight path every day and night in the five prayers — and that comprises guidance to the path and guidance within the path. Just as misguidance is of two kinds: a straying from the path, so that one is not guided to it; and a straying within it. The first is a straying from knowing it; the second is a straying from its details, or some of them.

Our shaykh [Ibn Taymiyyah] said: “Since the servant, in every state, is in need of this guidance in all that he does and leaves — for there are matters he has done not upon guidance, and so he needs to repent of them; and matters to whose root he has been guided but not to their detail, or guided to from one aspect but not another, and so he needs the completion of guidance in them, that he may increase in guidance; and matters in which he needs to attain, in the future, the like of the guidance he attained in the past; and matters concerning which he is devoid of [right] belief, and so he needs guidance; and matters he has not done, and so he needs to do them in the manner of guidance — and other kinds of guidance besides these — Allah made it obligatory upon him to ask Him for this guidance in the most excellent of his states, which is the prayer, several times in the day and night.” [End of his words.]

And the goal is not completed save by guidance to the road and guidance within it. For the servant may be guided to the road of his intent and its descent [the path he means to take], turning away from others, yet not be guided to the details of his travel within it, the times of travel [as opposed to other times], the provision of the journey, and the banes of the road. For this reason Ibn ʿAbbās said concerning His saying ﴿لِكُلٍّ جَعَلْنَا مِنكُمْ شِرْعَةً وَمِنْهَاجًا﴾ “For each of you We appointed a law (shirʿah) and a way (minhāj)” [al-Māʾidah 5:48]: “a road and a sunnah.” This interpretation itself needs interpreting: the road (sabīl) is the path, and it is the minhāj; and the sunnah is the shirʿah, and it is the details of the road, its rugged stretches, the manner of travel within it, and the times of travel. Upon this, his saying “a road and a sunnah” — the “road” is the minhāj and the “sunnah” is the shirʿah — so the earlier term in the verse [shirʿah] corresponds to the later in the interpretation [sunnah]; and in another wording [from Ibn ʿAbbās] it is “a sunnah and a road,” so the earlier corresponds to the earlier and the later to the latter.

Key insights & lessons

The obligation of asking “guide us to the straight path” in every prayer is justified by the two-fold structure of guidance: guidance to the path (knowing it) and guidance within the path (its details, timing, provisions, hazards) — mirrored by the two kinds of straying.

Ibn Taymiyyah’s catalogue itemizes why even the believer needs continual fresh guidance: past misdeeds needing repentance, roots grasped without detail, aspects half-seen, future steadfastness, gaps in belief, and unperformed goods — so the Fātiḥah request is never redundant. (This is the same taxonomy Ibn al-Qayyim opened the whole treatise with, now attributed to his shaykh.)

Ibn ʿAbbās’s gloss on shirʿah/minhāj is unpacked with care: minhāj = the road itself; shirʿah/sunnah = its details and manner of traversal — and Ibn al-Qayyim even tracks how the two narrated wordings (“road and sunnah” vs. “sunnah and road”) map onto the verse’s order. This is a model of precise lexical tafsīr, distinguishing the macro-path from its micro-navigation.

Attribution flag: the long quotation is expressly Ibn Taymiyyah’s (“our shaykh said… [end of his words]”); the shirʿah/minhāj reading is Ibn ʿAbbās’s, with the order-matching analysis being Ibn al-Qayyim’s clarifying gloss on the two transmitted wordings.

The sealing, stamping, and locking of hearts

Of this [third rank] is His informing, Glorified, that He has stamped (ṭabaʿa) upon the hearts of the disbelievers and sealed (khatama) them, and that He has deafened them to the truth and blinded their sight to it — as He said: ﴿إِنَّ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا سَوَاءٌ عَلَيْهِمْ أَأَنذَرْتَهُمْ أَمْ لَمْ تُنذِرْهُمْ لَا يُؤْمِنُونَ ۝ خَتَمَ اللَّهُ عَلَىٰ قُلُوبِهِمْ وَعَلَىٰ سَمْعِهِمْ﴾ “Indeed those who disbelieve — it is the same for them whether you warn them or do not warn them: they will not believe. Allah has sealed their hearts and their hearing” — and the complete stop (al-waqf at-tāmm) is here — then He said: ﴿وَعَلَىٰ أَبْصَارِهِمْ غِشَاوَةٌ﴾ “and over their sight is a veil” [al-Baqarah 2:6–7] — like His saying ﴿أَفَرَأَيْتَ مَنِ اتَّخَذَ إِلَٰهَهُ هَوَاهُ وَأَضَلَّهُ اللَّهُ عَلَىٰ عِلْمٍ وَخَتَمَ عَلَىٰ سَمْعِهِ وَقَلْبِهِ وَجَعَلَ عَلَىٰ بَصَرِهِ غِشَاوَةً﴾ [al-Jāthiyah 45:23].

And He said: ﴿وَقَوْلِهِمْ قُلُوبُنَا غُلْفٌ ۚ بَلْ طَبَعَ اللَّهُ عَلَيْهَا بِكُفْرِهِمْ﴾ “And their saying, ‘Our hearts are wrapped’ — rather, Allah has stamped them on account of their disbelief” [an-Nisāʾ 4:155]; and He said: ﴿كَذَٰلِكَ يَطْبَعُ اللَّهُ عَلَىٰ قُلُوبِ الْكَافِرِينَ﴾ “Thus does Allah stamp the hearts of the disbelievers” [al-Aʿrāf 7:101]; ﴿كَذَٰلِكَ نَطْبَعُ عَلَىٰ قُلُوبِ الْمُعْتَدِينَ﴾ “Thus do We stamp the hearts of the transgressors” [Yūnus 10:74]; ﴿وَنَطْبَعُ عَلَىٰ قُلُوبِهِمْ فَهُمْ لَا يَسْمَعُونَ﴾ “And We stamp their hearts, so they do not hear” [al-Aʿrāf 7:100].

And He informed, Glorified, that upon some hearts there are locks (aqfāl) preventing them from opening to the entry of guidance into them. And He said: ﴿قُلْ هُوَ لِلَّذِينَ آمَنُوا هُدًى وَشِفَاءٌ ۖ وَالَّذِينَ لَا يُؤْمِنُونَ فِي آذَانِهِمْ وَقْرٌ وَهُوَ عَلَيْهِمْ عَمًى﴾ “Say: it is, for those who believe, guidance and healing; but those who do not believe — in their ears is heaviness, and it is upon them blindness” [Fuṣṣilat 41:44] — so this heaviness (waqr) and blindness stand between them and that there be for them guidance and healing. And He said: ﴿إِنَّا جَعَلْنَا عَلَىٰ قُلُوبِهِمْ أَكِنَّةً أَن يَفْقَهُوهُ وَفِي آذَانِهِمْ وَقْرًا﴾ “Indeed We have placed over their hearts coverings, lest they understand it, and in their ears heaviness” [al-Anʿām 6:25]. And He said: ﴿وَكَذَٰلِكَ زُيِّنَ لِفِرْعَوْنَ سُوءُ عَمَلِهِ وَصُدَّ عَنِ السَّبِيلِ﴾ “And thus was made fair-seeming to Pharaoh the evil of his deed, and he was barred from the way” [Ghāfir 40:37] — the Kūfans read it “wa-ṣudda” with a ḍammah on the ṣād [passive], carrying it upon “was made fair-seeming.” And He said: ﴿إِنَّ اللَّهَ لَا يَهْدِي مَنْ هُوَ مُسْرِفٌ كَذَّابٌ﴾ “Indeed Allah does not guide one who is a transgressor, a liar” [Ghāfir 40:28]; and He said: ﴿وَاللَّهُ لَا يَهْدِي الْقَوْمَ الظَّالِمِينَ﴾ “And Allah does not guide the wrongdoing people.” And it is known that He did not negate the guidance of clarification and indication by which the argument stands — for that is His argument against His servants.

Key insights & lessons

This cluster gathers the “sealing” vocabulary — khatm (sealing), ṭabʿ (stamping), aqfāl (locks), akinnah (coverings), ghishāwah (veil), waqr (deafness) — as concrete expressions of the third rank’s negative pole: the withdrawal/withholding of tawfīq renders hearts impervious to guidance.

A careful tajwīd-and-tafsīr note: in al-Baqarah 2:7 the complete stop falls after “their hearing,” so the “veil” attaches to sight alone — a syntactic point with doctrinal payoff, paralleled by al-Jāthiyah 45:23 where seal (heart/hearing) and veil (sight) are distinguished.

The qirāʾāt note on Ghāfir 40:37 (Kūfan passive ṣudda vs. active) is preserved — showing the barring is read as something done to Pharaoh, consistent with “made fair-seeming.”

Crucial guardrail against fatalism: Ibn al-Qayyim immediately clarifies that the sealing verses do not negate the guidance of bayān (the binding proof) — that remains intact as Allah’s ḥujjah. And the sealing is repeatedly tied to the agents’ own kufr (“on account of their disbelief”), iʿtidāʾ, isrāf, kadhib, and ẓulm — i.e., it is requital, not arbitrary. This keeps justice and sovereignty together.

Attribution flag: all citations here are Quranic; the waqf placement and the Kūfan reading are qirāʾāt/tafsīr points reported as such. The framing (“of this third rank is…”) is Ibn al-Qayyim’s systematizing.

The Qadariyyah’s distortion (1): “guidance” as mere naming, and the rules of valid interpretation

The Qadariyyah refer all of this to the ambiguous (mutashābih) and make it among the ambiguous of the Qurʾān, and interpret it otherwise than its [true] interpretation — rather, they interpret it with what is decisively known to be false and not intended by the Speaker. As some of them say: what is intended by that is Allah’s naming the servant guided or astray — so they made His guiding and His misguiding merely the naming of the servant by that. And this is among what is known with certainty not to be a sound carrying of these verses; and when you ponder them you find they do not bear what [the Qadariyyah] mentioned in the least. There is not, in the language of any nation — let alone the most eloquent and complete of languages [Arabic] — “He guided him” in the sense of “He named him guided,” and “He misguided him” in the sense of “He named him astray.” Is it sound to say “He taught him” [to mean] He named him learned, and “He gave him understanding” [to mean] He named him a man of understanding?

And how can this be sound in the like of His saying ﴿لَّيْسَ عَلَيْكَ هُدَاهُمْ وَلَٰكِنَّ اللَّهَ يَهْدِي مَن يَشَاءُ﴾ “Not upon you is their guidance, but Allah guides whom He wills”? Has anyone other than the Qurʾān-distorting Qadariyyah understood from this: “Not upon you is naming them guided, but Allah names whom He wills guided”? And has anyone ever understood from His saying ﴿إِنَّكَ لَا تَهْدِي مَنْ أَحْبَبْتَ﴾ “You do not guide whom you love”: “You do not name him guided, but Allah names him by this name”? And has anyone understood from the supplicant’s saying ﴿اهْدِنَا الصِّرَاطَ الْمُسْتَقِيمَ﴾, and his saying, “O Allah, guide me from Yourself,” and the like: “O Allah, name me guided”?

This is among the crime of the Qadariyyah against the Qurʾān — and its meaning is the counterpart of the crime of their brethren among the Jahmiyyah against the texts of the [divine] attributes and their distortion of them from their places; and [the Qadariyyah/Jahmiyyah] opened to the heretics and apostates their crime against the texts of the Resurrection and its interpretation with interpretations which, if not stronger than [the Qadariyyah’s] interpretations, are not lesser than them; and they opened to the Qarāmiṭah and Bāṭiniyyah the interpretation of the texts of command and prohibition after the manner of their interpretations. So the interpretation of distortion (taʾwīl at-taḥrīf), whose chain these sects have forged, is the root of the corruption of the world and the religion and the ruin of creation — and we shall, Allah willing, devote a [separate] book in which we mention the crime of the [false] interpreters against the world and the religion.

For when you weigh between the interpretations of the Qadariyyah, the Jahmiyyah, and the Rāfiḍah, you find between them and the interpretations of the apostates and heretics among the Qarāmiṭah Bāṭiniyyah and their like no great difference. The false interpretation comprises the nullification of what the Messenger brought and the lie against the Speaker that He intended that meaning — so it comprises the falsifying of the truth, the establishing of falsehood, and the ascription to the Speaker of what does not befit Him, of obfuscation and riddling, together with speaking about Him without knowledge that He intended this meaning. So the interpreter is obliged: first, to show the suitability of the expression for the meaning he mentioned, and the Speaker’s usage of it in that meaning in most places — so that when He uses it in what could bear otherwise, it is carried upon what is known of His usage of it; and he is obliged to establish a proof free of any counter-evidence for the warrant that diverts the expression from its outward sense and reality to its metaphor and figurative use — otherwise that is a mere claim on his part, and is not accepted.

And the interpretation by some of them of these texts — that what is intended by them is the guidance of clarification and acquainting (taʿrīf), not the creation of guidance in the heart (for Allah, Glorified, is not able to do that, according to this sect!) — this interpretation is among the most false of the false. For Allah, Glorified, informs that He divided His guidance of the servant into two divisions: a division none but He is able to do, and a division within the power of [created] servants only. In the division within the power of another [than Allah] He said: ﴿وَإِنَّكَ لَتَهْدِي إِلَىٰ صِرَاطٍ مُّسْتَقِيمٍ﴾ “And indeed you guide to a straight path”; and He said, in the [division] not within the power of another: ﴿إِنَّكَ لَا تَهْدِي مَنْ أَحْبَبْتَ﴾ “You do not guide whom you love,” and ﴿مَن يُضْلِلِ اللَّهُ فَلَا هَادِيَ لَهُ﴾. And it is known with certainty that clarification and indication may be attained by him [the Messenger] and is not negated from him. Likewise His saying ﴿فَإِنَّ اللَّهَ لَا يَهْدِي مَن يُضِلُّ﴾ — it is not sound to carry it upon the guidance of call and clarification, for this [kind] is given to one even though Allah has misguided him, by the call and the clarification. And likewise His saying ﴿وَأَضَلَّهُ اللَّهُ عَلَىٰ عِلْمٍ وَخَتَمَ عَلَىٰ سَمْعِهِ وَقَلْبِهِ وَجَعَلَ عَلَىٰ بَصَرِهِ غِشَاوَةً فَمَن يَهْدِيهِ مِن بَعْدِ اللَّهِ﴾ — is it permissible to carry it upon the meaning: “Who, then, will call him to guidance and clarify for him that by which Allah’s argument stands against him”? And how will these [Qadariyyah] deal with the texts in which it is [stated] that He, Glorified, is the One who misguided them — is it permissible for them to carry them upon [the meaning] that He called them to misguidance?

Key insights & lessons

The Qadariyyah’s first dodge: file every “Allah guides/misguides” verse under mutashābih and re-read hudā/iḍlāl as naming (“He called him guided”). Ibn al-Qayyim refutes this by plain language: in no tongue does hadāhu mean “named him guided” — and the substitution produces absurdities when slotted into “Not upon you is their guidance,” “You do not guide whom you love,” and “Guide us to the straight path.”

He then lays down a rigorous theory of legitimate taʾwīl (three burdens on any interpreter): (1) show the word can bear the proposed meaning; (2) show the Speaker habitually uses it that way; (3) supply a counter-evidence-free proof compelling the shift from literal to figurative. Absent these, taʾwīl is mere claim — rejected. This is a portable hermeneutical standard, not just an anti-Qadarī jab.

He diagnoses taʾwīl at-taḥrīf as a single method with many franchises: Jahmiyyah on the attributes, Qadariyyah on qadar, heretics on the Resurrection, Bāṭiniyyah on command/prohibition — all sharing the structure of nullifying revelation + lying about the Speaker’s intent. (He promises a dedicated book on it — a cross-reference to his larger project.)

The sharpest refutation targets the Muʿtazilī premise that Allah cannot create guidance in the heart: Ibn al-Qayyim shows the Qurʾān itself splits guidance in two — the bayān the Messenger can give (al-Qaṣaṣ 28:56b) and the tawfīq he cannot (al-Qaṣaṣ 28:56a; al-Aʿrāf 7:186) — so reducing all guidance to bayān collapses a distinction the text insists on, and cannot handle “Allah misguided him and sealed his heart.”

Attribution flag: this is polemical kalām/tafsīr — Ibn al-Qayyim’s own argument (in his Ashʿarī-leaning, Sunnah-affirming register) against named theological schools. The verses are Quranic; the parenthetical “(for Allah is not able to do that, according to this sect!)” is his characterization of the Muʿtazilī/Qadarī position, stated as critique.

The Qadariyyah’s distortion (2): “marking,” “finding,” and the morphology that refutes them

If they say: That is not its meaning; rather its meaning is the One who comprehends and found them so; or He informed His angels and messengers of their misguidance; or He placed upon their hearts a mark (ʿalāmah) by which the angels know that they are astray — it is said: This is of the same kind as your statement that His guiding and misguiding, Glorified, is by naming them guided and astray. So these are four distortions of yours: that He named them by that, that He marked them with a mark by which the angels know them, that He informed about them by that, and that He found them so. The informing is of the same kind as the naming — and we have shown that the language does not bear that, and that the texts, when the ponderer ponders them, he finds them the furthest thing from this meaning.

As for the mark — O wonder at the sect of distortion and what it has perpetrated against the Qurʾān and faith! In what language and what tongue does His saying ﴿إِنَّكَ لَا تَهْدِي مَنْ أَحْبَبْتَ﴾ indicate the meaning: “You do not mark him with a mark, but Allah is the One who marks him with it”? And His saying ﴿مَن يُضْلِلِ اللَّهُ فَلَا هَادِيَ لَهُ﴾: “Whomever Allah marks with the mark of misguidance, none other marks him with the mark of guidance”? And His saying ﴿وَلَوْ شِئْنَا لَآتَيْنَا كُلَّ نَفْسٍ هُدَاهَا﴾: “We would have marked it with the mark of the guidance that it [itself] created for itself and gave itself”?! And in what language is it understood from the supplicant’s saying “Guide us to the straight path”: “Mark us with a mark by which the angels know that we are guided”? And their saying ﴿رَبَّنَا لَا تُزِغْ قُلُوبَنَا بَعْدَ إِذْ هَدَيْتَنَا﴾ “Our Lord, let not our hearts deviate after You have guided us”: “Do not mark them with the mark of the people of deviation”? And his saying “O Turner of hearts, make my heart firm upon Your religion,” and “O Director of hearts, direct my heart to Your obedience” — and the like of that of the texts — in what language and what tongue is it understood from this: “Mark us with the mark of firmness and direction upon Your obedience”? And in what language is the meaning of His saying ﴿وَجَعَلْنَا قُلُوبَهُمْ قَاسِيَةً﴾ “And We made their hearts hard”: “We marked them with the mark of hardness,” or “We found them so”?

Yes — if the Qurʾān had been sent down in the language of the Qadariyyah, the Jahmiyyah, and the people of innovation, it would have been possible to carry it upon that; or if the truth were a follower of their whims and its texts a follower of the innovations of the innovators and the opinions of the bewildered. And you find all these sects bringing the Qurʾān down upon their schools, their innovations, and their opinions: so the Qurʾān, with the Jahmiyyah, is Jahmī; with the Muʿtazilah, Muʿtazilī; with the Qadariyyah, Qadarī; with the Rāfiḍah, Rāfiḍī; and likewise it is, with all the people of falsehood [as they would have it]: ﴿وَمَا كَانُوا أَوْلِيَاءَهُ ۚ إِنْ أَوْلِيَاؤُهُ إِلَّا الْمُتَّقُونَ وَلَٰكِنَّ أَكْثَرَهُمْ لَا يَعْلَمُونَ﴾ “But they were not its guardians; its guardians are none but the God-fearing — yet most of them do not know” [al-Anfāl 8:34].

As for their distortion of these texts and their like — that the meaning is “He found them, He came upon them [so]” — in what tongue and what language did you find “I guided the man” [to mean] “I found him guided,” and “Allah sealed his heart and his hearing and placed over his sight a veil” [to mean] He found him so? Is this anything but a sheer fabrication against the Qurʾān and the language? If they say: We did not say this in the like of that; we said it only in the like of “Allah misguided him,” i.e., He found him astray — as one says “I praised the man (aḥmadtu),” “I found him stingy (abkhaltu),” “I found him mad (ajnantu)” when you found him so or ascribed it to him — it is said to the sect of distortion: this came only in a few, rare expressions; otherwise the foundation of this morphological pattern [afʿala] is that you did that to him — especially when the hamzah is for transitivity (taʿdiyah) from the triliteral: like qāma (he stood) and aqamtuhu (I made him stand), qaʿada and aqʿadtuhu, dhahaba and adhhabtuhu, samiʿa and asmaʿtuhu, nāma and anamtuhu; and likewise ḍalla and aḍallahu llāh (Allah made him stray), asʿadahu and ashqāhu, aʿṭāhu and akhzāhu, amātahu and aḥyāhu, azāgha qalbahu and aqāmahu to His obedience, and ayqaẓahu from his heedlessness, and arāhu His signs, and anzalahu a blessed lodging, and askanahu His Garden — to many times the like of that.

Do you find in them a single expression whose meaning is that He found him so? Exalted is Allah above what the distorters say! Then look into the book of faʿala wa-afʿala [the lexicographers’ work on these patterns]: do you, with the breadth of the chapter, light upon afʿaltuhu in the meaning of “I found him [so]” except in two or three expressions, transmitted from the people of the language? Then look: has anyone of the ancients or the moderns among the people of the language said that the Arabs coined “Allah misguided him,” “He guided him,” “He sealed his hearing and his heart,” “He made his heart deviate,” “He turned him from His obedience,” and the like, for the meaning “He found him so”? And when He, Glorified, intended to make plain this meaning [of finding], He said ﴿وَوَجَدَكَ ضَالًّا فَهَدَىٰ﴾ “And He found you astray and guided [you]” [aḍ-Ḍuḥā 93:7] — and He did not say “and He misguided you (wa-aḍallak).” And He said, concerning one who opposed the Messenger and disbelieved in what he brought, ﴿وَأَضَلَّهُ اللَّهُ عَلَىٰ عِلْمٍ﴾ “and Allah sent him astray upon knowledge” — and He did not say “and Allah found him astray.”

Then what tawḥīd, what praise, and what acquainting of the servants [with their Lord] is it that the whole affair belongs to Allah and is in His hand, and that no one has anything of His affair — [if all this reduces] to mere naming, marking, and the Lord’s coming-upon His servants so and His finding them upon these descriptions, without His having in them any making, creating, or willing? Are human beings incapable of naming, coming-upon, and finding [things] so? So what praise, what laudation, becomes the Lord, Most High, by that alone? You [Qadariyyah] and your brethren the Jabriyyah have not praised the Lord with what He deserves to be praised, nor lauded Him with the descriptions of His perfection, nor estimated Him at His true worth. And the followers of the Messenger, His party, and His elect are free of you and of them in your falsehood and theirs — and with you and them in whatever truth you hold; they do not align with anything other than what the Messenger clarified and brought, nor swerve from it in support of the differing opinions of men and their scattered whims. And that is the bounty of Allah, which He gives to whom He wills — and Allah is the Possessor of mighty bounty.

Key insights & lessons

Ibn al-Qayyim catalogs the Qadariyyah’s escape-hatches as “four distortions” of hadā/aḍalla: (1) naming (called him guided/astray), (2) marking (placed a sign for the angels), (3) informing (told the angels), (4) finding (came upon him so). Each empties the verb of its causal force.

The “marking” reading is dismantled by substitution into supplications: “Guide us,” “let not our hearts deviate,” “O Turner of hearts, make my heart firm” — none of which can possibly mean “mark us with a sign for the angels.” The reductio is linguistic, devastating, and accumulative.

The “Qurʾān according to each sect” line is the rhetorical hinge: a text twisted to fit every school is guarded by none of them — “its guardians are none but the God-fearing” (al-Anfāl 8:34). True wilāyah of the Qurʾān is taqwā, not partisan taʾwīl.

The decisive blow is morphological (ṣarf): the afʿala pattern with a transitivity-hamzah means “X did/caused it to Y” (aqāma, asmaʿa, anāma…), and by exact parallel aḍalla = “caused to stray.” The “found him so” sense (abkhaltu/aḥmadtu) is a rare, exceptional idiom, not the rule — and no lexicographer ever assigned aḍallahu llāh / khatama / azāgha to it. This is settled grammar deployed against the heretics, not a soft inference.

The clinching textual proof: when the Qurʾān does mean “found,” it says it plainly — ﴿وَوَجَدَكَ ضَالًّا فَهَدَىٰ﴾ uses wajada explicitly, and pointedly does not say aḍallak. So the very vocabulary the Qadariyyah need is available and used elsewhere — its absence in the iḍlāl verses is decisive.

The theological payoff: reducing guidance/misguidance to naming/marking/finding strips the Lord of creation, will, and making — leaving a “praise” that any human could equally earn. Ibn al-Qayyim charges both Qadariyyah (deny divine creation of the act) and Jabriyyah (deny the servant’s real act) with failing to estimate Allah at His true worth — and locates Ahl al-Sunnah as those who take all the truth in each camp and the falsehood of neither. (This is the explicit statement of the kasb middle path.)

Attribution flag: this is sustained Ibn al-Qayyim polemic grounded in ṣarf and Quranic usage. The grammatical claims (transitivity-hamzah; the rarity of afʿala = wajada; the faʿala wa-afʿala lexicon) are settled linguistic argument; the application to qadar is his doctrinal thesis. Reported as his, against named schools.

Ibn Masʿūd’s report: the tashahhud of need (Khuṭbat al-Ḥājah)

Ibn Masʿūd (may Allah be pleased with him) said: “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ taught us the tashahhud of the prayer and the tashahhud of [any] need.” The tashahhud of need is: “Indeed all praise belongs to Allah; we praise Him, seek His help, and seek His forgiveness; and we seek refuge in Allah from the evils of our souls [and from the ill of our deeds]. Whomever Allah guides, none can misguide him; and whomever He misguides, none can guide him. And I bear witness that there is no god but Allah, and I bear witness that Muḥammad is His servant and His Messenger.” Then he joins to it his [statement of] need.

At-Tirmidhī said: a sound (ṣaḥīḥ) hadith. And Abū Dāwūd narrated it with his chain [as Ibn al-Qayyim gives it].

Key insights & lessons

The hadith is cited as a prophetically-taught summary of the third rank: its pivot — “whomever Allah guides, none can misguide; whomever He misguides, none can guide” — is the exact doctrine of tawfīq as a divine prerogative, placed by the Prophet ﷺ at the head of every important undertaking (tashahhud al-ḥājah / khuṭbat al-ḥājah).

Its placement here is purposeful: after refuting the Qadariyyah’s evasions, Ibn al-Qayyim adduces a Sunnah-text in which the believer opens every need by confessing that guidance and misguidance rest with Allah alone — turning the contested doctrine into a lived act of worship and reliance.

Attribution flag: Ibn al-Qayyim preserves the gradings as given — at-Tirmidhī: ṣaḥīḥ, with Abū Dāwūd’s transmission. (Reader note: this is the famous Khuṭbat al-Ḥājah, widely transmitted; the bracketed “and from the ill of our deeds” is the standard completion of the wording and is rendered here within brackets to mark it as the received fuller form.)

[Translator’s note — one passage pending verification]

The source, at this point, contains the report of the address of ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb at al-Jābiyah and his exchange with the Jāthalīq (the Christian patriarch) bearing on qadar and guidance. I have rendered every other section directly from the source text; this single anecdote I am deliberately not reconstructing from memory, because its exact wording and isnād in this compilation are not before me (the original upload is no longer accessible in this session), and reproducing a near-match would violate the fidelity standard the rest of this translation holds to. Please re-share this paragraph (or re-upload the source file) and I will translate it in full, in place, with its attribution preserved — and remove this note.

The fourth rank of guidance: guidance on the Day of Resurrection — to Paradise, or to the path of Hell

The fourth of the ranks of guidance is the guidance of the Day of Resurrection: the leading of the people to their two abodes — the people of the Garden being guided to the Garden, and the people of the Fire being led (guided) to the path of Hell. Allah said: ﴿احْشُرُوا الَّذِينَ ظَلَمُوا وَأَزْوَاجَهُمْ وَمَا كَانُوا يَعْبُدُونَ ۝ مِن دُونِ اللَّهِ فَاهْدُوهُمْ إِلَىٰ صِرَاطِ الْجَحِيمِ﴾ “Gather those who did wrong, and their kinds [their companions/likes], and what they used to worship besides Allah, and lead them (fa-hdūhum) to the path of Hellfire” [aṣ-Ṣāffāt 37:22–23].

So He named this leading to the path of the Jaḥīm a “guiding” (hidāyah) — by way of [grim] counterpart and irony (muqābalah), just as is said of the bearer of evil tidings, “I give you glad tidings of [such-and-such].” It is the guidance of driving and dispatching to the abode of punishment — the opposite of the guidance of the people of faith, who are led to the Garden in honor and generosity.

And He said of the believers: ﴿وَالَّذِينَ قُتِلُوا فِي سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ فَلَن يُضِلَّ أَعْمَالَهُمْ ۝ سَيَهْدِيهِمْ وَيُصْلِحُ بَالَهُمْ ۝ وَيُدْخِلُهُمُ الْجَنَّةَ عَرَّفَهَا لَهُمْ﴾ “And those who are killed in the way of Allah — never will He let their deeds go astray. He will guide them (sa-yahdīhim) and set right their condition, and admit them to the Garden, which He has made known to them” [Muḥammad 47:4–6].

Ibn ʿAbbās said concerning ﴿عَرَّفَهَا لَهُمْ﴾ “which He made known to them”: each of them will know his dwelling in the Garden, and be guided to it, as [readily as] he knew his dwelling [in the world] when he would return to it — he will not err toward the dwelling of another. And concerning ﴿سَيَهْدِيهِمْ﴾ “He will guide them”: He will guide them to the path leading to the Garden. Az-Zajjāj said: the meaning is “He guides them” in the world to His obedience and His religion, and “He guides them” [on that Day] to the path of the Garden — so the two guidances are joined for them: the guidance of tawfīq in the abode of action, and the guidance of reaching the goal in the abode of requital.

This rank is the fruit of the ranks before it: for whoever Allah guided in this world with the guidance of bayān and the guidance of tawfīq, He guides him on the Day of Resurrection to the path of the Garden and to his dwelling within it; and whoever turned away from the guidance of bayān and was not granted the guidance of tawfīq, his recompense is to be “led to the path of Hellfire.” So the guidance of the Hereafter is in accordance with the guidance of this world — “and your Lord is not unjust to [His] servants.”

Key insights & lessons

The fourth and final rank closes the arc: guidance becomes eschatological destination — the believer guided to his very house in the Garden, the wrongdoer “led” to the path of Hell.

The rhetorical gem is the ironic hidāyah of aṣ-Ṣāffāt 37:23: calling the driving of the damned to Hell a “guiding” is muqābalah — the bitter mirror of the believers’ honored leading — like “congratulating” someone with bad news. The form of the word is guidance; the substance is requital.

Ibn ʿAbbās’s gloss on ﴿عَرَّفَهَا لَهُمْ﴾ is luminous: the people of Paradise will find their assigned mansions as unerringly as a person finds his own home — prior acquaintance, divinely granted.

Az-Zajjāj joins the two guidances for the martyr/believer: tawfīq in the dār al-ʿamal and arrival in the dār al-jazāʾ — making the fourth rank the harvest of the second and third. The whole taxonomy is thus shown to be one continuous gift: clarification → enabling → arrival.

The closing principle ties the system to justice: the Hereafter’s guidance tracks the dunyā’s — those who took the bayān and were granted tawfīq are guided home; those who spurned the bayān are “led” to the Fire — “your Lord is not unjust to His servants.”

Attribution flag: the verses are Quranic; the glosses on sa-yahdīhim and ʿarrafahā lahum are the reported readings of Ibn ʿAbbās and az-Zajjāj as Ibn al-Qayyim cites them. The muqābalah/irony analysis of fa-hdūhum is the standard balāghī reading he employs.

Closing note

With the fourth rank — the guidance of the Day of Resurrection — Ibn al-Qayyim’s treatment of ﴿اهْدِنَا الصِّرَاطَ الْمُسْتَقِيمَ﴾ reaches its end. The discourse has moved from the meaning of the request (knowledge of the truth with intent and preference), through the means of asking (Allah’s names and the servant’s ʿubūdiyyah), through the ten ranks witnessed within “ihdinā,” through the five veils the heart must be guarded from, into the comprehensive framework of guidance and misguidance — its four ranks (general creation-guidance, the bayān that binds the argument, the tawfīq that Allah alone bestows, and the eschatological arrival), the vast signs in the animal kingdom, and the sustained defense of the Sunnah’s middle path between the Qadariyyah and the Jabriyyah — closing where it must: with the believer guided to his home in the Garden, and the petition of the Fātiḥah answered.

One passage (the ʿUmar–Jāthalīq report at al-Jābiyah) remains flagged above for verbatim verification against the source.