The Prophetic Medicine

Imam Shams al-Din Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr ibn Ayyub al-Zur'i al-Dimashqi, known throughout the Muslim world as Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya — 'son of the principal of the Jawziyya school' — was a fourteenth-century Hanbali jurist, theologian, and spiritual writer whose works occupy a central place in Sunni intellectual and devotional life. Born in 691 AH / 1292 CE in Damascus, he was raised in a scholarly family and studied under more than thirty leading scholars of his age, but his decisive intellectual encounter came at age twenty-one when he became the closest student and lifelong companion of the controversial reformer Ibn Taymiyya, with whom he was imprisoned in the Citadel of Damascus until Ibn Taymiyya's death in 728 AH.

Ibn al-Qayyim's writing combines the rigor of Hanbali jurisprudence with an unusually rich treatment of the heart, spiritual states, and the inner life of the believer. His major works include Madarij al-Salikin, an extended commentary on al-Harawi's Manazil al-Sa'irin that maps the stages of the spiritual path; Zad al-Ma'ad, a comprehensive guide to the Prophetic way in worship, conduct, and daily life; I'lam al-Muwaqqi'in on the principles of legal verdicts; al-Da' wa al-Dawa' on the diseases of the heart and their remedies; and al-Fawa'id, a celebrated collection of spiritual and intellectual reflections. His treatment of the science of the soul anticipates many later concerns of Islamic ethics and psychology.

Ibn al-Qayyim died in Damascus in 751 AH / 1350 CE and was buried at the Bab al-Saghir cemetery near his mother. Though he was a devoted disciple of Ibn Taymiyya, his independent voice and his sustained engagement with spiritual themes — including substantial encounters with the Sufi tradition — gave his works an appeal across schools and orientations. His writings, particularly Madarij al-Salikin and Zad al-Ma'ad, remain among the most widely read books of classical Islamic spirituality across the Sunni world today.