Shaykh al-Islām
Although Ibn al-Qayyim is sometimes characterized today as an unabashed enemy of Islamic mysticism, it is historically known that he actually had a “great interest in Sufism,” which arose out of his vast exposure to the practice given Sufism's integral role in orthodox Islamic life at his time. Some of his major works, such as "Madārij, Ṭarīq al-hijratayn" ("Path of the Two Migrations") and "Miftāḥ dār al-saʿāda" ("Key to the Joyous Dwelling"), "are devoted almost entirely to Sufi themes," yet allusions to such "themes are found in nearly all his writings," including in such influential works of spiritual devotion such as "al-Wābil al-Ṣayyib", a highly important treatise detailing the importance of the practice of dhikr, and his revered "magnum opus", "Madārij al-sālikīn" ("The Wayfarers' Stages"), which is an extended commentary on a work written by the eleventh-century Hanbalite saint and mystic Abdullah Ansari, whom Ibn al-Qayyim referred to reverentially as "Shaykh al-Islām." In all such writings, it is evident Ibn al-Qayyim wrote to address "those interested in Sufism in particular and ... 'the matters of the heart' ... in general," and proof of this lies in the fact that he states, in the introduction to his short book "Patience and Gratitude", "This is a book to benefit kings and princes, the wealthy and the indigent, Sufis and religious scholars; (a book) to inspire the sedentary to set out, accompany the wayfarer on the Way ("al-sā'ir fī l-ṭariq") and inform the one journeying towards the Goal." Some scholars have compared Ibn al-Qayyim's role to that of Ghazali two-hundred years prior, in that he tried "rediscover and restate the orthodox roots of Islam's interior dimension."