Jamal al-Din Abu'I-Faraj 'Abd al-Rahman b. Ali, popularly known as Ibn al- Jauzi, 510 A.H.--- 599 A.H. (A.D. 1116 – A.D.1200), was the author of a vast number of work theological, historical, biographical, medical, philological, and entertaining of which several have been printed in recent times. He was famous as a preacher and the traveller Ibn Jubair gives an enthusiastic account of two of his sermons heard in Baghdad.
The work of which a translations is here offered is directed against the sins of contemporary society, which it traces to "delusion by the Devil." Its title (Talbis lblis) of which those words are a rendering, had been previously selected by Ghazali for a work of similar scope which he contemplated. Ibn Jauzi, though he handles Ghazali severely, adopted it by far the greater part of the book is criticism or censure of the Sufis, who, owing to the establishment of Orders by Ibn al-Rifa'i and 'Abd ai-Qadir al-Gilani in the sixth century of Islam, were beginning to render them, especially in North Africa, a political factor.
Jamal al-Din Abu'l-Faraj 'Abd al-Rahman b. Ali, popularly known as Ibn al-Jauzi, 510 A.H.--- 599 A.H. (A.D. 1116-A.D.1200), was the author of a vast number of works-theological, historical, biographical, medical, philological, and entertaining-of which several have been printed in recent times. He was famous as a preacher and the traveller Ibn Jubair gives an enthusiastic account of two of his sermons heard in Baghdad.
We learn from this notice that he was court-preacher, and indeed devoted some of his eloquence to eulogy of the Caliph and the imperial household; which seems inconsistent with his repeated warnings to the learned against association with princes. His father, he tells us, died when he was very young, and his mother paid him no attention. Nevertheless he was brought up in luxury, so that his first attempts at abstinence produced an illness as this interfered with his devotions, he returned to a less ascetic diet, From his earliest years, he had a passion for the acquisition of knowledge, all departments of which he aspired to master. He claims to have read more than 20,000 volumes, Ibn Khallikan calls him the most learned man of his time. Specimens of his homities are to be found in his collection of Miscellanies, called al-Mudhish. Ibn Jubair's account of their effectiveness bears out what the author records on the subject. He was instrumental in bringing more than 200,000 Muslims to repentance and converting more than 200 members of other communities to Islam. On one occasion he found himself preaching to a congregation of more than 10,000 persons, all of whom had either softened hearts or weeping eyes.
The God has committed the balance of justice to the hands of the intelligent, and sent Apostles to promise reward and give warning of punishment; has revealed unto them the Books which explain wrong and right has established Codes that are perfect without fault or flaw. I praise Him as one who knows that he is the Causer of causes, and I attest His Unity, as one who is sincere in his intent and undoubting; and I testify that Muhammad is His Servant and His Envoy, sent at a time when infidelity had let down its evil over the face of faith, so that he cleared away darkness by the light of guidance, and revealed to him, and elucidating the difficulties of the Book: "leaving them on the white highroad, wherein is no pitfall and no mirage."
God be gracious unto him and all his households and Companions, and their successors, favouring them until the Day of Judgment and Reckoning: and may he give them perfect peace. The greatest benefit conferred on man is Reason, since that is the instrument whereby he acquires knowledge of God Almighty, and the else whereby he arrives at belief in the Apostles, Only in as much as it is insufficient for all that is required of a man, Apostles were sent and Books revealed. So the Code is like the sun, and the reason like the eye, which, if sound, when it is opened, sees the sun. When the veracious sayings of the Prophets are assured to the reason by the evidence of miracles, is surrenders to those Prophets, and relies of them for what is hidden from itself.
When God bestowed reason on the human world, he commenced with the prophethood of Adam; he kept instructing them according to God's inspiration, and they went right till Cain followed his selfish passion and slew his brother. Thereupon different passions swayed mankind, which sent them astray in the wilds of error, so that they worshipped idols and adopted divers beliefs and courses of action, disagreeing therein with the Prophets and their own reasons, and following their lusts, inclining to their customs and imitating their magnates.
The Devil was confirmed in his opinion of them, and they followed him, all but a party of Believers. You are to know that the prophets furnished adequate instruction, and met the ailments with certain remedies; they agreed in pursuing an invariable course. Satan proceeded to mingle doubts with the instruction, and poison with the medicine: misleading tracks with the plain road. Nor did he cease playing with their intellects so that they worshipped idols in the Sacred House, tabooed the sa'ibah, bahirah, wasilah, and ham, approved of burying girls alive deprived them of inheritance, with other forms of error suggested to them by the Devil. Then God Almighty sent Muhammad, who abolished the atrocities, and enjoined what was profitable. His Companions walked with him and after him in the illumination of his light, immune from transgression and its deceit. Only when the light of their existence was withdrawn the clouds of darkness came on. Passions once more generated innovations, narrowing a path, which had always been wide; most people became schismatic and sectarian.
The Devil proceeded to delude and beguile, to separate and combine. He can only play the robber in the night of ignorance; were the mourn of knowledge to break on him, he would be discredited. I thought, it may duty to warn against his wiles, and point out his traps, since to indicate a danger involves warning against falling into it. Now the two Sahih contain the following Tradition recorded by Hudhaifah people used to ask the Prophet about the good, whereas I would ask him about the bad, fearing lest it should overtake me. And indeed we have been informed by Abu'l-Barakat Sa'd Allah b. 'Ali al-Bazzar by a chain of authorities leading up to Ibn 'Abbas that the latter said. By Allah may thinks there is no-one on the earth's surface whose death would give greater pleasure to Satan than mine,-He was asked. How so? He replied: He starts an innovation in East or West, and someone brings it to me. When it gets to me, I confute it with the Sunnah, and it is returned to him as he issued it.
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