An early Sufi concept of qalb : Hakim al-Tirmidhi's map of the heart

The Spiritual Journey is of pivotal importance to Sufis. Various mystics have conceived of this journey in different ways. For one early Sufi, al-H&dotbelow;akim al-Tirmidhi, this journey is conceived as an inward one through the concentric circles of the Heart. The focus of this thesis is on Tirmidhi's maqamat al-qalb, the "Stations of the Heart" as described in his work the Bayan al-Farq Bayn al-S&dotbelow;adr wa al-Qalb wa al-Fu'ad wa al-Lubb (The Elucidation of the Differences Between the Chest, the Heart, the Inner Heart, and the Intellect). To appraise Tirmidhi's elucidation, the discussion begins with a mentioning of the concept of the Heart in the Near East before Islam (in the Ancient Egyptian, Hindu, and Jewish traditions) and Tirmidhi's Muslim precursors and contemporaries who also dealt with this topic.Explication of the Bayan al-Farq itself is centered on the text itself, which follows an initial discussion of the usage of the terms s&dotbelow;adr, qalb, fu'ad, and lubb in the Arabic language as well as a discussion of how the terms are used in the Qur'an.Central to the subject matter of the Bayan al-Farq is not only Tirmidhi's elucidation of the differences between these layers of the Heart, but also his concepts of light and knowledge ( nur and ma'rifat)