In the prologue to his most celebrated Sufi classic, Abdullah ibn Muhammad al-Ansari (1006-1089 C.E./ 396-481 A.H.), of Herat in modern day Afghanistan, declares that he wrote this precious spiritual gem for the benefit of a “group of mendicants fuqara, readers and exiles, who were eager to acquaint themselves with the various Stations or Milestones that the [spiritual] wayfarer must traverse [in his journey] to the Real (al-Haqq)”. This is one spiritual manual that wishes not to digress from that declared aim.

In style and structure, Ansari managed to “order the chapters and the sections in such a way as to spare readers too much length and tedium as well as to safeguard against further mystification”. By putting great subtlety of expression in a highly condensed linguistic form - one in which the individual words and the very short phrases are meant to capture vast worlds of spiritual being - Ansari allowed for “greater ease in memorization” as well as provided inexhaustible openings for generations of Sufi commentators, throughout the ages. He hoped that this manner of exposition would have the merit of freshness and perspicacity that will avoid the pitfall of yet another schematic repetition of views already offeredon the matter by other authors. One must say that his hopes were rewarded. Stations, like The Sufi Aphorisms of Ibn Ataillah, for instance, is one of the most widely read Sufi classics. 

What distinguishes the content of this particular treatise, in Ansaris own view, is that it sets out to be a clear exposition of the stations of spiritual attainment, highlighting the salient features thereof and mentioning how each of them already refers to a definite level of perfection, while indicating at the same time the relative position that such a perfection occupies within the total hierarchy of the spiritual stations. He thus arranged his Stations in hierarchical order, while always indicating whatever subdivisions resulted from them. In this way, one roughly begins and ends where the spiritual Path itself must logically begin and end. 

As a manual that was essentially meant to serve as an aide-mémoire to aspirants who are minutely working out their spiritual progress, Stations was written in a concise, condensed and intricately woven Arabic prose, one that shows a prodigious mastery - by this Persian Sage of ancient Arab lineage of not only the deepest spiritual and psychological subtleties, but also of the subtlest nuances and inflections of a language that he did not speak as a mother tongue.

In addition to being known as a great Sufi luminary, Ansari was also a famous adherent of the School of the Ancients, the Salaf. He had the solid Islamic learning of a traditionist (muhaddith), of an exegete of the Quran as well as of a prominent member of the Hanbali school of Islamic Law. For the school of the Salaf, such credentials as Ansari had were the sine qua non of Sufi authenticity. Yet, if Ansari were alive today, in our spiritually impoverished era, he would be utterly dismayed to learn that it is precisely those credentials that are now considered as the provenance of religious learning in Islam that is most inimical to Sufism! In Ansaris day, however, a great Sufi master, a prominent Salafi traditionist or a jurist, could all be facets of a whole without fissure. Indeed, Stations manages to express all this multifaceted spiritual patrimony by covering the fullness of Sufi spiritual experience, from conversion to ultimate union with God - in a language that is entirely derived from the two Orthodox sources of Islam, the Quran and the Sunnah of the Prophet -Peace be upon him.

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