Qabḍ and basṭ — contraction and expansion — are among the most useful terms in Sufi writing for a reader trying to make sense of the emotional weather these authors describe. They name two conditions of the heart that arrive on their own and leave on their own.
Al-Hujwīrī's definition is one of the cleanest in the literature:
“Qabḍ (contraction) and basṭ (expansion) are two involuntary states which cannot be induced by any human act or banished by any human exertion. God hath said: ‘God contracts and expands.’ Qabḍ denotes the contraction of the heart in the state of being veiled (ḥijáb), and basṭ denotes the expansion of the heart in the state of revelation (kashf). Both states proceed from God without effort on the part of Man.”
Two things follow. First, they are states in the technical sense — gifts, not achievements (see ḥāl and maqām). Second, and this is the part most often lost, they are diagnostic. Contraction is not a failure of practice; it is what being veiled feels like from inside.
Al-Hujwīrī immediately calibrates the terms against the beginner's vocabulary:
“The qabḍ of gnostics is like the fear of novices, and the basṭ of gnostics is like the hope of novices.”
Fear and hope are directed at outcomes — punishment, reward. Contraction and expansion are not about anything. They are the condition itself, with the object removed.
Suhrawardī gives the pair a diagnostic account that connects them to the nafs:
“(a) of kabz is the revelation of the qualities of nafs and the veiling of the splendour of joy's state. The result is the contraction of the heart. (b) of bast is the up-lifting of the veil of nafs from before the heart. The result is the expansion of the heart.”
He also warns against the obvious confusion. To beginners, he notes, contraction merely resembles grief and expansion merely resembles joy — “to ‘the first ones,’ appear in nafs resemblances to: kabz (contraction) grief, bast (expansion) joy.” The resemblance is not the thing.
And he observes a practical consequence: when such a quality “prevaileth over the possessor from exceeding superiority of hal,” he “cannot understand another hal.” A person deep in one state is a poor judge of any other. (Chapter VII)
The pair sits at the centre of a genuine dispute. Ḥārith al-Muḥāsibī cited contraction and expansion, along with love and longing, as evidence that a state can become permanent and settle into an attribute. Junayd denied it: states are “like flashes of lightning,” and “their permanence is merely a suggestion of the lower soul.” Al-Hujwīrī reports both without deciding. (Chapter XIV)
Ibn al-Fāriḍ gives contraction a face in the Tāʾiyya, where it is not gloom but dread: “in the terror (wrath) of ‘contraction’ the whole of me is an awe, and o'er whatsoever I let mine eye range, it reveres me.” (Studies in Islamic Mysticism)
Abū Saʿīd, in Nicholson's account, describes the sequence from the inside — a “joyous transport… followed by a painful contraction (qabḍ)” — and reads the alternation itself as the lesson: “If it is good, it is a trial, and if it is evil, it is a trial. Do not stoop to good or to evil, but dwell with Me!” (Chapter I)
Al-Hujwīrī also embeds the pair in his allegory of the patched frock, where the two gussets of the garment are “contraction and dilation” — the two things a Sufi's shape must accommodate. (Chapter IV; see khirqa and murīd.)
The passages above are quoted from complete public-domain translations, all of which are free to read here in full.
Read the Kashf al-MaḥjūbRead the Awārif al-MaʿārifRead Studies in Islamic Mysticism