Maqam
The station: a stable degree of the path, acquired by the disciple's effort: repentance, patience, trust, contentment.
Maqam comes from qama, to stand upright: it is the place where one stands, the station. The word is Qur’anic (maqam Ibrahim, II, 125) and the Sufi tradition took it up for the stable degrees of the journey: repentance (tawba), patience (sabr), trust in God, contentment (rida).
Unlike the hal, which comes and goes, the maqam is acquired and kept: one does not ‘receive’ repentance, one settles into it through work of the will. Al-Qushayri orders his Risala along this progression of stations, like a road with stages the salik passes through one after another. The lists vary from author to author; the idea holds: the path has a geography, and the guide knows its map for having travelled it.
Each station has its own dangers, and that is where the murshid comes in: recognising where the disciple stands, not letting him settle into a station as though it were the terminus.