Ibn Taymiyya
How Taqī ad-Dīn Aḥmad ibn Taymiyyah challenged 13th-century Islamic theology and left a lasting legacy on Muslim scholarship.
How one 12th century scholar challenged the status quo and reshaped Islamic theology. From a turbulent childhood to his controversial views on Sufism and innovation, delve into the story of a man who left a lasting impact on Muslim scholarship and society.
As the world rotates, history is defined. Throughout history many prominent individuals have passed, each with a unique and defining personality. These personalities became turning points in history, resulting in the complete alteration of the environment and society. By analysing, speculating and evaluating a personality and the condition of the society at the time, we can deduce the powerful methods they used to reconstruct, remodel and refine whole complete ideologies.
Birth and early life
In the 12th century, the world witnessed the birth of one of the most influential figures of all time, Taqī ad-Dīn Aḥmad ibn Taymiyyah, born in Ḥarrān (present-day Urfa in Turkey). His father was ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm (died 682 AH), who was a lecturer of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus and Professor of Traditions in Dār al-Ḥadīth, ʿAskariyyah.
Ibn Taymiyyah was born five years after the siege of Baghdad and then Ḥalab (Aleppo) by the Mongols. At the tender age of 7, with war ravaging the lands, he was constrained to migrate from Ḥarrān to Damascus along with the people of the tribe when the Tartars discharged an attack on this land. These troubled times impart the fact that Ibn Taymiyyah became a hardened person as he was brought up under turbulent conditions, where continuous conflicts arose in the Middle East between the Mongol Empire and the Mamlūks.
The intellectual climate
During this restless and chaotic period there were many additional ongoing issues, not just in his tribe but within the Muslim nation itself. The major factors were social concepts, intellectual notions, and political conflict. The concerning influences incorporated mysticism, philosophy and Islamic theology.
Dialecticians were indulging in Greek metaphysical terminology scraped from philosophy, attempting to ascertain the nature and attributes of God. There were also the Bāṭinites, referred to by ʿAlī Nadwī as possessing a “peculiar creed interwoven from the texture of Marian Dogma.” He referred to the divisions which stemmed from them as “indiscreet schools of mysticism in Islam”, as the Neo-Platonic creed became amalgamated with the religion of Islam. Muslims were also implementing certain conducts and practices in glorifying and elevating saints and those “nearer to God” to an extent of idolatry — which is prohibited in Islam.
His positions on Sufism
Ibn Taymiyyah controverted two notions affiliated with Sufism. He states that certain Sufis insulted God with their monism — a creed apparently comparable to pantheism — that God “encompasses all things.” This denunciation included disparaging the opinions of the monist Ibn ʿArabī. He also alleged that the interpretation that “saintly illumination is of superior significance than observing the Sharīʿah” was a defect to correctly pursuing the example of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ.
His scholarship and legacy
Ibn Taymiyyah left a substantial corpus of his work — 350 works recorded by his student Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya and 500 by his student al-Dhahabī — that has been republished extensively in Syria, Egypt, Arabia, and India. Even though he gained many antagonists throughout his life, it is reported that approximately 10,000 people were present at his funeral prayers.
When he was eventually restricted from having any books in prison due to his adversaries making claims against him, additional accusations of unorthodoxy were presented for his statement that a divorce uttered in an innovative manner does not take effect. After passing the years 1319–21 in imprisonment, he was incarcerated again in 1326 until his demise, two years later. He was buried in the Sufi mausoleum in Damascus.
Al-Dhahabī, his famous student, extolled him excessively as “the exceptional Shaykh, leader, erudite scholar, censor, jurist, mujtahid, and commentator of the Qur’an,” but acknowledged that Ibn Taymiyyah’s reproachful conduct disaffected even his devotees. Ibn Taymiyyah’s devotees often deemed him Shaykh al-Islām, a privileged title with which he is still labelled today.
Lasting words
Ibn Taymiyyah’s role in history can be conclusively defined in the following words of his renowned student, al-Dhahabī:
“He was amongst the oceans of knowledge, from the limited intellectuals, the ascetics, the unique individuals, the great braves, the most generous nobles. He was praised by both the one who agreed with him and the one who differed with him and he became famous for his works.”
Bibliography
- Ibn Kathīr, Al-Bidāya wa’n-Nihāya, Vol. 13, p. 303; Vol. 14, p. 33
- Reynolds, Gabriel Said (2012). The Emergence of Islam: Classical Traditions in Contemporary Perspective. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, p. 174
- M.M. Sharif, A History of Muslim Philosophy, Pakistan Philosophical Congress, p. 798
- George Makdisi, A Sufi of the Qadiriya Order, p. 123
- Al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Dhahabī, Tadhkirat al-Ḥuffāẓ, Vol. 2, p. 1496
