Ibn Taymiyya
Ibn Taymiyya was a Sunni Muslim scholar, jurist, Mujtahid, traditionist, Qadiri Sufi, proto-Salafist theologian and iconoclast. Born in Harran in 1263 CE and fleeing from the Mongol invasion, he was taught by his grandfather and father in the principles of Islamic Jurisprudence at Damascus. Ibn Taymiyya proved to be a controversial figure among both his contemporaries and in later centuries. Syrian Salafi theologian Muhammad Rashid Rida, one of the major modern proponents of Ibn Taymiyya's works, designated him as the Mujaddid of the 7th Islamic century.
Ibn Taymiyya was born on 10 Rabi' al-Awwal 661 AH (January 22, 1263 CE) in Harran, Mamluk Sultanate to a family of traditional Hanbali scholars. He had Arab and Kurdish lineages by way of his Arab father and Kurdish mother. His father, Shihab al-Din Abd al-Halim ibn Taymiyya, held the Hanbali chair in Harran and later at the Umayyad Mosque. At the time, Harran was a part of the Mamluk Sultanate, near what is today the border of Syria and Turkey, currently in the Şanlıurfa Province. At the beginning of the Islamic period, Harran was located in Diyar Mudar, the land of the Mudar tribe. Before its destruction by the Mongols, Harran was also well-known since the early days of Islam for its tradition of adhering to the Hanbali school, to which Ibn Taymiyya's family belonged. His grandfather, Majd al-Din ibn Taymiyya, and his uncle, Fakhr al-Din, were both reputable scholars of the Hanbali school, and their scholarly achievements well-known.
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In 1269, Ibn Taymiyya, aged seven, left Harran together with his father and three brothers; however, the city was completely destroyed by the ensuing Mongol invasion. Ibn Taymiyya's family moved and settled in Damascus, Syria, which was ruled by the Mamluk Sultanate at the time. In Damascus, his father served as the director of the Sukkariyya Madrasa, a place where Ibn Taymiyya also received his early education. He acquainted himself with the religious and secular sciences of his time. His religious studies began in his early teens when he committed the entire Quran to memory, and later came to learn the disciplines of the Quran. From his father, he learnt the religious science of jurisprudence and its principles. Ibn Taymiyya studied the works of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Abu Bakr al-Khallal, and Ibn Qudama, as well as the works of his own grandfather, Majd al-Din. His study of jurisprudence was not limited to the Hanbali tradition, as he also studied the other schools of jurisprudence.
After his father died in 1284, he took up the then vacant post as the head of the Sukkariyya madrasa and began giving lessons on Hadith. A year later he started giving lessons, as chair of the Hanbali Zawiya on Fridays at the Umayyad Mosque, on the subject of tafsir (exegesis of Qur'an). In November 1292, Ibn Taymiyya performed the Hajj and after returning 4 months later, he wrote his first book aged twenty nine called Manasik al-Hajj (Rites of the Pilgrimage), in which he criticized and condemned the religious innovations he saw take place there. Ibn Taymiyya represented the Hanbali school of thought during this time. The Hanbali school was seen as the most traditional school out of the four legal systems (Hanafi, Maliki and Shafi'i) because it was "suspicious of the Hellenist disciplines of philosophy and speculative theology." He remained faithful throughout his life to this school, whose doctrines he had mastered, but he nevertheless called for ijtihad (independent reasoning by one who is qualified) and discouraged taqlid.
Possible influences
Ibn Taymiyya was taught by scholars who were renowned in their time; however, there is no evidence any of them had a significant influence on him. A strong influence on Ibn Taymiyya was the founder of the Hanbali school itself, Ahmad ibn Hanbal. Ibn Taymiyya was trained in his school by studying Ahmad's Musnad in great detail, having studied it multiple times. Though he spent much of his life following this school, he renounced blind-following near the end of his life. His work was most influenced by the sayings and actions of the first three generations of Muslims (salaf), which is displayed in his works where he would give preference to their opinions over those of his contemporaries. The modern Salafi movement derives its name from these generations.
Relationship with the authorities
Ibn Taymiyya's own relationship, as a religious scholar, with the ruling apparatus was not always amicable. It ranged from silence to open rebellion. On occasions when he shared the same views and aims as the ruling authorities his contributions were welcomed, but when Ibn Taymiyya went against the status quo, he was seen as "uncooperative", and on occasions spent much time in prison. Ibn Taymiyya's attitude towards his own rulers was based on the actions of Muhammad's companions when they made an oath of allegiance to him as follows; "to obey within obedience to God, even if the one giving the order is unjust; to abstain from disputing the authority of those who exert it; and to speak out the truth, or take up its cause without fear in respect of God, of blame from anyone."
First invasion
The first invasion took place between December 1299 and April 1300 due to the military campaign by the Mamluks against the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia who were allied with the Mongols. Due to the Mongol legal system that neglected sharia and implemented Yassa; Ibn Taymiyya had declared Takfir upon the Ilkhanid regime and its armies for ruling by man-made laws and believing in them, despite these laws being rarely enforced in Muslim majority regions in an extensive manner. Openly rejecting Ghazan Khan's claim to "pādishāh al-islām" (King of Islam), a title which Ghazan took to legitimise his military campaigns, Ibn Taymiyya denounced him as an "infidel king" and issued numerous fatwas condemning the political order of the Tatars. The Ilkhanate army managed to defeat the Mamluk Sultanate in The Third Battle of Homs and reach Damascus by the end of December 1299. Fearful of Mongol atrocities, many scholars, intellectuals and officers began to flee Damascus in panic. Ibn Taymiyya was one of those clerics who stood firm alongside the vulnerable Damascus citizens and called for an uncompromising and heroic resistance to the Tatar invaders. Ibn Taymiyya drew parallels of their crisis with the Riddah wars (Apostate wars) fought by the first Muslim Caliph, Abu Bakr, against the renegade Arabian tribes that abandoned sharia. Ibn Taymiyya severely rebuked those Muslims escaping in the face of Mongol onslaught and compared their state to the withdrawal of Muslims in the Battle of Uhud. In a passionate letter to the commander of the Damascene Citadel, Ibn Taymiyya appealed:
Second invasion
The second invasion lasted between October 1300 and January 1301. Ibn Taymiyya at this time began giving sermons on jihad at the Umayyad mosque. As the civilians began to flee in panic; Ibn Taymiyya pronounced fatwas declaring the religious duty upon Muslims to fight the Mongol armies to death, inflict a massive defeat and expel them from Syria in its entirety. Ibn Taymiyya also spoke to and encouraged the Governor of Damascus, al-Afram, to achieve victory over the Mongols. He became involved with al-Afram once more, when he was sent to get reinforcements from Cairo. Narrating Ibn Taymiyya's fierce stance on fighting the Mongols, Ibn Kathir reports:
Third invasion and Takfir of Ilkhanate Allies
The year 1303 saw the third Mongol invasion of Syria by Ghazan Khan. What has been called Ibn Taymiyya's "most famous" fatwā was his third fatwa issued against the Mongols in the Mamluk's war. Ibn Taymiyya declared that jihad against the Mongol attack on the Malmuk sultanate was not only permissible, but obligatory. The reason being that the Mongols could not, in his opinion, be true Muslims despite the fact that they had converted to Sunni Islam because they ruled using what he considered 'man-made laws' (their traditional Yassa code) rather than Islamic law or Sharia. Because of this, he reasoned they were living in a state of jahiliyyah, or pre-Islamic pagan ignorance. Not only were Ilkhanate political elites and its military disbelievers in the eyes of Ibn Taymiyya; but anybody who joined their ranks were as guilty of riddah (apostasy) as them:
Imprisonment on charges of anthropomorphism
Ibn Taymiyya was a fervent polemicist who zealously launched theological refutations against various religious sects such as the Sufis, Jahmites, Ash'arites, Shias, Falsafa, etc., labelling them as heretics responsible for the crisis of Mongol invasions across the Islamic World. He was imprisoned several times for conflicting with the prevailing opinions of the jurists and theologians of his day. A judge from the city of Wasit, Iraq, requested that Ibn Taymiyya write a book on creed. His subsequent creedal work, Al-Aqidah Al-Waasitiyyah, caused him trouble with the authorities. Ibn Taymiyya adopted the view that God should be described as he was literally described in the Qur'an and in the hadith, and that all Muslims were required to believe this because according to him it was the view held by the early Muslim community (salaf). Within the space of two years (1305–1306) four separate religious council hearings were held to assess the correctness of his creed.
Ibn Taymiyya referred to his imprisonment as "a divine blessing". During his incarceration, he wrote that, "when a scholar forsakes what he knows of the Book of God and of the sunnah of His messenger and follows the ruling of a ruler which contravenes a ruling of God and his messenger, he is a renegade, an unbeliever who deserves to be punished in this world and in the hereafter." During his imprisonment, he encountered opposition from the Maliki and Shafi'i Chief Justices of Damascus, Taḳī al-Dīn al-Ikhnāʾī. He remained in prison for over two years and ignored the sultan's prohibition, by continuing to deliver fatwas. During his incarceration Ibn Taymiyya wrote three works which are extant; Kitāb Maʿārif al-wuṣūl, Rafʿ al-malām, and Kitāb al-Radd ʿala 'l-Ikhnāʾī (The response to al-Ikhnāʾī). The last book was an attack on Taḳī al-Dīn al-Ikhnāʾī and explained his views on saints (wali). When the Mongols invaded Syria in 1300, he was among those who called for a Jihad against them and he ruled that even though they had recently converted to Islam, they should be considered unbelievers. He went to Egypt in order to acquire support for his cause and while he was there, he got embroiled in religious-political disputes. When he attempted to prohibit the veneration of Muhammad's footprints in Damascus in 1304, he was accused of impiety and chased away by the people. Ibn Taymiyya's clerical enemies accused him of advocating anthropomorphism, and in 1306, he was imprisoned for more than a year. Upon his release, he condemned popular Sufi practices and he also condemned the influence of Ibn Arabi (d. 1240), causing him to earn the enmity of leading Sufi shaykhs in Egypt and causing him to serve another prison sentence. In 1310, he was released by the Egyptian Sultan.
His debate on anthropomorphism and his imprisonment
On the arrival of Ibn Taymiyya and the Shafi'ite scholar in Cairo in 1306, an open meeting was held. The Mamluk sultan at the time was Al-Nasir Muhammad and his deputy attended the open meeting. Ibn Taymiyya was found innocent. Despite the open meeting, objections regarding his creed continued and he was summoned to the Citadel in Cairo for a munazara (legal debate), which took place on April 8, 1306. During the munazara, his views on divine attributes, specifically whether a direction could be attributed to God, were debated by the Indian scholar Safi al-Din al-Hindi, in the presence of Islamic judges. Ibn Taymiyya failed to convince the judges of his position and so was incarcerated for the charge of anthropomorphism on the recommendation of al-Hindi. Thereafter, he together with his two brothers were imprisoned in the Citadel of the Mountain (Qal'at al-Jabal), in Cairo until September 25, 1307. He was freed due to the help he received from two amirs; Salar and Muhanna ibn Isa, but he was not allowed to go back to Syria. He was then again summoned for a legal debate, but this time he convinced the judges that his views were correct and he was allowed to go free.
His trial for intercession and his imprisonment
Ibn Taymiyya continued to face troubles for his views which were found to be at odds with those of his contemporaries. His strong opposition to what he believed to be religious innovations, caused upset among the prominent Sufis of Egypt including Ibn Ata Allah and Karim al-Din al-Amuli, and the locals who started to protest against him. Their main contention was Ibn Taymiyya's stance on tawassul (intercession). In his view, a person could not ask anyone other than God for help except on the Day of Judgement when intercession in his view would be possible. At the time, the people did not restrict intercession to just the Day of Judgement but rather they said it was allowed in other cases. Due to this, Ibn Taymiyya, now aged 45, was ordered to appear before the Shafi'i judge Badr al-Din in March 1308 and was questioned on his stance regarding intercession. Thereafter, he was incarcerated in the prison of the judges in Cairo for some months. After his release, he was allowed to return to Syria, should he so wish. Ibn Taymiyya however stayed in Egypt for a further five years.
House arrest in Alexandria
1309, the year after his release, saw a new Mamluk sultan accede to the throne, Baibars al-Jashnakir. His reign, marked by economical and political unrest, only lasted a year. In August 1309, Ibn Taymiyya was taken into custody and placed under house arrest for seven months in the new sultan's palace in Alexandria. He was freed when al-Nasir Muhammad retook the position of sultan on March 4, 1310. Having returned to Cairo a week later, he was received by al-Nasir. The sultan would sometimes consult Ibn Taymiyya on religious affairs and policies during the rest of his three-year stay in Cairo. During this time he continued to teach and wrote his famous book Al-Kitab al-Siyasa al-shar'iyya (Treatise on the Government of the Religious Law), a book noted for its account of the role of religion in politics.
Return to Damascus and later years
He spent his last fifteen years in Damascus. Aged 50, Ibn Taymiyya returned to Damascus via Jerusalem on February 28, 1313. Damascus was now under the governorship of Tankiz. There, Ibn Taymiyya continued his teaching role as professor of Hanbali fiqh. This is when he taught his most famous student, Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya, who went on to become a noted scholar in Islamic history. Ibn Qayyim was to share in Ibn Taymiyya's renewed persecution. Three years after his arrival in the city, Ibn Taymiyya became involved in efforts to deal with the increasing Shia influence amongst Sunni Muslims. An agreement had been made in 1316 between the amir of Mecca and the Ilkhanid ruler Öljaitü, brother of Ghazan Khan, to allow a favourable policy towards Shi'ism in the city. Around the same time the Shia theologian Al-Hilli, who had played a crucial role in the Mongol ruler's decision to make Shi'ism the state religion of Persia, wrote the book Minhaj al-Karamah (The Way of Charisma'), which dealt with the Shia doctrine of the Imamate and also served as a refutation of the Sunni doctrine of the caliphate. In response, Ibn Taymiyya wrote his famous book, Minhaj as-Sunnah an-Nabawiyyah, as a refutation of Al-Hilli's work.
His fatwa on divorce and imprisonment
In 1318, Ibn Taymiyya wrote a treatise that would curtail the ease with which a Muslim man could divorce his wife. Ibn Taymiyya's fatwa on divorce was not accepted by the majority of scholars of the time and this continued into the Ottoman era. However, almost every modern Muslim nation-state has come to adopt Ibn Taymiyya's position on this issue of divorce. At the time he issued the fatwa, Ibn Taymiyya revived an edict by the sultan not to issue fatwas on this issue but he continued to do so, saying, "I cannot conceal my knowledge". As in previous instances, he stated that his fatwa was based on the Qur'an and hadith. His view on the issue was at odds with the Hanbali position. This proved controversial among the people in Damascus as well as the Islamic scholars who opposed him on the issue.
His risāla on visits to tombs and his final imprisonment
In 1310, Ibn Taymiyya had written a risāla (treatise) called Ziyārat al-Qubūr or according to another source, Shadd al-rihal. It dealt with the validity and permissibility of making a journey to visit the tombs of prophets and saints. It is reported that in the book "he condemned the cult of saints" and declared that traveling with the sole purpose of visiting Muhammad's grave was a blameworthy religious innovation. For this, Ibn Taymiyya, was imprisoned in the Citadel of Damascus sixteen years later on July 18, 1326, aged 63, along with his student Ibn Qayyim. The sultan also prohibited him from issuing any further fatwas. Hanbali scholar Ahmad ibn Umar al-Maqdisi accused Ibn Taymiyya of apostasy over the treatise.
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He fell ill in early September 1328 and died at the age of 65, on September 26 of that year, whilst in prison at the Citadel of Damascus. Once this news reached the public, there was a strong show of support for him from the people. After the authorities had given permission, it is reported that thousands of people came to show their respects. They gathered in the Citadel and lined the streets up to the Umayyad Mosque. The funeral prayer was held in the citadel by scholar Muhammad Tammam, and a second was held in the mosque. A third and final funeral prayer was held by Ibn Taymiyya's brother, Zain al-Din. He was buried in Damascus, in Maqbara Sufiyya ("the cemetery of the Sufis"). His brother Sharafuddin had been buried in that cemetery before him. Oliver Leaman says that being deprived of the means of writing led to Ibn Taymiyya's death. It is reported that two hundred thousand men and fifteen to sixteen thousand women attended his funeral prayer. Ibn Kathir says that in the history of Islam, only the funeral of Ahmad ibn Hanbal received a larger attendance. This is also mentioned by Ibn `Abd al-Hadi. Caterina Bori says that, "In the Islamic tradition, wider popular attendance at funerals was a mark of public reverence, a demonstration of the deceased's rectitude, and a sign of divine approbation."
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Ibn Taymiyya's three unprecedented fatwas (legal verdicts) that excommunicated the Ilkhanid authorities and their supporters as apostates over their neglect to govern by Sharia (Islamic law) and preference of the traditional Mongol imperial code of Yassa; would form the theological basis of 20th century Islamist and Jihadist scholars and ideologues. Reviving Ibn Taymiyya's fatwas during the late 20th-century, Jihadist ideologues like Sayyid Qutb, Abd al-Salam al-Faraj, Abdullah Azzam, Usama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, etc. made public Takfir (excommunication) of contemporary governments of the Muslim world and called for their revolutionary overthrowal through armed Jihad.
Several of Ibn Taymiyya's students became notable scholars in their own right. His students came from different backgrounds and belonged to various different schools of thought. The most well-known of them are Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya and Ibn Kathir, while his other students include:
Ibn Taimiyya was a materialist and held physicalist view on the world. This also extends to his view on God, who, according to ibn Taimiyya, is also composed of particles perceptible by at least one of the five senses. He rejects non-cognitivism of the traditionalists regarding the attributes of God – that God's attributes cannot be known – as well as the literal approach of the theologicans. Denying the existence of external universals, the meaning of God's attributes and characteristics derive from the context and through analogical reasoning. The unseen world is, according to ibn Taimiyya, not a supernatural or immaterial world, but consists of spatially and temporary extended particulars. From ibn Taimiyya's physicalist viewpoint, the rejection of God's corperality tantamounts to a denial of God. Accordingly, God, angels, the afterlife, belong to the unseen, but could be perceived with ideal vision. Yet, ibn Taimiyya agrees with his fellow Muslim theologians that God cannot be divided and contents that God's size implies being composed of parts. God's body – understood as indivisible – fills the entirety of unoccupied space, filling and surrounding the entire universe.
Prof. Al-Matroudi of SOAS university says that Ibn Taymiyya, "was perhaps the most eminent and influential Hanbali jurist of the Middle Ages and one of the most prolific among them. He was also a renowned scholar of Islam whose influence was felt not only during his lifetime but extended through the centuries until the present day." Ibn Taymiyya's followers often deemed him as Sheikh ul-Islam, an honorific title with which he is sometimes still termed today. However, most scholars argue that Ibn Taymiyya did not enjoy popularity among the intelligentsia of his day. Yossef Rapoport and Shahab Ahmed assert that he was a minority figure in his own times and the centuries that followed. Caterina Bori goes further, arguing that despite popularity Ibn Taymiyya may have enjoyed among the masses, he appears to have been not merely unpopular among the scholars of his day, but somewhat of an embarrassment. Khalid El-Rouayheb notes similarly that Ibn Taymiyya had "very little influence on mainstream Sunni Islam until the nineteenth century" and that he was "a little-read scholar with problematic and controversial views." He also comments "the idea that Ibn Taymiyya had an immediate and significant impact on the course of Sunni Islamic religious history simply does not cohere with the evidence that we have from the five centuries that elapsed between his death and the rise of Sunni revivalism in the modern period." It was only since the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries that the scholarly influence of Ibn Taymiyya has come to acquire an unprecedented prominence in Muslim societies, due to the efforts of Islamic revivalists like Rashid Rida, who also gave him the title muhaddid. However, no known earlier Muslim scholar has given him that title and it does not appear in al-Suyuti's tajdid, but rather considers him a mujtahid.
