1. Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn Taymiyya (661–728/1263–1328) was a Ḥanbalī theologian and jurist who lived most of his life in Damascus under the Mamlūk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria (648–922/1250–1517).17 Widely admired, even by his enemies, for the extraordinary breadth of his knowledge, he was a prodigious author who contributed monumental tomes in several fields. Many of his works were expositions of creed and polemics in the tradition of the refutation (radd). It was these, in addition to his contrarian legal opinions, that made him controversial and aroused the ire of the leading Sunnī scholars of Cairo and Damascus, including his fellow Ḥanbalīs. Not only did Ibn Taymiyya take on such groups as the Shīʿa and the philosophers in his writings, but he took aim at the prevailing currents and institutions of Sunnī Islam as well. To these he counterposed his own unique approach to Islamic theology and law, cast as an attempt to recover “the doctrine of the ancestors” (madhhab al-salaf) through a return to the Qurʾān, the sunna (the Prophet’s normative practice), and the words and deeds of the salaf (the first three generations of Muslims). For his views, his outspokenness, and his unwillingness to bend to authority, he would spend more than a decade on trial or in prison.
2. Ibn Taymiyya’s primary field was creed or theology (ʿaqīda, iʿtiqād), also known as the foundations of the religion (uṣūl al-dīn). This is the domain of first principles, of obligatory beliefs and practices, and as such it tends to be contentious. Unlike the more latitudinarian domain of Islamic jurisprudence, which generally allows for multiple positions on issues of dispute, in theology there can be only one correct position. While theology was not Ibn Taymiyya’s only concern, it was here that he expended the better part of his literary efforts and created the most trouble for himself. The reason for this focus on theology was that he felt, as Jon Hoover has stated, “that God was no longer worshipped and spoken of correctly” in his time.18 Ibn Taymiyya saw the mainstream beliefs and practices of contemporary Sunnī Islam as having been corrupted— by the influence of the Ashʿarīs, the Ṣūfīs, the Shīʿa, the philosophers, the Christians and Jews, and the Mongols, among others. He therefore authored a seemingly endless series of theological treatises and polemics, “introduc[ing] a new current of theology unprecedented in the Ḥanbalī school and not found elsewhere in medieval Islam” and provoking an uproar thereby

Ḥanbalī Theology

Unlike their Sunnī counterparts in the Shāfiʿī, Mālikī, and Ḥanafī schools of law, the Ḥanbalīs were largely united in their rejection of what is often called speculative theology (ʿilm al-kalām, or simply kalām). Kalām is a rationalist school of thought that employs a dialectical technique and philosophical terminology (e.g., body, accident, substance) to address theological questions and investigate the meaning of the foundational Islamic texts. Kalām had become a regular feature of Sunnī Islam beginning around the eleventh century and was popular in the Mamlūk Sultanate as elsewhere (Leaman, “Developed Kalām Tradition,” 81). The kalām approach later regained strength among Sunnīs in the form of two new theological schools, Ashʿarism and Māturīdism, named for Abū ʾl-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī (d. 324/935) and Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944), respectively. Over time the three principal law schools of Sunnī Islam, Shāfiʿism, Ḥanafism, and Mālikism, came to be associated with one of these theological schools—Ashʿarism in the case of the Shāfiʿīs and Mālikīs, and Māturīdism in the case of the Ḥanafīs (Law school affiliation, however, remained more important to one’s social identity than theological affiliation. On this point, see Cook, Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought, 339; Eichner, “Handbooks in the Tradition of Later Eastern Ashʿarism,” 496).

While the Shāfiʿī, Ḥanafī, and Mālikī legal schools could still count among them a number of traditionalists, only Ḥanbalism, the smallest of the four Sunnī legal schools, was defined by its staunch traditionalism. There were some exceptions, however, including such eminent Ḥanbalīs as Abū Yaʿlā Ibn al-Farrāʾ (d. 458/1066), Abū ʾl-Wafāʾ Ibn ʿAqīl (d. 513/1119), and Abū ʾl-Faraj Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 597/1201), all of whom applied kalām argumentation to varying degrees; see Hoover, “Ḥanbalī Theology,” 630–33.

One area over which the traditionalists and the rationalist mutakallimūn frequently clashed was the approach to God’s attributes (ṣifāt), in particular the humanlike features and characteristics attributed to God in the Qurʾān and the ḥadīth. These attributes include descriptions of God as having hands and eyes, sitting upon the throne, and descending to the lower heavens. For most rationalist theologians, particularly the Muʿtazila, such anthropomorphic descriptions of God were to be either rejected or reinterpreted metaphorically—that is, subjected to taʾwīl. Thus God’s hand (yad) was to be interpreted as His power (qudra), and His sitting upon the throne (istiwāʾ) was to be interpreted as His dominion (istīlāʾ). The traditionalists rejected the rationalist approach as divesting God of His attributes. Generally speaking, they argued that it was necessary to affirm the attributes as true while avoiding inquiry into their modality or meaning. In this way, they sought to avoid the accusation, frequently leveled at them by the rationalists, that they were likening God to creatures or committing anthropomorphism (tashbīh). In the view of the rationalists, many of the traditionalists were crass anthropomorphists who imagined God to have a face and body like those of humans and to move and laugh like them. EI3, s.v. “Anthropomorphism” (Livnat Holtzman); Holtzman, Anthropomorphism in Islam, chap. 4; Hoover, “Early Mamlūk Ashʿarism Against Ibn Taymiyya.”

Like most Ḥanbalīs before him, Ibn Taymiyya was deeply hostile to kalām. The particular target in his case was the Ashʿarī kalām of the Damascene Shāfiʿīs, who were a prominent and powerful group of scholars in his day. The salaf, Ibn Taymiyya argued, along with the eponyms of the four schools of law, categorically abjured speculative inquiry in matters of theology, and they had harsh words for those who dabbled in it. “Whosoever seeks [knowledge of] religion by means of kalām has become a heretic” (man ṭalaba ʾl-dīn biʾl-kalām tazandaqa), goes a phrase that he frequently cited, attributed to the protoḤanafī jurist Abū Yūsuf (d. 182/798) (See, e.g., Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 16:473). The traditionalists affirmed the attributes, but with the caveats of bi-lā kayf (lit. “without how,” or without inquiring into modality) and imrār (lit. “passing over,” in the sense of passing over the attributes without comment and without inquiry into their meanings). This was in contrast with the metaphorical reinterpretation (taʾwīl) favored by the rationalists. The term Jahmiyya refers to Jahm ibn Ṣafwān (d. 128/745f), an anti-Umayyad activist and theologian remembered for spreading the doctrine of nafy or taʿṭīl—the denial or stripping away of God’s attributes—among other alleged innovations (On Jahm and his theology, see Schöck, “Jahm b. Ṣafwān (d. 128/745–6) and the ‘Jahmiyya,’” esp. 56–67). Hence the second term, muʿaṭṭila, meaning “those who strip God of His attributes.” For Ibn Taymiyya, the practitioners of taʾwīlwere engaging in the same innovation as Jahm by interpreting away God’s attributes, and so he described them as Jahmiyya. Often he used the term in reference to the Ashʿarīs. It is worth noting that the Ashʿarīs did not universally favor taʾwīl; they also allowed, and in some cases even preferred, tafwīḍ, or delegating the meanings of the attributes to God; see Hoover, “Early Mamlūk Ashʿarism Against Ibn Taymiyya.”

In Ibn Taymiyya’s view, from this principle sprang many of the Ashʿarīs’ theological errors, including their willingness to interpret God’s attributes metaphorically. In refuting it, he asserts that reason and revelation, properly understood, never conflict. Unlike most Ḥanbalī theologians before him, Ibn Taymiyya was thus not opposed to engaging in reason-based arguments when it came to theology or borrowing the very conceptual frameworks and terminology of the rationalist theologians. Much as he made room in Ḥanbalī theology for investigating the meanings of God’s attributes, he widened its scope to include rationalist argumentation, allowing him to clarify and translate the meanings of the revealed texts into another idiom and to engage his theological opponents on their own terms. Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya, 113–18; Hoover, “Theology as Translation,” 47–53; Özervarlı, “Qur’ānic Rational Theology of Ibn Taymiyya.” Related to all this was Ibn Taymiyya’s notion of the natural constitution (fiṭra), which he took to mean mankind’s inherent inclination to monotheism. It is on account of fiṭra, Ibn Taymiyya says, that human beings may come to know about God by means of the faculty of reason. Likewise, fiṭra obviates the need to prove the existence of God by means of kalām, since knowledge of God is innate. See Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy, 39–44; EI3, s.v. “Fiṭra” ( Jon Hoover); Özervarlı, “Divine Wisdom, Human Agency and the Fiṭra in Ibn Taymiyya’s Thought”; Holtzman, “Human Choice, Divine Guidance and the Fiṭra Tradition.”

1. Here Ibn Taymiyya rejects the kalām view of a world created by God ex nihilo and the Avicennan cosmology of the emanation of an eternal world. The idea that God acts on behalf of wise purposes was also invoked in relation to the question of human acts. In contrast with the Ashʿarīs, who rejected the idea that God creates for the sake of a purpose or a cause (ʿilla), Ibn Taymiyya contended that God’s creative activity is in fact tied to wise purposes subsisting in His essence. A God who acts without regard for wise purposes would be a capricious God unworthy of the highest praise. God, Ibn Taymiyya believed, has created a good and perfect world in accordance with His wise purposes. In such a world, however, why did God create human beings who commit evil deeds and disobey Him? In Ibn Taymiyya’s view, God is just to hold humans responsible for the acts that they commit, even if these acts are ultimately God’s creation, for God has wise purposes in everything He creates. Without acknowledging the paradox, Ibn Taymiyya insists on the compatibility of God’s creation of all human acts with human responsibility for those acts. He explains his position as the golden mean (wasaṭ) between the exponents of free will (qadariyya) and the exponents of hard determinism (jabriyya). Human agency is real in that humans are freely choosing, but at the same time God is the creator of both their will and their acts. This compatibilist approach was not necessarily inconsistent with earlier Ḥanbalī traditionalism, but it was expressed and articulated in a dif­ferent and more sophisticated idiom.
2. Ṣūfī Monism and the Cult of Saints
3. Not every feature of Ibn Taymiyya’s theology had an equal impact on Wahhābism. The Taymiyyan approach to the issue of God’s attributes, for instance, though it would be adopted by the Wahhābīs, was not of immediate concern to what Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was preaching. Similarly, though one sees the influence of Ibn Taymiyya’s insistence on the compatibility of reason and revelation in Wahhābī writings, this was not a major theme in Wahhābī discourse. The Taymiyyan notion of a perpetually creative God who acts on behalf of wise purposes was even further from Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s concerns. The most significant feature of Ibn Taymiyya’s theology, insofar as Wahhābism is concerned, was his approach to certain aspects of Ṣūfism and particularly the cult of saints. As is now well known, Ibn Taymiyya was not an opponent of Ṣūfism, the mystical dispensation in Islam, as such. His writings do not betray a categorical hostility to Ṣūfism, and there is even some evidence, as George Makdisi has shown, that he was initiated into the Qādirī Ṣūfī order.38 In one of his fatwās, Ibn Taymiyya describes the early mystical tradition in Basra as “the path of worship and asceticism” (ṭarīq al-ʿibāda waʾlzuhd), praising this as “the Ṣūfism of truths” (ṣūfiyyat al-ḥaqāʾiq).39 At the same time, however, Ibn Taymiyya was by no means wildly enthusiastic about Ṣūfism, criticizing those who lavished excessive praise on Ṣūfīs and considered the Ṣūfī path superior to all other spiritual paths.40 He was highly intolerant of two dimensions of popular Ṣūfī belief and practice in particular, against which he polemicized frequently and at great length.
4. Controversies and Tribulations

Opinion was divided (ʿalā alwān):

• To one group of scholars he was a devil, a liar, and an unbeliever. To other learned and esteemed men he was an excellent and skilled innovator. To others he was a dark and sinister figure. To the great majority of his followers he was the guardian of the realm of the religion, the bearer of the banner of Islam, and the protector of the prophetic sunna (al-Dhahabī, Bayān zaghl al-ʿilm, 87; translation borrowed in part from Bori, “Ibn Taymiyya wa-Jamā‘atu-hu,” 38).

1. • Among the many scholars who felt antagonized by Ibn Taymiyya were some of the leading Sunnī ʿulamāʾ of the day. They did not shy away from refuting him. The most prolific in this regard was the Shāfiʿī qāḍī in Damascus Taqī al-Dīn al-Subkī (d. 756/1355) (see al-Subkī, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya al-kubrā, 10:139–339). Ibn Taymiyya, according to al-Subkī, failed to acquire knowledge from a teacher (lam yajid shaykhan yahdīhi, lam yatahadhdhab bi-shaykh), deviated from the community of Islam (shadhdha ʿan jamāʿat al-Muslimīn), and distorted true Islamic beliefs (shawwasha ʿaqāʾid al-Muslimīn) (al-Subkī, al-Rasāʾil al-Subkiyya, 195, 85, 151, 85). His student Ibn al-Qayyim, he added, encouraged the masses to pronounce takfīr on those Muslims of dif­ferent theological persuasions (takfīr kull man siwāhu wa-siwā ṭāʾifatihi). A number of Sunnī scholars would write refutations of Ibn Taymiyya’s views regarding the cult of saints. The Egyptian Shāfiʿī Nūr al-Dīn al-Bakrī (d. 724/1324), for instance, attacked Ibn Taymiyya for his position on istighātha, particularly istighātha of the Prophet. Ibn Taymiyya returned fire in a refutation known as al-Istighātha fīʾl-radd ʿalā al-Bakrī (Ibn Taymiyya, al-Istighātha). Some fifteen years later, in 728/1328, a similar exercise was carried out with another Egyptian scholar, a prominent Mālikī jurist named Taqī al-Dīn al-Ikhnāʾī (d. 750/1349).
2. Students and Followers

Intermediaries