Ibn Taymiyya
Ibn Taymiyya was a Sunni Muslim scholar, jurist, Mujtahid, traditionist, Qadiri Sufi, proto-Salafi 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. Clerics and state authorities accused Ibn Taymiyya and his disciples of anthropomorphism, which eventually led to the censoring of his works and subsequent incarceration.
Nevertheless, he emerged as one of the forefathers of the Salafi movement. Throughout his treatises, Ibn Taymiyya asserted there is no contradiction between reason and revelation, and denounced the usage of philosophy as a pre-requisite in seeking religious truth. As a cleric who viewed Shiism as a source of corruption in Muslim societies, Ibn Taymiyya was also known for his anti-Shia polemics throughout treatises such as Minhaj al-Sunna, wherein he denounced the Imami Shia creed as heretical. He issued a ruling to wage jihad against the Shias of Kisrawan and personally fought in the Kisrawan campaigns himself, accusing Shias of acting as the fifth-columnists of the Frank Crusaders and Mongol Ilkhanids. He is also known for his diplomatic involvement with the Ilkhanid ruler Ghazan Khan at the Battle of Marj al-Saffar, which ended the Mongol invasions of the Levant. A legal jurist of the Hanbali school, Ibn Taymiyya's condemnation of numerous Sufi practices associated with saint veneration and visitation of tombs made him a controversial figure with many rulers and scholars of the time, which caused him to be imprisoned several times as a result.
Within recent history, Ibn Taymiyya has been widely regarded as a major scholarly influence in militant Islamist movements, such as Salafi jihadism. Major aspects of his teachings, had a profound influence on Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the founder of the Wahhabism reform movement formed in the Arabian Peninsula, as well as other later Sunni scholars. 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's doctrinal positions, such as his takfir of the Mongol Ilkhanids and allowing jihad against other Muslims, were referenced by later Islamist political movements, including the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizb ut-Tahrir, al-Qaeda, and Islamic State, to justify social uprisings against the contemporary governments of the Muslim world. Ibn Taymiyya has been used by Wahhabism and Salafism for anti-Sufi rhetorics. However, from a historical perspective, this is an inaccurate portrayal of ibn Taimiyya, based on selective and out-of-context use of some of his writings by fundamentalist movements. While he sometimes criticized certain practices associated with Sufism, he acknowledged that Sufism is an integral part of Islam and praised many Sufi masters; he himself was affiliated with the Qadiriyya order. He also heavily condemned the killing of civilians, calling it "corruption that Allah and His Messenger hates."
Early years
Ibn Taymiyya was born on 10 Rabi' al-Awwal 661 AH 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.Education
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.
The number of scholars under which he studied hadith is said to number more than two-hundred, four of whom were women. Those who are known by name amount to forty hadith teachers, as recorded by Ibn Taymiyya in his work titled Arba'un Haditha. Serajul Haque says, based on this, Ibn Taymiyya started to hear hadith from the age of five. One of Ibn Taymiyya's teachers was the first Hanbali Chief Justice of Syria, Shams al-Din al-Maqdisi, who held the newly created position instituted by Baibars as part of a reform of the judiciary. Al-Maqdisi later came to give Ibn Taymiyya permission to issue legal verdicts, making him a judge at the age of seventeen.
Ibn Taymiyya's secular studies led him to devote attention to the Arabic language and literature by studying Arabic grammar and lexicography under Ali ibn Abd al-Qawi al-Tufi. He went on to master the famous book of Arabic grammar al-Kitab, written by the grammarian Sibawayhi. He also studied mathematics, algebra, calligraphy, speculative theology, philosophy, history, and heresiography. With the knowledge he gained from history and philosophy, he set to refute the prevalent philosophical discourses of his time, one of which was Aristotelianism. Ibn Taymiyya also learnt about Sufism and stated he had reflected on the works of Sahl al-Tustari, al-Junayd al-Baghdadi, Abu Talib al-Makki, Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, Shihab al-Din Umar al-Suhrawardi, and Ibn Arabi. In 1282, Ibn Taymiyya completed his education at the age of 20.
Life as a scholar
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. 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, 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 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 and discouraged taqlid.Ibn Taymiyya had a simple life, most of which he dedicated to learning, writing, and teaching. He never married nor did he have a female companion throughout his years. Professor Al-Matroudi stated that this may be why he was able to engage fully with the political affairs of his time without holding any official position such as that of a qadi. An offer of an official position was made to him but he never accepted.
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, 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."Ibn Taymiyya was a religious scholar as well as an Islamic political activist. In his efforts he was persecuted and imprisoned on six occasions with the total time spent inside prison coming to over six years. Other sources say that he spent over twelve years in prison. His detentions were due to the pushback from the clerical establishment of the Mamluk Sultanate, who opposed certain elements of his creed and his views on some jurisprudential issues. However, according to Yahya Michot, "the real reasons were more trivial". Michot stated five reasons as to why Ibn Taymiyya was imprisoned by the Mamluk government, they being: not complying with the "doctrines and practices prevalent among powerful religious and Sufi establishments, an overly outspoken personality, the jealousy of his peers, the risk to public order due to this popular appeal and political intrigues." Baber Johansen stated that the reasons for Ibn Taymiyya's incarcerations were, "as a result of his conflicts with Muslim mystics, jurists, and theologians, who were able to persuade the political authorities of the necessity to limit Ibn Taymiyya's range of action through political censorship and incarceration."
Ibn Taymiyya's emergence in the public and political spheres began in 1293 when he was 30 years old, when the authorities asked him to issue a fatwa on Assaf al-Nasrani, a Christian cleric who was accused of insulting Muhammad. He accepted the invitation and delivered his fatwa, calling for the man to receive the death penalty. Despite the fact that public opinion was very much on Ibn Taymiyya's side, the Governor of Syria attempted to resolve the situation by asking Assaf to accept Islam in return for his life, to which he agreed. This resolution was not acceptable to Ibn Taymiyya who then, together with his followers, protested against it outside the governor's palace, demanding that Assaf be put to death, on the grounds that any person—Muslim or non-Muslim—who insults Muhammad must be killed. His unwillingness to compromise, coupled with his attempt to protest against the governor's actions, resulted in him being punished with a prison sentence, the first of many such imprisonments which were to come. The French orientalist Henri Laoust says that during his incarceration, Ibn Taymiyya "wrote his first great work, al-Ṣārim al-maslūl ʿalā shātim al-Rasūl." Ibn Taymiyya, together with the help of his disciples, continued with his efforts against what, "he perceived to be un-Islamic practices" and to implement what he saw as his religious duty of commanding good and forbidding wrong. Yahya Michot says that some of these incidences included: "shaving children's heads", leading "an anti-debauchery campaign in brothels and taverns", hitting an atheist before his public execution, destroying what was thought to be a sacred rock in a mosque, attacking astrologers and obliging "deviant Sufi Shaykhs to make public acts of contrition and adhere to the Sunnah." Ibn Taymiyya and his disciples used to condemn wine sellers and they would attack wine shops in Damascus by breaking wine bottles and pouring them onto the floor.
A few years later in 1296, he took over the position of one of his teachers, taking the post of professor of Hanbali jurisprudence at the Hanbaliyya madrasa, the oldest such institution of this tradition in Damascus. This is seen by some to be the peak of his scholarly career. The year when he began his post at the Hanbaliyya madrasa, was a time of political turmoil. The Mamluk sultan Al-Adil Kitbugha was deposed by his vice-sultan Al-Malik al-Mansur Lajin who then ruled from 1297 to 1299. Lajin desired to commission an expedition against the Christians of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia who formed an alliance with the Mongol Empire and participated in the military campaign which lead to the destruction of Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, and the destruction of Harran, the birthplace of Ibn Taymiyya, for that purpose, he urged Ibn Taymiyya to call the Muslims to Jihad.
In 1298, Ibn Taymiyya wrote his explanation for the ayat al-mutashabihat titled Al-`Aqidat al-Hamawiyat al-Kubra. The book is about divine attributes and it served as an answer to a question from the city of Hama, Syria. At that particular time Ash'arites held prominent positions within the Islamic scholarly community in both Syria and Egypt, and they held a certain position on the divine attributes of God. Ibn Taymiyya in his book strongly disagreed with their views and this heavy opposition to the common Ash'ari position, caused considerable controversy.
Once more, Ibn Taymiyya collaborated with the Mamluks in 1300, when he joined the punitive expedition against the Alawites and Shiites, in the Kasrawan region of the Lebanese mountains. Ibn Taymiyya believed that the Alawites were "more heretical than Jews and Christians", and according to Carole Hillenbrand, the confrontation with the Alawites occurred because they "were accused of collaborating with Christians and Mongols." Ibn Taymiyya had further active involvements in campaigns against the Mongols and their alleged Alawite allies.
In 1305, Ibn Taymiyya took part in a second military offensive against the Alawites and the Isma`ilis in the Kasrawan region of the Lebanese mountains where they were defeated. The majority of the Alawis and Ismailis eventually converted to Twelver Shiism and settled in south Lebanon and the Bekaa valley, with a few Shia pockets that survived in the Lebanese mountains.