Ibn Taymiyya

Works

• c. 1310The Refutation of the Logicians (al-Radd ʿala al-mantiqiyyin)

  Definitions cannot grasp essences, universals exist only in the mind, and the syllogism gives no knowledge that could not be had without it.

• c. 1315Averting the Conflict between Reason and Revelation (Darʾ taʿarud al-ʿaql wa-l-naql)

  Against Fakhr al-Din al-Razi’s rule that reason must prevail where it seems to contradict scripture: rightly understood, sound reason and authentic revelation never conflict.

Position

Ibn Taymiyya wrote as a jurist and theologian, but much of his work is a sustained argument with philosophy and kalam. In The Refutation of the Logicians, begun in Alexandria and completed in Damascus, he argued that Aristotelian logic is neither necessary nor sufficient for knowledge. Definitions cannot capture the essence of a thing, because the line between essential and accidental properties is drawn arbitrarily; we know things by acquaintance and by distinguishing them from others. Universals exist only in the mind, and outside it there are only particular things. A syllogism only makes explicit what its premises already contain, and its conclusions are no more certain than those of analogy. In his longest philosophical work, Averting the Conflict between Reason and Revelation, he rejected Fakhr al-Din al-Razi’s “universal rule” that where reason and scripture seem to conflict, reason must prevail and scripture be interpreted figuratively. Sound reason and authentic revelation, he argued, cannot conflict, and much of what passes for reason in philosophy and kalam is mistaken. On these grounds he criticised Avicenna’s God, from whom the world emanates by necessity; the Asharite view that God’s attributes are timeless and involve no acts in time; and Ibn Arabi’s doctrine of being, which in his view erased the distinction between creator and creation. Some recent scholars, among them Wael Hallaq, Yahya Michot, Jon Hoover and Carl Sharif El-Tobgui, read him as a serious critic of philosophy on rational grounds; others see him above all as a traditionalist. His later reception, from Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab in the eighteenth century to modern Salafi and militant groups, is contested.

Life & context

Taqi al-Din Ahmad ibn Taymiyya was born in 1263 in Harran in upper Mesopotamia into a family of Hanbali scholars. In 1269 the family fled the Mongols to Damascus, then ruled by the Mamluk sultans of Cairo, where his father taught. He succeeded his father as a teacher in 1284 and became known as a jurist and preacher involved in public affairs. He issued fatwas calling for war against the Ilkhanid Mongols, although they had converted to Islam, and took part in the resistance to their invasions of Syria between 1299 and 1303. His theological creeds brought him into conflict with Asharite scholars and with Sufi groups. He was imprisoned in Cairo in 1306–07 and again in 1308–09, then held under house arrest in Alexandria for eight months. Back in Damascus he was jailed for some months over his rulings on divorce oaths and, from 1326, for condemning journeys to the tombs of prophets and saints. He died in prison in the citadel of Damascus in September 1328. His pupils included the theologian Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya and the historian Ibn Kathir.

Further main works

• Exposing the Deception of the Jahmiyya (Bayan talbis al-Jahmiyya, 1306–07)
• Governance according to God’s Law (al-Siyasa al-sharʿiyya, c. 1310)
• The Way of the Prophet’s Sunna (Minhaj al-sunna, against Twelver Shiʿism)
• Collected Fatwas (Majmuʿ al-fatawa, 37 vols., printed 1961–67)