Death of Ibn Taymiyyah

# Ibn Taymiyyah: The Defender of the Sunnah and the Scholar Behind Bars

A Giant of Islamic Scholarship

Taqi al-Din Ahmad ibn Abd al-Halim ibn Abd al-Salam ibn Abd Allah ibn Muhammad al-Khaddir ibn Ali ibn Abd Allah ibn Taymiyyah al-Harani al-Dimashqi was born on 10 Rabi al-Awwal 661 AH (January 22, 1263 CE) in Harran, a city in the region of northern Mesopotamia (modern southeastern Turkey). He died in the Citadel prison of Damascus on 20 Dhul Qa'da 728 AH (September 26, 1328 CE) at age 65.

Between these dates, he lived one of the most consequential lives in the history of Islamic scholarship — a life of extraordinary intellectual output, physical courage, political conflict, and personal integrity. He was imprisoned multiple times for his scholarly positions, fought in battle against the Mongols, wrote tens of millions of words, taught hundreds of students, and refused to compromise his understanding of the Quran and Sunnah to satisfy political authority or popular pressure.

Among traditional Sunni scholars, his standing is comparable to that of Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal — the earlier Hanbali Imam who had suffered imprisonment for refusing to accept the Mu'tazili doctrine of the created Quran under the Abbasid Caliph al-Ma'mun. Like Ibn Hanbal, Ibn Taymiyyah suffered for adhering to positions he believed were required by the Quran and Sunnah, and like Ibn Hanbal, he was vindicated by subsequent generations.

Family Background and Formation

When Ibn Taymiyyah was approximately 7 years old, his family fled Harran before the advancing Mongol forces and settled in Damascus (667 AH / 1269 CE). His father Abd al-Halim was himself a scholar who served as a teacher at the Dar al-Hadith al-Sukkariyya in Damascus, and his grandfather Abd al-Salam was a distinguished Hanbali scholar. Ibn Taymiyyah thus grew up in a household of scholars, in a city that was one of the great centers of Islamic learning.

His early formation was described by his biographers as exceptional: he memorized the Quran as a child, studied the major Islamic sciences under his father and other scholars of Damascus, and read prodigiously in every field. By his own account and that of his contemporaries, he had mastered the established Islamic sciences and was engaging with their difficult questions at an age when most students were still in the early stages of their education.

He received his ijaza (scholarly license to teach) at age 17 and began teaching formally at the Dar al-Hadith al-Sukkariyya in Damascus, where his father had taught. He was, from the beginning of his scholarly career, associated with the Hanbali school in jurisprudence and with what later came to be called the Athari (sometimes Salafi) tradition in aqeedah.

The Theological Position: Athari Aqeedah

The theological position Ibn Taymiyyah defended throughout his life — and for which he was repeatedly imprisoned — is the Hanbali Athari position on the divine attributes (sifat Allah). This position holds that the attributes of Allah described in the Quran and authentic hadith — the Hand, the Face, the Rising over the Throne (istawa), the Coming in anger, and others — are real attributes of Allah as described, and should be understood as befitting Allah's majesty without attempting to liken them to human attributes (tashbih) or to deny them (ta'til) or to offer speculative reinterpretations that read them as metaphors for something entirely different (ta'wil).

This position is the position of the Companions and the early generations (salaf) as represented in the transmitted scholarship: when asked about Allah's attributes, the early scholars accepted what the texts said, acknowledged that the ultimate reality (kayfiyya) was unknown, and refrained from speculation. Ibn Taymiyyah argued extensively and with great scholarly precision that this was the Quranic and Sunnah position, and that the Ash'ari and Maturidi schools' approach of allegorical reinterpretation, while motivated by sincere concern to avoid tashbih, ended up in a form of ta'til that negated the reality of the attributes.

This debate is a genuine and ongoing one within Sunni Islam. The positions of the Ash'ari and Maturidi schools represent the majority position among Sunni scholars historically, particularly in the post-4th century AH period. The Athari/Hanbali position represents an alternative that many scholars consider more faithful to the approach of the early generations. Both the Ash'ari/Maturidi and the Athari positions are within the scope of Ahl us-Sunnah; the disagreements between them, while significant, do not constitute takfir (declaration of disbelief) in either direction from scholars who understand the questions properly.

Against Innovation: The Principle and the Practice

Ibn Taymiyyah's opposition to bid'ah (religious innovation) was not merely theoretical — he was willing to act on it publicly and at personal cost. His most significant practical controversies concerned:

Visiting graves for the purpose of tawassul*** (seeking the intercession of the deceased): Ibn Taymiyyah held that traveling to visit a grave specifically for the purpose of asking the deceased to intercede with Allah was an impermissible innovation not established by the Prophet ﷺ or the early generations. He distinguished this from the permitted visiting of graves for the purpose of remembering death and making du'a for the deceased, which the Prophet ﷺ encouraged. This position — that asking the deceased for intercession is not established in the Sunnah and constitutes a form of innovation that can lead to shirk — is the position that most directly caused his imprisonments.

Divorce with three utterances: He issued a fatwa that a man who divorced his wife with three utterances in a single session had issued only one revocable divorce — a position traceable to certain Companion reports — rather than three simultaneous divorces as the position of the four established madhabs. This legal position, while defensible from certain early sources, directly contradicted the operative consensus of the established schools and caused significant political opposition from scholars who saw him as undermining the authority of the established legal tradition.

The Mongols: His fatwa declaring that the Mongol rulers of Syria — who had nominally converted to Islam — remained in a state that permitted fighting them because they governed by their Yasa customary law rather than Islamic law, was both theologically significant and practically consequential. It provided the jurisprudential basis for the Mamluk jihad against the Mongols at the Battle of Shaqhab (702 AH / 1303 CE), in which Ibn Taymiyyah himself participated physically.

Physical Courage: The Battle of Shaqhab

It is important to note that Ibn Taymiyyah's scholarship was not merely that of a cloistered academic. When the Mongols invaded Syria and threatened Damascus in 702 AH (1303 CE), Ibn Taymiyyah was not only in Damascus — he was part of the delegation that went to negotiate with and ultimately oppose the Mongol commander Qatlushah. He reportedly went to the battlefield at Shaqhab and participated in the fighting.

His biographers describe him encouraging the soldiers, refusing to flee, and publicly declaring the religious obligation to fight. When people asked him whether they should fight despite being from the region (and thus potentially subject to certain legal questions about fighting those who had recently entered the territory), he issued his famous response that they were obligated to fight.

Ibn Kathir, his student and biographer, describes these events with evident admiration: a scholar who did not merely issue fatwas about jihad but participated in it himself.

The Voluminous Works

Despite spending significant portions of his career in prison, Ibn Taymiyyah's written output was staggering. The collected Majmu al-Fatawa runs to 37 large volumes. His major independent works include:

Minhaj al-Sunnah al-Nabawiyya: A four-volume response to the Shia scholar Ibn al-Mutahhar al-Hilli's Minhaj al-Karama, constituting the most extensive Sunni critique of Shia theology written in the classical period.

Dar' al-Ta'arud al-Aql wal-Naql (Averting the Conflict Between Reason and Transmission): A major work on the relationship between rational theology and scriptural evidence, arguing that properly understood reason never genuinely conflicts with authentic revelation.

al-Aqeedah al-Wasitiyya (The Creed of the Middle Way): A relatively brief but precise statement of Athari theological principles that has been widely used as a teaching text.

al-Aqeedah al-Hamawiyya and al-Aqeedah al-Tadmuriyya: Major theological works on the divine attributes.

al-Siyasa al-Shar'iyya (Islamic Political Governance): A major work on Islamic political theory that influenced subsequent Islamic political thought significantly.

The Final Imprisonment and Death

Ibn Taymiyyah's final imprisonment in the Citadel of Damascus began in 726 AH (1326 CE) and lasted until his death in 728 AH. The immediate cause was his fatwa on shrine visitation — a subject on which he had issued rulings throughout his career and which had drawn sustained opposition from scholars and rulers who disagreed with him.

In his final months, the Mamluk authorities in Damascus denied him writing materials — an attempt to stop the flow of his fatwas and correspondence reaching his followers outside. His student Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya had himself been imprisoned in the Citadel alongside him. According to the account preserved by Ibn Kathir and other biographers, when denied paper and ink, Ibn Taymiyyah wrote with charcoal on whatever surface was available. He continued thinking, teaching those imprisoned with him, and praying until the end.

He died on the night of 20-21 Dhul Qa'da 728 AH. His funeral, despite attempts to limit it, drew an enormous crowd — Ibn Kathir estimates 60,000-200,000 people attended. He was buried in the Sufi cemetery (maqbarat al-Sufiyya) in Damascus. His tomb was, not without irony, visited by enormous crowds for generations after his death.

Al-Dhahabi, who had been his student and admirer, wrote in his obituary: "He was learned in usul and furu', knowledgeable of men (rijal) and the texts, a master of principles of jurisprudence and of jurisprudence itself, of the Arabic language, and of the fundamentals of religion. In all these fields he was accomplished to the highest degree. He was brave, generous, and devoted to Allah." Whatever reservations al-Dhahabi had about certain aspects of Ibn Taymiyyah's methods, his recognition of the scholar's greatness was unambiguous.

Sources:

• Ibn Kathir, al-Bidaya wan-Nihaya (obituary entry for 728 AH — Ibn Kathir was his student)
• al-Dhahabi, al-Mu'jam al-Mukhtass and Siyar A'lam al-Nubala (partially on Ibn Taymiyyah)
• Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, al-Wabil al-Sayyib and other works (preserving Ibn Taymiyyah's positions)
• Ibn Abd al-Hadi, al-Uqud al-Durriyya (early biography)
• Ibn Shakir al-Kutubi, Fawat al-Wafayat
• Henri Laoust, Essai sur les doctrines sociales et politiques de Taki-d-Din Ahmad b. Taimiya
• Yahya Michot, Muslims Under Non-Muslim Rule: Ibn Taymiyya
• Caterina Bori, Ibn Taymiyya: una vita esemplare