Ibn Taimiyyah (AH 661-728/1263-1328 CE), more fully Taqi al-Din Abu al-Abbas Ahmad ibn Abd al-Halim ibn Abd al-Salam al-Harrani al-Dimashqi; jurisconsult, theologian, and Sufi. He was born in Harran, and at the age of six he fled with his father and brothers to Damascus during the Mongol invasions. Ibn Taymiyyah devoted himself from early youth to various Islamic sciences (Quran, hadith and legal studies), and he was a voracious reader of books on sciences that were not taught in the regular institutions of learning, including logic, philosophy, and kalam.
Early Career.
Ibn Taymiyah studied law under the direction of his father and Shams al-Din Abd al-Rahman al-Maqdisi (d. 1283). Under several teachers of hadith he studied a number of works, in particular the Musnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, (a hadith collection that he read several times), the six books of hadith, and the bibliographical Mu'jam of al-Tabarani. He studied Arabic grammar and lexicography for a brief period under Sulayman ibn Abd al-Qawi al-Tuft (d. 1316); then, on his own, he mastered Sibawayh¡'s text on grammar. He became qualified to issue legal opinions before the age of twenty; at twenty-one, upon the death of his father in 1283, he succeeded him as professor of hadith and law at Dar al-Hadith al-Sukkariyah, a Sufi monastery and college of hadith founded around the middle of the thirteenth century in Damascus. Ibn Taymiyyah was a prolific writer, described as fast to learn and slow to forget: it was said of him that once he learned something, he never forgot it.
Ibn Taymiyyah also succeeded his father at the Umayyad Mosque, where he gave lectures on Quranic exegesis. His biographers record that, lecturing without notes, he would give materials for two or more fascicles. On one of these Fridays of Quranic exegesis in the Umayyad Mosque in 1291, Ibn Taymiyyah lectured briefly on the divine attributes. This was his first known public venture into controversial dogmatics. The reaction was quick among his opponents, who tried to prevent him from lecturing further in the mosque but failed in their attempt. Ibn Taymiyyah's treatment of the divine attributes was given as part of his profession of faith. The Chief Qadi Shahs al-Din al-Khuwayyi declared: 'I am in agreement with the creed of Shaykh Taqi al-Din [Ibn Taymiyyah].' When he was reproved, he continued: 'because he has sound intelligence, speaks from extensive knowledge, and says only what he knows to be sound.'
In 1292 Ibn Taymiyyah went on the pilgrimage to Makkah, where he gathered materials for his work 'Manasik al-Hajj' (Rituals of the Pilgrimage), denouncing a number of practices in the rituals of the pilgrimage as condemnable innovations.
The Shafii historian Ibn Kathir, in the events of the year 1293/4, treats of the affair of Assaf al-Nasrani (the Christian), who was reported by witnesses to have cursed the Prophet. Ibn Taymiyyah and a companion, al-Faraqi, apparently implicated in the affair for encouraging the assault and battery to which Assaf and his bedouin protector were victims, were flogged and put under house arrest.
In 1296, at the death of his Professor Zayn al-Din ibn Munajja, Ibn Taymiyyah succeeded to the chair of law thus vacated in the Madrasah Hanbaliyyah. His biographer Ibn Rajab said that he read an autobiographical note in Ibn Taymiyyah's own hand to the effect that Ibn Taymiyyah was offered, before the year 1291 (thus before the age of thirty), the post of 'Shaykh al-Shuyukh', or head of the Sufis, and the post of Chief Qadi, but he refused them both. Refusals to assume such posts usually meant that the scholar wished to stay aloof from the central power, out of desire for a private scholarly life, or in order to pursue the ascetic life, or to remain free to criticize practices he deemed not in keeping with the tenets of Islam. When Ibn Taymiyyah's subsequent life is taken into consideration, his refusal clearly appears to have been based on the last of these reasons.
Opposition to the Asyarites. Ibn Taymiyyah lived in a period between those of two notable propagandists of the rationalist Asyarite movement in theology: Ibn Asakir (d. 1176) and Subki (d. 1370). The attempt of the Asyarite movement to obtain legitimacy by infiltrating the Shafii school of law-an attempt that surfaced in the eleventh century-was still developing and had to face two implacable forces blocking its goal. The traditionalist movement was represented particularly by two schools of law: the Hanbali and the Shafii. The former was the obvious obstructive force, while the latter included the Asyarite faction, which was hard at work to gain the adherence of fellow Shafiis to Asyarite thought, an effort destined to fail in the face of the alliance between the traditionalists of the two schools.
Already in the days of Ibn Asakir the traditionalists had introduced an institution that was conceived to correct, among other things, the detrimental consequences of the exclusory principle in the madrasah, according to which only those students who chose to belong to the school represented by the madrasah were admitted. This policy tended to be divisive, separating members of the traditionalist movement who belonged to all the Sunni schools, while allowing the Asyarites to stay within one school, the Shafii.
The new institution that helped to correct the situation was Dar al-Hadith, wherein the principal subject of instruction was hadith rather than law, and students of any of the four schools could attend. Thus a Hanbali professor, such as Ibn Taymiyyah, could have students belonging to the Shafii school, such as al-Birzali, Mizzi, and al-Dhahabi. The first Dar al-Hadith was founded in Damascus by the Zengid ruler Nur al-Din (d. 1173).
To the philosophical theology of the Asyarites, Ibn Taymiyyah opposed this famous profession of faith (aqidah; pl., aqaid). His first full-length work of creed, written at the request of the people of Hama in the year 1299 and therefore known as 'Al-Aqidah al-Hamawiyyah', was very hostile to the Asyarites and their kalam-theology. According to Ibn Rajab, Ibn Taymiyyah wrote this creed in one sitting. His other important profession of faith is the 'Aqidah Wasitiyyah', written for a group of religious intellectuals in Wasit (Iraq) before the arrival of the Mongols in Damascus. Both professions of faith were attacked by his enemies, and he was taxed with anthropomorphism. In a meeting in the house of the Shafii Qadi Imam al-Din Umar ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Qazwini (d. 1299) 'Aqidah Hamawiyyah' was studied; Ibn Taymiyyah was questioned regarding various points, and it was deemed to be satisfactory. Regarding Wasitiyyah, even the Ashari-Shafii Safi al-Din al-Hindi (d. 1315) found it to be in conformity with the Quran and Sunnah. Nevertheless, his enemies tried hard to keep him in prison, even to have him executed, but failed on both counts.
Ibn Taymiyyah's polemic activity extended to the philosophers, especially the logicians, against whom he wrote a refutation, 'Al-Radd ala al-Mantiqiyin'. He wrote extensively against the monistic (ittihadiyyah) and incarnationist (hululiyyah) Sufis and condemned as heretical innovations many of the Sufi practices of his day. Nevertheless, Ibn Taymiyyah was praised by the Sufi Abu Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Qawwam, who said: Our Sufism became sound only at the hands of Ibn Taymiyyah, implying that Ibn Taymiyyah was not an outsider to Sufism.
Recently discovered evidence shows that Ibn Taymiyyah belonged to the Sufi order of the Qadiriyyah, named after the Hanbali Sufi Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, whom he praised and preferred to the other Hanbali Sufi, al-Ansari al-Harawi.
On the theological question of the divine attributes, Ibn Taymiyyah held that God should be described as He has described himself in His book and as the Prophet has described Him in his Sunnah. This classical traditionalist doctrine goes back to al-Shafii (d. 820) and to Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 855), the two great leaders of the movement, in whose works Ibn Taymiyyah was thoroughly versed. Ibn Taymiyyah and his famous disciple Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah (d. 1350) drew much of their inspiration from the works of al-Shafii and Ibn Hanbal. From the genesis of the traditionalist movement the principal message has always been that the basic sources for belief and practice are the book of God and the practice of the Prophet.
Ibn Taymiyyah, in the title of one of his numerous works, emphasized the place of the Prophet in relation to the two fundamental sources: The Steps Leading to the Knowledge That the Messenger of God Has Already Made a Clear Exposition of the Roots and Branches of Religion.
For the Prophet, as Messenger, brought the book of God and was himself a living example of what should be followed. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah quotes from the introduction to al-Shafii's 'Risalah': 'Praise be to God . . who is as He has described himself, and who is exalted above all the attributes given to Him by those among his creatures who have described him.' And again: 'No event shall befall an adherent of God's religion but that there is a guide in the book of God showing the right way to be followed.' These two statements were quoted against the Asyarites, the rationalist movement of the period of Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn Qayyim, as al-Shafii had said them some five centuries before in condemnation of the Mutazilites, the rationalist movement of his day.
Under Attack. Ibn Taymiyyah's troubles came chiefly from his opposition to Asyarite thought working from within the Shafii school, and also from his criticism of extremist Sufi thought and practices. His troubles were treated extensively by his Shafii disciples al-Birzali, al-Dhahabi, and Ibn Kathir, and by the Hanbali biobibliographer Ibn Rajab.
Ibn Taymiyyah's enemies finally succeeded in removing him from the scene. The opportunity was presented by one of his legal opinions (fatwas) entitled 'Travel to the Tombs of the Prophets and Saints' in which Ibn Taymiyyah prohibited such travel. His opponents pounced on this fatwa and charged him with demeaning the prophets and with unbelief. Eighteen jurisconsults, led by the Maliki Qadi al-Ikhnai, wrote fatwas condemning him. The four chief qadis of Cairo issued their decision that he be imprisoned in the citadel of Damascus. Other jurisconsults, including the two sons of the leading Maliki jurisconsult Abu al-Walid, had issued fatwas condemning that decision. They stated that it had no valid basis against Ibn Taymiyyah since he had simply cited the divergent opinions of the jurisconsults on the subject of the visiting of tombs and had given preponderance to one side of the question, a choice that was legitimate to make. But the decision stood without appeal. Ibn Taymiyyah was never to leave the citadel alive; he died there some two years later. Three months before his death, his enemy al-Ikhnai, against whom he had written a refutation, complained to the Sultan, who ordered that Ibn Taymiyyah be deprived of the opportunity to write; his ink, pen, and paper were taken away from him. But to the very last, his enemies could not quite get the better of him.
The biographers cite a number of statements made by Ibn Taymiyyah during his imprisonment that show the man's stature and state of mind. 'A prisoner is one who has shut out God from his heart.' ' A prisoner is one whose passions have made him captive.' ' In this world there is a paradise to be entered; he who does not enter it will not enter the paradise of the world to come.' ' What can my enemies possibly do to me? My paradise is in my breast; wherever I go it goes with me, inseparable from me.' ' For me, prison is a place of retreat; execution is my opportunity for martyrdom; and exile from my town is but a chance to travel.'
In reference to his enemies who strove to have him imprisoned: 'If I were to give all the gold it takes to fill the space of this citadel, I could not possibly reward them for the good they have done me.' And he often repeated the following prayer: 'O God! Help me to move my tongue incessantly in your praise, to express my gratitude, and to serve you in perfect worship.'
On 20 Dhu al-Qa¡dah 728 (26 September 1328), Ibn Taymiyyah died in the citadel at the age of sixty-five. The populace turned out in the hundreds of thousands for the funeral procession, which was compared to that of Ahmad ibn Hanbal. He was buried next to his brother, Sharaf al-Din Abd Allah, in the Sufi cemetery where other Sufi members of his family were buried.
Ibn Taymiyyah's influence has reached modern times. His teachings, first followed by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (d. 1792), became the basis of the Wahhabi movement in the nineteenth century and the guiding principles of the Wahhabi state of Saudi Arabia. Again, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, through Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida, they influenced the modernist Salafi movement.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arabic Sources
Ibn al-Imad al-Hanbali. Shadhardt al-dhahab fi akhbar man dhahab. Vol. 5. Cairo, 1931. See pages 80-86.
Ibn Kathir, Ismail ibn Umar. Al-biddyah wa-al-nihdyah fi al-tarikh. Vol. 14. Cairo, 1937. See pages 135-141.
Ibn Rajab. Dhayald tabagat al-Handbilah. Vol. 2. Edited by M. Hamid al-FigI. Cairo, 1953. See pages 387-408.
Studies
Laoust, Henri. Essai sur les doctrines sociales et politiques de Taki-al-Din Ahmad b. Taimiya. Cairo, 1939.
Laoust, Henri. La biographie d¡ Ibn Taimiya d¡apres Ibn Kathir.¨ Bulletin d¡ etudes orientales 9 (1942): 115-162.
Laoust, Henri. Le hanbalisme sous les Mamlouks Bahrides.¨ Revue des etudes islamiques 28 (1960): 1-71.
Laoust, Henri. Ibn Taymiyya.¨ In The Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed. Leiden, 1960-.
Laoust, Henri. L¡ influence d¡ Ibn Taimiyya.¨ In Islam: Past Influence and Present Challenge, edited by Alford T. Welch and Pierre Cachia. Edinburgh, 1979.
Makdisi, George. Ashari and the Asharites in Islamic Religious History.¨ Studia Islamica 17 (1962): 37-80.
Makdisi, George. Ibn Taimiya: A Sufi of the Qadiriya Order.¨ American Journal of Arabic Studies 1 (1973): 118-129. Makdisi, George. The Hanbali School and Sufism.¨ Hamadard Islamica 11 (1974): 61-72.
GEORGE MAKDISI
No comments:
Post a Comment