Ibn Taymiyyah : The Sheikh-ul-Islam

Thirteenth century was a turbulent time for Islamic world. The immensely powerful empire of Abbasid Caliphs, which was on decline for a few generations, was totally devastated and crushed by the Mongol invasion. The fall of Baghdad was so brutal and so thorough, that the morale of muslims across the world was at its lowest point. The political turmoil was also reflected in the scholarly world. 

On one hand an institutional maturity was developing across Egypt and Syria, where new religious institutes, salaried islamic teachers and historians, and scholarly employment was getting formalized. At the same time, in Central Asia and Iraq, the loss of the great library of the house of Wisdom resulted in a scholarly vacuum.The devastation lead muslims to introspect and seek new answers to the old traditions, leading the foundation of new sects and rise in theological disputes.

Early life

In such times, Taqī al-Dīn Ibn Taymiyyah (رحمه الله) was born in Ḥarrān, in modern day Turkey, in the year 661 AH. His family was known for scholarship, particularly within the Ḥanbalī tradition. He grew up in an environment where seeking knowledge was taken as a sacred duty. 

As the Mongol storm pressed toward more and more cities in Asia Minor, muslims migrated to southern part of the islamic lands. Ibn Taymiyyah’s family moved as well, to Damascus. He was around 7 years old at the time.

Damascus in those times was a crossroads of jurists, Hadith masters, and disputation. Young Ibn Taymiyyah’s gifts of sharp memory and deep comprehension became widely known in scholarly circles of Damascus soon. In one of the early recorded incidents, a Jewish neighbor on the road would stop him again and again with questions. Ibn Taymiyyah would answer to his questions, and then add a little extra reasoning which would make the neighbor come back again with more questions. This went on for several times. Every time, the neighbor got a little closer to the truth, until, finally, he accepted Islam, and became a practicing Muslim. Ibn Taymiyyah was very young at this time.

In few years, he memorized the Qur’an and then pursued ḥadīth science, islamic jurisprudence, tafsir, and other islamic faculties with relentless seriousness. He became proficient in other subjects like history, astronomy, medicine and others. 

Sheikh-ul-Islam, as he came to be called by later scholars, started giving legal verdicts at the age of nineteen, and started teaching at the age of twenty two. His scholarship consists of a lot of legal rulings, Fatwas which he issued regarding various topics. Ibn Taymiyyah lived amid polemics, court pressures, and factional conflict, his strict views on many subjects were controversial in his time. But he was a fearless person, who fought for ideas and kept no personal grudges in his heart. For him, scholarship was a form of worship. Teaching, writing, and counsel filled his days—but the inner thread was dhikr and prayer.

 He often said:. “No man fears other than Allah except that he has a sick heart.” 

This is one of the recurring motifs of his life: when fear rules hearts, truth becomes negotiable. He tried—sometimes gently, sometimes fiercely—to reverse that order.

Allah says: “O you who believe, fear Allah… and speak words of appropriate justice/truth.” (Qur’an 33:70–71)

His Teachings

Ibn Taymiyyah spoke of an inward paradise of knowing Allah and insisted that whoever does not taste it here will not recognize the sweetness of the Hereafter’s paradise in full. He framed adversity as worship in disguise: imprisonment could become retreat (khalwah), execution could become martyrdom, and exile could become spiritual travel. In this reading of life, the believer’s center of gravity shifts from the world’s permissions to Allah’s nearness.

His theological positions was to affirm scriptural doctrine as the early muslims understood it, discipline reason by revelation (not the reverse), define faith as lived obedience, and guard tawḥīd from devotional drifts. He believed that: 

1: There is no real contradiction between sound reason and authentic revelation. If a conflict appears, it is due to:

• an unsound rational premise, or
• an inauthentic/incorrectly interpreted transmitted text.

he was sharply critical of the dominance of Greek-inherited philosophical frameworks and certain kalām methods when they were used as the “judge” over revelation.

2: Imaan is belief of the heart , speech of the tongue and actions of the limbs, all combined, and it increases and decreases. He pushed back against overly “minimalist” definitions of imaan making piety/practice theologically meaningful. He defines worship as everything Allah loves and is pleased with, of inward and outward words and actions. Your worship is not what you do apart from living a regular life, but it is how you live your life. Ikhlas (sincerity to Allah)) and Ittiba (conformity to the Prophet’s ﷺ guidance) are integral part of Imaan.

3: Worship (Ibadah) is broad and includes inner and outer acts; therefore anything that shifts ultimate devotion, fear, hope, reliance, seeking supernatural help, to other than Allah is a serious violation of tawhid.

This explains his critiques of certain popular religious customs around:

• grave veneration – Pilgrimage to the graves of pious, with intension to seek blessings
• some forms of tawassul/intercession-seeking – Belief that saints and sufis are capable of intercession between them and Allah.
• and other religious practices he judged to be bidaah(innovation) like wearing amulets and charms, with the belief of getting any benefit from the act.

He resisted any religious culture that shifts hearts from Allah to objects, symbols, or social habits.

4: He approved Sunnah-conforming ascetic spirituality but rejected the devotional practices of Sufism as contradicting revelation. He believed in reflecting, instead of repeating recitation of Allah’s names and verses. For him, hearts live and die; diseases spread through doubts and desires and cure returns through revelation, repentance, and disciplined obedience.

 Due to this, he is read both as a critic of “deviant Sufism” and, simultaneously, as a writer of serious spiritual counsel. 

5: He insisted on affirming scriptural attributes of Allah’s name and attributes while rejecting metaphorical reinterpretation of them. He was accused of anthropomorphism in his lifetime, which means attributing human characteristics to Allah.

His Jihad

Ibn Taymiyyah was not just a teacher, he always insisted on acting upon beliefs and convictions. The Mongol invasion was a constant threat to islamic lands through his life. it shaped his childhood and public life. When Mongols confronted with Mamluks, Ibn Taymiyyah was with armies and commanders of Mamluks, mobilizing volunteers, preaching publicly, issuing legal rulings to sustain the campaign, and at times acting as a frontline negotiator/diplomat.

In one of the most famous episodes, he confronted the Mongol ruler Ghāzān after a battle, telling him that Ghāzān claimed Islam yet invaded Muslims, broke pacts, and did what even disbelieving forefathers did not do. He sought security and clemency, and convince the king for the release of captives, including non-Muslim protected peoples (dhimmis) taken from Syria. 

When Ghāzān offered him governance in Ḥarrān, Ibn Taymiyyah replied that he would never leave “the land that Ibrāhīm migrated to” for another home. 

He was also with the Mamluk army that defeated the Ilkhanids at Shaqḥab , present in the entourage of Sultan al-Nāṣir Muḥammad, and he played a recognized role in jihād propagation and morale-building around the campaign. He was a stabilizing presence among Muslims in wartime contexts—encouraging the fearful, reminding them of the virtue of fighting for Allah’s sake and divine aid, and projecting composure.

His imprisonments:

Ibn Taymiyyah’s public stances repeatedly created enemies—some sincere, some political, some driven by rivalry. Despite this, he kept increasing in effort for the truth rather than retreating into caution. He was imprisoned multiple times, for months and years for his theological positions. He endured many hardships while remaining firm upon what he believed to be truth grounded in Qur’an and Sunnah.

His student Ibn al-Qayyim reports him saying:

“What can my enemies do to me? My paradise and my garden are in my heart…” 

He was imprisoned for eighteen months in Cairo for his position on Allah’s name and his attributes. Another time, he was imprisoned again in Cairo for sixteen months for disputes over Sufi theology and popular religious practices that he criticized. He was imprisoned in Damascus due to his “unorthodox” legal opinions on divorce oaths where he insisted that when a man swears using divorce language as a threat, deterrent, or emphasis, without genuinely intending to end the marriage, it does not produce talaq, even if the condition occurs. It rather becomes a broken oath requiring kaffarah.

His final imprisonment was in Damascus, due to his teachings against undertaking travel to graves for the purpose of seeking intercession through the dead; this provoked strong opposition and resulted in a decree restricting him and re-imprisonment in the Citadel. 

Prison never deterred him from his work.

he said “The real prisoner is someone whose heart is imprisoned from his Lord.”

In confinements,his worship did not diminish into despair. Ibn Kathīr’s reported from Ibn Taymiyyah’s brother: that during their time in the citadel they completed eighty full readings of the Qur’an, and were into the next reading when Ibn Taymiyyah passed away, in year 728 AH, reaching verses about the righteous being in gardens and honor near the Sovereign King.

Forgiveness at the end of life

During his last days, a notable visitor came to apologize for shortcomings. Ibn Taymiyyah responded not with bitterness, but with a sweeping act of forgiveness. He declared that he had forgiven his enemies who did not know he was upon truth, and even forgave the ruler connected to his imprisonment on the basis that the ruler acted from what was conveyed to him rather than personal malice. He made a key exception: those who were enemies to Allah and His Messenger ﷺ , those who knowingly fought the religion itself.

His funeral

As news of his death spread, Damascus effectively stopped. Shops got closed, people poured into the streets with immense sorrow, crowds gathered at the citadel, walking towards the Umayyad Mosque for the funeral rites. Historical accounts have recorded an extraordinary turnout across classes – scholars, officials, merchants, craftsmen, and the general public. It was one of the biggest funerals of the era;  hundreds of thousands attended the janazah. It compares in scale to the funeral of Imām Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal ( رحمه الله ).

Legacy 

He trained and influenced a circle in Damascus; which included people such as Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya and Ibn Kathīr among others. His ideas became a major reference point for later reform scholars, even though he faced controversies during his lifetime. He appears as a man whose scholarship was energized by worship; whose courage was a symptom of inner freedom; whose service was inseparable from humility; and whose capacity to forgive was anchored in a sober distinction between personal rights and the rights of Allah’s message.His gatherings were open: the wealthy and poor, men and women, free and enslaved—people from every layer of society found space around him. His public role was not merely issuing rulings, but becoming a shelter for those seeking guidance, clarity, and hope.