Ibn Taymiyya on Reason and Revelation

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Islamic Philosophy, Theology
and Science
Texts and Studies

Edited by

Hans Daiber
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Ibn Taymiyya on Reason
and Revelation
A Study of Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wa-l-naql

By

Carl Sharif El-Tobgui

LEIDEN | BOSTON

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 This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the
CC-BY-NC 4.0 License, which permits any non-commercial use,
distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original
author(s) and source are credited.

Cover illustration: Das Tor der Großen Umayyaden-Moschee, Damaskus, 1890. The Gate of the Great
Umayyad Mosque, Damascus, 1890, where Ibn Taymiyya taught in his youth some six hundred years earlier.
By Gustav Bauernfeind (1848–1904).

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: El-Tobgui, Carl Sharif, 1974- author.

Title: Ibn Taymiyya on reason and revelation : a study of Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql
wa-l-naql / by Carl Sharif El-Tobgui.
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2020] | Series: Islamic philosophy, theology
and science, 0169-8729 ; volume 111 | Includes bibliographical references and
index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019033459 (print) | LCCN 2019033460 (ebook) |
ISBN 9789004412859 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004412866 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Ibn Taymīyah, Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm, 1263-1328. Bayān
muwāfaqat ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl li-ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl. | Faith and reason–Islam. |
Islam and philosophy.
Classification: LCC BP190.5.R4 I2534 2020 (print) | LCC BP190.5.R4 (ebook) |
DDC 297.2/0414–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019033459
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019033460

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 This book is dedicated,
with boundless love and eternal gratitude,
to my dear wife, Nadia,
and my beloved children,
Adnane and Amina

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 Carl Sharif El-Tobgui - 978-90-04-41286-6
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Contents

Acknowledgements xi
List of Figures and Tables xiv

Mise en Scène 1

Introduction 4
1 Contours of a Conflict 6
2 Why the Darʾ taʿāruḍ? 9
3 About This Work 13
3.1 Aims, Method, and Scope 13
3.2 Structure and Major Themes 16

Part 1
Reason vs. Revelation?

1 Reason and Revelation in Islam before Ibn Taymiyya 23

1 Reason and Revelation, Reason in Revelation 23
2 The Early Emergence of Rationalist and Textualist Tendencies:
The Case of the Law 27
3 Early Theological Reflection and Contention 31
3.1 The Translation Movement and the Impact of Greek
Philosophy 38
4 The Muʿtazila 41
5 Non-speculative Theology and the Legacy of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal 42
6 The Miḥna and Its Aftermath 46
7 Nascent Ashʿarī Thought and the Early Kalām 48
7.1 al-Ashʿarī 48
7.2 al-Bāqillānī 52
8 Philosophy 53
8.1 al-Kindī 55
8.2 al-Fārābī 57
8.3 Ibn Sīnā 60
9 The New Kalām and Subsequent Developments 63
9.1 al-Juwaynī 63
9.2 al-Ghazālī 66
10 Kalām and Falsafa in the Wake of al-Ghazālī 71

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viii contents

10.1 Ashʿarī Theology and the Struggle to Orthodoxy 71

10.2 Philosophical Theology and the Fate of Falsafa Proper 72
10.3 Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī 74

2 Ibn Taymiyya: Life, Times, and Intellectual Profile 78

1 The Life and Times of Ibn Taymiyya (661–728/1263–1328) 78
2 Intellectual Profile 87
3 Character and Contemporary Reception 93
4 Ibn Taymiyya’s Works 97
5 The Historiography of the Darʾ taʿāruḍ: Ibn Taymiyya’s Assessment
of the Intellectual Legacy He Inherited 102
6 The Darʾ taʿāruḍ in Context: Ibn Taymiyya’s View of Previous
Attempts to Solve the Conundrum of Reason and Revelation 118

3 On the Incoherence of the Universal Rule and the Theoretical

Impossibility of a Contradiction between Reason and Revelation 132
1 Ibn Taymiyya on the Universal Rule and the Variety of Responses
It Has Elicited 132
2 The End Result of Figurative Interpretation (taʾwīl) 137
3 Specious Rationality and Its Discontents: Reason in a
Cul-de-Sac 141
4 Ibn Taymiyya’s Project: Refuting the Universal Rule 148
5 On Reason Grounding Our Knowledge of Revelation 149
6 Knowledge vs. Conjecture: Conclusiveness Is What Counts 156
7 Not “Scriptural vs. Rational” but “Scripturally Validated vs.
Innovated” 163
8 Further Arguments Regarding the Rational Contradictoriness
of the Universal Rule 168
9 On the Incompatibility of the Universal Rule with the Status and
Authority of Revelation 172

Part 2
Ibn Taymiyya’s Reform of Language, Ontology, and Epistemology

4 Ṣaḥīḥ al-Manqūl, or What Is Revelation? 179

1 Taʾwīl and the Meaning of Qurʾān 3:7 184
1.1 The Meaning of “Taʾwīl” 185
2 The Centrality of Context and Ibn Taymiyya’s “Contextual
Taʾwīl” 193

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contents ix

2.1 Ibn Taymiyya’s Contextual Taʾwīl in Practice 198

2.2 Taʾwīl on the Basis of Intertextuality 202
2.3 Taʾwīl on the Basis of the Positions of the Salaf 204
3 The Salaf and the Authority of Their Linguistic Convention
(ʿurf ) 206
3.1 The Salaf’s Authority in Knowledge and the Understanding
of Revelation 208
4 Analysis of Terms to Detect and Correct for Semantic Shift 211
5 A Case Study: The Terms wāḥid, tawḥīd, and tarkīb 215

5 Ṣarīḥ al-Maʿqūl, or What Is Reason? 227

1 What Exists? Ibn Taymiyya’s Account of Reality 229
1.1 Self-Standing Entities (Aʿyān): The Realms of the Seen
and the Unseen 230
2 How Do We Know What Exists? The Primary Sources
of Knowledge 235
2.1 The First Source of Knowledge: Sensation (ḥiss) 236
2.2 The Second Source of Knowledge: Transmitted Reports
(khabar) 237
3 The Realm of the Mind: What Exists fī al-adhhān? 241
3.1 Universals 241
3.2 Essence and Existence, Essence and Attributes 248
4 The Structure of Reason 253
4.1 Self-Evident and A Priori Knowledge 255
4.2 Fiṭra: The Original Normative Disposition 260
4.3 Ḍarūra (Necessity) 264
4.4 Tawātur as the Final Epistemic Guarantor 267

6 Reason Reconstituted: The Divine Attributes and the Question

of Contradiction between Reason and Revelation 277
1 Rational Inference and the Question of Qiyās al-ghāʾib ʿalā
al-shāhid 277
2 Ibn Taymiyya’s Reforms Applied: The Question of the Divine
Attributes 285
3 Concluding Reflections 288

Appendix A: Summary Outline of the Darʾ taʿāruḍ 301

Appendix B: Detailed Outline of the Darʾ taʿāruḍ 307
Glossary of Arabic Terms 323
Glossary of Proper Names 347

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x contents

Bibliography 367
Index of Arabic Passages 398
Index of Ḥadīth 404
Index of People and Places 406
Index of Qurʾānic Verses 413
Index of Subjects 423

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Acknowledgements

No work of the nature of the current study can possibly be accomplished by any
person without substantial support, both academic and personal, from myriad
quarters. As this book began as a PhD dissertation, I begin by thanking my doc-
toral supervisor and mentor, Prof. Wael Hallaq, who for many years provided
me direction and guidance and who continues not only to inspire me but to
elicit from me the deepest admiration. I would also like to extend a special word
of gratitude to Prof. Robert Wisnovsky, who agreed to serve as a co-supervisor
during the last stages of my doctoral work and who provided me with direction
and advice on the development of the manuscript thereafter. I also record a
word of debt to the late Shahab Ahmed for his friendship and collegiality over
one and a half decades, for granting me generously of his time on numerous
occasions, and for allowing me to audit his course “The Life and Times of Ibn
Taymiyya” at Harvard University in fall 2005.
I would like to thank the anonymous reviewer commissioned by Brill for
his or her thorough assessment of the manuscript and detailed suggestions for
revision. I believe the final product has been substantially improved through
this feedback; any shortcomings remain, of course, entirely my responsibility.
I offer my thanks to Jon Hoover for his extensive comments and direction on
an earlier version of the manuscript, as well as for his prompt and helpful feed-
back on the glossary of terms. Special thanks likewise go to Daniel Haqiqatjou,
Ismail Lala, Elias Muhanna, and Samuel Ross for reading and commenting on
an earlier version of the full manuscript and to Celene Ibrahim, Aeyaz Kayani,
Suheil Laher, Joseph Lumbard, Aria Nakissa, and Aaron Spevack for their com-
ments and feedback on specific parts of the work. I thank Aaron Spevack also
for his detailed input on the glossary of terms. Kind thanks are due to Khaled
El-Rouayheb and Mohammed Rustom for their timely and helpful feedback on
the glossary of terms as well.
For their valuable research assistance, I offer my thanks to Alaa Murad for
her early help in tracking down sources and to Elias Abrar for his generous
and very prompt assistance in verifying and updating the references to chap-
ter 1. Special thanks are due to Nader Hirmas for tracking down and sorting
out numerous references in chapter 3 and to Mobeen Vaid for his extensive
research assistance at various stages of this project and particularly for his help
in verifying death dates and creating entries for the glossary of proper names.
I also express my gratitude to Suleyman Dost for his help in editing and final-
izing the glossary of proper names and to Nader Hirmas for scouting out and
suggesting the cover image and for his help in preparing the diagrams.

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xii acknowledgements

I would like to thank Marc Brettler and Jonathan Decter for the valuable fac-
ulty mentorship they have provided me, as well as Eugene Sheppard for his
support at critical moments in the later stages of this project. Special thanks are
likewise due to Sylvia Fried, who gave very generously of her time and advice
over the past year in helping me navigate the idiosyncratic world of academic
publishing. Kind thanks also go to Joanne Arnish and Jean Mannion in the Near
Eastern and Judaic Studies front office for making sure that things always run
so smoothly in the department and for their constant readiness to provide per-
sonal support and assistance whenever asked.
I offer my gratitude as well to Brandeis University for its research support
over many years and, particularly, for the generous support provided to fund
open access publishing of this work through a combination of grants from
the Tomberg Research Funds, the Dean’s Academic Support Fund, and the
Theodore and Jane Norman Fund for Faculty Research and Creative Projects.
I also thank the Near Eastern and Judaic Studies Department at Brandeis for
supporting the indexing of the book through two NEJS Graduate Student and
Faculty Research Grants.
I would like to thank Rebekah Zwanzig for copyediting the penultimate
version of the manuscript and for her help in verifying death dates, creat-
ing entries for the glossary of proper names, and putting together the tabu-
lar summary of Ibn Taymiyya’s bibliography. Outstanding thanks are due to
Valerie Joy Turner for her very thorough copyediting of the final version of the
manuscript, as well as for her great meticulousness and acumen in preparing
the indices.
I offer a particular note of thanks to Teddi Dols at Brill for her exceptional
professionalism, helpfulness, good cheer, and generous patience from the time
I submitted the manuscript for consideration until the time it was handed over
to production. I likewise thank Wilma de Weert for seeing the book through
the typesetting and publication phases so efficiently and for her indulgence of
the extensive fine-tuning I carried out on the manuscript while it was under her
stewardship. Publishing with Brill has been a wonderfully pleasant and reward-
ing experience, and much of the credit for that undoubtedly goes to Ms. Dols
and to Ms. de Weert. I likewise express my sincere gratitude to Ms. Dieuwertje
Kooij for her outstanding diligence in typesetting the manuscript and for her
kind indulgence in the face of the enormous number of changes I made to the
text after it had already been set in proofs.
I record a special word of debt and appreciation to Hisham Mahmoud, who
witnessed this project from its very inception, never stopped believing that I
would (eventually) get it done, and stood by me with much-needed gestures of
encouragement and support in some of my darkest hours.

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acknowledgements xiii

To my ever loving and unflinchingly supportive parents and to my wonderful

sisters, Magda and Nadia: you have never failed to be there for me in every con-
ceivable way. Your unshakeable belief in me, your constant encouragement and
advice, your many prayers, and the myriad practical ways in which you have all
so frequently stepped in to lighten the burden have been no less than critical to
the instantiation of this work—a work that, indeed, belongs every bit as much
to you as it does to me.
À mes beaux-parents, M. Ahmed Nadifi et feu l’ Honorable Zineb Talbi, et
à mon beau-frère Si Karim: Nuls mots ne suffiraient à traduire l’ immense
reconnaissance que je porte envers vous. Nulles paroles ne sauraient égaler
l’ éloquence de vos gestes héroïques témoignés à mon égard: vos innombrables
attentions, votre largesse sans bornes, la solidarité intégrale dont vous n’avez
jamais cessé de me faire preuve. Dieu seul saurait m’acquitter de tout ce dont
je vous suis redevable.
I reserve a very special word of thanks to the incomparable Maysam al
Faruqi, the most passionate and contagiously inspiring teacher I have ever
encountered. Studying with Prof. al Faruqi as an undergraduate at Georgetown
University years ago was the catalyst that propelled me onto the paths I cur-
rently tread. Her unexpected re-entry into my life at various critical junctures
over the past decade has been nothing short of a godsend. Even a perfunctory
account of the prodigious ways in which Prof. al Faruqi has gone far above any
reasonable call of duty would likely necessitate an entire chapter unto itself.
Suffice it therefore to say: no thanks will ever be enough.
It seems customary to reserve the final spot for those who have made the
greatest sacrifices and who thus merit the highest tribute and the profoundest
acknowledgement of all: my beloved wife, Nadia—whose limitless capacity to
nurture and encourage, whose unwavering constancy and faultless dedication,
and whose inexhaustible stores of tender cheer and unyielding forbearance
have never ceased to humble and to bewilder me—and those two glowing
apples of my eye, my dearest Adnane and Amina, the lights of my life, on
account of whom I may justly lay claim to the honorable epithet Dhū al-Nūrayn.
Words cannot thank you enough, my dears, for having had so often to compete
for the time and attention of your father with a relentlessly jealous computer
screen. Together you three are my answer to the Qurʾānic supplication “Our
Lord! Grant us spouses and offspring who will be the comfort of our eyes.”Bārak
Allāhu fīkum!

Wa-mā tawfīqī illā billāh

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List of Figures and Tables

Figures

1 The Taymiyyan pyramid 7

2 The Taymiyyan pyramid 143
3 Both rational and scriptural proofs admit of being conclusive or
inconclusive 157
4 Mainstream classification of proofs as scriptural (sharʿī) vs. rational
(ʿaqlī) 164
5 Ibn Taymiyya’s classification of proofs as scripturally validated (sharʿī) vs.
innovated (bidʿī) 165

Tables

1 Timeline of the development of the reason–revelation dichotomy in Islam

before Ibn Taymiyya 39
2 Overview of Ibn Taymiyya’s biography 86
3 Ibn Taymiyya’s account of the development of the conflict between reason and
revelation 116
4 Predominance (tarjīḥ) chart for scriptural and rational proofs on the basis of
conclusiveness and inconclusiveness 158

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Mise en Scène

It is the turn of the year 1300. The city of Damascus is filled with a heavy sense of
foreboding. Where once the vibrant lights of civilization shone forth to illumi-
nate the surrounding lands, a decidedly somber atmosphere now hung thickly
over the deserted marketplaces and alleyways. Most of the city’s inhabitants
had already fled in horror before the impending cataclysm. The governors and
intellectual elite had abandoned camp en masse as well, following their terri-
fied populace south into Palestine, then farther down into Egypt, whose perpet-
ually sunny skies had not yet been darkened by the chilly shadow cast by the
gathering menace to the north. The land of Syria was under existential threat.
Nowhere in the annals of the ancient metropolis had a more fateful day been
recorded; for, perched along the northeast border of the city, ready to swoop
down like a pack of vultures at the slightest nod from their redoubtable chief,
camped the fearsome hordes of the sons of Genghis Khan.
Some time later, in the dungeon of the citadel at Cairo, quite another bat-
tle was being waged. Having been sentenced to one and a half years in prison
for propagating allegedly anthropomorphic ideas regarding the nature of God,
an energetic, bold, and innately combative scholar and man of religion by the
name of Taqī al-Dīn Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) scarcely seemed fazed by the
fact that he was locked behind bars. As long as the prison wards continued to
supply him with reams of paper and an ever fresh supply of ink and pens, Ibn
Taymiyya could continue to fight a battle infinitely more consequential than
the struggle against the Mongols in Syria; for if Damascus, one of the first of
the illustrious external citadels of Islam, were to fall to hostile forces, then much
was lost indeed. But if the internal citadel of faith itself were overrun, then all
was lost, for the stakes here were nothing less than ultimate.
The lines had been drawn long before Ibn Taymiyya’s day. Nearly seven cen-
turies had passed since the Prophet of Islam had brought to a chaotic world
God’s final message to mankind—a revealed Book whose very words were
those of God Himself. The message, in its early days, had been clear and pris-
tine. God was al-Ḥaqq, the Ultimate Reality, or the Ultimately Real. He was also
al-Khāliq, the Creator of the heavens and earth and of everything they con-
tained. God had also created man and had placed him on the earth to worship
his Lord and to work good deeds for as long as he might tarry. Man, inexorably,
would one day taste of death, whereafter God would raise him up again, body
and soul, to judge him for the sincerity of his faith and the goodness of his
works. So was it revealed to them in the Book, and so did they believe in it—
with their hearts as well as with their minds.

© Carl Sharif El-Tobgui, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004412866_002

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2 mise en scène

Yet over the centuries, the clear and unencumbered plains of God’s Holy
Word had slowly but steadily been encroached upon from beyond the hori-
zon, and foreign troops had come to occupy many a Muslim thinker’s mind.
The mass translation of Greek and Hellenistic medical, scientific—but espe-
cially philosophical—texts into Arabic from the time of the Abbasid caliph
al-Maʾmūn in the early third/ninth century onward brought a host of new and
strange ideas and modes of thinking into the Muslim intellectual landscape.
The works on logic, metaphysics, and other disciplines by Aristotle and var-
ious Neoplatonic thinkers fascinated and enticed, yet also discomforted and
repelled; for here was a sophisticated, brilliantly exposited view of the world,
carefully elaborated over the course of centuries by some of the most brilliant
minds the world had ever known. Provocatively, it was a view of the world, a
vision of reality, that pretended to far-reaching coherence and comprehensive-
ness and that presented itself, quite compellingly, as based on, as growing out
of, as being derived from nothing less than reason itself.
And what cause was there for worry? For does not the Qurʾān itself, in
numerous passages, beseech its followers to reflect, to ponder, to exploit their
God-given intellects, to employ their minds that perchance they might better
fathom the purpose of their existence? “A-fa-lā yaʿqilūn” (Will they not then
understand?);1 “A-fa-lā yatadabbarūn” (Do they not consider [the Qurʾān] with
care?);2 “Laʿallahum yatafakkarūn” (Perchance they may reflect).3
Yet what to make of it were one to comply with God’s behest to use one’s
intellect only to discover, unsettlingly, that what reason has delivered is some-
how discordant with what God—Creator of all things, including man and his
intellect—has Himself declared in revelation? For the Greeks spoke of man as
well. They too spoke of the heavens and the earth, and of God. Reason, Aristo-
tle tells us, perceives that God is a perfect being. Now, all may agree that God is
perfect. But reason, Aristotle tells us further, judges that a perfect being must
be, among other things, perfectly simple, indivisible, non-composite. So, while
revelation may very well seem to predicate certain qualities or attributes of
God—such that He is living (ḥayy), self-subsisting (qayyūm), mighty ( jabbār),
lovingly kind (wadūd), omniscient (ʿalīm), all-seeing (baṣīr), and all-hearing
(samīʿ)—reason, for its part, avers that God cannot in reality possess any such
attributes, for then He would no longer be perfectly simple, as reason requires

1 Q. Yā Sīn 36:68. All translations in this work, whether from Arabic or from European lan-
guages, including translations of the Qurʾān and ḥadīth, are mine except where otherwise
indicated.
2 Q. al-Nisāʾ 4:82 and Muḥammad 47:24. (Trans. ʿAbdullāh Yūsuf ʿAlī, The Meaning of the Holy
Qurʾān. Hereafter Yusuf Ali.)
3 Q. al-Aʿrāf 7:176, al-Naḥl 16:44, and al-Ḥashr 59:21.

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mise en scène 3

Him to be, but composite; that is, He would be “composed” of His uniquely indi-
visible essence and His alleged attributes or qualities. Similarly, we are told, the
dictates of sound reason affirm that God cannot be held to have knowledge
of any particular, individual, instantiated thing in the world, as all such things
are impermanent, springing into existence one day only to succumb to their
demise the next. It follows by rational inference, therefore, that God cannot be
held to know any such ephemera, for to know them would imply a relational
change (and therefore an imperfection) in His knowledge. But, does not God
Himself say in revelation, “Wa-mā tasquṭu min waraqatin illā yaʿlamuhā” (And
not a leaf falls but that He knows it)?4 Indeed, He does. And so the lines are
drawn, and the battle is on.

4 Q. al-Anʿām 6:59.

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Introduction

The present work, a revised version of my PhD dissertation, is the first book-
length study of Ibn Taymiyya’s ten-volume magnum opus, Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql
wa-l-naql (Refutation of the contradiction of reason and revelation).1 This mas-
sive treatise, totaling over four thousand pages in the 1979 edition of Muḥam-
mad Rashād Sālim,2 represents the vigorous and sustained attempt of a major,
late medieval Muslim theologian-jurist to settle a central debate that had
raged among Muslim theologians and philosophers for more than six cen-
turies: namely, the debate over the nature, role, and limits of human reason
and its proper relationship to and interpretation of divine revelation. In the
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, Ibn Taymiyya—who was, “by almost universal consensus, one of
the most original and systematic thinkers in the history of Islam”3—attempts
to transcend the dichotomy of “reason vs. revelation” altogether by breaking
down and systematically reconstituting the very categories through which rea-
son was conceived and debated in medieval Islam.
In the current study, based on a close, line-by-line reading of the full ten
volumes of the Darʾ taʿāruḍ, I provide a detailed and systematic account of
the underlying, yet mostly implicit, philosophy and methodology on the basis
of which Ibn Taymiyya addresses the question of the compatibility of reason
and revelation. Discontent with previous attempts, Ibn Taymiyya not only cri-
tiques but also fundamentally reformulates the very epistemological, ontolog-
ical, and linguistic assumptions that formed the sieve through which ideas on
the relationship between reason and revelation had previously been filtered.
Though Ibn Taymiyya does not lay out an underlying philosophy in system-
atic terms, I seek to demonstrate that a careful reading of the Darʾ taʿāruḍ
reveals a broadly coherent system of thought that draws on diverse intellec-
tual resources. Ibn Taymiyya synthesized these resources and, combining them
with his own unique contributions, created an approach to the question of
reason and revelation that stands in marked contrast to previously articulated
approaches. Through this ambitious undertaking, Ibn Taymiyya develops views

1 Hereafter Darʾ taʿāruḍ or, more frequently, simply Darʾ.

2 Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad b. Taymiyya, Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wa-l-naql, aw Muwāfaqat ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl
li-ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl, ed. Muḥammad Rashād Sālim, 11 vols. (Riyadh: Dār al-Kunūz al-Adabiyya,
1399/1979). The text itself is ten volumes, running a total of 4,046 pages, with an eleventh
volume consisting of an index.
3 Rapoport and Ahmed, “Ibn Taymiyya and His Times,” 19.

© Carl Sharif El-Tobgui, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004412866_003

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introduction 5

and arguments that have implications for fields ranging from the interpretation
of scripture to ontology, epistemology, and the theory of language.
Earlier efforts to address the relationship between reason and revelation in
Islam, such as the attempts of the theologians al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) and al-
Rāzī (d. 606/1209) and those of the philosophers Ibn Sīnā (d. 428/1037) and Ibn
Rushd (d. 595/1198),4 are well known and have received due scholarly atten-
tion; the current work aims to establish Ibn Taymiyya’s contribution to the
debate as a third pivotal chapter in classical Muslim attempts to articulate a
response to the question of conflict between revelation and reason. Indeed,
if Ibn Sīnā and Ibn Rushd epitomize the Muslim philosophers’ (or falāsifa’s)
approach to the issue, with al-Ghazālī and al-Rāzī representing that of main-
stream Ashʿarī theology, then Ibn Taymiyya’s Darʾ taʿāruḍ must be seen as the
premier philosophical response to the question of reason and revelation from a
Ḥanbalī perspective—a response that is equal to the works of his predecessors
in terms of its comprehensiveness, cohesion, and sophistication. A study of this
nature is particularly needed since, despite important recent corrective schol-
arship, lingering stereotypes of Ibn Taymiyya as little more than a simplistic
and dogmatic literalist continue to result in an underappreciation of the true
extent and philosophical interest of his creative engagement with the Islamic
intellectual tradition as exemplified in a work like the Darʾ taʿāruḍ.
The present book is addressed to several distinct audiences. First among
these are students and scholars of, as well as those with a general interest in,
Islamic theology and philosophy, medieval Islamic thought, Ibn Taymiyya stud-
ies, or post-classical Islamic intellectual history. Second, this study is relevant to
those with an interest in Christian or Jewish rational theology of the High Mid-
dle Ages owing to the shared concerns taken up by medieval Muslim, Christian,
and Jewish theologians and philosophers in both the European West and the
Islamic East and in light of the common, Greek-inspired vocabulary and con-
ceptual backdrop in terms of which all three communities conceived of and
articulated theological and theo-philosophical issues. Finally, given that Ibn
Taymiyya’s Darʾ taʿāruḍ grapples with a philosophical and theological problem
of universal import that transcends both centuries and religious communities,
this book will be of interest to a broader, non-specialist Muslim readership,
as well as to lay readers outside the Islamic tradition who are interested in
questions concerning the relationship between reason and revelation more
generally.

4 Known in the medieval and modern West by the Latinized form “Averroes.”

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6 introduction

1 Contours of a Conflict

The debate over reason and revelation among classical Muslim scholars cen-
tered primarily on the question of when and under what circumstances it
was admissible to practice taʾwīl, or figurative interpretation, on the basis of
a rational objection to the plain sense of a Qurʾānic verse or passage. Of par-
ticular concern in this respect were those passages containing descriptions of
God, passages whose literal meaning seemed to entail tashbīh, an unaccept-
able assimilation of God to created beings. The Qurʾān affirms not merely that
God exists but that He exists as a particular entity with certain intrinsic and
irreducible qualities, or attributes. Some of these attributes that are (appar-
ently) affirmed in revelation were held by various groups—particularly the
philosophers, the Muʿtazila (sing. Muʿtazilī), and the later Ashʿarīs—to be ratio-
nally indefensible on the grounds that their straightforward affirmation would
amount to tashbīh. In such cases, a conflict was thought to ensue between
the clear dictates of reason and the equally clear statements of revelation,
which resulted in the unsettling notion that a fundamental contradiction exists
between reason and revelation, both of which have nevertheless been accepted
as yielding true knowledge about ourselves, the world, and God.
The question of how to deal with such rational objections to the plain sense
of revelation elicited various kinds of responses from philosophers and theolo-
gians, ultimately culminating in the “universal rule” (al-qānūn al-kullī), which
Ibn Taymiyya paraphrases on the first page of the Darʾ taʿāruḍ as it had come
to be formulated by the time of the famous Ashʿarī theologian Fakhr al-Dīn al-
Rāzī in the sixth/twelfth century. This rule, in brief, requires that in the event
of a conflict between reason and revelation, the dictates of reason be given pri-
ority and revelation be reinterpreted accordingly via taʾwīl. This prescription is
justified on the consideration that it is reason that grounds our assent to the
truth of revelation, such that any gainsaying of reason in the face of a revealed
text would undermine reason and revelation together.
Ibn Taymiyya makes the refutation of this universal rule his primary, explicit
goal in the Darʾ taʿāruḍ. In doing so, he endeavors to prove that pure reason
(ʿaql ṣarīḥ, or ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl) and a plain-sense reading of authentic revelation
(naql ṣaḥīḥ, or ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl) can never stand in bona fide contradiction.
Any perceived conflict between the two results from either a misinterpreta-
tion of the texts of revelation or, more pertinently for the current investiga-
tion, a misappropriation of reason. The more speculative (and hence dubious)
one’s rational premises and precommitments, the more extravagantly one must
reinterpret—or twist, as Ibn Taymiyya would see it—revelation to bring it into
line with the conclusions of such “reason.”

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introduction 7

We may illustrate this concept in the form of the following “Taymiyyan pyra-
mid”:

figure 1 The Taymiyyan pyramid

Truth, for Ibn Taymiyya, is that point of unicity, clarity, and certainty ( yaqīn) at
which the testimony of sound reason and that of authentic revelation, under-
stood correctly and without any attempt to interpret it away through alle-
gory or metaphor, fully coincide. At the opposite end of this point lies pure
sophistry (safsaṭa) in rational matters coupled with the unrestrained allego-
rization (“qarmaṭa”)5 of scripture. As individuals and groups move away from
the point of truth where reason and revelation are fully concordant, the wide-
reaching unity of their views on central points of both rational truth and reli-
gious doctrine gives way to ever increasing disagreement on even the most
basic issues—such that the philosophers, in Ibn Taymiyya’s words, “disagree
(massively) even in astronomy (ʿilm al-hayʾa),6 which is the most patent and
least controversial of their sciences.”7
In pursuit of his mission to resolve the conflict between reason and revela-
tion, Ibn Taymiyya elaborates around thirty-eight arguments (wujūh, sing. wajh;

5 Term derived from the Qarmatians (Ar. Qarāmiṭa), an Ismāʿīlī Shīʿī (pl. Shīʿa) group in the
third/ninth and fourth/tenth centuries known for adhering to a highly esoteric exegesis of
the Qurʾān that often seemed to involve a complete disregard for the outward sense of the
text. The Qarāmiṭa are perhaps most reputed for their infamous theft of the Black Stone and
desecration of the well of Zamzam (into which they threw Muslim corpses) during the hajj
season of 317/930. Esposito, ed., Oxford Dictionary of Islam, 253. For a more extensive treat-
ment, see Madelung, “Ḳarmaṭī,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. [hereafter EI2], 4:660–665.
6 Short for ʿilm hayʾat al-nujūm (lit. “knowledge of the state of the stars”).
7 Darʾ, 1:157, line 16 to 1:158, line 2. For passages where Ibn Taymiyya expresses the relationship
between revelation, reason, concordance, and contradiction as illustrated by the Taymiyyan
pyramid, see, e.g., Darʾ, 5:281, lines 11–12; 5:314, lines 13–15; 9:252, lines 12–14; 10:110, lines 6–9.

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8 introduction

lit. “aspects” or “viewpoints”) against the logical coherence of the theologians’

universal rule and the integrity, in purely theoretical terms, of the premises and
assumptions upon which it is based.8 In the remainder of the Darʾ, he takes up
what seem to be all the instances of alleged conflict between reason and rev-
elation raised by various philosophical and theological schools over the seven
centuries of the Islamic intellectual tradition that preceded him. It is here that
Ibn Taymiyya both develops and applies a characteristic Taymiyyan philoso-
phy and methodology through which he attempts to dissolve, once and for
all, the ongoing conflict between reason and revelation. After doing away with
the universal rule, Ibn Taymiyya elaborates an alternative theory of language
that reframes the traditional distinction between literal (ḥaqīqa) and figurative
(majāz) usage—upon which taʾwīl depends—in new ways meant to transcend
the apparent opposition between the two. Finally, he reformulates key aspects
of the philosophers’ and theologians’ ontological and epistemological assump-
tions that he holds responsible for producing the mere illusion of a conflict
between reason and a plain-sense reading of revelation where, in his view, none
truly exists.
Ultimately, Ibn Taymiyya seeks to resolve the conflict between reason and
revelation by demonstrating that the very notion of reason employed by the
philosophers and theologians is compromised, with the result that the argu-
ments based on such “reason” are incoherent and invalid. His mission is to
show that there is no valid rational argument that opposes or conflicts with
the straightforward affirmations of revelation concerning any of the particu-
lar attributes or actions affirmed therein of God, the temporal origination of
the universe, or any other topic. If Ibn Taymiyya, as he sees it, can do this con-
vincingly, then the famous “rational objection” evaporates. Purified of its cor-
rupted elements and specious presuppositions, the notion of reason can then
be returned to what Ibn Taymiyya holds to be the inborn, unadulterated state
of pure natural intelligence (ʿaql ṣarīḥ). The final segment of Ibn Taymiyya’s
reconstructive project in the Darʾ is to establish precisely what this inborn,
unadulterated state of pure natural intelligence is and the manner in which
it interacts with revelation.

8 The table of contents of the Darʾ taʿāruḍ lists forty-four arguments (wujūh) in total. However,
six of these “arguments” (nos. 17, 18, 19, 20, 43, and 44) consist of extended discussions of myr-
iad philosophical topics and do not address the universal rule specifically (though Arguments
17 and 18 do contain important general principles regarding the relationship between reason
and revelation). For this reason, I speak of Ibn Taymiyya’s “thirty-eight arguments” (and not
forty-four arguments) against the universal rule.

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introduction 9

2 Why the Darʾ taʿāruḍ?

Ibn Taymiyya’s Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wa-l-naql is of particular scholarly inter-

est on a number of levels. It is one of the central works—if not the central
work—of a prolific, late medieval figure who, while relatively obscure for nearly
half a millennium after his death,9 has nevertheless come to wield consider-
able authority for many in the modern Muslim world.10 Contemporary Muslim
appropriations of Ibn Taymiyya’s legacy, however, have often focused selec-
tively on his political opposition to the Mongols11 as justification for violent
opposition to modern Muslim regimes, or they fixate on certain of his discrete
creedal or juridical stances in a manner that is frequently devoid of historical
context or conceptual nuance. This has tended to obscure the more intellectual
side of Ibn Taymiyya’s output and, as a consequence, has led to an underappre-
ciation of the precise extent and nature of his thought. A careful and sustained
engagement with a work such as the Darʾ promises to go a long way in calibrat-
ing this imbalance.
On an intellectual level, the Darʾ taʿāruḍ is a highly compelling work on
account of the astonishing richness and variety of the doctrines and trends
with which its author deals. In an article that examines the overall contention
of the Darʾ and includes a translation and detailed analysis of Ibn Taymiyya’s
ninth argument,12 Yahya Michot marvels that “one can only be dumbfounded
by the breadth of Ibn Taymiyyah’s erudition,”13 remarking that the quantity
alone of his references in the Darʾ justifies our recognition of Ibn Taymiyya
as “the most important reader of the falāsifah after Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī in the
Sunnī world.”14 Commenting on the quality of Ibn Taymiyya’s treatment of the
works he analyzes, Michot further remarks that “his virtuosity is often matched
only by his relevance”15 and suggests that the “spiritual father of contem-

9 El-Rouayheb, “From Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī,” 269–270 and overall.

10 See Rapoport and Ahmed, “Ibn Taymiyya and His Times” for the remark that Ibn Taymiyya
is “one of the most cited medieval authors” (p. 15) and that “today, few figures from the
medieval Islamic period can claim such a hold on modern Islamic discourses” (p. 4).
11 On which, see Michot, Ibn Taymiyya: Mardin, translated as Muslims under Non-Muslim
Rule. Also on the selective misappropriation of Ibn Taymiyya for contemporary, violent
political ends, see Mona Hassan, “Modern Interpretations and Misinterpretations of a
Medieval Scholar.” On Ibn Taymiyya’s political thought more generally, see Anjum, Poli-
tics, Law, and Community.
12 Michot, “Vanités intellectuelles.”
13 “l’on ne peut que rester pantois devant l’ampleur de l’ érudition d’ Ibn Taymiyyah.” Ibid.,
599.
14 Ibid.
15 “sa virtuosité n’a souvent d’égale que sa pertinence.” Ibid.

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10 introduction

porary Islamism” should, perhaps, henceforth be included in the “prestigious

line of the commentators of [Aristotle].”16 Dimitri Gutas likewise notes Ibn
Taymiyya’s enormous erudition and trenchant critical capacity, referring to him
as “that highly percipient critic of intellectuals of all stripes.”17
Finally, the subject matter of the Darʾ taʿāruḍ—namely, the often volatile
relationship between human reason and divine revelation—lies deeply em-
bedded in the substructure of all the Islamic religious disciplines. From law
and legal theory to exegesis, theology, and beyond, the question concerning
the implications of divine revelation and the proper use of the human intel-
lect in approaching revelation is one that has surfaced over and over again,
sometimes in different guises, over the course of centuries. For this reason, the
central theme of the Darʾ is one that has implications, directly and indirectly,
for Islamic thought as a whole, both past and present.
Given the fecundity and promise of the Darʾ taʿāruḍ as a text, it is all the
more remarkable that four decades have passed since the first complete, ten-
volume edition of the work was made available, yet no comprehensive study
of it has been published to date by any scholar writing in a European lan-
guage.18 Several studies treat the Darʾ as a whole19 or examine discrete portions
of it in detail,20 while other works touch directly on questions of reason—and

16 Ibid., 599–600.
17 Gutas, “Heritage of Avicenna,” 85.
18 Nor, to my knowledge, has any scholar writing in Arabic addressed this text in full.
19 Such as, e.g., the introductory section of Michot, “Vanités intellectuelles” (pp. 597–603).
See also Heer, “Priority of Reason” and Abrahamov, “Ibn Taymiyya on the Agreement
of Reason with Tradition,” both of which provide a general overview of Ibn Taymiyya’s
arguments against the mutakallimūn. Ovamir Anjum synopsizes the Darʾ as a whole in Pol-
itics, Law, and Community, 196–215, while Tariq Jaffer offers an epitome of Ibn Taymiyya’s
response to al-Rāzī on the universal rule in Rāzī, 117–130. Two further investigations—
el Omari, “Ibn Taymiyya’s ‘Theology of the Sunna’” and Griffel, “Ibn Taymiyya and His
Ashʿarite Opponents”—examine Ibn Taymiyya’s opposition to Ashʿarī theology, particu-
larly its brand of taʾwīl, or figurative interpretation, as practiced most notably by figures
such as al-Ghazālī and al-Rāzī. See Vasalou, Theological Ethics, 229–241 for an examina-
tion of Ibn Taymiyya’s approach to reason and revelation (based mostly on the Darʾ) in
the context of his theory of ethics and Adem, “Intellectual Genealogy” (PhD dissertation,
University of Chicago, 2015) for an insightful account of Ibn Taymiyya’s intellectual pedi-
gree, including a substantial discussion of questions related to reason and revelation and
to scriptural hermeneutics that feature prominently in the Darʾ. Finally, Yasir Kazi [also:
Qadhi] examines a selection of Ibn Taymiyya’s arguments against the universal rule and
provides a detailed analysis of his notion of fiṭra in the Darʾ in “Reconciling Reason and
Revelation” (PhD dissertation, Yale University, 2013).
20 For example, the main body of Michot, “Vanités intellectuelles,” which translates and ana-
lyzes Argument 9 of Ibn Taymiyya’s thirty-eight arguments against the universal rule, and

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especially of logic and metaphysics—that are also germane to the Darʾ21 or elu-
cidate the broader framework necessary for us to locate and interpret the Darʾ
within Ibn Taymiyya’s larger theological project.22
Yet despite the activity we have witnessed in the field of Taymiyyan stud-
ies, particularly over the past decade, the work that may justifiably be consid-
ered our author’s magnum opus, the Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wa-l-naql, has yet to
receive the comprehensive attention it deserves. Several reasons may explain
this. Perhaps the most obvious is the sheer size of the work, coupled with
Ibn Taymiyya’s well-known penchant for digression, repetitiveness, discussions
embedded matryoshka-like within others, and a generally inconsistent struc-
ture and lack of linear progression.23 Though Ibn Taymiyya’s language itself
is seldom difficult or cryptic, the foregoing inconveniences of style can make
his works exasperating to read. When such features are multiplied tenfold in a
work of as many volumes, the task becomes all the more daunting.

Michot, “Mamlūk Theologian’s Commentary,” which translates and analyzes part of Argu-
ment 20. Also relevant is the introduction to Jean R. Michot, Ibn Taymiyya: Lettre à Abû
l-Fidâʾ. See, in a similar vein, Zouggar, “Interprétation autorisée et interprétation proscrite,”
which analyzes the introduction to the Darʾ as well as Argument 16, and Zouggar, “Aspects
de l’argumentation,” which analyzes arguments 1 through 5.
21 Most importantly Wael Hallaq’s magisterial Ibn Taymiyya against the Greek Logicians,
which consists of a heavily annotated translation of al-Suyūṭī’s abridgement (entitled
Jahd al-qarīḥa fī tajrīd al-Naṣīḥa) of Ibn Taymiyya’s Kitāb al-Radd ʿalā al-manṭiqiyyīn (alter-
natively known as Naṣīḥat ahl al-īmān fī al-radd ʿalā manṭiq al-Yūnān), preceded by an
extensive analytical introduction. Also important are sections of Hallaq, “Ibn Taymiyya
on the Existence of God” and two very substantial studies by Anke von Kügelgen, “Ibn
Taymīyas Kritik” and “Poison of Philosophy” (this latter contains a discussion of the Darʾ
specifically at pp. 265–267 and 276–284). See also Rayan, “Ibn Taymiyya’s Criticism of the
Syllogism” and Rayan, “Criticism of Ibn Taymiyyah on the Aristotelian Logical Proposi-
tion,” as well as M. Sait Özervarli’s analysis of Ibn Taymiyya’s “Qurʾānic rationalism” in his
“Qurʾānic Rational Theology.” Earlier studies in a similar vein include al-Nashshār, Manā-
hij al-baḥth; Haque, “Ibn Taymīyyah”; Qadir, “Early Islamic Critique”; Brunschvig, “Pour ou
contre la logique grecque”; and Madjid, “Ibn Taymiyya on Kalām and Falsafa” (PhD disser-
tation, University of Chicago, 1984), which examines the problem of reason and revelation
in Ibn Taymiyya’s thought more generally. Finally, for a detailed study of Ibn Taymiyya’s
approach to the divine attributes—a question central to the Darʾ taʿāruḍ—see Suleiman,
Ibn Taymiyya und die Attribute Gottes.
22 See Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy, particularly chap. 1. A summary of the main outlines
of Ibn Taymiyya’s theological vision and approach can also be found in Hoover, “Ḥanbalī
Theology,” 633–641.
23 Wael Hallaq observes that “Ibn Taymiyya’s digressive mode of discourse,” which “leaves
the modern reader with a sense of frustration,” entails that “the treatment of a particular
issue may often not be found in any one chapter, or even in any one work. The search bear-
ing on an issue takes one through the entire treatise, if not through several other tracts
and tomes. Some two dozen treatises of his must be consulted in order to establish, for
instance, his views on the problem of God’s existence.” Hallaq, Greek Logicians, li.

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A second reason for the relative neglect of the Darʾ taʿāruḍ may relate to Ibn
Taymiyya’s place in the sweep of Islamic history, coming as he does on the heels
of what has traditionally been regarded as the great classical period of Mus-
lim civilization (roughly the first five to six centuries of Islam),24 a period that
has so far attracted the bulk of Western scholarly interest in the pre-modern
Islamic world. Twenty years ago, Gutas described Arabic philosophy in the
sixth/twelfth and seventh/thirteenth centuries, for instance, as “almost wholly
unresearched,” then went on to suggest that this period “may yet one day be rec-
ognized as its golden age.”25 Fortunately, recent work—particularly by Khaled
El-Rouayheb,26 as well as Aaron Spevack,27 Asad Q. Ahmed,28 and others—
has begun to fill this gap. In the current study, I seek to contribute to the
growing field of post-classical Islamic scholarship—at the beginning of which
Ibn Taymiyya stands—by laying a new brick in the edifice of our still nascent
understanding of what is, in fact, turning out to be a rich and productive phase
of Islamic thought.
Yet a third reason the Darʾ taʿāruḍ remains relatively understudied may be
related to the persisting notions of Ibn Taymiyya’s identity as an intellectual
figure. Frequently dismissed as a dogmatic literalist with little in evidence of
genuine intellection, Ibn Taymiyya is often mentioned only briefly, if at all, in
books concerned with Islamic thought, philosophy, or sometimes even theol-
ogy.29 Majid Fakhry, in his 1970 A History of Islamic Philosophy (2nd ed., 1983),
classified Ibn Taymiyya, along with Ibn Ḥazm (d. 456/1064), as a “champion” of
“slavish traditionalism,”30 while Norman Calder, several decades later, opined
that “a rigid dogmatic agenda is the major intellectual gift to Islam of Ibn
Taymiyya.”31 By stark contrast, Shahab Ahmed spoke in 1998 of the “remark-
able synthetic originality of Ibn Taymiyya’s thought,”32 while Richard Martin

24 At least in the Arab-speaking lands, for the Persians, Turks, and Indians experienced their
most splendorous days subsequent to this period.
25 Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture.
26 See El-Rouayheb, “Sunni Muslim Scholars on the Status of Logic”; El-Rouayheb, “Open-
ing the Gate of Verification”; El-Rouayheb, Relational Syllogisms; and El-Rouayheb, Islamic
Intellectual History.
27 Spevack, Archetypal Sunnī Scholar.
28 See, e.g., A. Ahmed, “Post-Classical Philosophical Commentaries/Glosses” and Ahmed and
McGinnis, eds., “Rationalist Disciplines in Post-Classical (ca. 1200–1900CE) Islam,” Special
thematic issue, Oriens 42, nos. 3–4 (2014).
29 For a useful survey and discussion of the Western secondary literature on Ibn Taymiyya
and his legacy (up until the early 2000s), see Krawietz, “Ibn Taymiyya,” especially at p. 52 ff.
30 Fakhry, History, 315.
31 Calder, “Tafsīr from Ṭabarī to Ibn Kathīr,” 124–125.
32 S. Ahmed, “Ibn Taymiyyah and the Satanic Verses,” 122.

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introduction 13

and Mark Woodward, in a 1997 study on reason in the Muʿtazila, concluded

that “Ibn Taymiya was a more rational and independent-minded thinker than
many of his later interpreters seem to have appreciated.”33 Sait Özervarli speaks
of Ibn Taymiyya’s “intellectual flexibility,”34 while the prominent twentieth-
century Azharī scholar Muḥammad Abū Zahra (d. 1394/1974) similarly credits
Ibn Taymiyya with a “lack of rigidity” (ʿadam jumūd)35—accolades that con-
trast sharply with Georges Tamer’s recent, roundly negative assessment of the
philosophical interest of Ibn Taymiyya’s thought.36
Birgit Krawietz remarked in 2003 that Western scholarship on Ibn Taymiyya
has had a tendency to zero in on a narrow set of topics, often influenced by,
among other things, political anxieties over his purported inspiration of con-
temporary radical movements in the Muslim world. Additionally, she remarks,
“it seems that Western authors, by and large, still allow themselves to be led
strongly by the pre-existing image of Ibn Taymiyya as a notorious troublemaker
given [to him] by his opponents in debate.”37 The tide in Ibn Taymiyya studies
has certainly shifted in the nearly two decades since these words were written,
thanks to the numerous and variegated studies noted above. Today we have an
appreciably sharper understanding of Ibn Taymiyya’s thought than before, yet
his oeuvre is vast and there remains much work to be done. It is my hope that
the current volume will contribute meaningfully to this endeavor.

3 About This Work

3.1 Aims, Method, and Scope

The goal of the current work is to provide a detailed and systematic exposition
of the philosophy of Ibn Taymiyya as it emerges from the Darʾ taʿāruḍ. As we
shall discover in chapter 2, Ibn Taymiyya led a turbulent life, and this turbu-
lence is reflected in his writing. Not much given to systematic presentation, he
is seldom explicit about his overall strategy or its underlying logic. To use a lin-
guistic metaphor, Ibn Taymiyya simply speaks the language and leaves it to his

33 Martin and Woodward, Defenders of Reason in Islam, 126. Also cited by Krawietz (“Ibn
Taymiyya,” 54), who herself characterizes Ibn Taymiyya as “ein beträchtlich unabhängiger
Kopf” (a considerably independent thinker [lit. “head”]). Krawietz, 61.
34 Özervarli, “Qurʾānic Rational Theology,” 80.
35 Abū Zahra, Ibn Taymiyya, 218–219.
36 Tamer, “Curse of Philosophy,” 369–374.
37 “Es scheint, als ob sich die westlichen Autoren insgesamt immer noch stark von dem
von den Polemikgegnern Ibn Taymiyyas vorgegebenen Bild eines notorischen Störenfrieds
leiten lassen.” Krawietz, “Ibn Taymiyya,” 57.

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14 introduction

reader to identify and describe the grammar. In the current study, I have
attempted to produce a descriptive “grammar” of Ibn Taymiyya’s worldview as it
emerges in the Darʾ taʿāruḍ—a “codification,” in a sense, of the implicit syntax
responsible for the order and coherence of his thought. And, as we shall dis-
cover, his thought evidences both order and coherence in abundance, though
they do not always emerge clearly amidst the din of clashing swords or the
buoyant cadences of earnestly engaged polemic.
In mapping the contours of Ibn Taymiyya’s thought, I have divided the Darʾ,
for the purpose of analysis, into two main categories or types of text: (1) Ibn
Taymiyya’s thirty-eight discrete arguments against the universal rule of inter-
pretation and (2) everything else. The manner in which the text opens gives the
impression that the entirety of the Darʾ is to be dedicated to the elaboration
of these arguments. In reality, Ibn Taymiyya presents thirty-eight well circum-
scribed arguments—some quite lengthy—that together take up most of the
first and fifth volumes. These arguments are solely concerned with the valid-
ity of the universal rule and do not touch upon any substantive philosophical
or theological debates per se. I account for these thirty-eight arguments com-
prehensively in chapter 3, where I draw out the epistemological renovations
Ibn Taymiyya seeks to marshal against the universal rule. The remaining six
arguments address substantive philosophical and theological questions, usu-
ally at such length that they trail off into extended disquisitions on one topic
after another, eventually dissipating into the larger body of the text.38 It is these
substantive discussions—consisting mostly of lengthy citations from previous
thinkers and Ibn Taymiyya’s responses to them—that, in fact, occupy the vast
majority of the Darʾ, and it is these discussions that form the surface from
which we delve into the deeper structure of Ibn Taymiyya’s methodology and
thought (which we examine primarily in chapters 4 and 5).
To borrow from the language of the Islamic rational sciences, my goal has
been to produce an exposition of the Darʾ taʿāruḍ that is “jāmiʿ-māniʿ,” that
is, inclusive of the whole of the Darʾ and exclusive of anything extraneous to
it. By “inclusive of the whole of the Darʾ,” I clearly do not mean that I have
sought to capture and represent each and every argument or discussion in it.

38 Argument 19, for instance, begins on p. 320 of volume 1 and does not address the universal
rule at all. Rather, it takes up the argument for the existence of God based on the temporal
origination of movements and accidents, a discussion that then meanders from one topic
to another over the course of the next three volumes of the text. It is not until one comes to
the first page of volume 5 that one finally reads “al-Wajh al-ʿIshrūn” (Argument Twenty),
which is itself an extended, substantive back and forth that spans two hundred pages, or
half the volume.

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introduction 15

Such an investigation would hardly be feasible nor, indeed, desirable. Rather,

I have attempted to identify and extract, in as comprehensive a manner as
possible, all the higher-order principles, presuppositions, and implicit assump-
tions that undergird and motivate Ibn Taymiyya’s argumentation in the Darʾ—
those elements that I collectively refer to as the underlying “philosophy of
Ibn Taymiyya.” These principles are often not stated explicitly but, rather, are
embedded within discrete arguments. Therefore, it has been necessary to go
beyond the specifics of the individual arguments in order to extract, and to
abstract, the universal principles at play. Presenting Ibn Taymiyya’s philosophy
in the Darʾ has thus necessitated a substantially different approach than would
be required for expositing in English a text whose principles have already been
distilled by the author and presented systematically to the original reader. By
saying that the distillation I attempt here is comprehensive (or “jāmiʿ ”), I mean
that it is based on a close reading of the entire text of the Darʾ, not merely
selected portions. The elements of Ibn Taymiyya’s worldview that I exposit
in this study have emerged organically, over the course of literally thousands
of pages of argumentation and discussion, as the dominant leitmotifs of the
work. In most cases, I have cited several—and, where possible, all—instances
throughout the Darʾ where a given concept is discussed or point substantiated.
By saying that the current study is “māniʿ,” or exclusive of anything extrane-
ous to the Darʾ, I mean that I have not cross-referenced discussions in the Darʾ
taʿāruḍ with similar discussions found elsewhere in Ibn Taymiyya’s writings,
though I have endeavored to read and interpret the Darʾ in light of the rich sec-
ondary literature on Ibn Taymiyya mentioned above. Given the length of the
Darʾ itself, the vastness of Ibn Taymiyya’s larger oeuvre, and his well-known
habit of addressing the same issue in many different places, a systematic cross-
referencing of the primary sources would have hardly been feasible. For this
reason, the current study should be seen primarily as an exposition and analysis
of the Darʾ taʿāruḍ as a discrete work, not as a study of everything Ibn Taymiyya
has written on the topic of reason and revelation. The Darʾ taʿāruḍ is a lengthy,
cumbersome, and intellectually demanding text, one that I have worked to
domesticate, to decipher, and to lay open for the reader such that its pith and
purpose may be readily grasped. In any case, it is the Darʾ taʿāruḍ that, by virtue
of its title and opening salvo, appears to be the work Ibn Taymiyya himself
meant to be taken as his definitive statement on the relationship between rea-
son and revelation. Happily, the picture that emerges from our present study of
the Darʾ harmonizes closely with the image currently crystallizing on the basis
of other studies dedicated to Ibn Taymiyya’s thought. This is yet another indi-
cation of the consistency and coherence of that thought, notwithstanding its
sometimes erratic presentation.

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16 introduction

3.2 Structure and Major Themes

This book is divided into two main parts, each consisting of three chapters.
Part 1, “Reason vs. Revelation?,” provides the historical and biographical back-
ground necessary to situate Ibn Taymiyya and the project to which he dedicates
the Darʾ taʿāruḍ, then examines his contestation of the very dichotomy of rea-
son versus revelation that he inherited.
Chapter 1 provides a broad overview of the historical development of the
issue of reason and revelation in Islamic thought in the fields of theology, phi-
losophy, and law from the first Islamic century to the time of Ibn Taymiyya
in the seventh/thirteenth and eighth/fourteenth centuries. As a later, post-
classical figure, Ibn Taymiyya makes numerous references and allusions to ear-
lier Muslim thinkers, controversies, and schools of thought; we cannot under-
stand his contributions to this vital debate, much less appreciate them, without
sufficient knowledge of what came before him. Though chapter 1 is necessarily
broad in scope, the discussion of each figure or school nevertheless focuses on
those elements that touch directly upon our main topic—the question of rea-
son and revelation—or that anticipate a distinct line of argumentation in the
Darʾ that is taken up in later chapters. The background provided in chapter 1 is
particularly relevant for non-specialists, as it allows them to familiarize them-
selves with the most relevant antecedent discussions on reason and revelation
in Islam before embarking on their exploration of the Darʾ taʿāruḍ proper.
In chapter 2, sections 1–4 provide a survey of the life and times of Ibn
Taymiyya, followed by an intellectual profile that situates him both ideologi-
cally and methodologically within the wider intellectual and religious context
of late medieval Islam. Section 5 reconstructs Ibn Taymiyya’s reception and
interpretation of his own intellectual heritage by examining numerous remarks
scattered throughout the Darʾ. It then presents his view of the nature and his-
torical development of the conflict between reason and revelation in the cen-
turies that preceded him. Understanding exactly how Ibn Taymiyya viewed and
interpreted the issue is critical for comprehending not only his motivations but
also, more importantly, the methodology and overall strategy he deploys in the
Darʾ in his attempt to resolve the dilemma once and for all. Finally, section
6 considers how Ibn Taymiyya represents several earlier high-profile attempts
to resolve the conflict between reason and revelation—those of Ibn Sīnā, al-
Ghazālī, and Ibn Rushd—and how he situates his own project in the Darʾ vis-
à-vis those of his three eminent predecessors. Thus, while the first four sections
of chapter 2 complete the background provided in chapter 1, sections 5 and 6
mark the beginning of our full-fledged engagement with the Darʾ taʿāruḍ itself.
Chapter 3 consists of an exhaustive analysis of Ibn Taymiyya’s thirty-eight
arguments against the philosophers’ and theologians’ universal rule. Through

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introduction 17

these arguments, he attacks not only the rule’s logical coherence but also the
main epistemic categories and assumptions upon which it is based. While Ibn
Taymiyya himself presents these arguments in a disjointed and seemingly ran-
dom fashion, I demonstrate in chapter 3 that by breaking down, regrouping,
and reconstructing them, we can discern a coherent attempt on Ibn Taymiyya’s
part to reconfigure the very terms of the debate in several important ways.
First, he redefines the opposition at stake not as one of reason versus rev-
elation but as a purely epistemological question of certainty ( yaqīn) versus
probability (ẓann), with reason and revelation each serving as potential sources
of both kinds of knowledge. He then builds on this to replace the dichotomy
“sharʿī–ʿaqlī,” in the sense of “scriptural versus rational,” with the dichotomy
“sharʿī–bidʿī,” in the sense of “scripturally validated versus innovated,” arguing
that revelation itself both commends and exemplifies the valid use of rea-
son and rational argumentation. With this altered dichotomy, Ibn Taymiyya
attempts to undermine the inherited categorical differentiation between rea-
son and revelation in favor of a new paradigm in which it is the epistemic
quality of a piece of knowledge alone that counts rather than its provenance in
either reason or revelation. In this manner, he subsumes reason itself into the
larger category of “sharʿī,” or scripturally validated, sources of knowledge.
In part 2, “Ibn Taymiyya’s Reform of Language, Ontology, and Epistemol-
ogy,” chapters 4 and 5 explore the main elements of Ibn Taymiyya’s underlying
philosophy as gleaned from the Darʾ al-taʿāruḍ. In these chapters, I provide
a systematic account of the positive, reconstructive project that I argue Ibn
Taymiyya is carrying out in the Darʾ, a project in which he articulates an alterna-
tive theory of language as well as a reconstructed notion of reason in his bid to
address the problem of the conflict between reason and revelation. In chapters
4 and 5, I present a formal, theoretical summary of all the major elements of Ibn
Taymiyya’s philosophy—his linguistic and hermeneutical principles, his ontol-
ogy, and his epistemology—that are indispensable for understanding how his
critique of reason and its alleged conflict with revelation is meant to work. In
chapter 6, I then illustrate how Ibn Taymiyya applies the principles and meth-
ods of his philosophy to one of the most central substantive issues of concern to
him (and to the Islamic theological tradition as a whole), namely, the question
of the divine attributes, anthropomorphism, and the boundaries of figurative
interpretation (taʾwīl).
Chapter 4 explores how Ibn Taymiyya seeks to reformulate the theory of
language by which revelation is understood. We first examine exactly what
authentic revelation (naql ṣaḥīḥ) consists of for Ibn Taymiyya and the
hermeneutical principles according to which it ought to be interpreted. Ibn
Taymiyya proposes a textually self-sufficient hermeneutic, predicated on the

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18 introduction

Qurʾān’s own repeated characterization of itself as “clear” and “manifest”

(mubīn), against what he deems to be the overly liberal use of taʾwīl based
on the (in his view irremediably speculative) interpretations of his opponents
among the rationalist theologians. We next explore Ibn Taymiyya’s larger phi-
losophy of language—resting on the twin pillars of context (siyāq, qarāʾin)
and linguistic convention (ʿurf )—on the basis of which he attempts to dis-
card the traditional distinction between literal (ḥaqīqa) and figurative (majāz)
usage while yet avoiding the simplistic literalism of which his critics have often
accused him. Chapter 4 also examines Ibn Taymiyya’s account of semantic
shifts that took place in certain termini technici prior to his day. These shifts
in the meaning of key technical terms, he argues, resulted in interpretive dis-
tortions that saw later meanings unwittingly projected anachronistically onto
earlier texts. The chapter closes with an illustration of Ibn Taymiyya’s discus-
sion of this phenomenon via an extended case study of the terms wāḥid (one),
tawḥīd (oneness of God), and tarkīb (composition).
Chapter 5 examines Ibn Taymiyya’s critique of what the philosophers and
later theologians construe as reason, then explores his elaboration of what
he deems to be authentic sound reason (ʿaql ṣarīḥ). Ibn Taymiyya’s critique
targets both the ontology and the epistemology of the philosophers by chal-
lenging what he sees as their chronic confusion between the realm of exter-
nally existent entities (mā fī al-aʿyān) and the realm of that which exists only
in the mind (mā fī al-adhhān). While all knowledge of external reality must
ultimately have its basis either in immediate sensation (ḥiss) or in reliable
transmitted reports (khabar), Ibn Taymiyya nevertheless assigns theoretical
reason several important functions, namely, (1) to abstract similarities shared
by existent particulars into universal concepts (kulliyyāt), (2) to issue judge-
ments in the form of predicative statements relative to existing particulars,
and (3) to draw inferences of various kinds on the basis of the innate ( fiṭrī)
and necessary (ḍarūrī) knowledge of fundamental axioms embedded in reason
and known, therefore, in an a priori (awwalī) or self-evident (badīhī) man-
ner. Ibn Taymiyya’s reformed epistemology—based on experience, reason, and
transmitted reports—is undergirded by an expanded notion of the moral-cum-
cognitive faculty of the fiṭra, or “original normative disposition.” Ultimately,
this epistemology is guaranteed by a universalized notion of tawātur (recur-
rent mass transmission), a concept that Ibn Taymiyya borrows from the Muslim
textual and legal traditions and applies expansively as the final guarantor of all
human cognition.
Chapter 6 brings together the sundry elements of Ibn Taymiyya’s attempt-
ed hermeneutic, ontological, and epistemological renovations and demon-
strates how he rallies them to resolve, once and for all, the contradiction

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introduction 19

between reason and revelation in medieval Islam, particularly with regard to

the question of the divine attributes. Since God, in Islamic ontology, exists in
the unseen realm (ghayb), Ibn Taymiyya takes up the centuries-old theological
debate over the legitimacy of drawing an analogy (qiyās) between the empiri-
cal (or “seen”) and the metaphysical (or “unseen”) realms of existence. While he
argues that such an inference is not valid for establishing the factual existence
(thubūt) or the specific ontological reality (ḥaqīqa) of would-be entities in the
unseen realm, he insists that it is not merely legitimate but, indeed, mandatory
for us to draw such an analogy on the level of universal meanings (maʿānī) and
notions (also maʿānī) abstracted from our everyday empirical experience. It is
only by drawing this latter sort of analogy that we can, in fact, understand some-
thing meaningful about entities existing in the unseen realm that are denoted
by names (asmāʾ) that they share with the familiar entities of our contingent
empirical experience.
As I demonstrate in chapter 6, Ibn Taymiyya seeks to preserve God’s com-
prehensibility (and hence His conceivability and, in a sense, knowability to us)
by virtue of the names and descriptions that are applied both to Him and to
created entities without, however, God resembling His creation in any ontolog-
ically relevant way—the only way that, for Ibn Taymiyya, would entail the kind
of theologically objectionable tashbīh, or “assimilationism,” that the philosoph-
ical and theological recourse to taʾwīl was originally meant to remediate. In this
manner, the disparate elements of Ibn Taymiyya’s theory of language, his ontol-
ogy, and his epistemology eventually converge in a synthesis that is meant to
accommodate a robust and rationally defensible affirmationism vis-à-vis the
divine attributes while yet avoiding the tashbīh that the Islamic philosophi-
cal and later theological traditions so often presumed such affirmationism to
entail.

…
Concerning the larger implications of the Darʾ taʿāruḍ, perhaps the most com-
pelling part of Ibn Taymiyya’s project goes beyond the man himself to the
problematic with which he wrestled. In a sense, the whole question of the
tension between revelation and reason, which Ibn Taymiyya internalized so
poignantly, can in many ways be considered a key problem of Islamic moder-
nity. Though the specific issues have changed—few today, for example, from
the most textually-based conservative to the most liberal-minded reformer,
are much concerned by the question of the divine attributes—the underlying
problematic remains, in significant ways, very much the same. Whether it is the
issue not precisely of reason and revelation but, say, of science and revelation
or, for instance, the tension between sacralized and secularized visions of law

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20 introduction

and government, which has been a particularly troubling issue for Muslims in
the modern period, the root of all these issues can be traced to the deeper-
lying tensions with which Ibn Taymiyya grappled when confronting the del-
icate question of the relationship between reason and revelation in his own
day.
And, in an almost uncanny way, the crisis that many Muslims have faced
since the nineteenth century, both in and with modernity, is strikingly similar
to the intellectual crisis (and later also the political crisis) of early and medieval
Islam, crises that had come to a head at the time of Ibn Taymiyya and that swept
him up, heart and soul, into the great existential drama that played out seven
centuries ago. The challenge this time around has come from strikingly similar
quarters: then from Greece in the form of an intellectual challenge, today from
a modern civilization also descended, intellectually, from Greece. And while
in Ibn Taymiyya’s day the intellectual and the political challengers were dif-
ferentiated, the modern period has witnessed something like the intellectual
power of Greece and the military might of the Mongols combined—Aristotle
and Genghis Khan, if we may, wrapped into one. Now as then, the question
remains: How might the tension once more be resolved between the relentless
vicissitudes of the times and a Book whose adherents believe was sent down
by an eternal God into our world of time and space on the tongue of a prophet
some fourteen hundred years ago?
But before we join Ibn Taymiyya on his quest to resolve the discord between
reason and revelation, we must first understand the context and the overall
intellectual situation that presented itself to him with such existential urgency
so many centuries ago.

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 part 1
Reason vs. Revelation?

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 chapter 1

Reason and Revelation in Islam before

Ibn Taymiyya

Ibn Taymiyya’s massive effort to refute the universal rule and his exhaustive
deconstruction and reconstruction of reason in his colossal work, Darʾ taʿāruḍ
al-ʿaql wa-l-naql, were not just a spur-of-the-moment intellectual exercise.
Rather, his efforts were occasioned by centuries of intense theological and
intellectual debate that involved scholars of law, theology, and philosophy, as
well as Sufis, and expressed a fundamental clash between distinct epistemo-
logical approaches. This debate did not simply result from the absorption of
Greek philosophy into Muslim thought, as has often been assumed, but man-
ifested itself in nascent form from the earliest days of the Islamic community.
The following sections provide an overview of the multi-layered development
and interaction between reason and revelation in the Qurʾān and the major
Islamic disciplines—with a particular emphasis on theology—up to the time
of Ibn Taymiyya in the seventh/thirteenth and eighth/fourteenth centuries.

1 Reason and Revelation, Reason in Revelation

The Qurʾān is a book intensely concerned with knowledge.1 In addition to mak-

ing various declarative and imperative statements, it repeatedly invites those
it addresses to reflect—especially to reflect upon the created order, including
man, as a sign of God. In addition, it makes abundant use of arguments to per-
suade its audience of the truth of its teachings, thus inviting believers, from the
very inception of revelation, to an integrated paradigm of reason and revela-
tion. The Qurʾān, moreover, does not present itself as the least bit self-conscious
or defensive in the face of a questioning human reason; indeed, it boldly chal-
lenges its readers to find within it any fundamental contradiction2 and to
inspect the created order with careful scrutiny for any gaps or incongruences.3

1 The word ʿilm (knowledge) and other verbal and nominal derivatives of the root ʿ-l-m (to
know) appear in the Qurʾān in a staggering 811 verses, or roughly thirteen percent of all verses
of the Qurʾān.
2 “Do they not consider the Qurʾān (with care)? Had it been from other than God, they would
surely have found therein much discrepancy.” (Q. al-Nisāʾ 4:82); trans. Yusuf Ali.
3 “(3) ... No want of proportion will you see in the creation of the Most Merciful. So turn your

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24 chapter 1

The Qurʾān identifies the locus of rational reflection variously as the “ʿaql,”
“qalb,” “lubb,” and “fuʾād,” among other, related terms.4 It also makes frequent
use of terms connoting mental cognition and reflection, describes itself as
bringing knowledge to a humanity that has “been given of knowledge but lit-
tle,”5 draws stark distinctions between “those who know and those who know
not,”6 repeatedly exhorts mankind to ponder and to reflect,7 and, significantly,
insists that belief in God and the acceptance of the truth of revelation arise
as the natural result of a healthy, properly functioning intellect. It is a remark-
able fact that nowhere in the Qurʾān is knowledge (ʿilm) contrasted with faith
(īmān), as is typical in modern parlance, but only with lack of knowledge,
or ignorance ( jahl, jahāla).8 Knowledge and faith, rather, are presented as
being fully concomitant and mutually entailing. The distinctly Enlightenment
notion that one has “faith” in something of which one does not have, and in
principle cannot have, bona fide knowledge, or the related notion that know-
ing something precludes having “faith” in it, is entirely alien to the Qurʾānic
worldview and epistemology.9 At the same time, the Qurʾān squarely admits
that human reason, being a faculty of a limited and finite being, is of neces-
sity not boundless—for “of knowledge you have been given but little,”10 and

sight again: do you see any flaw? (4) Then turn your sight twice more; (your) sight will
come back to you feeble and weary.” (Q. al-Mulk 67:3–4).
4 For a discussion, with Qurʾānic references, of various terms used in the Qurʾān to signify
reason, reflection, and related meanings—particularly the words yaʿqilūn/taʿqilūn, ulū
al-albāb, yatafakkarūn, yubṣirūn, yafqahūn, ulū al-abṣār, and yaʿlamūn—see al-Kattānī,
Jadal, 1:281–285. See also Kalin, Reason and Rationality in the Qurʾan.
5 See, for example, Q. al-Isrāʾ 17:85.
6 As in the verse “Say, ‘Are those who know equal to those who know not?’ ” (Q. al-Zumar
39:9).
7 For example, “Thus do We explain the signs in detail for a people who reflect ( yata-
fakkarūn)” (Q. Yūnus 10:24) and similar at Q. al-Raʿd 13:3; al-Naḥl 16:11, 16:69; al-Rūm
30:21; al-Zumar 39:42; and al-Jāthiya 45:13. Also, “perchance they may reflect” (laʿallahum
yatafakkarūn) at Q. al-Aʿrāf 7:176 and similar at Q. al-Naḥl 16:44 and al-Ḥashr 59:21.
8 See, e.g., Q. al-Baqara 2:30, 2:216, 2:232; Āl ʿImrān 3:66; al-Naḥl 16:74, 16:78; and al-Nūr 24:19
for lack of knowledge (especially in comparison to God’s omniscience) and, e.g., Q. al-
Nisāʾ 4:17; al-Māʾida 5:50; Hūd 11:29; al-Furqān 25:63; al-Naml 27:55; al-Zumar 39:64; and
al-Ḥujurāt 49:6 for references to ignorance.
9 Josef van Ess has observed that “Christianity speaks of ‘mysteries’ of faith; Islam has noth-
ing like that. For Saint Paul, reason belongs to the realm of the ‘flesh’; for Muslims, reason,
ʿaql, has always been the chief faculty granted human beings by God.” Van Ess, Flowering,
153–154. Similarly, Eric Ormsby begins a chapter on Arabic philosophy with the statement,
“Reason is central to Islam,” then goes on to elaborate that “an intense preoccupation with
reason is one of the most enduring and characteristic aspects of Islam and of Islamic cul-
ture.” Ormsby, “Arabic Philosophy,” 125.
10 “wa-mā ūtītum min al-ʿilmi illā qalīlan” (Q. al-Isrāʾ 17:85).

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reason and revelation in islam before ibn taymiyya 25

indeed, more soberingly, “God knows and you know not.”11 The Qurʾānic reve-
lation, therefore, actively directs human beings to think and to reflect with their
minds, the full and earnest use of which will inexorably bring them not only to
God and the truth of religion but also, simultaneously, to the understanding
that ultimately God alone is absolute and that all else, including man and his
formidable powers of intellect, is relative and limited.
Complementing its insistence on the centrality of knowledge and its per-
sistent encouragement to reflect, the Qurʾān also describes itself variously as
an “evincive proof” (burhān),12 a “criterion of judgement” ( furqān),13 an “eluci-
dation” (bayān),14 a “clarification of all things” (tibyānan li-kulli shayʾ),15 and as
“consummate wisdom” (ḥikma bāligha).16 Indeed, it frequently challenges its
readers with a variety of arguments, inferences that are to be drawn, step by
step, by the person who reflects with consideration.17 The notable fact that the
Qurʾān grounds its teachings not only in raw assertion but also through argu-
mentation and persuasion is often overlooked. Yet this fact is of key importance
because it establishes, or at least opens the door to, a complementary and har-
monious paradigm of the relationship between reason and revelation in and
through the text of revelation itself.18

11 Q. al-Baqara 2:216. Also Q. al-Baqara 2:232, Āl ʿImrān 3:66, al-Naḥl 16:74, and al-Nūr 24:19.
12 Q. al-Nisāʾ 4:174.
13 Q. al-Baqara 2:185. See also Q. Āl ʿImrān 3:4 and al-Furqān 25:1.
14 Q. Āl ʿImrān 3:138.
15 Q. al-Naḥl 16:89.
16 Q. al-Qamar 54:5.
17 See Blankinship, “Early Creed,” 34, where the author remarks that the Qurʾān “develops its
own themes argumentatively, sometimes at considerable length, to explain its teachings,
and to rebut the established anti-monotheistic arguments of its initial target audience.”
Rosalind Ward Gwynne has dedicated an entire monograph, based on al-Ghazālī’s treatise
al-Qisṭās al-mustaqīm, to identifying and categorizing all instances of rational argumen-
tation used in the Qurʾān. She remarks in the introduction to this study that “I believe that
the reader will be surprised at how thick with argument the Qurʾān actually is.” Gwynne,
Logic, Rhetoric, and Legal Reasoning, xiii. See also van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft, 1:48,
where he likewise makes note of the Qurʾān’s frequent use of dialectical argumentation as
it engages with the Prophet’s opponents directly in an argumentative and reasoned man-
ner.
18 The view that the Qurʾān makes abundant use of various kinds of argumentation is echoed
by the famous ninth-/fifteenth-century polymath Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505) in
his al-Itqān fī ʿulūm al-Qurʾān, where he states: “Scholars have held that the Qurʾān con-
tains all kinds of [rational] proofs (barāhīn, adilla) and that there exists no [type of]
indication (dalāla), disjunction (taqsīm), or admonition (taḥdhīr) built upon the gen-
eral categories of knowledge afforded by reason and revelation (tubnā min kulliyyāt al-
maʿlūmāt al-ʿaqliyya wa-l-samʿiyya) that the Book of God has failed to mention, except that
it has mentioned them according to the customary [speech] habits of the Arabs and not

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Further evidence of the argumentative nature of the initial revelatory mo-

ment can be found in classical sources of ḥadīth19 and sīra.20 These sources
record echoes of discussions during the lifetime of the Prophet, discussions
that can comfortably be termed proto-theological by virtue of their subject
matter rather than because of any conscious effort to engage in the deliberate,
methodical speculation implied in the common use of the term “theological.”
The Prophet was naturally questioned by his Companions on numerous occa-
sions regarding matters of the hereafter, God, angels, and a host of other topics
directly connected to the creedal content of the new faith. Some ḥadīth reports
portray the Prophet as instructing his followers—in a manner similar to that
of the Qurʾān—by inviting them to reflect and to draw certain conclusions on
their own.21 Other narrations show the Prophet warning his community against
the inherent futility of pursuing certain lines of rational inquiry that are nec-
essarily without issue, such as the ḥadīth that states: “Satan shall come to you
and say, ‘Who created this?’ and ‘Who created that?’ until he says, ‘Who created
your Lord?’ So if anyone of you should reach this point, let him seek refuge in
God and desist”22—as if to alert his Companions that the argument of an infi-
nite causal regress cannot, with proper rational justification, be extended to

in accordance with the detailed [discursive] methods of the theologians.” See al-Suyūṭī,
Itqān, 4:60. Earlier protagonists in the debate on reason and revelation in Islam also based
their claims for the legitimacy of certain forms of ratiocination on particular verses of
the Qurʾān. Al-Ghazālī, for example, believed he had located the five classical figures of
the Aristotelian syllogism in the Qurʾān in implicit form, while Ibn Rushd identified the
three levels of argumentation as defined by Aristotle, namely, rhetorical, dialectical, and
demonstrative. On al-Ghazālī, see Chelhot, “«al-Qisṭās al-Mustaqīm»,” esp. 6–8 and Mar-
mura, “Ghazali’s Attitude to the Secular Sciences and Logic,” esp. 102–103. On Ibn Rushd,
see Hourani, Averroes on the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy, esp. 32–37.
19 For a précis on the Western scholarly debate concerning the authenticity of ḥadīth mate-
rial, see Harald Motzki’s introduction in Motzki, ed., Hadith: Origins and Developments and
Brown, Hadith, 226–276, both of whom discuss the recent scholarship that casts doubt on
the radical skepticism of earlier generations of Islamicists (such as, most famously, Ignaz
Goldziher and Joseph Schacht). Furthermore, the types of questions raised in the ḥadīth
cited here are not so formally developed or theoretical as to appear anachronistic for this
early period. In fact, it would be extraordinary if the Companions had never asked the
Prophet any questions related to theological issues.
20 See van Ess, Flowering, 45ff. for a discussion of the sīra literature as containing formal
argumentation.
21 See al-Kattānī’s discussion of the use of rational methods of inference by the Prophet and
his Companions. Al-Kattānī, Jadal, 1:614–627, 642–643.
22 See, e.g., al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, 807; Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 69–70. An alternative version of the ḥadīth
says, “… let him say, ‘I have believed in God and His messengers’” (Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 69), and
a third version contains the wording “People will continue to pose questions until they
ask, ‘Who created God?’” (Muslim, 69).

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God, the Necessarily and Beginninglessly Existent. Finally, a few ḥadīth reports
depict the Companions as occasionally becoming embroiled in controversy
over theological topics. In one instance, a group of them were arguing over the
divine decree (qadar), whereupon the Prophet, overhearing their altercation,
became vexed and obliged them to remain silent concerning such matters that
are “but known unto God.”23 The main theme of these instances appears to
be that the use of reason is reliable and legitimate in some domains, that it is
invalid if based on false or absurd premises, and, finally, that certain matters
lie inherently beyond the ken of rational apprehension altogether. The impli-
cation would therefore seem to be that we should (1) employ reason to its full
extent in areas that are amenable to rational scrutiny, (2) use reason for such
matters in a correct and valid manner, and (3) accept that some matters, by
their very nature and that of reason itself, are simply not subject to rational
apprehension such that trying to “rationalize” them can lead, of necessity, only
to their distortion. The Qurʾān and the prophetic Sunna, therefore, appear to
urge man to deploy his rational faculties within their proper scope and ___domain,
yet we are ever reminded that, as great as these powers may be, in the larger
scheme of reality and from the perspective of divine omniscience, we have
indeed “been given of knowledge but little.”24

2 The Early Emergence of Rationalist and Textualist Tendencies:

The Case of the Law

In addition to its numerous exhortations to think, reflect, and ponder and its
own frequent deployment of rational argumentation in support of its funda-

23 A more extensive discussion of such instances can be found in Abdel Haleem, “Early
Kalām,” 71–88.
24 It is significant that the Qurʾān’s emphasis on the validity of reason, on what reasoned
reflection ultimately leads to (namely, knowledge of and faith in God), and on the inherent
limits of reason (namely, the fact that certain existent realities escape the grasp of rea-
son altogether) parallels the Qurʾānic depiction of the empirical realm that it so urgently
encourages us to ponder. Our senses mediate to us a picture of reality that reveals an
underlying unity and perfection of structure that rational reflection (ʿaql) finds can only
be the result of an intelligent, omniscient will backed by boundless powers of instantia-
tion; yet reason also discerns that not all that exists necessarily lies within the realm of
our empirical perception. In this vein, the very beginning of the second chapter of the
Qurʾān makes mention of “those who believe in the unseen” (Q. al-Baqara 2:3), enun-
ciating thereby the existence of two fundamental orders of reality: the visible, or seen
(shahāda), and the invisible, or unseen (ghāʾib). In the Qurʾānic worldview, a thing is no
less real for its being imperceptible to our senses.

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mental doctrines, the Qurʾān also contains the germ of theological speculation
by virtue of its engagement with questions of ultimate truth and the inter-
pretation of reality. Though the utterances of the Qurʾān were accepted by all
Muslims as the authentically preserved and transmitted articulations of divine
revelation, such utterances could nevertheless lend themselves to more than
one understanding—a fact that was bound to create rifts not only in ques-
tions of theology but also in the daily tumble of social and political affairs.
Indeed, the first schisms that arose in the early community were expressed,
to some degree, in theological terms, though they were unmistakably politi-
cal in origin.25 This is hardly surprising given that the Qurʾān both specifically
addressed and intimately interacted with the socio-political milieu of its orig-
inal recipients, even as it presented its message in universal ethical and spir-
itual terms. Concurrent with early political developments and the inchoate
proto-theological discussions they engendered, other disciplines were starting
to be developed more systematically and deliberately; these were, primarily,
Qurʾānic exegesis (tafsīr),26 grammar,27 ḥadīth,28 and law ( fiqh). These disci-
plines represent fully indigenous Islamic sciences pursued (originally) with
the tools and methods of reasoning and analysis that came intuitively to the
earliest generations of Muslims. These tools and methods, in turn, directly
influenced the earliest systematic theological reflections that arose in the first
Islamic century. We focus here on the ___domain of law.
Whereas the enterprise of speculative theology, as we shall see, lays claim
by its very nature to being a rational (ʿaqlī) science, the subject matter of the

25 In their careful, historically and theologically informed study of Islamic theology, Louis
Gardet and M.-M. Anawati speak of the “«ferment» déposé par les dissensions politiques
au sein de la pensée religieuse.” See Gardet and Anawati, Introduction, 35.
26 On the earliest attitudes towards tafsīr, see ibid., 26–31, as well as Gilliot, “Kontinuität und
Wandel,” 5–17 and Gilliot, “Exegesis of the Qurʾān.” For a general overview of tafsīr as a
genre, see Saleh, “Quranic Commentaries.” On the nascent “rationalist” versus more “tex-
tualist” trends in early tafsīr, see al-Kattānī, Jadal, 1:504–529 ff.
27 On the rise and significance of the science of Arabic grammar, see Versteegh, The Arabic
Language, 60–84. On the introduction of grammar and the nascent linguistic sciences into
early tafsīr, see Gilliot, “Kontinuität und Wandel,” 18–25. For a detailed study of the rela-
tionship between grammar and the development of tafsīr, see Versteegh, Arabic Grammar.
For a discussion of the contrasting methodologies, and particularly the variant terminol-
ogy, of the Kufan and the (more rationalistically inclined) Basran schools of grammar, see
Versteegh, Arabic Grammar, 9–16.
28 On the vitally important notion of “sunna” for traditional Arab society and, hence, for the
Prophet Muḥammad’s contemporaries, who received him as no less than the Messenger of
God, see Bravmann, Spiritual Background, 123–198 (esp. 123–177). See also Ansari, “Islamic
Juristic Terminology,” 259–282.

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legal sciences was seen to be squarely revelational/transmitted (naqlī). Be that

as it may, revealed texts must be understood and interpreted in order to deter-
mine their relevance and applicability to a given situation. It is significant that
the very term usually translated as “law” is fiqh, the primary meaning of which
is simply “to understand.”29 The methodological and hermeneutical principles
involved in deriving the law are, therefore, without question based on disci-
plined and methodical reasoning—reasoning that began as informal raʾy, or
reasoned opinion, and became ever more sophisticated and refined as the sci-
ence of jurisprudence developed. The use of reasoning in legal matters was,
however, regarded with suspicion by some, who preferred to resolve legal ques-
tions, to the extent possible, solely on the basis of the revealed texts.30 Similar
to trends taking place in the emerging sciences of Qurʾānic exegesis and gram-
mar, this methodological bifurcation resulted in two distinct approaches to
questions of law. One trend was self-consciously based on a strict adherence
to ḥadīth (with as little interpretation of them as possible), while the second
accorded freer rein to reasoned opinion (raʾy) when applying revelation to the
social and legal realities at hand.31 The opposing methodological tendencies
of ahl al-raʾy (the people of reasoned opinion) and ahl al-ḥadīth (the people of
ḥadīth) resulted in a tension that was not resolved until the third/ninth century.
It fell to Muḥammad b. Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820) to sketch what eventu-
ally became the outlines of a reconciliation between these opposing tenden-
cies. In his famous treatise al-Risāla, al-Shāfiʿī argued for restricting the notion
of sunna exclusively to the Sunna of the Prophet and further mandated that

29 Derivatives of the root f-q-h occur twenty times in the Qurʾān, invariably with the meaning
of “to understand,” “fathom,” “comprehend.” In a well-known ḥadīth, the causative form
“faqqaha” (to cause to understand or comprehend) is used in an analogous sense: “man
yurid Allāh bihi khayran yufaqqihhu fī al-dīn” (For whomever God desires good, He grants
him understanding in religion). See, e.g., al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, 30 (and elsewhere); Muslim,
Ṣaḥīḥ, 417 (and elsewhere); al-Tirmidhī, Jāmiʿ, 4:385; Ibn Mājah, Sunan, 80.
30 Watt, Formative Period, 181.
31 Concerning the relationship between the availability of ḥadīth and the use of reason in
legal matters, some have speculated that early Iraqi jurists relied more heavily on raʾy
because they had access to fewer ḥadīth reports—and, by consequence, less knowledge
regarding the details of the prophetic Sunna—than their counterparts in the Hijaz. This
point is made, for example, by al-Kattānī ( Jadal, 1:307–309, 631), but also by no less author-
itative an interpreter of early Muslim history than Ibn Khaldūn (d. 808/1406), who, in his
discussion of the rise of a ḥadīth- versus a raʾy-based jurisprudence in the early period,
identifies the latter with the jurists of Iraq, explaining that “the people of Iraq had little in
the way of ḥadīth (kāna al-ḥadīth qalīlan fī ahl al-ʿIrāq) for the reasons we have previously
stated; thus, they made much use of qiyās ( fa-istaktharū min al-qiyās) and became skilled
in it (wa-maharū fīhi).” Ibn Khaldūn, al-Muqaddima, 446, lines 9–12.

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this prophetic Sunna be supported by properly attested ḥadīth reports.32 At the

same time, he articulated a theory of legal methodology that reduced the kinds
of rational arguments that could be used, but simultaneously confirmed and
consecrated those kinds of rational arguments accepted in the theory (primar-
ily analogical reasoning, known as qiyās). The result of al-Shāfiʿī’s effort was
thus to defend and normalize the use of qiyās against those who were opposed
to it—making it a permanent part of Islamic juristic thought—and to reduce
other, less controlled methods of legal reasoning.
Al-Shāfiʿī’s thesis should not be seen as a one-sided triumph of “textualists”33
over “rationalists.” While much of the Risāla is squarely aimed at justifying
the preeminence of scriptural sources of the law—especially the prophetic
Sunna as expressed in ḥadīth—over “free” rational methods, al-Shāfiʿī’s incor-
poration of the rational processes of analogical reasoning into legal theory
was apparently enough for hard-core textualists to associate him with the
(legal) rationalists, and even with the Muʿtazila.34 In tracing a middle path
between textualism and rationalism, however, the Risāla aptly represents “the
first attempt at synthesizing the disciplined exercise of human reasoning and
the complete assimilation of revelation as the basis of the law”35—a synthesis
that came to form the foundation of Islamic legal theory as a whole after the
late third/ninth century. The tension that al-Shāfiʿī sought to alleviate between
rational modes of reasoning and the revealed texts—that is, between reason

32 For a concise presentation and discussion of the contents of al-Shāfiʿī’s Risāla, see Hallaq,
History, 21–29. For an extended study and reinterpretation of this foundational text, see
Lowry, Early Islamic Legal Theory. For a complete English translation of the Risāla with
parallel Arabic text, see Lowry, Epistle on Legal Theory.
33 Most contemporary scholars speak reflexively of a “rationalist” versus a “literalist” ten-
dency. I consider the term “literalist” to be problematic, as it carries with it implicit
assumptions regarding reason, the use of language, and the relationship of language to
rationality that prejudge a number of issues central to Ibn Taymiyya’s critique. I have
therefore opted for “textualist” as a more neutral, descriptive term. My usage follows that
of Bernard Weiss in The Spirit of Islamic Law, particularly chap. 3, where he defines and
uses the term “textualist” in the same manner as described here, and primarily for the
same reasons.
34 Hallaq, History, 31.
35 Ibid., 34. As we see below, the Ashʿarī theological school attempted, one century later, to
effect a similar reconciliation between reason and revelation by synthesizing the disci-
plined exercise of human reason and the complete assimilation of revelation as the basis
of theology. And this is precisely Ibn Taymiyya’s project as well, as we shall discover in the
course of this study, albeit on the basis of a radically different notion of reason—reason
returned, as Ibn Taymiyya contends, to its original, intuitive ( fiṭrī), pre-kalām/pre-falsafa
synthetic state. For a discussion of the synthesis of reason and revelation and the lack
of dichotomy between the two in the early Muslim community, see Winter, “Reason as
Balance.”

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and revelation—constitutes a reflection on the legal plane of a much broader

tension that was occurring in Islamic thought as a whole, including theology,
and that would eventually require a synthesis analogous to that of al-Shāfiʿī in
law.

3 Early Theological Reflection and Contention

The methodology of early theological reflection initially reflected patterns of

thought and methods of reasoning worked out in the indigenous disciplines of
Qurʾān exegesis, grammar, ḥadīth, and law. This was because the men engaged
in these early theological ruminations were, first and foremost, jurists who were
required to know grammar and tafsīr in order to engage in fiqh.36 But the early
Muslims who first developed the new Islamic sciences were by no means liv-
ing in comfortable isolation in the Arabian Peninsula. Just thirty years after
the Prophet’s death, the Muslims found themselves at the helm of a vast cos-
mopolitan empire that stretched from western Libya to the eastern borders
of Persia and, less than one hundred years later, from northern Spain in the
west to the Indus River in the east. In the year 40/661, following the assas-
sination of the fourth caliph, ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, the capital of the new empire
was relocated from Medina (and briefly Kufa) to Damascus, an ancient seat
of culture most recently heir to a fecund overlay of Hellenistic high culture
deposited onto the Syro-Aramaic backdrop of an age-old Near Eastern civiliza-
tion. The earliest influences of Greek thought came about through contact with
the Hellenistic tradition that was still being cultivated in the Christian schools
established by the Sassanians in Iraq and Persia and continued by the Muslims
who took possession of these territories.37 Most noteworthy of these was the
school of Jundishapur in addition to non-Christian schools, particularly that
of the Sabians of Harran (Ibn Taymiyya’s hometown, incidentally). The intel-
lectual languages used throughout the region were predominantly Syriac and
Greek.38 Thus, the dominant intellectual strand in the area ruled by the early

36 Watt observes that the “discussion of the roots of jurisprudence affected the whole future
course of Islamic thought, for jurisprudence was the central intellectual discipline in the
Islamic world.” Watt, Formative Period, 181. It has likewise been suggested that the forma-
tive legal training of most early theologians naturally predisposed them to apply to their
theological reflections the habits of mind they had acquired in their study of fiqh. Gardet
and Anawati, Introduction, 44. For the most recent treatment of the origins of the style of
argumentation used in kalām theology, see Treiger, “Origins of Kalām,” 29–34.
37 Watt, Islamic Philosophy and Theology, 37.
38 On the linguistic situation of the Near East in the early Islamic period, see Versteegh, Greek
Elements, 1–4.

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Muslim state was Hellenism in its Syriac expression, admixed with Indic ele-
ments transmitted through Old Persian, or Pahlavi.39
The Muslims thus came to rule a vast conglomeration of peoples and cul-
tures teeming with Persian, Indian, Greek, and other philosophies and beliefs
that were often radically at odds with Islamic teachings. Such doctrines in-
cluded Mazdaism, Manichaeism, materialism (dahriyya),40 the doctrines of the
Sumaniyya of Central Asia,41 and others. In this early period, as Muslims came
into contact with educated non-Muslims who often argued against Islamic
teachings, Muslims found themselves in need of tools to defend—in univer-
sally acceptable terms—the underlying reasonability and plausibility of their
creed. This was true especially with respect to the Christians, who not only
formed the majority of the populace, particularly in the region of Greater
Syria, but who also represented a rival monotheism with a similarly universal-
ist outlook. Moreover, competing Christian theological claims were couched
in a sophisticated intellectual idiom that resulted from over six hundred years
during which Christian thought had been infused with Greek philosophy, par-
ticularly in the form of a late Hellenic Neoplatonism combined with certain
Aristotelian and Stoic elements as well.42 The early Muslims were primed to
engage in such debates by virtue of the “dialectical way of thinking”43 that they
had learned not only from the Qurʾān and prophetic practice but also from the
early, indigenous Islamic disciplines of tafsīr, grammar, ḥadīth, and law men-

39 The influence of Hellenism was found chiefly in Iraq, first Basra and Kufa, then Baghdad.
The regions farther to the east had also long been exposed to Hellenistic culture, but not
much is known about the rationalizing theological activity there prior to the theologian
Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī (d. ca. 333/944). See Watt, Formative Period, 184. On the rise of
Māturīdī theology, see Rudolph, “Das Entstehen der Māturīdīya”; Rudolph, “Ḥanafī Theo-
logical Tradition and Māturīdism,” 285–293; and, more extensively, Rudolph, Al-Māturīdī
und die sunnitische Theologie in Samarkand (trans. Adem, Al-Māturīdī and the Develop-
ment of Sunnī Theology in Samarqand). Alternative death dates for al-Māturīdī have been
given as 332/943 or 336/947. See Madelung, “al-Māturīdī,” EI2, 6:846a.
40 On the Dahriyya, see Crone, “Excursus II: Ungodly Cosmologies,” 115–123.
41 Primarily in Tirmidh and Samarqand. The early figure Jahm b. Ṣafwān (see p. 34 below)
may have taken certain extreme positions in theology primarily in response to this group,
who may have been Buddhists of some sort.
42 For an analysis of the Stoic influences on early Islamic theological thought, see van Ess,
“The Logical Structure of Islamic Theology,” esp. 26–42.
43 “dialektische[r] Denkstil,” van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft, 1:48–49. See also van Ess,
1:55 for the observation that not only in the Qurʾān but also in the Sīra of Ibn Isḥāq (d.
ca. 150/767) can we begin to detect a kalām style of argumentation. For a critique of van
Ess and a different perspective on the sources and dates of kalām, see Cook, “Origins of
Kalam” (also discussed in Treiger, “Origins of Kalām” 30–31).

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tioned above.44 But these tendencies were now reinforced and supplemented
by the new cultural milieu of the lands that the Arabs had come to control (and
from which the non-Arab converts originally hailed). The immediate effect of
this cultural and intellectual interaction was the adoption by Muslim theolo-
gians of certain concepts and methods they deemed necessary to answer their
rivals and to present Islam in what was taken to be the neutral canons of a
universally shared rational discourse. Greek concepts in particular—as well as
Greek methods of argumentation, such as formal disputation45—were power-
ful tools that could be deployed for the defense of Islam in the context of stri-
dent inter-confessional debate. The overall result of this polemical rencontre
was that both the methods and, to a considerable extent, even the content and
problems of kalām theology as developed by the late second/eighth century
bear the distinct imprint of these early exchanges in which Muslim debaters
were compelled to adapt themselves to the categories of their opponents.46
It is in the context of this intellectual backdrop that the first full-fledged,
properly speculative theological discussions in Islam took place.47 The first
such debate revolved around the question of free will and determinism and
influenced the manner in which various other questions of dogma were con-
ceived and debated.48 This debate concerned the issue of whether human
beings have free choice in their moral action or whether their deeds are inex-
orably predetermined by God. Advocating for the first position were the

44 Watt suggests that the receptivity of Muslim scholars to the use of Greek rational methods
once these became available may have been a result of their training in Islamic jurispru-
dence, through which they had already become familiar with various forms of rational
argumentation. Watt, Formative Period, 180.
45 Cook, “Origins of Kalam” and Jack Tannous, “Between Christology and Kalām?” trace the
dialectical method of early kalām specifically to Syriac Christological disputations that
took place in the second half of the seventh century. Tannous suggests that this method-
ology may have been transmitted to the early Muslim community via Arab Christian
communities in Iraq and Syria. (See Treiger, “Origins of Kalām,” 30–32.)
46 Van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft, 1:52–53. For a detailed discussion of these exchanges,
see Wolfson, Philosophy of the Kalam, 1–43, 64–66.
47 Blankinship, “Early Creed,” 38.
48 The extent to which early Muslim theological debates may have been due to Christian or
other outside influences is a matter of debate. For a fairly extensive discussion of West-
ern scholars’ (highly variable) views on this issue, see Wolfson, Philosophy of the Kalam,
58–64 and, more recently, Treiger, “Origins of Kalām,” 29–34. (On the origins of the debate
over free will in particular, see Treiger, 34–38.) Steven Judd (“Early Qadariyya,” 46) remarks
that modern scholars who attribute Christian origins to the debate on free will do so, to
some extent, in keeping with medieval Arabic sources but suggests that these sources’ own
ascription of a Christian origin to the debate was likely “more polemical than theological.”
See also Judd, 48, 50, 53.

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Qadarīs (or Qadariyya),49 a group purportedly started by Maʿbad al-Juhanī (exe-

cuted 80/699), a well-regarded ḥadīth transmitter whose father was a Com-
panion of the Prophet. The single common point of doctrine unifying the
Qadariyya seems to have been their assertion of human volition in moral acts
(particularly sinful ones). The famous al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (d. 110/728)—a figure
universally revered by later schools of law, theology, and Sufism50—likewise
spoke forcefully in favor of a person’s ability to choose to sin (or not) and his
consequent responsibility for his sin, arguing that God creates only good while
evil stems either from man himself or from Satan.51 The early Muʿtazila subse-
quently developed the Qadarī stress on human volition into a more robust doc-
trine of free will, one in which human moral responsibility was held to depend
on the fact that men not only chose and performed ( faʿala) their actions but
positively “created” (khalaqa) them as well. This view was widely denounced as
compromising the unique status of God as the only Creator (khāliq) and instan-
tiator of all that exists. The Qadarīs, whose doctrine was less formally devel-
oped, became embroiled in politics, and their cause was taken up for a brief
time on the occasion of a political revolt against the Umayyad caliph al-Walīd
b. Yazīd (al-Walīd II) in the year 126/744.52 The Qadarī cause was eclipsed, how-
ever, with the eventual political failure of the movement. The opposite, “jabrī”
impulse tended towards a strict determinism and categorical denial of human
free will. This side of the debate was represented in its most extreme form
by Jahm b. Ṣafwān (d. 128/746), whose views on the issue seem to have been
supported by the ruling Umayyads. Some have speculated that the Umayyads
favored the jabrī doctrine as a way of excusing their actions as simply the result
of God’s determinative will and for which they could not be held morally (or
politically) accountable.53
The second major debate was the abstruse and perplexing question of God’s
relationship to the Qurʾān as His word. Specifically, this question concerned
whether the Qurʾān, as God’s speech, was to be considered an “attribute” of the

49 The name “Qadarī” for this movement may seem counterintuitive, since qadar is almost
always used with reference to God’s divine decree. Judd suggests that qadar here, how-
ever, may have been meant as a reference to human beings’ ability (qadar) to determine
and choose their own actions. Judd, “Early Qadariyya,” 45.
50 On al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and the multifaceted (and often contradictory) ways in which he is
presented in early and medieval Islamic sources, see Mourad, Early Islam between Myth
and History.
51 Blankinship, “Early Creed,” 39.
52 Al-Walīd II was killed during this turmoil in April 126/744; this brought an end to his brief,
one-year reign (which had begun only in February of the preceding year, 125/743).
53 See, e.g., Blankinship, “Early Creed,” 38–39; Judd, “Early Qadariyya,” 51.

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reason and revelation in islam before ibn taymiyya 35

divine essence and therefore eternal (qadīm) or, rather, separate from God’s
essence and thus contingent and temporally originated (muḥdath)—or, as it
was eventually described, “created” (makhlūq).54 First formulated by al-Jaʿd b.
Dirham55 and subsequently propagated by his student, Jahm b. Ṣafwān,56 the
notion that the Qurʾān was not eternal but created may have been an attempt to
safeguard the notion of God’s exclusive eternity in the face of Christian claims
of Jesus’s divinity on the basis of his status as God’s word (kalimat Allāh), or
logos.57 Yet the notion of a “created Qurʾān” appears, by all accounts, to have
stoked the ire of almost all contemporary Muslim scholars and, in fact, was
deemed so pernicious a doctrine that it served to justify the execution of both
al-Jaʿd b. Dirham and Jahm b. Ṣafwān. The debate on the nature of the Qurʾān
became one of the most pivotal and divisive issues in early Muslim theology,
and it formed the crux of a major showdown between theological “rationalists”
and “textualists” in the mid-third/ninth century. The question of the Qurʾān
is also central to the concerns of this study because it relates directly to the
question of the divine attributes—a question that forms the spine of Islamic
theology and that lies at the very heart of Ibn Taymiyya’s main preoccupation
in the Darʾ taʿāruḍ.
Several comments of a conceptual character are in order here regarding
the nature and implications of these early debates, which manifest a distinct
progression in terms of their abstraction, their use of a formal philosophical

54 For an in-depth account of the issue of the createdness of the Qurʾān, see the classic arti-
cle of Wilferd Madelung, “The Origins of the Controversy Concerning the Creation of the
Koran.” A useful shorter survey can be found in El-Bizri, “God: Essence and Attributes,”
122–131. In addition to the view that the Qurʾān must be either “created” (makhlūq) or else
eternal (qadīm), there is an important intermediate position, critical to Ibn Taymiyya’s
view on the issue, that the Qurʾān is “non-created” (ghayr makhlūq). See Hoover, “Perpet-
ual Creativity,” 296.
55 Executed by Khālid al-Qasrī sometime during his reign as governor of Iraq (105–120/724–
738). See Judd, “Jaʿd b. Dirham,” Encyclopaedia of Islam—Three [hereafter EI3] (2016-5),
150.
56 On whom see Schöck, “Jahm b. Ṣafwān.”
57 See Gardet and Anawati, Introduction, 38 on the probable origin of this discussion in the
Christian challenge of the logos. It is of note that not only Christian theology but also the
Qurʾān itself describes Jesus as “a word from Him [God]” (Q. Āl ʿImrān 3:45). The early
Muslims must have felt a pressing need to explain such verses in a manner consistent
with Islamic monotheism in the face of Christian trinitarianism, particularly since it was
the Christian understanding of the concept of the logos—ostensibly (in Christian eyes)
embraced by the Qurʾān as well—that underpinned the Christian doctrine of the divinity
of Jesus. For the challenge of the “Sumaniyya” of Tirmidh, who may have been Buddhists,
and their possible influence on the highly abstract and transcendentalizing theology of
Jahm b. Ṣafwān, see Nagel, History, 101–102.

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nomenclature, and the degree to which their protagonists explicitly appealed

to reason as the arbiter of competing theological claims. The first of these
debates, the debate over free will and predestination, involved a crucial aspect
of the relationship between man and God and directly implicated revelation
inasmuch as it was related to different ways of interpreting scriptural asser-
tions about God. This debate, though initially motivated by political events,
involved the nature of God and turned on what was implied by certain dis-
crete statements in revelation concerning that nature. The proponents of free
will (Qadarīs) reasoned that since God is just,58 human beings must be acting
freely as the authors and creators of their own deeds; this is necessary for their
reward or punishment in the hereafter to be just. By contrast, the proponents
of determinism (Jabrīs) reasoned that if God is all-powerful,59 then His power
must extend—as the Qurʾān so clearly seems to state—to all things, including
the actions of human beings. Were it not so, we might reason, then God would
not be “powerful over all things.”
The debate over free will is conceptually foundational for two reasons. First,
it illustrates the manner in which early theological debate grew out of differ-
ing interpretations of the Qurʾān that emerged once questions were raised that
had not been posed in the time of the Prophet or addressed explicitly by rev-
elation. These questions left later protagonists to search for answers to new
quandaries in the verses of the Qurʾān.60 The second reason for the impor-
tance of the debate over free will is largely historical insofar as it discloses—
now in the realm of theology—the same emerging fault line between two

58 Numerous Qurʾānic verses affirm, for instance, that God never does any injustice unto His
servants. See, for instance, Q. Āl ʿImrān 3:108 (“And God wills no wrong for the worlds [i.e.,
His creation]”), al-Kahf 18:49 (“And your Lord does wrong unto none”), and Fuṣṣilat 41:46
(“And your Lord is in no wise unjust to [His] slaves”). Numerous other passages affirm that
God does not wrong His servants, but rather they do wrong unto themselves. See, e.g., Q. Āl
ʿImrān 3:117; al-Tawba 9:70; Hūd 11:101; al-Naḥl 16:33, 16:118; al-ʿAnkabūt 29:40; al-Rūm 30:9;
and al-Zukhruf 43:76.
59 As per numerous verses of the Qurʾān, such as al-Kahf 18:45: “And God has power over all
things.” See also Q. al-Aḥzāb 33:27, Fāṭir 35:44, and al-Zukhruf 43:42.
60 It is important, however, to underscore that the difference of opinion in this instance
reflects not so much a “rational” exegesis of the text in contrast to an unreflective “liter-
alism” but rather a differential emphasis placed on contradistinctive descriptions of God
found in revelation. The Qurʾān asserts that God is just; it likewise asserts that He is all-
powerful. Revelation affirms both statements unequivocally, yet the implications of this
twin affirmation for the question of the freedom or determinism of human action, once
posed in this manner, are not elaborated, or even adumbrated, in the Qurʾān. It is the chal-
lenge of the theologian somehow to articulate an understanding of God that coherently
and judiciously accounts for all the various contradistinct attributes and qualities predi-
cated of Him in revelation.

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reason and revelation in islam before ibn taymiyya 37

distinct epistemological approaches to revelation that had appeared earlier

in the domains of Qurʾān exegesis, grammar, ḥadīth, and law and that soon
pitted faction against faction in a bitter ideological tussle that raged through-
out the second/eighth and third/ninth centuries. The question of free will is
thus foundational because it is the first instance of debate that clearly shows
a transposition onto the theological plane of the nascent rationalist–textualist
cleavage already operative in the other Islamic disciplines.
The question of freedom and determinism, then, is essentially an exegeti-
cal debate cast in moral-ethical terms, both in the sense that it carries impli-
cations for human moral responsibility and in the sense that it attempts to
account rationally, in human ethical terms, for God’s justice in the face of
His unbounded might. This question stands in contrast to the debate con-
cerning the nature of the Qurʾān as the word of God, which involves more
abstract considerations of an explicitly metaphysical and ontological order.
That is, what was at stake in this debate was not whether God had spoken the
Qurʾān and what this might entail for human ethical, moral, and spiritual life
but rather the very nature of God’s being, His relationship to His word, and
the nuanced ontological questions pertaining to God’s essence, His attributes,
and so forth. Furthermore, the terms in which this latter debate was conceived
and the conceptual framework on the basis of which the problem itself was
defined and discussed—“essence,” “attributes,” and so on—are a direct result of
the influence of Greek philosophy and the discussions with Hellenized Chris-
tian theologians in Syria and elsewhere. In such discussions, proto-Muʿtazilī,
rationalistically inclined theologians appealed directly and explicitly to rea-
son (ʿaql) and sought to adopt a consistent methodological rationalism as their
choice method of inquiry. This rationalism was meant not merely to serve the
hermeneutic objective of interpreting scriptural passages related to the nature
of God but also to further the quasi-philosophical goal of delineating a con-
ception of God’s nature in entirely rational terms and independently of the
“constraints” of revelation.
Thus, the debate over the ontological status of the Qurʾān introduced into
theological discussion, for the first time, a level of speculative abstraction (sup-
plied by outside sources) that came to form a particular rational optic through
which revelation was henceforth to be refracted. With the debate on the sta-
tus of the Qurʾān, we are no longer grappling with an intertextual, purely
hermeneutical enterprise that is fully contained within the textual bounds of
revelation. Rather, for the first time, we are witness to a speculative theological
venture that makes claims in its own right, and independently of revelation,
about how the nature of God “must be” according to the dictates of reason.
This venture represented a systematic attempt to mold the understanding of

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revelation to the contours of a rational framework that would henceforth dic-

tate, on its own authority, the essential terms of analysis.

3.1 The Translation Movement and the Impact of Greek Philosophy

Despite the centrality of personal contact with a living philosophical tradi-
tion and with Hellenized Christian theologians in the early Islamic period,
the influence of Greek ideas on Muslim thought eventually came primarily—
and profusely—in the form of Arabic translations of the Greek philosophi-
cal corpus, made directly from Greek originals or from intermediate Syriac
translations.61 Although some Greek works—particularly medical and scien-
tific treatises—were translated in late Umayyad times (that is, in the first half
of the second/eighth century, before the Abbasid revolution of 132/750), it was
not until well after the consolidation of Abbasid rule that the large-scale project
of translation came into full swing. The Abbasid revolution brought about
far-reaching changes on a number of levels, spelling a new era for kalām as
well as for a host of other intellectual disciplines and cultural pursuits. Polit-
ically, the capital of the Muslim umma moved from Damascus to Baghdad,
whereafter Syria and the Hijaz were no longer centers of innovative theological
development.62 Under the new order, religious knowledge and its cultivators
received new prominence as the Abbasids explicitly promoted themselves as
the defenders of a multiethnic and specifically Islamic order meant to super-
sede the Umayyad order, which was based on the ethnic favoritism of Arabs.63
Such circumstances inaugurated an unprecedented efflorescence of kalām, the
technique of which was developed primarily in Iraq in an atmosphere favor-
able to theological debate and with the patronage of the Abbasid authorities.64
Indeed, it was primarily at the caliphal court, where thinkers from various
regions and intellectual proclivities regularly comingled, that the new theology
was most highly refined and developed into a sophisticated arm of intellectual
disputation.65
Although kalām as a discrete discipline was already firmly established by the
time of the illustrious Hārūn al-Rashīd (r. 170–193/786–809) and although the
term mutakallim is applied in the literature to some figures even before this
period, information about the views of these early theologians is so scant that

61 For a comprehensive treatment of the translation movement and the transmission of

Greek learning into early Arab-Islamic society, see Gutas, Greek Thought. Also informa-
tive is Endreß, “Athen, Alexandria, Bagdad, Samarkand.”
62 Van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft, 1:56.
63 See the discussion in Gardet and Anawati, Introduction, 39–41.
64 Van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft, 1:55.
65 Ibid., 1:56.

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 reason and revelation in islam before ibn taymiyya 39

we cannot draw firm conclusions regarding their individual doctrines. In any

case, it was the translation movement—particularly after the founding of the
Bayt al-Ḥikma, or “House of Wisdom,” as a public institution in Baghdad by the
Abbasid caliph Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Maʾmūn (r. 198–218/813–833)—that seems to
have constituted the major impetus for the dramatic political rise of the first
theological school proper, that of the Muʿtazila.

table 1 Timeline of the development of the reason–revelation dichotomy in Islam before

Ibn Taymiyya

610 CE–AH 11/632 CE The Qurʾān encourages use of reason to arrive at faith; simultaneously declares rea-
son limited.
mid-first/seventh c. Beginnings of the sciences of Qurʾānic exegesis, Arabic grammar, law, and ḥadīth.
41/661 and after Capital of emerging Islamic empire moved to the cosmopolitan environment of
Damascus.
Muslims increasingly exposed to Hellenistic, Christian, Persian, and other influ-
ences, causing early theologians to adopt some Greek methods and vocabulary to
defend Islamic belief.
late first/seventh c. Rise of the debate over free will and predestination.
early second/eighth c. Rise of the debate over the createdness of the Qurʾān.
early to mid- Some Greek texts, primarily medical and scientific, translated into Arabic.
second/eighth c.
Emergence of methodological division in law between ahl al-raʾy and ahl al-ḥadīth.
Beginnings of Muʿtazilī school at the hands of Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ and ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd.
132/750 Abbasid revolution. Capital of empire moved from Damascus to Baghdad. Theolog-
ical speculation given new impetus under Abbasid rule.
early third/ninth c. Bayt al-Ḥikma (“House of Wisdom”) founded in Baghdad by the caliph al-Maʾmūn
(r. 198–218/813–833). Massive translation of Greek philosophical texts begins.
Al-Shāfiʿī synthesizes methodologies of ahl al-raʾy and ahl al-ḥadīth by consecrating
rational qiyās, along with firm adherence to ḥadīth, as basis of the law.
ca. 205–235/820–850 Flourishing of the major architects of Muʿtazilī theology. Assimilation of numerous
Greek concepts and methods of argumentation.
218–232/833–847 Miḥna instituted by three consecutive Abbasid caliphs in an attempt to impose the
Muʿtazilī doctrine of the createdness of the Qurʾān as official doctrine.
early to mid- Al-Kindī, first Muslim philosopher, flourishes. Shows clear Islamic doctrinal com-
third/ninth c. mitments, especially on the question of the non-eternality of the world, but his
method is that of falsafa.
Al-Muḥāsibī and Ibn Kullāb active, both of whom shun Muʿtazilī doctrine but begin
using systematic rational methods to defend transmitted Sunnī orthodoxy.

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Table 1 The development of the reason–revelation dichotomy in Islam (cont.)

ca. 233–237/848–851 The caliph al-Wāthiq turns on the Muʿtazila, ends the miḥna, and reinstates Sunnī
orthodoxy. Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal emerges as a hero for his refusal to capitulate to the
inquisition.
second half of Influence of the theological style of al-Muḥāsibī and Ibn Kullāb spreads, comple-
third/ninth c. mented by the similar work of figures like Ibn Qutayba and al-Qalānisī.
first half of fourth/ Emergence of the traditionalist creed of al-Ṭaḥāwī. Active period of other tradi-
tenth c. tionalist voices, such as al-Ṭabarī and Ḥanbalīs like al-Khallāl, al-Barbahārī, and Ibn
Khuzayma.
Al-Ashʿarī breaks from the Muʿtazila at age forty but uses their rational method to
launch a full-fledged defense of inherited orthodox creed.
Al-Fārābī flourishes. Explicitly theorizes the outward sense of revelation as being for
the masses only.
late fourth/tenth to Al-Bāqillānī flourishes in the second generation after al-Ashʿarī, strongly reinforcing
early fifth/eleventh c. the foundations of Ashʿarī thought and bringing the “old doctrine” of the school to
its highest point.
early to mid- Active period of Ibn Sīnā, whose philosophical system exercises a major impact on
fifth/eleventh c. kalām and practically all subsequent Islamic thought.
mid- to late fifth/ Flourishing of al-Juwaynī, first Ashʿarī theologian to feel the full force of Ibn Sīnā’s
eleventh c. influence. Considered a crossover figure between early and later Ashʿarī school.
late fifth/eleventh to Al-Ghazālī pens scathing attack on the philosophers but incorporates logical meth-
early sixth/twelfth c. ods of falsafa into theology and legal theory. Explicitly endorses taʾwīl. Adopts cer-
tain esotericist doctrines as well.
second half of Ibn Rushd flourishes. Defends Aristotelianism and responds to al-Ghazālī point for
sixth/twelfth c. point. Writes Faṣl al-maqāl on the necessity of upholding the literal sense of revela-
tion for the common people while reserving the real truth, gained through reason,
for the philosophical elite.
Flourishing of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, seminal figure of the later Ashʿarī school whose
work represents a sophisticated philosophical theology. Al-Rāzī further elaborates
the universal rule of interpretation articulated by al-Ghazālī and targeted by Ibn
Taymiyya in the Darʾ taʿāruḍ.
Active period of Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī and rise of the Ishrāqī, or “Illumina-
tionist,” school of philosophy.
first half of sev- Flourishing of Ibn ʿArabī, seminal figure in later Sufi thought, strongly criticized by
enth/thirteenth c. Ibn Taymiyya for his monistic ontology.
661–728/1263–1328 Life and work of Ibn Taymiyya.

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reason and revelation in islam before ibn taymiyya 41

4 The Muʿtazila

The first speculations of the Muʿtazila can be traced back to the last decade
of the Umayyad dynasty, just prior to the Abbasid revolution.66 The origin of
Muʿtazilī thought is normally attributed to Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ (d. 131/748 or 749)—
who is said to have separated from (iʿtazala) the circle of al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī over
the question of the status of the grave sinner67—and to Wāṣil’s contemporary
ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd (d. 144/761), though the main architects of the school died sev-
eral generations later, between 204/820 and 224/840. In terms of methodology,
the early Muʿtazila seem to have relied principally on the styles of reasoning
and argumentation that had been developed in the indigenous Islamic sciences
of Arabic grammar and law,68 as well as Qurʾān exegesis and ḥadīth.69 Eventu-
ally, however, the mature Muʿtazilī school reinforced its intellectual armature
by adopting numerous aspects of Greek reasoning and methods of argumen-
tation over the course of early Abbasid rule.70
Of the famous so-called five principles (al-uṣūl al-khamsa) of the Muʿta-
zila71—first articulated, most likely, by Abū al-Hudhayl al-ʿAllāf (d. between
226/840 and 235/850)72—the most important for our topic is the first princi-
ple, involving the notion of tawḥīd, since it touches directly on the question of
the divine attributes, one of Ibn Taymiyya’s overriding preoccupations in the
Darʾ. The three main aspects of the Muʿtazilī notion of tawḥīd are (1) the denial
of the distinctiveness of the essential attributes of God, such as knowledge,
power, and speech; (2) the denial of the eternality (qidam), or “uncreatedness,”
of the Qurʾān; and (3) the radical denial of resemblance between God and any
created thing (tanzīh).73 Indeed, the doctrines the Muʿtazila most vehemently

66 Van Ess, Flowering, 123. For an overview of the scholarship on the origins and rise of the
Muʿtazila, see el-Omari, “The Muʿtazilite Movement (I),” 152–154.
67 Sarah Stroumsa, however, makes a plausible argument in support of Goldziher’s thesis
that the name “Muʿtazila,” derived from the verb iʿtazala, is in reference to the asceti-
cism of the movement’s founders (and, hence, their iʿtizāl of—or separation from and
renunciation of—the world). See Stroumsa, “The Beginnings of the Muʿtazila Reconsid-
ered.”
68 Blankinship, “Early Creed,” 50–51.
69 Daiber, Islamic Thought in the Dialogue of Cultures, 19.
70 See Blankinship, “Early Creed,” 50–51.
71 On which see Watt, Islamic Philosophy and Theology, 48–53, as well as Bennett, “Muʿtazilite
Movement (II),” 146–147 and 152–156.
72 Blankinship, “Early Creed,” 47.
73 Watt, Formative Period, 242. On the Muʿtazilī conception of the divine attributes, see also
Bennett, “Muʿtazilite Movement (II),” 152–154.

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opposed were predestination and anthropomorphism,74 the latter of which

they regularly sought to neutralize through figurative interpretation, or taʾwīl.
In addition to these five principles, Muʿtazilī thinkers were also united by
an apologetic program that was motivated by a common zeal to defend the
core doctrines of Islam against the arguments put forth by the adherents of
other religions, as well as against groups of their Muslim co-religionists whom
they deemed to have compromised God’s unique and incomparable nature by
clinging to what they (the Muʿtazila) considered an overly literal and, there-
fore, overtly anthropomorphic understanding of scripture. Most important to
our topic is the way in which Muʿtazilī thinkers sought to realize this defensive
project through a shared interpretive methodology that consisted in applying
reason (as they conceived of it) as rigorously and consistently as possible to
all questions of a theological nature, even if—critically—the conclusions they
reached ended up contradicting the plain sense of the Qurʾānic text.
The Muʿtazila, through their theological and polemical engagements, adopt-
ed a large number of Greek concepts and methods of reasoning and argumen-
tation, leaving it to later scholars to sift through the spoils to determine which
of these were truly assimilable to Islamic thought. As a result of this process,
many ideas were retained and absorbed into Sunnī kalām, such that Greek
ideas “came to dominate one great wing of Islamic theology, namely, rational
or philosophical theology.”75 Yet since the majority of Sunnī scholars generally
regarded the Muʿtazila as heretics, Muʿtazilī doctrines and theses could not
simply be taken over by mainstream thought, at least not in the same form
in which the Muʿtazila had presented them. The result was that such ideas
often exercised only an indirect influence—a reality that Ibn Taymiyya sensed
acutely and that, in fact, he held responsible for a great deal of what had “gone
wrong” in later Islamic theology.76 Thus, although the Muʿtazilī school was
eventually defeated, it nevertheless influenced permanently not only the form
of, but also the problems dealt with, in all subsequent kalām.

5 Non-speculative Theology and the Legacy of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal

Throughout the third/ninth century, there were a number of figures who up-
held conservative doctrinal positions but who nevertheless engaged to some

74 Van Ess, Flowering, 31.

75 Watt, Formative Period, 249.
76 See below, p. 102ff. on Ibn Taymiyya’s understanding and assessment of the intellectual
tradition he inherited.

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reason and revelation in islam before ibn taymiyya 43

extent, even if by way of refutation and disavowal, with the newly developing
science of (Muʿtazilī) kalām. Indeed, the fifth-/eleventh-century Ashʿarī theolo-
gian ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Baghdādī (d. 429/1037 or 1038) includes in his Kitāb Uṣūl
al-dīn a section on the “mutakallimūn of ahl al-sunna,” among whom some were
prominent in the science of ḥadīth.77 For our purposes, then, a “theologian”
is not strictly a rationalist theologian in the way of the Muʿtazila but anyone
who explicitly and consciously articulated views on the pressing theological
matters of the day, regardless of the extent to which he may or may not have
relied on or articulated his views in terms of the rationalistic framework of the
emerging science of kalām. It is precisely such men who took explicit stands
on theological issues, albeit while consciously avoiding or openly opposing the
rationalistic program of the Muʿtazila, that I refer to as “non-speculative the-
ologians” and whose style of engagement in theological debates I have labeled
“non-speculative theology.”78
The non-speculative approach to theology, which eventually came to be
most closely associated with the Ḥanbalī school,79 was, in fact, favored—es-
pecially before the triumphant rise of the Ashʿarī and Māturīdī style of kalām
in the fifth/eleventh century—by a substantial number of scholars from all

77 Watt, Formative Period, 279. See ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Baghdādī, Kitāb Uṣūl al-dīn, 333–334.
Al-Baghdādī identifies two figures as the “first mutakallimūn of ahl al-sunna” among the
Companions: ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, on account of his theological disputations with the Khawārij
and the Qadariyya, and ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar (d. 73/693), also for his debates with the
Qadariyya. Among the first mutakallimūn of ahl al-sunna in the generation of the Suc-
cessors al-Baghdādī identifies ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (d. 101/720), Zayd b. ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn
(d. 122/740; the great-grandson of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib), al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, al-Shaʿbī (d. between
104/722 or 723 and 106/724 or 725), and al-Zuhrī (d. 124/742), followed by Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq
(d. 148/765) in the following generation. Finally, as the first mutakallimūn among the
jurists and authorities (arbāb) of the legal schools he names Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 150/767)
and al-Shāfiʿī, followed by the students of al-Shāfiʿī “who combined knowledge of law
( fiqh) and theology (kalām).” These students of al-Shāfiʿī include specifically al-Ḥārith
al-Muḥāsibī (d. 243/857), Abū ʿAlī al-Karābīsī (d. 245/859 or 248/862), Abū Yaʿqūb al-
Buwayṭī (d. 231/846), Ḥarmala b. Yaḥyā (d. 243/858), and Dāwūd al-Aṣbahānī (al-Ẓāhirī)
(d. 270/884). [N.B.: Al-Baghdādī lists “Ḥarmala al-Buwayṭī,” but “Ḥarmala” and “al-Buwayṭī”
are, in fact, two separate figures. I have listed them both here, though it is not altogether
clear whether al-Baghdādī meant to list both or just one of them.]
78 The term “non-speculative theology” I employ here is roughly equivalent in scope and
implication to the Arabic term uṣūl al-dīn, which refers in a general sense to Islamic
creedal commitments and their foundations (uṣūl)—both scriptural and rational—with-
out, however, implying a commitment to or an endorsement of the particular rationalistic
approach and dialectical style normally implied by the term kalām.
79 On the formation and development of Ḥanbalī thought, especially as a theological orien-
tation, see Hoover, “Ḥanbalī Theology,” esp. 627–630.

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the major legal schools. This was particularly true of early Mālikī and Shāfiʿī
scholars, but it also holds for a number of prominent early Ḥanafīs, who,
in legal matters, tended to accord a greater role to reasoned opinion (raʾy)
and other extra-textual methods, such as istiḥsān (juristic preference), that
were often disapproved of by other schools. So although a certain strand of
Ḥanafīs accepted kalām and the conclusions to which it led and although a
number of prominent Muʿtazilīs were also Ḥanafī in legal madhhab (pl. ma-
dhāhib), it is by no means the case that the early Ḥanafīs were, as a group,
automatically or immediately inclined to theological rationalism.80 Indeed,
there is a contrasting, more cautious Ḥanafī attitude that was apprehensive
of rationalistic kalām, as evidenced by the famous creed of Abū Jaʿfar al-
Ṭaḥāwī (d. 321/933), a prominent Ḥanafī authority and leading scholar of ḥadīth
who, in general, insisted on hewing closely to the terms of the Qurʾān and
Sunna.81
The final piece of the puzzle on the third-/ninth-century Islamic theological
scene is represented by those who opposed the methods and conclusions of
(Muʿtazilī) kalām outright but who nevertheless put forward explicit doctrines
on controversial issues of theology. In general, such men belonged to the group
that the sources designate as ahl al-ḥadīth, the most influential of whom was
Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal (d. 241/855),82 founder of the fourth Sunnī legal school, of
which Ibn Taymiyya was a loyal adherent.83 Ibn Taymiyya, as we shall see, has
much praise for Ibn Ḥanbal’s keen intellect, a judgement shared by contempo-
rary Western scholars such as Watt, who says of Ibn Ḥanbal that “he was clearly
a man of powerful intellect capable of adopting a coherent view in matters
of great complexity.”84 On the other hand, Watt’s claim—typical of an earlier
generation of Western scholarship—that Ibn Ḥanbal “rejected [altogether] the
rational methods of the Mutakallimūn and insisted on deriving religious doc-

80 On the “traditionalization” of the Ḥanafī school in the third/ninth century, see Melchert,
Formation, 54–60.
81 Watt, Formative Period, 284. Watt mentions this specifically with regard to whether the
verbalization (lafẓ) of the Qurʾān during recitation is “created” or “uncreated,” though al-
Ṭaḥāwī’s circumspection on this issue can be generalized to his approach as a whole. For
a translation of al-Ṭaḥāwī’s creed with an extensive introduction and notes, see Hamza
Yusuf, The Creed of Imam al-Ṭaḥāwī. On the development of theology among Ḥanafīs from
the time of Abū Ḥanīfa through the founding of the Māturīdī school in the fourth/tenth
century, see Rudolph, “Ḥanafī Theological Tradition and Māturīdism.”
82 On whom see especially Melchert, Ahmad ibn Hanbal.
83 With some qualifications, as discussed in chapter 2.
84 Watt, Formative Period, 291.

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trines and legal rules solely from the Qurʾān and the Traditions”85 must be
nuanced in light of more recent studies. Binyamin Abrahamov, for instance, has
shown that many in the traditionalist camp indeed used rational arguments—
sometimes even kalām-style proofs—in addition to direct appeals to the
Qurʾān and ḥadīth in order to establish a given point of theology.86 Ibn Tay-
miyya, incidentally, makes a very similar point, as we explore further in chap-
ter 2.87
Prominent Ḥanbalīs of this period include Abū Bakr al-Khallāl (d. 311/923),
al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī al-Barbahārī (d. 329/941), and Ibn Khuzayma (d. 311/924). Yet
not all ḥadīth scholars who took public positions on theological matters were
followers of Ibn Ḥanbal. Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889), for instance, who lived
about one generation after Ibn Ḥanbal, deemed himself a member of the ahl
al-ḥadīth but not necessarily a follower of Ibn Ḥanbal, whom he considered
“only one of at least a dozen distinguished scholars of this party.”88 The famous
Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923), known primarily for his forty-volume
historical chronicle89 but who also founded a legal school (which, however,
did not survive in the long run), also held theological views that were, by
and large, very close to those held by this group of scholars. Nevertheless, al-
Ṭabarī is not usually thought of as a Ḥanbalī, and, in fact, he drew the ire of
the Ḥanbalīs in the last year or so of his life, apparently for conceding certain
Muʿtazilī theses regarding some of the seemingly anthropomorphic passages
of the Qurʾān.90 These various names and tendencies serve to demonstrate the
extent to which there existed “orthodox,” primarily non-speculative Sunnī (as
opposed to Muʿtazilī) theologians even before the time of Abū al-Ḥasan al-
Ashʿarī in the early fourth/tenth century.

85 Ibid.
86 See Abrahamov, “Scripturalist and Traditionalist Theology,” 273–274, where he details Ibn
Ḥanbal’s use of the kalām argument from disjunction (taqsīm) to prove the impossibility
of God’s being present (i.e., in His essence, as opposed to with His knowledge) in each and
every place.
87 See, e.g., Darʾ, 7:154, lines 7–8 in reference to Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal’s use of definitive proofs
(adilla qaṭʿiyya) based in both reason (ʿaql) and revelation (naql).
88 Watt, Formative Period, 296.
89 Entitled Tārīkh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk (History of prophets and kings).
90 See van Ess, Flowering, 60–61.

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6 The Miḥna and Its Aftermath

The clash between Muʿtazilī rationalistic theology, on the one hand, and the
non-speculative, or minimally speculative, amodal adherence to the overt
meaning of scripture (as propounded by the founders of the main Sunnī legal
schools, master ḥadīth critics, and figures like al-Baghdādī’s mutakallimūn of
ahl al-sunna), on the other hand, came to a head in the first half of the third/
ninth century with the infamous miḥna, or “inquisition.”91 At issue in the miḥna
was the highly contentious question encountered above concerning the “cre-
atedness” of the Qurʾān. Though remembered primarily as a theological dis-
pute, the miḥna had important political ramifications and was symptomatic
of a wider struggle for legitimacy and religious authority between the office of
the caliph and the collective body of religious scholars, or ʿulamāʾ.92 During
the reign of three successive Abbasid caliphs,93 all religious scholars, judges,
and other notables, particularly in Baghdad and its immediate environs, were
forced publicly to endorse the Muʿtazilī doctrine that the Qurʾān was “created”
(makhlūq) rather than eternal (qadīm).94 Those who refused were imprisoned,
beaten, and, in some cases, killed. While the vast majority of ʿulamāʾ relented
under such pressing duress, a few stalwart souls held out, braving torment and
humiliation to uphold what was widely considered the orthodox position of
the early community (salaf ) and authoritative scholars (aʾimma) of the first
two centuries of Islam: namely, that the Qurʾān was the eternal and uncreated
word of God, an intrinsic and inseparable part of His essence and not a creation
extrinsic to the divine being and originated in time like the created universe
and all that it contains. Among those few who defied the inquisition authorities
and refused to flinch under any circumstances was, most prominently, Aḥmad
b. Ḥanbal.95

91 For a summary of these events, see Hurvitz, “al-Maʾmūn (r. 198/813–218/833) and the
Miḥna.”
92 For a discussion of the political dimensions of the miḥna and its connection to the struggle
over ultimate religious authority, see Zaman, Religion and Politics. For a different perspec-
tive on the possible causes of the miḥna, see Nawas, “Reexamination” and Nawas, “Miḥna.”
93 The first of whom was the caliph al-Maʾmūn (d. 218/833), son of the famed Hārūn al-Rashīd
(d. 193/809). On al-Maʾmūn, see Cooperson, Al-Maʾmun.
94 This doctrine was held by a number of Ḥanafīs as well, and it has been argued that the
miḥna was largely aimed at supporting rationalist and semi-rationalist trends more gen-
erally against an “increasingly assertive traditionalism.” Hoover, “Ḥanbalī Theology,” 628.
95 The one other person who held out indefinitely—until he finally died in chains while
being transported back to Baghdad from the Byzantine border, where he and Ibn Ḥan-
bal had been interrogated under the caliph’s personal supervision—was a scholar by the
name of Muḥammad b. Nūḥ al-ʿIjlī (d. 218/833). Melchert, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, 11.

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In the year 232/847, the tables were turned on the Muʿtazila when the caliph
Jaʿfar b. al-Muʿtaṣim al-Mutawakkil (r. 232–247/847–861) succeeded his brother,
Abū Jaʿfar al-Wāthiq (r. 227–232/842–847), and deposed the Muʿtazila,96 remov-
ing them from their posts and initiating a downhill spiral from which they
never fully recovered. Though the Muʿtazila remained a strong theological (and
sometimes political) voice in pockets beyond the central Abbasid lands for sev-
eral centuries, they became increasingly marginalized from mainstream schol-
arly discourse.97
In the wake of the miḥna, a group of theologians emerged in Baghdad whose
doctrinal positions were close to the views of Ibn Ḥanbal and of those Ḥanafīs
and others who had remained aloof from Muʿtazilī methods and had refused to
debate theological issues on the terms set by kalām.98 One figure in this emerg-
ing group was the famous early Sufi al-Ḥārith al-Muḥāsibī (d. 243/857),99 a
contemporary of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal who, in spite of his essentially traditionalist
orientation, nevertheless incurred Ibn Ḥanbal’s wrath merely for engaging with
the discourse of kalām in order to refute it. Ibn Ḥanbal seems to have deemed
this engagement in and of itself a dangerous endorsement of the legitimacy
of the methods and assumptions of kalām.100 Other figures who engaged in
kalām discourse at this time include Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Qalānisī101 and the afore-
mentioned Ibn Qutayba.102 Ibn Qutayba and al-Muḥāsibī can be understood as

96 On the reversal of the miḥna and the period immediately succeeding it, see Melchert,
“Religious Policies.”
97 Watt, Islamic Philosophy and Theology, 53.
98 It is important to remember that kalām at this time was more or less an entirely Muʿtazilī
affair, which explains why some were so adamantly opposed to it; it had not yet been
integrated into mainstream discourse or rendered “safe” in the eyes of more circumspect,
traditionally-minded individuals.
99 Major studies on al-Muḥāsibī include van Ess, Die Gedankenwelt des Ḥāriṯ al-Muḥāsibī;
de Crussol, Le rôle de la raison dans la réflexion éthique d’Al-Muḥāsibī; and, more recently,
Picken, Spiritual Purification in Islam. See summary treatment in Bin Ramli, “Predecessors
of Ashʿarism,” 219–221.
100 Bin Ramli, “Predecessors of Ashʿarism,” 219. On the relationship between al-Ḥārith al-
Muḥāsibī and Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, see Picken, “Ibn Ḥanbal and al-Muḥāsibī.”
101 The place and dates of al-Qalānisī’s birth and death are not known with precision. Ibn
ʿAsākir (d. 571/1176) describes him as “a contemporary, though not a pupil, of Abū al-
Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī” (min muʿāṣirī Abī al-Ḥasan, raḥimahu Allāh, lā min talāmidhatihi). See
Ibn ʿAsākir, Tabyīn kadhib al-muftarī, 398. On al-Qalānisī more generally, see al-Salālī, Ārāʾ
al-Kullābiyya, 73–78, as well as Gimaret, “Cet autre théologien sunnite” (summarized in
Bin Ramli, “Predecessors of Ashʿarism,” 221–223).
102 Regarding the divine attributes, for instance, Ibn Qutayba took the position that God’s
essence and acts could not be fully comprehended by reason. Rather, the essential reality
of such matters lay inherently and irremediably beyond full human comprehension, such

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treading a middle path between the practitioners of kalām as it had developed

up to their day and those who refused even to engage with its discourse.103
Another theologian of great influence in the period immediately following
the miḥna was ʿAbd Allāh b. Kullāb (d. ca. 241/855),104 who played a central role
in the movement for the acceptance of kalām and its methods among main-
stream Sunnīs.105 Though Ibn Kullāb largely inclined towards the substantive
doctrines of the Ḥanbalī-style traditionalists,106 he is famous for the view—
which became standard in subsequent Ashʿarī doctrine—that the divine attri-
butes are neither identical to God nor other than God.107 In sum, al-Muḥāsibī,
Ibn Kullāb, and al-Qalānisī can be seen as the immediate forerunners of al-
Ashʿarī; they were “semi-rationalists”108 who used some measure of kalām argu-
mentation in defending (more or less) traditionalist theological positions.109

7 Nascent Ashʿarī Thought and the Early Kalām

7.1 al-Ashʿarī
Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī (d. 324/935 or 936),110 a descendent of the famous Com-
panion of the Prophet Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī (d. ca. 42/662),111 hailed from the
city of Basra but spent most of his life in Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid

that attempting to confine any such truths within perfectly transparent rational categories
could only lead to their distortion. Nagel, History, 135.
103 Al-Muḥāsibī, for instance, attempted to respond to the Muʿtazila by “develop[ing] the
concept of a certain alignment of God’s actions and those of His creatures,” that is, by
“rationalizing” the divine attributes to some degree—even if slight—in order to bring
them more within the range of human rational apprehension. Ibid., 140.
104 On Ibn Kullāb, see van Ess, “Ibn Kullāb and His School,” 263–267. For a more specific
discussion of Ibn Kullāb’s role in the miḥna, see van Ess, “Ibn Kullāb und die Miḥna” (sub-
sequently published in French as “Ibn Kullāb et la Miḥna”).
105 Watt, Formative Period, 288.
106 Bin Ramli, “Predecessors of Ashʿarism,” 218.
107 Ibid., 217.
108 Ibid., 223–224.
109 Watt, Formative Period, 288; Bin Ramli, “Predecessors of Ashʿarism,” 217.
110 There is some uncertainty concerning al-Ashʿarī’s death date. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī
(d. 463/1071) reports three possible dates: (1) the 330s/940s; (2) between 320/932 and
330/941; and (3) the precise year 324/935 or 936, which he reports on the authority of Ibn
Ḥazm. See al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh Baghdād, 13:260. Kaḥḥāla reports the same three
dates (the second on the authority of the Ottoman historian and chronicler Taşköprüzade
[d. 968/1561]) and concludes that the most likely date is 324/935 or 936. See Kaḥḥāla,
Muʿjam al-muʾallifīn, 7:35.
111 The death date of Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī is also a matter of considerable uncertainty, with
various dates given in the sources as AH 41, 42, 50, 52, or 53. The most likely date seems to
be 42/662. Vaglieri, “al-Ashʿarī, Abū Mūsā,” EI2, 1:694–696.

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empire. In Baghdad, he dedicated himself to the religious sciences, eventu-

ally emerging as the top student of the leading Muʿtazilī authority of his day,
Abū ʿAlī al-Jubbāʾī (d. 303/915 or 916). Around the age of forty, al-Ashʿarī experi-
enced an abrupt change of heart after a dream in which the Prophet visited him
and urged him to defend the Sunna (as transmitted through ḥadīth). Al-Ashʿarī
thereupon publicly recanted Muʿtazilī doctrine,112 completely abandoned the
pursuit of kalām, and devoted himself exclusively to the study of the Qurʾān
and ḥadīth. In a subsequent vision, however, the Prophet reproved al-Ashʿarī,
clarifying that while he had commanded him to defend the doctrines reported
on his authority, he had not commanded him to give up rational methods of
argumentation. Al-Ashʿarī thus dedicated the remainder of his life to working
out a methodology for systematically defending revealed doctrines on the basis
of rational argumentation.113
Al-Ashʿarī adopted theological positions close to those of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal
but sought to support these positions on the basis of reasoned argument.114
The novelty in al-Ashʿarī’s approach can be discerned in the fact that even
when, in the course of an argument, he quotes from the Qurʾān, it can be
seen that he is building up a “considerable structure of rational argument”
around the verses.115 And while it is true that Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal had made
some cautious use of rational argumentation, al-Ashʿarī went farther by argu-
ing unapologetically for the legitimacy of systematically defending theological
doctrines by means of formal rational argumentation based on the very meth-
ods developed and employed by the Muʿtazila, whose substantive theological
doctrine he had so resolutely rejected. Al-Ashʿarī even sought to justify this
approach by arguing that the Qurʾān itself contained the germ of certain ratio-
nal methods the Muʿtazila had employed.116 For this reason, most Ḥanbalīs of

112 For an account of al-Ashʿarī’s public dispute with his master, al-Jubbāʾī, that occurred
around the same time and that also contributed to his loss of faith in the Muʿtazilī creed,
see Fakhry, History, 204–205. On the rise of Ashʿarī kalām more generally, see Thiele,
“Between Cordoba and Nīsābūr.”
113 Watt, Islamic Philosophy and Theology, 64–65. For the main differences between Muʿtazilī
theology and the theology eventually developed by al-Ashʿarī, see Thiele, “Between Cor-
doba and Nīsābūr,” 226–229.
114 On al-Ashʿarī’s view of the nature and function of reason in theological matters, see Frank,
“Al-Ašʿari’s Conception.”
115 Watt, Formative Period, 307. See also Watt, Islamic Philosophy and Theology, 66: “When he
[al-Ashʿarī] quotes a verse and argues from it, he is not simply quoting (as some other writ-
ers did) but is placing the verse within a setting of rational conceptions, and he has other
arguments which do not depend on quotations”—a description that is equally apt for Ibn
Taymiyya’s methodology.
116 Nagel, History, 152. This is a critical point since Ibn Taymiyya also stresses the Qurʾān’s use
of rational argumentation and consciously tries to develop a notion of reason that grows
out of and is congruent with the Qurʾān.

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al-Ashʿarī’s day rejected him and his followers since they, like their leader,
Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, considered the very use of formalized kalām a dangerous
capitulation to methods and assumptions that, in and of themselves, were
invalid and without foundation.117
In terms of substantive doctrine, al-Ashʿarī differed from the Ḥanbalīs in that
he took an explicit position on the question of the divine attributes, initially
raised by the Muʿtazila,118 in contrast to the Ḥanbalīs’ strict amodal (bi-lā kayf )
approach. Al-Ashʿarī’s position allows some measure of analogy between the
attributes of God and those human attributes designated by the same name, in
accordance with an attenuated form of the Muʿtazilī principle of qiyās al-ghāʾib
ʿalā al-shāhid (or al-qiyās bi-l-shāhid ʿalā al-ghāʾib), that is, drawing an analog-
ical inference from the “visible” (shāhid) world of our empirical experience to
the “invisible” (ghāʾib) world of unseen realities that lie beyond our sense per-
ception.119 By cautiously adopting this principle in a moderated form, al-Ashʿarī
tried to steer a middle course between the radical views of the Muʿtazila120 and
those of the strictest Ḥanbalīs.121 Thomas Nagel sums up al-Ashʿarī’s position
on the divine attributes by explaining that

they [the attributes] were not merely some phantom of the necessarily
human language of revelation. To be sure, when the Koran spoke of God’s
hands, it meant something that exclusively referred to God’s reality, but
it also had a comparable reference point in the realm of human expe-
rience. . . . Expressions in the revelation such as hand, face, etc., which

117 See, e.g., ibid., 178.

118 For an extended discussion of al-Ashʿarī’s position on the divine attributes in his various
works, see Allard, Le problème, 173–285.
119 Nagel, History, 153. We deal with the question of qiyās al-ghāʾib ʿalā al-shāhid, which is
central to Ibn Taymiyya’s methodology and approach to the divine attributes, in detail in
chapter 6.
120 This inference from the seen to the unseen was one of the Muʿtazilī principles that al-
Ashʿarī initially adopted but attempted to bend to his own purposes. He seems to have con-
cluded that the Muʿtazila were not wrong in principle to draw such inferences with regard
to the divine attributes (otherwise we would have no way of relating to the attributes at
all); however, in their attempt to achieve maximum rational consistency, the Muʿtazila had
pushed the principle so far that they committed precisely that kind of tashbīh from which
they had originally fled. Thus, they essentially came to conceive of the divine attributes as
being subject to the very same sorts of limitations that apply to human attributes denoted
by the same name. It is for this reason that, in an effort to avoid likening God to created
things, they ultimately denied the divine attributes altogether. Because they had essen-
tially assimilated (shabbahū) God’s attributes to man’s, the Muʿtazila drew the inexorable
conclusion that affirming any of the divine attributes necessarily involved likening God
to creation (tashbīh).
121 See Nagel, History, 154; also Thiele, “Between Cordoba and Nīsābūr,” 227–228.

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God Himself chose, were by no means metaphors! But neither must they
be understood in purely human-physical terms. Rather, they were real
attributes whose true nature man was not able to recognize.122

Al-Ashʿarī’s theological treatise al-Ibāna ʿan uṣūl al-diyāna123 has been de-
scribed as a turning point in Islamic theology, a kind of bridge work between
the earlier credos (like that of al-Ṭaḥāwī) and the later dogmatic treatises, such
as those of al-Ghazālī, al-Bayḍāwī (d. 685/1286 or 691/1292), al-Ījī (d. 756/1355),
or al-Sanūsī (d. 895/1490).124 In the Ibāna, which may be his first work after
embracing Sunnism,125 al-Ashʿarī shows no compromise with Muʿtazilī doc-
trines or methods whatsoever. In a later work, Maqālāt al-Islāmiyyīn (Theologi-
cal doctrines of the Muslims), however, his tone is calmer and his positions are
less black and white, as he is freer to “take the spoils from defeated Muʿtazil-
ism and enrich therewith a henceforth orthodox kalām”126 (which, for Ibn
Taymiyya, it might be added, is precisely where al-Ashʿarī went wrong).127

122 Nagel, History, 154.

123 For the Arabic text of this work with an English translation, see Klein, Abu’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn
Ismāʿīl al-Ašʿarī’s al-Ibānah ʿan uṣūl ad-diyānah.
124 Gardet and Anawati, Introduction, 60.
125 The chronology of the Ibāna is disputed. Gardet and Anawati (Introduction, 60) follow
Wensinck (Muslim Creed, 93) in suggesting that the Ibāna was al-Ashʿarī’s first post-
conversion work. Allard (Le problème, 250–251), by contrast, dates it to around the year
315/927 or 928, placing it after al-Ashʿarī’s other major works, including Risāla ilā ahl al-
thaghr, Kitāb al-Lumaʿ, and Istiḥsān al-khawḍ fī ʿilm al-kalām [also known by the title Kitāb
al-Ḥathth ʿalā al-baḥth—on which see Frank, “Al-Ashʿarī’s Kitāb al-ḥathth ʿalā l-Baḥth”].
Note that Ibn Taymiyya also considered the Ibāna to be al-Ashʿarī’s last work on theology,
one that represented his final view on theological matters. On various views concern-
ing the authenticity of and the relationship among al-Ashʿarī’s various works, see Thiele,
“Between Cordoba and Nīsābūr,” 227, n. 2.
126 Gardet and Anawati, Introduction, 60. The difference in the tone of al-Ashʿarī’s various
treatises has also been interpreted as a function of each work’s respective audience. Watt
(Formative Period, 306–307), for instance, follows Allard’s view that al-Ashʿarī’s al-Lumaʿ
was directed to the Muʿtazila and other mutakallimūn, whereas the Ibāna contains argu-
ments specifically addressed to the Ḥanbalīs—a point that perhaps explains its more
strident, less compromising tone. See Allard, Le problème, esp. 215–285. Yet we must bear
in mind that al-Ashʿarī also seems to have written the work Istiḥsān al-khawḍ fī ʿilm al-
kalām (The vindication of the use of the science of kalām) with a Ḥanbalī audience in
mind, in this case to convince them of the legitimacy and appropriateness, or “permis-
sibility” (“istiḥsān” here presumably being used in its legal sense), of engaging in kalām.
These positions are perhaps not incompatible since a strict Ḥanbalī (recall Aḥmad b. Ḥan-
bal) would have objected to any rationalistic (understood here in the pejorative sense of
pseudo-rational) defense of theological doctrines, regardless how conservative and tradi-
tionalist the positions defended. For the Arabic text of al-Ashʿarī’s Istiḥsān with an English
translation, see McCarthy, The Theology of al-Ashʿarī.
127 For a summary of the achievement of al-Ashʿarī, see Watt, Formative Period, 303ff. For

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When Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī died in 324/935 (or 936), he left behind only
three pupils, none of whom are particularly well known to posterity.128 It is
not until the second generation after al-Ashʿarī that we encounter three other,
prominent figures who took up al-Ashʿarī’s torch and who further developed
the thought and formalized the method of their esteemed master. The most
important of these figures is Abū Bakr al-Bāqillānī.129

7.2 al-Bāqillānī
Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. al-Ṭayyib al-Bāqillānī (d. 403/1013), like al-Ashʿarī,
hailed from the city of Basra, where he is reported to have studied kalām
under two of al-Ashʿarī’s direct students.130 A Mālikī in legal rite,131 al-Bāqillānī
spent much of his life in Baghdad with the exception of a period during which
he held the office of judge (qāḍī) somewhere outside the capital city.132 Ibn
Khaldūn credits al-Bāqillānī with perfecting the early methodology of Ashʿarī
kalām,133 and modern scholars have agreed on the pivotal role al-Bāqillānī
played in consolidating the school.134 Al-Bāqillānī drew out al-Ashʿarī’s initial
insights and positions more fully and refined his method in order to provide the
most robust defense of al-Ashʿarī’s original doctrine possible.135 We recall that

a more detailed study of the development of al-Ashʿarī’s doctrine, see Frank, “Elements
in the Development of the Teaching of al-Ašʿarī.” For an extended study of the life and
thought of al-Ashʿarī, see McCarthy, Theology, passim and Allard, Le problème, 25–72.
128 These are Abū Sahl al-Ṣuʿlūkī (d. 369/980) of Nishapur, Abū al-Ḥasan al-Bāhilī (d. ca. 370/
980) of Basra, and Abū ʿAbd Allāh b. Mujāhid al-Ṭāʾī (d. 360s/970s or 370s/980s) of Basra.
Watt, Formative Period, 312. For a discussion of the major Ashʿarī figures up until al-
Ghazālī, see Watt, Islamic Philosophy and Theology, 75–84.
129 The other two being Ibn Fūrak (d. 406/1015) and Abū Isḥāq al-Isfarāyīnī (d. 418/1027).
Thiele, “Between Cordoba and Nīsābūr,” 229.
130 Namely, al-Bāhilī and Ibn Mujāhid. Watt, Formative Period, 312.
131 Al-Bāqillānī’s Mālikī affiliation seems to have contributed to the spread and acceptance of
Ashʿarī theology in North Africa, a region uniformly Mālikī in legal rite. Before this time,
most adherents of Ashʿarī kalām were Shāfiʿī (like al-Ashʿarī himself), though there were
some Ḥanafīs among them as well. Watt, Islamic Philosophy and Theology, 76.
132 Ibid.
133 See Ibn Khaldūn, al-Muqaddima, 465, lines 12–13 for the remark that al-Bāqillānī “took a
leading role in [developing] their [the Ashʿarīs’] method,” specifically by making explicit
the rational premises on which the key positions of the school rested.
134 Thiele, “Between Cordoba and Nīsābūr,” 231. Majid Fakhry, for instance, speaks of the
“pioneering role [al-Bāqillānī played] in elaborating the metaphysical groundwork of
Ashʿarism.” Fakhry, History, 213.
135 Al-Bāqillānī’s ingenuity in this regard can be seen in his remodeling of al-Jubbāʾī’s the-
ory of the aḥwāl, or “states,” a theory that he adapted to the needs of Ashʿarī theology
by using it to prove what the Muʿtazila had intended it to disprove (namely, the subsis-
tence in God of qualities such as knowledge, power, and will as distinct, existing entities,

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al-Ashʿarī’s views were, on the whole, rather conservative and close to those of
Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal (though on some issues they tended more towards a mid-
dle path between strict Ḥanbalī traditionalism and Muʿtazilī-inspired rational-
ism). Whereas al-Ashʿarī had set stringent conditions for proofs, al-Bāqillānī
laid down even more exacting standards, namely, through his principle of
reversibility, which requires that proofs be fully reversible, meaning that the
invalidity of a proof necessarily entails the falsity of that which it was meant to
prove.136
On the whole, al-Bāqillānī can be considered the greatest systematizer of
early Ashʿarī theology (the way of the “mutaqaddimūn”) and, in a sense, the last
one since, starting with al-Juwaynī (d. 478/1085) in the next generation, funda-
mental changes began to occur that paved the way for a “new kalām” (that of
the “mutaʾakhkhirūn”)—changes that involved a number of conceptual refor-
mulations and methodological renovations of earlier Ashʿarī doctrine. But to
gain an adequate understanding of exactly what happened and why, we must
divert our attention briefly to the rise and development of an entirely separate
discourse that had a major impact on Ashʿarī kalām as of the middle of the
fifth/eleventh century: namely, philosophy ( falsafa).

8 Philosophy

Philosophical reflection began early in the intellectual career of Islam.137 As

we have seen above, some Greek materials were already in circulation and
being used in the Syriac tradition before the rise of Islam in the first/seventh
century. Greek logic, along with other categories of Greek philosophy, had
been incorporated into Christian theological discourse for several centuries,
and elements of it had already begun to appear in early Muslim theological
debates.138 But it was the massive movement to translate Greek philosoph-
ical and scientific texts, an effort that lasted from the second/eighth to the
fourth/tenth century and known simply as the translation movement, that was
the major catalyst for the rise of a rationalist Muʿtazilī theology. This move-

or maʿānī). See Thiele, “Abū Hāshim al-Jubbāʾī’s (d. 321/933) Theory of ‘States’ (aḥwāl),”
377–380.
136 Nagel, History, 160.
137 For a useful list of selected readings on all aspects of the Islamic philosophical tradi-
tion, see Adamson and Taylor, eds., Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy, 426–441
(“Select Bibliography and Further Reading”).
138 See section 3 of the current chapter, p. 31ff.

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ment also catalyzed the development of an independent tradition of philo-

sophical reflection in Arabic, one whose formative and classical stages stretch
from early third-/ninth-century Baghdad to late sixth-/twelfth-century Andalu-
sia.139
The genealogy of the Arabic-Islamic philosophical tradition (also known
by its Arabic name falsafa) that arose in the Muslim world as a result of
the Greco-Arabic translation movement includes Aristotle and the main Hel-
lenistic commentators on his work—all of whom, with the exception of the
Aristotelian Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. ca. 200CE), were Neoplatonists—
in addition to original Neoplatonic texts.140 Since even Aristotle’s works were
transmitted into Arabic through a distinctly Neoplatonic lens, Neoplatonism
was central in setting the tenor of the Muslim philosophical tradition, and
many of the ideas that Ibn Taymiyya found most objectionable in the philo-
sophical and theological traditions he inherited were of Neoplatonic inspira-
tion. The most outstanding (earlier) figures of the Arabic-Islamic philosophical
tradition are al-Kindī (d. ca. 252/866), al-Fārābī (d. ca. 339/950), and, especially,
their preeminent successor Ibn Sīnā, an independent and original thinker
widely hailed as the greatest figure in the Muslim Peripatetic tradition. Ibn Sīnā,
in fact, took up many of the questions that had been put forth in kalām, such
that philosophy after the classical period had to contend with both Ibn Sīnā
and the tradition of kalām.141 As a result, philosophers post-Ibn Sīnā became
more consistently concerned with providing solutions anchored in philoso-
phy to the problems set forth by kalām.142 At the same time, and far more
significantly for our inquiry, kalām itself was enormously influenced by the
thought of Ibn Sīnā, whose categories, ideas, and terminology left a lasting

139 For a detailed presentation of the various stages of the translation movement and the
actors involved, see Fakhry, History, 4–19 and, more extensively, Gutas, Greek Thought, pas-
sim.
140 For a table of the numerous Neoplatonic writings translated into Arabic (or Syriac) pre-
sented in convenient table form, see d’Ancona, “Greek into Arabic,” 22–23.
141 See comments at Wisnovsky, “Avicenna,” 92.
142 Falsafa has traditionally been seen as primarily, and perhaps exclusively, influenced by
Islamic theological discourse not in its method or basic philosophical precommitments
but only in the sense that it ultimately took up some of the issues discussed in kalām
and “philosophized” them, so to speak, by assimilating them to the larger philosophi-
cal Weltanschauung and recasting them in light of a purely philosophical interpretation.
(See, e.g., Gardet and Anawati, Introduction, 322–323, n. 3.) More recent scholarship, how-
ever, has contended that the boundaries between theology and philosophy were not as
clearly demarcated, whether in terms of methodology or in terms of subject matter. See,
for instance, Wisnovsky, “Notes,” as well as Wisnovsky, “Nature and Scope.”

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imprint on the works of the later mutakallimūn.143 To gain a just appreciation of

al-Ghazālī’s synthesis at the turn of the sixth/twelfth century—and, ultimately,
of the nature of the intellectual tradition that Ibn Taymiyya inherited and to
which he responded with such vigor two centuries later—we must first under-
stand the challenge philosophy posed to kalām and to Islamic religious belief
more generally, as well as the imprint the philosophical tradition left on kalām
and its practitioners.

8.1 al-Kindī
The Kufan-educated Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb b. Isḥāq al-Kindī (d. ca. 252/866), known
as the “philosopher of the Arabs” ( faylasūf al-ʿArab), flourished in Baghdad
under the patronage of the same three Abbasid caliphs who had executed the
miḥna. Al-Kindī endeavored to make philosophy acceptable to his fellow Mus-
lims through a “policy of reconciliation,”144 in part by designating philosophy
by the Qurʾānic term ḥikma (wisdom) and in part by attempting to demon-
strate that the rational sciences were consistent with true belief, specifically
tawḥīd.145 Classical biographers, both supporters and detractors, agree that al-
Kindī sought to bridge the gap between philosophy and religion,146 holding that
the two could not be truly contradictory since they both served the common
end of making accessible to men the knowledge of the True One (al-Ḥaqq),
God.147 Indeed, while al-Kindī privileged prophetic over philosophical knowl-
edge with respect to the immediacy of the former (in contrast to the latter,
which can be acquired only after years of arduous learning), he did not seem to
believe that prophets had access to a categorically different kind of knowledge
than what was available to the best philosophers.148
As a philosopher, al-Kindī advocated the application of rational philosophi-
cal methods to the texts of revelation. Not surprisingly, his overall positions on
theological issues were close to those of the Muʿtazila—although there appears
to be no evidence in his writings that he considered himself either a theolo-
gian or a Muʿtazilī proper149—and, as a methodological principle, he placed
the tools and techniques of philosophy above those of kalām.150 Thus, while the

143 See, for example, Wisnovsky, “One Aspect.”

144 Endress, “Defense of Reason,” 15.
145 Ibid., 4–5. See also Adamson, Al-Kindī, 43 on his “belief in the harmony, even the identity,
of the truths of philosophy and the truths of Islam.”
146 Fakhry, History, 68.
147 Klein-Franke, “Al-Kindī,” 171.
148 Adamson, Al-Kindī, 43.
149 Mahdi, Alfarabi and the Foundation, 5.
150 Endress, “Defense of Reason,” 6, 8. See also Watt, Formative Period, 206–208.

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titles of a number of al-Kindī’s works reveal his clear affinities with Muʿtazilī
preoccupations, the titles of other treatises show that he also undertook de-
tailed refutations of certain Muʿtazilī theses, such as atomism.151 Significantly,
however, al-Kindī—almost uniquely among the philosophers—parted ways
with Aristotle on a number of fundamental issues in favor of positions that
were in line with Islamic theological postulates. He joined with Muʿtazilī the-
ologians in defending Islamic beliefs against various groups (materialists,
Manichaeans, atheists, and rival philosophers), breaking ranks with both Aris-
totle and the Neoplatonists on touchstone issues like the creation of the world
ex nihilo,152 the resurrection of the body, the possibility of miracles and pro-
phetic revelation, and the ultimate destruction of the world—all of which he
upheld, in conformity with Islamic teachings but in opposition to the Greek
philosophical tradition and to later falsafa.153 Finally, it has been suggested
that al-Kindī’s conception of God as the efficient cause of the universe can, in
a sense, be seen as an adaptation of the Neoplatonic conception of the One to
the theistic concept of God as Creator.154
We can likewise discern the impact of kalām on some of the topics taken
up by philosophy even as early as al-Kindī, insofar as he attempted to pro-
vide solutions from within philosophy to some of the issues being debated in
kalām. In his most important treatise, Fī al-falsafa al-ūlā (On first philosophy,
of which only the first of four parts has been preserved),155 al-Kindī discusses
the notion of oneness, the crux of which is that nothing about which some-
thing can be predicated can be said to be “one.” Since God is the ultimate One

151 Adamson, “Al-Kindī and the Reception,” 48. For a detailed discussion of the philosoph-
ical convergences and divergences between al-Kindī and the Muʿtazila, see Adamson,
“Al-Kindī and the Muʿtazila,” 45–77. For the theory of atomism as first introduced by the
Muʿtazilī theologian Abū al-Hudhayl al-ʿAllāf, see Frank, Metaphysics of Created Being.
152 Though he seems to have embraced a composite doctrine that combined the Neoplatonic
emanationist notion of the One, Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover, and the theistic conception
of God as Creator, thus simultaneously combining Neoplatonic, Aristotelian, and Islamic
doctrines on God. See Adamson, “Al-Kindī and the Reception,” 38–39; also Endreß, “Athen,
Alexandria, Bagdad, Samarkand,” 49.
153 Fakhry, History, 69. Fakhry stresses how orthodox al-Kindī was for a philosopher (see, for
instance, Fakhry, 93–94). Muhsin Mahdi, by contrast, remarks that while al-Kindī’s views
in some respects resemble those of Muʿtazilī theologians, nevertheless “as one looks more
closely at what al-Kindī writes, he sees that the spirit, intention, and substance of his
thought are quite different from those of the Muʿtazila.” See Mahdi, Alfarabi and the Foun-
dation, 5.
154 Endress, “Defense of Reason,” 10–11. See also Ivry, “Al-Kindī as Philosopher,” 118–124 and
passim for al-Kindī’s eclectic blending of Neoplatonic and Islamic monotheistic elements
within a larger framework of primarily Aristotelian inspiration.
155 Klein-Franke, “Al-Kindī,” 168.

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and since the ascription of any predicate or concept to an entity automatically

entails its multiplicity, it follows that nothing whatsoever can be predicated of
God. The radical negative theology that results from this conception of oneness
is a standard feature of later falsafa and, as we have seen, a central tenet (albeit
in a mitigated form) of the Muʿtazila, self-styled “people of (divine) justice and
unicity” (ahl al-ʿadl wa-l-tawḥīd). Even in the case of al-Kindī the philosopher,
however, some argue against interpreting his theology as purely negative, con-
tending that the faylasūf al-ʿArab was primarily concerned with “preserving a
doctrine of positive divine attribution that can withstand the requirements of
simplicity and transcendence.”156 In particular, at the end of Fī al-falsafa al-ūlā,
al-Kindī refers to the True One, God, as “‘the Giver and Originator, the Powerful,
the Supporter,’” from which Peter Adamson concludes that, for al-Kindī, “God is
not just a principle of oneness; He is an agent.”157 Be that as it may, the philoso-
phers’ starkly abstract conception of divine oneness, with the attendant radical
denial of most or all of the divine attributes, is one of the targets Ibn Taymiyya
attacks most consistently and relentlessly in the Darʾ taʿāruḍ.

8.2 al-Fārābī
Born in Farab (located in current-day Turkmenistan), Abū Naṣr Muḥammad
al-Fārābī (d. ca. 339/950) spent most of his life in Baghdad, where he stud-
ied logic under the Nestorian Christian scholars Yūḥannā b. Ḥaylān (fl. early
fourth/tenth century)158 and Abū Bishr Mattā b. Yūnus (d. 328/940) and where
he taught the Syriac Jacobite Christian translator and logician Yaḥyā b. ʿAdī
(d. 363/974).159 Al-Fārābī was universally venerated as an unparalleled master
of logic and was also considered the leading expositor of Plato and Aristotle in
his day.160 It is primarily his work on logic, however, that earned him the epi-
thet “the Second Teacher” (al-muʿallim al-thānī)161—second only to the First

156 Adamson, Al-Kindī, 55.

157 Ibid., 57.
158 We do not have precise information about the date of Yūḥannā b. Ḥaylān’s death; we know
only that he died during the reign of the Abbasid caliph al-Muqtadir bi-Llāh, sometime
between the years 295/908 and 320/932. See Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa, ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ, 605; Ibn al-
Athīr, al-Kāmil, 7:237.
159 Black, “Al-Fārābī,” 178.
160 Fakhry, History, 107. For a list of al-Fārābī’s chief logical writings, see Fakhry, 109. For a
study of the pre-Fārābian logical tradition in Arabic, with a concentration on early ter-
minology as an indication of the primarily Syriac roots thereof, see Zimmermann, “Some
Observations on al-Farabi and Logical Tradition.”
161 For one interpretation of how al-Fārābī came to merit this appellation, see S.H. Nasr, “Why
Was Al-Fārābī Called the Second Teacher?”

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Teacher, Aristotle. Ibn Rushd and Maimonides (d. 601/1204) pay tribute to him
for his work on logic,162 and Ibn Sīnā records his debt to al-Fārābī for his under-
standing of Aristotle’s Metaphysics.163
Al-Fārābī is credited not only with writing the “first systematic exposition
of Neo-Platonism in Arabic”164 but also, indeed, with laying the foundations of
the mainstream tradition of Islamic philosophy.165 Like al-Kindī, only a small
portion of his many works has survived.166 The majority of al-Fārābī’s writings
are dedicated to logic and the philosophy of language, specifically the relation-
ship between abstract logic and the philosophical terminology used to express
logical relations, on the one hand, and ordinary language and grammar, on the
other.167 The issue of logic and language represents a cardinal point of con-
tention in the debate between reason and revelation168 and, in fact, constitutes
a major element of Ibn Taymiyya’s attack on abstract philosophical reasoning
and of his attempt to reconstitute rationality on more intuitive principles of
everyday reasoning.169
Also relevant to the topic of reason and revelation is the fact that al-Fārābī,
like al-Kindī before him, dealt explicitly with the relationship between phi-
losophy and religion,170 casting this vital discussion in terms that were later

162 Black, “Al-Fārābī,” 192.

163 Ibid., 188.
164 Fakhry, History, 107.
165 Mahdi, Alfarabi and the Foundation, 3. This work provides an informative and interesting
treatment of the background to and the various aspects of al-Fārābī’s philosophical work.
166 Black, “Al-Fārābī,” 179.
167 Ibid. For a full treatment, see Abed, Aristotelian Logic and the Arabic Language in Alfārābī.
Al-Fārābī is also well known for his various writings on political science and philosophy.
(See, for instance, the discussion in Mahdi, Alfarabi and the Foundation, 14–15 ff.)
168 Epitomized by the famous debate between Mattā b. Yūnus, the logician, and Abū Saʿīd al-
Ṣīrāfī (d. 368/979), the theologian, jurist, and philologist. For a presentation and English
paraphrase of this debate, see Mahdi, “Language and Logic,” 51–84. A full German transla-
tion of the debate by Gerhard Endreß is available as an appendix to his detailed study on
the contentious relationship between Greek logic and Arabic grammar and philology from
the beginning of Islam through al-Ghazālī. See Endreß, “Grammatik und Logik,” 235–270.
This appendix also includes a presentation and translation of a text by Yaḥyā b. ʿAdī, Mattā
b. Yūnus’s most important Christian disciple (al-Fārābī, of course, was his most important
Muslim disciple), on the difference between logic and grammar. (See Endreß, 271–296.)
For an extensive study of al-Ṣīrāfī and a systematic interpretation of his debate with Mattā
b. Yūnus, see, in the same volume, Kühn, “Die Rehabilitierung der Sprache.”
169 We return to the issue of language and terminology, a crucial component of Ibn Taymiyya’s
critique, in greater detail in chapter 4, then take up the question of the status of reason
and rationality proper in chapter 5.
170 See Mahdi, “Alfarabi on Philosophy and Religion.”

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closely echoed by Ibn Sīnā and, especially, Ibn Rushd. Al-Fārābī saw the lan-
guage of revelation as a popular expression of philosophical truth, employing
the tools of rhetoric (khiṭāb) and poetics (shiʿr) to indicate, in figurative terms,
truths that the unphilosophical masses are incapable of grasping rationally.171
Though based on Platonic and Hellenistic antecedents, this notion of revela-
tion as a (mere) representation of reality encoded in literary form was fully
worked out, it seems, only in the context of the Arabic-Islamic philosophi-
cal tradition.172 In his writings, al-Fārābī articulates a hierarchy of syllogistic
arts in which, following Aristotle, demonstration (burhān) is the only apodic-
tic method available in philosophy;173 other modes of discourse, particularly
rhetoric and poetics, serve the purposes of non-philosophical communication.
As for dialectic ( jadal), although it falls short of apodictic demonstration, al-
Fārābī nevertheless assigns it a number of important ancillary functions that,
taken together, “elevate [it] from the status of a mere handmaiden to a de facto
partner with demonstration in philosophical pursuits.”174 Like al-Kindī before

171 Black, “Al-Fārābī,” 181.

172 Griffel, Apostasie und Toleranz, 246.
173 Black, “Al-Fārābī,” 181. For a discussion of al-Fārābī’s theory of demonstration, including
those aspects in which he differs from Aristotle—particularly al-Fārābī’s “emphasis on the
ascent toward primary truths at the expense of the subsequent deductive reasoning from
them and his concomitant elevation of dialectic at the expense of demonstration in its
usual meaning”—see Galston, “Al-Fārābī on Aristotle’s Theory of Demonstration” (cited
quotation at p. 30). Relevant to our concerns farther on, Galston raises the possibility that
al-Fārābī may have viewed Aristotle’s apodictic demonstration as merely “a guide for rea-
soning while itself an unattainable goal” (Galston, 32). Furthermore, al-Fārābī seems to
have deemed it very difficult to construct full-fledged demonstrations from scratch and,
consequently, to have given considerable weight to the practical necessity of beginning
one’s pursuit of truth by reasoning from dialectical syllogisms based on generally accepted
premises, then refining these by a subsequent application of the rules of demonstration in
order to distinguish true premises from false. Al-Fārābī therefore seems to stand in agree-
ment with Ibn Taymiyya that true apodictic demonstration (as per the doctrine of the
philosophers) is hard to come by, particularly when it comes to “acquiring premises of
the requisite kind” (Galston, 31). Galston states the matter aptly when she asks if, for al-
Fārābī, “the upward movement [i.e., from particular sense experiences] toward primary
principles can ever provide the necessary certainty that demonstrations require of their
starting-points” (Galston, 31).
174 Black, “Al-Fārābī,” 182. At the beginning of his Kitāb al-Jadal (Book of dialectic), al-Fārābī
enumerates five ways in which dialectic contributes substantively to the philosophical
pursuit, namely, (as paraphrased in Black, 182) “(1) by offering training in the skills of
argumentation; (2) by providing an initial exposure to the principles of the individual
demonstrative sciences; (3) by awakening awareness of the innate self-evident principles
of demonstration, in particular for the physical sciences; (4) by developing the skills useful
for communicating with the masses; and (5) for refuting sophistry.”

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him, al-Fārābī explicitly called for the allegorical reinterpretation of scripture

in instances in which the literal meaning conflicts with reason.175 In this vein,
he outlined a theory in which Aristotle’s poetics is identified as the means of
communication employed by revelation, the truths of which are thus com-
municated to the masses through takhyīl, a kind of “imaginalization” or imag-
inative evocation meant to stand in as a surrogate for those incapable of
philosophical reasoning.176 This notion of revelation’s reliance on poetic lan-
guage and on the imaginative evocation such language is said to enable went on
to become standard doctrines of the philosophers; both ideas were forcefully
reasserted two and a half centuries later by Ibn Rushd and come under massive
and sustained attack by Ibn Taymiyya in the Darʾ taʿāruḍ. Al-Fārābī’s central rel-
evance to the debate on reason and revelation in Islam thus lies principally in
his “interest in types of rationality, in modes of discourse and argumentation,
and in the relations between ordinary and philosophical language,” all of which
form an “integral part of his answer to [the] historical challenge [of the] need
to address seriously the sometimes competing claims between philosophy and
religion.”177

8.3 Ibn Sīnā

Born near Bukhara (in current-day Uzbekistan), Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn b. Sīnā
(d. 428/1037), known in the medieval and modern West under the Latinized
name Avicenna, is without a doubt the central figure in the Arabic-Islamic
philosophical tradition. Before Ibn Sīnā, philosophy and kalām, despite cross-
fertilizations, represented two distinct strands of thought. With Ibn Sīnā, the
two strands became intertwined to such an extent that post-Avicennian kalām
came to represent a synthesis of Ibn Sīnā’s metaphysics and Islamic theologi-
cal doctrine.178 Ibn Sīnā’s metaphysical theses were taken up and debated by
kalām-theologians right up to the dawn of the modern era.179 In short, Ibn Sīnā
“straddled two worlds: the world of falsafa and the world of kalām.”180

175 Fakhry, History, 116.

176 Black, “Al-Fārābī,” 182.
177 Ibid., 192.
178 See Wisnovsky, “Avicenna,” 92. See also Ayman Shihadeh, “From al-Ghazālī to al-Rāzī,” 175
for the observation that philosophy ( falsafa) and theology (kalām) “came to be as if one
and the same discipline.” See also Endress, “Defense of Reason,” 30 for the point that “it
was through him [Ibn Sīnā] that the falsafa came to be and to stay an integral and living
part of Islamic thought” (and further remarks at Endress, 37).
179 Wisnovsky, “Avicenna,” 93. For an overview of Ibn Sīnā’s metaphysics, see Marmura, “Avi-
cenna’s Metaphysics”; also Hallaq, Greek Logicians, xiv–xxiv, and passim. For a more in-
depth treatment, see Menn, “Avicenna’s Metaphysics” and McGinnis, Avicenna, 149–208.
For an exhaustive exploration, see Wisnovsky, Avicenna’s Metaphysics in Context.
180 Wisnovsky, “Avicenna,” 109.

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Ibn Sīnā’s influence, like that of al-Fārābī, was felt most profoundly in the
fields of logic and, especially, metaphysics. Our concern here is strictly lim-
ited to those aspects of Ibn Sīnā’s thought that were eventually adopted by
mainstream mutakallimūn and naturalized into later kalām. One of the most
important of these ideas is Ibn Sīnā’s distinction between essence and exis-
tence, as well as his distinction (which attracted a considerable amount of crit-
icism) between that which is necessary by virtue of itself (al-wājib bi-dhātihi),
namely, God, and that which is necessary but by virtue of another (al-wājib
bi-ghayrihi), namely, everything other than God (which is deemed to exist nec-
essarily, albeit by virtue of God and not by virtue of itself). These twin theses
exercised an enormous influence in post-classical Islamic intellectual history,
both in various strains of later philosophy and in mainstream Sunnī, as well as
Shīʿī, kalām.181
Ibn Sīnā viewed logic as the key to philosophy, an indispensable tool that
leads to knowledge of the essential natures of things182—a conception of logic
that Ibn Taymiyya attacks emphatically.183 Ibn Sīnā is credited with articulating
the original notion of God as being “necessarily existent by virtue of Himself”
(wājib al-wujūd bi-dhātihi)—the Necessarily Existent from whom the rest of
existent things then overflow by necessity (which is why they are classified as
necessarily existent, though by virtue not of themselves but of God) in typi-
cal Neoplatonic emanationist fashion. Ibn Sīnā’s particular notion of God pre-
cluded that He could have any intentional relation to the world184—a major
point of variance with Islamic theological doctrine, which insists on God’s fully
free and volitional creation of the cosmos. Furthermore, according to Ibn Sīnā,
divine providence cannot be understood in terms of God’s direct superinten-
dence of or concern for the world, but only in the far more remote sense of
God’s (mere) knowledge of the order of all existence and the manner of its
goodness.185
Later critics of Ibn Sīnā, such as the Ashʿarī theologians al-Ghazālī and al-
Shahrastānī (d. 548/1153), mostly took issue with Ibn Sīnā’s conception of God
and His relationship to the world, his denial of God’s knowledge of particulars

181 Ibid., 93.

182 Inati, “Ibn Sīnā,” 234–235. See also McGinnis, Avicenna, 28–35.
183 On Ibn Taymiyya’s critique of logic, see Hallaq, Greek Logicians, as well as von Kügelgen,
“Ibn Taymīyas Kritik” and von Kügelgen, “Poison of Philosophy.” For a recent reassessment
of Hallaq’s interpretation of Ibn Taymiyya and a critical review of Ibn Taymiyya’s critique
of logic and the logicians, see El-Rouayheb, “Theology and Logic,” 416–422.
184 Inati, “Ibn Sīnā,” 242.
185 Ibid.

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as particulars, the doctrine of the eternity of the universe, and his purely spir-
itualist, non-corporeal conception of the afterlife. Al-Ghazālī, as we shall see,
dedicated one of his most famous and influential works, Tahāfut al-falāsifa (The
Incoherence of the Philosophers), to launching a devastating attack on major
elements of the Muslim philosophical tradition, primarily as incarnated in Ibn
Sīnā’s unique synthesis of Aristotelian, Neoplatonic, and original Avicennian
elements. In his attack on philosophy, al-Ghazālī singled out the last three doc-
trines enumerated above (the eternity of the world, the denial of God’s knowl-
edge of particulars, and the denial of a physical resurrection) as fundamentally
irreconcilable with the tenets of Islam, such that anyone who held these views
was beyond the pale of the faith. Ibn Taymiyya, too, had many criticisms of Ibn
Sīnā, for he “very perspicaciously saw what Avicenna had done: he had incor-
porated into, and discussed in terms of his own philosophical system, all the
intellectual concerns of Islamic society, such as the nature of prophecy, escha-
tology (maʿād), etc.”186 It was precisely Ibn Sīnā’s discussion and reinterpreta-
tion of central Islamic doctrines on the terms of an independent (and, in his
eyes, rationally inadequate) philosophical system that Ibn Taymiyya objected
to so strongly and that he sought to remedy.
Ultimately, however, the criticisms of al-Ghazālī and others failed to pre-
vent Ibn Sīnā’s thought not only from profoundly affecting the post-Avicennian
philosophical tradition (which is to be expected) but also from penetrating the
very conceptual core of kalām, leading to a distinction between the early kalām
tradition (that of the so-called mutaqaddimūn) and a later, distinctly “post-
Avicennian” kalām (that of the so-called mutaʾakhkhirūn) that unmistakably
bears the imprint of Ibn Sīnā’s philosophy.187 Even al-Ghazālī himself, who was
initially perceived by Western scholars to be categorically opposed to philoso-
phy on all levels, is now understood to have been rather deeply influenced by
his arch-rival Persian compatriot.188

186 Gutas, “Heritage of Avicenna,” 85.

187 Wisnovsky, “Avicenna,” 92. See further at p. 133, where Wisnovsky goes so far as to charac-
terize the post-Avicennian mutakallimūn as “the torchbearers of the Avicennian tradition
in Islamic intellectual history.”
188 And, in fact, this post-Avicennian “kalām of the mutaʾakhkhirūn” may just as well be
described as a “post-Ghazālian kalām” since it was primarily al-Ghazālī who, in refuting
Ibn Sīnā, simultaneously opened the door to his philosophy and (unwittingly?) adopted
and domesticated within both kalām and Sufism a number of important tenets of his
rival’s teaching. For a study of the affinities between al-Ghazālī’s thought and that of Ibn
Sīnā, see Janssens, “Al-Ghazzālī’s Tahāfut.” See also Tim Winter’s remarks in his introduc-
tion to The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology, 12–14.

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9 The New Kalām and Subsequent Developments

Theology in the fifth/eleventh century underwent a fundamental change as it

came under the direct influence of the imposing philosophical system of Ibn
Sīnā. We recall that philosophy until the middle of the fourth/tenth century
was, both methodologically and institutionally, separate from kalām to a con-
siderable degree and that the philosophers as a group, from al-Kindī through
al-Fārābī, had a relatively minor impact on theological discourse.189 Indeed,
although the theologians had absorbed a number of methodological tools from
the philosophers,190 the problems treated in kalām remained essentially the
same throughout this nearly three-century period. This remained true until a
seismic shift took place with the rise, post-Ibn Sīnā, of the new kalām reflected
in the work of al-Juwaynī and, especially, of his famous student, al-Ghazālī.
Given the relative isolation in which philosophy had incubated during its ini-
tial development and subsequent consolidation—that is, during the period of
some two hundred years from al-Kindī through Ibn Sīnā—it must have seemed
as if philosophy had come from nowhere to shake the very foundations of the-
ology itself. This shock may well have led to a sense that Ashʿarī kalām, as
originally developed by al-Ashʿarī in response to the Muʿtazila, was relatively
ill-equipped to deal with philosophy proper and that even after the introduc-
tion of what were hoped to be the requisite methodological renovations, such
as those of al-Bāqillānī, rational certainty in matters of theology continued to
prove elusive, particularly in the face of philosophy’s supreme confidence in its
ability to engender certitude.

9.1 al-Juwaynī
The first major Ashʿarī theologian to have come under the direct influence of
philosophy via Ibn Sīnā seems to be Abū al-Maʿālī (“Imām al-Ḥaramayn”) al-
Juwaynī (d. 478/1085). Al-Juwaynī sought to rectify the inadequacies that had
become apparent when kalām was confronted with philosophy. He did this by
adopting certain aspects of the philosophical tradition that he deemed not only
compatible with kalām but also, indeed, vital for shoring up the worldview
of kalām in the face of Ibn Sīnā’s imposing philosophy. Al-Juwaynī’s chang-
ing attitude towards the place of the rational sciences in the overall hierarchy
of Islamic religious disciplines is apparent from his view that naẓar (that is,

189 Watt, Formative Period, 204–208.

190 On the nature of this process, see especially Wisnovsky, “Nature and Scope,” as well as
Wisnovsky, “Essence and Existence.”

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engaging in a deliberate process of rational inquiry regarding the foundations

of faith) is an obligation for all Muslims who have reached the age of maturity
and must be undertaken in order for their faith to be considered valid.191
Though al-Bāqillānī had harbored reservations about the analogical infer-
ence from the seen to the unseen (al-qiyās bi-l-shāhid ʿalā al-ghāʾib) and had
tried to reinforce the defensive arsenal of kalām by adding to it his principle of
reversibility, with al-Juwaynī this inference from the seen was abandoned alto-
gether.192 But al-Juwaynī went farther and dropped al-Bāqillānī’s reversibility
principle as well, replacing it with certain elements selectively incorporated
from the new logic, which was becoming more widespread via the work of
Ibn Sīnā. Al-Juwaynī incorporated into the logical armor of kalām a number of
techniques such as enumeration and division (al-sabr wa-l-taqsīm) and the dis-
junction between affirmation and negation. Such methods supplemented the
two main procedures previously in use, the indirect syllogism (qiyās al-khalf )
and the direct, or standard, syllogism (al-qiyās al-mustaqīm).193
In his final theological work, al-ʿAqīda al-Niẓāmiyya,194 al-Juwaynī abandons
the earlier kalām’s method of proving the existence of God from the created-
ness of the world (specifically the argument from the temporal origination of
bodies, or ḥudūth al-ajsām) in favor of Ibn Sīnā’s proof, which was based on
the dichotomy of ontological necessity (wujūb) and contingency (imkān).195
This change in the argument used for proving the existence of God and the
increasing appropriation of logic as a tool for theology represent two funda-

191 See Gardet and Anawati, Introduction, 66 (citing the opening of al-Juwaynī’s Kitāb al-
Irshād). As we shall discover, Ibn Taymiyya would not reject this in principle since the
Qurʾān is full of exhortations to “look” ( faʾnẓurū, etc.) and to ponder. Rational reflection
(in the sense of looking and pondering) is therefore fundamental, in Ibn Taymiyya’s view,
to reaching and maintaining authentic conviction in the truth of Islam. His main goal
in the Darʾ, however, is to refute the validity of the methods and content of what passed
for naẓar among later kalām theologians, such as al-Juwaynī, and to replace this with a
reconfigured “sound reasoning” (ḥusn al-naẓar) that he identifies with that of the early
community of the pre-kalām/pre-philosophy stage, in which “ ‘reason and revelation’ …
were not experienced as dichotomous” (Winter, “Reason as Balance,” 8).
192 Nagel, History, 165.
193 Gardet and Anawati, Introduction, 73.
194 On the chronology of al-Juwaynī’s works, see Allard, Le problème, 379–380.
195 Nagel, History, 173. See also Wisnovsky, “One Aspect.” On al-Juwaynī’s reforms of the ear-
lier kalām argument for the existence of God, see Thiele, “Between Cordoba and Nīsābūr,”
236. Antecedents to al-Juwaynī’s reform can be found even before Ibn Sīnā in the work of
the Muʿtazilī Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī (d. 436/1044); see Madelung, “Abū l-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī’s
Proof.” On the relationship between Ibn Sīnā’s proof for the existence of God and kalām
theology more generally, see Rudolph, “La preuve de l’ existence de Dieu.”

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mental distinctions on the basis of which practically all later thinkers196 differ-
entiate between the “early kalām” of the mutaqaddimūn and the “later kalām”
of the mutaʾakhkhirūn. Furthermore, al-Juwaynī seems to have been the first
to incorporate the Muʿtazilī doctrine of atomism into Ashʿarī kalām as a nor-
mative teaching that, in combination with the argument from contingency, was
used to prove the existence of God, His attributes, and the temporality, or “tem-
poral origination” (ḥudūth), of the world.197
Another crucial departure from al-Ashʿarī’s methodology in the work of
al-Juwaynī—and one that is of central concern to Ibn Taymiyya—relates to
al-Juwaynī’s position on the divine attributes. Both al-Ashʿarī and al-Bāqillānī,
as we have seen, upheld a modified version of the bi-lā kayf doctrine of the
early Muslim community as a means of preserving both divine transcendence
and the literal integrity of the Qurʾān’s assertions regarding the attributes of
God. Al-Juwaynī, however, went farther by separating attributes into essen-
tial (nafsī) and qualitative (maʿnawī), a move that has been described as a
shift towards a more “liberal” Ashʿarī theology, one less attached to a literal
understanding of Qurʾānic statements regarding the divine attributes.198 In
this, al-Juwaynī was one of the first Ashʿarī theologians to make taʾwīl of—in the
sense of interpreting figuratively—the so-called revealed attributes (al-ṣifāt al-
khabariyya), such as God’s hands, face, and other such attributes that cannot
be known through independent reason and are denoted in revelation by terms
that could seem to imply corporeality.199
Similarly, al-Juwaynī was the first theologian to elaborate a juridical method-
ology on the basis of the principles of the new kalām, an initiative brought
to full fruition by his student al-Ghazālī,200 who oversaw the firm and com-
plete incorporation of logic into theology as well. Al-Juwaynī nonetheless rep-
resents a critical juncture in the transition from the earlier style of reason-
ing in kalām to the new, philosophically oriented kalām, being as he was
“old-school by virtue of his dialectical method, but an old-schooler who por-

196 Such as Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (Nagel, History, 207). See Ibn Khaldūn, al-Muqaddima, 465,
line 22 to 466, line 4 for the incorporation of logic into kalām and its centrality in
the demarcation of “old-style kalām” (ṭarīqat al-mutaqaddimīn) from “new-style kalām”
(ṭarīqat al-mutaʾakhkhirīn).
197 Gardet and Anawati, Introduction, 73.
198 Ibid., 66. In the generation before al-Juwaynī, Ibn Fūrak made taʾwīl of certain ḥadīth,
while ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Baghdādī had previously endorsed a more thorough-going taʾwīl
than Ibn Fūrak. See Allard, Le problème, 326–329 on Ibn Fūrak and Allard, 334–342 on al-
Baghdādī.
199 Gardet and Anawati, Introduction, 73.
200 Primarily through al-Ghazālī’s systematic incorporation of logic into his famous work on
jurisprudence, al-Mustaṣfā min ʿilm al-uṣūl.

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tends the triumph of the new method.”201 According to Ibn Khaldūn, the old
way is exemplified by al-Bāqillānī’s reversibility principle (which states that
the invalidity of the proof entails the falsity of what is being proved), while
the new way, informed by Aristotelian logic, is not bound by this principle.
The principle itself seems to be drawn primarily from legal analogy (qiyās) as it
was originally used in the ___domain of fiqh, in which the Aristotelian syllogism
had not yet made its appearance.202 In the new logic on the basis of which
al-Bāqillānī’s reversibility principle is rejected, however, the Aristotelian syllo-
gism becomes predominant. This “new method”—which incorporates the new
logic as well as the new argument for the existence of God, both compliments
of Ibn Sīnā—comes fully into its own with al-Ghazālī, after whom the method
and terminology of kalām come to resemble that of philosophy more and more
with each succeeding generation of Ashʿarīs.203

9.2 al-Ghazālī
The “Proof of Islam” (Ḥujjat al-Islām) Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) is
a watershed figure in Islamic intellectual history whose thought represents a
confluence of jurisprudence, theology, philosophy, and Sufism and who right-
fully deserves a separate discussion in relation to each of these fields.204 We
treat him here not only because of his superb philosophical education and
sharply analytical mind but also because it is his engagement with the Muslim
philosophical tradition that is most relevant to the concerns of this study. This
relevance stems not only from al-Ghazālī’s refutation of certain central theses
of the philosophers on purely philosophical grounds (similar to Ibn Taymiyya’s
refutations) but also from his adoption of certain elements of philosophy that
he made part and parcel of Islamic orthodoxy (legal and theological, as well as
spiritual and mystical). In the pivotal figure of al-Ghazālī, who developed an
early interest in the epistemological foundations of knowledge,205 we witness
the full crossover in Islamic theology from the way of the early school (ṭarīq
al-mutaqaddimīn) to the way of the later school (ṭarīq al-mutaʾakhkhirīn) fore-
shadowed by al-Juwaynī.206

201 Gardet and Anawati, Introduction, 154. For an analysis of the main differences between
old-style and new-style kalām, see the discussion at Gardet and Anawati, 72–76.
202 Ibid., 72–73.
203 Ibid., 154.
204 On al-Ghazālī’s life and works, see Griffel, Al-Ghazālī’s Philosophical Theology, 19–59.
205 Griffel, Apostasie und Toleranz, 264.
206 Gardet and Anawati, Introduction, 72. For a more detailed discussion of the progressive
crossover from the “old way” to the “new way” through an analysis of al-Bāqillānī’s Tamhīd,
al-Juwaynī’s Irshād, and al-Ghazālī’s Iqtiṣād, see Gardet and Anawati, 153–160. In sum,

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Born in 450/1058 in the northeastern Iranian city of Tus, al-Ghazālī stud-

ied in Nishapur under the eminent Imām al-Ḥaramayn al-Juwaynī. He then
taught at the prestigious Niẓāmiyya madrasa in Baghdad for four years. Dur-
ing this period, al-Ghazālī’s intense philosophical studies led him to produce
a number of important works,207 including an exposition of logic, Miʿyār al-
ʿilm fī fann al-manṭiq (The standard of knowledge in the art of logic),208 and
an important work of Ashʿarī theology, al-Iqtiṣād fī al-iʿtiqād (The just mean
in belief). He wrote his most celebrated work, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn (The Revival
of the Religious Sciences), after a lengthy period of solitary travel dedicated to
treading the Sufi path of spiritual purification and mystical realization. Upon
returning home from this extended hiatus,209 al-Ghazālī resumed his teaching
and other scholarly activities, producing, inter alia, a major work on uṣūl al-fiqh
(the aforementioned al-Mustaṣfā),210 an intellectual and spiritual autobiogra-
phy, two mystical treatises, and, shortly before his death, a small work warning
against the pursuit of kalām theology by the common people.
In one of his most famous and influential works, Tahāfut al-falāsifa (The
Incoherence of the Philosophers),211 al-Ghazālī sharply critiques the philosoph-
ical tradition—particularly Ibn Sīnā’s metaphysics and psychology,212 but also
aspects of al-Fārābī’s philosophy.213 This attack elicited a strident, line-by-line
response by the staunchly Aristotelian philosopher Ibn Rushd, born in the
Andalusian city of Cordoba only fifteen years after al-Ghazālī’s death in north-

the authors remark that the new way, whose eventual triumph one can already sense in
the work of al-Juwaynī, becomes fully actualized in the work of al-Ghazālī, with Ashʿarī
theologians thereafter incorporating an ever greater portion of the terms and categories
of philosophy into kalām proper (Gardet and Anawati, 154).
207 For a chronological presentation and discussion of al-Ghazālī’s main works, see Madelung,
“Al-Ghazālī’s Changing Attitude.”
208 Michael Marmura speaks of al-Ghazālī’s work as being an exposition of “Avicenna’s logic.”
Marmura, “Al-Ghazālī,” 139. Fakhry specifies this notion of an Avicennian logic as one in
which “Aristotelian, Neo-Platonic, and Stoic elements are intermingled.” Fakhry, History,
133. For a discussion of Ibn Sīnā’s presentation of logic in his famous Shifāʾ, see Fakhry,
133–135.
209 For a reinterpretation of al-Ghazālī’s “crisis” as traditionally depicted on the basis of his al-
Munqidh min al-ḍalāl (Deliverance from Error), see Garden, “Revisiting al-Ghazālī’s Crisis”
and, more extensively, Garden, First Islamic Reviver, 1–60.
210 See p. 65, n. 200 above.
211 On which see Griffel, “Theology Engages with Avicennan Philosophy,” 437–446.
212 Marmura, “Al-Ghazālī,” 137. For al-Ghazālī’s debt, on the other hand, to philosophy—and
particularly to Ibn Sīnā—in his theory of mystical cognition, see Treiger, Inspired Knowl-
edge. For a concise and pointed account of al-Ghazālī’s complex relationship to philoso-
phy, see Madelung, “Al-Ghazālī’s Changing Attitude.”
213 Marmura, “Al-Ghazālī,” 144.

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eastern Iran. In the Tahāfut, al-Ghazālī charges the philosophers with relying
on inherited assumptions that cannot be deduced apodictically214 and sets out
to refute twenty of their discrete doctrines, three of which he considered irrec-
oncilable with Islamic belief.215 These three doctrines are (1) the eternity of the
world, (2) the idea that God knows only universal concepts and not particular
instantiations thereof, and (3) the impossibility of a physical resurrection after
death.216
Al-Ghazālī’s was the first, though not the last, attempt in Islam to respond
to philosophy on its own grounds, using purely philosophical arguments rather
than merely vilifying philosophy as a foreign science, accusing its practitioners
of impiety, or arguing against it based solely on the authority of scripture. Yet
despite the mordancy of al-Ghazālī’s attack against the philosophers and the
longstanding view that his offensive sounded the death knell of (at least a par-
ticular brand of) philosophy in the Muslim world, more recent scholarship has
revealed the extent to which al-Ghazālī’s own thought was indebted to that
of his ideological foes, in particular Ibn Sīnā.217 Indeed, it is well known that
while al-Ghazālī rejected many aspects of philosophy entirely, most notably
its precarious metaphysics, he nonetheless enthusiastically embraced the Aris-
totelian logic built on definition and syllogism that forms the core of the entire
system.218 Perhaps sensing the vulnerability of kalām arguments supported by
earlier forms of logic in the face of Ibn Sīnā’s imposing philosophical edifice,
al-Ghazālī made Ibn Sīnā’s logic his own and henceforth incorporated it into
kalām (just as he made it part and parcel of legal theory as well). In his enthu-
siasm for this powerful new tool of logic, al-Ghazālī even believed he could
identify in the Qurʾān a prefiguring of the five forms of the Aristotelian syllo-

214 Griffel, Apostasie und Toleranz, 274–275.

215 For a concise and lucid summary of all twenty issues dealt with in the Tahāfut, see Fakhry,
History, 222–233.
216 On al-Ghazālī’s treatment of these three doctrines and his fatwā against them, see Griffel,
“Theology Engages with Avicennan Philosophy,” 442–446 and, more exhaustively, Griffel,
Apostasie und Toleranz, 260–281. For a succinct discussion of al-Ghazālī’s views on defin-
ing the proper boundaries of faith in his Fayṣal al-tafriqa bayna al-Islām wa-l-zandaqa
(Criterion for discernment between Islam and disbelief), see Jackson, On the Boundaries.
For an extended analysis, see Griffel, Apostasie und Toleranz, 304–335, esp. sections 3 and
4.
217 See, e.g., Janssens, “Al-Ghazzālī’s Tahāfut.” See also Landolt, “Ghazālī and ‘Religionswissen-
schaft’”; Griffel, Al-Ghazālī’s Philosophical Theology, 97–109; Wisnovsky, “One Aspect,”
passim; Madelung, “Al-Ghazālī’s Changing Attitude,” esp. 29–31; Rudolph, “Al-Ghazālī’s
Concept of Philosophy,” passim; and Treiger, Inspired Knowledge, 81–101.
218 See introduction to Hallaq, Greek Logicians, xii–xiv.

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gism.219 We saw above how, starting with al-Juwaynī, the dialectical and syllo-
gistic methods of argumentation were combined. Al-Ghazālī now fully accepts
formal deductive reasoning based on the search for a universal middle term
and makes it part and parcel of Islamic theological reasoning.220 Al-Ghazālī
thus made important innovations in terms of method, mode of exposition, and
style of reasoning,221 and it is this new method of reasoning and arguing that
was identified as the “way of the later [school]” (ṭarīq al-mutaʾakhkhirīn) by Ibn
Khaldūn and others.222
Regarding the metaphorical interpretation of texts, al-Ghazālī accepted the
use of taʾwīl, in the manner of al-Juwaynī, to obviate overtly anthropomorphic
readings of the ṣifāt khabariyya, or “revealed attributes” (hands, face, etc.),223
but he insisted that such taʾwīlāt should remain the province of the elite and
not be discussed among the general populace for fear of inducing confusion in
their minds.224 Yet al-Ghazālī seems willing—at least in some of his writings—
to go a step farther than al-Juwaynī. We see an example of this tendency in
his Mishkāt al-anwār (Niche of Lights),225 which contains a complete theory
of symbolism (in the sense of allegory, or tamthīl) with respect to the sensible
and intelligible worlds, as well as multiple examples of symbolic exegesis of the
Qurʾān.226

219 See Chelhot, “«al-Qisṭās al-Mustaqīm»,” 12–15 for a discussion of al-Ghazālī’s identification
of the “five rules of thought” (namely, five different syllogistic figures) that he contends are
revealed in the Qurʾān. See also Kleinknecht, “Al-Qisṭās al-Mustaqīm,” where the author
emphasizes, in particular, al-Ghazālī’s attempt to wrest logic from the exclusive province
of the philosophers and to win it over for more general use by the educated, as well as
his use of tangible metaphors to make logical reasoning acceptable to those suspicious of
abstractions. For a nuanced study of al-Ghazālī’s role in the reassessment and appropria-
tion of logic, see Rudolph, “Die Neubewertung der Logik durch al-Ġazālī.” On knowledge
and certainty in al-Ghazālī more generally, see Luis Xavier López-Farjeat, “Al-Ghazālī on
Knowledge (ʿilm) and Certainty ( yaqīn).”
220 Gardet and Anawati, Introduction, 360–361.
221 Ibid., 71–72.
222 See Ibn Khaldūn’s discussion in al-Muqaddima, 466, esp. lines 3–7 ff.
223 For a detailed discussion of al-Ghazālī’s position on the use of taʾwīl, see Aydin, “Al-Ghazâlî
on Metaphorical Interpretation.”
224 Griffel, Apostasie und Toleranz, 273–274, 317–319. See also Griffel, Al-Ghazālī’s Philosophi-
cal Theology, 111–122 and, for a much more extensive treatment, Griffel, “Al-Ghazālī at His
Most Rationalist.” The latter two studies provide a thorough analysis of al-Ghazālī’s itera-
tion of the qānūn al-taʾwīl, Ibn Taymiyya’s response to which forms the subject of chapter 3
of the present study.
225 On this text, see Landolt, “Ghazālī and ‘Religionswissenschaft.’ ”
226 For al-Ghazālī’s use of allegory and his development of a symbolic vocabulary in the
Mishkāt, see ibid. On the Mishkāt, see also Girdner, “Ghazālī’s Hermeneutics.”

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Al-Ghazālī’s attitude towards kalām—and, by extension, the status of dis-

cursive knowledge more generally—is critical for an understanding of his
potent legacy and the development of Islamic thought that Ibn Taymiyya inher-
ited one and a half centuries later. In the Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, al-Ghazālī exhibits a
guarded attitude towards kalām, admitting that it was not practiced by the ear-
liest generations of Muslims but nevertheless conceding a limited use of it as
indispensable for combatting heretical innovations (bidaʿ) that risked leading
believers away from the path of the Qurʾān and Sunna. Given that such innova-
tions were often put forth in the name of reason, they could only be effectively
countered on their own—that is, on rational—terms. Notwithstanding this
remedial function of kalām, al-Ghazālī does not seem to accept it as a fully
legitimate (or at least not a fully adequate, much less necessary) path for reach-
ing truth.227 The inherent limitations of kalām, as al-Ghazālī instructs us in
his work al-Munqidh min al-ḍalāl (Deliverance from Error), lie in the fact that
it proceeds on the basis of premises that are not rationally certain in and of
themselves since they must be accepted on the basis of revelation or the con-
sensus (ijmāʿ) of the community; for this reason, they are incapable of yielding
apodictic certitude (on a purely rational level) as the would-be result of a syl-
logistic process of inference.228 Yet just as we saw in the case of al-Ashʿarī after
his abandonment of the Muʿtazila, al-Ghazālī’s initially critical, if not depre-
catory, assessment of kalām yielded, in his later writings, to a more moder-
ate and nuanced tone that accords kalām a legitimate, if duly circumscribed,
place in the overall hierarchy of sciences. Thus, in his al-Risāla al-Laduniyya,
for instance, al-Ghazālī classifies ʿilm al-tawḥīd—the science of the oneness
of God, “also known as kalām”229—as occupying a position of prime impor-
tance. And while the sources of the knowledge of tawḥīd, according to the
Risāla, are primarily the Qurʾān and the Sunna, he also specifically acknowl-
edges that these sources contain “rational proofs and syllogistic demonstra-
tions” (al-dalāʾil al-ʿaqliyya wa-l-barāhīn al-qiyāsiyya).230
Al-Ghazālī’s guarded acceptance of kalām in some of his writings should
not, however, obscure his abiding insistence on the limited nature of all purely
discursive thought and related rational discourse, kalām being no exception.

227 Gardet and Anawati, Introduction, 70–71. Breaking with his teacher, al-Juwaynī, al-Ghazālī
explicitly distanced himself from the Ashʿarī view that makes some measure of rational
inquiry (naẓar) into theological questions a requirement for salvation. Griffel, Apostasie
und Toleranz, 273.
228 Fakhry, History, 220.
229 Gardet and Anawati, Introduction, 119.
230 Ibid.

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For al-Ghazālī, true certainty ( yaqīn) can ultimately be gained only through the
“witnessing of realities” (mushāhada, or mushāhadat al-ḥaqāʾiq)231 by way of
spiritual unveiling (kashf ). While kalām may be of initial assistance in helping
one move towards this goal, it can also act as a veil insofar as one may unwit-
tingly mistake the means for the end.

10 Kalām and Falsafa in the Wake of al-Ghazālī

10.1 Ashʿarī Theology and the Struggle to Orthodoxy

The immediate reception of the new Ashʿarī kalām in the sixth/twelfth century
is illustrative of the larger intellectual mood of the period. While the Ashʿarī
method undoubtedly had its enthusiastic supporters, it had many implaca-
ble opponents as well. As we may expect, the most vociferous opposition
came from Ḥanbalī quarters—an example being ʿAbd Allāh al-Anṣārī al-Harawī
(d. 481/1089), a Ḥanbalī and well-known Sufi who attacked the Ashʿarīs vigor-
ously232—but opposition during this period went considerably beyond strictly
Ḥanbalī circles. Yet in spite of ongoing polemics against rationalist kalām by
Ḥanbalīs and others, the Ashʿarī school boasted a number of enthusiastic
and vocal supporters as well, such as the Shāfiʿī ḥadīth master and historian
Ibn ʿAsākir (d. 571/1176), who forcefully defended the legitimacy of a rational
theological dialectic,233 and even the Ḥanbalī jurist and theologian Ibn ʿAqīl
(d. 513/1119).234 In time, Ashʿarī kalām established itself as the dominant school
in the central regions of the Islamic world, but not without a struggle.235 It was
not until the famous Seljuq vizier Niẓām al-Mulk (active 455–485/1063–1092)
established positions in the major madrasas of the empire specifically to teach
the new theology that the Ashʿarī school was finally able to triumph over its
two rivals: the Muʿtazila, on the one hand, and the strictest of the Ḥanbalīs, on
the other.236

231 Marmura, “Al-Ghazālī,” 152.

232 Nagel, History, 242. Al-Harawī’s opposition to kalām seems to have stemmed as much from
his mystical orientation as from his Ḥanbalī commitments. With respect to the view that
kalām is unnecessary at best and that scripture alone suffices, Tim Winter remarks that
“al-Harawī (d. 1089) agrees, suggesting that kalām is an unreliable substitute for the true
gift of mystical illumination.” Winter, Cambridge Companion, 5.
233 Gardet and Anawati, Introduction, 57.
234 On whom see Makdisi, Ibn ʿAqil.
235 See Makdisi, “Ashʿarī and the Ashʿarites” (to be qualified, however, by Khaled El-Rouay-
heb’s remarks in “From Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī,” 295–296 ff.).
236 Gardet and Anawati, Introduction, 61–62. Major representatives of new Ashʿarī kalām in

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By the time Ibn Taymiyya was born some two hundred years later,237 any
significant opposition to kalām theology had all but dissipated in most quar-
ters. Ashʿarī kalām had long since been accepted by much of the Sunnī world
as the normative, orthodox expression of Islamic belief in rational-theological
terms. At the same time, the Mamluk rulers of Syria and Egypt (the two coun-
tries where Ibn Taymiyya spent his life) had proved themselves enthusiastic
patrons of the now dominant Ashʿarī theology, and also of the many eclectic
brands of Sufism—some quite orthodox, others decidedly less so—that had
also become widespread. Their patronage meant that conflicts with those who
abjured theological speculation and advocated a stricter adherence to the lit-
eral text would be unavoidable.238

10.2 Philosophical Theology and the Fate of Falsafa Proper

While al-Ghazālī’s attack on the Muslim Peripatetic tradition was long under-
stood in Western scholarship to have spelled the death of philosophy in the
Muslim world, this is only true in one limited sense, namely, that there was
no continuation of an independent philosophical tradition pursued along the
largely Aristotelian lines of classical falsafa. One notable exception to this
was Ibn Rushd, whose work, however consequential it may have been for
medieval Europe, had virtually no impact on the Muslim world itself.239 On
the one hand, alternative schools of philosophy arose and flourished, most
notably the Ishrāqī, or “Illuminationist,” tradition founded by Shihāb al-Dīn
al-Suhrawardī “al-Maqtūl” (executed 587/1191). This tradition reached its cul-
mination in the eleventh-/seventeenth-century synthesis represented by the
“transcendent theosophy,” or ḥikma mutaʿāliya, of the Persian Shīʿī philosopher,
theologian, and mystic Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī (Mullā Ṣadrā) (d. 1050/1640)240
and has survived in Iran up to the present day.241 On the other hand, a perusal

the post-Ghazālī period include Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Shahrastānī (d. 548/1153),
Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1209), Ḥāfiẓ al-Dīn al-Nasafī (d. 701/1301 or 710/1310), ʿAḍud al-
Dīn al-Ījī (d. 756/1355), Saʿd al-Dīn al-Taftāzānī (d. 793/1390), al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī (d. 816/
1413), Muḥammad b. Yūsuf al-Sanūsī (d. 895/1490), and Jalāl al-Dīn al-Dawānī (d. 908/
1502). On the appropriation of Avicennian thought by the new kalām, see Wisnovsky,
“Nature and Scope.”
237 That is, in the year 661/1263.
238 Nagel, History, 243.
239 Ibn Rushd’s views on the relationship between reason and revelation are discussed in
more detail at the end of the following chapter. For a lucid overview, see Fakhry, History,
270–292.
240 On whom see Rustom, Triumph of Mercy.
241 Fakhry refers to Mullā Ṣadrā as “the last great encyclopedic writer in Islam” and remarks
that “his voluminous output is an eloquent disproof of the view expressed by many his-

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of later kalām works makes it abundantly clear that mainstream Islamic dis-
course in a sense co-opted, rather than banished, philosophy, absorbing it into
the body of kalām while bending it to the outlook, purposes, and needs of the
discipline.242
Contemporary scholars have offered contrasting pictures of the precise na-
ture of the intertwinement of philosophy and theology that took place in
the post-Ibn Sīnā / post-Ghazālī period. Earlier scholarship stressed that the
philosophers (with the sole exception of al-Kindī) had retained full autonomy
in the face of Islamic doctrine,243 underscoring their reluctance to “surrender
any aspect of [philosophy], or to attribute any mark of privilege or distinction
to [Islamic belief] by virtue of its supernatural or divine origin.”244 More recent
studies, however, have brought to light the (formerly unappreciated) extent to
which falsafa itself and its practitioners were influenced by kalām, not merely
in terms of the topics with which they dealt but also in terms of their concep-
tual vocabulary, discrete arguments, the examples they used, and sometimes
even the substantive positions they adopted.245 Building on the argument that
Ibn Sīnā himself had been influenced by kalām in developing certain funda-
mental notions, including the key distinction between essence and existence
so central to his thought,246 it has been suggested that this “theologization”

torians of Islamic medieval philosophy that by the end of the eleventh century al-Ghazālī
had dealt philosophy a crippling blow from which it never recovered” (Fakhry, History,
311). For a detailed recent study on the influence of Ibn Sīnā and how it manifests in the
work of Mullā Ṣadrā, see Eichner, “Die iranische Philosophie von Ibn Sīnā bis Mullā Ṣadrā.”
242 See Gardet and Anawati, Introduction, 325ff. See also Winter’s remarks in his introduc-
tion to Cambridge Companion, esp. 11–14 (“The fate of falsafa”), where he observes that
“even the most superficial perusal of a late kalām work will reveal the immense influence
which Avicenna exerted on the framing of Muslim orthodoxy” (Winter, 12). He goes on to
remark, following Khaled El-Rouayheb, that “Muslim orthodoxy did not shed Hellenism,
but steadily accumulated it, and continued to extol the core Aristotelian discipline of logic,
not only in kalām, but in law” (Winter, 14). Further, he cites al-Taftāzānī, “author of perhaps
the most widely used text of later Muslim theology,” to the effect that “the kalām folk had
‘incorporated most of the physics and metaphysics, and delved deeply into the mathemat-
ics, so that but for the samʿiyyāt, kalām was hardly distinguishable from falsafa’ ” (Winter,
12).
243 Gardet and Anawati, for instance, argued that although the Muslim philosophers tried
hard to maintain the letter of the Qurʾān, they never accepted anything from revelation
that went beyond the ___domain of philosophy proper. See Gardet and Anawati, Introduction,
321–323.
244 Fakhry, History, 91.
245 See, e.g., Wisnovsky, “Notes” and Wisnovsky, “Essence and Existence.” See also Wisnovsky,
Avicenna’s Metaphysics, 145–160, 227–244.
246 See Wisnovsky, Avicenna’s Metaphysics, 16, 145–180.

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of the philosophical tradition may even help explain why Ibn Sīnā’s thought
spread so rapidly among the mutakallimūn and was eventually taken up in so
many quarters with such enthusiasm.247 On the ultimate fate of philosophy as
an independent pursuit in the Islamic world, Tim Winter concludes that

falsafa as a discipline was progressively overtaken, or perhaps swallowed

up, by Sunnī kalām at some point after the twelfth century. Perhaps
the reason for this was the same factor which had caused the transla-
tion movement to wind down two centuries earlier: the ideas had been
successfully transmitted. Falsafa functioned as an intermediary school,
a module provisionally and imperfectly integrated into Muslim culture
which allowed Muslim thinkers to entertain Greek ideas and choose those
which seemed to them persuasive and true. As a system, however, it did
not possess the resources to survive indefinitely. Once Muslims found that
their need for a sophisticated philosophical theology was satisfied by the
kalām, falsafa as an independent discipline naturally withered.248

10.3 Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī

One of the main architects of this new “philosophical theology” in the century
immediately after al-Ghazālī was the Persian Shāfiʿī theologian and polymath
Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1209),249 who has been referred to as “the most out-
standing phenomenon in speculative theology in the post-Ghazālī period.”250
He has also been characterized as a “subtle dialectician, possessor of a vast
philosophical and theological culture as well as of an intellectual courage rare
in his time, [who] is among the leading representatives of Sunnite Islam.”251
More recently, the “breadth of Rāzī’s intellectual ambition” has been described
as “unprecedented in the history of Islamic civilization.”252 Born in the city
of Rayy (near present-day Tehran) in 543/1149, it is al-Rāzī who, coupled with

247 See, e.g., Winter’s remarks at Cambridge Companion, 11.

248 Ibid., 13.
249 For background on al-Rāzī’s life and works, see Street, “Concerning the Life and Works,” as
well as Griffel, “On Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s Life.” For immediate intellectual antecedents, see
Shihadeh, “From al-Ghazālī to al-Rāzī.” For al-Rāzī’s thought in general, and his theolog-
ical and philosophical views in particular, see al-Zarkān, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī; Arnaldez,
“L’œuvre”; and Jaffer, Rāzī. On al-Rāzī’s polemical entanglements with Muʿtazilīs, Kar-
rāmīs, and others, see Kraus, “‘Controversies.’”
250 “die hervorragendste Erscheinung der spekulativen Theologie der nach-ġazālischen Zeit.”
Goldziher, “Aus der Theologie,” 223.
251 Kraus, “‘Controversies,’” 131.
252 Jaffer, Rāzī, 10.

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al-Ghazālī, did the most to incorporate the new philosophical approach into
the body of kalām.253 In addition to his studies in history, literature, law, the-
ology, medicine, and the natural sciences,254 al-Rāzī immersed himself in the
study of philosophy and was a master of the art of disputation. His thought
was profoundly influenced by Ibn Sīnā, but mostly in the way of the philoso-
pher Abū al-Barakāt al-Baghdādī (d. 560/1164 or 1165), a convert from Judaism
to Islam whose thought, while steeped in that of Ibn Sīnā, was nevertheless crit-
ical of the latter and whose views, on the whole, were closer to orthodox Mus-
lim (and Jewish) theological positions.255 Al-Rāzī wrote an important work on
metaphysics, al-Mabāḥith al-mashriqiyya (Oriental investigations), that mani-
fests his clear debt to Ibn Sīnā but also his rejection of certain central aspects
of Ibn Sīnā’s system, such as the doctrine of emanation.256 Nevertheless, al-
Rāzī’s most important work on theology, Muḥaṣṣal afkār al-mutaqaddimīn wa-
l-mutaʾakhkhirīn min al-ʿulamāʾ wa-l-ḥukamāʾ wa-l-mutakallimīn (The harvest
of the thought of the ancients and moderns among scholars, philosophers, and
theologians), which begins with an extended disquisition on metaphysics, epis-
temology, and logic, clearly shows the increasing influence of the terms and
categories of philosophy in the discourse of kalām. Indeed, al-Rāzī’s inclusion
of a metaphysical preamble to the Muḥaṣṣal became standard in subsequent
works of Ashʿarī kalām.
Contemporary scholars have brought considerable nuance to our under-
standing of al-Rāzī’s thought. Ayman Shihadeh traces the crucial developments
in sixth-/twelfth-century philosophical theology that led from al-Ghazālī, who
died at the beginning of that century, to al-Rāzī, who died almost exactly one
hundred years later.257 He elucidates al-Rāzī’s ethical theory, taking up age-old
theological questions concerning the ethical nature as well as the ontological
instantiation of human acts.258 More relevant to our concerns, Shihadeh deals
in depth with al-Rāzī’s apparent late-life skepticism concerning the ability of

253 Watt, Islamic Philosophy and Theology, 94.

254 For a list of seventy-six treatises ascribed to al-Rāzī across a wide range of disciplines, see
Muhibbu-Din, “Imām Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī: Philosophical Theology in al-Tafsīr al-Kabīr,”
58–62.
255 Watt, Islamic Philosophy and Theology, 94. On the philosophical and theological devel-
opments that occurred between al-Ghazālī and Abū al-Barakāt al-Baghdādī, see Griffel,
“Between al-Ghazālī and Abū l-Barakāt al-Baghdādī.”
256 Fakhry, History, 319–321.
257 See Shihadeh, “From al-Ghazālī to al-Rāzī.” On these developments, see also Griffel, “The-
ology Engages with Avicennan Philosophy.”
258 See Ayman Shihadeh, Teleological Ethics.

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reason to yield certain knowledge,259 a theme to which we shall return at sev-

eral junctures in the course of subsequent investigations.
In a volume on the medieval reception of Ibn Sīnā’s metaphysics,260 Heid-
run Eichner traces the major role al-Rāzī played in “shaping the reception
and interpretation of Avicennian ontology” and identifies his compendium al-
Mulakhkhaṣ fī al-ḥikma wa-l-manṭiq (The epitome on philosophy and logic) as
“one of the most influential works in the Arabic reception of Avicennian philos-
ophy from the late thirteenth century onwards.”261 Al-Rāzī’s influential presen-
tation of Ibn Sīnā’s positions does not necessarily mean that he always agreed
with them. In fact, he often explicates them only to argue an alternative posi-
tion against them. On some occasions, al-Rāzī does not faithfully represent Ibn
Sīnā’s positions; furthermore, he uses a vocabulary that is not always adequate
to render Ibn Sīnā’s thought.262 On another note, al-Rāzī has been identified
as “the most prominent exponent of the thesis that existence is superadded
to quiddity,”263 a view that Ibn Taymiyya ascribes to the Muslim Peripatetic
philosophers and that forms a main crux in his attack on their ontology. It is
of note that al-Rāzī maintained this view in opposition to al-Ashʿarī himself,
albeit with the (from an Ashʿarī perspective) very commendable goal of main-
taining God’s willful creation of the world as opposed to His mere, as it were
automatic, necessitation of it as conceptualized by Ibn Sīnā.264
Finally, Tariq Jaffer has dedicated a full monograph to al-Rāzī265 in which
he elaborates in depth on al-Rāzī’s endeavor to establish Islamic (specifically
Ashʿarī) theology on the most solid rational foundations possible. Significantly,
al-Rāzī undertakes this ambitious project not merely by means of the received
medium of the formal theological or philosophical treatise but even more so
through his massive, 32-volume Qurʾānic commentary, Mafātīḥ al-ghayb (Keys
of the unseen), also known simply as al-Tafsīr al-kabīr (The grand tafsīr).266

259 On al-Rāzī’s eventual skepticism and epistemological pessimism, see Shihadeh, Teleologi-
cal Ethics, 181–203. Al-Rāzī’s pessimism stands in marked contrast to Ibn Taymiyya’s overall
confidence in sound human reason (ʿaql ṣarīḥ) and his concomitant optimism, in both the
epistemological and the ethical realms. See Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy, 1–6, 224–237.
260 Hasse and Bertolacci, eds., The Arabic, Hebrew and Latin Reception of Avicenna’s Meta-
physics.
261 See Eichner, “Essence and Existence,” 123.
262 Ibid., 124.
263 Wisnovsky, “Essence and Existence,” 29, 42–43.
264 For details, see ibid., 40–44; also, on a somewhat related question, Abrahamov, “Faḫr al-
Dīn al-Rāzī.”
265 Jaffer, Rāzī.
266 Ibn Taymiyya is reported to have quipped that this massive work “contains everything
but tafsīr,” to which the Ashʿarī jurist Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn al-Subkī (d. 725/1325) retorted that, in

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reason and revelation in islam before ibn taymiyya 77

Jaffer argues that “by using the Qurʾān to express his philosophical theology,
Rāzī gave his revolutionary agenda an undisputed authority in Sunnī Islam.”267
By bringing about a “grand synthesis of ideas” through his tafsīr, al-Rāzī sought
to achieve three overriding objectives,268 one of which was to synthesize
Islamic revelation with the rich Aristotelian-Avicennian philosophical tradi-
tion that had gained such prominence in the century before al-Rāzī, thereby
extending to this tradition the sanctioning mantle of the Qurʾān.
Al-Rāzī’s other two main objectives are, in fact, also central to Ibn Taymiyya’s
project in the Darʾ taʿāruḍ. The first of these was to put the science of tafsīr—
and thereby of theology more generally—on a firm epistemological footing by
grounding it in rigorous rational and logical principles that would act as a con-
trol on the possible meanings that could be derived from the revealed texts. It
is partly in pursuit of this goal that al-Rāzī (following al-Ghazālī and others)
articulated the universal rule of interpretation,269 which explicitly prioritizes
reason over revelation when adjudicating any possible conflicts between the
two. Ibn Taymiyya cites this rule of interpretation on the first page of the Darʾ
taʿāruḍ, then declares that he has dedicated the entirety of the work to refuting
it. (We examine this universal rule, and Ibn Taymiyya’s response to it, in detail in
chapter 3.)270 After establishing reason as the arbiter in interpreting revelation,
al-Rāzī’s final goal is to “demonstrate the Qurʾān’s pre-eminence by disclosing
that its method of reasoning coincides with the human intellect’s procedure of
discursive reasoning and the conclusions reached by it.”271
These lines could just as easily have been written about Ibn Taymiyya, for
whom the natural concord between the deliverances of human reason and the
declarations of revelation is, in fact, the principal thesis of the Darʾ taʿāruḍ. But
before delving into Ibn Taymiyya’s work, we would do well first to acquaint our-
selves with the man himself.

fact, it “contains everything along with tafsīr.” See Maʿṣūmī, “Imām Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī
and His Critics,” 357.
267 Jaffer, Rāzī, 14. See also, on the epistemological aspects of al-Rāzī’s grand tafsīr, Oulddali,
Raison et révélation en Islam.
268 Jaffer, Rāzī, 14.
269 Known variously as “al-qānūn al-kullī” (the universal rule), “qānūn al-taʾwīl” (the rule
of interpretation), or “al-qānūn al-kullī fī al-taʾwīl” (the universal rule of interpretation).
Chapter 3 of the present work is dedicated to a detailed examination of this universal rule
and Ibn Taymiyya’s numerous arguments against it.
270 Jaffer deals with al-Rāzī’s principles of interpretation in detail at Jaffer, Rāzī, 54–83 and
with al-Rāzī’s proposed reconciliation of reason and revelation on the basis of these prin-
ciples at Jaffer, 84–130. The last section of Jaffer’s treatment (pp. 117–130) consists, in fact,
of a summary of Ibn Taymiyya’s response in the Darʾ taʿāruḍ to al-Rāzī’s version of the
qānūn.
271 Jaffer, Rāzī, 14.

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 chapter 2

Ibn Taymiyya: Life, Times, and Intellectual Profile

1 The Life and Times of Ibn Taymiyya (661–728/1263–1328)

The previous chapter provided an overview of the development of the Islamic

intellectual tradition over the course of the seven centuries preceding Ibn
Taymiyya, with special emphasis on those aspects most relevant to our main
concern—the relationship between reason and revelation—as we can piece
them together from various Muslim theological, historical, and heresiographi-
cal works, as well as the secondary source materials that are based on and that
analyze these works. The current section complements this background with
a brief overview of the political and social circumstances of Ibn Taymiyya’s
tumultuous life, followed by his biography, intellectual profile, reception by his
contemporaries, and an overview of his major works that bear relevance to the
Darʾ taʿāruḍ.
The chaotic intellectual climate into which Ibn Taymiyya was born was
matched by the political uncertainty and fragmentation of his times.1 Born in
the city of Harran (located in current-day southeastern Turkey near the Syrian
border) in the year 661/1263,2 Ibn Taymiyya’s family fled southwest to Damascus

1 For general studies on the political background of Ibn Taymiyya’s times, see Irwin, Middle East
in the Middle Ages and Northrup, “Baḥrī Mamlūk Sultanate.” On the Mongol incursion into
Syria in the year 700/1300 (in the resistance to which Ibn Taymiyya played a pivotal role), see
Amitai, “The Mongol Occupation of Damascus in 1300.” On the cultural and social backdrop
of the period, see Berkey, “Culture and Society during the Late Middle Ages.” Concerning the
religious life of the period, see Little, “Religion under the Mamluks” and Pouzet, Damas au
VIIè/XIIIè siècle, 20–105.
2 The most complete and authoritative single source for the life of Ibn Taymiyya is Ibn ʿAbd
al-Hādī’s (d. 744/1344) al-ʿUqūd al-durriyya. Other important sources for the biography of
Ibn Taymiyya include al-Dhahabī’s (d. 748/1348) Kitāb Tadhkirat al-ḥuffāẓ and his al-Iʿlām
bi-wafayāt al-aʿlām, Ibn Kathīr’s (d. 774/1373) al-Bidāya wa-l-nihāya, Ibn al-Dawādārī’s (fl.
708–735/1309–1335) Kanz al-durar, Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī’s (d. 795/1393) al-Dhayl ʿalā Ṭabaqāt
al-Ḥanābila, and al-Kutubī’s (d. 764/1362) Fawāt al-wafayāt, which is a supplement to Ibn
Khallikān’s (d. 681/1282) famous Wafayāt al-aʿyān. Later works include Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī’s
(d. 852/1448) al-Durar al-kāmina, al-ʿUlaymī’s (d. 928/1521) al-Manhaj al-aḥmad, al-Karmī’s
(d. 1033/1624) al-Kawākib al-durriyya, al-Shawkānī’s (d. 1250/1834) al-Badr al-ṭāliʿ, and al-
Ālūsī’s (d. 1295/1899) Jalāʾ al-ʿaynayn. For a detailed discussion of the classical Arabic sources
for the biography of Ibn Taymiyya, see Little, “Historical and Historiographical Significance,”
313–318 and passim. For an excellent contemporary study in Arabic, see Abū Zahra, Ibn
Taymiyya; also Al-Azmeh, Ibn Taymiyya. The most extensive treatment of Ibn Taymiyya’s

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ibn taymiyya: life, times, and intellectual profile 79

in 667/1269 before the westward advance of the Mongols, who had reached
the gates of northern Syria when Ibn Taymiyya was only six years old. Greater
Syria had fallen under the influence of petty amirs who, in their infighting
and general ineptitude, proved incapable of mounting any credible resistance
to the advancing Mongol armies while Egypt—generally safe from the men-
ace of a direct Mongol onslaught—was under the rule of the Baḥrī Mamluk
dynasty.
After fleeing Harran,3 the Taymiyya family settled in the Ḥanbalī quarter of
Damascus, where Ibn Taymiyya’s father served as the director of the Sukkariyya
Ḥanbalī madrasa, located in the shadows of the Ḥanbalī gate outside the
walls of Old Damascus. It was in this madrasa that Ibn Taymiyya received his
principal education, following in the footsteps of his uncle, Fakhr al-Dīn b.
Taymiyya (d. 622/1225), and his paternal grandfather, Majd al-Dīn b. Taymiyya
(d. 653/1255), both of whom had distinguished themselves as important author-
ities of the contemporary Ḥanbalī school.4 Though Ibn Taymiyya studied with
a large number of scholars (including a number of women)5 over the course
of his education, his strength and independence of mind were such that none
of his various mentors exercised a sufficient influence on his thinking for Ibn
Taymiyya to be considered his (or her) disciple.6 Ibn Taymiyya eventually suc-
ceeded his father as director of the Sukkariyya madrasa and gave his first public
lesson there at just twenty-one years of age. One year later, he began teaching
Qurʾānic exegesis (tafsīr) at the famous Umayyad Mosque in Damascus and, a
decade later, took up teaching at the Ḥanbaliyya madrasa in Damascus after the

life and thought in a European language remains Laoust, Essai sur les doctrines sociales et
politiques de Takī-d-Dīn Ahmad b. Taimīya [hereafter Essai]. Shorter studies include Laoust,
“L’influence d’Ibn-Taymiyya” and Laoust, “La biographie d’ Ibn Taimiya d’ après Ibn Kaṯīr,”
which is a summary of Ibn Kathīr’s Bidāya (see above). See as well more recent works
such as Bori, Ibn Taymiyya: una vita esemplare and Bori, “Ibn Taymiyya wa-Jamāʿatu-hu,” as
well as Adem, “Intellectual Genealogy.” On Ibn Taymiyya’s influence, see primarily Laoust,
“L’influence” and El-Rouayheb, “From Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī.”
3 The following account of Ibn Taymiyya’s life paraphrases, in the main, Laoust, “Ibn Taymiyya,”
EI2, 3:951–955, supplemented by numerous more recent studies as indicated throughout the
notes. For a more detailed account of these events, see Laoust, “La biographie,” 115–162;
Laoust, Essai, 110–150; and Murad, “Ibn Taymiyyah.”
4 For a detailed presentation of Ibn Taymiyya’s education and intellectual training, see Laoust,
Essai, 71–109.
5 Al-Matroudi (Ḥanbalī School, 16) mentions that Ibn Taymiyya had a large number of teach-
ers, with some sources claiming up to two hundred. He further reports on a mashyakha (list
of teachers) of Ibn Taymiyya’s, related by al-Dhahabī, that includes forty-one male teachers
and four female teachers (shaykhāt). Al-Matroudi, 200, n. 124.
6 Laoust, Essai, 71–72. For an extensive discussion of Ibn Taymiyya’s scholarly genealogy, see
Adem, “Intellectual Genealogy,” 454–467.

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death of one of his teachers there. At around the same time, he was offered the
prestigious and much coveted position of chief justice (qāḍī al-quḍāh), which,
however, he turned down.7 In addition to a strong grounding in Ḥanbalī law and
jurisprudence, Ibn Taymiyya is also said to have gained such an expert knowl-
edge of the other schools of law—and from each school’s authoritative primary
sources—that he never discussed legal matters with a scholar from one of these
other schools without his interlocutor having learned, by the end of the discus-
sion, something of value about his own school from Ibn Taymiyya.8 In addition
to his impressive training in law, Ibn Taymiyya was particularly well grounded
in ḥadīth and tafsīr and read avidly in the fields of philosophy and theology, as
well as the existing Muslim heresiographical literature.9 Indeed, through the
vast and varied corpus of his writings, Ibn Taymiyya exhibits an almost aston-
ishing familiarity with all the major schools of thought, as well as the particular
writings, of most of the philosophers and theologians before his time. This is
what led Yahya Michot, as noted in the introduction (p. 9 above), to characterize
Ibn Taymiyya as “the most important reader of the falāsifah after Faḫr al-Dīn
al-Rāzī in the Sunnī world.”10 Ibn Taymiyya was a bold and formidable debater
as well, which, coupled with the enormous range and depth of his erudition,
guaranteed that he rarely, if ever, lost a debate.11
Ibn Taymiyya was a public intellectual par excellence whose feet were firmly
planted in the social and political realities of his day. Indeed, the external polit-
ical turbulence of his times closely resembled the many vicissitudes of his
own personal and professional life. Ibn Taymiyya’s boldness in defending and
proclaiming his views, coupled with his undisputed reputation for great per-
sonal uprightness and high moral integrity, won him many admirers among
the common folk and the political and intellectual elite alike. Nevertheless,
the idiosyncratic and often controversial nature of some of his views, doubt-
less exacerbated by his often condescending and vituperative tone and his
self-admitted inclination towards irascibility, earned him numerous powerful
opponents as well. All told, over the course of his sixty-five years of life, Ibn
Taymiyya was summoned to trial nine times, exiled twice (from Damascus to

7 Umaruddin, “Ibn Taimiyya,” 718.

8 Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, ʿUqūd, 10. On Ibn Taymiyya’s “intellectual anatomy,” see Adem, “Intellec-
tual Genealogy,” 467–480.
9 Such as al-Ashʿarī’s Kitāb Maqālāt al-Islāmiyyīn or al-Shahrastānī’s Kitāb al-Milal wa-l-
niḥal.
10 “le plus important lecteur des falāsifah après Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī dans le monde sunnite.”
Michot, “Vanités intellectuelles,” 599.
11 See Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, ʿUqūd, 10.

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ibn taymiyya: life, times, and intellectual profile 81

Cairo, then from Cairo to Alexandria), twice ordered to desist from giving fat-
wās, and imprisoned on six separate occasions for a total duration of more than
six years.12
Ibn Taymiyya’s first foray into political life took place in the year 693/1294,
when a Christian by the name of ʿAssāf (“ʿAssāf al-Naṣrānī”) was alleged to have
publicly insulted the Prophet Muḥammad, a punishable offense under Islamic
law. Ibn Taymiyya and another shaykh brought the matter to the attention of
the viceroy (nāʾib al-salṭana), who summoned ʿAssāf to a hearing. A public
disturbance ensued, whereupon the viceroy had the two shaykhs flogged and
briefly detained.13 Several years later, in 698/1299, Ibn Taymiyya wrote one of
his most famous statements of creed, al-Fatwā al-Ḥamawiyya al-kubrā, which
was hostile to Ashʿarī theology and to kalām in general.14 Ibn Taymiyya’s oppo-
nents from among the mutakallimūn accused him of anthropomorphism on
account of this creed, whereupon he was summoned to questioning at the
home of the Shāfiʿī qāḍī Jalāl al-Dīn [also known as Imām al-Dīn] b. ʿUmar al-
Qazwīnī (d. 739/1338). After a close review of the text of the Ḥamawiyya and
Ibn Taymiyya’s detailed explication of it during this session, he was acquitted
of all charges and permitted to continue his teaching and writing.
The events of the following few years called upon Ibn Taymiyya to take
an active political, and even military, role on a number of occasions. During
the Mongol invasion of Damascus in 699/1300, Ibn Taymiyya was one of the
spokesmen of the resistance party in Damascus sent to negotiate with the
Īlkhān Ghāzān, leader of the invading forces. Thanks to his forceful pleading,
Ibn Taymiyya was able to negotiate the release of many prisoners as well as to
obtain a declaration of peace for the city’s inhabitants.15 Later that year, he took
part in an expedition under Mamluk command against the Shīʿa of Kasrawān,
who were accused of collaborating with both the Mongols and the crusaders.
Shortly thereafter, in the face of a second Mongol threat, Ibn Taymiyya was bid-
den to exhort the populace to mount a defense, and he traveled all the way to
Cairo to beseech the Mamluk sultan, al-Nāṣir Muḥammad b. Qalāwūn (r. 709–
741/1310–1341), to dispatch an army to Syria. Ibn Taymiyya also fought at the

12 Little, “Historical and Historiographical Significance,” 313.

13 Ibn Kathīr, Bidāya, 17:665–666. On this incident, see also Hoover, “Ibn Taymiyya,” 853–854.
14 Laoust speaks of the “insolent mépris avec lequel Ibn Taymiyya s’ en prenait à la légitimité
de la théologie spéculative” (the insolent contempt with which Ibn Taymiyya went after
the legitimacy of speculative theology). Laoust, “L’influence,” 15. See the detailed analysis
and discussion of al-Fatwā al-Ḥamawiyya in Adem, “Intellectual Genealogy,” 483–533.
15 Umaruddin, “Ibn Taimiyya,” 718.

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battle of Shaqḥab in 702/1303, which resulted in a victory against a third Mon-

gol invasion, and in 704/1305, he participated in a renewed campaign against
the Shīʿa of Kasrawān.
After these political engagements, Ibn Taymiyya returned to his scholarly
writing and debates. On one occasion during this period, he is reported to have
led a party of stonemasons to smash a sacred rock that was being venerated
in the mosque of Naranj. He also sent a letter to the shaykh Naṣr al-Manbijī
(d. 719/1319), a leading member of the Damascene disciples of the Andalu-
sian Sufi Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240), in which he politely but roundly condemned
this latter’s increasingly popular, yet highly controversial, mystical monism.16
Around the same time, Ibn Taymiyya’s opponents raised a second round of
doubts surrounding the orthodoxy of his belief, this time on the basis of a
second statement of creed, known as al-ʿAqīda al-Wāsiṭiyya.17 Two councils18
were held back to back in 705/1306 at the residence of the governor of Dam-
ascus; during the second, a pupil of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, that master of late
Ashʿarī philosophical kalām, judged Ibn Taymiyya’s Wāsiṭiyya to be “in confor-
mity with the Qurʾān and Sunna.” Nevertheless, a Shāfiʿī judge, Najm al-Dīn
b. Ṣaṣrā (d. 723/1322),19 immediately reopened the case against the Wāsiṭiyya,
and a third council was held by order of the sultan. This time, too, the council
refrained from condemning the treatise, whereupon Ibn Ṣaṣrā resigned and,
along with Ibn Taymiyya, was banished to Cairo several months later. Immedi-
ately upon his arrival in Cairo, Ibn Taymiyya was summoned before yet another
council, this one composed of high-ranking Mamluk officials and the four

16 For the text of this letter, see Ibn Taymiyya, “Kitāb Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyya ilā al-ʿārif
bi-Llāh al-Shaykh al-Naṣr al-Manbijī,” in Majmūʿat al-rasāʾil wa-l-masāʾil, 1:161–183. It also
appears in Majmūʿ fatāwā Shaykh al-Islām Aḥmad b. Taymiyya [hereafter MF], 2:452–479.
17 There is some question whether it was al-ʿAqīda al-Wāsiṭiyya that landed Ibn Taymiyya
before the Damascus tribunal or whether his troubles were a result of his activities and
theological positions in general and he simply used the Wāsiṭiyya as evidence to expound
his creed in detail before his jurors. On this question, see Jackson, “Ibn Taymiyyah on Trial,”
49–51 (esp. at 49, n. 53). For a translation of the Wāsiṭiyya with an introduction and notes,
see Swartz, “A Seventh-Century (A.H.) Sunnī Creed,” 91–131 and, before him, Laoust, La
profession de foi d’Ibn Taymiyya. For the specific charges brought against the Wāsiṭiyya,
see Swartz, “Seventh-Century (A.H.) Sunnī Creed,” 101–102.
18 For a detailed study of the Damascus trials, including a presentation of all the actors
involved as well as a translation and discussion of Ibn Taymiyya’s own first-person account
of their proceedings, see Jackson, “Ibn Taymiyyah on Trial.” See also Little, “Historical and
Historiographical Significance.”
19 On the correct pronunciation of this name as “Ibn Ṣaṣrā,” as opposed to “Ibn Ṣaṣarī” or
other variant pronunciations often given in Western sources, see Jackson, “Ibn Taymiyyah
on Trial,” 46, n. 20 (following W.M. Brinner’s conclusions in “The Banū Ṣaṣrā”).

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ibn taymiyya: life, times, and intellectual profile 83

chief qāḍīs of Egypt. The council convicted him of propagating anthropomor-

phic views and sentenced him to prison in the citadel of Cairo. After eighteen
months of internment, Ibn Taymiyya was freed but was not permitted to return
to Syria.
In Cairo, Ibn Taymiyya continued to denounce various beliefs and practices
that he considered bidʿa (reprehensible innovation). This earned him the oppo-
sition, in the year 707/1308, of the influential Sufi shaykh of the Shādhilī order
Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh al-Iskandarī (d. 709/1309) and another prominent Sufi, Karīm
al-Dīn al-Āmulī (d. 710/1310 or 1311). At issue was Ibn Taymiyya’s vocal oppo-
sition to the practice, widely accepted by both Sufis and the majority of legal
scholars, of tawassul (or istighātha), a form of supplication for divine assistance
through the intermediary of the Prophet Muḥammad or another person of high
spiritual rank, known as a walī (pl. awliyāʾ). Ibn Taymiyya declared tawassul
prohibited, as he saw in it a subtle form of shirk (idolatry). He feared that this
practice (sometimes referred to as “maraboutism,” or the “cult of saints”), if
taken to an extreme, could shift a believer’s primary spiritual focus from God to
created beings, however pious the latter may have been. In the wake of a pop-
ular demonstration against him, Ibn Taymiyya was called before a Shāfiʿī judge
in Cairo and asked to clarify his views on tawassul. The judge apparently acquit-
ted him, as he was officially granted permission to return to Syria; nevertheless,
he was held in prison in Cairo for several additional months.
One year later, in 708/1309, Rukn al-Dīn Baybars al-Jāshnikīr (d. 709/1310),
a disciple of the aforementioned shaykh Naṣr al-Manbijī, was proclaimed sul-
tan.20 The new sultan’s alignment with the Sufi forces that Ibn Taymiyya had
directly opposed led to a new round of recriminations against him. Ibn Tay-
miyya was arrested and exiled to Alexandria, where he was imprisoned for
seven months in the tower of the sultan’s palace. During this period, he wrote
several important works, most notably his Kitāb al-Radd ʿalā al-manṭiqiyyīn
(Refutation of the logicians)21—a work that Wael Hallaq has described as “one
of the most devastating attacks ever leveled against the logical system upheld
by the early Greeks, the later commentators, and their Muslim followers”22 and
whose theme is central to Ibn Taymiyya’s critique of the philosophical and

20 His rule, however, lasted a mere ten months and twenty-four days and ended with his
arrest and execution at the order of Sultan al-Nāṣir Muḥammad, under whose second
reign (699–708/1299–1309) Baybars had served as vice-sultan of Egypt. See Fernandes,
“Baybars II, al-Malik al-Muẓaffar Jāshnikīr,” EI3 (2012-4), 34.
21 See Hallaq, Greek Logicians for an introduction to this work and a translation of Jalāl al-
Dīn al-Suyūṭī’s abridgement of it (called Jahd al-qarīḥa fī tajrīd al-Naṣīḥa).
22 Hallaq, Greek Logicians, xi.

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theological methods he blames for engendering the famous “contradiction”

between reason and revelation that he sets out to refute in the Darʾ taʿāruḍ.
The following year, Ibn Taymiyya was released from captivity in Alexandria
and returned to Cairo, where he taught privately and continued writing for
three years until 712/1313, when a new Mongol threat occasioned his return to
Damascus. Around the same time, a new governor of Damascus was appointed
and Ibn Taymiyya was promoted to the rank of professor. By this time, his sup-
porters esteemed him an independent mujtahid, and it was during this period
that he began training his most talented and influential pupil, Ibn Qayyim al-
Jawziyya (d. 751/1350), who did much to synthesize, organize, and popularize
his master’s teachings. It is also likely during this period that Ibn Taymiyya
wrote the Darʾ taʿāruḍ.23 Relations between Ḥanbalīs and Ashʿarīs in Damascus
remained troubled, however, and in 716/1316, open rivalry broke out between
them, once more pitting the two schools against each other over questions of
creed.
By the year 718/1318, trouble flared up once again, this time in conjunction
with Ibn Taymiyya’s ruling—against the consensus opinion (ijmāʿ) of the four
legal schools, including his own Ḥanbalī madhhab—that a triple divorce for-
mula uttered in one sitting counted only as a single repudiation and, hence,
was insufficient to bring about an irrevocable divorce (ṭalāq) if the man utter-
ing it had not intended such.24 The sultan ordered Ibn Taymiyya to stop issuing
fatwās on divorce that did not conform to the doctrine of the Ḥanbalī school,
and two councils were held, one in 718/1318 and the other in 719/1319, to inves-
tigate the matter further. Ibn Taymiyya was acquitted after these two hearings,
but a third council, held in 720/1320, charged him with insubordination for dis-
obeying the sultan’s order to refrain from giving fatwās. At the close of this
third hearing, Ibn Taymiyya was arrested and imprisoned for five months in
the citadel of Damascus. For six years following his release from prison in
721/1321, he continued teaching and writing and is also reported to have become
involved numerous times in the politics and public religious life of both Syria
and Egypt.

23 See Muḥammad Rashād Sālim’s discussion in his introduction to the Darʾ, 1:7–10, as well
as Hoover’s summary and comments in Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy, 11, n. 23.
24 On the question of Ibn Taymiyya and the triple ṭalāq, see Rapoport, “Ibn Taymiyya on
Divorce Oaths,” as well as Laoust, Essai, 422–434. See also Al-Matroudi, Ḥanbalī School,
chap. 6, where the author argues that a careful study of the evidence reveals that Ibn
Taymiyya’s stance on ṭalāq in fact agrees with that of some scholars in other schools
of law, but that he was indeed the first Ḥanbalī (though not the last) to hold this posi-
tion.

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In 726/1326, Ibn Taymiyya was again arrested, deprived of the right to issue
fatwās, and thrown back into the citadel in Damascus, where he remained for
two full years. At issue this time was his treatise al-Risāla fī ziyārat al-qubūr wa-
l-istinjād bi-l-maqbūr (Treatise on the visitation of graves and seeking aid from
the buried), in which he attacked the practice of visiting the graves of righteous
people (awliyāʾ) for the purpose of making tawassul through them.25 This time,
Ibn Taymiyya faced the opposition of two more influential figures, the Mālikī
chief judge Taqī al-Dīn al-Ikhnāʾī (d. 750/1349) and the Shāfiʿī chief judge ʿAlāʾ
al-Dīn al-Qūnawī (d. 729/1329), a follower of Ibn ʿArabī—a combined opposi-
tion that perhaps explains the length of his sentence. Ibn Taymiyya continued
to write from the Damascus citadel, producing, among other works, a treatise in
which he leveled a personal attack against al-Ikhnāʾī and expounded his views
on visiting and supplicating at the graves of the awliyāʾ. A complaint from al-
Ikhnāʾī prompted the sultan to order that Ibn Taymiyya be deprived of all paper,
ink, and pens.
Five months after this final edict from the sultan, on 20 Dhū al-Qaʿda 728/
26 September 1328, Ibn Taymiyya, as if overwhelmed by chagrin at being denied
the means to write, passed away in his cell at the citadel. Despite such strong
and persistent opposition from certain quarters, Ibn Taymiyya had endeared
himself to the majority of the population of Damascus, who saw in him a
scholar of great personal integrity, religious scrupulousness, and fearless val-
iance in confronting the greatest social and political dangers of his day, all
the way to the battlefield when necessary. Indeed, it is reported that from the
time of his death until his burial, “the normal life of Damascus came to a vir-
tual standstill.”26 After his funeral, which was attended by a large number of
the city’s inhabitants, including an unusually large number of women,27 Ibn
Taymiyya was laid to rest in the Sufi cemetery at Damascus, where his tomb—
for all his disapproval of visiting the graves of the pious—is still honored to this
day.

25 For a discussion, see Taylor, In the Vicinity of the Righteous, esp. 168–194.
26 Swartz, “Seventh-Century (A.H.) Sunnī Creed,” 99 (referencing Ibn Rajab, Dhayl, 2:405–
407).
27 For an insightful treatment of Ibn Taymiyya’s emotional and psychological profile—and
specifically his relationship to women, his relationship with his mother, the fact of his life-
long celibacy, and related issues—see Michot, “Un célibataire endurci et sa maman.” For a
description of Ibn Taymiyya’s funeral, underscoring “l’ importance de la participation fém-
inine à ses obsèques” (the large number of women who took part in his funeral) and citing,
on the authority of Ibn Kathīr, the figure of fifteen thousand women in attendance, see
Michot, 165ff. Michot also cites (p. 167, from Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī’s ʿUqūd) a certain ʿAbd Allāh

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table 2 Overview of Ibn Taymiyya’s biography

661/1263 Ibn Taymiyya is born in the city of Harran, in current-day southeastern Turkey.
667/1269 Taymiyya family flees Mongol invasions and takes refuge in the Ḥanbalī quarter of Damas-
cus.
683/1284 Ibn Taymiyya succeeds his father as director of the Sukkariyya Ḥanbalī madrasa, located in
Damascus.
684/1285 Begins teaching Qurʾānic exegesis at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus.
693/1294 Begins teaching at the Ḥanbaliyya madrasa in Damascus subsequent to the death of one of his
teachers.
693/1294 The incident of ʿAssāf al-Naṣrānī occasions Ibn Taymiyya’s first foray into political life and his
first stint in prison.
698/1299 Ibn Taymiyya writes one of his most famous statements of creed, al-Fatwā al-Ḥamawiyya.
699/1300 Mongols attack Damascus. Ibn Taymiyya negotiates release of prisoners. Takes part in expedi-
tion against the Shīʿa of Kasrawān.
700/1301 Travels to Cairo to implore Mamluk sultan, al-Nāṣir b. Qalāwūn, to dispatch an army to Syria.
702/1303 Ibn Taymiyya fights at Shaqḥab, participating in the victory against a third Mongol invasion.
704/1305 Takes part in a renewed campaign against the Shīʿa of Kasrawān. Sends a letter to the Sufi
shaykh Naṣr al-Manbijī condemning Ibn ʿArabī’s mystical monism.
705/1306 Two councils are held on the orthodoxy of Ibn Taymiyya’s belief as expounded in his al-ʿAqīda
al-Wāsiṭiyya. Banished to Cairo after a third council. Convicted by a further council of propa-
gating anthropomorphic views and sentenced to prison in the citadel of Cairo.
707/1307 Set free after eighteen months of imprisonment, but not permitted to return to Syria.
707/1308 Questioned by Shāfiʿī judge in Cairo concerning his views on tawassul. Acquitted and offi-
cially granted permission to return to Syria, but held in prison in Cairo for several additional
months.
708/1309 Ibn Taymiyya is arrested, exiled to Alexandria, and held for seven months in the tower of the sul-
tan’s palace. Writes several important works, most notably his Kitāb al-Radd ʿalā al-manṭiqiyyīn
(Refutation of the logicians).
709/1310 Released from captivity in Alexandria. Returns to Cairo to teach privately and continue
writing.
712/1313 Returns to Damascus on account of a new Mongol threat from the north. Promoted to the rank
of professor by the new governor of Damascus.

al-Ḥarīrī al-Mutayyam (d. 731/1331), who speaks of hundreds of thousands (miʾīna ulūfan)
of weeping attendees and “multitude upon multitude” ( fawja baʿda fawja) of believing
women. See Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, ʿUqūd, 370, lines 6 and 8.

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Table 2 Overview of Ibn Taymiyya’s biography (cont.)

713–717/ Period during which Ibn Taymiyya (most likely) composed the Darʾ taʿāruḍ.
1313–1317
718/1318 Ordered by the sultan to stop issuing fatwās on divorce that do not conform to the doctrine of
the Ḥanbalī school. First council held on Ibn Taymiyya’s divorce fatwā.
719/1319 Second council held on Ibn Taymiyya’s divorce fatwā.
720/1320 A third council charges Ibn Taymiyya with insubordination for refusing to obey the sultan’s
order to stop issuing fatwās. Arrested and imprisoned in the citadel of Damascus for five
months.
721/1321 Released from prison. Continues teaching and writing for the next six years. Becomes involved
in the political and public religious life of both Syria and Egypt on numerous occasions.
726/1326 Arrested for the sixth time, confined once more to the citadel of Damascus, and denied the
right to issue any fatwās whatsoever.
738/1328 Ibn Taymiyya is deprived of paper, ink, and pens. Passes away several months later, on 20 Dhū
al-Qaʿda / 26 September, in his cell at the Damascus citadel.

2 Intellectual Profile

We have mentioned the extraordinary breadth and depth of Ibn Taymiyya’s

erudition not only in the text-based sciences—law, ḥadīth, Qurʾān, and the
biographical literature of the Prophet, Companions, and early generations—
but also in the rational sciences of kalām and philosophy, with both of which
his writings exhibit an astonishingly deep familiarity.28 Ibn Taymiyya also read
widely in the works of the Sufi tradition, including those of such luminaries as
Sahl al-Tustarī (d. 283/896), al-Junayd al-Baghdādī (d. ca. 297/910), Abū Ṭālib
al-Makkī (d. 386/996),29 Abū al-Qāsim al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1073), al-Ghazālī,
and Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī (d. 632/1234),30 not to mention two Ḥanbalī

28 For an in-depth study on the versatility, originality, and synthetic quality of Ibn Taymiyya’s
thought and methodology, specifically with regard to the question of the “Satanic verses”
incident (al-gharānīq), see Shahab Ahmed’s rich discussion in S. Ahmed, “Ibn Taymiyyah
and the Satanic Verses.”
29 Whose famous work, Qūt al-qulūb (Nourishment of the hearts), was one of Ibn Taymiyya’s
favorite books. Laoust, “L’influence,” 19.
30 His full name is Shihāb al-Dīn Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī, not to be confused with Shi-
hāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī al-Maqtūl, the Ishrāqī mystic put to death in Aleppo in 587/1191.
See p. 72 above.

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Sufis, the aforementioned ʿAbd Allāh al-Anṣārī al-Harawī and the famous ʿAbd
al-Qādir al-Jīlānī (d. 561/1166).31 While Ibn Taymiyya expressed great admira-
tion for such figures, repeatedly referring to them by laudatory epithets such
as “our shaykh,” he nevertheless denounced unflinchingly and uncondition-
ally the speculative mystical system of Ibn ʿArabī and his followers, such as
Ibn ʿArabī’s foremost disciple, Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī (d. 673/1274), as well as
ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq b. Sabʿīn (d. 669/1271), ʿAfīf al-Dīn al-Tilimsānī (d. 690/1291), and
other Sufis, such as the ḥadīth scholar and master poet ʿUmar b. ʿAlī b. al-Fāriḍ
(d. 632/1235), who adopted a similar metaphysical outlook.32
Despite his intellectual independence, Ibn Taymiyya maintained his affili-
ation with the Ḥanbalī school throughout his life, an affiliation that implied
as much a theological outlook as an approach to law and legal theory. In
terms of law, Ibn Taymiyya followed closely the principles of legal derivation
exemplified by the school’s eponym, Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, whose methodology he
believed, in comparison to those of the other schools of law, to have remained
most closely in tune with the legal practices and spirit of the authoritative
early community (that is, the generations of the Salaf).33 Ḥanbalī jurispru-
dence is characterized by a particularly strong emphasis on adherence to the
revealed texts (Qurʾān and Sunna) and to the authority of the early commu-
nity, and it takes a comparatively more cautious attitude towards the use of

31 On whose Futūḥ al-ghayb (Revelations of the unseen) he even saw fit to write a partial
commentary. See Michel, “Ibn Taymiyya’s Sharḥ.” For a discussion of Ibn Taymiyya’s per-
sonal affiliation with the Qādirī Sufi order, see Makdisi, “Ibn Taimīya: A Ṣūfī of the Qādirīya
Order.” However, as noted by Caterina Bori (“Ibn Taymiyya wa-Jamāʿatu-hu,” 46, n. 17), Mak-
disi’s conclusions must now be qualified by subsequent studies, including Michel, “Ibn
Taymiyya’s Sharḥ”; Meier, “Das Sauberste über die Vorherbestimmung” (published in an
English translation as “The Cleanest about Predestination”); and Knysh, Ibn ʿArabī, 314,
n. 5.
32 Ibn Taymiyya’s reputation for being implacably anti-Sufi is inaccurate and misleading
when indiscriminately generalized, but it is not entirely without foundation as he was
indeed staunchly—and very vocally—opposed to discrete ideas and practices that were
widely associated with Sufism in his day. For Ibn Taymiyya’s critiques of such aspects
of contemporary Sufism, critiques that are responsible not only for the stereotype we
have inherited of him today but also for a considerable amount of the opposition and
tribulations he faced in his own day, see the following studies: Homerin, “Sufis and their
Detractors,” esp. 231–235; Knysh, Ibn ʿArabī, 87–112; Michel, Muslim Theologian’s Response,
5–14, 24–39; and Memon, Ibn Taimīya’s Struggle against Popular Religion. See further Wael
Hallaq’s incisive comments in Greek Logicians, esp. xi–xiv.
33 Laoust, Essai, 76. Ibn Taymiyya is reported to have written a full volume on the preferabil-
ity (tafḍīl) of the Ḥanbalī madhhab and its merits. See Ibn Rushayyiq, Asmāʾ muʾallafāt Ibn
Taymiyya [hereafter Asmāʾ muʾallafāt], 27.

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analogy (qiyās) in legal derivation.34 At the same time, however, Ibn Taymiyya
opposed what he saw as the exaggerated weight accorded to the principle of
moral scrupulousness (waraʿ) used by many Ḥanbalī scholars in deriving the
law.35
Overall, Ibn Taymiyya’s thought evidences a strong preference for the
methodology of ahl al-ḥadīth over that of ahl al-raʾy, commending the way of
Mālik in the Hijaz over that of contemporary Iraqi scholars and maintaining
that it was Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal who had ultimately perfected Mālik’s ḥadīth-based
methodology.36 In places, he praises the Ḥanbalī school for its strict adherence
to the Qurʾān and Sunna and to the opinions of the Salaf.37 He also lauds the
school for its relative unity, describing its scholars as having fewer points of dis-
agreement (ikhtilāf ) among themselves than the adherents of the other legal
schools.38 As prefigured in our “Taymiyyan pyramid,”39 Ibn Taymiyya posits a
strong correlation between truth and unanimity and identifies the amount of
internal disagreement among the members of a given school—be it of law,
theology, or any other discipline—as a tell-tale sign of that school’s relative
distance from the unitary, normative truth. This attitude towards the unicity
of truth is reflected in Ibn Taymiyya’s adherence, with regard to the difference
of opinion (ikhtilāf ) among legal scholars, to the maxim that “the truth is [to be

34 Al-Matroudi, Ḥanbalī School, 32–35. Under “analogy” we may also class related principles
of ijtihād, such as istiḥsān (juristic preference), istiṣḥāb (presumption of continuity), and
maṣlaḥa mursala (textually unattested benefits). For more on these principles, see Hallaq,
History, 107–115. For a treatment of the details of Ibn Taymiyya’s legal methodology, see
Laoust, Contribution, which includes an annotated translation, preceded by an extensive
introductory analysis, of two of Ibn Taymiyya’s most important works on legal methodol-
ogy, “Maʿārij al-wuṣūl” and “al-Qiyās fī al-sharʿ al-Islāmī” (commonly known as “Risāla fī
al-qiyās”).
35 For Ibn Taymiyya’s views on precaution (iḥtiyāṭ) and pious restraint (waraʿ) in legal rul-
ings and his critique of the overapplication of these principles on the part of some legal
scholars, see Al-Matroudi, Ḥanbalī School, 103–107. Interestingly, just one generation after
Ibn Taymiyya, the famous Andalusian jurist Abū Isḥāq al-Shāṭibī (d. 790/1388), likely in
response to the perceived over-scrupulousness of Sufis (not Ḥanbalīs), advocated a simi-
lar moderating of waraʿ when applied to questions of legal derivation.
36 Al-Matroudi, Ḥanbalī School, 44. Ibn Taymiyya wrote a 100-page treatise on the correct-
ness of the principles of the Mālikī school (“Ṣiḥḥat uṣūl madhhab ahl al-Madīna,” at MF,
20:294–396). Ibn Rushayyiq also notes that Ibn Taymiyya wrote a separate treatise on the
merits ( faḍāʾil) of the Four Imams (Abū Ḥanīfa, Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, and Ibn Ḥanbal) and the
virtues of each. See Ibn Rushayyiq, Asmāʾ muʾallafāt, 27.
37 Al-Matroudi, Ḥanbalī School, 41.
38 Ibid.
39 See introduction, p. 7 above.

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found] in one [opinion]” (al-ḥaqq fī wāḥid), that is, while each mujtahid scholar
may well be rewarded for his sincere effort to identify a legal ruling, only one of
several conflicting solutions is actually correct in the objective sense of being
the right answer from the perspective of God.40 This contrasts with the more
catholic—but epistemologically also more relativistic—position of the major-
ity, predicated on the maxim that “each mujtahid is correct” (kullu mujtahid
muṣīb); in other words, not merely is each of the mujtahids who disagree on a
point of law rewarded for his effort, but all their divers opinions are positively
correct, even when they contradict one another.41 We will see these various ten-
dencies in Ibn Taymiyya’s legal thought replicated in his approach to Qurʾānic
hermeneutics and, ultimately, his approach to questions of theology and phi-
losophy as well. Another central tenet of Ibn Taymiyya’s legal thought likewise
reflected in his theology is the notion that an authentic text of revelation can
never conflict with a valid legal analogy (qiyās) based on a correct instance of
ijtihād. In other words, there can be no conflict between revelation and rea-
son on the plane of legal rulings just as there can be no such conflict in the
realm of theology. Any apparent contradiction between reason and revelation
in the legal ___domain is necessarily due to an unsound analogy, the use of an
inauthentic text, or the misinterpretation or misapplication of an authentic
one.42
Though Ibn Taymiyya was a faithful adherent of the methodology exempli-
fied by Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, he nevertheless believed that the Ḥanbalī school,

40 In this regard (as in others), Ibn Taymiyya manifests a distinct affinity with the thought
of Ibn Ḥazm. On the question of the unicity of truth, for instance, and whether each muj-
tahid can be considered positively correct in his ijtihād, see El-Tobgui, “Epistemology of
Qiyas and Taʿlil,” 352–353 (and pp. 340–351 for an analysis of Ibn Ḥazm’s epistemology
more generally).
41 Ibn Taymiyya is listed as having penned a separate treatise on this issue as well. See Ibn
Rushayyiq, Asmāʾ muʾallafāt, 28.
42 Al-Matroudi, Ḥanbalī School, 27–30. The existence of a conflict between reason and rev-
elation had been taken for granted in earlier jurisprudential treatises, such as the al-
Mustaṣfā min ʿilm al-uṣūl of al-Ghazālī (a Shāfiʿī), the al-Iḥkām fī uṣūl al-aḥkām of Sayf
al-Dīn al-Āmidī (d. 631/1233) (a Ḥanbalī turned Shāfiʿī), and even the Rawḍat al-nāẓir wa-
junnat al-munāẓir of Muwaffaq al-Dīn b. Qudāma (d. 620/1223) (an avowed Ḥanbalī and
anti-Ashʿarī). See Laoust, Contribution, 11. In his treatise “Risāla fī al-qiyās,” Ibn Taymiyya
argues against the possibility of a real contradiction between a revealed text and a valid
legal analogy or, for that matter, between a revealed text and the product of other tools
of legal rationalism, such as istiḥsān (juristic preference) or maṣlaḥa (utility, public inter-
est). For an overall treatment of Ibn Taymiyya’s legal methodology, especially as it relates
to and overlaps with his approach to theology and reason more generally, see Rapoport,
“Ibn Taymiyya’s Radical Legal Thought,” esp. 193–199.

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over the course of its subsequent development, had arrived at incorrect posi-
tions on certain issues. Consequently, he sought to revise such rulings on the
basis of a direct engagement with the primary sources of the Sharīʿa—Qurʾān,
Sunna, consensus, and analogy—and in light of the statements and general
principles of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal.43 Ibn Taymiyya’s intellectual independence
and willingness to challenge even widely or universally held opinions within
his own school—if he judged them incorrect in light of the primary sources
and the principles of the school’s imam—led other Ḥanbalī authorities to crit-
icize sharply a number of his fatwās.44 As an example, we may cite the afore-
mentioned triple divorce formula, in which Ibn Taymiyya seems to be the first
Ḥanbalī (though not the first Muslim jurist altogether) to hold the position that
the triple formula uttered in a single instance does not result in an irrevocable
“triple” divorce. Ibn Taymiyya’s stature as a scholar, however, ensured that his
opinions were taken seriously, and it is of note that since his time, Ḥanbalī legal
works have taken note of Ibn Taymiyya’s stance on the issue of ṭalāq and cited
the existence of ikhtilāf in the Ḥanbalī school over the question of the triple
divorce. Several later scholars even adopted Ibn Taymiyya’s conclusions on the
matter.
Regarding matters of creed, Ibn Taymiyya also looked to the first three gen-
erations (those of the Salaf) as the sole standard by which to judge correct
belief, both in terms of the Salaf’s substantive doctrine and in terms of their
specific methods of approaching the texts and of using reason to gain a proper
understanding of them. Ibn Taymiyya did not condemn kalām—in the sense
of disciplined reasoning about theological matters—outright; rather, he dis-
tinguished between a “kalām sunnī” and a “kalām bidʿī,”45 that is, between an
orthodox and a heterodox way of reasoning about religious truths. A primary
motivating factor in his opposition to kalām was his view that it was divisive
and schismatic: schools often differed bitterly over points of doctrine owing
to their differing notions of what reason was presumed to entail and, just as
commonly, on account of variant starting assumptions and founding axioms
determined by the overall philosophical premises of the school in question. Ibn
Taymiyya’s life project was, in a sense, to transcend school divisions by reunit-
ing the Muslim religious community on a reintegrated theological platform
that was based directly on the understanding and approach of the Salaf, whom

43 Al-Matroudi, Ḥanbalī School, 56–57, 189–190, and passim. Also Laoust, Essai, 77–78.
44 On opposition to Ibn Taymiyya from his Ḥanbalī peers, see Bori, “Ibn Taymiyya wa-
Jamāʿatu-hu,” 33–36 and Bori, 37–41 for opposition to him from traditionalist (that is,
non-Ashʿarī) Shāfiʿīs as well.
45 Laoust, “L’influence,” 18.

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he held to be, of necessity, both more correct than later theologians and, as a
corollary to this, characterized by a comparatively higher degree of consensus,
if not outright uniformity, in their apprehension of theological truth.
In addition to his study of theology, Ibn Taymiyya also closely scrutinized
the doctrines of the philosophers—primarily with the view to refute them, but
also to understand their origins. He wrote his scathing critique of Aristotelian
logic, al-Radd ʿalā al-manṭiqiyyīn, while imprisoned in the tower at Alexandria.
He also forcefully advocated the old-style analogical reasoning (qiyās) of the
jurists over the Aristotelian syllogism, which had become part and parcel of the
“new” kalām through the work of al-Ghazālī. Ibn Taymiyya likewise advocated
for the jurists’ method of definition by description (waṣf ) over the philosoph-
ical method of definition by genus and specific difference (known as ḥadd).
Finally, Ibn Taymiyya was a (moderate) nominalist,46 refusing to accord any
independent ontological reality to abstract concepts or notions outside the
mind.47 These and similar matters will occupy our attention in chapter 5.
Ibn Taymiyya’s own positive theology has been given the name “Qurʾānic
rational theology.”48 Considering the rise and spread of a rationalistic theol-
ogy that was increasingly influenced by philosophical terms and categories,
Ibn Taymiyya set himself the task—reminiscent of al-Ashʿarī—of defending
traditional doctrines by reformulating them within an alternative rationalist
framework.49 Deeply immersed in the intellectual legacy of Islamic civiliza-
tion and intimately familiar with its sundry movements and discourses, Ibn
Taymiyya, it has been noted, seems to have been “influenced by al-Ashʿarī’s
critique of the Muʿtazilites, al-Ghazālī’s of the philosophers, and Ibn Rushd’s
of the Ashʿarites.”50 Ibn Taymiyya was keenly aware, and highly mistrustful,
of the “Avicennian turn”51 that had occurred in later Ashʿarī kalām as of al-
Juwaynī and, especially, al-Ghazālī one generation later. He therefore sought
to articulate an alternative theology based more squarely on the revealed texts
while nevertheless fully engaging the philosophical tradition. In this respect,
his approach differed substantially from past traditionalist scholars, who had
clung to a strong theological textualism while deliberately eschewing any en-
gagement with the philosophical tradition whatsoever.

46 This was true in some respects, but he was also a moderate realist in others, as argued by
Anke von Kügelgen, “Poison of Philosophy,” 306ff.
47 Laoust, “L’influence,” 19.
48 Özervarli, “Qurʾānic Rational Theology,” 78.
49 Ibid., 79.
50 Ibid.
51 See Wisnovsky, “One Aspect.”

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At the same time, Ibn Taymiyya was a strong proponent of the notion that
revelation—in the form of the Qurʾān and the Sunna—provides comprehen-
sive knowledge of not only the principles (uṣūl) but also the details ( furūʿ) of
the theological postulates upon which religion rests. Furthermore, it does so
by explicitly indicating not only the premises but also the rational methods—
backed up by the most conclusive and certain rational arguments and proofs—
on the basis of which further details are to be worked out. Indeed, perhaps the
most salient and ingenious feature of Ibn Taymiyya’s thought and methodology
is the fact that he did not banish reason in favor of an entirely non-speculative
traditionalism; rather, he rehabilitated reason, all the while preserving the obvi-
ous meaning of the revealed texts by demonstrating that sound reason and
authentic revelation never come into actual conflict. This is so because reve-
lation, “all-inclusive and faultless, contains within itself perfect and complete
rational foundations.”52 On the basis of this insight, Ibn Taymiyya put forth a
“philosophical interpretation and defense of tradition,”53 thereby developing
his own unique brand of what has appositely been termed a “philosophical tra-
ditionalism.”54

3 Character and Contemporary Reception

Ibn Taymiyya was a controversial figure in his own times and has remained
one up to the current day. On the one hand, he was universally recognized
by his contemporaries—friend and foe alike—for his extraordinary personal
integrity and moral character, to say nothing of his virtually unparalleled mas-
tery of a vast range of religious and intellectual disciplines coupled with his
reputation for fastidious adherence to the teachings and practices of Islam.
Indeed, while many found fault with Ibn Taymiyya’s ideas, hardly anyone criti-
cized him for his character.55 Ibn Taymiyya was particularly admired by classi-
cal historians and biographers, so much so that

without exception, all of the historians, no matter what their position,

training, and specialization, show a distinctly favorable attitude towards
Ibn Taymiyya’s words and deeds. So far as has been determined, only al-
D̲ h̲ ahabî, Ibn Rajab, and Ibn Ḥajar record anything at all that might be

52 See Rapoport and Ahmed, “Ibn Taymiyya and His Times,” 8.

53 Hoover, “Perpetual Creativity,” 194.
54 Rapoport and Ahmed, “Ibn Taymiyya and His Times,” 12.
55 See Little, “Did Ibn Taymiyya Have a Screw Loose?,” 94.

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construed as an uncomplimentary interpretation of Ibn Taymiyya’s char-

acter and activities, and the instances of this are rare even with these three
authors.56

And while it is true that nearly all the Syrian scholar-historians happened to
be followers or supporters of Ibn Taymiyya—drawn from the ranks of fellow
Ḥanbalīs like Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī (d. 744/1344) and Ibn Rajab (d. 795/1393) or
of traditionalist-oriented Shāfiʿīs like al-Dhahabī (d. 748/1348) and Ibn Kathīr
(d. 774/1373)—even his worst enemies conceded the overall excellence of his
character and the exemplary quality of his pious and God-fearing life. For
example, the Mālikī chief qāḍī Zayn al-Dīn b. Makhlūf (d. 718/1318), who had
been behind many of Ibn Taymiyya’s troubles after his arrival in Egypt, ulti-
mately conceded that “there is no one more righteous than Ibn Taymiyya; we
ought to abandon our struggle against him.”57 Furthermore, Taqī al-Dīn al-
Subkī (d. 756/1355), who was, on the whole, highly critical of Ibn Taymiyya’s
ideas and who wrote several tracts attacking his doctrines, made the following
almost gushing statement to al-Dhahabī:

As for what you [al-Dhahabī] say in regard to al-Shaykh Taqī al-Dīn [Ibn
Taymiyya], I am convinced of the great scope, the ocean-like fullness and
vastness of his knowledge of the transmitted and intellectual sciences,
his extreme intelligence, his exertions and his attainments, all of which
surpass description. I have always held this opinion. Personally, my admi-
ration is even greater for the asceticism, piety, and religiosity with which
God has endowed him, for his selfless championship of the truth, his
adherence to the path of our forebears, his pursuit of perfection, and the
wonder of his example, unrivalled in our time and in times past.58

In addition to such an adulatory character assessment from even his sworn

opponents, Ibn Taymiyya was also highly reputed for his constant concern for
others (particularly society’s less fortunate), his self-sacrifice, his clemency, his
courage in the face of existential danger (such as the invasion of the Mongols),
and his magnanimity—even when in a position to exact reprisals—towards all
who had ever occasioned him harm or borne him malice.
Notwithstanding this overall laudatory appraisal, it appears to be a mat-
ter of consensus—even among those who were generally supportive of Ibn

56 Little, “Historical and Historiographical Significance,” 319.

57 Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, ʿUqūd, 221. (Trans. Little, “Screw Loose?,” 99.)
58 Ibn Ḥajar, Durar, 1:186. (Trans. Little, “Screw Loose?,” 100.)

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Taymiyya, such as al-Dhahabī—that he had an irascible temper59 and an abra-

sive personality, that he could be overweening, and that he was often conde-
scending towards his fellow scholars, tactless, sanctimoniously convinced of
the truth of his own views, and dismissive of those who differed with him. A
number of sources suggest that it was primarily Ibn Taymiyya’s cantankerous-
ness, penchant for criticism, and perpetual tendency to raise a public ruckus
that guaranteed the unyielding, and often vicious, opposition of his detrac-
tors. Certainly, some of Ibn Taymiyya’s positions—idiosyncratic and some-
times directly opposed to broadly-held views on certain theological or legal
questions—would have sufficed on their own to ensure no shortage of ani-
mated and contentious exchanges between him and others. However, his grat-
ing and obstreperous manner seems to have made it that much easier for Ibn
Taymiyya’s antagonists to go after him with such ferocity.
Furthermore, while Ibn Taymiyya was beloved among the populace and
certainly enjoyed the respect and admiration of some contemporary schol-
ars and important statesmen and other public officials, he was by no means
welcomed with open arms even by many of his fellow Ḥanbalīs. Some fel-
low traditionalists took exception to the important role he accorded to reason
in understanding and interpreting revealed truths,60 while many objected to
his idiosyncratic legal opinions, in which he broke ranks, both methodologi-
cally and substantively, with accepted Ḥanbalī doctrine and practice. His close
disciples numbered only around twelve and are conspicuous for including
members of different legal schools (including a number of Shāfiʿīs and at least
one Mālikī).61 This fact demonstrates how Ibn Taymiyya, and those who were

59 The following—admittedly humorous—anecdote, related from al-Dhahabī, makes this

point especially clear: “When Ibn Taymiyya was a little boy, studying with the Banū Mu-
najjā, they supported something that he denied, whereupon they produced the text. When
he had read it, he threw it down in fury. They said, ‘How bold you are to cast from your hand
a volume that contains knowledge!’ He quickly replied, ‘Who is better, Moses or I?’ ‘Moses,’
they said. ‘And which is better, this book or the tablets on which the Ten Commandments
were inscribed?’ ‘The tablets,’ they replied. Ibn Taymiyya said, in words to this effect, ‘Well,
when Moses became angry, he threw down the tablets!’ ” Al-Ṣafadī, al-Wāfī bi-l-wafayāt,
7:12. (Trans. Little, “Screw Loose?,” 106.)
60 Al-Dhahabī, an anti-Ashʿarī Shāfiʿī who was largely committed to a traditionalist, non-
speculative approach to the revealed texts, commented that Ibn Taymiyya “repeatedly
swallowed the poison of the philosophers and their works; the body becomes addicted to
the frequent use of poison so that it is secreted, by God, in the very bones.” Little, “Screw
Loose?,” 101. Laoust, however, cast doubt on the authenticity of this quotation. See Laoust,
Essai, 484.
61 For a detailed discussion of Ibn Taymiyya’s “inner circle,” see Bori, “Ibn Taymiyya wa-
Jamāʿatu-hu.”

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attracted to him, saw his methodology as transcending that of the established

schools of law and theology and harking back to what they deemed to be the
idyllically unified understanding of the pristine early community, that of the
Salaf. Ibn Taymiyya’s approach is built on the interrelated premises that such
a unified and unequivocal understanding (1) had existed among the Salaf, (2)
was identifiable, and thus (3) could be retrieved and objectively established as
a true representation of the Salaf’s positions. This could be done by following
the methods that Ibn Taymiyya held were alone capable of identifying and lay-
ing these positions bare (methods that we examine in detail in chapters 4 and
5).
A corollary of Ibn Taymiyya’s approach—unsettling to many of his contem-
poraries—was that the existing legal and theological schools did not neces-
sarily, either individually or collectively, coincide with the verifiably authentic
views of the Salaf and, by extension, of the Prophet himself. Indeed, as we have
noted, Ibn Taymiyya favored the Ḥanbalī school, both in legal and theological
terms, because he believed that Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal had remained truest to the
early ways of the Salaf. But as we have also seen, Ibn Taymiyya was not shy to
critique later positions of the Ḥanbalī school when he judged that they had
deviated from Aḥmad’s (and therefore the Salaf’s) original understanding and
method. Yet by Ibn Taymiyya’s time, the older, more open rivalry among the var-
ious legal schools was in abeyance, and the more catholic tendency by which
each school recognized the validity of the others had gained general accep-
tance. This tendency was perhaps aided, in the particular social and political
context of the late seventh-/thirteenth- and early eighth-/fourteenth-century
Mamluk state, by the political decision to recognize all four legal schools as
equally valid and to appoint four chief judges in Cairo, one from each school.62
In light of this move towards a mutual recognition of different, officially sanc-
tioned doctrines associated with the different legal schools, Ibn Taymiyya’s sup-
porters at the Damascus trials of 705/1306 urged him to agree to define the theo-
logical stance expounded in his al-ʿAqīda al-Wāsiṭiyya as the “Ḥanbalī” position,
a position that could then exist in harmony with and mutual recognition of the
predominantly Ashʿarī theology of his opponents. Ibn Taymiyya, however, flatly
refused to countenance such a move. On the contrary, he insisted that “his was
the view not of Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal, but of the Prophet himself,” which “left his
adversaries with only two choices: convert to his doctrine or destroy him.”63

62 On the various factors motivating this move on the part of Egypt’s Mamluk authorities,
see Rapoport, “Legal Diversity in the Age of Taqlīd.”
63 Jackson, “Ibn Taymiyyah on Trial,” 56.

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The foregoing considerations, coupled with the fact that Ibn Taymiyya’s
close disciples were drawn from various schools of law, reinforce the view that
what was primarily at stake was a struggle between new-style Ashʿarī kalām and
old-school theological traditionalism.64 This struggle took place not only across
madhhab lines but within the various legal schools as well—particularly the
Shāfiʿī school, from whose ranks most contemporary Ashʿarīs hailed but which
nevertheless retained a significant number of scholars who continued to resist
Ashʿarī kalām in favor of an old-style, non-speculative theological traditional-
ism. We have also seen that certain high-profile Ḥanbalīs—such as Ibn ʿAqīl
(d. 513/1119), Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 597/1201), and Najm al-Dīn al-Ṭūfī (d. 716/1316)—
were likewise partial to rationalist kalām theology of the Ashʿarī type, but these
figures were much more of an exception in the midst of a Ḥanbalī school whose
members, in their vast majority, had long maintained a staunch allegiance to
a thoroughly textualist, non-speculative theology. It is important to remember,
however, that Ibn Taymiyya was opposed not only by contemporary rationalis-
tically inclined Ashʿarīs, on account of their belief that his “literalist” theology
directly entailed anthropomorphism, but also, and certainly no less signifi-
cantly, by a number of traditionalists themselves. Such traditionalists faulted
him precisely for what they judged to be his over-reliance on reason and philo-
sophical method in establishing theological truths. They also faulted him, more
generally, for what they considered his blurring of the lines—dare one say
à la Ashʿarī?—between the boundaries and methods of the revelation-based
(naqlī) and the rational (ʿaqlī) sciences.65 Indeed, this combination of tradi-
tionalism and rationalism has been identified as “perhaps the most distinctive
trait of Ibn Taymiyya’s religious thought.”66

4 Ibn Taymiyya’s Works

An eighth-/fourteenth-century work entitled Asmāʾ muʾallafāt Ibn Taymiyya,

written by Ibn Taymiyya’s personal scribe, Ibn Rushayyiq (d. 749/1349), reveals
that Ibn Taymiyya was an extremely prolific writer who penned several hun-
dred works spanning hundreds of volumes.67 Ibn Taymiyya’s student, Ibn ʿAbd

64 Ibid., 48 (also citing George Makdisi to the same effect).

65 Özervarli, “Qurʾānic Rational Theology,” 80.
66 Rapoport and Ahmed, “Ibn Taymiyya and His Times,” 8.
67 Several printed versions of Asmāʾ muʾallafāt incorrectly ascribe the work to Ibn Taymiyya’s
famous disciple, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya. The actual compiler, however, was Ibn Tay-
miyya’s scribe (kātib), Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh b. Rushayyiq. Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī reports in

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al-Hādī, reported that his teacher had a gift for composing quickly and that he
often wrote from memory without needing to cite from written materials—a
major reason he was able to remain so productive even while in prison. Ibn
Taymiyya, according to Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, could write a short volume (mujallad
laṭīf ) in a single day and up to forty folios (or eighty pages) in a single sitting. On
at least one occasion, he is reported to have composed an answer to an exceed-
ingly difficult question (min ashkal al-mashākil) in eight quires (128 pages),68
likewise in a single session!69 The ninth-/fifteenth-century chronicler Ibn Nāṣir
al-Dīn al-Dimashqī (d. 842/1438) reported Ibn Taymiyya’s contemporary Abū
al-Muẓaffar al-Surramarrī (d. 776/1374) as saying, “Among the wonders of our
time is the memory (ḥifẓ) of Ibn Taymiyya: he used to read a book once and
it would be etched in his memory such that he would quote it verbatim in his
own writings [from memory, it is implied].”70
In terms of style, Ibn Taymiyya’s prose is clear, precise, and easy to read; he
was by no means given to the use of highly ornate or stylized language. Like
his personality, his theology, and his lifestyle, Ibn Taymiyya’s writing is down
to earth, pragmatic, and to the point. Though he often deals with themes of
extraordinary complexity (particularly in a work as philosophically involved
as the Darʾ taʿāruḍ), it is nevertheless clear that his intention was to write
in a manner accessible to the average man and not just the scholarly elite.
The only occasions on which he incorporates slight embellishments of style
into his writing are his intermittent use of sajʿ (rhymed prose) to mark the
transition from one topic to another or as a means of emphasis. Notwith-
standing the limpidity of his language, Ibn Taymiyya’s works are nonethe-
less characterized by a high degree of repetition, excursiveness, and a pen-
chant for tangents. Some digressions in the Darʾ taʿāruḍ, for instance, go on
for tens of pages, while others run on for more than a hundred. Some mod-
ern scholars have described Ibn Taymiyya’s writing style as a “characteristically
digressive, disjointed style that bears the marks of brilliant insights hastily jot-
ted down.”71 Other scholars have blamed the relative dearth of serious stud-
ies of Ibn Taymiyya’s sophisticated philosophical and theological thought on

his ʿUqūd that Ibn Rushayyiq was one of the closest personal associates of Ibn Taymiyya
(min akhaṣṣ aṣḥāb shaykhinā) and the most keen on collecting his writings. On Ibn
Rushayyiq, see al-Ḥujaylī, Manhaj.
68 A quire (kurrās[a], pl. karārīs) was most often formed of four folded sheets of paper, yield-
ing eight leaves/folios (waraqāt)—or sixteen total sides (wujūh), or pages.
69 Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, ʿUqūd, 72.
70 Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, al-Radd al-wāfir, 218.
71 Rapoport and Ahmed, “Ibn Taymiyya and His Times,” 4.

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his “disorganized writing style, length, verbosity, and propensity for digres-
sion and repetition”72—all features that are prominent in the Darʾ and that
go a long way towards accounting for the difficulty and unwieldiness of the
text.
Here we mention briefly those of Ibn Taymiyya’s works that are most rele-
vant to the topic of reason and revelation. Pertinent writings on exegesis and
its principles include the following: Muqaddima fī uṣūl al-tafsīr (Introduction to
the Principles of Tafsīr);73 a full-volume commentary on the phrase “and none
knows its taʾwīl save God”;74 a treatise on the phrase “in it [the Qurʾān] are
muḥkam verses”;75 a treatise on the phrase “a Book whose verses have been
made firm (uḥkimat)”;76 and a fifty-leaf treatise on the all-important verse
“There is none like unto Him.”77 Also important for Ibn Taymiyya’s understand-
ing of language and interpretation is an eighty-leaf treatise on the terms “literal”
(ḥaqīqa) and “figurative” (majāz).78
Regarding works on theological topics (uṣūl al-dīn), Asmāʾ muʾallafāt lists
165 separate writings of various lengths and genres, the most famous of which
are Kitāb al-Īmān (Book of Faith); Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wa-l-naql; Bayān talbīs al-
Jahmiyya fī taʾsīs bidaʿihim al-kalāmiyya (Elucidating the deceit of the Jahmiyya

72 Özervarli, “Qurʾānic Rational Theology,” 96. In a complementary vein, Birgit Krawietz

remarks that “[Ibn Taymiyya] selbst verwandte jedoch keine Sorgfalt auf die Vorstruk-
turierung seines Nachruhms durch systematische Präsentation, gefällige Aufbereitung
oder sorgfältige Sichtung seiner bereits abgefaßten Schriften” ([Ibn Taymiyya] himself,
however, took no care to structure his posthumous reputation in advance through sys-
tematic presentation, appealing preparation, or the careful sifting of his already drafted
writings). Krawietz, “Ibn Taymiyya,” 55.
73 Available with commentary by Muḥammad b. Ṣāliḥ al-ʿUthaymīn, translated into English
as An Explanation of Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah’s Introduction to the Principles of Tafsir.
For a detailed study of this work, including its implications for and effect upon the larger
tafsīr tradition, see Saleh, “Ibn Taymiyya and the Rise of Radical Hermeneutics.” A colla-
tion of the various works Ibn Taymiyya wrote on tafsīr reveals that, all in all, he composed
the equivalent of about seventy quires (1,120 pages) of tafsīr. Al-Ḥujaylī, Manhaj. Ibn
Taymiyya’s writings in tafsīr are now available as a single multi-volume collection, pub-
lished in al-Qaysī, Tafsīr Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyya (7 vols). The introduction to this
work states that these seven volumes contain all Ibn Taymiyya’s known writings on tafsīr,
going substantially beyond what is found in MF. See al-Qaysī, Tafsīr Shaykh al-Islām Ibn
Taymiyya, 15ff.
74 Q. Āl ʿImrān 3:7. MF, 13:270–313. (Also discussed at MF, 5:477–482.)
75 Q. Āl ʿImrān 3:7. Discussed at MF, 13:143–148.
76 Q. Hūd 11:1. MF, 15:106–108.
77 Q. al-Shūrā 42:11. MF, 6:513–529.
78 Ibn Taymiyya, al-Ḥaqīqa wa-l-majāz (also at MF, 20:400–497). The separate treatise al-
Risāla al-Madaniyya (which also appears at MF, 6:351–373) is also relevant.

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in laying the bases of their theological innovations); Kitāb Minhāj al-sunna

(The way of the Sunna), in refutation of Shīʿism; the seven-volume al-Jawāb al-
ṣaḥīḥ li-man baddala dīn al-Masīḥ (The correct response to those who altered
the religion of the Messiah), in refutation of Christian trinitarian theology;79
and the work Iqtiḍāʾ al-ṣirāṭ al-mustaqīm li-mukhālafat aṣḥāb al-jaḥīm80 (On
the obligation of remaining distinct from the people of the fire),81 on the
various excesses of popular religion against which Ibn Taymiyya regularly in-
veighed. Other comprehensive theological works include a full volume expli-
cating the first part of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s famous theological work Muḥaṣṣal
afkār al-mutaqaddimīn wa-l-mutaʾakhkhirīn and a two-volume commentary on
certain questions treated in al-Rāzī’s al-Arbaʿīn fī uṣūl al-dīn.82 Shorter theo-
logical treatises of a general nature include the aforementioned al-ʿAqīda al-
Wāsiṭiyya83 and al-Fatwā al-Ḥamawiyya, as well as al-Risāla al-Tadmuriyya,84
al-Qāʿida al-Murrākushiyya (on the question of the divine attributes), and a
fifty-leaf treatise on the creed of the Ashʿarīs, the Māturīdīs, and the non-
Māturīdī Ḥanafīs.85
Works dealing with the all-important question of God’s names and attri-
butes include, in addition to the abovementioned Murrākushiyya, the follow-
ing tracts: a treatise on the Most Beautiful Names of God (asmāʾ Allāh al-
ḥusnā), as well as a treatise on the affirmation (ithbāt) of God’s names and
attributes;86 a fifty-leaf fatwā on the issue of God’s being above (ʿuluww);87
a treatise known as the Irbīliyya on the question of God’s settling (istiwāʾ)
and descending (nuzūl) and whether these are meant to be taken literally

79 For a study on and partial translation of Jawāb, see Michel, Muslim Theologian’s Response.
This work has also been taken up in Roberts, “Reopening of the Muslim-Christian Dia-
logue.” See also Hoover, “Ibn Taymiyya,” 834–844, which provides a detailed discussion
of the content and significance of Jawāb, as well as an exhaustive list of all extant
manuscripts, editions and translations, and scholarly studies.
80 For a description and full bibliography, see Hoover, “Ibn Taymiyya,” 865–873.
81 Literally, “On the requirement of the Straight Path [i.e., Islam] to remain distinct from the
people of the fire.” Trans. Memon, Ibn Taimīya’s Struggle against Popular Religion.
82 Neither of which is known to be extant.
83 Trans. Swartz, “Seventh-Century (A.H.) Sunnī Creed.”
84 Also at MF, 3:1–128. This treatise has formed the object of a lengthy refutation by the
contemporary Palestinian-Jordanian scholar Saʿīd Fūda, entitled Naqḍ al-Risāla al-Tadmu-
riyya.
85 Treatise not identified.
86 Material related to the Most Beautiful Names and to the affirmation of the divine names
and attributes can be found at MF, 5:153–193 and in al-Risāla al-Madaniyya.
87 In Majmūʿat al-rasāʾil wa-l-masāʾil, 185–216.

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(ḥaqīqatan);88 a further, twenty-page treatise on istiwāʾ and a refutation of its

interpretation as “dominion” or “overpowering” (istīlāʾ);89 and a forty-leaf trea-
tise on God’s distinction and separateness (mubāyana) from creation.90
Other treatises touch upon questions of epistemology or rational methods
of argumentation. These include the following: a 100-leaf qāʿida (treatise) on
the notion that every rational argument adduced by an innovator (mubtadiʿ)
proves the invalidity of his position;91 a full-volume work on knowledge that is
firmly established (al-ʿilm al-muḥkam); a three-volume work refuting the posi-
tion that definitive (scriptural) indicants (adilla qaṭʿiyya) do not yield certainty
( yaqīn);92 a treatise on the superiority of the knowledge of the early commu-
nity (the salaf ) over those who succeeded them (the khalaf ); and a treatise
on the perceived contradiction between the texts of revelation and consensus
(ijmāʿ).93
Works on purely philosophical themes include the following: a refutation
of Ibn Sīnā’s al-Aḍḥawiyya fī al-maʿād, which denies physical resurrection after
death94 (one of many extensive philosophical discursions found throughout
the Darʾ); a thin volume on the “tawḥīd” of the philosophers following in the
way of Ibn Sīnā; a work entitled al-Radd ʿalā falsafat Ibn Rushd; a short volume
on universals; a “large volume” refuting the philosophers’ assertion of the eter-
nity of the world; and, finally, the aforementioned all-out attack on Greek logic,
Kitāb al-Radd ʿalā al-manṭiqiyyīn.
Finally, we must mention several important compendia of Ibn Taymiyya’s
writings. The largest and most significant of these are Majmūʿat al-rasāʾil al-
kubrā (2 vols.), Majmūʿat al-rasāʾil wa-l-masāʾil (5 vols.), the 37-volume Majmūʿ
fatāwā Shaykh al-Islām Aḥmad b. Taymiyya, and, now, the seven-volume Tafsīr
Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyya. These works bring together a number of shorter

88 Perhaps MF, 5:194–225 (though I have not been able to find any discrete treatise by this
name). For this theme in general, see MF, vol. 5 (“al-Asmāʾ wa-l-ṣifāt I”), passim.
89 Al-Bazzār reports that Ibn Taymiyya composed the equivalent of thirty-five quires (560
pages) on the question of istiwāʾ (al-Ḥujaylī, Manhaj). (Treatise not identified.)
90 MF, 5:310–320.
91 Possibly MF, 4:46–97.
92 Listed in al-Ḥujaylī, Manhaj, on the authority of al-Ṣafadī and Ibn Shākir (d. 764/1363).
(Treatise not identified.)
93 Ibn Taymiyya, “Risāla fī al-qiyās.” For a useful summary and analysis of this work, as well as
a comparison of Ibn Taymiyya’s application of the principle of non-contradiction between
reason and revelation in both the legal and the theological domains, see Rapoport, “Ibn
Taymiyya’s Radical Legal Thought,” 192–199.
94 At Ibn Taymiyya, Darʾ, 5:10–87. For a detailed study and a translation of Ibn Taymiyya’s
treatment of the Aḍḥawiyya in the Darʾ taʿāruḍ, see Michot, “Mamlūk Theologian’s Com-
mentary.”

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works—and some lengthier ones95—on various topics; as such, they form

an indispensable resource for the researcher interested in exploring Ibn Tay-
miyya’s rich thought and his voluminous writings.

∵
5 The Historiography of the Darʾ taʿāruḍ: Ibn Taymiyya’s Assessment
of the Intellectual Legacy He Inherited

In chapter 1, we considered the various currents and crosscurrents of the

Islamic intellectual tradition, with special emphasis on the question of the rela-
tionship between reason and revelation as it developed in various disciplines
up to the time of Ibn Taymiyya in the mid-seventh/thirteenth century. The
preceding section of this chapter complemented that survey by providing an
aperçu of Ibn Taymiyya’s immediate political and social circumstances, the fun-
damental elements of his biography, and the main outlines of his intellectual
profile and scholarly output. Yet, we must take one final step in order to under-
stand with precision what motivated Ibn Taymiyya in the Darʾ taʿāruḍ, in what
context he perceived the momentous struggle of reason and revelation, and
what precisely he hoped to achieve through his monumental magnum opus.
This step involves reconstructing, from various statements scattered through-
out the Darʾ, Ibn Taymiyya’s assessment of the development of the intellectual
tradition he inherited and with which he brought himself into such urgent and
strident conversation. Once we have understood Ibn Taymiyya’s perspective on
the fundamental issues at stake, as can be gleaned from his own words, we can
then delve into the Darʾ in the next chapter and begin to unravel the project to
which its author has dedicated it.
We recall the fundamental issue of the divine attributes and the question
of how best to understand scriptural statements that affirm the completely
unique, other, and incomparable nature of God while simultaneously describ-
ing Him in terms evocative of qualities and attributes partaken of by human
beings. The necessity of affirming God’s radical dissimilarity (tanzīh) to any-
thing created had to be counterbalanced by the imperative to uphold and
affirm (ithbāt) the language of scripture and the reality of the descriptions God
gives of Himself therein. We have seen that, over the course of Islamic history,
different schools of thought adopted varying positions on how best to effect

95 Such as Kitāb al-Īmān, which occupies all of MF, vol. 7 (comprising a total of 686 pages).
For a discussion of this work, see Belhaj, Questions théologiques, 89–98.

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this reconciliation, with some stressing the reality of the attributes to the point
of falling into a crude and primitive assimilationism (tashbīh), while others
insisted upon divine transcendence with such single-mindedness as to deny
the attributes any reality whatsoever, nullifying them altogether (taʿṭīl) and
reducing the word “God” to an empty signifier denoting an abstract entity
entirely inconceivable to the human mind (and, hence, unapproachable to the
human heart as well).
We begin our mapping of Ibn Taymiyya’s mindset by considering his under-
standing of the positions pertaining to the divine attributes upheld by the early
community of the Salaf (roughly, the learned men and women of the first three
generations of Muslims), whom Ibn Taymiyya takes to be uniquely authorita-
tive in their understanding and practice of the religion. The goal of this section
is not to offer an independent assessment of Ibn Taymiyya’s depiction of the
issues at hand but only to present his understanding of them in order to allow
us, in the remainder of this study, to appreciate his response to the intellectual
situation he encountered in the late seventh/thirteenth and early eighth/four-
teenth centuries.
We begin with the earliest period, that of the Salaf. With respect to this early
authoritative community, Ibn Taymiyya contends the following: (1) that the
Salaf were unanimous in their affirmation of all the attributes predicated of
God in revelation in a manner consistent with a straightforward, plain-sense
understanding of the revealed texts, that is, without making taʾwīl or tafwīḍ
of any of the divine attributes (in other words, he maintains that the Salaf
were full-fledged affirmationists [muthbitūn] with no indications from them of
any form of negationism [nafy] or figurative reinterpretation [taʾwīl]—which
amounts to negationism for Ibn Taymiyya);96 (2) that they were also unan-
imous in denouncing negationist positions once these started to arise with
or around the time of Jahm b. Ṣafwān and his teacher, al-Jaʿd b. Dirham, in
the late first/seventh and early second/eighth centuries; and, critically for Ibn
Taymiyya’s project, (3) that they actively defended and promoted affirmationist
stances, and denounced negationist ones, by means of rational argumentation
(in additional to citing purely scriptural evidence). This last point is key, for
even the negationist admits, as a rule, that the obvious sense of the texts seems
to imply affirmationism; hence his effort to reinterpret (that is, to make taʾwīl
of) the text according to the demands of reason or, at the very least, to point
out that the obvious meaning cannot have been intended based on the pres-
ence of a rational objection (muʿāriḍ ʿaqlī). In the face of such a stance, merely

96 See, for instance, Ibn Taymiyya, Darʾ, 4:23, line 16 to 4:24, line 7.

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citing scripture is of no avail, for both the negationist and the affirmationist
are, in fact, in agreement about what the obvious sense of the texts implies.
The negationist’s “rational objection” to the apparent sense of revelation can
thus be adequately met only by rational arguments refuting this objection and
demonstrating the reasonability of the plain sense of the text in question. Ibn
Taymiyya is keen to establish that the Salaf, whose positions and methods
he takes as uniquely normative, were in possession both of a sound (indeed,
the soundest) understanding of the revealed texts and of robust and evincive
(indeed, the most robust and evincive) methods of rational argumentation in
defense of this understanding. They thus stood at the very top of the Taymiyyan
pyramid,97 in perfect and harmonious conformity with both authentic revela-
tion and sound reason.98
But how, according to Ibn Taymiyya, did we get from this situation to Fakhr
al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s articulation of the universal rule six centuries later? Much like
modern historians of Islamic intellectual history, Ibn Taymiyya, relying largely
on al-Shahrastānī’s Kitāb al-Milal wa-l-niḥal as well as al-Ashʿarī’s Maqālāt al-
Islāmiyyīn, dates the spread of negationist ( jahmī)99 positions to the period
“after the first century [of the hijra], towards the end of the generation of the
Successors.”100 This is the period when the proto-Muʿtazila101 took the position
that neither accidents (aʿrāḍ) nor temporally originating events (ḥawādith)
could supervene in God (taḥullu bihi). By this, Ibn Taymiyya reports, they meant
that there could not subsist in God (taqūmu bihi) any attribute (ṣifa), such as
“knowledge” or “power,” or any action ( fiʿl) or state (ḥāl), such as “creating”
or “settling” (istiwāʾ, i.e., upon the throne). Prior to this period, Ibn Taymiyya
maintains, there are no statements or positions of negationism regarding the

97 See p. 7 above.
98 Ibn Taymiyya seems to have stressed the early community’s expertise in and regular
recourse to rational argumentation in defense of the rational plausibility of scriptural
dicta as a response to later thinkers (such as al-Rāzī and others), who contended that the
Salaf were too preoccupied with establishing and expanding the frontiers of the Islamic
lands and setting up its basic institutions to concern themselves with a careful reflection
upon, and a rationally mature understanding of, the texts of revelation.
99 See Darʾ, 7:72, line 21 to 7:73, line 1, where Ibn Taymiyya speaks of the foreign origins of
negationism (tajahhum) and how it was adopted from past atheist nations (malāḥidat
al-umam al-munkirīna lil-Ṣāniʿ), whom Ibn Taymiyya brands “the most ignorant of sects
and the least endowed with intellect.” It is not clear whether by “past atheist nations” Ibn
Taymiyya is referring to the Greeks or, more likely, to the “materialists” (dahriyya) or the
(possibly Buddhist) Sumaniyya of Tirmidh and Samarqand briefly encountered in the pre-
vious chapter (see above, p. 32).
100 Darʾ, 4:24, lines 9–10.
101 Such as al-Jaʿd b. Dirham, Jahm b. Ṣafwān, and others (on whom see above, p. 35 ff.).

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divine attributes that are recorded or known of anyone among the Muslim
community, nor are there any statements denying that acts or states contingent
upon God’s will inhere in the divine essence.102 Once such a position arose and
was championed by the Muʿtazila, however, the authoritative scholars of the
early community (aʾimmat al-salaf ) promptly denounced it, “as is known and
reported of them in a mutawātir fashion.”103 This initial denial of the divine
attributes and actions led the Muʿtazila to adopt the position of the created-
ness of the Qurʾān, on the grounds that if the Qurʾān were held to subsist in
God’s essence (law qāma bi-dhātihi), then this would entail that there could, in
fact, subsist in Him actions and attributes, a position that had been denied at
the outset. Ibn Taymiyya reports that the Salaf and early authorities (al-salaf
wa-l-aʾimma) were likewise unanimous in denouncing this position too.104
Now, explains Ibn Taymiyya, all those who opposed the Muʿtazila on this
count initially upheld the subsistence in God of attributes and of actions and
speech contingent upon His will until the time of Ibn Kullāb (d. ca. 241/855)105
and his followers, who introduced a distinction between God’s “essential attri-
butes” and His “volitional attributes.” Essential attributes, such as life and
knowledge, are intrinsic to the divine essence. Volitional attributes, on the
other hand, are contingent upon God’s will and power. Consequently, volitional
attributes cannot be said to “subsist” in God, as this would entail the super-
vening of a succession of temporally originating events (taʿāqub al-ḥawādith)
within the divine being—an impossibility according to Ibn Kullāb’s doctrine.
Ibn Kullāb was then succeeded by Muḥammad b. Karrām (d. 255/869). Ibn
Taymiyya reports on the authority of al-Ashʿarī’s Maqālāt that Ibn Karrām,
along with “the majority of Muslims (ahl al-qibla) before him—including var-
ious factions of mutakallimūn from the Shīʿa and the Murjiʾa, such as the
Hishāmiyya, and the disciples of Abū Muʿādh al-Tūmanī and Zuhayr al-Atharī

102 “al-umūr al-ikhtiyāriyya al-qāʾima bi-dhātihi.” Darʾ, 4:24, line 11 and 8:286, line 13. See simi-
lar discussion at Darʾ, 2:173, 6:321, 9:189, 9:248, and 9:312.
103 See Darʾ, 4:24, lines 14–15. The word mutawātir, a technical term primarily used in the sci-
ences of jurisprudence and ḥadīth, refers to any report that is “highly recurrent” or “mass
transmitted” (and on every level of transmission, including the very first) by such a large
number of disparate individuals as to preclude their collusion upon the forgery of said
report. For a discussion of the centrality of the concept of tawātur not only to ḥadīth
but to Islamic conceptions of epistemology more generally, see Weiss, “Knowledge of the
Past.” See also Hallaq, “On Inductive Corroboration,” esp. 9–24. On tawātur in Ibn Taymiyya
specifically, see El-Tobgui, “From Legal Theory to Erkenntnistheorie.”
104 Darʾ, 4:24, lines 16–18.
105 On whom see esp. p. 48ff. above.

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and others”106—was opposed both to the Muʿtazila and to the followers of Ibn
Kullāb. All such groups, Ibn Taymiyya affirms, held the position that tempo-
rally originating events could subsist in God,107 and some among them even
held the explicit position that God could move and that He has been “speaking
from eternity whenever He willed.”108
The next generation saw the rise of Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī (d. 324/935 or
936), whom Ibn Taymiyya credits with having launched a major effort to shore
up the early community’s normative understanding of the revealed texts con-
cerning God’s attributes and actions. It is noteworthy that one is hard pressed to
find a single critical, let alone pejorative, statement about al-Ashʿarī in ten vol-
umes of text. Rather, Ibn Taymiyya lauds al-Ashʿarī generously and commends
him for his efforts to defend the received doctrine of the early community in
rational terms. He classifies al-Ashʿarī, for instance, as “one of the astute of
the mutakallimūn” (min hudhdhāq ahl al-kalām) for conceding that the argu-
ment for the creation of the world from the temporal origination of accidents
(ḥudūth al-aʿrāḍ) is not the method employed by revelation or by the early
community and authoritative scholars (salaf al-umma wa-aʾimmatuhā).109 He
further praises al-Ashʿarī and his immediate followers (aṣḥābuhu) for their affil-
iation with (the doctrine of) Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal and “leading authorities of
the Sunna like him.”110 Indeed, Ibn Taymiyya affirms, al-Ashʿarī was “closer to
the doctrine (madhhab) of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal and ahl al-sunna than many of
the later figures affiliated with Aḥmad [i.e., latter-day Ḥanbalīs] who inclined
to some [aspects] of Muʿtazilī kalām, [figures] such as Ibn ʿAqīl, Ṣadaqa b.
al-Ḥusayn [d. 573/1177], Ibn al-Jawzī, and others like them.”111 Ibn Taymiyya
also held the view that the doctrine of al-Ashʿarī and his immediate follow-
ers on the divine attributes in particular was closer to the (orthodox) posi-
tion of ahl al-sunna and the people of ḥadīth than the doctrine of Ibn Ḥazm
and the Ẓāhirīs was.112 Finally, Ibn Taymiyya cites approvingly the text of a
letter by Abū Bakr al-Bayhaqī (d. 458/1066) called Fī faḍāʾil al-Ashʿarī (On
the virtues of al-Ashʿarī), which al-Bayhaqī “wrote to one of the governors of

106 See Darʾ, 4:25, lines 7–10.

107 “kānū yaqūlūna bi-qiyām al-ḥawādith bihi.” Darʾ, 4:25, line 11.
108 “lam yazal mutakalliman idhā shāʾ.”Darʾ, 4:25, line 13. My translation of this expression fol-
lows Hoover, “God Acts by His Will and Power,” 58. For a detailed history and explication
of the nuances of the term lam yazal as used in Islamic theological discourse, see Frank,
“‘Lam yazal’ as a Formal Term in Muslim Theological Discourse.”
109 See Darʾ, 1:39, lines 6–9.
110 Darʾ, 1:270, lines 8–9.
111 Darʾ, 1:270, lines 9–11.
112 Darʾ, 5:250, lines 7–9.

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Khurasan when people began cursing the innovators (ahl al-bidaʿ) there and
some wanted to include al-Ashʿarī among them.”113
Despite such generous commendation, Ibn Taymiyya nonetheless ascribes
to al-Ashʿarī two specific shortcomings that, while subtle and therefore eas-
ily overlooked in al-Ashʿarī’s own doctrine, planted the seeds for an eventual
excrescence of major problems in the centuries that followed. The first short-
coming concerns al-Ashʿarī’s knowledge of the details of the Sunna. Although
Ibn Taymiyya goes so far as to consider al-Ashʿarī and “the likes of him,” such as
Ibn Kullāb, to be among the “mutakallimat ahl al-ḥadīth” (ḥadīth folk special-
ized in kalām) and “the best among the various factions and closest to the Book
and the Sunna,”114 he nevertheless maintains that while al-Ashʿarī possessed
detailed expertise in kalām, his knowledge of the particulars of the ḥadīth and
Sunna (as is typical, he tells us, of those specialized primarily in rational the-
ology) was much more general and, ultimately, insufficient for him always to
know precisely what the early positions of the Salaf were that needed to be
defended.115 Ibn Taymiyya speaks of how al-Ashʿarī and his main (early) fol-
lowers (aʾimmat atbāʿihi), such as al-Bāqillānī and Abū Isḥāq al-Isfarāyīnī,

wanted to champion the well-known positions of the people of Sunna

and ḥadīth (ahl al-sunna wa-l-ḥadīth) while at the same time concurring
with the negationists ( jahmiyya) on [certain] rational principles that they
deemed to be valid, and [since] they did not have the detailed expertise
in the Qurʾān and its meanings, as well as in ḥadīth and the positions
of the Companions, that the leading scholars of Sunna and ḥadīth had,
they formed a doctrine (madhhab) that was a composite of these two
[approaches], with the result that both parties [i.e., the negationists and
the people of ḥadīth] accused them of contradiction.116

In another passage, Ibn Taymiyya remarks that the foremost authors (aʿyān
al-fuḍalāʾ al-muṣannifīn) [i.e., on creed], such as al-Shahrastānī, Abū Bakr b. al-
ʿArabī (d. 543/1148), al-Juwaynī, al-Qāḍī Abū Yaʿlā (d. 458/1066), Ibn al-Zāghūnī
(d. 527/1132), Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī, Muḥammad b. al-Hayṣam (d. 407[?]/1016
or 1017), and others

113 Darʾ, 7:98–99. See excerpt from al-Bayhaqī’s Risāla at Darʾ, 7:99, line 3 to 7:101, line 8.
114 Darʾ, 7:462, lines 5–6. See also Darʾ, 2:308, lines 8–10, where Ibn Taymiyya states that
“since al-Ashʿarī and those like him were closer to the Sunna than [other] factions of
mutakallimūn, he is closer in affiliation (intisāb) to Aḥmad [b. Ḥanbal] than are others,
as is evident in his works.” (See index of Arabic passages.)
115 See Darʾ, 7:35–36.
116 Darʾ, 7:35, lines 14–19. (See index of Arabic passages.)

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often mention many positions on an issue taken by various groups, yet

they neither know nor cite the established position of the early com-
munity (salaf ) and of authorities (aʾimma) such as Aḥmad [b. Ḥanbal],
even though the generality of scholars affiliated with the Sunna/Sun-
nism (ʿāmmat al-muntasibīna ilā al-sunna) from all the various factions
(ṭawāʾif ) claim to follow the authoritative imams such as Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī,
Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, Ibn al-Mubārak, Ḥammād b. Zayd, and others.117

Reminiscent of a comment made by Abū Bakr b. al-ʿArabī with respect to his

teacher, al-Ghazālī,118 Ibn Taymiyya maintains that al-Ashʿarī spent so many
years immersed in Muʿtazilī thought that he was unable to extricate himself
from it fully. As a result, he unwittingly retained in his own doctrine what Ibn
Taymiyya calls “remnants of the principles of the Muʿtazila.”119 Such “remnants”
include, for instance, al-Ashʿarī’s (and Ibn Kullāb’s) concession of the validity of
the argument for the existence of God from accidents (ṭarīqat al-aʿrāḍ) and the
argument from the composition of bodies (ṭarīqat al-tarkīb)120—topics that,
Ibn Taymiyya concedes, are “difficult even for those with more knowledge of
the ḥadīth and Sunna than al-Ashʿarī had.”121 In another passage, Ibn Taymiyya
speaks of “remnants of iʿtizāl” in al-Ashʿarī, al-Qalānisī, and “those like them.”
This time, he mentions the argument from motion (ṭarīqat al-ḥarakāt), an argu-
ment that, Ibn Taymiyya tells us, al-Ashʿarī himself admits (in his Risāla ilā ahl
al-thaghr) was an innovation in prophetic religion (ṭarīq mubtadaʿ fī dīn al-
rusul) and prohibited in it (muḥarram ʿindahum [i.e., al-rusul]).122 “This prin-
ciple,” Ibn Taymiyya concludes, “is what landed the Muʿtazila in the denial of
[God’s] attributes and actions.”123

117 See Darʾ, 2:307, line 12 to 2:308, line 2. (See index of Arabic passages.)
118 See Darʾ, 1:5, lines 9–10, where Ibn Taymiyya quotes Abū Bakr b. al-ʿArabī as saying,
“Our shaykh [al-Ghazālī] penetrated into the inner reaches of philosophy [lit. “inside the
philosophers” (buṭūn al-falāsifa)] then wanted to come back out, but he was not able
to.”
119 “baqāyā min uṣūl al-Muʿtazila.” Darʾ, 7:462, line 8. Synonymous expressions include “baqā-
yā min al-tajahhum wa-l-iʿtizāl” (7:97, lines 14–15), “baqāyā al-tajahhum wa-l-iʿtizāl” (7:106,
lines 4–5), and “baqiyya min al-iʿtizāl” (7:236, line 10).
120 Darʾ, 7:97, lines 14–18; also Darʾ, 7:106, line 5.
121 Ibn Taymiyya mentions al-Ḥārith al-Muḥāsibī, Abū ʿAlī al-Thaqafī (d. 328/940), and Abū
Bakr b. Isḥāq al-Ṣibghī (d. 342/953 or 954) as among those who possessed “more knowl-
edge of ḥadīth and Sunna than al-Ashʿarī had” but still fell into a similar trap and eventually
retracted their positions. See Darʾ, 7:97, line 18 to 7:98, line 2.
122 Darʾ, 2:99, lines 14–15.
123 Darʾ, 2:99, lines 12–13.

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Notwithstanding these reservations, Ibn Taymiyya’s assessment of the early

Ashʿarī school (that of the mutaqaddimūn) and its main authorities is over-
whelmingly positive. In one particularly illuminating passage,124 he recounts
the scholarly filiation of and the transmission of doctrines among figures such
as al-Bāqillānī and his student Abū Dharr al-Anṣārī al-Harawī (d. 434/1043),
as well as Abū Naṣr al-Sijzī (d. 444/1052) and Abū al-Qāsim al-Zinjānī (d. 471/
1078)—both of whom took al-Bāqillānī’s doctrine from Abū Dharr al-Harawī—
and “others like them among the top authorities in scholarship and religion,”125
including such luminaries as Abū Bakr b. al-ʿArabī and al-Juwaynī. After men-
tioning these early Ashʿarī masters, he says of them collectively:

There is not one among them who has not made praiseworthy efforts and
performed meritorious actions for the sake of Islam and [who has not]
engaged in refuting many of those [who call to] heresy and innovation
and rallied to the defense of many [who uphold] the Sunna and [true]
religion. This is not hidden to anyone who is familiar with their circum-
stances and who speaks of them with knowledge, truthfulness, justice,
and impartiality.126

He then goes on to explain, however, that

since [the problematic nature of such-and-such] principle, taken from

the Muʿtazila, was not clear to them (iltabasa ʿalayhim), they, being people
of distinction and intelligence, realized the need to apply [the princi-
ple] consistently and to abide by its entailments (iḥtājū ilā ṭardihi wa-
iltizām lawāzimihi). For this reason, they were forced to take positions
(lazimahum min al-aqwāl) that the scholars and people of religion found
objectionable [and denounced]. Because of this, some people came to
extol them for their merits and creditable traits, while others came to cen-
sure them on account of the innovations and falsehoods that had crept
into their discourse. But the best path is the middle path.127

With respect to al-Ashʿarī in particular, Ibn Taymiyya maintains that while the
champion of early Sunnī theological rationalism did not himself adopt any
overtly errant positions, the seeds of such were nonetheless implicit in some

124 See Darʾ, 2:100–102.

125 Darʾ, 2:101, lines 14–15.
126 Darʾ, 2:102, lines 4–7. (See index of Arabic passages.)
127 Darʾ, 2:102, lines 7–12. (See index of Arabic passages.)

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of his basic assumptions. When his later followers became aware of the full
entailments (lawāzim) of the positions he did adopt, they desired to maintain
consistency; they thus adhered to the consequences al-Ashʿarī’s initial doc-
trine and allowed their substantive positions to be modified accordingly.128 In
this manner, Ashʿarī theologians in each new generation were pulled farther
back towards Muʿtazilī-style negationism as they sought to apply al-Ashʿarī’s
own doctrine consistently and to tease out systematically all the implications
and entailments of their master’s initial positions. For a similar reason, while
al-Ashʿarī and his immediate followers, according to Ibn Taymiyya, did not
concede even the theoretical possibility of a contradiction between reason
and revelation,129 later Ashʿarīs—such as Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī and Sayf al-
Dīn al-Āmidī (d. 631/1233)—who “took from the Muʿtazila when they inclined
towards negationist doctrines (tajahhum) and even towards philosophy,”130
conceded not only the formal possibility but also the actual occurrence of
real contradictions between reason and revelation, ultimately leading to the
formulation of the universal rule as a means of ironing out the supposed incon-
gruities.131
So it is, explains Ibn Taymiyya, that with each successive generation of
Ashʿarīs, we find ever increasing misgivings about one after another of the
attributes predicated of God in revelation. These misgivings arise from alleged
rational objections that al-Ashʿarī himself (and perhaps al-Bāqillānī too, since
Ibn Taymiyya also sees him as having remained quite close to the Sunna) did
not catch but that later thinkers uncovered in increasing number as they sought
to work out consistently the full implications of his initial doctrine. Such slip-
page can likewise occur, according to Ibn Taymiyya, as later followers think up
ever more numerous and sophisticated rational arguments to support their
founder’s initial doctrine—arguments that entail further negation and that
had not occurred to the mind of the founder.132 Such a proliferation of increas-
ingly negationist arguments can be found not only among major Muʿtazilī
figures of the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries133 but among primary

128 See Darʾ, 7:237, lines 1–16. The specific concession al-Ashʿarī made here to the Muʿtazila,
according to Ibn Taymiyya, is the validity of the argument for the existence of God from
the temporal origination of accidents (ṭarīq al-aʿrāḍ). See Darʾ, 7:236, lines 3–4.
129 See Darʾ, 7:97, lines 5–7.
130 Darʾ, 7:97, lines 4–5.
131 On the influence of logic, both Aristotelian and Stoic, on eminent representatives of the
later tradition, including figures such as al-Āmidī and Ibn al-Ḥājib (d. 646/1248), see Hal-
laq, “Logic, Formal Arguments and Formalization of Arguments,” 322–327.
132 See Darʾ, 5:247, line 19 to 5:248, line 2.
133 Here Ibn Taymiyya specifically mentions Abū ʿAlī al-Jubbāʾī (d. 303/915 or 916), his son Abū

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Ashʿarī authorities as well. In this manner, says Ibn Taymiyya, al-Ashʿarī him-
self and his immediate successor, al-Bāqillānī, unambiguously affirmed the
so-called revealed attributes (al-ṣifāt al-khabariyya), including those that had
become a point of contention, such as God’s face, hands, and His settling upon
the throne. Indeed, Ibn Taymiyya avers, al-Ashʿarī is not known ever to have
held more than one position on this issue, to the point that “those who trans-
mitted his doctrine (madhhab) were not in dispute over [this].”134 Not only
did al-Ashʿarī affirm such attributes, Ibn Taymiyya tells us, but he also refuted
the rational arguments of those, such as the Muʿtazila, who argued that such
texts could not be understood “literally” but had to be reinterpreted figura-
tively ( yutaʾawwal) in order to skirt a rational objection or a charge of tash-
bīh.135 However, just two generations after al-Bāqillānī, Ibn Taymiyya bemoans,
al-Juwaynī negates such attributes, “in agreement with [the doctrine of] the
Muʿtazila and the Jahmiyya.”136 Concurring that such attributes could not be
affirmed at face value, al-Juwaynī first adopted the position of taʾwīl in his
Kitāb al-Irshād. In his later work al-ʿAqīda al-Niẓāmiyya, however, he upheld
tafwīḍ instead, stating that “the early community (salaf ) unanimously held that
taʾwīl was neither permissible (sāʾigh) nor obligatory (wājib).”137 Ibn Taymiyya
is alluding here to a passage in al-Juwaynī’s Niẓāmiyya in which he states:

The authorities of the early community (aʾimmat al-salaf ) refrained from

taʾwīl, leaving the outer wording of the texts to stand as is and consigning
their true meaning (tafwīḍ maʿānīhā) to the Lord most high. The opin-
ion to which we [al-Juwaynī] consent and the rational stance we adopt in
religious matters (alladhī nartaḍīhi raʾyan wa-nadīnu Allāh bihi ʿaqlan) is
to follow the early community (ittibāʿ salaf al-umma), as it is preferable
to follow [the early authorities] and to refrain from generating new doc-
trines [that conflict with theirs] ( fa-l-awlā al-ittibāʿ wa-tark al-ibtidāʿ).138

As we have seen, Ibn Taymiyya vehemently rejects the view that the author-
itative early community practiced tafwīḍ in any form. Rather, he insists, they
were all full-fledged affirmationists who affirmed not only the wording of the

Hāshim al-Jubbāʾī (d. 321/933), al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār (d. 415/1025), Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī
(d. 436/1044), “and others.” See Darʾ, 5:248, lines 3–5.
134 See Darʾ, 5:248, lines 11–12.
135 See Darʾ, 5:248, lines 18–20.
136 Darʾ, 5:249, line 1.
137 Darʾ, 5:249, lines 1–5.
138 Al-Juwaynī, al-ʿAqīda al-Niẓāmiyya, 32 (mentioned in passing at Darʾ, 5:249 and cited in
full by the editor at 5:249, n. 2). (See index of Arabic passages.)

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revealed texts but also the meanings most naturally understood from this word-
ing in light of the known linguistic convention of the first, prophetic commu-
nity. (The question of interpreting revelation in light of the linguistic conven-
tion of the early community will occupy us at length in chapter 4.)
Eventually, in the fifth/eleventh century, we come to al-Ghazālī, who, Ibn
Taymiyya tells us, at times affirms the “rational attributes” (al-ṣifāt al-ʿaqliyya),
in conformity with the standard Ashʿarī position, and at times either negates
them altogether or reduces them to the single attribute of knowledge, in agree-
ment with the doctrine of the philosophers.139 His final position on the issue,
Ibn Taymiyya reports, was one of suspension of judgement (waqf ), whereupon
he clung to the Sunna as the safest path and died, allegedly, while engaged in
studying the books of ḥadīth.140 Finally, by the sixth/twelfth and seventh/thir-
teenth centuries, al-Rāzī and al-Āmidī, both major authorities of later Ashʿarī
kalām, had become so agnostic with regard to the reality and the knowability
of the divine attributes affirmed in scripture—coupled with their proportion-
ately decreasing confidence that revelation could serve as the basis for any
certain ( yaqīn), objective knowledge whatsoever, even in strictly theological
matters—that they ultimately claimed not to have any proof at all, rational or
scriptural, for either the affirmation or the negation of the divine attributes.141
They thus ended up, essentially, in a draw over a major point of theology
addressed extensively in revelation and sharply contested by the leading philo-
sophical and theological minds of the preceding six centuries.142 Indeed, Ibn
Taymiyya observes, al-Āmidī was not even able to establish in his books doc-
trines as basic as the oneness of God (tawḥīd), the temporal origination of the

139 In the following section (p. 118ff.), we consider at greater length Ibn Taymiyya’s relation-
ship to al-Ghazālī and the position he held with respect to his esteemed predecessor.
140 Darʾ, 5:249, lines 9–12. In another place, Ibn Taymiyya says more specifically that al-
Ghazālī “died studying [a copy of] the Ṣaḥīḥ of al-Bukhārī.” See Darʾ, 1:162, line 11. Such
reports of deathbed disavowals of wayward doctrine are a common trope and cannot be
taken at face value without further corroboration. With respect to this claim regarding
al-Ghazālī, see Griffel, Al-Ghazālī’s Philosophical Theology, 56–57.
141 See Darʾ, 5:249, lines 6–8.
142 See, for example, Darʾ, 5:313, esp. lines 10–12 for how, regarding the most basic and impor-
tant aspects of religion, the major rationalists (nuẓẓār) are in “great confusion” (ḥayra
ʿaẓīma). See also Darʾ, 7:283, lines 10–11, where they are said to be in “confusion, uncer-
tainty, and doubt” (ḥayra wa-shubha wa-shakk). Similar indictments can be found in
numerous places throughout the Darʾ. For a list of quotations by major thinkers who
allegedly admitted that they had not gained any certain knowledge from their years of pur-
suing rational inquiry (naẓar) in the manner of the mutakallimūn, see Darʾ, 3:262, line 10
to 3:264, line 2. This list includes, among others, Afḍal al-Dīn al-Khūnajī (d. 646/1248), the
top logician of his day.

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world (ḥudūth al-ʿālam), or even the very existence of God143 and was reported
by a “reliable authority” (thiqa) to have said, “I applied myself assiduously to
the study of kalām but did not acquire anything [reliable] from it that differs
from what the common people believe.”144
The foregoing pertains to the mutakallimūn and Ibn Taymiyya’s depiction
of the historical development of kalām. With regard to the philosophers, Ibn
Taymiyya blames their extreme form of negationism for Ibn ʿArabī’s mysti-
cal notion of the “unity of being” (waḥdat al-wujūd). The Bāṭiniyya (esoteri-
cists, often with specific reference to the Ismāʿīlīs), however, exhibit the most
extreme form of negationism, to the point that they refrain from predicating
anything of God whatsoever. The result is a purely—and, Ibn Taymiyya argues,
highly incoherent—negative theology in which, ostensibly to avoid falling
into tashbīh of any sort whatsoever, one may not even affirm that God exists
(mawjūd) or that He does not exist (ghayr mawjūd), nor may one affirm that
He is positively non-existent (maʿdūm) or that He is not non-existent (ghayr
maʿdūm). Ibn Taymiyya also mentions that those whom he labels the “material-
ist (pseudo-)philosophers” (al-mutafalsifa al-dahriyya),145 such as Ibn Sīnā and
al-Fārābī, claim that reason rules out the possibility of a physical resurrection
on the day of judgement, with the now familiar prescription that texts appar-
ently affirming such a resurrection must be subjected to the (alleged) dictates
of reason and reinterpreted accordingly. When those among the Muʿtazila who
affirm bodily resurrection dispute with such philosophers over this matter, the
philosophers reply with the same type of argument that the Muʿtazila employ
against the affirmationists. The philosophers argue, essentially, that “our posi-
tion on bodily resurrection is analogous to your position on the attributes,”146
that is, if you (the Muʿtazila) are truly consistent, then you should also deny
bodily resurrection on the same grounds on which you have denied the divine
attributes.
This, then, is the chronological progression, as Ibn Taymiyya sees it, from
what he contends was the conscientious and unrestricted affirmationism of the
Salaf, buttressed by probative rational arguments and therefore in full confor-

143 Darʾ, 3:263, lines 1–2.

144 “amʿantu al-naẓar fī al-kalām wa-mā istafadtu minhu shayʾan illā mā ʿalayhi al-ʿawāmm.”
Darʾ, 8:262, lines 15–16.
145 The second form quadriliteral verb “tafalsafa” does not necessarily have the negative con-
notation of “pseudo-philosophizing” in all contexts and may, indeed, simply mean “to
practice philosophy” in a neutral sense. (I thank Robert Wisnovsky for pointing this out to
me.) Here, however, I deliberately translate it as “pseudo-philosophers” since that seems
to be the connotation Ibn Taymiyya most likely wished to impart in this context.
146 Darʾ, 5:250, lines 13–14.

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mity with pure reason (ʿaql ṣarīḥ), to the outright negation of all divine names,
attributes, and actions that arose as an ill-conceived response to alleged ratio-
nal objections. Ibn Taymiyya rejects this negationism as being not only opposed
to any plausible reading of the texts of revelation but also, significantly, in fla-
grant violation of the most elementary and universal principles of reason itself.
Now, Ibn Taymiyya holds that while all these developments—and increas-
ingly grave deviations—were occurring among those formally involved in the-
ological and philosophical speculation, there always remained a group, includ-
ing many scholars and the majority of the common folk, that persisted in
upholding, and also in rationally defending, the understanding of the revealed
texts bequeathed to the umma by its earliest—and, once again, uniquely au-
thoritative—generations. According to Ibn Taymiyya, this group included the
majority of ḥadīth scholars, a majority of legal scholars ( fuqahāʾ, sing. faqīh)
in the early centuries and a good number in his day, as well as the majority of
early ascetics and Sufis. Some among this group were so repulsed by the very
nature and contentiousness of the discussions raging among the theologians
and philosophers that they refused even to engage in them and were content
faithfully to uphold what they knew to be the understanding of the early com-
munity. Ibn Taymiyya is keen to point out, however, that others among this
group did take it upon themselves to engage in theological debate in an attempt
to provide an adequate rational defense of the received normative understand-
ing of the Salaf. We may venture to affirm that Ibn Taymiyya would be happy to
include al-Ashʿarī (though not, to be sure, the majority of later Ashʿarīs) among
this group, albeit with the abovementioned caveat regarding the “remnant of
iʿtizāl” that marred al-Ashʿarī’s initial doctrine and that later festered, at the
hands of his most astute successors, into what Ibn Taymiyya saw as the pseudo-
philosophical, quasi-Muʿtazilī approach of a sixth-/twelfth-century al-Rāzī or a
seventh-/thirteenth-century al-Āmidī.
Most prominent among the rationally engaged traditionalists was Aḥmad b.
Ḥanbal (d. 241/855), the revered eponym of the legal and theological school
to which Ibn Taymiyya adhered and the scholar that he credits with having
adduced, in the process of establishing the foundations of theology (uṣūl al-
dīn), “a larger number of definitive proofs (adilla qaṭʿiyya), based in both rev-
elation and reason, than all other major authorities.”147 Ibn Taymiyya further
asserts that Ibn Ḥanbal “did not forbid appealing to a valid rational argument
that leads to [knowledge of] what is meant to be proved ( yufḍī ilā al-maṭlūb)”
and adds that, in his disputations with the Jahmiyya and other groups opposed

147 Darʾ, 7:154, lines 7–8.

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to the normative, orthodox understanding of the early community, Ibn Ḥan-

bal employed rational arguments such as are “well known in his writings and
among his followers.”148 To substantiate this point, Ibn Taymiyya cites two spe-
cific examples of rational inferences (qiyāsayn ʿaqliyyayn) used by Ibn Ḥan-
bal to refute this or that doctrine of a negationist,149 closing with the state-
ment that “Aḥmad [b. Ḥanbal] draws inferences on the basis of rational argu-
ments ( yastadillu bi-l-adilla al-ʿaqliyya) in theological matters as long as they
are valid” (emphasis mine).150 Ibn Taymiyya further highlights Ibn Ḥanbal’s
broad authority among scholars and non-scholars alike as the heroic champion
of orthodoxy against the official state imposition of Muʿtazilī doctrines during
the miḥna. In this vein, Ibn Taymiyya cites on several occasions in the Darʾ a
lengthy quotation from Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, which reads:151

Praise be to God, who has appointed in every non-prophetic era ( fī kulli

zamān fatra min al-rusul) remnants of the people of knowledge (ahl al-
ʿilm) who call those who have strayed [back] to right guidance and are
forbearing in the face of what harm [they may receive from those they
call], who bring back to life by the Book of God those who are dead [spir-
itually] and who grant vision, by God’s light, to those who are blind. How
many dead victims of the devil have they brought to life! How many of
those wandering in error have they guided aright! How comely, then, is
the effect they have on people and how odious the effect of people on

148 Darʾ, 7:153, line 19 to 7:154, line 1.

149 See Darʾ, 7:154, line 19 to 7:155, line 8.
150 Darʾ, 7:155, lines 9–10. See also Darʾ, 5:180, line 1ff.: “Given that this is known by reason,
Aḥmad said …” (wa-lammā kāna hādhā yuʿrafu bi-l-ʿaql qāla Aḥmad …). For a study that
addresses Ibn Ḥanbal’s use of reason and argument in theological matters, see Williams,
“Aspects of the Creed of Imam Ahmad Ibn Hanbal.”
151 Ibn Taymiyya states that this passage appears in the work al-Radd ʿalā al-jahmiyya wa-l-
zanādiqa (also “al-zanādiqa wa-l-jahmiyya”), attributed to Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, and he cites
it on several occasions in the Darʾ (see next note). The Radd is translated in Seale, Muslim
Theology, 96–125 (the translation of the passage cited here, however, is mine). Jon Hoover
points out (on the basis of al-Sarhan, “Early Muslim Traditionalism,” 29–54) that while
earlier forms of this text may go back to Ibn Ḥanbal, the final version of it contains sub-
stantial rational argumentation against non-traditionalist doctrines and may thus be seen
as a fifth-/eleventh-century text attributed retroactively to Ibn Ḥanbal to legitimize ratio-
nal argumentation in theology among the Ḥanbalīs (on the assumption that Ibn Ḥanbal
would not have approved of or engaged in such himself). See Hoover, “Ḥanbalī Theology,”
627. Be that as it may, Ibn Taymiyya certainly took this text as authentically attributable to
Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, a position that matches his general portrayal of Ibn Ḥanbal as someone
who not only approved of (valid forms of) rational argumentation but who also, indeed,
exemplified these in his own polemical engagements with theological adversaries.

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them! They exonerate the Book of God from the distortions of extremist
sectarians (al-ghālīn), the misrepresentations of those who falsify reli-
gion (intiḥāl al-mubṭilīn), and the (unfounded) interpretations (taʾwīl) of
the ignorant who have raised the banners of heretical innovation (bidʿa)
and unloosed the reins of discord ( fitna). They are those who oppose
the Book and differ over it, united only in their abandoning of the Book.
They discourse on God and the Book of God with no knowledge and
speak in vague and ambiguous terms ( yatakallamūna bi-l-mutashābih
min al-kalām), fooling thereby the ignorant among men. We seek refuge,
therefore, in God from the trials of those who lead [others] astray ( fitan
al-muḍillīn).152

Ibn Taymiyya certainly sees himself as following in the footsteps of his revered
forebear and, along with all the rightly guided defenders of the early doctrine
mentioned above, clearly aspires to take his place in the cortège of those “rem-
nants of the people of knowledge who call those who have strayed [back] to
right guidance” by providing, via his Darʾ taʿāruḍ, the definitive answer to the
seemingly insoluble “conflict” between reason and revelation that had been
building for so many centuries.

table 3 Ibn Taymiyya’s account of the development of the conflict between reason and
revelation

610 CE–AH 11/632 CE Age of revelation in the form of the Qurʾān and the prophetic Sunna. Prophet con-
veys full and adequate understanding of the theological content of revelation to his
Companions.
11–220/632–835 Period of the Salaf, comprising the first three generations of Muslims praised by the
Prophet:
– the Companions (ca. 11–100/632–718)
– the Successors (ca. 100–170/718–786)
– the Successors of the Successors (ca. 170–220/786–835)
Salaf unanimously affirm all the divine attributes without interpreting them figura-
tively (taʾwīl) or disavowing their literal sense while entrusting their true meaning
to God (tafwīḍ).
early second/eighth c. First negationist positions arise with al-Jaʿd b. Dirham and his student, Jahm b.
Ṣafwān.
Authoritative scholars of the Salaf unanimously condemn negationism (nafy) and
defend affirmationism (ithbāt), partly through the use of rational argumentation.

152 Cited three times, at Darʾ, 1:18, 1:221–222, and 2:301–302; Ibn Ḥanbal, Radd, 55. (See index
of Arabic passages.)

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 ibn taymiyya: life, times, and intellectual profile 117

Table 3 Ibn Taymiyya’s account of the conflict between reason and revelation (cont.)

second half of Early Muʿtazila deny that accidents or temporally originating events supervene in
second/eighth c. God, implying negation of attributes such as knowledge, power, creating, or settling
on the throne.
Initial negationism with respect to the divine attributes eventually leads to the doc-
trine of the createdness of the Qurʾān, which is unanimously denounced by the Salaf.
Salaf continue unanimously to uphold the subsistence in God both of attributes and
of actions and speech contingent upon His will.
early third/ninth c. Ibn Kullāb introduces a distinction between God’s essential attributes, intrinsic to
the divine essence, and His volitional attributes, which cannot be said to “subsist” in
God.
mid-third/ninth c. Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal emerges from the miḥna as a hero of Sunnī orthodoxy—the posi-
tion of the majority of the common folk as well as the majority of ḥadīth scholars,
fuqahāʾ, and early ascetics and Sufis. Ibn Taymiyya credits Ibn Ḥanbal with the use
of solid rational arguments in defense of orthodoxy where necessary.
Ibn Karrām opposes Ibn Kullāb and upholds, along with the majority of Muslim fac-
tions, the subsistence of temporally originating events in God.
late third/ninth to Rise of Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī. Defends orthodox doctrines through rational means
early fourth/tenth c. but retains “remnants of iʿtizāl” that draw figures of the later Ashʿarī school back
towards Muʿtazilī theses.
Al-Ashʿarī and his immediate followers affirm all the divine attributes—including
God’s face, hands, and settling on the throne—and refute, by way of rational proofs,
Muʿtazilī arguments that these attributes must be interpreted figuratively in order
to avoid tashbīh.
Al-Ashʿarī and his immediate followers do not concede even the possibility of a con-
flict between reason and (the plain sense of) revelation.
late fourth/tenth to Prominent Ashʿarī figures, such as al-Bāqillānī and al-Isfarāyīnī, continue cham-
early fifth/eleventh c. pioning orthodox doctrines while unwittingly conceding certain principles to the
negationists.
Flourishing of Ibn Sīnā, whom Ibn Taymiyya classifies, along with al-Fārābī a century
earlier, as a “materialist (pseudo-)philosopher.” He faults them for extreme negation-
ism of the divine attributes, the denial of physical resurrection, and their view of
revelation as an imaginative evocation rather than as literally true.
early to late fifth/ Flourishing of numerous Ashʿarī figures whom Ibn Taymiyya praises highly, includ-
eleventh c. ing al-Bāqillānī and al-Juwaynī (and, in the first half of the next century, Abū Bakr
b. al-ʿArabī). Given their acumen and desire for consistency, these figures draw out
some of the entailments of al-Ashʿarī’s initial Muʿtazilī-influenced assumptions and
uphold their consequences. This trend increases in subsequent generations, leading
to greater adoption of Muʿtazilī-like theses.

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Table 3 Ibn Taymiyya’s account of the conflict between reason and revelation (cont.)

Despite general praise of al-Juwaynī, Ibn Taymiyya faults him for adopting tafwīḍ
vis-à-vis attributes such as God’s hands and face (and for attributing this stance to
the Salaf).
late fifth/eleventh to Flourishing of al-Ghazālī, whom Ibn Taymiyya faults for being inconsistent on the
early sixth/twelfth c. reality of the attributes, sometimes affirming them, sometimes negating them or
reducing them to the single attribute of knowledge, and eventually suspending
judgement on them altogether.
late sixth/twelfth Flourishing of al-Rāzī and al-Āmidī, whom Ibn Taymiyya faults for their agnosticism
to early seventh/ regarding the reality and knowability of the divine attributes and their correspond-
thirteenth c. ing skepticism of the power of reason to reach truth in fundamental matters of
theology.
early to mid- Death of Ibn ʿArabī, whom Ibn Taymiyya excoriates for an extreme form of “nega-
seventh/thirteenth c. tionism” in the guise of his monistic mystical esotericism.
661–728/1263–1328 Life and work of Ibn Taymiyya.

6 The Darʾ taʿāruḍ in Context: Ibn Taymiyya’s View of Previous

Attempts to Solve the Conundrum of Reason and Revelation

Ibn Taymiyya was not, of course, the first Muslim thinker to attempt, on a grand
and conclusive scale, to put an end to the conflict between reason and reve-
lation. Notwithstanding the several figures (mentioned at the end of the pre-
ceding section) whom Ibn Taymiyya credits with providing a rational defense
of orthodox understandings regarding the divine attributes and other issues,
there were several notable attempts by theologians and philosophers before
him to provide a definitive solution to this most vexing of issues. The works
of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī153 and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī154 represent attempts to

153 The main studies on al-Ghazālī relevant to the points discussed here are (in chronologi-
cal order) Chelhot, “«al-Qisṭās al-Mustaqīm»”; Othman, Concept of Man in Islam, 33–70;
Marmura, “Ghazali and Demonstrative Science”; Kleinknecht, “Al-Qisṭās al-Mustaqīm”;
Fayyūmī, al-Imām al-Ghazālī wa-ʿalāqat al-yaqīn bi-l-ʿaql; Abrahamov, “Al-Ghazālī’s Su-
preme Way to Know God”; Aydin, “Al-Ghazâlî on Metaphorical Interpretation”; Griffel,
Al-Ghazālī’s Philosophical Theology, 111–122; Griffel, “Al-Ghazālī at His Most Rationalist”;
and Griffel, “Theology Engages with Avicennan Philosophy.”
154 For al-Rāzī’s views on reason and revelation as well as scriptural interpretation, see Jaf-
fer, Rāzī, 68–117; Kafrawi, “Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s Sources of Taʾwīl”; and the sources listed
below at p. 133, n. 5; p. 134, n. 7; and p. 184, n. 12.

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reconcile reason and revelation from a kalām perspective, while those of Ibn
Sīnā155 and Ibn Rushd represent parallel attempts made by the philosophers.156
Before taking up the details of Ibn Taymiyya’s solution to this question, we first
briefly review how, in the Darʾ taʿāruḍ, he assesses his predecessors’ attempts
at a resolution and how he seeks to position his own efforts with respect to
theirs. Below, we discuss Ibn Sīnā and Ibn Rushd on the philosophers’ side and
al-Ghazālī on the side of the theologians. As for al-Rāzī, the Darʾ as a whole is,
in a sense, a response to his articulation of the universal rule, Ibn Taymiyya’s
critique of which occupies the entirety of the following chapter.
We begin with the two philosophers, Ibn Sīnā and Ibn Rushd, whom Ibn
Taymiyya recognizes to have held very similar, if not identical, views regard-
ing the purpose and scope of revealed religion as well as the nature of the
relationship between reason and revelation.157 Following in the footsteps of al-
Fārābī158—and, indeed, characteristic of the Muslim philosophers as a
whole—both Ibn Sīnā and Ibn Rushd (1) consider the language of revelation

155 Pertinent studies on Ibn Sīnā’s approach to reason, epistemology, and the relationship
between reason and revelation include Street, “An Outline of Avicenna’s Syllogistic”;
McGinnis, “Avicenna’s Naturalized Epistemology”; Acar, “Talking about God: Avicenna’s
Way Out”; Acar, Talking about God and Talking about Creation; Shihadeh, “Aspects of the
Reception”; Alper, “Epistemological Value”; and, with particular relevance to Ibn Taymiyya
in the Darʾ taʿāruḍ, Michot, “Mamlūk Theologian’s Commentary.”
156 The main studies on Ibn Rushd relevant to the points discussed here are (in chronologi-
cal order) Wolfson, “Double Faith Theory”; Hourani, “Ibn-Rushd’s Defence of Philosophy”;
Hourani, Averroes on the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy; Mahdi, “Remarks on Aver-
roes’ Decisive Treatise”; von Kügelgen, Averroes und die arabische Moderne; Butterworth,
“Source that Nourishes”; Alain de Libera’s introduction to Averroès, Discours décisif, 5–83,
as well as his introductory essay in Averroès, L’Islam et la raison, 9–76; and Ḥamāda, Ibn
Rushd fī Kitāb Faṣl al-maqāl.
157 See Michot, “Mamlūk Theologian’s Commentary,” 168–170 for examples of parallels, on the
question of hermeneutics and the nature of revelation, between Ibn Sīnā’s al-Aḍḥawiyya
fī al-maʿād, on the one hand, and Ibn Rushd’s al-Kashf ʿan manāhij al-adilla [hereafter
Manāhij] and Faṣl al-maqāl, on the other. Ibn Taymiyya comments at length in the Darʾ
taʿāruḍ on both Aḍḥawiyya (at Darʾ 5:18–86) and Manāhij (at Darʾ, 6:212–249). For a
detailed study of Ibn Taymiyya’s engagement with Ibn Rushd in the Darʾ and, particu-
larly, in his earlier treatise Bayān talbīs al-Jahmiyya, see Hoover, “Ibn Taymiyya’s Use of Ibn
Rushd.” In this study, Hoover demonstrates how “Ibn Taymiyya puts Ibn Rushd to work
marginalizing his opponent Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī from his self-proclaimed position as a
mainstream rationalist theologian and refuting his arguments” (Hoover, “Ibn Taymiyya’s
Use of Ibn Rushd,” 475).
158 On al-Fārābī, see Mahdi, “Alfarabi on Philosophy and Religion”; O’Meara, “Religion als
Abbild der Philosophie”; Schoeler, “Poetischer Syllogismus—bildliche Redeweise—
Religion”; Germann, “Natural and Revealed Religion”; López-Farjeat, “Faith, Reason, and
Religious Diversity”; and El-Rayes, “The Book of Religion’s Political and Pedagogical Objec-
tives.”

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on metaphysical, theological, and eschatological topics to be almost entirely

symbolic or allegorical rather than literal; (2) regard the purpose of revelation
as primarily moral-ethical and legal-political rather than cognitional or epis-
temic; (3) distinguish sharply between the common folk (ʿāmma), whom the
pictorial language of revelation is meant to motivate in the performance of
good deeds, and the philosophical elite (khāṣṣa), who attain to metaphysical,
theological, and eschatological truth by dint of rational inquiry; and (4) censure
the mutakallimūn for confusing the common people by publicly reinterpreting
certain Qurʾānic verses figuratively, and for doing so on the basis of what they
decry as substandard argumentation and inconclusive reasoning.
With respect to Ibn Sīnā’s views on reason and revelation, Ibn Taymiyya ded-
icates a substantial section at the beginning of Argument 20 (Darʾ, vol. 5) to a
treatment of his treatise al-Aḍḥawiyya fī al-maʿād, the third section of which
contains Ibn Sīnā’s hermeneutical prescription for dealing with revealed texts
that are thought to conflict with reason.159 In the Aḍḥawiyya, which Yahya
Michot labels the “most controversial writing of the Shaykh al-Raʾīs,”160 Ibn
Sīnā confirms that “the revelation (sharʿ) and religion (milla) that come on
the tongue of a prophet are meant to address the generality of the masses (al-
jumhūr kāffatan).”161 Accordingly, it is inadmissible (mumtaniʿ) that the doc-
trine of tawḥīd be presented in its true form to the common people. Ibn Sīnā
defines the true doctrine of tawḥīd as

the affirmation of the Maker (al-Ṣāniʿ) as one, transcendently beyond

[or “sanctified above”: muqaddas ʿan] quantity, quality, place, time, posi-
tion, and change, such that one come to believe that He is one essence
(dhāt wāḥida), unique in kind, without any existential part ( juzʾ wujūdī),
either quantitative or qualitative, and that it [His essence] can be neither
inside nor outside the world, nor such that He can be pointed to [as being]
here or there.162

Indeed, Ibn Sīnā maintains, “had it [the doctrine of tawḥīd] been presented in
this manner to the native Arabs and the uncouth Hebrews,163 they would have

159 For extensive background on and analysis of Ibn Sīnā’s Aḍḥawiyya, followed by a transla-
tion of Ibn Taymiyya’s commentary on it in the first part of Argument 20 (at Darʾ, 5:18–86),
see Michot, “Mamlūk Theologian’s Commentary.”
160 Michot, “Mamlūk Theologian’s Commentary,” 164.
161 “al-sharʿ wa-l-milla al-ātiya ʿalā lisān nabī min al-anbiyāʾ yurāmu bihā khiṭāb al-jumhūr kāf-
fatan.” Darʾ, 5:11; Ibn Sīnā, Aḍḥawiyya, 97.
162 Darʾ, 5:11; Aḍḥawiyya, 97–98. (See index of Arabic passages.)
163 Referring not to the Jews of seventh-century Arabia or eleventh-century Persia but to the

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rushed to deny it and would have concurred that the belief to which they were
being called was belief in a non-existent (īmān bi-maʿdūm).”164
Ibn Sīnā goes on to affirm that while certain Qurʾānic expressions, such as
“God’s hand is over their hands” (Q. al-Fatḥ 48:10), are clearly meant figura-
tively or metaphorically, in accord with the expansive norms of Arabic locu-
tion,165 other expressions, such as God’s “coming in the shadows of clouds”
(see Q. al-Baqara 2:210), cannot plausibly be interpreted as figures of speech
in light of Arabic rhetorical conventions.166 Indeed, he concludes, “[If we] sup-
pose that all such expressions are to be taken as metaphors, then where is the
tawḥīd? Where is the expression [in revelation] that explicitly indicates the
pure tawḥīd to which the reality of this upright religion calls, the majesty of
which is professed on the tongues of all the sages of the world?”167 Ibn Sīnā then
strikes out at the mutakallimūn by asking rhetorically where revelation men-
tions any of the theological subtleties with which they concern themselves,
such as whether God is knowledgeable by virtue of His essence (ʿālim bi-l-dhāt)
or by virtue of an attribute of knowledge (ʿālim bi-ʿilm), whether He occupies
space (mutaḥayyiz) or is spatially located ( fī jiha), and so on. He concludes that

it is apparent from all this that religious teachings (sharāʾiʿ) have come
to address the masses according to what they can understand, bringing
closer to their minds that which they cannot understand through the
use of allegory (tamthīl) and similitude (tashbīh). Had it been otherwise,
[these] teachings would have been of no avail whatsoever (la-mā aghnat
al-sharāʾiʿ al-batta).168

It follows from this, as Ibn Sīnā states explicitly, that “the apparent sense of
revelation cannot serve as an argument in these matters [specifically, eschatol-
ogy].”169 Knowledge of this truth, however, is intended for “those who aspire
to be among the elite of the people and not the masses.”170 As for the masses,
they should be left to have faith in the outward meaning of scripture and not

original Hebrew tribes to whom Moses brought the Torah. Farther on in the Aḍḥawiyya,
Ibn Sīnā refers to “the barbarous Hebrews and the [uncultured] desert Arabs” (ghutm al-
ʿIbrāniyyīn wa-ahl al-wabar min al-ʿArab). Darʾ, 5:16; Aḍḥawiyya, 101.
164 Darʾ, 5:11; Aḍḥawiyya, 98. (See index of Arabic passages.)
165 “fa-huwa mawḍiʿ al-istiʿāra wa-l-majāz wa-l-tawassuʿ fī al-kalām.”Darʾ, 5:14; Aḍḥawiyya, 100.
166 See Darʾ, 5:12–13; Aḍḥawiyya, 99.
167 Darʾ, 5:14; Aḍḥawiyya, 100. (See index of Arabic passages.)
168 Darʾ, 5:17; Aḍḥawiyya, 103. (See index of Arabic passages.)
169 “ẓāhir al-sharāʾiʿ ghayr muḥtajj bihi fī mithl hādhihi al-abwāb.” Darʾ, 5:18; Aḍḥawiyya, 103.
170 “man ṭalaba an yakūna khāṣṣan min al-nās lā ʿāmman.” Darʾ, 5:18; Aḍḥawiyya, 103.

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be confused by the non-literal interpretations of the mutakallimūn, nor should

they be made privy to the real knowledge of tawḥīd that the philosophers have
discerned through the light of reason.
As for Ibn Rushd, Ibn Taymiyya cites and discusses in the Darʾ numerous
lengthy abstracts from the philosopher’s works, most notably his al-Kashf ʿan
manāhij al-adilla fī ʿaqāʾid al-milla [hereafter Manāhij].171 Ibn Taymiyya cites
Ibn Rushd at length, mainly for his concession, as a leading philosopher, that
the revealed texts convey nothing but pure affirmationism with regard to the
divine attributes and in no wise intimate, even remotely, the types of “negation-
ist” taʾwīl given to them by the mutakallimūn.172 Ibn Rushd, in fact, goes so far
as to say that “affirming spatial ___location [of God] (ithbāt al-jiha) is obligatory by
virtue of both revelation and reason; this is what revelation has come with and
is built upon. Nullifying this principle [or rule: qāʿida] amounts to a nullifica-
tion of religious teachings (sharāʾiʿ),”173 as the masses (al-jumhūr) are incapable
of conceiving anything that does not have a counterpart in sensory reality. For
this reason, revelation prohibits ( yazjuru ʿan) delving into such matters if there
is no need. It is thus obligatory, Ibn Rushd tells us, to defer to the way in which
revelation itself deals with such matters and to refrain from interpreting figu-
ratively that which the texts do not explicitly treat as figurative.174 Deflecting
the obvious sense of revelation in favor of non-apparent, figurative interpreta-
tions (taʾwīlāt) derived through reason only confuses the common people and
undermines their confidence in the veracity and integrity of scripture.
In upholding the necessity of literal interpretation for the populace while
strictly limiting the real truth of tawḥīd and other metaphysical realities to
the philosophical elite, Ibn Rushd, like Ibn Sīnā before him, launches a heavy
attack against the mutakallimūn. Human beings, he tells us, fall into three cat-

171 Among the most significant of these abstracts is a lengthy citation from Manāhij (followed
by Ibn Taymiyya’s commentary) at Darʾ, 6:212–249 (esp. 6:217–227). The other major work
of Ibn Rushd directly relevant to the present theme is his Faṣl al-maqāl and its appendix
(Ḍamīma), both of which are translated in Hourani, Averroes on the Harmony of Religion
and Philosophy and in Butterworth, Averroës: Decisive Treatise & Epistle Dedicatory.
172 See Hoover, “Ibn Taymiyya’s Use of Ibn Rushd,” 474 and passim. Hoover speaks (p. 483)
of Ibn Taymiyya’s “audacity and ingenuity in invoking Ibn Rushd to supplant Ibn Sīnā
and marginalize al-Rāzī” and notes that Ibn Taymiyya, despite his differences with Ibn
Rushd, nonetheless invokes him at length to provide the strongest refutation of the
mutakallimūn’s (public) practice of reinterpreting seemingly corporealist descriptions of
God in revelation.
173 Darʾ, 6:216; Ibn Rushd, Manāhij, 178. (See index of Arabic passages.)
174 “fa-yajibu an yumtathala fī hādhā kullihi fiʿl al-sharʿ wa-lā yutaʾawwala mā lam yuṣarriḥ al-
sharʿ bi-taʾwīlihi” (Manāhij: “wa-an lā yutaʾawwala”). Darʾ, 6:217; Manāhij, 179.

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egories (or ranks, rutab; sing. rutba) with respect to the metaphysical matters
addressed in revelation:175 (1) the general masses (al-jumhūr) and the majority
(al-akthar), who experience no doubt when the texts are understood according
to their literal meaning; (2) the “scholars who are firmly grounded in knowl-
edge,”176 who know the reality of such matters (ʿarafū ḥaqīqat hādhihi al-ashyāʾ)
and who constitute a minority among people; and (3) those who stand above
the rank of the commoners but below that of the scholars and who are assailed
by doubts regarding such matters that they are unable to resolve. It is this third
group that experiences revelation as “ambiguous” or indeterminate in mean-
ing (mutashābih), and it is they whom God has censured in the Qurʾān.177 For
the scholars and the general public, revelation contains no ambiguity or inde-
terminacy. Ibn Rushd likens these two groups to healthy people, whose bodies
benefit when given the nourishment appropriate to them (namely, the literal
meaning for the common people and the abstract rational truth for the “schol-
ars,” that is, the philosophers). The third group, on the other hand, are like
the sick, and they are the minority among people. Ibn Rushd specifies that
these are “the people of disputation and discursive theology” (ahl al-jadal wa-l-
kalām),178 whose figurative interpretations (taʾwīlāt) of scripture “are not based
on firm proof (burhān), nor do they have the effect of the overt meaning in
[bringing about] the masses’ acceptance of and knowledge about [such mat-
ters].”179 As Ibn Rushd explains, “the primary objective of [religious] knowledge
with respect to the masses is [righteous] action: whatever is more beneficial in
[encouraging righteous] action is better. As for the objective of knowledge with
respect to the scholars, it comprises both matters together, namely, knowledge
and action.”180
Ibn Taymiyya cites with much approval Ibn Rushd’s insistence that revela-
tion only be interpreted publicly in a straightforward, literal manner. In this
vein, he cites Ibn Rushd’s critique of al-Ghazālī—who, in Ibn Rushd’s words,
“came and the torrent of the valley rose and choked up the meadow”181—for

175 See Darʾ, 6:217–218; Manāhij, 179.

176 “al-ʿulamāʾ al-rāsikhūna fī al-ʿilm” (Darʾ, 6:218; Manāhij, 179: “al-ʿulamāʾ ”), an allusion to Q.
Āl ʿImrān 3:7, discussed at length at p. 184ff. below.
177 “wa-hādhā al-ṣinf hum alladhīna yūjadu fī ḥaqqihim al-tashābuh fī al-sharʿ wa-hum alla-
dhīna dhammahum Allāh taʿālā.” Darʾ, 6:218; Manāhij, 179. God’s censure of this group for
finding tashābuh in revelation is also a reference to Q. Āl ʿImrān 3:7.
178 Darʾ, 6:219; Manāhij, 180.
179 “laysa yaqūmu ʿalayhā burhān wa-lā tafʿalu fiʿl al-ẓāhir fī qabūl al-jumhūr lahā wa-ʿilmihim
ʿanhā” (Manāhij: “wa-ʿamalihim ʿanhā”). Darʾ, 219–220; Manāhij, 180.
180 Darʾ, 6:220; Manāhij, 180. (See index of Arabic passages.)
181 “jāʾa [Abū Ḥāmid] fa-ṭamma al-wādī ʿalā al-qarī.” Darʾ, 6:222; Manāhij, 182. The standard

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having shared with too many people what ought to have remained a private dis-
cussion among the qualified philosophical elite. Ibn Rushd censures al-Ghazālī
for “divulging the entirety of philosophy and the views of the philosophers to
the masses”182 and for venturing to make positive figurative interpretations of
various verses, then revealing these interpretations to a dangerously wide sec-
tion of the public.183 In fact, Ibn Taymiyya cites Ibn Rushd page after page with
such apparent approbation that we begin to wonder if he fully grasped Ibn
Rushd’s ultimate position on the (non-)status of revelation as a purveyor of
knowledge—though in other passages, it is quite clear that Ibn Rushd’s true
position was, of course, not lost on him.184 In fact, Ibn Taymiyya describes Ibn
Rushd as

inclining towards the esotericist philosophers (bāṭiniyyat al-falāsifa) who

consider it obligatory to hold the masses to the outward [meaning of
revelation], just like those among the theologians, jurists, and scholars
of ḥadīth who adopt their [i.e., such philosophers’] position. He [Ibn
Rushd] does not belong to the esotericist Shīʿa, like the Ismāʿīlīs and
those of their ilk who openly declare [their] heresy and make a show
of flouting the religious prescriptions of Islam. But in terms of negat-
ing the [divine] attributes, he is worse than the Muʿtazila and their likes,
[reaching] the level of his brethren from among the esotericist philoso-
phers.185

As for al-Ghazālī, Ibn Taymiyya likewise discusses his works and opinions on
numerous occasions in the Darʾ taʿāruḍ. Although al-Ghazālī was much more of
a theologian than a philosopher and, in fact, dedicated one of his most famous
works, Tahāfut al-falāsifa, to refuting just the type of philosophy triumphed by
the likes of Ibn Sīnā and Ibn Rushd,186 Ibn Taymiyya is cool, at best, towards

form of this proverb, used to indicate that an evil has transgressed its bounds, is “jarā al-
wādī fa-ṭamma ʿalā al-qarī.” See al-Maydānī, Majmaʿ al-amthāl, 1:159 (#823).
182 “ṣarraḥa bi-l-ḥikma kullihā lil-jumhūr wa-bi-ārāʾ al-ḥukamāʾ.” Darʾ 222–223; Manāhij, 182.
183 See Darʾ, 6:222–237 for Ibn Taymiyya’s citation of an extensive passage from Manāhij in
which Ibn Rushd criticizes al-Ghazālī. (Corresponds to Manāhij, 182–191.)
184 Ibn Taymiyya also wrote a separate treatise in refutation of Ibn Rushd. See Ibn Taymiyya,
al-Radd ʿalā falsafat Ibn Rushd.
185 Darʾ, 6:237, line 10 to 6:238, line 2. (See index of Arabic passages.) See also Hoover, “Ibn
Taymiyya’s Use of Ibn Rushd,” 485–487 for the translation of a lengthy passage from Bayān
talbīs al-Jahmiyya in which Ibn Taymiyya criticizes Ibn Rushd harshly.
186 Al-Ghazālī was, of course, responding to the philosophers primarily in the person of Ibn
Sīnā, whose impure and admixed Aristotelianism was the subject of considerable critique
on the part of Ibn Rushd himself. But see Janssens, “Al-Ghazzālī’s Tahāfut,” as well as Frank,

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al-Ghazālī throughout the Darʾ.187 He is respectful of al-Ghazālī’s immense

erudition and spiritual accomplishment—paying homage to “his tremendous
intelligence and piety (taʾalluh), his knowledge of discursive theology (kalām)
and philosophy, and his traveling the path of abstemiousness, disciplining of
the soul, and taṣawwuf ”188—and he is ready, as usual, to recognize laudable
and well-intentioned efforts in the service of truth and the defense of Islam
where due.189 Notwithstanding, he observes that while al-Ghazālī may have
refuted many of the false doctrines of the philosophers, he capitulated to many
of them as well, becoming thereby a sort of “interstice (barzakh) between
them [the philosophers] and the Muslims”190—so much so that even the likes
of the Andalusian mystical philosopher Ibn Ṭufayl (d. 581/1185), whom Ibn
Taymiyya labels one of the “mystically inclined of the heretics” (ṣūfiyyat al-
malāḥida), could find affinity with ( yastaʾnisu bi) some of al-Ghazālī’s doc-
trines.191
With specific reference to the issue of reason and revelation, Ibn Taymiyya
faults al-Ghazālī for launching a purely destructive attack against the philoso-
phers and for contenting himself (as al-Ghazālī himself states in the introduc-
tion to the Tahāfut) with using any argument he could lay his hands on to
expose the philosophers’ incoherence (their “tahāfut”), regardless of whether
the argument was valid in and of itself. In this manner, al-Ghazālī was satis-
fied, as Ibn Taymiyya puts it, to “confront falsehood with falsehood”192 and,
despairing ultimately of the ability of reason to reach any reliable conclusions
in such matters, resorted to spiritual unveiling (kashf ) and subjective experi-
ence (dhawq) as the surest means of arriving at truth and a proper understand-
ing of revelation.193 Here, Ibn Taymiyya paraphrases a passage from the Iḥyāʾ
ʿulūm al-dīn in which al-Ghazālī states:

“Al-Ghazâlî’s Use of Avicenna’s Philosophy.” On the relationship between al-Ghazālī and

Ibn Rushd, see Griffel, “Relationship between Averroes and al-Ghazālī.”
187 For Ibn Taymiyya’s reception of and attitude towards al-Ghazālī, see Michot, “An Impor-
tant Reader of al-Ghazālī: Ibn Taymiyya.”
188 Darʾ, 1:162, lines 8–9.
189 See first block quotation on p. 109 above.
190 Darʾ, 6:57, line 3.
191 Darʾ, 6:56, line 14 to 6:57, line 1.
192 See Ibn Taymiyya’s citation of al-Ghazālī’s Tahāfut at Darʾ, 7:164, lines 3–10. See also Darʾ,
6:223, lines 6–8, where he cites (via Ibn Rushd’s Manāhij) al-Ghazālī, in his work Jawāhir
al-Qurʾān, as admitting that the arguments used in the Tahāfut amounted to “(merely)
dialectical arguments” (aqāwīl jadaliyya) and that the truth of the matter lay in the doc-
trine he expounded in the esoteric work al-Maḍnūn bihi ʿalā ghayr ahlihi.
193 See Darʾ, 5:339, line 13 to 5:340, line 2.

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The moderate path (ḥadd al-iqtiṣād) between the wantonness (inḥilāl) of

excessive taʾwīl and the rigidity ( jumūd) of the Ḥanbalīs is a fine and sub-
tle [point] comprehensible only to those who have been granted success
[and] who perceive things by a divine light, not by means of receiving
transmitted knowledge (samāʿ). Then, when the hidden aspects of things
are made manifest to them as they truly are (idhā inkashafat lahum asrār
al-umūr ʿalā mā hiya ʿalayhi), they consider (naẓarū ilā) the transmitted
texts [of revelation] and the wording thereof; [then,] whatever agrees
with what they have witnessed (mā shāhadūhu) by the light of certainty
they affirm (qarrarūhu), and whatever disagrees [with this] they interpret
figuratively [through taʾwīl] (awwalūhu).194

The contrasting views195 that these men—Ibn Sīnā and Ibn Rushd, al-Ghazālī,
and Ibn Taymiyya—held regarding the nature of knowledge and the most reli-
able means of gaining it are striking indeed and bring us back to the central
concern of our study. For the philosophers Ibn Sīnā and Ibn Rushd, reason
is the ultimate guide to what is true and not true, real and not real, about
the world. Objective human reason is (simplistically stated) what Aristotle
took it to be; knowledge of truth and reality can be discovered most reliably
through the rigorous and disciplined process of formal syllogistic demonstra-
tion bequeathed to the world by the First Teacher, that most distinguished
sage from Stagira. The purpose—and, indeed, the genius—of revelation is not
to enunciate forthrightly the greatest metaphysical and ontological, let alone
eschatological, truths of the universe, for the subtlety of these truths is well
beyond the ken of the vast majority of ordinary men. Rather, certain knowledge
is what the philosophers, specifically the Peripatetics, have discovered through
rational demonstration (burhān). This certain knowledge is a prize jewel that
is accessible only to the gifted few; therefore, it must be tightly held within the
circles of the intellectual elect and carefully guarded from falling into the hands
of men who, not being blessed with philosophical minds, would only become

194 Al-Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ, 122. The full passage from al-Ghazālī, as translated here, is cited by the
editor of the Darʾ at 5:339, n. 2 and 5:340, n. 2. (See index of Arabic passages.)
195 Useful comparative studies include (in chronological order) Wolfson, Avicenna, Algazali,
and Averroes; Qumayr, Ibn Rushd wa-l-Ghazālī; Sālim, Muqārana bayna al-Ghazālī wa-
Ibn Taymiyya; Bello, Medieval Islamic Controversy; Saʿd, Mawqif Ibn Taymiyya min falsafat
Ibn Rushd; Naqārī, al-Manhajiyya al-uṣūliyya wa-l-manṭiq al-Yūnānī; Puig Montada, “Ibn
Rushd versus al-Ghazālī”; Sharqāwī, al-Ṣūfiyya wa-l-ʿaql; Griffel, “Relationship between
Averroes and al-Ghazālī”; Wohlman, Al-Ghazali, Averroës and the Interpretation of the
Qurʾan; and von Kügelgen, “Muslimische Theologen und Philosophen.” See also Michot’s
remarks in “Mamlūk Theologian’s Commentary,” 170–172.

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confused by it or possibly led astray. Thus, for the philosophers, the ingenuity of
revelation lies not in that it conveys to mankind precious and objectively true
knowledge of things as they are but rather in the preeminent adroitness with
which it symbolizes transcendent realities through evocative images. Although
these images do not correspond to reality in any objective sense, they neverthe-
less accomplish the lofty moral objective of encouraging men to perform good
deeds and to live their lives piously in such a manner as to ensure their ultimate
success in the hereafter.
Ibn Taymiyya, for his part, concurs with al-Ghazālī’s—and, arguably, al-
Rāzī’s196—skepticism regarding the Greek model of rationality that was adopt-
ed with such enthusiasm by so many of the intellectual elite among his Muslim
coreligionists. Indeed, the mission of the Darʾ is to deconstruct this (to his
mind) very particular and parochial, not to say ultimately incoherent, con-
figuration of rationality and to do so in an even more radical manner than
al-Ghazālī himself had attempted to do. Yet Ibn Taymiyya takes al-Ghazālī to
task for his ultimate loss of faith in any notion of a publicly shared, reliable rea-
son and for his attempt, instead, to establish moral and cognitive certainty on
the ultimately subjective basis of private spiritual experience.
In contrast to al-Ghazālī, Ibn Taymiyya shares with Ibn Sīnā and Ibn Rushd
—and, by extension, with the philosophers more generally—their optimistic
assessment of reason and its ability to reach objective, true, and certain con-
clusions regarding many of the most fundamental truths about God, man, and
the world. Nevertheless, he stands at the opposite end of the philosophers’ con-
ception of the language of revelation as merely evocative and pictorial rather
than denotative and factual. For Ibn Taymiyya, it is the obvious sense of reve-
lation, available and comprehensible to the elite and the commoner alike, that
tells the real story by providing a factual, face-value account of all the themes
addressed therein (even if the ultimate ontic reality of such transcendent mat-
ters as they are in and of themselves remains, of necessity, beyond the reach
of our contingent and perforce limited human faculties). On the other hand,
the ostensibly rational deductions of the philosophers and theologians are lit-
tle more than a figment of their own imaginations—mental constructs that
not only contradict revelation but also (as al-Ghazālī himself had so astutely
demonstrated in the Tahāfut) fall apart on strictly rational grounds as well
once rational investigation of them is truly pushed to the limit. In addition, Ibn
Taymiyya censures the philosophers specifically for, as he sees it, demoting the
value of revelation to one of a strictly pragmatic moral-ethical phenomenon

196 See p. 145, n. 34 below.

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that is essentially unrelated to the (higher) epistemic function of conveying

to man objective knowledge about the reality of his existence and the various
realms that God has created—the empirical/seen (shāhid) and the transcen-
dent/unseen (ghāʾib), the present world (dunyā) and the life of the hereafter
(ākhira). It is not, to be sure, that the philosophers prize knowledge less than
action. In fact, quite the opposite is true, only that they do not look to revela-
tion as a source of objective knowledge but limit the utility of the revealed texts
to their pragmatic dimension alone.197 Ibn Taymiyya, of course, recognizes and
assigns great value to the practical moral guidance afforded by revelation,198
yet he is nonetheless adamant in declaring that the most noble, lofty, and ulti-
mately beneficial aspect of revelation is, precisely, the knowledge it provides
human beings about God, themselves, and the ultimate significance of their
worldly lives as a sowing ground for the abode of eternity that lies beyond.199
For the philosophers, then, we can come to know truth only through reason,
and reason proper is what Aristotle conceived it to be: the demonstrative fac-
ulty operating deductively in terms of Aristotelian syllogistics. For al-Ghazālī,
reason may well be what Aristotle conceived it to be, but, that being the case,
it is ultimately of little use in reaching true knowledge of the most important
matters. For Ibn Taymiyya, reason can enable us to reach definitive conclusions
on the most important of matters, but precisely because it is not what Aristo-
tle, and all who followed in his wake, conceived it to be. Al-Ghazālī’s project, at
least with regard to reason, would seem to be a primarily deconstructive one: he
systematically dismantles the pretensions of philosophical mental acrobatics,
but then, as if reason could not be anything other than what the philosophers
esteemed it to be, he discards it altogether as a means for ascertaining the

197 See Darʾ, 5:359, lines 1–7 and 5:359, line 13 to 5:360, line 5 for the related point that what
the philosophers’ position here actually implies—if knowledge indeed be nobler than
action—is that those who teach knowledge (namely, the philosophers) are, by implica-
tion, nobler and more beneficial to mankind than those who taught men only action
(namely, the prophets).
198 In fact, one of Ibn Taymiyya’s main motivations for attempting to be rid of negationism
once and for all is that the philosophers’ highly abstract notion of a remote deity makes
it nearly impossible for one to relate to God personally or to cultivate the religiously vital
senses of love and awe of God necessary for one to worship Him in a meaningful way and
to keep His commandments. For a full treatment of this crucial aspect of Ibn Taymiyya’s
theology and larger religious reform project, see Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy, chap. 1,
chap. 3, and passim.
199 See Darʾ, 5:358, lines 1–3, where Ibn Taymiyya states that what the Qurʾān addresses in
terms of knowledge is quantitatively greater and qualitatively more noble than what it
addresses in terms of works (al-khiṭāb al-ʿilmī fī al-Qurʾān ashraf min al-khiṭāb al-ʿamalī
qadran wa-ṣifatan).

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truth. Ibn Taymiyya conceives of his own project as going well beyond that
of al-Ghazālī: he attempts to “counter what is unsound with what is sound”
( yuqābilu al-fāsid bi-l-ṣāliḥ)200 and to settle the issue of the vexed relationship
between reason and revelation definitively by demonstrating that true, pure
reason (ʿaql ṣarīḥ) positively agrees with and corroborates revelation and can,
moreover, be plausibly demonstrated to do so. Insofar as al-Ghazālī conceived
of his work in the Tahāfut in purely deconstructive and negative terms—laying
the philosophers’ heretical doctrines to waste but without erecting in their
stead a solid rational structure capable of demonstrating the inherent rational
plausibility and consistency of revelation—then the Darʾ taʿāruḍ, at least in
terms of the ambition Ibn Taymiyya harbors for it, goes significantly beyond al-
Ghazālī’s more circumscribed enterprise. Like the philosophers, Ibn Taymiyya
seeks nothing less than a full resolution to the intractable standoff between
reason and revelation—albeit on terms radically opposed to those proposed
by his Peripatetic predecessors.
In the remainder of this study, we examine in detail just how Ibn Taymiyya
accomplishes his projected tour de force. An affirmative verdict on the viabil-
ity of Ibn Taymiyya’s project would be of major significance, not only in terms
of the ideas themselves but also in terms of current scholarly inquiry. Rather
than stopping at al-Ghazālī’s (negative) project of demolishing the philoso-
phers’ system, we would henceforth be obliged to include Ibn Taymiyya’s Darʾ
taʿāruḍ as another major episode in the conflict between reason and revelation
in Islamic thought. Not only does Ibn Taymiyya’s undertaking, as I have inti-
mated, purport to be more fundamentally eradicative than al-Ghazālī’s (since
Ibn Taymiyya rejects even more of the inherited philosophical system than al-
Ghazālī did, including the very logic on which the entire philosophical edifice
was built), but it also—significantly—represents a conscientiously construc-
tive, or rather re-constructive, project with two overriding aims. These aims
are (1) to demonstrate that pure sound reason (ʿaql ṣarīḥ) does exist and to
establish, in positive terms, precisely what it is and (2) to show that this pure
reason demonstrates not only that the philosophers’ doctrines are false, inco-
herent, and positively irrational but also that what revelation reveals is, in
diametric opposition to this, not just true (of course) but fully coherent and

200 See Darʾ, 1:376, lines 10–12, where Ibn Taymiyya explains that “light and guidance are only
achieved by countering the corrupt with the sound, the false with the true, religious inno-
vation with the Sunna, waywardness with guidance, and falsehood with truth.” He then
says, in conclusion, that “by this means, it becomes clear that valid indicants (al-adilla al-
ṣaḥīḥa) are not subject to objection under any circumstances and that pure reason is in
full conformity with authentic revelation.” (See index of Arabic passages.)

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demonstrably rational as well. As we have seen, Ibn Taymiyya insists that merely
“refuting falsehood with falsehood” may be instructive insofar as it demon-
strates how the philosophers and theologians refute one another’s arguments,
but this proves only that all these groups are in error. It is decidedly not suf-
ficient, Ibn Taymiyya insists, for establishing in rational terms what is actually
true and correct. This can only be done by “countering the corrupt with the
sound and the false with the true,” which conforms to both authentic revela-
tion (al-manqūl al-ṣaḥīḥ) and pure reason (al-maʿqūl al-ṣarīḥ).201
The terms on which Ibn Taymiyya bids to resolve the conflict between reason
and revelation in Islam are enormously ambitious. While previous attempts
to defuse this tension generally demanded that revelation yield to the deliv-
erances of a rationality largely conceived along Greek lines and constructed,
ultimately, on the backbone of Aristotelian logic (a conception of rational-
ity that had been taken for granted for centuries before him—even by the
more textually conservative of theologians—as constitutive of reason per se),
Ibn Taymiyya takes a distinctly different route. For him, simply reinterpreting
or suspending revelation is not merely too facile a solution to the problem;
it is also a largely disingenuous one, for the basic consequence of the uni-
versal rule, as he sees it, is that ultimately reason alone is granted the right
to arbitrate, even on matters that fall outside its proper ___domain. With each
new instance of figurative interpretation (taʾwīl) or suspension of meaning
(tafwīḍ), the integrity of revelation as a source of knowledge is further eroded
until its epistemic function as a purveyor of truth is largely, if not entirely,
eclipsed by a “reason” whose own deep-set incongruities conspire to preclude
it, too, from yielding any bona fide knowledge, particularly of God and related
matters theological. Sunk to the bottom of the Taymiyyan pyramid,202 caught
between a debilitated revelation shorn of its prerogative to convey truth and
a dilapidated reason scattered in the winds of incessant schismatics and hob-
bled by incurable misgivings, the Muslim intellectual landscape of the early
eighth/fourteenth century, to Ibn Taymiyya’s mind, cried for a resolution. Yet
our author’s prescription does not consist in simply turning the tables on rea-
son and bidding it to silence wherever and whenever revelation has spoken. For
Ibn Taymiyya, not only would the intellectual inadequacy of such a “solution”
render it perpetually unstable, but it would also violate the very imperative of
revelation itself, with its recurrent appeal to “reflect,” “consider,” “reason,” and
“ponder,” to say nothing of its own deployment of rational argumentation in

201 See ibid.

202 See introduction, p. 7 above.

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recommending the plausibility of its doctrine to an originally skeptical audi-

ence. Ibn Taymiyya seeks the solution elsewhere: namely, in the elaboration of
a (re)integrated epistemology in which conflict between reason and revelation
is not merely staved off by the terms of a truce in which each antagonist enjoys
supremacy in a separate ___domain of exclusive magisterium,203 nor yet in which
the historical tension between the two is artificially defused by subjugating one
to what is deemed to be the terms of the other, nor even one in which the two
(merely) coexist side by side in blissful harmony. Rather, Ibn Taymiyya’s goal is
nothing less than the full (re)integration of reason and revelation into a coher-
ent epistemology in which a rehabilitated intuitive reason and an unaffected,
straightforward reading of scripture are, as if flowing from a common font, fully
corroborative and mutually reinforcing.
A mighty tall order indeed. Precisely how Ibn Taymiyya attempts this feat
will command our attention for the remainder of this study.

203 Consider Stephen Jay Gould’s notion of “non-overlapping magisteria” between science
and religion. See Gould, “Nonoverlapping Magisteria” and Gould, Rocks of Ages.

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 chapter 3

On the Incoherence of the Universal Rule and the

Theoretical Impossibility of a Contradiction
between Reason and Revelation

1 Ibn Taymiyya on the Universal Rule and the Variety of Responses

It Has Elicited

In the year 606/1209, fifty-four years before the birth of Ibn Taymiyya, the great
Persian Ashʿarī theologian Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī passed away, leaving behind
a massive body of writings.1 Many of these writings were theological tracts
aimed specifically at buttressing the position of the more textually conser-
vative Ashʿarī school of theology against the more rationalistically inclined
Muʿtazila. In one of his more influential theological treatises, Asās al-taqdīs,2
al-Rāzī enunciates a so-called universal rule (qānūn kullī), a plea from Ashʿarī
theologians for a truce in the ongoing battle between reason and revelation. By
al-Rāzī’s time, this universal rule had won the approval of the majority of his
Ashʿarī colleagues, whose doctrine was steadily becoming the standard formu-
lation of Islamic belief, expressed in rationalistic terms, throughout much of
the Islamic world.3
The universal rule, as paraphrased by Ibn Taymiyya at the beginning of the
Darʾ taʿāruḍ,4 states:

If scriptural and rational indications, or revelation and reason, or the obvi-

ous outward meaning of the revealed texts and the definitive conclusions

1 A summarized version of this chapter has appeared previously as El-Tobgui, “Ibn Taymiyya
on the Incoherence of the Theologians’ Universal Law.” Note the change in terminology from
“Universal Law” in the article to “universal rule” for “al-qānūn al-kullī” in the current work.
2 Tariq Jaffer points out that al-Rāzī refers to this work, which is devoted entirely to the question
of taʾwīl, as “Taʾsīs al-taqdīs”; this is also the title that is listed in Ḥājjī Khalīfa’s Kashf al-ẓunūn.
See Jaffer, Rāzī, 58–59, n. 19; Ḥājjī Khalīfa, Kashf al-ẓunūn, 1:333.
3 For an overview of Ashʿarī principles of figurative interpretation (taʾwīl) from al-Juwaynī to
al-Jurjānī in the face of conflicting rational and scriptural evidence, see Heer, “Priority of Rea-
son,” 181–188.
4 For a discussion of earlier statements of this rule in al-Ghazālī and al-Rāzī and the relation-
ship of Ibn Taymiyya’s paraphrase of the rule in the Darʾ to these antecedents, see Griffel, “Ibn
Taymiyya and His Ashʿarite Opponents,” 15–30.

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on the incoherence of the universal rule 133

of rational thought—or other ways of phrasing it—are in conflict, then

either (1) they must both be accepted, which is impossible as this would
violate the law of non-contradiction [claiming both p and −p]; (2) they
must both be rejected [which is also impossible as this would violate the
law of the excluded middle (claiming neither p nor −p)]; or (3) prece-
dence must be given to revelation, which is impossible since revelation
is grounded in reason, such that if we were to give priority to the for-
mer over the latter [that is, to revelation over reason], this would amount
to a rejection of both reason and [by extension] that which is grounded
in reason [namely, revelation]. One must, therefore, (4) give precedence
to reason over revelation, then either interpret revelation figuratively [to
accord with reason] (taʾwīl) or negate the apparent meaning of revelation
but refrain from assigning to it a definite, particular metaphorical mean-
ing (tafwīḍ).5

Ibn Taymiyya cites an alternative formulation of this rule given by al-Rāzī in

another work, Nihāyat al-ʿuqūl fī dirāyat al-uṣūl, in which al-Rāzī adds a signif-
icant detail—central to Ibn Taymiyya’s overall concern in the Darʾ—namely,
that “(the truth of) revelation can be established only through rational means,
for it is only through reason that we can establish the existence of the Creator
and know (the authenticity of) revelation.”6 Ibn Taymiyya laments that al-Rāzī
and his followers have made this into a universal rule for interpreting revelation
as it relates to God’s attributes and other issues in which they deem reason to be
in contradiction with what scripture affirms. Some of them—including al-Rāzī

5 Darʾ, 1:4 (see index of Arabic passages); see also al-Rāzī, Asās, 220–221. Al-Rāzī cites the
same basic principle in similar terms in other works as well. See, e.g., al-Rāzī: Maṭālib, 9:116–
117; Muḥaṣṣal, 51; Nihāyat al-ʿuqūl, 1:143; Arbaʿīn, 1:163–164; Masāʾil, 39–40; Maʿālim, 48; and
Mafātīḥ, 22:6–7. See Heer, “Priority of Reason,” 184–185 for an English translation and discus-
sion of the passages given here from al-Rāzī’s Asās and Masāʾil. See Jaffer, Rāzī, 89–94 for a
translation and discussion of these same two passages, as well as the passage cited here from
Mafātīḥ. On tafwīḍ, see Abrahamov, “‘Bi-lā Kayfa’ Doctrine.” On the universal rule, see also
Adem, “Intellectual Genealogy,” 210–229.
6 Cited at Darʾ, 5:331, lines 2–4 (emphasis mine). See al-Rāzī, Nihāyat al-ʿuqūl, 1:143 and simi-
lar at al-Rāzī, Masāʾil, 39–40. For statements by other major Ashʿarī theologians to the effect
that reason is the only means by which the authority of revelation can be established, see, for
example, ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Baghdādī, Kitāb Uṣūl al-dīn, 23; al-Juwaynī, Irshād, 358–360; and
al-Ghazālī, Iqtiṣād, 115. For English translations of the passages indicated in this note from al-
Juwaynī’s Irshād and al-Ghazālī’s Iqtiṣād, see Heer, “Priority of Reason,” 185–186. For a more
expansive list of sources—including the writings of figures such as Shams al-Dīn al-Aṣfahānī
(d. 749/1349), al-Taftāzānī (d. 793/1390), and al-Jurjānī (d. 816/1413), as well as Muʿtazilīs who
also held this doctrine—see Heer, “Priority of Reason,” 193, n. 21 and 194, n. 22.

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134 chapter 3

himself—add to this the notion that scriptural indicants (adilla samʿiyya) are,
in fact, inherently incapable of engendering certainty and therefore cannot be
relied upon in matters of definitive knowledge.7 Ibn Taymiyya remarks that oth-
ers before them had already articulated this universal rule, such as al-Ghazālī,
who employed it in his short treatise Qānūn al-taʾwīl8 to answer questions
posed to him by some of his students, such as Abū Bakr b. al-ʿArabī. Ibn al-
ʿArabī, in turn, articulated an alternative formulation of the rule in a lengthy
work of the same title,9 basing himself on the method followed by al-Ghazālī’s

7 See, for example, Darʾ, 5:335, lines 2–3, where Ibn Taymiyya cites a passage from al-Rāzī’s
Nihāyat al-ʿuqūl, a few pages after his statement of the universal rule cited above, to the
effect that “transmitted textual indicants (adilla naqliyya) cannot be relied upon in mat-
ters of (definitive) knowledge (al-adilla al-naqliyya lā yajūzu al-tamassuk bihā fī al-masāʾil
al-ʿilmiyya).” See al-Rāzī, Nihāyat al-ʿuqūl, 1:146 (where, however, al-Rāzī has “al-masāʾil al-
ʿaqliyya,” not “al-masāʾil al-ʿilmiyya”). See also al-Rāzī, Maʿālim, 25; Muḥaṣṣal, 51; and Arbaʿīn,
2:253–254 (where, however, al-Rāzī states that textual indicants can yield certainty if backed
up by mutawātir reports; see similar at al-Rāzī, Maṭālib, 9:117). For further discussion of al-
Rāzī’s views on revelation and certainty, see El-Tobgui, “Hermeneutics of Fakhr al-Dīn al-
Rāzī,” 139–140 and, more extensively, Jaffer, Rāzī, 77–83 and 102–104. Notwithstanding al-Rāzī’s
qualification (in works such as Arbaʿīn and Maṭālib) about the ability of scriptural indi-
cants to yield certain knowledge if corroborated by tawātur, Jaffer concludes—primarily
on the basis of Asās, Mafātīḥ, and Maʿālim—that al-Rāzī fundamentally denies the possi-
bility that even mutawātir reports can engender certitude (see Jaffer, 80–83), thus assign-
ing “even the strongest of ḥadīth reports a low epistemic value” (Jaffer, 82). (These conclu-
sions thus concur with the earlier findings of Goldziher, “Aus der Theologie,” 230–237 and
Arnaldez, “L’œuvre,” 315.) Jaffer observes further that the radical nature of al-Rāzī’s skepti-
cism vis-à-vis ḥadīth was matched only by the “maverick Muʿtazilite” Abū Isḥāq al-Naẓẓām
(d. between 220/835 and 230/845), the “only thinker who expresses such a degree of doubt
about prophetic reports” and whose “views were considered radical even by Muʿtazilite stan-
dards.” Jaffer, 81, n. 71 and 83, n. 77. Van Ess credits Ibn Taymiyya with having possessed a
“well-informed insight” into the discussions that had taken place regarding the probity and
proof value of scriptural indicants, specifically in his work al-Furqān bayna al-ḥaqq wa-l-
bāṭil. See van Ess, Die Erkenntnislehre des ʿAḍudaddīn al-Īcī, 409. Ibn Taymiyya, van Ess tells
us, knew that al-Rāzī was among those who “polemicized most strongly against scriptural
proofs,” which he held to be fundamentally inconclusive (van Ess, 409). On these grounds,
van Ess likewise characterizes al-Rāzī’s position as an “extreme case” (ein Extremfall) (van
Ess, 410).
8 Al-Ghazālī, Qānūn al-taʾwīl, 19, 21. Related discussions can be found in al-Ghazālī, Iqtiṣād,
116 and al-Ghazālī, Fayṣal al-tafriqa, 47–48. (For a translation and introduction to Fayṣal
al-tafriqa, see Jackson, On the Boundaries.) For a presentation and analysis of al-Ghazālī’s
approach to metaphorical interpretation, see Griffel, Al-Ghazālī’s Philosophical Theology, 111–
122 (esp. 111–116) and, more expansively, Griffel, “Al-Ghazālī at His Most Rationalist.” For a
translation of al-Ghazālī’s Qānūn al-taʾwīl, see Heer, “Al-Ghazali: The Canons of Taʾwil.”
9 See Abū Bakr b. al-ʿArabī, Qānūn al-taʾwīl, 646–647. See also Abū Bakr b. al-ʿArabī, al-ʿAwāṣim
min al-qawāṣim, 231.

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on the incoherence of the universal rule 135

teacher, al-Juwaynī,10 and those before him such as al-Bāqillānī.11 In sum, Ibn
Taymiyya explains, every school of thought has established for itself an analo-
gous rule: they take as true and objective knowledge what they deem to know
on the basis of reason, then they subordinate revelation to this alleged “knowl-
edge” and (re)interpret it accordingly.
Such reinterpretation of revelation as prescribed by the universal rule has
conventionally been carried out in one of two ways: through (1) figurative inter-
pretation, or taʾwīl, which is normally defined as assigning to a revealed text
a meaning other than its overt or obvious (ẓāhir) sense in accordance with a
conclusion reached through reason, or through (2) suspension of meaning, or
tafwīḍ, normally defined as declaring the obvious meaning of a text invalid but
refraining from providing any specific alternative interpretation, consigning
(“tafwīḍ”) its true meaning to God instead. Ibn Taymiyya subsumes both taʾwīl
and tafwīḍ under a larger dichotomy composed of what he refers to as “alter-
ation of meaning” (tabdīl), on the one hand, and “presumption of ignorance
and misguidance” (tajhīl and taḍlīl), on the other. Tabdīl, in turn, comprises
two sub-varieties: (a) “wahm and takhyīl” and (b) “taḥrīf and taʾwīl.”
The first method of alteration of meaning, that of wahm and takhyīl, presup-
poses revelation to consist mainly of images and metaphors that, by design,
do not correspond to the actual reality of metaphysical matters, such as the
nature of God, angels, and other unseen realities, or the eschatological realities
of heaven and hell. Rather, according to this view, revelation purposely induces
men to conceive of God as consisting of an enormous body, to believe in the
literal resurrection of bodies after death, physical rewards and punishments in
the hereafter, and so on, as it is in the moral interest (maṣlaḥa) of the common
people to be addressed in such a way. Indeed, it is only in this manner that they
can successfully be called to religion and that their ultimate otherworldly ben-
efit, which is consequent upon their acceptance of religion, can be assured.

10 See, for instance, al-Juwaynī, Irshād, 358–360.

11 See, for instance, al-Bāqillānī, Tamhīd, 259, where we read that “it is necessary to divert
speech from its apparent meaning if rational and scriptural indicants rule out its being
used in accordance with its primary sense” (innamā yajibu ṣarf al-kalām ʿan ẓāhirihi idhā
kānat dalāʾil al-ʿaql wa-l-samʿ tamnaʿu istiʿmālahu ʿalā mā warada bihi). Ibn Taymiyya gen-
erally thinks very highly of al-Bāqillānī, no doubt since he was close in time to al-Ashʿarī
and therefore still recognizably part of the early Ashʿarīs, or “mutaqaddimūn” (with al-
Juwaynī seen as the bridge to the later doctrine). The universal rule (al-qānūn al-kullī or
qānūn al-taʾwīl)—as later articulated by the likes of al-Juwaynī, al-Ghazālī, and al-Rāzī—
does not appear in an explicitly crystallized form in al-Bāqillānī, though the idea and
principle of taʾwīl are present (as in the citation from Tamhīd given here). See the com-
ments of Muḥammad Sulaymān (ed.) in Abū Bakr b. al-ʿArabī, Qānūn al-taʾwīl, 246.

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Among others, Ibn Taymiyya faults Ibn Sīnā for endorsing this kind of tabdīl
(alteration of meaning) in his Aḍḥawiyya.12
The second method of alteration of meaning, that of taḥrīf and taʾwīl, con-
cedes that those who were sent with revelation, such as the Prophet Muḥam-
mad, did not intend their respective audiences to believe anything other than
what is true in and of itself.13 However, what is true in and of itself is precisely
that which we come to know through the use of our reason, not necessarily
what is suggested by a straightforward reading of the revealed texts. We must
then proceed to make various figurative interpretations (taʾwīlāt) of the texts
in accordance with what we believe our reason has established as true. Such
interpretations, according to Ibn Taymiyya, typically involve interpreting words
in ways that fall outside conventional usage (ikhrāj al-lughāt ʿan ṭarīqatihā al-
maʿrūfa) and drawing on far-fetched figures of speech and unlikely metaphors
(gharāʾib al-majāzāt wa-l-istiʿārāt).14 If the method of wahm and takhyīl marks
the philosophers’ approach to revelation, then that of taḥrīf and taʾwīl repre-
sents the choice method of the (later) mutakallimūn, who engaged in making
taʾwīl of the texts on the basis of (putatively) rational considerations.
Whereas both methods of tabdīl, or alteration of meaning, presume that
the revealed texts possess a true meaning underneath their overt, or literal,
sense (a meaning known by the bearer of revelation, the Prophet, and accessi-
ble to those possessing the requisite rational capacities), the approach that Ibn
Taymiyya refers to as tajhīl and taḍīl posits a revelation that is partly incom-
prehensible.15 The advocates of this approach concede that certain verses bear
meanings other than those most naturally understood from them (tukhālifu
madlūlahā al-mafhūm minhā) but hold that these true meanings are known to
God alone. By consequence, the meanings of such verses are not even known
to the Prophet or, by extension, to any of the Companions or Successors, let
alone to later generations of Muslim scholars and common people. Those
adopting this approach thus practice tafwīḍ by consigning the true meaning
of such verses to God, believing this to have been the way of the pious fore-
bears (al-salaf al-ṣāliḥ). Others maintain that the Prophet himself knew the
true meanings of such verses but that he purposely refrained from clarify-
ing them to the community. Rather, he left it for later scholars to convey the
true meaning of these verses and to explicate them on the basis of rational

12 For Ibn Taymiyya’s full discussion of the method of wahm and takhyīl, see Darʾ, 1:8–11,
along with the corresponding passage in Ibn Sīnā, Aḍḥawiyya, 97–103.
13 For Ibn Taymiyya’s full discussion of the method of taḥrīf and taʾwīl, see Darʾ, 1:12–13.
14 Darʾ, 1:12, lines 4–5.
15 See Darʾ, 1:14–17 for Ibn Taymiyya’s full discussion of the method of tajhīl and taḍlīl.

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on the incoherence of the universal rule 137

arguments born of their efforts in the science of non-literal, or figurative, inter-

pretation (that is, taʾwīl). However, given that the Prophet was commissioned
to clarify the meaning of revelation to everyone so that they might be rightly
guided, his failure to do so would, for Ibn Taymiyya, constitute a positive act of
misguidance (hence, “taḍlīl”).

2 The End Result of Figurative Interpretation (taʾwīl)16

I have made frequent mention of the notion of a “conflict” between reason and
revelation, specifically with respect to what each allegedly says regarding the
nature of God. I have also indicated that the claim of conflict typically takes
the form of an assertion that revelation, taken in its obvious sense, seems to
affirm of God certain characteristics that reason has judged cannot be properly
ascribed to Him as doing so, reason is held to have determined, would result in
either (1) violating one or more premises of a rational argument meant to prove
the existence of God or the plausibility of authentic revelation or (2) likening
God to created things in a manner that would compromise His unique divinity,
a phenomenon known as tashbīh (“likening” or, more technically, “assimilation-
ism”). The universal rule dictates that any such conflict be decided in favor of
reason and that revelation be reinterpreted accordingly. But before taking up
the details of Ibn Taymiyya’s attempt to refute the universal rule, we must first
get a clearer picture of what exactly is at stake for him in the alleged conflict
between reason and revelation. What, in other words, did Ibn Taymiyya find so
odious about interpreting revelation through taʾwīl that he felt obliged to write
ten volumes in refutation of the universal rule? We can answer this question by
considering Ibn Taymiyya’s portrayal of the process and the inevitable result of
increasingly wanton forms of textual reinterpretation.
One of the main motivations for denying certain of God’s attributes—or the
divine attributes in general—is, as previously mentioned, to avoid tashbīh, or
likening God to created things.17 An argument typical of this kind is the one
made by the late fourth-/tenth-century Persian Ismāʿīlī (“Bāṭinī”) missionary
and Neoplatonic philosopher Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī (executed ca. 361/971)18

16 Based on Arguments 30 (Darʾ, 5:286–288) and 32 (5:320–338).

17 The term “anthropomorphism,” by which tashbīh is often translated, is too restrictive here
as it only implies likening God to human beings, whereas tashbīh, as we see in the current
example, refers to the likening of God to any created thing—to anything, in short, that is
other than God Himself.
18 Alternatively, “al-Sijzī.” He is reported to have been executed by the Saffarid governor of

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in his work al-Aqālīd al-malakūtiyya.19 This is the very type of argument by

which, in Ibn Taymiyya’s assessment, al-Sijistānī and other extreme “negation-
ists” (nufāh) are able to get the better of the various groups that fall along the
spectrum from the very slight negationism of the early Ashʿarīs, through the
Muʿtazila, and on to the more comprehensive and systematic negationism of
the philosophers. They are able to do this, he explains, because all such groups
have concurred with the full-fledged negationists, such as the Bāṭiniyya, on
the legitimacy, in principle, of making figurative interpretation (taʾwīl) of the
revealed texts by conceding to them the necessity of negating “what is called
tashbīh” of any kind whatsoever.20 In this manner, any group that affirms any
of the divine names or attributes, such as the Living (al-Ḥayy), the Omniscient
(al-ʿAlīm), the Omnipotent (al-Qadīr), and so on, is confuted by the claim that
all such predications equally and ultimately entail assimilation (tashbīh).
How is this so? The negationist, Ibn Taymiyya explains, contends that the
class of “living things” and the class of “existent things” each admit of a two-
fold logical division into that which is eternal (qadīm) and that which is origi-
nated in time (muḥdath). The fact that the basis of division (mawrid al-taqsīm)
is shared between the two categories entails a kind of composition (tarkīb),
which constitutes for the negationist a particularly pernicious form of assimi-
lation, namely, that of corporealism (tajsīm). It also entails assimilationism in
a more general sense since, according to the argument, if what is eternal (God)
and what is temporally originated (the universe) are both said to be “existent,”
then they are similar to each other (ishtabahā) insofar as they are both sub-
sumed under the nominatum of the term “existence” (ishtarakā fī musammā
al-wujūd)21—a fact that inexorably amounts to assimilationism (tashbīh). And
if it be further held that, say, one of two existing entities (namely, God) is also
characterized by the fact of being necessary by virtue of itself (wājib bi-nafsihi),
then this entity shares with the other, non-necessary entity in the nomina-
tum of the term “existence” (musammā al-wujūd) yet is simultaneously distinct
from it by virtue of its necessity. Furthermore, that aspect in which it resembles

Sijistan “at an uncertain date (but not long after 361/971).” See Walker, “Abū Yaʿqūb al-
Sijistānī,” EI3 (2007-1), 25.
19 Ibn Taymiyya’s presentation and critique of al-Sijistānī’s position is found in Argument 32
(specifically at Darʾ, 5:323, line 5 to 5:324, line 17).
20 “wāfaqūhu ʿalā nafy mā yusammā tashbīhan bi-wajh min al-wujūh.” Darʾ, 5:323, lines 7–8.
21 The phrase “mushārakat al-wujūd” is a standard formula for articulating Ibn Sīnā’s ontol-
ogy subsequent to al-Rāzī. See Wisnovsky, “Essence and Existence,” 40–48. On al-Rāzī’s
discussion of mushārakat al-wujūd in his al-Mulakhkhaṣ fī al-ḥikma, see also Eichner, “The
Chapter ‘On Existence and Non-existence’ of Ibn Kammūna’s al-Jadīd fī l-Ḥikma,” 158–163.

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on the incoherence of the universal rule 139

the non-necessary entity (namely, existence) is distinguished from that aspect

in which it differs from that entity (namely, its necessity). This leads to the con-
clusion that the necessary by virtue of itself (al-wājib bi-nafsihi) is “composed”
of both that in which it shares with the other entity (existence) and that which
makes it distinct (its unique necessity). But, we are told, reason has determined
that whatever is composite (murakkab) in any form is, of necessity, temporally
originated (muḥdath) rather than eternal (qadīm), contingent (mumkin) rather
than necessary (wājib). The deleterious result of God’s essence being “com-
posed” of two “parts,” existence and necessity, is said to stem from the fact that
such a “composed” entity would be dependent on (lit. “in need of”) each of its
parts (muftaqir ilā juzʾihi). Now, since a thing’s part is necessarily other than
the thing itself, the argument continues, it follows that the Necessarily Exis-
tent would be dependent on (muftaqir ilā) something other than itself. But that
which depends for its existence on something other than itself cannot simul-
taneously be held to be necessary by virtue of itself (wājib bi-nafsihi), enjoying
inherent necessity through nothing more than, or other than, its own self. It
follows, therefore, that if God is truly God by virtue of His self-necessary, begin-
ninglessly eternal existence, then He must be entirely and utterly simple (basīṭ)
and in no manner “composed,” even if such “composition” be merely a matter
of His possessing an entity that is qualified by attributes (and it bears repeat-
ing that one of the attributes negated in this argument is the very attribute of
existence itself).
In this manner, Ibn Taymiyya concludes, the extreme negationist is able
to drag whoever has conceded to him these invalid starting principles (uṣūl
fāsida) to an outright negation of the Necessarily Existent, whose factual exis-
tence (thubūt) is known by rational necessity to every reasonable individual.
The Bāṭinī loses in the end, however, for he has brought upon himself the rather
serious objection that if, in his desperate attempt to escape assimilationism,
he holds that God is, say, neither “existent” nor “living” (as created entities are
also said to be existent and living), then he has not escaped assimilationism
at all; rather, he has fallen into an even more egregious form of it, for now he
has likened God not to any contingent albeit existent thing but to that which
is positively non-existent. If he then attempts to skirt this dilemma by claiming
that God is neither existent nor non-existent, then he faces the unanswerable
objection that “you have established in logic that for any two identical propo-
sitions that differ only in affirmation and negation, it necessarily follows that if
one of them is true, then the other is false. Thus, if it is true that He exists, then
it is false that He does not exist [and vice versa].”22 In accordance with the law

22 Darʾ, 5:324, lines 2–5. In other words, if the proposition “P exists” is true, then its inverse,

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of the excluded middle, there is no escape from the fact that one or the other
of these propositions must be the case. Pushed hopelessly into a corner, the
Bāṭinī’s final recourse is to declare, “I do not affirm any of the foregoing propo-
sitions: I do not affirm the proposition ‘He is existent,’ nor the proposition ‘He is
not existent,’ nor the proposition ‘He is non-existent,’ nor the proposition ‘He is
not non-existent.’” This, Ibn Taymiyya concludes, is the ultimate position of the
atheists (malāḥida).23 By violating the most elementary laws of logic24—here
the law of the excluded middle—such a person has fallen into a more serious
quandary than the one from which he was attempting to escape. With regard to
assimilationism, moreover, he has sought to escape likening God to any existent
or non-existent thing by, in the end, likening Him not merely to what is possible
but non-existent (such as a unicorn) but, even worse, to what is logically incon-
ceivable and utterly devoid of even purely mental reality (such as a “four-sided
triangle”). Not only does that which is “neither existent nor non-existent” have
no ontological reality whatsoever, but it is not even logically conceivable and is
thus a worse thing to be likened to than something that is at least conceivable
even if predicated not to exist.
The foregoing, then, is an example of a denial of some or all of the attributes
affirmed of God in revelation on the basis of a rational argument proffered in
order to avoid assimilationism (tashbīh) at all costs, but this denial ultimately
falls apart because it violates the most elementary laws of logic, thus resulting
in the worst kind of assimilationism possible—namely, likening God to what
is both ontologically impossible and logically inconceivable. Such arguments,

“P does not exist,” must necessarily be false, and vice versa. Holding both to be true
simultaneously (that is, holding both p and −p) constitutes a violation of the law of non-
contradiction, while holding both to be false simultaneously (that is, holding neither p
nor −p) contradicts the law of the excluded middle.
23 More often than not, Ibn Taymiyya uses the term mulḥid (pl. malāhida)—which, in mod-
ern Arabic usage, normally denotes an atheist—in the sense of “heretic,” denoting some-
one who holds a position considered so fundamentally at odds with basic Islamic teach-
ings as to place him beyond the faith (or very nearly so), even if such a person does not
necessarily renounce belief in the existence of God. Given the context in which the term
is used here, however, the term “atheist,” in the literal sense of denying the very existence
of God, is precisely what Ibn Taymiyya seems to have in mind.
24 Here, “logic” is understood not as formal Greek syllogistics, which Ibn Taymiyya rejects,
but as constitutive of just that kind of natural, intuitive, straightforward—in other words,
“ṣarīḥ”—reason that, as we shall discover throughout this study, he champions forcefully.
The laws of non-contradiction and the excluded middle, in any case, also lie at the basis
of the Greek logic his opponents allegedly prize as the ultimate mechanism of disciplined
rational inference. This allows Ibn Taymiyya to best them, as it were, by reducing their
position to absurdity on the basis of the very principles they themselves claim to espouse.

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on the incoherence of the universal rule 141

according to Ibn Taymiyya, are typical of those put forth by the various groups
of negationists, all of whom (a) concede the theoretical possibility of a bona
fide contradiction between reason and (a plain-sense reading of) revelation;
(b) concur that, in the event of such a contradiction, reason must be given
priority over revelation; and (c) proceed to reinterpret the obvious sense of rev-
elation (that sense which conflicts with their allegedly unimpeachable rational
arguments and conclusions) through various degrees of metaphorical interpre-
tation. This process of metaphorical interpretation continues until, eventually,
the texts of revelation are eviscerated of any meaning whatsoever and denied
all possibility of conveying any factual propositional content about God, the
hereafter, or any other of a host of metaphysical, or “unseen” (ghāʾib), reali-
ties. This, in short, is what Ibn Taymiyya sees as the inescapable outcome of
a consistent and rigorous application of the universal rule—and the taʾwīl it
prescribes—as a means of accommodating revelation to the putative rational
objections raised against discrete elements of its overt content.

3 Specious Rationality and Its Discontents: Reason in a Cul-de-Sac25

If such negationism is the result of a consistent application of reason, then we

may ask, Is there any alternative other than to interpret metaphorically through
taʾwīl, or neutralize through tafwīḍ, the “problematic” passages of scripture if
we seek to safeguard the rational integrity—and, to a large extent, therefore,
the plausibility—of revelation? Ibn Taymiyya answers this question about the
possibility of an alternative in the affirmative and, in fact, dedicates the bulk
of the Darʾ taʿāruḍ’s ten volumes to demonstrating that all the alleged rational
objections brought to bear against a straightforward reading of revelation (par-
ticularly those verses pertaining to God and His attributes) fall apart on purely
rational grounds. What is called “reason” gradually breaks down as we move
farther away from the true, natural, innate, pure reason (ʿaql ṣarīḥ) endorsed
by revelation and exemplified by the Salaf.
Ibn Taymiyya begins his case with the observation that the principle accord-
ing to which a person should give precedence to the deliverances of his own
rational faculty over the obvious meaning of the revealed texts is not governed
by a universally applicable rule (qawl lā yanḍabiṭ). This is so because kalām the-
ologians and philosophers (who regularly dispute with one another over what
they call “rational knowledge”) often make opposite truth claims on the basis

25 Based on Argument 9 (Darʾ, 1:156–170).

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142 chapter 3

of identical appeals to rational necessity (ḍarūra) or to the results of discursive

inference. For instance, both those who negate (some of) the divine attributes
and the divine decree (Ibn Taymiyya singles out the Muʿtazila and those of the
Shīʿa who followed them), on the one hand, and those who affirm the divine
attributes and decree, on the other, claim to do so on the basis of allegedly con-
clusive rational arguments.
Moreover—and this is a cardinal tenet of Ibn Taymiyya’s doctrine on reason
and revelation—the farther a school of thought is from the Sunna,26 the greater
the internal disagreement among its adherents concerning what the dictates
of reason are.27 This point is essential. For Ibn Taymiyya, reason and revela-
tion coincide in a fundamental sense. As a result, the more a faction moves
away from what reason and revelation essentially overlap in affirming, the more
it experiences internal dissension, divergences of opinion, and incoherence
purely in terms of rational thought, in addition to finding itself at increasingly
greater odds with revelation. In other words, either one is fully in line with both
pure reason (ʿaql ṣarīḥ) and an essentially straightforward reading of authen-
ticated revelation (naql ṣaḥīḥ) or one drifts away both from reason and from
revelation simultaneously. In the latter case, one not only ends up contradict-
ing revelation (and seeking to explain it away through an increasingly liberal
use of the principle of taʾwīl) but also falls prey, at the same time, to increas-
ingly intractable rational contradictions, divergences, and improbabilities.
This principle can best be illustrated in the form of the “Taymiyyan pyra-
mid” encountered in the introduction and reproduced on the following page.
Truth is that point of unicity, clarity, and certainty ( yaqīn) at which the testi-
mony of sound reason and that of authentic revelation are fully concordant.
According to the pyramid, the Muʿtazila, for example, exhibit greater internal
discord than the Ashʿarīs and other affirmationists among the mutakallimūn,

26 Ibn Taymiyya’s use of the term “Sunna” is perhaps closest to the term “orthodoxy” (lit. “cor-
rect belief”). I retain Ibn Taymiyya’s original term, however, since it is a more transparent
rendering of precisely what “correct belief” is for him and how it is to be determined. For
Ibn Taymiyya, as for the mainstream Islamic tradition as a whole, correct belief (as we
explore in greater depth in the following chapter) is synonymous with the beliefs and prac-
tices of the first three generations (qurūn) of Muslims—that of the Companions (ṣaḥāba),
the Successors (tābiʿūn), and the Successors of the Successors (tābiʿū al-tābiʿīn)—and par-
ticularly the first generation comprising the Prophet’s own contemporaries. As we shall
discover, Ibn Taymiyya’s insistence that sound reason and authentic revelation always con-
cur and never contradict necessarily entails that the first generations were in possession
both of a uniquely normative—and hence quintessentially “orthodox”—understanding
of sacred scripture and of the soundest rational methods used for understanding and rea-
soning about divine matters.
27 See Darʾ, 1:157, lines 4–5.

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on the incoherence of the universal rule 143

figure 2 The Taymiyyan pyramid

as evidenced by the extent of disagreement between the Muʿtazilī school of

Basra and that of Baghdad—though adherents of the former, Ibn Taymiyya
tells us, are closer to the Sunna (that is, to “orthodoxy”) than the latter and
are therefore more internally united than their opponents from Baghdad. The
Shīʿa evince even greater internal discord than the Muʿtazila since they are
even farther removed from Sunna-based orthodoxy. As for the philosophers,
Ibn Taymiyya remarks, it is almost impossible to find anything upon which
they collectively agree. In point of fact, their internal divergences are greater
than those that separate the distinct religious communities of Muslims, Jews,
and Christians.28 Indeed, he argues, the philosophers’ differences with regard
to astronomy alone—which is a computational, mathematical subject that fig-
ures among the most objective and accurate of their sciences—are greater than
the differences among any of the various sects of Muslims. As for metaphysics,
the leading philosophers themselves concede their inability to reach any kind
of certitude regarding it whatsoever. Rather, their discourse on metaphysical
matters amounts to no more than weighing various probabilities and hazard-
ing judgements of likelihood and probability.29

28 Here, Ibn Taymiyya is apparently not referring to the internal divergences within each
confessional community; rather, he is saying that the differences that separate the three
communities are still fewer than those that divide the philosophers. In other words, Mus-
lims, Jews, and Christians, notwithstanding the (sometimes fundamental) differences that
separate them, are nevertheless in agreement with one another on a considerably greater
number of issues than are the philosophers—all of whom claim, despite their wild diver-
gences of opinion, to have arrived at their various doctrines through pure reason on the
basis of rationally demonstrable arguments and unimpeachable proofs.
29 Darʾ, 1:157, line 5 to 1:159, line 5. Ibn Taymiyya refers his reader to a number of sources
to support his point regarding the disarray of the philosophers; these include al-Ashʿarī’s
Maqālāt ghayr al-Islāmiyyīn and al-Bāqillānī’s Daqāʾiq al-ḥaqāʾiq, both of which, he ex-

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To underline the specious nature of much of kalām discourse, Ibn Taymiyya

appeals to several of the major rationalists (nuẓẓār) themselves who testify to
the futility of their life-long efforts to attain theological certainty through the
practice of dialectical theology. The following two lines by al-Shahrastānī, for
instance, emphasize how such thinkers often reached only a state of confusion
and perplexity:

I have made the rounds of the gatherings of the learned (maʿāhid)

And cast my eyes upon the haunts of erudition (maʿālim);
Yet never did I see but men perplexed, with their chins in their hands
Or gnashing their teeth in regret.30

Ibn Taymiyya also cites three lines of poetry to a similar effect from a work
of al-Rāzī, which Ibn Taymiyya refers to as Aqsām al-ladhdhāt.31 This passage
reads:32

Entanglement, the acme of minds’ pursuit,

Most human endeavour is but straying;
Our souls are estranged from our bodies,

plains, contain many times more in the way of disputes and differences among the
philosophers than what al-Shahrastānī (in his Milal) and others have mentioned. Al-
Bāqillānī’s Daqāʾiq, unfortunately, is lost. (See editor’s note at Darʾ, 1:6, n. 3.)
30 “la-qad ṭuftu fī tilka l-maʿāhidi kullihā, wa-sayyartu ṭarfī bayna tilka l-maʿālimi / fa-lam
ara illā wāḍiʿan kaffa ḥāʾirin, ʿalā dhaqanin aw qāriʿan sinna nādimi.” Darʾ, 1:159, lines 10–
11. Muḥammad Rashād Sālim (at Darʾ, 1:159, n. 2) also cites a two-line response to al-
Shahrastānī from the latter-day Yemeni scholar Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl b. al-Amīr al-Ṣanʿānī
(d. 1182/1768), who retorted, “laʿallaka ahmalta l-ṭawāfa bi-maʿhadi, l-Rasūli wa-man lāqāhu
min kulli ʿālimi / fa-mā ḥāra man yuhdā bi-hadyi Muḥammadin, wa-lasta tarāhu qāriʿan
sinna nādimi”:
Perhaps your rounds have missed the learned circle (maʿhad) of the Prophet,
And every man of knowledge (ʿālim) who encountered him;
For he who is led by the guidance of Muḥammad is never perplexed,
Nor ever found gnashing his teeth in regret.
31 See Darʾ, 1:159, lines 12–13. The more common name for this treatise is Dhamm al-ladhdhāt
(or Dhamm ladhdhāt al-dunyā), a critical edition of which can be found in Shihadeh, Tele-
ological Ethics, 212–265 (see pp. 205–209 for a discussion of the manuscript basis used for
the edition), preceded by an extensive analysis and commentary at pp. 155–203. Shihadeh
(p. 209) cites several alternative names by which the treatise is sometimes known and
attributes the title Aqsām al-ladhdhāt solely to Ibn Taymiyya and his student Ibn Qayyim
al-Jawziyya. Sālim remarks that Ibn Taymiyya cites these lines from al-Rāzī on numerous
occasions throughout his writings. See Darʾ, 1:160, n. 4.
32 As translated by Shihadeh (Teleological Ethics, 187).

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The yield of our world, but harms and bane;

All we’ve gained from a lifelong research,
Is but collecting quotations and sayings.33

Ibn Taymiyya continues citing from the same work, where al-Rāzī states, in a
manner reminiscent of al-Ghazālī in al-Munqidh min al-ḍalāl, that he has con-
templated the methods of both the philosophers and the mutakallimūn and
has found neither to be of any ultimate benefit. Rather, he has found that the
most reliable way is that of the Qurʾān, which affirms the divine attributes in
verses such as “The Most Merciful has settled upon the throne” (Q. Ṭā Hā 20:5)
and “To Him ascends the goodly word and He raises up righteous deeds” (Q.
Fāṭir 35:10). Yet it also contains verses that negate any notion of commensura-
bility or essential comparability between God and creation, such as “There is
none like unto Him” (Q. al-Shūrā 42:11), “They encompass Him not in knowl-
edge” (Q. Ṭā Hā 20:110), and “Have you knowledge of anything like unto Him?”
(Q. Maryam 19:65). Ibn Taymiyya concludes by quoting al-Rāzī’s statement that
“whoever experiences what I have experienced will come to know what I have
come to know.”34

33 “nihāyatu iqdāmi l-ʿuqūli ʿiqālu, wa-aktharu saʿyi l-ʿālamīna ḍalālu / wa-arwāḥunā fī waḥ-
shatin min jusūminā, wa-ḥāṣilu dunyānā adhan wa-wabālu / wa-lam nastafid min baḥthinā
ṭūla ʿumrinā, siwā an jamaʿnā fīhi qīla wa-qālū.” Darʾ, 1:160, lines 5–7. This passage as it
appears in al-Rāzī (see Shihadeh, Teleological Ethics, 262) contains two additional lines:
“wa-kam raʾaynā min rijālin wa-dawlatin, fa-bādū jamīʿan musriʿīna wa-zālū / wa-kam min
jibālin qad ʿalat shurufātihā, rijālun fa-zālū wa-l-jibālu jibālu.” Shihadeh (Teleological Ethics,
187) translates:
Many a man and dynasty we have seen,
That all quickly perished and expired;
Many a mountaintop was surmounted,
By men, who perished, yet the mountains remain.
34 Darʾ, 1:160, lines 12–13. For this quotation, see al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 21:501. In his Tārīkh al-
Islām, 43:218–219, al-Dhahabī quotes al-Rāzī as saying, “I found the best (aṣlaḥ) and most
correct (aṣwab) way to be that of the Qurʾān, which entails ‘tark al-rabb’ [?], then refraining
from going too deep (tark al-taʿammuq), then glorifying [God] greatly without delving into
details.” Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī (d. 771/1370) transmits a quotation of similar import in Ṭabaqāt
al-Shāfiʿiyya al-kubrā, 8:91. Tony Street, however, argues that when al-Rāzī’s waṣiyya is read
in its entirety, it is “hardly a repentance for having used kalām,” but rather a question of al-
Rāzī “simply recognizing his own scholarly limitations.” Street, “Concerning the Life and
Works,” 4–5. Street goes on to identify none other than Ibn Taymiyya’s (decontextualized)
paraphrase of al-Rāzī’s waṣiyya as giving rise to the claim, from the late eighth/fourteenth
century onward, that al-Rāzī had “repented” from kalām on his deathbed. Shihadeh, in
contrast to Street, affirms that al-Rāzī not only recognized his own scholarly limitations
but also found himself, towards the end of his life, deeply pessimistic about whether rea-
son could lead to certitude. See Shihadeh, Teleological Ethics, 155–203, esp. 181 ff.

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Ibn Taymiyya also cites nine lines of similar import from Ibn Abī al-Ḥadīd
(d. 656/1258), “one of the foremost Shīʿī thinkers with Muʿtazilī and philo-
sophical leanings.”35 He also points out that the illustrious latter-day Ashʿarī
theologian and legal scholar Sayf al-Dīn al-Āmidī (d. 631/1233), in most of
his books, suspends judgement on many of the central issues of theology,
declaring the arguments of various sects spurious but ultimately remaining
perplexed and unable to take a position himself.36 Similarly, the celebrated
seventh-/thirteenth-century logician and judge of Persian origin, Afḍal al-Dīn
al-Khūnajī (d. 646/1248), best known for his logical treatise Kashf al-asrār ʿan
ghawāmiḍ al-afkār, was reported to have said on his deathbed, “I die having
learned nothing but that the contingent is dependent on the impossible (al-
mumkin muftaqir ilā al-mumtaniʿ), yet dependence (iftiqār) is a negative prop-
erty; thus, I die having learned nothing at all.”37
Indeed, Ibn Taymiyya remarks, even al-Ghazālī, despite his tremendous
intelligence and pious devotion, his knowledge of discursive theology and phi-
losophy, and his traveling the Sufi path of asceticism and spiritual discipline,
nonetheless ended up suspending judgement on such matters and referred,
in the final analysis, to the method of private intuition and spiritual unveiling
(kashf ). Nevertheless, he reports, al-Ghazālī returned to the way of the peo-
ple of ḥadīth at the end of his life and, upon his death, was occupied with the
study of al-Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ collection of authentic prophetic reports.38 Another
result of the futility of the rational methods used in discursive theology, in Ibn
Taymiyya’s view, is that al-Ghazālī refuted the methods and arguments of the
philosophers but did not affirm any particular method of his own. Rather, as
al-Ghazālī admits in his famous work Tahāfut al-falāsifa,

I hold them to the [full and undesirable] consequences of their doctrine

(ulzimuhum) by arguing at times from the position of the Muʿtazila, at
times from the position of the Karrāmiyya, and at other times from the
position of those who suspend judgement (al-wāqifa), yet I refrain from
defending any particular position myself.39

35 “min fuḍalāʾ al-shīʿa al-muʿtazila al-mutafalsifa.” Darʾ, 1:161, line 1.

36 Darʾ, 1:162, lines 3–4.
37 Darʾ, 1:162, lines 4–7 (also cited in Ibn Taymiyya, Radd, 114). This incident is reported by
ʿAfīf al-Dīn al-Tilimsānī in Sharḥ Mawāqif al-Niffarī, 171. (See index of Arabic passages.)
38 Darʾ, 1:162, lines 8–11. We have heard this claim before (at p. 112, n. 140 above). See Griffel,
Al-Ghazālī’s Philosophical Theology, 56–57.
39 Darʾ, 1:163; al-Ghazālī, Tahāfut, 82–83. (See index of Arabic passages.) Ibn Taymiyya’s cri-
tique of al-Ghazālī here is perhaps unjustified, at least with respect to the Tahāfut, as al-
Ghazālī himself explicitly states that this work was meant to be purely deconstructive and
that he had no intention of establishing or defending in it a systematic doctrine of his own.

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Ibn Taymiyya also informs us that a group of leading mutakallimūn used to

speak of the “equivalence of proofs” (takāfuʾ al-adilla), claiming that the vari-
ous arguments advanced to prove a particular point cancelled one another out,
making it impossible to determine, on rational grounds, truth from falsehood
with respect to the given question. Ibn Taymiyya relates that it was reported to
him that a certain Ibn Wāṣil al-Ḥamawī (d. 697/1298), who had studied with the
foremost authority of his time in the fields of discursive theology and philoso-
phy, used to say, “I lie in bed at night, pull the covers over my eyes, and weigh the
arguments of this group and of that group until morning comes with neither
position having proved to be the stronger one.”40
Ibn Taymiyya contrasts the drastic agnostic pessimism expressed in the
numerous quotations above with what he describes as the calm assuredness of
those who know and who cling resolutely to the “original, pristine, orthodox,
scripturally revealed prophetic method.”41 Such men are thoroughly familiar
both with this method and with the doctrines that are said to be in contradic-
tion with revelation, such as the claim of the createdness of the Qurʾān or the
purely abstract or symbolic nature of the divine attributes. Therefore, they can
easily recognize the invalidity of such doctrines by virtue of the deliverances
of what Ibn Taymiyya calls “pure natural reason” (al-maʿqūl al-ṣarīḥ), which
is always found to be in full conformity with what is affirmed by authentic
revelation (al-manqūl al-ṣaḥīḥ). However, those who delve into the elements
of philosophy and discursive theology that are said to contradict revelation,
but without possessing full knowledge of the contents and the consequents
(lawāzim) of the revealed texts or of the doctrines alleged to be at odds with
them, are unable to arrive at any certain knowledge with confidence. Instead,
they end up in confusion and perplexity. The most preeminent of them are even
at a loss to furnish conclusive arguments for the existence of the Creator Him-
self, a topic of central concern to Ibn Taymiyya in the Darʾ and one that merits
a study of its own. Some, he says, end up perplexed, like al-Rāzī, while oth-
ers, like al-Āmidī, are forced to suspend judgement on the matter. Indeed, such
thinkers often mention numerous positions held by different schools, claiming
that truth lies in one or the other of them though they cannot necessarily deter-
mine which one. Yet all the various positions mentioned, Ibn Taymiyya declares
confidently, can, in fact, be shown to be false and without rational foundation
on the basis of pure natural reason (bi-l-maʿqūl al-ṣarīḥ).42

40 Darʾ, 1:165, lines 3–4.

41 “al-ṭarīqa al-nabawiyya al-sunniyya al-salafiyya al-Muḥammadiyya al-sharʿiyya.” Darʾ,
1:164, line 1.
42 See Darʾ, 1:164, passim.

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4 Ibn Taymiyya’s Project: Refuting the Universal Rule

If, as Ibn Taymiyya sees it, the rational processes advocated by the philosophers
and the mutakallimūn lead to such an abusive “interpretation” of scripture and,
at the same time, to a rational dead end in which reason itself breaks down,
then what is the solution? This is the question to which Ibn Taymiyya has dedi-
cated the entirety of the Darʾ taʿāruḍ and to which we turn our attention for the
remainder of this chapter. Ibn Taymiyya’s project in the Darʾ, at its most essen-
tial, consists in undermining and refuting the universal rule itself, along with
the premises and assumptions on which it is based, since he considers this rule
the primary cause of the intellectual and religious disarray he inherited at the
turn of the eighth/fourteenth century. For Ibn Taymiyya, the project of refuting
the universal rule is imperative not only to salvage the integrity of revelation
but to rescue reason as well since both were dangerously compromised, in his
view (and as illustrated by the Taymiyyan pyramid diagrammed above, p. 143),
primarily by a faulty and abusive use of the rational faculty.
To refute the universal rule, Ibn Taymiyya puts forth around thirty-eight dis-
crete “arguments” (wujūh, sing. wajh; lit. “aspects” or “viewpoints”)43—located
primarily in volumes 1 and 5 of the Darʾ—to demonstrate why the rule, as it
came to be formulated, is logically unsound and, therefore, theoretically base-
less. As is typical of Ibn Taymiyya’s writings, a number of these arguments
overlap with one another, some seemingly forming an expanded or summa-
rized version of others. Furthermore, the arguments as Ibn Taymiyya presents
them do not follow any specific logical order but rather are given one after the
other as so many discrete objections to the universal rule. For our purposes
here, instead of simply listing the arguments in the order in which Ibn Taymiyya
presents them, I have grouped them by theme and argument. In each of the
sections that follow, I paraphrase a coterie of arguments that share a unifying
theme or that seem intended by their author to accomplish a common objec-
tive. The first three sections below (sections 5, 6, and 7) cover specific criticisms
that, collectively, aim to shift the inherited paradigm of reason and revela-

43 Tariq Jaffer discusses al-Rāzī’s use of the wajh (translated as “viewpoint” or “argument”),
which, in addition to the masʾala (which he renders as “question” or “point of investiga-
tion”), lies at the center of his dialectical method—a method that the philologist, litté-
rateur, and biographer Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Khalīl b. Aybak al-Ṣafadī (d. 764/1363) characterized
as unprecedented. Jaffer explains that al-Rāzī used the wajh both to corroborate and to
critique philosophical arguments and as a vehicle to record and resolve the shubuhāt
(or shubah; sing. shubha)—that is, the objections or counter-arguments—raised against
a given position. See Jaffer, Rāzī, 27–29. On the “dialectical turn” that occurred in the
sixth/twelfth century, see Griffel, “Between al-Ghazālī and Abū l-Barakāt al-Baghdādī.”

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tion in three distinct ways. In the subsequent section (section 8), I present the
gist of a number of more generic arguments Ibn Taymiyya levels against the
overall coherence and logical validity of the universal rule, and in a final sec-
tion (section 9), I showcase some of the purely revelation-based arguments he
deploys against the universal rule, arguments that are meant to complement
and support the primary rational arguments against it that form the backbone
of the Darʾ taʿāruḍ. The presentation in sections 5 through 9 below, together
with sections 2 and 3 above, accounts comprehensively for these thirty-eight
arguments.44 The remaining six of the forty-four arguments (wujūh) listed in
the Darʾ,45 it turns out, are not “arguments” at all but extended disquisitions
(some of which run on for several hundred pages) concerning highly complex
substantive philosophical and theological problems. In chapters 4 through 6,
which deal with the more specific theological and philosophical issues Ibn
Taymiyya takes up throughout the Darʾ, I introduce and analyze select portions
of these six arguments, in addition to other relevant sections of the thirty-eight
arguments presented globally in the remainder of the current chapter.

5 On Reason Grounding Our Knowledge of Revelation46

Ibn Taymiyya endeavors to undermine the universal rule’s main premise,

namely, that giving precedence to revelation over reason would amount to a
rejection of the very thing that grounds revelation (namely, reason), which
would fatally undercut revelation itself. “Grounding” here implies that reason
is the basis on which our knowledge of the truth and validity of revelation
rests; that is, reason grounds revelation not ontologically but epistemologi-
cally.

44 Relevant sections of Arguments 17 and 18 are treated in subsequent chapters.

45 Namely, Arguments 17 (Darʾ, 1:208–279), 18 (1:280–320), 19 (1:320–406?), 20 (5:3–203), 43
(6:3–353 and 7:3–140?), and 44 (7:141–464?). [N.B.: It is not clear whether Argument 19
ends at Darʾ, 1:406 or continues on to volume 2, nor is it clear whether Argument 43 stops
at a point before Darʾ, 7:140. Similarly, it is unclear whether Argument 44 is meant to stop
at the end of volume 7 or continues on to volume 8. These three wujūh are among the
“arguments” that, as explained in the introduction (p. 14, n. 38 above), are not discrete
arguments against the universal rule at all but rather extended discussions and refuta-
tions covering numerous topics and authors. Since each of these discussions carries on for
sometimes hundreds of pages, it is difficult to determine exactly where the “argument” in
question is meant to end.]
46 The question of the manner in which revelation is grounded in reason is taken up primar-
ily in Arguments 3 (Darʾ, 1:87–133), 24 (5:214–216), and 29 (5:268–286).

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Ibn Taymiyya begins by challenging the philosophers’ and theologians’

notion of precisely what is implied by the claim that our knowledge of revela-
tion is grounded in reason. “We do not concede,” he tells us, “that if precedence
be given to revelation, this would amount to impugning the very thing that
grounds it, namely, reason.”47 This is so because if it is the knowledge we acquire
through reason that constitutes the epistemological grounding upon which our
knowledge of the truth and validity of revelation rests, it is nonetheless true
that not everything known (or thought to be known) through reason is part
of the rational knowledge that authenticates revelation. The various objects of
knowledge apprehended through reason are innumerable, and knowledge of
the validity and truth of revelation is contingent, at most, upon that by which
the veracity of the Prophet Muḥammad and his prophetic mission can be deter-
mined. Relevant (rational) knowledge here would be, for example, proof of the
existence of God, His vindication of the truthfulness of the Prophet through
miracles, and the like. Ibn Taymiyya explains that the principal error of those
who call for adherence to the universal rule is that they place all forms of ratio-
nally grounded knowledge in one category with respect to validity and inva-
lidity. In reality, however, our ability to form a positive rational judgement on
the validity of revelation does not require that all conclusions we may reach
through our reason be true. Rather, it requires the validity only of those spe-
cific rational conclusions that relate to the truth of revelation (as a whole), not
the validity of those rational conclusions that contradict or are incompatible
with (certain of the discrete assertions of) revelation.48
It is significant that Ibn Taymiyya explicitly classifies knowledge of the exis-
tence of God, the reality of prophecy, and the possibility of miracles as propo-
sitions subject to verification through the use of reason. This is tantamount
to an acknowledgement that revelation is, in fact, fundamentally grounded in
reason, for it is by reason alone that we can test and confirm the most basic
claims of revelation. This finding, recently corroborated by Frank Griffel,49
thus corrects Nicholas Heer’s contention that “as a Ḥanbalite traditionalist Ibn
Taymīyah held firmly to the position that scripture was in no way dependent
on rational arguments, either for the establishment of its truth or for an expla-
nation of its meaning.”50 Heer seems to have missed the fact that, according to

47 Darʾ, 1:87, lines 12–13.

48 “wa-maʿlūm anna al-samʿ innamā yastalzimu ṣiḥḥat baʿḍihā al-mulāzim lahu lā ṣiḥḥat al-
baʿḍ al-munāfī lahu.” Darʾ, 1:91, lines 4–5.
49 See Griffel, “Ibn Taymiyya and His Ashʿarite Opponents,” 36–37.
50 Heer, “Priority of Reason,” 191–192. In an earlier passage, Heer remarks, “Scripture, [Ibn
Taymiyya] claims, does not have to be proven true through the use of reason, as the theolo-

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Ibn Taymiyya, revelation does indeed rely on arguments—rational argu-

ments—to support its principal doctrines. In fact, Ibn Taymiyya makes much
of the fact that revelation includes and advances rational arguments, trying to
wrest the rational high ground from the philosophers and the mutakallimūn
and to reclaim it for revelation. It would be desirable to examine in detail the
rational arguments Ibn Taymiyya gives for the existence of God and the pos-
sibility of miracles (as against those of the theologians and philosophers) in
order to define precisely what he means when he claims that reason is capa-
ble of establishing such matters in a manner conclusive enough to lend the
fundamental claims of scripture a baseline of rational plausibility. However, an
in-depth analysis of such arguments lies beyond the scope of this study.
Ibn Taymiyya entertains a possible objection to his argument that the truth
of revelation depends not on the inerrancy of the rational faculty per se but
only on the accuracy of its specific judgements regarding the authenticity of
revelation. According to this objection, one need not prioritize all rational
conclusions over revelation but only those by which one has determined the
validity of revelation. To this Ibn Taymiyya responds that with respect to the
so-called ʿaqliyyāt (or rational conclusions) said to contradict revelation, he
will demonstrate that none of them, in fact, form part of that rational knowl-
edge upon which our knowledge of the authenticity of revelation is contin-
gent. Therefore, every product of reason (that is, every maʿqūl) that is said to
oppose revelation is, in fact, extrinsic to the set of (valid) rational judgements
that ground (our knowledge of) revelation. From this Ibn Taymiyya concludes
that challenging any of these particular judgements of reason does not, in fact,
undermine the foundations of revelation.
This conclusion should be little cause for controversy since, Ibn Taymiyya
tells us, most people agree that knowledge of the existence of God and the
veracity of the Prophet—in other words, that rational knowledge upon which
our knowledge of the authenticity of revelation does depend—is not contin-
gent upon those elements of rationally derived knowledge that some claim
to contradict revelation. For example, he tells us, those who have formulated
and established (al-wāḍiʿūna li) the universal rule, such as al-Ghazālī, al-Rāzī,
and others, concede that knowledge of the Prophet’s veracity is not contin-
gent upon any putative rational conclusions that are at odds with revelation.
In fact, a great number of them—including al-Ghazālī himself, in addition to
al-Shahrastānī, al-Rāghib al-Aṣfahānī (d. ca. 502/1108), and others—hold that

gians assert, because it itself contains all the arguments necessary to support its principal
doctrines” (Heer, 188).

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knowledge of the existence of God is both innate and necessary ( fiṭrī ḍarūrī).51
In addition, Ibn Taymiyya maintains, revelation itself is replete with rational
arguments for the existence and omnipotence of the Creator and His corrob-
oration (through miracles and signs) of the veracity of His Messenger. What
revelation affirms of these matters does not contradict, but rather accords with
( yuwāfiq), the rational foundations on the basis of which we come to know the
authenticity of revelation. Furthermore, according to Ibn Taymiyya, revelation
provides far more numerous—and far more evincive—rational arguments for
such matters than we find in the books of the rationalists themselves. Even the
majority of those who maintain that knowledge of the Creator comes about
only through rational inference (naẓar)—as opposed to arising instinctively
(bi-l-fiṭra)—concede, critically, that of the various inferential methods avail-
able for arriving at knowledge of the truthfulness of the Prophet, there indeed
exist some that do not contradict anything affirmed in the revealed texts. In
fact, al-Rāzī himself, Ibn Taymiyya informs us, is one of those who concur on
this point, as evidenced by a passage in Nihāyat al-ʿuqūl in which al-Rāzī con-
cludes:

It has been established that knowledge of the principles (uṣūl) upon the
validity of which [our knowledge of the authenticity of] the messenger-
ship of Muḥammad (may God bless him and grant him peace) depends is
patent and evident knowledge (ʿilm jalī ẓāhir); these principles have been
discussed at length only to remove the doubts raised by those who would
declare them false (al-mubṭilūn) … [Otherwise,] it is firmly established
that the foundations of Islam are patent and clear and, furthermore, that
the proofs establishing them are mentioned in a comprehensive manner
(ʿalā al-istiqṣāʾ) in the Book of God [and are] free of anything erroneously
imagined to oppose them.52

In establishing the foregoing point, Ibn Taymiyya reverses the universal rule
to show that the opposite principle—namely, prioritizing revelation over rea-
son in case of conflict—can be argued and defended in a precisely analo-
gous manner.53 This leads to the conclusion that if we cannot put reason
above revelation or revelation above reason, then the truth (which is intrin-
sically coherent) must lie in the fact that these two sources of knowledge can

51 See, e.g., al-Shahrastānī, Nihāyat al-iqdām, 118–119.

52 Darʾ, 1:96; al-Rāzī, Nihāyat al-ʿuqūl, 4:290–291. (See index of Arabic passages.)
53 For this point overall, see Argument 6 at Darʾ, 1:138–144.

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never truly be in contradiction—the precise point Ibn Taymiyya is concerned

to prove in the Darʾ taʿāruḍ. The opposite rule to the theologians’ qānūn al-taʾwīl
would state:

If reason and revelation contradict each other, then revelation must be

given priority over reason since reason has adjudged revelation veracious
in everything it contains, whereas revelation has not judged reason to be
correct in all its various conclusions, nor is our knowledge of the authen-
ticity of revelation contingent on (mawqūf ʿalā) all the separate conclu-
sions at which reason may have arrived.54

This position, says Ibn Taymiyya, is better advised (awjah) than the previous
position (that of granting blanket priority to reason over revelation) since rea-
son indicates the truth of revelation in a general and unconditional manner
(dalāla ʿāmma muṭlaqa). This is like the hypothetical case of Layman A (let us
call him Zayd) and Layman B (let us call him ʿAmr). Zayd knows a particular
man to be a reliable muftī and refers ʿAmr to him for legal advice. Now, if Zayd
then differs with the muftī’s judgement in a particular legal matter, it would
nevertheless be incumbent on ʿAmr to adhere to the muftī’s opinion over that of
Zayd, despite the fact that Zayd is the source of ʿAmr’s knowledge that the muftī
was reliable to begin with. This is so because Zayd, by producing convincing evi-
dence of the muftī’s competence, has established a general obligation to follow
the muftī’s judgement on particular legal matters over anyone else’s (including
that of Zayd himself). ʿAmr’s acceptance of Zayd’s evidence that the muftī is
competent does not obligate him to accept Zayd’s opinion in all matters, nor,
conversely, does Zayd’s error in legal judgement (represented by his disagree-
ment with the muftī on a particular point of law) entail that he was incorrect in
his assertion of the muftī’s professional competence. This is true because Zayd’s
ability to determine accurately that the muftī is indeed competent in issuing
legal responsa does not require that Zayd possess this same ability himself: one
may, after all, confidently recommend a doctor to a friend without oneself pos-
sessing any detailed knowledge of medicine. Furthermore, ʿAmr’s obligation to
accept the muftī’s judgement holds even though the muftī is fallible and it is
therefore conceivable for him to err in a given legal opinion. How much more
obvious and stringent, then, is the obligation for us to accept the truth of what
we have been informed of through the Prophet, who is known by reason (if he is
truly a prophet) to be infallible in matters of conveying revelation from God? It
follows from this, Ibn Taymiyya concludes, that the principle by which all agree
that ʿAmr is obliged to hold the opinion of the muftī in higher esteem than that

54 Darʾ, 1:138, lines 1–3. (See index of Arabic passages.)

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of Zayd on discrete legal points is even more applicable with regard to granting
priority to the words of an infallible prophet over the conclusions of one’s own
decidedly fallible reasoning.55
This is especially true, Ibn Taymiyya explains, given that the disparity
between a prophet, on the one hand, and the most intelligent and knowl-
edgeable of ordinary men, on the other, is manifestly greater than the dis-
parity between, for instance, a master craftsman and a beginning apprentice.
In fact, the difference involved is no less than categorical since, theoretically,
any ordinary man could, by dint of sustained personal effort, attain mastery
of a given field, whereas prophethood cannot be attained through personal
striving but rather is bestowed by God upon those whom He has elected
to the prophetic office.56 Similarly, we trust and follow the prescriptions of
physicians—regardless of the pain and inconvenience often occasioned by the
remedies they prescribe and in spite of our knowledge that they may err and
that their putative cures may even lead to our death—even when, at times, our
own intuitions concerning the restoration of our health may be at odds with
the doctor’s orders. So what, then, of cases in which our mere conjecture—
“rational” or otherwise—conflicts with what we know to have been revealed
on the tongue of a prophet, whom we know through rational arguments to be
infallible in his transmission of revelation to us from God?57
In addition to the foregoing rational arguments, Ibn Taymiyya also casts the
issue in terms of a hypothetical that renders the religious implications of the
matter immediately transparent. Imagine, he bids us, that someone had come
to the Prophet during his lifetime and said to him:

This Qurʾān, or Wisdom (al-ḥikma), that you have transmitted to us con-

tains many elements that contradict what we know through our reason,
yet we have only come to know your truthfulness through our reason as
well. Thus, if we accept everything of which you inform us, despite the fact
that reason contradicts some of it, then that would undermine the very
thing—namely, reason—by which we have come to affirm your veracity.

55 Darʾ, 1:138, line 4 to 1:139, line 5.

56 See Darʾ, 1:140, line 11 to 1:141, line 3. Ibn Taymiyya is citing here the orthodox theolog-
ical position regarding the purely God-given, non-acquired (ghayr muktasab) nature of
the prophetic office, as opposed to the philosophers’ interpretation of prophethood as an
essentially natural faculty analogous to the bursts of inspiration from beyond that may
result from the personal spiritual efforts of a practicing sage or mystic. For more on vari-
ous conceptions of prophethood in Islam, see Rahman, Prophecy in Islam.
57 Darʾ, 1:141, lines 10–16.

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We therefore hold to be true the positions derived from our reason that
stand in contradiction with the plain meaning of what you have brought,
from which [meaning] we turn away, gaining therefrom neither guidance
nor knowledge.58

We know as a necessary fact of the Islamic religion (naʿlamu bi-l-iḍṭirār min dīn
al-Islām),59 says Ibn Taymiyya, that the Prophet would not have accepted this
stance as constituting authentic belief in revelation. Indeed, if this were admis-
sible, then it would be possible for anyone to object to any particular element
of revelation. This is so because people differ in their intellectual capacities,
there are numerous potential objections that could be raised against any given
proposition, and Satan continually insinuates doubt and misgivings into men’s
hearts.
In summary, Ibn Taymiyya endeavors, through the set of arguments pre-
sented above, to undermine the universal rule’s main premise, namely, that
if precedence be given to revelation over reason, then this would amount to
a rejection of the very thing that grounds revelation (namely, reason) and
thereby fatally undercut revelation itself. Ibn Taymiyya challenges the philoso-
phers’ and theologians’ notion of what it means for our knowledge of revelation
to be grounded in reason by arguing, in essence, that what we call “reason”
does not, as many imagine, constitute one undifferentiated category such that
impugning any of the various conclusions reason might reach would amount to
undermining all of them. Rather, he contends, there are innumerable discrete
conclusions we might reach through the rational faculty, and our knowledge
of the validity of revelation is contingent, at most, only upon those discrete
elements of rational judgement through which, for instance, we can ascertain
the veracity of the Prophet Muḥammad and the authenticity of his prophetic
mission. If this be the case, then imprecating other conclusions of reason—
such as those that contradict certain discrete assertions of revelation—would
not, as most theologians and philosophers held, automatically compromise
the rational faculty itself and each one of its sundry conclusions, not least the
rational basis by virtue of which we may ascertain the authenticity of revela-
tion.

58 Darʾ, 5:214, line 16 to 5:215, line 3. (See index of Arabic passages.)

59 Darʾ, 5:214, line 16. For the point made in this paragraph in general, see Darʾ, 5:214–216,
which comprises the entirety of Argument 24.

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6 Knowledge vs. Conjecture: Conclusiveness Is What Counts60

Ibn Taymiyya’s refutation of the universal rule consists in showing the false-
ness of its premises. The rule, as enumerated in section 1 above, is based on the
following three premises:

1. There exists an actual contradiction between reason and revelation.

2. The possible options for dealing with the alleged contradiction are lim-
ited to the following four: (a) accepting both contradictory statements
simultaneously, (b) rejecting both simultaneously, (c) prioritizing reve-
lation over reason, or (d) prioritizing reason over revelation.
3. The first three alternatives in premise 2 are invalid. Therefore …
Conclusion: It is necessary to accept the fourth alternative, namely, giving pri-
ority to reason over revelation and reinterpreting revelation accordingly.

Ibn Taymiyya rejects all three premises as invalid. His attempt to prove the fal-
sity of premise 1 is the mission of the entire Darʾ taʿāruḍ and is treated in greater
depth in the course of subsequent chapters. Here, however, I discuss his con-
centration on undermining premise 2, which he does by refusing to concede
the four-fold division of the premise. Instead, he holds, a given rational indi-
cant may take priority in some instances, while the scriptural indicant may
take precedence in others. How is this so? Ibn Taymiyya explains: If two indi-
cants contradict each other—irrespective of whether they are both scriptural,
both rational, or one of them scriptural and the other rational—then it must be
the case that they are both conclusive (qaṭʿī), that they are both inconclusive
(ẓannī), or that one is conclusive and the other inconclusive.
If both are conclusive, then it is theoretically impossible that they should
contradict each other, regardless of whether they are both rational, both scrip-
tural, or one rational and one scriptural. Therefore, it follows that if two con-
clusive indicants were contradictory or if one of them contradicted what is
indicated or established by the other, then this would entail a violation of the
law of non-contradiction, which is impossible. Rather, for any two indicants
that are thought to be conclusive and that also seem to contradict each other,
it must be the case either that one of them is not, in fact, conclusive or that
the respective propositions they establish do not, upon closer scrutiny, stand
in actual contradiction.

60 Ibn Taymiyya’s development and discussion of the dichotomy “knowledge vs. conjecture”
is located primarily in Arguments 1 (Darʾ, 1:86–87), 2 (1:87), 4 (1:134–137), and 5 (1:137). (For
the material presented here [p. 156], however, see Darʾ, 1:78, line 10 to 1:79, line 11.)

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figure 3 Both rational and scriptural proofs admit of being conclu-

sive or inconclusive

Furthermore, Ibn Taymiyya argues, if one of the indicants is conclusive to the

exclusion of the other, then all rational persons (ʿuqalāʾ) agree by consensus
that priority must be given to the conclusive indicant irrespective of whether
it comes from revelation or from reason, since probability can never override
certainty. If both indicants are inconclusive (ẓannī), then one must investi-
gate which of them is of greater probative value (rājiḥ), then prioritize the
stronger one over the weaker one by virtue of its superior evidentiary value—
irrespective, once again, of its epistemological origin (whether scriptural or
rational).61 Consequently, it is false to claim that one must give absolute prece-
dence either to the scriptural or to the rational indicant on pain of violating the
law of non-contradiction or the law of the excluded middle, for indeed there
exists an alternative to the four options mentioned in premise 2 above: namely,
that precedence be given to whichever of the two indicants is conclusive or, bar-
ring conclusiveness, to whichever enjoys greater probative weight, regardless of
whether it is scriptural or rational. This last procedure, Ibn Taymiyya asserts, is
the correct one.62
The only possible objection to the foregoing rule, Ibn Taymiyya explains,
would be to maintain that a scriptural indicant can never be conclusive. Al-
Rāzī, it turns out, held just such a position. According to him, it is impossible

61 Darʾ, 1:79, lines 12–15.

62 See Darʾ, 1:87, lines 5–11 (comprising all of Argument 2) for a statement of this point.

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158 chapter 3

table 4 Predominance (tarjīḥ) chart for scriptural and rational proofs on the basis of con-
clusiveness and inconclusiveness

Rational proof
(dalīl ʿaqlī)

Conclusive Inconclusive
(qaṭʿī) (ẓannī)

Both revelation and Conclusive scriptural

Conclusive reason attest proof takes precedence
(qaṭʿī) conclusively to one and over inconclusive
the same fact. rational proof.
Scriptural proof
(dalīl naqlī) The stronger (rājiḥ) of
Conclusive rational
the two inconclusive
Inconclusive proof takes precedence
proofs takes
(ẓannī) over inconclusive
precedence over the
scriptural proof.
weaker (marjūḥ).

to establish the foundations of theology (uṣūl al-dīn) in a conclusive (qaṭʿī)

manner through textual evidence since reasoning (istidlāl) from scripture is
dependent on inconclusive (ẓannī) factors. Such “inconclusive” factors include,
for al-Rāzī, the transmission of the lexicon, syntax, and morphology of the lan-
guage; verification of the absence of figurative usage (majāz), ellipsis (iḍmār),
homonymy or polysemy (ishtirāk), particularization of a general term (takhṣīṣ),
or transposition of meaning (naql); and, beyond such linguistic and hermeneu-
tic concerns, establishing that there exists no valid rational objection (muʿāriḍ
ʿaqlī) to the obvious sense of the texts (ẓāhir al-naṣṣ).63 Debilitatingly, how-
ever, al-Rāzī holds that it is impossible to know that there is no rational objec-
tion, since it is always conceivable that there might exist an intrinsically ( fī
nafs al-amr) valid rational objection to what the Qurʾān states that simply has
not occurred to the person encountering a given Qurʾānic verse or ḥadīth.64
Ibn Taymiyya informs us that in a work [entitled Sharḥ awwal al-Muḥaṣṣal]

63 See, e.g., al-Rāzī, Asās, 234–235; also al-Rāzī, Tafsīr, 24:181 (discussed in El-Tobgui, “Herme-
neutics of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī,” 139–140).
64 See, e.g., al-Rāzī, Maṭālib, 116–117; al-Rāzī, Muḥaṣṣal, 51; al-Rāzī, Arbaʿīn, 2:251–254; and al-
Rāzī, Maʿālim, 25.

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composed some thirty years before the Darʾ taʿāruḍ, he had responded to
al-Rāzī’s allegations that arguments deduced from revelation could never be
definitive and had established, to the contrary, that such arguments could
indeed yield certitude.65 Be that as it may, al-Rāzī’s argument regarding the
inconclusiveness of scriptural indicants—quite apart from its invalidity—is
of no use, for even if al-Rāzī were right, the indicant given priority (namely,
the rational one) would still be privileged on account of its being conclu-
sive, not on account of its being rational or on account of its “grounding”
revelation. For those who adhere to the universal rule, by contrast, the pri-
mary basis on which they give priority to the rational indicant is its alleged
grounding of revelation, a position that does not stand up to scrutiny.66 Any
rational person would agree, moreover, that if a conclusive and an incon-
clusive indicant contradict, then the conclusive one must be given prefer-
ence. But demonstrating that a scriptural indicant can never be conclusive,
Ibn Taymiyya avers, would be to accomplish the impossible (dūnahu kharṭ al-
qatād).67
Moreover, Ibn Taymiyya maintains, everyone agrees that certain points of
creed—for example, that various acts of worship are obligatory, that various
forms of moral license and wrongdoing are prohibited, that the Creator is one,
that resurrection after death is real, and so forth—constitute fundamentals
that are known of necessity to be part and parcel of the religion (maʿlūm bi-
l-iḍṭirār min al-dīn). Now, if someone were to claim that a definitive rational
proof contradicting one of these matters had been established and that it was
therefore necessary to give precedence to this proof on the basis that reason
grounds revelation, such a prioritizing of reason would, by universal agree-
ment, be tantamount to belying the Prophet himself and the authenticity of
the revelation he transmitted, which amounts to open disbelief. Ibn Taymiyya
explains that, in response to this objection, such groups typically appeal to the
simple impossibility that there could be a valid rational proof that contradicts
matters known to belong to the established fundamentals of the faith. But by
this, he reasons further, it becomes clear that it is impossible for anything that
has been established by a conclusive (scriptural) proof to be contradicted by
a conclusive (rational) proof. Yet many fall into this error: they make assump-
tions that entail certain consequences and then proceed to affirm these conse-

65 See Darʾ, 1:22, lines 3–6. The work in question—cited in, among others, Ibn Rushayyiq,
Asmāʾ muʾallafāt, 19 and Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, ʿUqūd, 37—is, unfortunately, no longer extant.
(See editor’s comments at Darʾ, 1:22, n. 4.)
66 Darʾ, 1:80, lines 1–5.
67 Darʾ, 1:80, lines 6–7.

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quences, without realizing that the assumption itself is invalid and that an
invalid assumption may indeed entail invalid consequences.68
Ibn Taymiyya also drives two related arguments on the basis of an issue that
is common in legal discussions of the texts of revelation (Qurʾān and ḥadīth):
namely, the issue of the authenticity, reliability, or integrity (thubūt) of the
texts, on the one hand, and that of their meaning or signification (dalāla), on
the other.69 According to the first of these two arguments,70 either a person
possesses knowledge (based on reason) that the Prophet’s mission was authen-
tic and, consequently, that what was revealed to him is factual and true in and of
itself (thubūt mā akhbara bihi fī nafs al-amr), or he does not. If he does not pos-
sess knowledge (that is, certain knowledge) that revelation is authentic, then
there can be no bona fide conflict between anything revelation asserts and any
rational conclusion that he knows (i.e., with certainty) to be true. In such a
scenario, the rational conclusion known with certainty would take precedence
over anything asserted in a source (in this case, revelation) that is not known
with certainty to be trustworthy and authentic. And if the rational proposition
in question is also not known (that is, known with certainty to be true), then
there cannot, a fortiori, be a conflict in this case either, since it is impossible for
two unknowns to contradict each other. In short, if the mind knows (a) that rev-
elation is indubitably authentic and (b) that revelation has affirmed (akhbara
bi) a proposition p, then knowledge of the factual truth (thubūt) of p is entailed
necessarily by the combination of (a) and (b), just as other known propositions
are entailed necessarily by a combination of their premises if these latter be
true.71
Ibn Taymiyya goes on to spell out the implications of someone saying, “Do
not believe in the factual truth of what revelation has informed you of since
your believing so is incompatible with ( yunāfī) that by which you have come
to know of its veracity [namely, reason].”72 In fact, Ibn Taymiyya remarks,
what is definitively incompatible with reason (i.e., that reason which has led
to knowledge of the truth of revelation) is the notion that one should, while
accepting revelation as true and authentic, feel free to belie any of the specific
propositions contained therein. This would eventually undermine our confi-
dence in anything revelation may assert, since if it is possible for revelation

68 “al-taqdīr al-mumtaniʿ qad yalzamuhu lawāzim mumtaniʿa.” Darʾ, 1:81, lines 1–2. For this
argument overall, see Darʾ, 1:80, line 6 to 1:81, line 3.
69 See figure 3, p. 157 above.
70 Argument 4 (Darʾ, 1:134–137).
71 See Darʾ, 1:134, lines 1–9.
72 Darʾ, 1:134, lines 10–11. For the larger argument, see Darʾ, 1:134, line 10 to 1:135, line 8.

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to err in a given instance, then it is surely possible for it to err in other, innu-
merable instances as well.73 The result of all this is that people who approach
the texts in such a manner do not gain any knowledge from them about the
attributes of God known through revelation (ṣifāt khabariyya) or about the
day of judgement. This is so because they believe that such statements con-
tain some elements that ought to be accepted at face value and other elements
whose obvious meanings are inapplicable and, consequently, subject to figura-
tive interpretation through taʾwīl. Yet they have no rule or principle from reve-
lation itself by which to make the crucial distinction between those elements
that are meant literally and those that are intended in a figurative sense.74
If, indeed, it is inconceivable that what a prophet asserts by way of rev-
elation should contravene reason, Ibn Taymiyya continues, then this would
amount to an admission that it is, in fact, impossible for scriptural and ratio-
nal indicants to contradict each other. Someone might then argue that what
is really meant is that it is impossible for there to be a contradiction between
reason and something that is not a scriptural indicant at all (though it is erro-
neously thought to be) or between reason and a scriptural indicant that is
inconclusive (ẓannī), either on the level of its chain of transmission (isnād)
(in the event, say, of a mendacious or inaccurate narrator in the chain) or
on the level of its content (matn) (in the event, say, of an equivocal term in
the text). In this case, the response would be that if the term “scriptural indi-
cant” is applied to what does not actually constitute a (reliable) proof in and
of itself (mā laysa bi-dalīl fī nafs al-amr), then it could likewise be the case that
some of what have been called “rational indicants” but that contradict reve-
lation could, mutatis mutandis, also turn out, upon closer inspection, not to
constitute a proof in and of itself ( fī nafs al-amr). In this case, if such proofs,
touted as apodictic and rationally conclusive75 though they be merely conjec-
tural, were to contradict a scriptural indicant whose premises are both valid
and well known, then it would be incumbent to give priority to the scriptural

73 See Darʾ, 1:135, lines 9–13.

74 It is important to note here that many thinkers did, in fact, propose certain texts of rev-
elation as containing directions to carry out precisely this type of rational weighing of
reality and the figurative interpretation (taʾwīl) of revelation accordingly. Perhaps this
is most obviously the case with Ibn Rushd, but it is also assumed, perhaps to a lesser
degree, by a number of theologians as well. (We recall, for instance, al-Ghazālī’s discus-
sion, in al-Qisṭās al-mustaqīm, of the mīzān mentioned in the Qurʾān as being equiva-
lent to the various figures of Aristotelian syllogistic inference.) See al-Ghazālī, al-Qisṭās
al-mustaqīm, 41–46. Al-Ghazālī’s Qisṭās has been translated into French by Chelhot, “«al-
Qisṭās al-Mustaqīm»,” and into English, as The Just Balance (al-Qisṭās al-Mustaqīm), by
D.P. Brewster.
75 Roughly paraphrasing “barāhīn ʿaqliyya” and “qawāṭiʿ ʿaqliyya.” Darʾ, 1:136, line 15.

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indicant over the rational one—by virtue, once again, of its superior epistemic
warrant, not on account of its origin in the category of statements collectively
referred to as “revelation.”
It is thus manifest, Ibn Taymiyya concludes, that whatever explanation is
given for one category of indicants—scriptural or rational—enjoying auto-
matic preponderance, it is possible to reverse this explanation and apply it in an
equivalent manner to the other category as well. It is therefore invalid to accord
automatic priority to an entire category of indicant over another. Rather, one
must investigate the two specific pieces of evidence found to be in contradic-
tion on a particular point and give precedence to whichever one is conclusive
(qaṭʿī) or, if neither is fully conclusive, then to whichever one is of greater pro-
bative value (rājiḥ), irrespective of whether the indicant thus preferred be the
scriptural or the rational one. In this manner, the fallacious principle that has
served as a means for various forms of heterodoxy is vitiated.76
The previous argument revolved around the question whether revelation
is known to be authentic, that is, a question of textual integrity, or thubūt.
Ibn Taymiyya now completes this series of arguments77 by starting from the
assumption that the authenticity (thubūt) of revelation is known, then con-
sidering the question of signification, or dalāla—that is, whether revelation
can be established to have definitively addressed the issue in which a con-
flict with reason is alleged. Assuming revelation to be authentic, we are faced
with one of three scenarios: (1) revelation is known to affirm the issue under
debate, (2) it is merely conjectured to affirm it, or (3) it is neither known
nor conjectured to affirm the issue at hand. Now, if it is known that revela-
tion has affirmed the matter, then it is impossible for there to be anything
in reason that would contradict or be incompatible with ( yunāfī) what is
known to be the case (whether known through revelation or by any other
means), for if something is known either to be true or not to be true, either
to exist (thubūt) or not to exist (intifāʾ), then it is not possible that a proof
be established that would contradict this. If, on the other hand, something
is only conjectured to be the case on the basis of revelation, then it is pos-
sible for something in reason to contradict it, in which case it is incumbent,
once again, to give priority to knowledge over conjecture—not on account of
its being rational rather than scriptural but on account of its being knowl-
edge, just as it would be incumbent to give priority to what is known by
revelation over what is merely conjectured to be the case by reason. If the
rational indicant itself is merely conjectural, falling short of conclusive cer-
tainty, and if the two indicants are of equivalent probative value, then the

76 See Darʾ, 1:136, line 5 to 1:137, line 8 for this and the preceding paragraph.
77 See Argument 5 (Darʾ, 1:137).

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matter remains irresolvable; otherwise, priority is given to the one that enjoys
the greater epistemic warrant. And if revelation contains nothing that can be
considered knowledge, or even mere conjecture, on the point in question, then
there is nothing in it for reason to contradict with in the first place. This proves
once again, for Ibn Taymiyya, that according automatic priority to reason (or
even to revelation) in all circumstances is both misguided and rationally inde-
fensible.78
In conclusion, then, Ibn Taymiyya seeks to replace the binary “reason vs. rev-
elation” with the alternative binary “certainty vs. probability.” He does so by
arguing that individual arguments based either on what is considered reason
or on what is considered authentic scripture run the entire scale of epistemic
value from “certain” to “fallacious” and that, therefore, precedence must be
accorded, in each case, to whichever argument enjoys greater probative weight,
regardless from which of the two sources of knowledge, reason or revelation, it
comes to us. Once Ibn Taymiyya has, in essence, equated the two sources—
reason and revelation—epistemically while simultaneously subjecting each
discrete element of both categories to a common test of probative value, he
completes this second maneuver against the universal rule by declaring that
the issue is not, as everyone seems to have assumed, one of reason versus rev-
elation but rather one of knowledge versus conjecture, certainty versus proba-
bility, more probative versus less probative indicators of truth. Taken together,
Arguments 1 through 5—addressing what it means for reason to “ground” reve-
lation and establishing the crucial binary “certainty vs. probability” over against
the inherited dichotomy “reason vs. revelation”—aim to undermine the main
premises upon which the universal rule is predicated.

7 Not “Scriptural vs. Rational” but “Scripturally Validated

vs. Innovated”

Ibn Taymiyya’s insistence that the relevant distinction to be made is between

knowledge and conjecture rather than between reason (as a category) and rev-
elation (as a category) has immediate implications for the epistemological sta-
tus, as well as the religious-moral evaluation, of various arguments and proofs.
In Argument 15,79 Ibn Taymiyya elaborates a fundamental distinction through

78 Darʾ, 1:137, lines 9–18 (comprising all of Argument 5).

79 See Darʾ, 1:198–200 for Argument 15 and the full presentation of Ibn Taymiyya’s novel
binary “sharʿī vs. bidʿī” in place of the more usual dichotomy “sharʿī vs. ʿaqlī” (or “scrip-
tural vs. rational”).

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164 chapter 3

figure 4 Mainstream classification of proofs as

scriptural (sharʿī) vs. rational (ʿaqlī)

which he seeks to shift the entire frame of reference in the debate concerning
reason and revelation. He proposes that the real issue is not a question of “scrip-
tural” versus “rational” (that is, sharʿī as opposed to ʿaqlī) proofs and methods,
as scholars had framed the debate up until his time. Rather, he tells us, the
fundamental distinction to be made is between “scripturally validated” versus
“innovated” (that is, sharʿī as opposed to bidʿī) proofs and methods. Scripturally
validated proofs, in turn, comprise both revealed (samʿī) and rational (ʿaqlī)
indicants. For Ibn Taymiyya, the sharʿī–bidʿī binary is based on the premise that
an indicant’s classification as “scriptural” or “rational” is not, in and of itself,
a property that entails praise or blame, validity or invalidity. Rather, this only
reveals the epistemological avenue—reason or revelation—through which an
alleged piece of knowledge has come to us (although when revelation is the
source, reason must also be used in order to understand it).80
Ibn Taymiyya’s reclassification of indicants and proofs results in a new
binary that is no less than fundamental to his thought and methodology. Ac-
cording to this new classification, the converse of a scriptural (sharʿī) proof
is not a rational one but an innovated (bidʿī) one, for it is innovation (bidʿa)
rather than reason that stands opposite revealed religion (shirʿa).81 The word
sharʿī in Ibn Taymiyya’s new schema is thus no longer simply a synonym of
samʿī (referring, in the religious context, to that which we know only through
revelation) but comes to mean something like “scripturally validated” or “scrip-
turally confirmed,” in other words, valid and true and vouched for as such
by revelation. Being scripturally validated (sharʿī) is a positive attribute of an
indicant or proof, whereas being innovated (bidʿī)—not in the sense merely
of being new but of lacking scriptural validation—is a negative qualification,

80 Ibn Taymiyya seems to imply that this is necessary in order to determine that something
is a part of authentic revelation and, having done so, properly to understand the import
thereof. In other words, reason is employed in the determination both of the reliability
and authenticity (thubūt) of the revealed texts and of their signification (dalāla) or mean-
ing, as we have discussed in the preceding section.
81 “idh al-bidʿa tuqābilu al-shirʿa.” Darʾ, 1:198, line 6.

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on the incoherence of the universal rule 165

figure 5 Ibn Taymiyya’s classification of proofs as scripturally validated (sharʿī) vs. inno-
vated (bidʿī)

for whatever stands opposed to authentic scriptural religion (sharīʿa) is, of

necessity, invalid and false. A scripturally validated indicant, in turn, may con-
sist of either a revealed text or a conclusion reached through reason, for a
proof’s being scripturally validated can mean one of two things: either (1) that
revelation has positively affirmed and explicitly indicated it (kawn al-sharʿ ath-
batahu wa-dalla ʿalayhi) or (2) that revelation has permitted it and declared it
valid and licit (kawn al-sharʿ abāḥahu wa-adhina fīhi).82 Scriptural validation,
in other words, can come about either by way of affirmation from the sharʿ
(revelation) or by way of revelation’s approbation and approval.
If one uses “scriptural” (sharʿī) according to the first meaning—namely, that
which scripture has positively affirmed and indicated—then it is possible that
the indicant or proof in question is also knowable through the use of reason,
with the role of scripture being to point it out (dalla ʿalayhi) and call attention
to it (nabbaha ʿalayhi). In this case, the indicant is classified as a “scripturally
validated rational” (sharʿī-ʿaqlī) indicant. As examples of scripturally validated
rational indicants, Ibn Taymiyya cites the various parables (amthāl) mentioned
in the Qurʾān, arguments for the oneness of God and the authenticity of the
Prophet Muḥammad, the affirmation of God’s attributes, and similar matters.
All these are proofs whose truth is known by reason, as they consist of rational
demonstrations and syllogisms (barāhīn wa-maqāyīs ʿaqliyya), yet they are also

82 See Darʾ, 1:198, lines 3–9.

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classified as scripturally validated by virtue of being mentioned and explicitly

affirmed in the Qurʾān. If, by contrast, a given indicant is known exclusively
by way of the revealed texts, then it is classified as a “scripturally validated
revealed” (sharʿī-samʿī) indicant. Such indicants would include, for instance,
proof texts adduced from the Qurʾān or ḥadīth to establish the reality of events
like the day of judgement or other such matters that we can know about only
through revelation. In sum, all valid indicants may be categorized as either
scripturally validated and rational (sharʿī-ʿaqlī) or scripturally validated and
revealed (sharʿī-samʿī).
Many kalām theologians, Ibn Taymiyya insists, have made the error of pre-
suming that the category of scriptural indicants consists exclusively of this
second type (namely, sharʿī-samʿī indicants that can be known only through
the texts of revelation and not through reason) and that revelation functions
as an indicant (dalīl) only in this manner, that is, purely by informing us of
matters about which we could otherwise have no knowledge. For this reason,
they separate the foundations of theology (uṣūl al-dīn) into two categories—
rational and scriptural—and define the rational strictly as that which is not,
and cannot be, known by way of revelation (and, conversely, define the scrip-
tural strictly as that which is not, and cannot be, known through reason). Yet
Ibn Taymiyya insists that this is an error, for the Qurʾān itself uses, indicates,
and draws attention to rational proofs. Indeed, some things classified as ratio-
nal proofs can be inferred by reason on the basis of empirical evidence,83 as the
Qurʾān itself indicates in verses such as “We shall show them Our signs in the
horizons and in themselves until it becomes clear to them that it is the Truth”
(Q. Fuṣṣilat 41:53). The purpose of such a verse, for Ibn Taymiyya, is to advance
a rational argument for the existence of God based on the existence and con-
tingent nature of the empirical world around us.84
If, however, we use the term “scriptural” or “scripturally validated” (sharʿī)
according to the second meaning mentioned above (namely, what scripture
has permitted and deemed licit but has not itself positively affirmed or estab-
lished), then this category, according to Ibn Taymiyya, is divided into several
subcategories: (1) that which has reached us of the authenticated prophetic
Sunna, (2) that which the Qurʾān has indicated and drawn attention to in terms
of rational proofs and arguments, and finally (3) that which can be inferred on
the basis of our empirical observation of existent things (mā dallat ʿalayhi wa-

83 “wa-in kāna min al-adilla al-ʿaqliyya mā yuʿlamu bi-l-ʿiyān wa-lawāzimihi.” Darʾ, 1:199,
lines 9–10.
84 See Darʾ, 1:198, line 9 to 1:199, line 12 for this and the preceding paragraph.

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on the incoherence of the universal rule 167

shahidat bihi al-mawjūdāt)—this last subcategory effectively elevating empir-

ical observation to the category of sharʿī, or scripturally validated, evidence as
well.85
To summarize, an indicant that is scripturally validated (dalīl sharʿī) can-
not be contradicted by or subordinated to one that is not scripturally vali-
dated (ghayr sharʿī). As for indicants that are rational (ʿaqlī) or have the nature
of a transmitted report (samʿī) but that are not specifically validated by rev-
elation (sharʿī),86 such indicants may sometimes outweigh and sometimes
be outweighed by countervailing evidence, sometimes be valid and some-
times invalid.87 Finally, statements of authentic revelation, both declarative
and imperative, cannot be overridden or contradicted ( yuʿāraḍ) by anything.
Unfortunately, however, Ibn Taymiyya laments, some include in the category
of scriptural proofs and indicants (adilla sharʿiyya) that which does not belong
to it, while others exclude from it that which is, in fact, a proper subcategory
of it. This subcategory, we may assume, includes scripturally validated rational
(sharʿī-ʿaqlī) arguments—an important category of sharʿī indicants that Ibn
Taymiyya blames the mutakallimūn for having made the fundamental error of
excluding from the category of scriptural proofs.88
In conclusion, Ibn Taymiyya completes his redefinition of the terms of the
debate on reason and revelation by proposing a third conceptual shift, namely,
that indicants and proofs are not diametrically opposed in terms of being
“scriptural” (sharʿī) versus “rational” (ʿaqlī) but rather in terms of being “scrip-
turally validated” (sharʿī) versus “innovated” (bidʿī). The category of scripturally
validated proofs comprises both the authentic texts of revelation, properly
comprehended, and valid rational arguments built on sound premises. Ibn
Taymiyya thus divides what passes for “reason” into two categories, valid/true
and invalid/false, and absorbs that which is valid89 into the larger umbrella
category of sharʿī, or scripturally validated, proofs. By rigorously insisting on
the epistemic quality of a proof or piece of evidence to the exclusion of all
other considerations, including whether the proof or evidence originates in
reason or in revelation, Ibn Taymiyya attempts to circumvent the rigid cat-

85 See Darʾ, 1:199, lines 13–14.

86 Such as, for example, a historical or other sort of “report” or piece of information that is
neither affirmed, nor denied, nor addressed by revelation in any way.
87 As in the case of rational arguments containing false premises or built on invalid infer-
ences, or in the case of ḥadīth texts transmitted as putative revelation but found, upon
investigation, to be inauthentic.
88 See Darʾ, 1:200, lines 13–18.
89 Ibn Taymiyya’s understanding of what exactly constitutes valid and invalid reasoning and
rational proofs deserves a separate study and cannot be taken up in detail here.

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egories of “reason” (taken as a whole) and “revelation” (taken as a whole)

by subjecting each individual element of both categories to a common test
of epistemic warrant, then asserting that revelation legitimates and endorses
everything that is true and certain and abjures everything that is false and
unfounded—regardless, once again, of whether it originates in reason or in
what is claimed to be divine revelation.

In summary, we have seen in sections 5, 6, and 7 above that Ibn Taymiyya makes
three fundamental moves in his refutation of the universal rule. First, he demol-
ishes the fixed categories of “revelation” and “reason” by placing all the discrete
elements of both on an equal footing. Second, he insists that each element,
whether from reason or from revelation, be individually investigated for its pro-
bative value, thus replacing the binary “reason vs. revelation” (ʿaql–naql) with
the binary “certainty (‘knowledge’) vs. probability” (ʿilm–ẓann)—and, in the
case of probabilistic (ẓannī) matters, the further sub-binary of “more probative
vs. less probative” (rājiḥ–marjūḥ) indicators of knowledge and truth. Finally, he
subsumes valid rational arguments based on sound premises under the larger
category of “scripturally validated” (sharʿī) proofs, placing them into a new cat-
egory he terms “scripturally validated rational” (sharʿī-ʿaqlī), the counterpart of
the “scripturally validated revealed” (sharʿī-samʿī). By these three maneuvers,
Ibn Taymiyya seeks to demolish the universal rule altogether and to redefine
the very terms of the debate surrounding reason and revelation in Islam. He
accomplishes this tour de force first by poking holes in all the major assump-
tions that form the basis of the universal rule, then by redefining the very
categories in terms of which the question of reason and revelation had been
conceived and debated up to his time.

8 Further Arguments Regarding the Rational Contradictoriness

of the Universal Rule90

In this section, I present a number of disparate arguments Ibn Taymiyya

advances against the universal rule. The majority of these arguments are com-
posed of succinct statements that, taken together with the arguments dis-
cussed in section 9, provide an overview of the nature and content of nearly

90 Based on Arguments 8 (Darʾ, 1:148–156), 10 (1:170–192), 11 (1:192–194), 13 (1:195), 14 (1:195–

198), 21 (5:204–209), and parts of Argument 29 (5:268–286). Arguments 28 (Darʾ, 5:242–
268), 31–35 (5:289–320, 5:320–338, 5:338–340, 5:340–343, and 5:343–345, respectively), 37
(5:357–358), 39 (5:363–370), and 42 (5:387–392) also belong to this group.

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on the incoherence of the universal rule 169

half Ibn Taymiyya’s thirty-eight arguments against the universal rule. In the
paragraphs that follow, I present Arguments 11 through 14, as well as parts of
Arguments 8 and 21.
In Argument 8,91 Ibn Taymiyya asserts that the majority of issues allegedly
involving a contradiction between reason and revelation are recondite and
ambiguous matters that perplex even many of the rationalists themselves—
issues such as God’s names, attributes, and actions, the ontological reality
of otherworldly reward and punishment, God’s throne (ʿarsh) and footstool
(kursī), and other such matters pertaining to the unseen. Most people who
have ventured into such territory on the basis of mere opinion derived from
their own rational reflection either end up in dispute and disagreement with
one another or remain at a loss and perplexed (mutahawwikūn).92
Ibn Taymiyya makes the further point that most of these thinkers defer
without qualification to the main figures of their particular school of thought,
even when their own reflections sometimes lead them to different conclusions.
Among the followers of Aristotle, for example, many come to different conclu-
sions from their master in the fields of logic, physics, and metaphysics,93 yet
they refrain from opposing Aristotle’s doctrine and attribute the fact that their
conclusions differ from his to their own mental deficiency and lack of under-
standing.94 This, remarks Ibn Taymiyya, in spite of the fact that

the people of intellect who are endowed with pure reason (ahl al-ʿaql al-
muttaṣifūna bi-ṣarīḥ al-ʿaql) know that the science of logic, for instance,
contains much that is patently and indubitably erroneous, as has been
mentioned elsewhere. As for what he [Aristotle] and his followers—
such as Alexander of Aphrodisias [fl. ca. 200 CE], Proclus [d. 485 CE],
Themistius [d. 387CE], al-Fārābī, Ibn Sīnā, al-Suhrawardī al-Maqtūl, Ibn
Rushd (the grandson), and others—have said in the realm of metaphysics
(ilāhiyyāt), this contains such great error and enormous deficiency as are
clear to the generality of rational human beings ( jumhūr ʿuqalāʾ banī
Ādam). Indeed, their discourse is beset by well-nigh incalculable contra-
dictions.95

91 Darʾ, 1:148–156.
92 Darʾ, 1:151, lines 5–10.
93 Ibn Taymiyya often cites pre-Islamic thinkers, both Greek and Hellenistic, who disagreed
with Aristotle’s logic and larger philosophy, either in whole or in part. See von Kügelgen,
“Ibn Taymīyas Kritik,” 176–179.
94 Darʾ, 1:151, lines 13–16.
95 Darʾ, 1:151, line 16 to 1:152, line 4. (See index of Arabic passages.)

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170 chapter 3

This same attitude of excessive deference to authority can be observed

among the followers of all the major schools of Muslim thought as well, from
the major Muʿtazilī theologians to those who are “closer to the Sunna,” from the
Ashʿarīs, Kullābīs, and Karrāmiyya to the followers of the Four Imams and the
leading ascetics and early Sufi figures.96 Ibn Taymiyya contends that not only do
many of their doctrines contain much that contradicts the Qurʾān, the Sunna,
and the consensus (ijmāʿ) of the community, but they also contain numer-
ous positions that contradict pure reason. Yet none of the followers of these
various authorities would give unconditional priority to his own conclusions
over that of his revered leader. How then, Ibn Taymiyya asks, can anyone claim
that authentic revelation contains elements that every common man knows
through his reason to be false and that each man should thus give precedence
to his own opinion over revelation—despite his awareness of the deficiency of
his own intellect and the confusion into which adherents of his school and con-
tending schools have fallen with regard to such matters? Yet all groups claim to
know that revelation is true, and what is known to be true cannot legitimately
be opposed by what is ambiguous and confused and is thus, by contrast, not
known to be true.97
Argument 1198 holds that much of what people refer to as proofs (adilla)—
whether rational or scriptural—does not, in fact, constitute proof but is some-
thing they only surmise to constitute proof. Everyone, from the Companions
to the later rationalists (affirmationists and negationists alike), agrees that the
texts of revelation affirm (tadullu ʿalā) the divine names and attributes, details
pertaining to the hereafter, and the like. The dispute arises only with regard
to whether there is anything in reason that dictates that the texts ought to be
read as conveying a “true” non-literal or metaphorical meaning that differs from
what a straightforward exegesis of them would suggest. However, there is vast
disagreement among rationalist thinkers on the question of what constitutes
valid rational knowledge. Thus, something that is known and agreed upon—
namely, the straightforward meaning or signification (dalāla) of the revealed
texts—cannot legitimately be opposed by putative conclusions of reason that
are subject to so much dispute and uncertainty. Nevertheless, Ibn Taymiyya
remarks in conclusion, the people of truth do not impugn rational arguments

96 See Darʾ, 1:153, line 6 to 1:155, line 2. Among those who are “closer to the Sunna” he men-
tions al-Ḥusayn b. Muḥammad al-Najjār (d. ca. 220/835) and Ḍirār b. ʿAmr (d. ca. 200/815),
whose followers include Muḥammad b. ʿĪsā Burghūth (d. 240/854 or 241/855), “who
debated Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal,” and Ḥafṣ al-Fard (fl. ca. 200/815), “who debated al-Shāfiʿī” (see
Darʾ, 1:153, line 6 to 1:154, line 2).
97 See Darʾ, 1:151, lines 2–3 and 1:155, lines 2–13.
98 Darʾ, 1:192–194.

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on the incoherence of the universal rule 171

or proofs (adilla ʿaqliyya) as a category nor that which reason knows to be valid;
rather, they reject only what their opponents claim to be in contradiction with
revelation. Yet with respect to all such claims, he asserts, not one of them is
supported by an intrinsically valid argument (dalīl ṣaḥīḥ fī nafs al-amr),99 nor
by an argument that is accepted by the generality of rational persons (ʿāmmat
al-ʿuqalāʾ), nor yet by an argument that has not been undermined and refuted
by reason itself.
Argument 12100 holds that all the conclusions of reason that allegedly con-
tradict revelation can be demonstrated by reason itself to be invalid. Now, what
is known by reason to be invalid cannot be used to oppose other conclusions
similarly derived from reason or to oppose revelation. This is a general princi-
ple that Ibn Taymiyya promises to substantiate in detail when he turns to the
specific arguments propounded by those who contravene orthodox belief (“the
Sunna”), arguments whose specious and contradictory nature he says he will
demonstrate on the basis of reason itself.
According to Argument 13,101 those elements of revelation that are claimed
to contradict rational evidence—elements such as affirmation of the divine
attributes, the details of the hereafter, and the like—are known of necessity
to be part and parcel of the religion of Islam (maʿlūm bi-l-iḍṭirār min dīn al-
Islām).102 Thus, it is incoherent for one to hold any of these matters to be false
once one has accepted the truthfulness of the Prophet and the concomitant
authenticity of the revelation he brought.
In Argument 14,103 Ibn Taymiyya contends that not only the words but also
the meanings of the Qurʾān, as well as the intentions and objectives of the
Prophet (maqāṣiduhu wa-murāduhu), have been transmitted in the same recur-
rent (mutawātir) fashion as the Qurʾānic text, the obligatory nature of the five
daily prayers, the obligation to fast during Ramadan, and similar well-known
and undisputed matters. Some of these elements are mutawātir among both
scholars and the general public, while other, more specialized elements are
mutawātir only among the experts of Qurʾānic exegesis and the prophetic
Sunna. Yet other, even less commonly circulated elements are known exclu-
sively to particular individuals and may even be deemed suspect (maẓnūn) or
fabricated (makdhūb) by those lacking the requisite knowledge to assess them.
According to Ibn Taymiyya, this principle holds in all the various disciplines,
such as Qurʾānic exegesis, ḥadīth criticism, grammar, medicine, law, and discur-

99 Darʾ, 1:192, lines 6–7.

100 Darʾ, 1:194.
101 Darʾ, 1:195.
102 Darʾ, 1:195, line 3.
103 Darʾ, 1:195–198.

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172 chapter 3

sive theology. From an epistemological point of view, recurrent transmission of

the mutawātir type yields knowledge that is certain and, therefore, not subject
to refutation. Thus, any claim about the content of revelation (concerning, for
instance, the meanings of the Qurʾān or the intentions and objectives of the
Prophet as known through his Sunna) that contradicts what the scholars most
intimately familiar with these sources know to be true would, of necessity, be
a false claim.
Argument 21,104 which is less an argument than an assertion, affirms the
premise that it is impossible for two declarative statements of revelation to con-
tradict each other, though it may be the case that one explains or elucidates the
meaning of the other. This contrasts with the case of contradictory imperative
statements, whereby one may have been abrogated and superseded by another.
Ibn Taymiyya insists, however, that only revelation (and not, we are to under-
stand, reason) may abrogate revelation. Whoever seeks to abrogate any aspect
of the religion on the basis of his own whims and opinions is guilty of heresy
(ilḥād), just like someone who rejects or relativizes the declarative statements
of revelation by making their interpretation subject to the fruits of his own
(unfounded) speculation. Ibn Taymiyya accuses the Qarāmiṭa (seemingly a ref-
erence to the Ismāʿīlīs) of engaging in both such abrogation and speculation,
and he excoriates other heretics (malāḥida) for going so far as to claim prophet-
hood for themselves or a station they consider even higher than prophethood
(he is referring here to the philosophical enterprise, by which many of the
philosophers claim access to a truth higher than that purveyed by revealed reli-
gion).105 Ibn Taymiyya concludes that opposing revelation on the basis of mere
opinion is one of the paths that lead to disbelief (min shuʿab al-kufr), even if the
one who does so firmly believes in all the teachings of revelation other than
those he claims to be contradicted by his rational conclusions. If revelation is
true, then all arguments that lead to a contradiction with any part of it are, by
necessity, invalid and false.

9 On the Incompatibility of the Universal Rule with the Status

and Authority of Revelation

A large majority of Ibn Taymiyya’s arguments against the universal rule, as we

have seen above, take the form of rational critiques of its coherence and logi-
cal implications and are meant to demonstrate that the rule as formulated does

104 Darʾ, 5:204–209.

105 See Darʾ, 5:208, lines 10–16.

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not hold up on logical grounds. A number of arguments, however, consider the

implications of the universal rule through the lens of revelation and within
the larger religious context of the Islamic faith. These arguments leave aside
the question of the logical and rational viability of the rule on its own terms
and focus instead on the extent to which Ibn Taymiyya considers the rule to
cohere (or not) with the overall epistemological structure of Islam, in the name
of which he launches his massive critique and seeks to redress the troubled
relationship between reason and revelation that he inherited. In the current
section, we examine the main arguments Ibn Taymiyya makes in relation to
the compatibility of the universal rule with Islamic revelation.
As part of Argument 3,106 Ibn Taymiyya contends that anyone who has the
slightest familiarity with the content of the message brought by the Prophet
Muḥammad knows necessarily (bi-l-iḍṭirār) that he did not call people to faith
by arguing from accidents or the negation of attributes or by teaching that the
Creator was neither above the world nor distinct from it, neither inside the
world nor outside it. Similarly, the Prophet made no mention of the negation
of “body” in the technical, philosophical sense of the term, nor of the impos-
sibility of a past or future infinite regress, nor of other such doctrines held by
the philosophers and mutakallimūn. Not only did he not endorse such teach-
ings explicitly, but he also made no mention of anything that could plausibly
be construed to imply or entail any of this. In fact, our knowledge that the
Prophet did not address such matters is even more patent and obvious than
our knowledge of a host of other details about his life as related in the books
of Sunna, details such as the fact that he made the pilgrimage only once after
the Hijra or that he never prayed the five obligatory prayers alone but always in
a group. Yet if anyone tried to pass off falsified ḥadīth reports or deduce ratio-
nal arguments to the contrary, then the scholars who are intimately familiar
with the texts and who know the truth of these matters in a necessary fashion
(ʿilman ḍarūriyyan) would immediately recognize the falsehood of such claims,
just as they would recognize the necessary falsehood of sophistical arguments
even before resolving the specific points of doubt raised by such arguments.
Hence, if anyone were to employ such rational methods of argumentation or
publicly endorse the position of negationism (nafy) with regard to the divine
attributes, then the necessary falsehood of his position would be even more bla-
tant than the falsehood of one who claimed something contrary to any of the
issues mentioned above relating to the (lesser-known aspects of the) Prophet’s
daily practice. This is known, Ibn Taymiyya concludes, by anyone with even the
slightest knowledge of the conditions of the Prophet’s life, let alone those with

106 Darʾ, 1:87–133.

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an intermediate level of knowledge, to say nothing of those who are the heirs
of the Prophet,107 namely, the scholars who possess comprehensive knowledge
of his words and deeds.108
As part of Argument 15,109 Ibn Taymiyya maintains that God, the Author of
revelation, has prohibited the use of false arguments (such as an argument
based on a faulty premise) just as He has forbidden falsehood and lying in
general, not least with regard to Himself. This prohibition is indicated by the
Qurʾānic verse “Was not the covenant of the Book taken from them that they
would ascribe naught to God but the truth?” (Q. al-Aʿrāf 7:169). God has also
forbidden the use of arguments by one who seeks to use them without knowl-
edge, as we read in verses such as Q. al-Isrāʾ 17:36: “And pursue not that of which
you have no knowledge,” or Q. al-Aʿrāf 7:33: “that you say of God that which
you know not,” or Q. Āl ʿImrān 3:66: “Behold! You are those who dispute con-
cerning that whereof you have knowledge; so why do you dispute concerning
that whereof you have no knowledge?” Finally, God has forbidden the use of
arguments merely for the purpose of disputation after the truth of a matter has
been clarified, as indicated in the verse “They dispute with you (O Muḥammad)
concerning the truth after it was made manifest” (Q. al-Anfāl 8:6), as well as the
verse “And those who disbelieve dispute with vain argument in order to con-
fute therewith the truth” (Q. al-Kahf 18:56). The implication here is clear: Ibn
Taymiyya interprets these verses, originally addressed to the Meccan pagans, as
applying also to later philosophers and theologians, whose premises and argu-
ments he considers specious and ill-founded. He therefore considers them to
be “saying of God that which they know not” on the basis of “vain argument”
and to be disputing with one another “concerning the truth after it was made
manifest” (i.e., in the clear language of the Qurʾān and Sunna). In doing so, he
charges, they weaken and undermine, rather than strengthen and reinforce, the
truths plainly revealed to mankind on the tongue of God’s final messenger.110
As part of Argument 21,111 Ibn Taymiyya asserts that privileging the rational
opinions of men above revelation is tantamount to belying the prophets, which
opens the door to disbelief. He paraphrases the beginning of al-Shahrastānī’s
famous heresiographical work, Kitāb al-Milal wa-l-niḥal, to the effect that the
root of every evil lies in opposing revelation with mere opinion and putting

107 From a prophetic ḥadīth, which states, in part, “The scholars are the heirs of the prophets”
(inna al-ʿulamāʾ warathat al-anbiyāʾ). See al-Tirmidhī, Jāmiʿ, 4:414; Abū Dāwūd, Sunan,
5:485; Ibn Mājah, Sunan, 81.
108 For this paragraph, see Darʾ, 1:105, line 8 to 1:108, line 8.
109 Darʾ, 1:198–200.
110 For the argument presented in this paragraph, see Darʾ, 1:199, line 15 to 1:200, line 7.
111 Darʾ, 5:204–209.

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one’s own biases and whims above the revealed texts.112 Ibn Taymiyya then cites
five fairly lengthy Qurʾānic passages in support of this notion.113 He explains
that revelation is divided into two types of speech: imperative (inshāʾī) and
declarative (ikhbārī). The key to felicity and success consists in believing
wholeheartedly in the declarative statements and obeying unreservedly the
imperative ones, while the key to misery lies in opposing both with one’s own
opinion (raʾy) and biased whim (hawā) and giving priority to these opinions
and whims over the declarative and imperative dictates of revelation. Accord-
ing to Ibn Taymiyya, those theologians and rationalists who strayed did so with
respect to the declarative part of revelation by opposing, on the basis of their
own reasoning and opinions, that which God has declared in revelation regard-
ing Himself and His creation. By contrast, the ascetics (ahl al-ʿibāda) and legal
scholars who strayed did so with respect to the imperative parts of revelation
by opposing God’s command and following their own “sharīʿa” based on their
personal whims and opinions. Ibn Taymiyya’s main point is that opposing reve-
lation in either of these two domains (declarative or imperative) is the mark of
a disbeliever, not a believer. This fact is established by several Qurʾānic verses,114
as well as by a ḥadīth which declares that “disputation (mirāʾ) with respect to
the Qurʾān is disbelief.”115 Ibn Taymiyya contends that these statements apply
to any who dispute concerning the Qurʾān and who prefer their own opin-
ions over the plain meaning of revelation, even if only inadvertently (by, for
instance, upholding positions that, in effect, give priority to their reason—
understood by Ibn Taymiyya as their own biased and misguided reason and
not, of course, ʿaql ṣarīḥ, or pure reason proper—over the texts of revelation).
This judgement applies even to someone who holds a position that leads to
doubt merely by way of implication (man qāla mā yūjibu al-mirya wa-l-shakk),
let alone someone who explicitly claims that his reasoning and opinion should
be given priority over the texts of the Qurʾān and Sunna.
According to Argument 22,116 God censures the disbelievers for turning
people away from the path of God and seeking crookedness therein.117 Ibn
Taymiyya cites four Qurʾānic passages118 that concern those who turn away, or

112 Darʾ, 5:204, lines 1–4.

113 Q. al-Anʿām 6:130, al-Aʿrāf 7:35–36, Ṭā Hā 20:123–126, al-Zumar 39:71, and al-Mulk 67:8–9.
(Darʾ, 5:204–205).
114 Q. al-Kahf 18:56, Ghāfir 40:4, 40:5. (Darʾ, 5:206).
115 “al-mirāʾ fī al-Qurʾān kufr.” Darʾ, 5:206, lines 14–15.
116 Darʾ, 5:210–211.
117 “yaṣuddūna ʿan sabīl Allāh wa-yabghūnahā ʿiwajan.” Darʾ, 5:210, line 2 (and similar at 5:211,
line 2).
118 Q. Āl ʿImrān 3:98–99, al-Aʿrāf 7:86, Hūd 11:18–19, and Ibrāhīm 14:2–3. (Darʾ, 5:210).

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who divert others, from God’s path (that is, the normative religion that God has
charged His messengers to convey), be it in terms of the propositional content
of revelation or its normative commands and prohibitions. One who calls peo-
ple not to believe in or to obey the prophets even in an abstract sense (man
nahā al-nās nahyan mujarradan) is guilty of this, so what of someone who
encourages people to disbelieve in the specific substance of what was revealed
to the prophets, arguing that his own reasoning contradicts it and is to be given
priority over the contents of revelation? Furthermore, anyone who claims that
sound reason (ʿaql ṣarīḥ), which it is incumbent upon people to follow, con-
tradicts revelation and that God’s path consists in following such “reason” has
“sought crookedness in the path of God.”119 This is so because he seeks to rectify
the alleged crookedness of revelation and to redress its diversion from the truth
by explaining it “correctly” on the basis of his own reasoning. In doing so, he
implies that the divinely revealed path (al-sabīl al-sharʿiyya al-samʿiyya) trans-
mitted via prophetic authority is not straight but crooked and that the straight
path is the one newly innovated by those who contravene the argumentative
methods and the explicit propositional content of revelation.
In Argument 23,120 Ibn Taymiyya cites many verses about how the Prophet
was sent to make a clear declaration (balāgh mubīn) of truth and to guide peo-
ple to the straight path. That being the case, if the obvious sense of what he
brought were contradicted by sound reason as the negationists claim, then he
would not have fulfilled these functions and would have misled people rather
than guiding them aright. It is patently clear, Ibn Taymiyya argues, that the texts
of revelation do not indicate negationism with respect to the divine attributes
in such a way as to lead people to it in a clear and straightforward manner.
On the contrary, he argues, the obvious sense of revelation entails nothing but
clear and unambiguous affirmation of the attributes in a manner so patent as
to be admitted readily by the generality of Muslims. Even the Muʿtazila and
other negationists concede that such affirmationism constitutes the obvious
sense of scripture. Thus, if negationism were correct (although the texts, Ibn
Taymiyya contends, clearly endorse the opposite), then the Prophet would be
someone who knew the truth but suppressed it and instead manifested its polar
opposite. Ibn Taymiyya affirms that such a position—the position of “tajhīl and
taḍlīl” that we encountered in the first section of this chapter—openly contra-
dicts the tenets of the message brought by the Prophet Muḥammad. In fact,
he concludes, the contradiction is so patent as to count among those elements
that are “known by necessity to be part and parcel of the religion (of Islam).”

119 “fa-qad baghā sabīl Allāh ʿiwajan” (Darʾ, 5:211, line 2), reminiscent of several Qurʾānic
verses, namely, Q. Āl ʿImrān 3:99; al-Aʿrāf 7:45, 7:86; Hūd 11:19; Ibrāhīm 14:3; and al-Kahf 18:1.
120 Darʾ, 5:211–214.

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 part 2
Ibn Taymiyya’s Reform of Language,
Ontology, and Epistemology

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 chapter 4

Ṣaḥīḥ al-Manqūl, or What Is Revelation?

Never did We send a messenger except [that he spoke] in the language of

his people, that he might explain to them clearly.
Qurʾān, Ibrāhīm 14:4

∵
We have spoken in previous chapters of an alleged conflict between reason and
revelation. Yet the notion that “reason” might contradict “revelation” means lit-
tle until we define each of these two entities and determine exactly how it is
that each one allegedly contradicts the other. When philosophers, theologians,
and others assert a contradiction between reason and revelation, this typically
means that what are taken to be the unimpeachable conclusions of reason are
found to be incongruent with the “literal” (ḥaqīqa) or obvious (ẓāhir) sense of
the revealed texts1 (and, most important for Ibn Taymiyya, what those texts
assert about the nature and attributes of God). According to Ibn Taymiyya, such
thinkers essentially take the rational faculty and its deliverances as primary
and require that the language of the revealed texts be (re)interpreted in con-
gruence with reason. In other words, for the philosophers and the rationalistic
mutakallimūn, the meaning of revelation is ultimately determined not by any-
thing inherent in the texts but on the basis of (allegedly) certain and universal
rational conclusions that are reached independently of the texts. Such conclu-
sions can—and, in fact, often do (to a greater or lesser extent depending on the
school in question)—contradict the plain sense of revelation, which is then

1 Wolfhart Heinrichs translates “ḥaqīqa” as the “literal, proper, veridical meaning or use of a
given word.” Heinrichs, “On the Genesis,” 115. For an exhaustive treatment of the development
of “literal meaning” in Islamic legal hermeneutics, including the meaning and development of
“ḥaqīqa,” “ẓāhir,” and related terms, see Gleave, Islam and Literalism, the main thesis of which
is summarized in Gleave, “Conceptions of the Literal Sense (ẓāhir, ḥaqīqa) in Muslim Inter-
pretive Thought.” For a discussion of “apparent” (ẓāhir) meaning—in light of its relation to
ḥaqīqa expressions, figurative usage (majāz), and the legitimacy of taʾwīl—in the legal theory
of the influential sixth-/twelfth- to seventh-/thirteenth-century Shāfiʿī jurist and theologian
Sayf al-Dīn al-Āmidī (d. 631/1233), who is representative of the mature uṣūl al-fiqh tradition,
see Weiss, The Search for God’s Law, 463–472.

© Carl Sharif El-Tobgui, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004412866_007

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180 chapter 4

declared to harbor a “true” meaning that, unsurprisingly, coincides precisely

with what has been derived through reason. Ibn Taymiyya sees this tendency
exhibited in its most extreme form by the Muslim philosophers, who reduce
revelation primarily to the status of an ethical motivator for the masses and
essentially deny it any real role as a purveyor of metaphysical, ontological, or
even theological truths—truths that, in the final analysis, can be known (by
an elect few) through reason alone. Less extreme manifestations of this ten-
dency mark the Muʿtazilī school as a whole and even, as Ibn Taymiyya regularly
laments, later new-school Ashʿarī orthodoxy as represented, for instance, by the
enthusiastically rationalistic Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī.2
In diametric opposition to this tendency, Ibn Taymiyya insists that the true
meanings of the revealed texts are, in one manner or another, entirely embed-
ded in the language of those texts themselves. This obviates (or at least min-
imizes) the need to appeal, for a proper understanding of revelation, to any
factors or considerations extrinsic to the texts, including—indeed, especially—
the deliverances of abstract rational speculation as practiced by the philoso-
phers and theologians.3 We have seen in previous chapters that Ibn Taymiyya’s
overriding concern in the Darʾ taʿāruḍ is to vindicate a plain-sense understand-
ing and straightforward affirmation of the divine attributes predicated of God
in revelation over against the rationalists’ negation (nafy) or nullification (taʿṭīl)
of any of the said attributes. He insists that this way of affirmation was the
consensus approach and understanding of the Salaf, and for that reason it
remains uniquely authoritative throughout time. The kinds of rational objec-
tions (muʿāriḍ ʿaqlī) raised by various theological schools usually involve the
claim that a given revealed attribute (such as the possession of a hand or face,
or the act of descending or settling upon the throne), if affirmed of God in
accordance with the obvious sense (ẓāhir) of the texts, would entail a “likening”
(tamthīl) or “assimilation” (tashbīh) of God to created beings and thus infringe
upon the radical uniqueness of God’s divinity and His utter dissimilarity to any-
thing tainted by creatureliness, contingency, or limitation of any kind.

2 In his study on al-Rāzī’s ethics, Ayman Shihadeh speaks of al-Rāzī’s “reputation for being an
exceedingly confident rationalist, which indeed he lives up to in the absolute majority of his
works.” See Shihadeh, Teleological Ethics, 182. On al-Rāzī’s disillusionment with the rational-
ist project and later epistemological skepticism as expressed, for instance, in his late works
al-Maṭālib al-ʿāliya and Risālat Dhamm ladhdhāt al-dunyā, see Shihadeh, 182–203.
3 This does not, of course, mean that Ibn Taymiyya recognizes no role for what he deems to
be pure and unadulterated reason (ʿaql ṣarīḥ) and sound rational inference (naẓar ḥasan /
ḥusn al-naẓar). In fact, these play a central role in understanding revelation correctly and, he
contends, are positively encouraged and even modeled by revelation itself.

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ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl, or what is revelation? 181

Yet if Ibn Taymiyya’s project essentially consists in affirming and defend-

ing a plain-sense reading of scripture while refuting the rational objections
that allegedly disqualify such a reading, then does this make of him the
simple-minded and crass literalist his detractors have so often accused him of
being? Ibn Taymiyya’s theory of interpretation, for instance, was “almost always
understood by his opponents as a dogmatic denial of the existence of majāz
[figurative usage] in the language or as a naive call directed at the adherents of
taʾwīl for the abandonment of the attention they give to non-apparent mean-
ings in the Qurʾānic and Sunnī texts.”4 In a similar vein, it has been noted
that “subsequent tradition, even those who viewed Ibn Taymiyya favorably,
understood his rejection of majāz as a sign of an anthropomorphic literalism
rather than as a proposal of a whole alternative model of communication.”5 Ibn
Taymiyya for his part—and for all his insistent and unabashed affirmationism
with respect to the divine attributes—in no wise sees himself as a mushab-
bih, or “assimilator,” and, in fact, he explicitly condemns any view or doctrine
that he considers to entail tashbīh or tamthīl. How, then, does he propose to
base the interpretation of revelation exclusively on textual and linguistic fac-
tors without falling prey to a reactionary and unyielding literalism? How does
he purport to disavow taʾwīl in favor of the apparent sense (ẓāhir) of the texts
without succumbing to the odious assimilationism of tashbīh? And finally, how
does he argue for the hermeneutical independence of the texts from the specu-
lations of the philosophers and their “rational conclusions” (maʿqūlāt) without
undermining his own larger project, which consists not in excluding reason per
se but in rehabilitating it, restoring it to what he deems to be its pure form and
demonstrating its inherent congruence with revealed scripture?
The answer to these and similar questions requires a nuanced understand-
ing of Ibn Taymiyya’s theory of the meaning of revelation, for prior to taking up
the question whether revelation asserts anything that conflicts with reason, we
must naturally first know what it is that revelation affirms. In the current chap-

4 Mohamed Yunis Ali [hereafter Yunis Ali], Medieval Islamic Pragmatics, 88. On the reception
history of Ibn Taymiyya from the eighth/fourteenth to the thirteenth/nineteenth century,
see El-Rouayheb, “From Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī,” esp. 271–287 for the reception—often overtly
hostile—of Ibn Taymiyya as a crass literalist (ḥashwī) and corporealist (mujassim).
5 Gleave, Islam and Literalism, 58, n. 113. On the relative lack of influence of Ibn Taymiyya’s the-
ory of language and meaning even on fellow Ḥanbalīs (before the current day), see Gleave, 26,
n. 66 as well as Gleave, 58, n. 113, where the author remarks that “it seems that Ibn Taymiyya’s
critique was only really understood by his disciple Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya.” On the implica-
tions of the centuries-long obscurity of Ibn Taymiyya’s linguistic theory as well as the new-
found influence of his (and Ibn Qayyim’s) approach on current-day Ḥanbalī, and especially
Salafī, uṣūl al-fiqh discussions, see Gleave, 176–184.

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ter, I answer these questions by synthesizing hundreds of disparate statements

related to language and interpretation that appear throughout the Darʾ in an
attempt to delineate the overriding principles of Ibn Taymiyya’s “philosophy
of language” and hermeneutics of revelation as he developed and employed
them in his magnum opus. As this chapter demonstrates, Ibn Taymiyya’s views
on language and the interpretation of texts as elaborated in the Darʾ are very
much in accord with the linguistic and hermeneutic principles he presents
elsewhere in his expansive oeuvre. Specifically, the philosophy of language and
hermeneutics that emerge from the Darʾ taʿāruḍ broadly confirm and rein-
force the doctrines that Ibn Taymiyya lays out in his Fatāwā and Radd ʿalā
al-manṭiqiyyīn,6 as well as in his main treatise dedicated explicitly and singu-
larly to the question of Qurʾānic interpretation, Muqaddima fī uṣūl al-tafsīr.7
Stated briefly, Ibn Taymiyya’s approach to the interpretation of revelation—
and, indeed, of language generally—can be said to rest on the twin pillars
of context (siyāq, qarāʾin) and linguistic convention (ʿurf ). These pillars are
backed up by the discrete interpretive utterances of the Salaf and predicated on
the preeminent clarity (bayān) and lack of ambiguity implicit in the Qurʾān’s
repeated characterization of itself as “clear” and “manifest” (mubīn).8 For Ibn

6 See Yunis Ali, Medieval Islamic Pragmatics, 87–140 (namely, chap. 4, “Ibn Taymiyyah’s Contex-
tual Theory of Interpretation”), which is the most thorough and technical treatment to date
of Ibn Taymiyya’s conception of the workings of language and the proper understanding of
discourse. In addition to Fatāwā and Radd, Yunis Ali also draws, to a lesser extent, on Ibn
Taymiyya’s Kitāb al-Īmān. (By contrast, the Darʾ taʿāruḍ is referenced only twice in the course
of his 48-page treatment.)
7 See Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima fī uṣūl al-tafsīr. For a presentation and analysis of this work,
see Saleh, “Radical Hermeneutics.” For a partial translation of Ibn Taymiyya’s Muqaddima, see
McAuliffe, “Ibn Taymiya: Treatise on the Principles of Tafsir,” 35–43.
8 The word mubīn (clear, manifest) occurs in the Qurʾān a total of 118 times as a qualifier
of various objects, such as bounty (al-faḍl al-mubīn), victory (al-fawz al-mubīn–twice), the
Truth (al-ḥaqq al-mubīn–twice), misguidance (ḍalāl mubīn–nineteen times), warner (nadhīr
mubīn–twelve times, once with the definite article), conveyance [of the message] (al-balāgh
al-mubīn–seven times), enemy (ʿaduww mubīn–nine times), and others. As a qualifier denot-
ing the clarity of the Qurʾān itself, the term occurs on eight occasions (modifying various
nomina referring to the Qurʾān), at Q. al-Nisāʾ 4:174 (nūran mubīnan); Q. al-Māʾida 5:15 and al-
Naml 27:1 (kitāb mubīn); and Q. Yūsuf 12:1, al-Shuʿarāʾ 26:2, al-Qaṣaṣ 28:2, al-Zukhruf 43:2, and
al-Dukhān 44:2 (al-kitāb al-mubīn). On two occasions, the Qurʾān states that it was revealed
in a “clear Arabic tongue” (lisān ʿarabī mubīn) (Q. al-Naḥl 16:103 and al-Shuʿarāʾ 26:195), and
on two other occasions, it refers to itself simply as a “clear Qurʾān” (Qurʾān mubīn) (Q. al-
Ḥijr 15:1 and Yā Sīn 36:69). Finally, at Q. Āl ʿImrān 3:138, we encounter the single occurrence
in the Qurʾān of the related nominal form bayān (clarity; elucidation): “hādhā bayānun lil-
nāsi wa-hudan wa-mawʿiẓatun lil-muttaqīn” (This [Qurʾān] is an elucidation for mankind, and
guidance, and an admonishment for the God-fearing).

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ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl, or what is revelation? 183

Taymiyya, the statement that revelation is “clear” essentially means that it is

lucid, unambiguous, and fully self-explanatory without any need for recourse
to extra-textual sources such as speculative reason.9
In what follows, we first examine Ibn Taymiyya’s notion of the contextual
interpretation of language, which is a paramount feature of his hermeneu-
tics. This will necessarily involve a brief preliminary discussion of the question
whether language contains figurative usage (majāz). If Ibn Taymiyya is found to
reject taʾwīl, along with the notion of metaphor or figurative use presupposed
on its behalf by the philosophers and later theologians, then what of the famous
Qurʾānic verse, Āl ʿImrān 3:7, concerning muḥkam (supposedly “literal”) and
mutashābih (supposedly “figurative”) verses that some claim endorse taʾwīl or
the related procedure of tafwīḍ? Furthermore, how does Ibn Taymiyya propose
to reject the notion of figurative language as it is traditionally understood while
avoiding a crude literalism, particularly with regard to the divine attributes?
An exploration of these and related questions is followed by an examination
of several illustrations of Ibn Taymiyya’s contextual hermeneutics as brought
to bear on representative “problematic” texts from the Qurʾān and ḥadīth that
are normally deemed unsalvageable without recourse to taʾwīl as understood
by the later tradition (that of the mutaʾakhkhirūn).
In the latter portion of the chapter, we take up the second principal pillar of
Ibn Taymiyya’s interpretive theory, which involves privileging known linguistic
convention (ʿurf ) over rational speculation when interpreting words and texts.
In this vein, we first explore Ibn Taymiyya’s theoretical reasons for prioritizing
convention in the interpretation of scripture, then we consider his account of
the various ways in which language conventions change over generations and
across various technical specializations, giving rise to “vague and ambiguous
terms” (alfāẓ mujmala mushtabiha) that Ibn Taymiyya blames for numerous
grave distortions in the understanding of revelation. Such importance does Ibn
Taymiyya attach to this notion of “ambiguous terms” that he goes so far as to
contend that “the majority of disagreements among rational thinkers are due
to an equivocity of terms (ishtirāk al-asmāʾ).”10 Correspondingly, he asserts that
a proper clarification and analysis of terms is often sufficient to settle a signif-

9 See Ibn Taymiyya, Darʾ, 5:373–374 for a statement about why revelation must be clear and
manifest in this sense. For the development of the ideas of clarity (bayān, naṣṣ, ẓāhir,
etc.) and ambiguity (ijmāl, ibhām, tashābuh, etc.) in Islamic hermeneutical thinking from
al-Shāfiʿī through representative figures of earlier Muʿtazilī and Ashʿarī thought and culmi-
nating with the dominance of the mature uṣūl al-fiqh paradigm, see Vishanoff, Formation,
50–56, 123–125, 162–165, and 238–240, respectively.
10 See, e.g., Darʾ, 1:233, lines 4–6; 1:299, lines 3–4.

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184 chapter 4

icant number of theological and philosophical disagreements. After a discus-

sion of the method Ibn Taymiyya employs for disambiguating such expressions,
we close with an illustration of this method in practice via his analysis and
deconstruction of the key terms wāḥid (one), tawḥīd (oneness of God), and
tarkīb (composition) that were so hotly contested in Islamic theological and
philosophical circles before and during his time.

1 Taʾwīl and the Meaning of Qurʾān 3:7

Ibn Taymiyya, as mentioned, affirms that revelation is fully independent in

conveying its meanings with certitude, but how can we determine what those
meanings are? In fact, one may contend, we know from the Qurʾān itself that
revelation contains non-literal usage, that some of its verses are “clear” and
others “ambiguous,” and that the ambiguous passages have a non-literal, figu-
rative meaning that must be determined through the application of taʾwīl. Ibn
Taymiyya, however, maintains that this is not the case: the texts of revelation
do not, in fact, endorse what is meant by the term taʾwīl in the (later) usage of
the philosophers and mutakallimūn.11 The common later definition of taʾwīl as
“diverting a word from its apparent sense (ẓāhir) to its non-preponderant (mar-
jūḥ) meaning”12 is, Ibn Taymiyya contends, a convention found among “some
of the later scholars,”13 one that was not available at the time of revelation or
for generations thereafter. This being the case, the word taʾwīl cannot legiti-
mately be interpreted as carrying this meaning where it is used in the Qurʾān.
Ibn Taymiyya seeks to substantiate this view by citing numerous early author-
ities who vouch for only two meanings of taʾwīl, to the exclusion of the third,
technical (iṣṭilāḥī) meaning that involves deflecting a word from its apparent

11 One of the most thorough studies to date of Ibn Taymiyya’s views on the fraught question
of taʾwīl is al-Julaynid, al-Imām Ibn Taymiyya wa-mawqifuhu min qaḍiyyat al-taʾwīl.
12 “ṣarf al-lafẓ ʿan ẓāhirihi ilā maʿnāhu al-marjūḥ,” as defined by Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī in Asās.
For a detailed presentation and analysis of al-Rāzī’s explanation of taʾwīl in the Qurʾān,
based on his extensive exegesis of Q. Āl ʿImrān 3:7 concerning the taʾwīl of muḥkam
and mutashābih verses in his famous exegetical work, al-Tafsīr al-kabīr, see El-Tobgui,
“Hermeneutics of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī.” See also Lagarde, “De l’ ambiguïté (mutašābih)
dans le Coran.” On al-Rāzī as a theologian and exegete more generally, see Ceylan, The-
ology and Tafsīr in the Major Works of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (especially chap. 2, “Approach
to the Qurʾān”) and Monnot, “Le panorama religieux de Fahr al-Dīn al-Rāzī.” On al-Rāzī’s
life and works, see Street, “Concerning the Life and Works.”
13 “baʿḍ al-mutaʾakhkhirīn.”Darʾ, 1:14, line 6. For a comparative study of Ibn Taymiyya’s and al-
Rāzī’s approaches to taʾwīl, see al-Qaranshāwī, al-Taʾwīl bayna Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī wa-Ibn
Taymiyya.

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ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl, or what is revelation? 185

(ẓāhir) or “literal” (ḥaqīqa) meaning to a non-apparent, or figurative (majāz),

sense.14 Furthermore, Ibn Taymiyya affirms, an inductive survey of the stated
positions (aqwāl) of the Salaf reveals that the early authoritative generations
did not engage in taʾwīl in the manner of the later philosophers and theolo-
gians. Rather, they resolutely affirmed the obvious sense of the texts, while
nonetheless conceding that the modality, or the “how” (kayf /kayfiyya), of cer-
tain unseen realities—most prominently the divine attributes—lay beyond
the full ken of human intelligibility. Moreover, Ibn Taymiyya asserts, the Salaf
did not even engage in tafwīḍ with respect to the meanings of Qurʾānic verses.
If anything, they made taʾwīl and tafwīḍ of the modality, or kayfiyya, of certain
matters asserted in revelation, but never, he maintains, of the meaning (maʿnā)
or the (straightforward) explication (tafsīr) of anything asserted therein.

1.1 The Meaning of “Taʾwīl”

The majority of later Islamic theological and philosophical writings, and in-
deed most Western academic studies as well, take for granted that the Qurʾān,
by its own declaration, is composed of two main types of verses, “clear” or deter-
minate (muḥkam) and “ambiguous” or indeterminate (mutashābih), and that
the latter are susceptible of a non-literal or figurative interpretation (taʾwīl) at
variance with their apparent sense and in which their true significance lies.
Support for this view is normally sought in Q. Āl ʿImrān 3:7, which speaks of
“āyāt muḥkamāt,” declared to be the “mother of the Book” (umm al-kitāb), and
“others that are mutashābihāt.” The verse castigates those who, on account of
a waywardness in their hearts, follow the mutashābihāt, seeking thereby to
arouse discord ( fitna) and to uncover the “taʾwīl” of said verses.15 The remain-

14 For Ibn Taymiyya’s historical account of the rise and development of the ḥaqīqa–majāz
dichotomy, along with his refutation of this division and his treatment of numerous
other language-related topics that are typically discussed in works of uṣūl al-fiqh, see Ibn
Taymiyya, Kitāb al-Īmān, 75–103 (Kitab Al-Iman: Book of Faith, chap. 8, 98–131), as well
as Ibn Taymiyya, MF, 20:400–497. (Both sources are also referenced in Heinrichs, “On
the Genesis,” 115, n. 1.) Heinrichs is inclined to think that Ibn Taymiyya was correct in
attributing the birth of the ḥaqīqa–majāz dichotomy as a hermeneutical tool to the early
(Basran) Muʿtazila. See Heinrichs, 117, 132, 139. Towards the end of the article, Heinrichs
describes how Muʿtazilī theologians seem to have adopted the philologist and exegete
Abū ʿUbayda’s (d. ca. 210/825) early sense of majāz as the “natural-language” rewriting of
idiomatic expressions and extended it to “cases which were linguistically quite clear and
of no interest to Abū ʿUbayda, such as metaphors that were only theologically objection-
able” (emphasis mine). Heinrichs, 139. On majāz in Abū ʿUbayda, see (to be read in light
of Heinrichs, “On the Genesis”) Almagor, “The Early Meaning of Majāz and the Nature of
Abū ʿUbayda’s Exegesis.”
15 For a useful discussion of the rise of taʾwīl and the various positions taken on the meaning

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186 chapter 4

der of verse 3:7, read with a pause in either of two critical junctures, declares
the taʾwīl of such verses to be known either by God alone or by God and “those
firmly grounded in knowledge” (al-rāsikhūna fī al-ʿilm)—presumably those
possessing knowledge in religion, the ʿulamāʾ.16 Later scholars concluded that
if the verse is read such that the taʾwīl is known by God alone, then the appro-
priate stance of the believer in the face of a mutashābih verse is tafwīḍ, namely,
declaring the apparent sense inoperative while refraining from offering a spe-
cific alternative explanation of the verse. Those who read the verse such that
the rāsikhūna fī al-ʿilm are also said to know the taʾwīl generally understand this
as an invitation for specialized religious scholars—those “firmly grounded in
knowledge”—to search for and suggest possible alternative, non-literal mean-
ings of the verse in question. It is normally stipulated that the non-literal, or
figurative, meaning put forth must conform to the known conventions of the
Arabic language. Further, it is generally considered prudent for the interpreter
to refrain from claiming certain knowledge ( yaqīn) that a suggested mean-
ing is definitively the one intended by God. Rather, he should simply suggest
that such a meaning may be the one meant while admitting that the true
meaning intended by God can be known with certitude by God alone. Yet the
Qurʾān does not itself indicate precisely which verses are muḥkam and which
are mutashābih. The tradition of the later mutakallimūn nonetheless generally
identifies the putatively “ambiguous” verses as those whose apparent meaning
(ẓāhir) has been determined to be impossible—typically on the strength of a
so-called rational objection (muʿāriḍ ʿaqlī)—thus necessitating an abandon-
ment of this apparent meaning in favor of either taʾwīl or tafwīḍ.17 Precisely

of Q. Āl ʿImrān 3:7, see al-Kattānī, Jadal, 1:549–553. For a thorough study in English on
this verse, one that compares Sunnī, Shīʿī, Muʿtazilī, and Sufi approaches, as well as com-
mentaries based on prophetic ḥadīth, and contrasts these with commentaries based on
“reasoned opinion,” or raʾy, see Kinberg, “Muḥkamāt and Mutashābihāt (Koran 3/7),” the
appendix of which provides a concise survey of a number of modern studies on the topic.
16 The full verse reads: “He it is who has sent down to you (O Muḥammad) the Book. In
it are verses that are muḥkam; they are the mother of the Book. Others are mutashābih.
But those in whose hearts is perversity follow the part thereof that is mutashābih, seeking
discord and searching for its taʾwīl; and none knows its taʾwīl save God. And those firmly
grounded in knowledge say, ‘We believe in the Book; the whole of it is from our Lord.’
And none shall grasp the message save men of understanding.” (Trans. Yusuf Ali, with
modifications.) The alternative punctuation of the recited verse yields “and none knows
its taʾwīl save God and those firmly grounded in knowledge; they say …” Though English
translations generally render the word muḥkam as “clear,” mutashābih as “ambiguous” (or
“allegorical”), and taʾwīl as “interpretation,” I have purposely left these terms untranslated
since their exact meaning is precisely what is at issue for Ibn Taymiyya and what forms
our main concern in this section.
17 From a historical perspective, it appears that the Baghdādī Muʿtazilī theologian Abū Jaʿfar

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ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl, or what is revelation? 187

which verses were to be counted as mutashābih and therefore open to inter-

pretation was, naturally, the subject of much debate, fueled by various schools’
contending doctrines regarding the nature and dictates of reason and the scope
of its prerogative to adjudicate over the meaning of the revealed texts.
Ibn Taymiyya, for his part, rejects out of hand this later, technical defini-
tion of taʾwīl and the procedure of figurative interpretation practiced under its
umbrella.18 He counters that the eventual standard definition of taʾwīl as “the
deflection of a word from its preponderant meaning to a non-preponderant
meaning on the basis of a relevant indicant”19 represents a technical usage that
originated only in the academic convention of the later philosophers and theo-
logians and was unknown to the Salaf (and the early scholars of tafsīr), in whose
language the Qurʾān was revealed and in light of whose conventions it must
therefore be understood. This being the case, Ibn Taymiyya argues, it is illegiti-
mate to read the later, technical sense of the word taʾwīl back into the Qurʾān as
if it were the meaning that was intended by the Book’s Author and that would
have been understood by its initial recipient audience.20 But what, then, is the
meaning of “taʾwīl” if not the widely accepted sense of figurative interpretation
taken for granted by the later theologians (mutaʾakhkhirūn)?

al-Iskāfī (d. 240/854) was the first to focus the discussion of Q. Āl ʿImrān 3:7 on the notion
of ambiguity, defining muḥkam verses as those that are determinate and univocal in mean-
ing and mutashābih verses as those that are indeterminate and admit, therefore, of more
than a single interpretation. This typology was later adopted by Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī
(d. 324/935 or 936) and by his contemporary, the influential Ḥanafī legal theorist Abū al-
Ḥasan al-Karkhī (d. 340/952), until verse Q. 3:7 “eventually came to be widely regarded as
an affirmation of ambiguity in the Qurʾān” (Vishanoff, Formation, 17).
18 For Ibn Taymiyya’s main discussions of taʾwīl (and tafwīḍ), see Argument 16 (Darʾ, 1:201–
208), Argument 27 (Darʾ, 5:234–241), and also (on taʾwīl specifically) Darʾ, 5:380–382
(which is part of Argument 41). On the relationship between taʾwīl and the mutashābih
verses of the Qurʾān, see also Ibn Taymiyya’s separate treatise “Risālat al-Iklīl fī al-mutashā-
bih wa-l-taʾwīl,” in Majmūʿat al-rasāʾil al-kubrā, 2:3–36.
19 “ṣarf al-lafẓ ʿan al-iḥtimāl al-rājiḥ ilā al-iḥtimāl al-marjūḥ li-dalīl yaqtarinu bihi.” Cited at
Darʾ, 5:235, lines 3–4 and again at 5:382, lines 13–14. The addition “li-dalīl yaqtarinu bihi”
is found at Darʾ, 1:206, line 7. Ibn Taymiyya gives an alternatively worded definition in
another passage: “ṣarf al-lafẓ ʿan al-maʿnā al-madlūl ʿalayhi al-mafhūm minhu ilā maʿnā
yukhālifu dhālika” (Darʾ, 1:206, lines 3–4), which, for him, amounts to “deflecting the texts
from what they properly denote” (ṣarf al-nuṣūṣ ʿan muqtaḍāhā) (Darʾ, 5:380, line 7) and,
shortly thereafter, “ṣarf al-nuṣūṣ ʿan muqtaḍāhā wa-madlūlihā wa-maʿnāhā” (Darʾ, 5:382,
lines 2–3).
20 Gleave (Islam and Literalism, 65) makes a similar comment about the word tafsīr, which
appears only once in the Qurʾān, at Q. al-Furqān 25:33: “And they come not to you (O
Muḥammad) with any parable but that We bring you the truth and a better explanation
(illā jiʾnāka bi-l-ḥaqqi wa-aḥsana tafsīran).”

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188 chapter 4

Ibn Taymiyya calls upon a wide range of evidence to establish that the word
taʾwīl—as it was employed by the seventh-century inhabitants of the Hijaz
whose language habits form the linguistic matrix presupposed by revelation—
carried only two possible meanings,21 neither of which is related to the third,
specialized meaning that the word acquired when it was adopted as a technical
term by later theologians and philosophers. The first of these meanings, accord-
ing to Ibn Taymiyya, is “explication” (tafsīr) and “elucidation” (bayān), which he
defines as a straightforward explanation of the apparent sense, or simply the
“meaning” (maʿnā), of revelation “as found in the work of al-Ṭabarī and oth-
ers.” In another place, he defines it as “cognizance of the intended meaning
of [an instance of] speech such that it can be contemplated, grasped by the
mind, and understood.”22 The second original meaning of the word taʾwīl in
the convention of the Companions and the Salaf, according to Ibn Taymiyya, is
“the ultimate reality of that to which the speech pertains” (ḥaqīqat mā yaʾūlu
ilayhi al-kalām).23 In another passage, Ibn Taymiyya renders this second mean-
ing as “the reality of a thing, like its ‘how’ (or modality), which is only known
to God.”24 In yet another passage, he further clarifies that the “taʾwīl” of those
verses pertaining to God and unseen realities (particularly the events of the
last day) represents “the very [ontological] reality” (nafs al-ḥaqīqa) of the enti-
ties mentioned in such verses.25 With respect to God, this ḥaqīqa refers to the
quintessential nature of His divine essence and attributes, which is known
only to Him.26 This definition of ḥaqīqa as the very reality of a thing is rem-
iniscent of that given by al-Bāqillānī, who offers two definitions of the term

21 For these two meanings as exhausting the original definition of “taʾwīl,” see Darʾ, 5:234,
lines 9–12. See also Ibn Taymiyya, Kitāb al-Īmān, 33, lines 3–8.
22 “maʿrifat al-murād bi-l-kalām ḥattā yutadabbara wa-yuʿqala wa-yufqah.” Darʾ, 5:382,
lines 10–11. On taʾwīl as linguistic explanation (tafsīr) in Ibn Taymiyya’s treatment of terms
denoting the divine attributes, see also Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy, 53–55, 68.
23 In another place, “al-ḥaqīqa allatī yaʾūlu ilayhā al-khiṭāb” (Darʾ, 5:382, lines 4–5). For an
extensive analysis of the term taʾwīl as used in the Qurʾān, including in this second sense
cited by Ibn Taymiyya, see Gleave, Islam and Literalism, 66–72.
24 “ḥaqīqat al-shayʾ ka-l-kayfiyya allatī lā yaʿlamuhā illā Allāh.”Darʾ, 7:328, lines 10–11. See also
Darʾ, 5:382, lines 11–12 (“… wa-huwa al-taʾwīl alladhī infarada Allāh bi-ʿilmihi wa-huwa al-
ḥaqīqa allatī lā yaʿlamuhā illā huwa”).
25 “wa-ammā taʾwīl mā akhbara Allāh bihi ʿan nafsihi wa-ʿan al-yawm al-ākhir fa-huwa nafs
al-ḥaqīqa allatī akhbara ʿanhā.” Darʾ, 1:207, lines 4–5. See also Darʾ, 5:382, line 5 (“nafs al-
ḥaqāʾiq allatī akhbara Allāh ʿanhā”) and 9:24, lines 8–9 (“al-ḥaqīqa allatī hiya nafs mā huwa
ʿalayhi fī al-khārij”).
26 “wa-dhālika fī ḥaqq Allāh huwa kunh dhātihi wa-ṣifātihi allatī lā yaʿlamuhā ghayruhu.”Darʾ,
1:207, line 5. See also Darʾ, 5:382, lines 6–7, where Ibn Taymiyya explains that “the taʾwīl [of
verses] pertaining to God is none other than His own holy self [or essence] qualified by
His exalted attributes” (wa-taʾwīl mā akhbara bihi ʿan nafsihi huwa nafsuhu al-muqaddasa
al-mawṣūfa bi-ṣifātihi al-ʿaliyya).

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ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl, or what is revelation? 189

in his al-Taqrīb wa-l-irshād, one of which is “the reality (ḥaqīqa) behind the
qualification (waṣf ) of a thing by which it is specified [or defined] and that
property (maʿnā) on account of which it merits the qualification, like saying,
‘The ḥaqīqa of a scholar (ʿālim) is the fact that he possesses knowledge (ʿilm).’ ”27
Al-Bāqillānī’s definition of ḥaqīqa resembles that of al-Ashʿarī before him, who
defined ḥaqīqa “not as a certain way of using words [i.e., literally], but as the
true nature of things—the actual qualities by virtue of which things can be
called by certain names.”28 Indeed, the precise relationship between words—
specifically “names,” or nouns (asmāʾ)—and the ontological reality (ḥaqīqa) of
the nominata (musammayāt) to which they apply is of central importance to
Ibn Taymiyya’s larger theological project in the Darʾ taʿāruḍ and elsewhere.
Ibn Taymiyya establishes this dual definition of taʾwīl—as simple expli-
cation of meaning and as the ultimate reality of a thing—primarily on the
strength of statements by the Companions and early exegetes explicitly defin-
ing it as such, as well as on the basis of tafsīr by the Companions and early
exegetes on verses additional to Q. 3:7 that also employ the term taʾwīl. To estab-
lish the meaning of taʾwīl among the early exegetes, Ibn Taymiyya appeals to
Mujāhid b. Jabr (d. between 100/718 and 104/722), the early “leader of
the exegetes” (imām ahl al-tafsīr), who is said to have asked Ibn ʿAbbās
(d. ca. 68/687) to provide him the “tafsīr” of the entire Qurʾān, which he (Ibn
ʿAbbās) did (wa-fassarahu lahu).29 Ibn Taymiyya informs us that Mujāhid used
to maintain that those firmly grounded in knowledge (al-rāsikhūna fī al-
ʿilm) know the “taʾwīl” of the Qurʾān, meaning the tafsīr of it, like the tafsīr
bequeathed to Mujāhid by Ibn ʿAbbās.30 According to Ibn Taymiyya, this defini-
tion of taʾwīl (in the sense of tafsīr) was also endorsed by Ibn Qutayba and oth-
ers who upheld that those firmly grounded in knowledge are capable of know-
ing the taʾwīl of the mutashābih verses. In addition to Mujāhid and Ibn Qutayba,

27 Al-Bāqillānī, Taqrīb, 1:352 (also cited in Gleave, Islam and Literalism, 118; translation mine).
Gleave comments that ḥaqīqa in this sense “means something like ‘the truth conditions of
a defining characteristic’. It refers to the reality of the individual rather than a fact of lan-
guage” (Gleave, 118)—which closely resembles Ibn Taymiyya’s characterization of it here.
For a fuller treatment of al-Bāqillānī’s hermeneutics, see Vishanoff, Formation, 160–189.
28 Vishanoff, Formation, 22. This conception of ḥaqīqa, Vishanoff elaborates, “suggested that
the Muʿtazilī abandonment of the literal sense of scripture was not merely a departure
from ordinary linguistic usage, but a misrepresentation of ontological reality” (emphasis
mine). Vishanoff, 22.
29 Darʾ, 5:381, lines 15–16. Mujāhid (b. Jabr) is reported to have said, “I read (ʿaraḍtu) the
muṣḥaf to Ibn ʿAbbās from beginning to end, stopping him at every verse and asking him
about it” (Darʾ, 1:208, lines 7–8).
30 See Darʾ, 5:381, lines 16–17.

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190 chapter 4

figures such as Ibn ʿAbbās, Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 37/657), and Ibn
Isḥāq (d. ca. 150/767), among others, also held that the pause in verse 3:7 should
fall after “al-rāsikhūna fī al-ʿilm,” such that those who are “firmly grounded
in knowledge,” too, in addition to God, are said to know the taʾwīl of the
mutashābihāt.31 The alternative position—that of setting the pause after
“Allāh,” such that the taʾwīl of the mutashābihāt is known only to God—was
reported also to have been held by Ibn ʿAbbās, in addition to eminent early
authorities such as Ubayy b. Kaʿb (d. ca. 35/656),32 ʿAbd Allāh b. Masʿūd (d. 32/
652 or 653), ʿĀʾisha (d. 58/678), and ʿUrwa b. al-Zubayr (d. 93/711 or 712 or 94/712
or 713), among others.33
In light of the two original meanings of the word taʾwīl and the alternative
pauses recognized by the Companions, how did the early community under-
stand verse 3:7? According to Ibn Taymiyya, whenever this verse was read with
the pause after “al-rāsikhūna fī al-ʿilm,” the Companions and the Salaf inter-
preted the kind of taʾwīl that is known by those who are firmly grounded in
knowledge in accordance with the first meaning cited above. That is, they
understood it as a reference to (straightforward) tafsīr, such that whoever had
knowledge of the Qurʾān’s tafsīr also had knowledge of its taʾwīl.34 In contrast,
whenever the verse was read with the pause after “Allāh,” the Companions and
the Salaf interpreted the kind of taʾwīl that is known only by God in accordance
with the second meaning cited above. That is, they understood it as a reference
to God’s exclusive knowledge of the ontological reality (ḥaqīqa) and the modal-
ity (kayfiyya) of the unseen (whether this pertain to matters such as the events
of the day of judgement or to matters such as the essence and attributes of
God). This dual interpretation of the term taʾwīl (which alternates according
to where one pauses when reading the verse) was determined and imposed,
according to Ibn Taymiyya, by the Companions’ common understanding of
the “conventional language known among them” (lughatuhum al-maʿrūfa bay-
nahum). This shared language, as indicated in the Companions’ own state-
ments and those of the early exegetes, admitted of only the two meanings
discussed above to the exclusion of the third, “specialized technical meaning
of taʾwīl” (maʿnā al-taʾwīl al-iṣṭilāḥī al-khāṣṣ) as developed and employed by the

31 Darʾ, 1:205, lines 13–15.

32 Ibn al-Jazarī reports a wide range of disagreement on the date of Ubayy b. Kaʿb’s death,
citing the years 19/640, 20/641, 23/644, 30/650 or 651, 32/652 or 653, 33/653 or 654, and,
finally, “a week or a month before the assassination of ʿUthmān [b. ʿAffān],” which occurred
in summer 35/656. The author himself favors this last date. See Ibn al-Jazarī, Ghāyat al-
nihāya, 1:34 (no. 131).
33 Darʾ, 1:205, lines 10–13.
34 “wa-mithl hādhā al-taʾwīl yaʿlamuhu man yaʿlamu tafsīr al-Qurʾān.” Darʾ, 5:381, line 14.

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ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl, or what is revelation? 191

later philosophers and theologians.35 For Ibn Taymiyya, therefore, the ques-
tion is not one of ḥaqīqa (“literal”) versus majāz (“figurative”), as it was for the
later kalām and uṣūl al-fiqh traditions,36 but one of ḥaqīqa (in the sense of the
ontological reality and modality of a thing’s external existence) versus maʿnā
(in the sense of straightforward lexical signification). Unlike in the ḥaqīqa–
majāz distinction, the two terms of the ḥaqīqa–maʿnā pair are not mutually
exclusive opposites; rather, they are two distinct yet complementary aspects—
one semantic and notional, the other existential and ontological—of any given
reality.
In addition to the early authorities of tafsīr, Ibn Taymiyya calls to witness
several other reports (āthār) of the Companions to complete his mapping of
the original semantic field covered by the word taʾwīl. He explains that when
used with respect to imperative speech (command or prohibition), “taʾwīl”
is the act of doing the thing commanded or refraining from the thing pro-
hibited.37 In support of this meaning, he cites Sufyān b. ʿUyayna (d. 198/814),
who reportedly said, “al-sunna taʾwīl al-amr wa-l-nahy,” which was taken to
mean that proper conformity to the prophetic Sunna entails careful obser-
vance of the commands and prohibitions of the Islamic religion. A further
report from ʿĀʾisha and one from ʿUrwa b. al-Zubayr provide supplementary evi-
dence for this meaning of taʾwīl.38 In citing this array of evidence, Ibn Taymiyya
argues that there is no known circumstance in which the Companions and
Salaf used the term taʾwīl to indicate the suspension of a word’s well-known
signification—that is, its ẓāhir (apparent) or rājiḥ (preponderant) meaning—
in favor of a non-apparent (muʾawwal), non-preponderant (marjūḥ), or non-
literal/figurative (majāz) meaning. Rather, it was always used either in the sense
of explication (tafsīr) or in the sense of the ultimate reality (ḥaqīqa) of a thing
or the outcome of an affair. It is for this reason that, when explicating verses
such as “al-Raḥmānu ʿalā l-ʿarsh istawā” (the Most Merciful has settled upon the
throne)39 or “thumma stawā ʿalā l-ʿarsh” (then He settled upon the throne),40
early authorities like Mālik b. Anas (d. 179/795), Rabīʿa (d. ca. 136/753),41 and oth-

35 See Darʾ, 1:206, lines 2–3.

36 Indeed, ḥaqīqa and majāz are usually the first pair of hermeneutic terms dealt with in
mature works of legal theory. Gleave, Islam and Literalism, 36.
37 “huwa nafs fiʿl al-maʾmūr bihi wa-tark al-manhī ʿanhu.” Darʾ, 1:206, lines 18–19.
38 See Darʾ, 1:206, line 19 to 1:207, line 3.
39 Q. Ṭā Hā 20:5.
40 Q. al-Aʿrāf 7:54.
41 Rabīʿa b. Abī ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Farrūkh, also known as “Rabīʿat al-Raʾy.” There is some dis-
agreement regarding the date of Rabīʿa’s death. The year 136/753 (or 754) seems to be the
most common date reported and is the one given, for instance, by al-Dhahabī, on the

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ers used to say, “God’s settling [on the throne] is known (al-istiwāʾ maʿlūm), but
the modality of it is unknown (al-kayf majhūl).”42 In other words, the lexical sig-
nification (maʿnā) of the phrase “istawā ʿalā al-ʿarsh”—according to the speech
convention of the Arabs—is known (maʿlūm); it is the modality (kayf/kayfiyya)
of how such an action pertains to God, who is utterly unlike any created being,
that is unknown to us (huwa al-majhūl lanā).43 According to Ibn Taymiyya, it is
the metaphysical and ontological modality—and therefore the ultimate reality
(ḥaqīqa)—of God’s settling that constitutes the taʾwīl that is known only unto
God, not the lexical significance of the phrase “istawā ʿalā al-ʿarsh” (the taʾwīl
of which, from the linguistic perspective, is known to us as well). If the lexical
signification of the verse, as understood according to the linguistic convention
of the Salaf, were not known to us, then the verse would simply have no deter-
minable meaning for us whatsoever, an eventuality precluded by the fact of
revelation’s signature clarity (bayān) and lack of ambiguity.
In support of this understanding of taʾwīl, Ibn Taymiyya appeals to the early
jurist, muftī of Medina, and contemporary of Mālik, Ibn al-Mājishūn (d. 164/780
or 781),44 as well as to Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal “and others among the Salaf,” who used
to say, “We do not know the ‘how’ (kayfiyya) of what God has stated about
Himself, even though we do know its explication (tafsīrahu) and its mean-
ing (maʿnāhu).”45 Indeed, al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (d. 110/728) reportedly stated that
“God did not reveal any verse except that He desired [us] to know what He

authority of Ibn Saʿd (d. 230/845) from al-Wāqidī (d. 207/823). See al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 6:93.
Other dates cited are 133/750 or 751 and 142/759 or 760.
42 See Darʾ, 1:207, line 6; 5:382, line 9; and 7:328, line 11.
43 Darʾ, 5:235, line 2.
44 ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. ʿAbd Allāh b. Abī Salama al-Mājishūn, referred to alternatively as “al-
Mājishūn” and “Ibn al-Mājishūn,” not to be confused with his son, ʿAbd al-Malik b. ʿAbd
al-ʿAzīz b. al-Mājishūn (d. 213/828 or 214/829), an accomplished jurist and muftī of Medina
in his own right. On (Ibn) al-Mājishūn’s theological views, see al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 7:309–
312, esp. 311ff. Goldziher cites Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr’s (d. 463/1071) description of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz
b. al-Mājishūn as “der erste […], welcher die Lehre der muhammedanischen Theologen in
Medîna in einem Codex zusammenfasste” (the first to summarize the teachings of Muslim
theologians in Medina in a codex). See Goldziher, Muhammedanische Studien, 2:219, also
cited (with the English translation given here) and discussed in Brockopp, “Competing
Theories of Authority in Early Mālikī Texts,” 9.
45 Darʾ, 1:207, lines 6–8. See also Darʾ, 5:234, lines 14–16 and further at 5:235, lines 1–2, where
Ibn Taymiyya explains that “knowledge of [the meaning of] istiwāʾ (‘settling’) is a question
of tafsīr, which is the taʾwīl of which we have knowledge. As for the modality (al-kayf )
[thereof], this is the taʾwīl of which only God has knowledge and which is unknown
(majhūl) to us.” (See index of Arabic passages.) On Ibn Taymiyya’s affirmation of God’s
names and attributes as revealed, but without probing into modality, see Hoover, Ibn
Taymiyya’s Theodicy, 48–56 (esp. 48–52).

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ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl, or what is revelation? 193

meant by it,”46 and in this spirit, Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal “explicated ( fassara) all the
mutashābih verses in the Qurʾān and clarified what was meant by them.”47 By
sharp contrast, the third, technical meaning of “taʾwīl,” involving deflection to
a non-literal (or figurative) interpretation, was condemned by the Salaf and
early authorities as “false and devoid of any reality (or truth)” (bāṭil lā ḥaqīqata
lahu).48 This third form of taʾwīl, Ibn Taymiyya concludes, amounts to “distort-
ing words from their true intended meanings”49 and “deviating with regard to
God’s names and (revealed) verses.”50

2 The Centrality of Context and Ibn Taymiyya’s “Contextual Taʾwīl”

We have seen in the preceding section that, according to Ibn Taymiyya, the texts
of revelation do not allow for taʾwīl (or even tafwīḍ) in the sense employed
by later thinkers, which presumes the presence of a metaphorical meaning
arrived at by diverting a text from its primary, literal (ḥaqīqa) signification to
a secondary, non-literal or figurative (majāz) meaning. Are we to understand
from this that Ibn Taymiyya did not accept the existence of non-literal usage,
either in language as a whole or in the texts of revelation in particular, in other
words, that he did not believe in the equivalent of what is meant by taʾwīl
in the later tradition? To answer this important question, we must carefully
examine Ibn Taymiyya’s views on the centrality of context in determining the
meaning of language and texts, with linguistic factors determinative through-
out, as opposed to the notion of primary/preponderant versus secondary/non-
preponderant meanings with reason playing the decisive role in determining
the intended meaning. In effect, Ibn Taymiyya advances a two-pronged argu-
ment concerning context, one addressing the use of language per se and the
other addressing the specific case of the language and texts of revelation as
embodied in the Qurʾān and Sunna.
Regarding the general use of language, when Ibn Taymiyya argues that there
is no “figurative” or “non-literal” use (majāz) in language—and hence no taʾwīl

46 “mā anzala Allāh āya illā wa-huwa yuḥibbu an yuʿlama mā arāda bihā.”Darʾ, 1:208, lines 9–
10.
47 Darʾ, 1:207, lines 10–11.
48 Darʾ, 5:382, line 15.
49 “taḥrīf al-kalim ʿan mawāḍiʿihi” (Darʾ, 5:382, lines 15–-16), borrowed from several Qurʾānic
passages in which past communities are indicted for distorting their respective scriptures.
See, for instance, Q. al-Nisāʾ 4:46 and al-Māʾida 5:13. On the concept of taḥrīf as deployed
in the Qurʾān, see Gleave, Islam and Literalism, 66–72.
50 “al-ilḥād fī asmāʾ Allāh wa-āyātihi” (Darʾ, 5:382, line 16), an allusion to Q. al-Aʿrāf 7:180 and
Fuṣṣilat 41:40.

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as understood by the later tradition—he is not arguing that words can have
only one meaning or that they must always be understood in their most obvi-
ous sense, that is, the sense that the tradition normally refers to as the “lit-
eral” (ḥaqīqa), “apparent” (ẓāhir), or “preponderant” (rājiḥ) meaning of the
word. Rather, he maintains that the distinction between “literal” (ḥaqīqa) and
“non-literal” (majāz) meanings is, in fact, artificial, a mental construct entirely
divorced from the way language functions in the real world.51 How is this so?
Ibn Taymiyya is fully aware that many words in a given language can be (and
often are) used to denote a number of different meanings, admitting an equiv-
ocity that he would nevertheless be loath to classify as “metaphorical” or “figu-
rative.” For instance, he accepts that the conventions of the Arabic language
allow the word yad (“hand”) to be used to mean things other than a five-
fingered appendage of flesh and bone. Depending on context, for example, it
may be used to mean “help” (as in English “Can you give me a hand?”) or “col-
lusion” (as in English “She certainly had a hand in this!”). What Ibn Taymiyya
rejects is the notion that words possess, entirely independent of context, par-
ticular “literal,” “real,” or “primary” meanings, which we are then, in certain cir-
cumstances (often motivated by putatively rational considerations), compelled
to abandon in favor of “secondary,” “non-literal,” or “metaphorical” meanings.
Rather, for Ibn Taymiyya, all meaning—and in each and every instance of lan-
guage use—is determined by context, as judged in light of the known, commu-
nally shared conventions of the language in question.52

51 Yunis Ali mentions the difficulty, even in modern pragmatics, of providing a “water-tight
distinction” between literal and non-literal use. He remarks that mainstream scholars of
uṣūl al-fiqh devised lists of criteria to make this distinction clear but that some uṣūlīs
doubted their adequacy. By contrast, Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya “deny the
plausibility of the distinction altogether,” claiming that it is a “technical construct, and that
it has no empirical basis.” Yunis Ali, Medieval Islamic Pragmatics, 75. For a detailed presen-
tation of Ibn Taymiyya’s (and Ibn Qayyim’s) arguments against the ḥaqīqa–majāz distinc-
tion, see Yunis Ali, 109–114. On Ibn Taymiyya’s own account of majāz, see Yunis Ali, 114–125.
52 See also Ibn Taymiyya, MF, 20:459, where he affirms that “a word can only signify in
conjunction with the non-verbal context [in which it is used]” (al-lafẓ lam yadulla illā
bi-qarāʾin maʿnawiyya). Interestingly, Ibn Taymiyya’s position here resembles that of his
contemporary, the famous Shīʿī jurist Jamāl al-Dīn (“al-ʿAllāma”) al-Ḥillī (d. 726/1325). In
response to common definitions of ẓāhir given by the likes of al-Ghazālī and al-Āmidī,
who define ẓāhir as the meaning that is likely to conform with a word’s putative initial
assignation, or waḍʿ, but do not negate the possibility that the speaker may have intended
a non-waḍʿī (that is, a majāzī) meaning, al-Ḥillī states: “The ẓāhir is not restricted to what-
ever is indicated by the original [waḍʿ] or by convention. Rather every utterance in which
there is a meaning that establishes itself as preponderant (tarajjaḥ) is ẓāhir in relation to
[the intended meaning].” See al-Ḥillī, Nihāyat al-wuṣūl, 2:489 (cited, with the translation
given here, in Gleave, Islam and Literalism, 50). (See index of Arabic passages.) See further

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ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl, or what is revelation? 195

As a consequence of this radical dependence of meaning on context, the

English word “hand” or the Arabic word yad simply cannot be said to signify
a particular meaning absent any context whatsoever—that is, say, as an iso-
lated item in a vocabulary list or as written up at random on a blackboard.
Rather, in every instance in which the word “hand” ( yad) is used, it is per-
force employed in a particular context and against the backdrop of a partic-
ular linguistic convention, and what the speaker means by the word in any
given utterance can, in every case, only be determined by considering that con-
text in light of that convention. In other words, even if it happens to be the
case that the word “hand” is used to mean “five-fingered fleshy appendage” in
the great majority of instances in which a given speech community uses it,
that would not make this particular meaning the preponderant (rājiḥ), real/lit-
eral (ḥaqīqa), or apparent (ẓāhir) sense of the word, with the meanings “help”
and “collusion” classed as secondary, non-preponderant (marjūḥ), or figurative
(majāz). This is so because in every instance, Ibn Taymiyya maintains, we are
only able to determine what the speaker means by any word53 through con-
sidering the context in which it has been used. Thus, if one were to say, “I
shall wash my hands before dinner,” then the real, literal, ḥaqīqa meaning of
“hand” in this instance would indeed be the five-fingered appendage attached
to the end of one’s arm. If, however, one were to ask, “Can you please give
me a hand?” then the real, literal, ḥaqīqa sense of “hand” in this instance, as
determined conclusively and unambiguously by the context, would be none
other than “help” or “assistance.” Indeed, a person who, upon being asked to
“give me a hand,” proceeded to cut off his metacarpus at the wrist and offer up
his actual physical hand would be deemed fully incapable of judging context
or else woefully ignorant of the universally shared conventions of the English
language. Further, he would be unjustified in accusing his interlocutor of aban-
doning clear speech in favor of a vague, or even slightly ambiguous, turn of
phrase. Finally, since “help” is the only meaning that any English speaker would
understand in this context, then “help,” according to Ibn Taymiyya, would
be the apparent (ẓāhir), “literal” (ḥaqīqa) sense of the word in this particu-
lar instance. Using the word “hand” to mean “help” in such a case would not
count as metaphorical for him since, once again, all possible connotations of a
given word are ḥaqīqa (“real,” “literal”) and ẓāhir (“apparent”) in their respective

remarks on al-Ḥillī’s conception of ẓāhir, and the role that context plays in it, at Gleave,
50–55.
53 See Ibn Taymiyya, Kitāb al-Īmān, 32, where he states, “No one may construe a person’s
speech [to mean] other than what he [the speaker] is known to have intended [or meant],
not according to the [various meanings] that word may convey in any [random] person’s
speech” (laysa li-aḥad an yaḥmila kalām aḥad min al-nās illā ʿalā mā ʿurifa annahu arādahu
lā ʿalā mā yaḥtamiluhu dhālika al-lafẓ fī kalām kulli aḥad).

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contexts.54 Deflection of the meaning (ṣarf al-maʿnā) of a revealed text, invari-

ably negative in Ibn Taymiyya’s view, would involve a deflection from whatever
meaning has been determined—by context, convention, and related texts—to
be the apparent sense in favor of some other meaning that cannot be defended
on these bases. Presumably, this would be done out of a desire to accommo-
date an alleged rational objection to the primary (and in this sense “ẓāhir”)
meaning, as duly determined by the factors mentioned. Such a deflection can,
in fact, be carried out only on the basis of a scriptural proof or indicant (dalīl
sharʿī),55 by which Ibn Taymiyya presumably means other texts of revelation
that illuminate, and qualify the interpretation of, the text whose meaning is to
be deflected.56
In addition to the central role he assigns to context, Ibn Taymiyya elsewhere
speaks of the centrality of tabādur (the sense that first impresses itself upon
the mind) in determining the meaning intended by the speaker (murād al-
mutakallim) in a given communicative situation. All lexicographers agree, for
instance, that the word ẓahr (“back”) can be used in Arabic to refer to all ani-
mal backs. Nevertheless, what first comes to mind (mā yatabādaru ilā al-dhihn)
for most people upon hearing the word ẓahr is the back of a human only. This,
according to Ibn Taymiyya, results from the fact that “ẓahr” happens to be used
most frequently in reference to human backs, as opposed to the backs of ants,
or camels, or horses. This frequency does not, however, make the human back
a unique and privileged ḥaqīqa meaning of the word ẓahr but only makes it
the statistically dominant one. As for whether, in any given instance of actual
language use, a human back, an ant back, or any other type of back is the
meaning intended by the speaker, this can only be determined on the basis of
various contextual factors accompanying the given utterance.57 In discussing
the notion of tabādur, Mohamed Yunis Ali remarks that “the opponents of
majāz [such as Ibn Taymiyya] would prefer to say that what occurs to the mind
first in the actual respective situation is the intended and, consequently, the
proper meaning.”58 In other words, proper meaning (al-maʿnā al-ḥaqīqa) and
intended meaning (al-maʿnā al-murād)—as determined (partly) on the basis

54 Ibn Taymiyya states explicitly, as a matter of principle, that “when contextual evidence
makes the meaning of a word clear, then that [meaning] is the apparent [or ‘literal’] sense
[i.e., in that context]” (al-lafẓ idhā qurina bihi mā yubayyinu maʿnāhu kāna dhālika huwa
ẓāhirahu). Darʾ, 5:236, line 2.
55 See Darʾ, 5:233, lines 9–11.
56 See Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima, 93–105 (esp. 93–95). This passage is summarized in Saleh,
“Radical Hermeneutics,” 144–148.
57 See, e.g., Ibn Taymiyya, MF, 20:436–437 and MF, 20:449–450.
58 Yunis Ali, Medieval Islamic Pragmatics, 111–112.

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ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl, or what is revelation? 197

of tabādur—are, for Ibn Taymiyya, one and the same in any given instance.
Surprisingly, Ibn Taymiyya does not discuss the concept of tabādur explicitly
in the Darʾ taʿāruḍ, despite the fact that he deals at length with other aspects
of the communicative process in light of which he holds proper and intended
meaning to be the same.
Ibn Taymiyya’s theory of meaning as entirely dependent on and inseparable
from context, along with the related concept of tabādur, stands in notable con-
trast to the view of mainstream legal theorists, which holds that “an expression
is ḥaqīqah if it signifies independently of context (in dalla bi-lā qarīnah) and
majāz if it does not signify without context.”59 For Ibn Taymiyya, this distinc-
tion is meaningless since, he insists, there is no entirely context-free instance
of actual language use. This does not negate the fact, as he explains in Kitāb
al-Īmān, that “expressions in isolation can indeed be found in the works of
lexicographers, but this is because these abstract expressions are understood
by lexicographers to represent the common range of what native speakers
mean in different utterances.”60 In other words, the mainstream uṣūl al-fiqh
model regards the ẓāhir meaning as inhering in the texts themselves, and this
ẓāhir meaning either coincides or does not coincide with the meaning deter-
mined, on the basis of contextual clues, to be that intended by the speaker.
The apparent (ẓāhir) meaning of a text, on the mainstream model, can thus
diverge from the intended meaning of the author. For Ibn Taymiyya, by con-
trast, texts cannot be said to possess or to convey any meaning whatsoever on
their own, that is, as abstract entities divorced from the intentional (and con-
textualized) locutionary act of the speaker. Whatever speaker-intended mean-
ing the context determines the speaker to have meant on a given occasion
is, for Ibn Taymiyya, one and the same as the ẓāhir meaning of the text. In
fact, even referring to it as the ẓāhir meaning of the text, as opposed to the
ẓāhir meaning of the author that he intends to convey through the text, risks
misrepresenting Ibn Taymiyya’s position since, once again, any actual mean-
ing (maʿnā) involved can only be that of a conscious agent (the speaker of
an utterance or the author of a text) and not of the utterance or the text
itself. This stance, in fact, corresponds perfectly with Ibn Taymiyya’s consis-
tent and rigorous distinction between what he regards as the theoretical con-
structs of the mind and the external facts of objective reality (a topic addressed
at length in chapter 5). Though he does not say so himself (as far as I am
aware), Ibn Taymiyya would probably dismiss the notion of a text holding

59 Ibid., 99.
60 Ibn Taymiyya, Kitāb al-Īmān, 104 (also cited, with the translation given here, in Yunis Ali,
Medieval Islamic Pragmatics, 115).

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a meaning entirely on its own (in isolation from the intent of its author) as
a pure mental abstraction. Since the text did not write itself, it cannot prop-
erly be seen as a locus where meaning somehow resides in abstraction from
the actual communicative process instantiated between a willful speaker and
a conscious, recipient interlocutor.
Finally, we may compare Ibn Taymiyya’s equation of ẓāhir and intended
meaning with the mainstream uṣūlī taxonomy of ẓāhir and muʾawwal mean-
ings. The mainstream taxonomy classifies as an “interpreted” or non-apparent
(muʾawwal) meaning any meaning that is taken to be the one intended by the
speaker but that (a) is not in accord with the apparent (ẓāhir) meaning of a
given text when viewed in isolation and (b) was only arrived at through the
consideration of a “non-contiguous textual indicator elsewhere within the rev-
elatory corpus.”61 In this schema, the ẓāhir meaning may eventually be put
aside and the muʾawwal meaning identified as that intended by the speaker
(and, thus, as the correct interpretation of the text). Ibn Taymiyya, however,
seems to go so far as to identify the ẓāhir meaning of any text as whichever
meaning happens to emerge once all other relevant revelatory data have been
brought to bear—since, once again, he does not seem to concede any meaning-
ful distinction between “apparent” (ẓāhir) meaning and intended meaning. He
would thus seem to have no particular name or category for the meaning that
seems to emerge from a text when considered in isolation, prior to an inductive
investigation of the revealed texts as a whole.

2.1 Ibn Taymiyya’s Contextual Taʾwīl in Practice

The foregoing principles of contextual interpretation, tabādur, and the iden-
tification of ẓāhir meaning with intended meaning apply to language use in
general and represent Ibn Taymiyya’s account of the intrinsic mechanism by
which meanings are expressed via human language at all times and in all places.
Islamic revelation, which represents an expression of meaning addressed to
human beings in the particular language of Arabic, necessarily conforms to
the same universal linguistic principles delineated above. That is, the texts of
the Qurʾān and Sunna, like any other communication via human language,
necessarily convey their substantive content through words (alfāẓ), the mean-
ings of which are determined, in each and every instance, as a function of the
immediate context (qarāʾin, siyāq al-kalām) as judged in light of the shared lin-
guistic convention (ʿurf ) of their original target audience, namely, the Prophet
Muḥammad and his immediate Companions. We have seen that Ibn Taymiyya

61 Gleave, Islam and Literalism, 51.

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ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl, or what is revelation? 199

lays great stress on the fact that revelation, by its own declaration, is eminently
clear (mubīn) and devoid of any ambiguity that would obscure its message
or impede its communication to its intended recipients.62 Given his theory of
meaning and the preeminent role of context in it, Ibn Taymiyya understands
the translucent clarity of revelation to rest on a further principle: namely,
that the texts of revelation, taken collectively, always contain within them
explicit indications of the meaning intended by “ambiguous” passages.63 We
may denote this principle by the (admittedly unwieldy) term “semantically
explicit, self-contained intertextuality.” Not only does this principle confer
upon the revealed texts their signature clarity, but, in a major move Ibn Tay-
miyya makes against the rationalists, it also ensures that the texts remain fully
independent of any external factor (particularly the deliverances of abstract
rational speculation) in conveying the meanings they were intended to convey.
The way in which the principle of semantically explicit, self-contained inter-
textuality functions is best illustrated by examining instances of its application,
instances in which Ibn Taymiyya attempts to sidestep the straightforward lit-
eral meaning of “problematic” texts while nevertheless adhering firmly to his
linguistic principles and avoiding recourse to purely rational considerations. A
simple example is the following ḥadīth, reported on the authority of Ibn ʿAbbās:
“The Black Stone is the right hand of God on earth; whoever shakes it and
kisses it, it is as if he had shaken and kissed the right hand of God.” Though
Ibn Taymiyya rejects the authenticity of this report as a prophetic ḥadīth,64
he nonetheless considers it a report whose literal wording, or obvious sense
(ẓāhir), renders its intended meaning clear and thus stands in no need of an

62 Ibn Taymiyya’s theory of the clarity of revelation and the necessarily unambiguous nature
of its propositional content mirrors, in numerous interesting respects, the views of the
major Muʿtazilī theologian, Shāfiʿī jurist, and systematizer of Muʿtazilī thought, al-Qāḍī
ʿAbd al-Jabbār (d. 415/1025). See, e.g., ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s argument for the linguistic univo-
cality of the Qurʾān in Schöck, Koranexegese, Grammatik und Logik, 382–393. See also
Vishanoff, Formation, 2.
63 See, for instance, Darʾ, 5:239, line 18 to 5:240, line 2, where Ibn Taymiyya states, “al-
tafsīr alladhī bihi yuʿrafu al-ṣawāb qad dhukira mā yadullu ʿalayhi fī nafs al-khiṭāb immā
maqrūnan bihi wa-immā fī naṣṣ ākhar.” The principle of intertextual clarification—in
which one text of revelation elucidates another, resulting in the clarity (bayān) of reve-
lation as a whole—goes back to al-Shāfiʿī, who, in his Risāla, sets out five discrete ways in
which the meaning of an initially ambiguous Qurʾānic passage can be clarified by appeal
to various forms of intertextual evidence. See Vishanoff, Formation, 42–44.
64 On the status of this ḥadīth, see Darʾ, 5:236, lines 8–9; 5:239, lines 5–6; 3:384, line 9; and
the editor’s note at 3:384, n. 2. The ḥadīth appears in various versions and has alterna-
tively been categorized as fair (ḥasan), weak but with corroborating narrations (ḍaʿīf lahu
shawāhid), and authentic (ṣaḥīḥ) but as a saying of Ibn ʿAbbās, not the Prophet.

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external factor—such as reason—to deflect it from its (putative) outward sense

via taʾwīl (that is, in order to avoid the implication that the Black Stone consti-
tutes a divine attribute, namely, God’s hand).65 In fact, this ḥadīth, Ibn Taymiyya
maintains, is explicit (ṣarīḥ) in affirming that the Black Stone is not the hand of
God. This is so because, first, the predicative statement “the Black Stone is the
right hand of God” is restricted by the qualifier “on earth.” Though Ibn Taymiyya
does not say so explicitly, he implies that since it is known, on the basis of
other texts, that God does not inhere in the earth in any manner, the qualifi-
cation that the Black Stone is the right hand of God “on earth” immediately
alerts the listener to the fact that the predication is not to be taken “literally.”
Second, we know the Black Stone is not the hand of God because the ḥadīth
states explicitly that whoever greets (ṣāfaḥa; lit. “shakes the hand of”) the Black
Stone, it is as if ( fa-ka-annamā) he had shaken the hand of God. And since it
is known that the thing compared (mushabbah) in a simile is other than the
object to which it is likened (mushabbah bihi), Ibn Taymiyya asserts that the
ḥadīth is explicit (ṣarīḥ) in affirming that the act of greeting the Black Stone (the
mushabbah) is not, in fact, synonymous with the act of shaking the right hand
of God (the mushabbah bihi). This amounts to an explicit denial that the Black
Stone is literally the right hand of God, be it on earth or elsewhere. For these
reasons, the ḥadīth requires no taʾwīl, or figurative reinterpretation, at variance
with its obvious sense (ẓāhir).66 Ibn Taymiyya affirms that there are numerous
such examples from the Qurʾān and the ḥadīth in which the text itself makes
it clear that the false (bāṭil) meaning is not the one intended. This relieves us
of any need, in order to disavow this false meaning, for a “separate indicant or
a figurative reinterpretation (taʾwīl) predicated on a deflection of the explicit
verbal form (lafẓ) from its [naturally understood] import and connotation.”67
And while Ibn Taymiyya does not deny that reason, on its own, might also rec-
ognize that it is impossible for a created element of the world (such as a black
stone) to be an attribute of a transcendent and perfect God, we are in no way
dependent on reason’s judgement of this impossibility for our knowledge that
this is what revelation is affirming.
It is important to reiterate, with regard to the foregoing ḥadīth and similar
texts, that Ibn Taymiyya is by no means claiming that all linguistic utterances
are to be taken “literally.” Rather, he is saying that in all instances, the correct

65 “min al-akhbār mā yakūnu ẓāhiruhu yubayyinu al-murād bihi lā yaḥtāju ilā dalīl yaṣrifuhu
ʿan ẓāhirihi.” Darʾ, 3:384, lines 5–6.
66 “lam yaḥtaj ilā taʾwīl yukhālifu ẓāhirahu.” Darʾ, 3:384, lines 12–13.
67 “fa-lā yaḥtāju nafy dhālika ilā dalīl munfaṣil wa-lā taʾwīl yukhriju al-lafẓ ʿan mūjibihi wa-
muqtaḍāhu.”Darʾ, 3:385, lines 1–2. For Ibn Taymiyya’s discussion of the Black Stone ḥadīth,
see, inter alia, Darʾ, 3:384, line 5 to 3:385, line 2.

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ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl, or what is revelation? 201

intended meaning is inherent in the texts themselves and (readily) discernible

from them. This eliminates the need for arguments and would-be proofs of a
purely speculative or theoretical nature derived from sources extrinsic to rev-
elation. It bears to be stressed that when Ibn Taymiyya insists upon a firm
adherence to the “lafẓ” (that is, to the explicit verbal form) of a text, he is not
advocating anything like a strict “literalism.” For Ibn Taymiyya, the lafẓ is never
conceived of as a bare word, primordially assigned to denote a specific, disem-
bodied “primary” meaning. Rather, what Ibn Taymiyya refers to as the “lafẓ” is
always the lafẓ (1) as embedded in a given context, (2) as understood according
to the linguistic conventions of the Salaf, and (3) as interpreted in light of other
relevant texts. There is simply no such thing as a lafẓ in the abstract since no
lafẓ, for Ibn Taymiyya, possesses any determinable meaning whatsoever out-
side a particular, contextualized instance of use. In other words, he rejects the
meaning–use distinction altogether. As we have seen above with the example
of the word “hand” ( yad), Ibn Taymiyya does not admit of any preponderant
(rājiḥ) or “literal” (ḥaqīqa) meaning that can simply be assumed by default
unless a rational (or even a textual) objection arises to alert us that such mean-
ing cannot have been the one meant. So, while Ibn Taymiyya certainly purports
to be a strict textualist, he is by no means a strict literalist in the way this term is
normally understood.68 The true literalist would be the one who claimed that
words have primary, disembodied default meanings, then insisted that a word
can be taken to denote only this one meaning whenever and wherever it is used,
regardless of such factors as context, convention, and intertextuality (let alone
the presence of a putative rational objection). Literalism in this sense does not
reflect the position of Ibn Taymiyya and, after him, of his student, Ibn Qayyim
al-Jawziyya; rather, it seems to come somewhat closer to that of the Ẓāhirīs,
whose approach appears, at least in certain respects, to be the diametric oppo-
site of Ibn Taymiyya’s. Whereas Ibn Taymiyya proposes a heavily pragmatic
model in which context—linguistic and paralinguistic—and the intent of the
speaker are central, the Ẓāhirī model has been characterized as one that oper-
ates primarily in reverse. According to Yunis Ali, for instance, the Ẓāhirī model
is one that “is based primarily on the non-pragmatic givens of the language and
stresses the predetermined conventions of the language which are encoded
in the linguistic structure of the texts as the essential, and perhaps the only
requirements for communication,” while “extra-linguistic contexts are gener-
ally ignored and the inferential capacity of the hearer has almost no role to play

68 Here again the parallel with al-ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī’s views is striking. See Gleave, Islam and
Literalism, 52 and 52, n. 93.

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in interpretation.”69 Recent work by Amr Osman, however, has nuanced the

notion of Ẓāhirī thought as unremittingly “literalist” in this sense, suggesting
“textualism” instead as a more accurate description of the premises, method-
ologies, and aims of the school.70 My analysis of the Darʾ taʿāruḍ has led me to
a similar conclusion regarding the “textualism” of Ibn Taymiyya, who has long
been described—and decried—as a simplistic “literalist” in both Muslim and
non-Muslim sources.71

2.2 Taʾwīl on the Basis of Intertextuality

We can gain further insight into Ibn Taymiyya’s “contextual taʾwīl”—particu-
larly the aspect of it that I have referred to as the principle of intertextuality—
by examining instances of taʾwīl by Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal that Ibn Taymiyya cites
approvingly as paradigmatic examples of proper engagement with the texts.
Ibn Taymiyya cites one such example from Ibn Ḥanbal’s purported work,
al-Radd ʿalā al-jahmiyya wa-l-zanādiqa. The example involves Ibn Ḥanbal’s re-
sponse to those among the “Jahmiyya” who deny that God is distinct and sep-
arate from (mubāyin li) creation, claiming instead that He is everywhere (that
is, in all places such that no place is ever devoid of Him and He is never in one
place to the exclusion of another). The implication is that God Himself—that
is, God in His very essence—is not distinct from the world but rather inheres in
every place within it. Those holding this view find support in a “literal” reading
of Q. al-Anʿām 6:3: “And He is God in the heavens and on the earth,”72 interpret-
ing this to mean that God inheres with His essence in the heavens and the earth.
Ibn Ḥanbal’s ultimate response to this contention is that the true meaning of
this verse is that He is the God of those in the heavens and the God of those on

69 Yunis Ali, Medieval Islamic Pragmatics, 9. For useful summary treatments of literalism
and Ẓāhirī thought, particularly in the context of legal hermeneutics, see Yunis Ali, 130ff.;
Vishanoff, Formation, 66–108 (esp. 88–102); and Gleave, Islam and Literalism, 146–174,
esp. 150ff. Roger Arnaldez’s Grammaire et théologie chez Ibn Ḥazm de Cordoue remains
an excellent resource, particularly for Ẓāhirī thought as developed by its famous latter-
day representative, Ibn Ḥazm (d. 456/1064). The most recent comprehensive study of the
history and doctrines of the Ẓāhirī school—and the first monograph on the topic since
Goldziher’s 1884 work, Die Ẓâhiriten—is Amr Osman, Ẓāhirī Madhhab.
70 See Osman, Ẓāhirī Madhhab, 171–224.
71 In this vein, see also Gleave, Islam and Literalism, 2 for the observation that “those Muslim
groups and tendencies commonly called ‘literalists’ (ḥashwiyya, ẓāhiriyya, salafiyya and so
on) are simply applying rules concerning non-deviation from the literal meaning with a
greater level of rigidity than other so-called ‘non-literalists’. The various groups are not, in
truth, operating in a different hermeneutic context.”
72 “wa-huwa Llāhu fī l-samāwāti wa-fī l-arḍ” (Q. al-Anʿām 6:3).

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ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl, or what is revelation? 203

the earth, while He Himself is above the throne, encompassing with His knowl-
edge everything beneath the throne (that is, all of creation). No place is devoid
of God’s knowledge, nor is His knowledge in one place to the exclusion of
another.
Yet how does Ibn Ḥanbal arrive at this conclusion, which seems to repre-
sent a rather extreme particularization (takhṣīṣ) of the overt import of the
verse (in fact, it would seem to contradict the most “literal” meaning of the
verse and to constitute a straightforward instance of the kind of taʾwīl that Ibn
Taymiyya rejects)? In establishing the correct meaning of this verse, Ibn Ḥanbal
makes a textual appeal to numerous other verses describing God as being “in
the heavens” ( fī al-samāʾ)73 and “above” ( fawq)—in other words, not inherent
in creation in any way.74 He also appeals to a number of verses showing that
everything “down” (asfal) is blameworthy and ignoble (madhmūm), such that
in addition to being ontologically impossible, it would also be morally unbefit-
ting for God to be “down here” on earth.75 He combines this with the common
sense appeal that we know instinctively (that is, by the fiṭra) that God, in His
exaltedness and majesty, could not possibly inhere in numerous filthy and exe-
crable places, such as our innards or those of a pig or other such squalid loca-
tions. Thus, Ibn Ḥanbal concludes, it is inconceivable that God should inhere
in the earth ( fī al-arḍ) or in any part of creation. Consequently, a verse like Q.
al-Anʿām 6:3: “And He is God in the heavens and on the earth” must be taken to
mean that He is the God of those that are in the heavens (such as the angels)
and of those that are on the earth (such as humans, birds, and animals). Yet His
lordship over them entails that although He is separate and distinct from them,
He has full knowledge of them. This is confirmed by Q. al-Ṭalāq 65:12: “that you
may know that God has power over all things and that God encompasses all
things with His knowledge.”
The foregoing instance of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal’s use of taʾwīl provides an exam-
ple of what I have called the principle of intertextuality. While it is true that Ibn
Taymiyya is normally at pains to show that single verses and ḥadīth contain
their own self-exonerating elements of clarification, he nevertheless allows,
as we see here, that disparate texts of revelation can elucidate one another.

73 He interprets this to mean not contained in the physical heavens but, rather, distinct from
all created things (that is, from the creation as a whole) and distinctly above it, reading
“fī al-samāʾ ”—derived from the verb samā, yasmū (to be high, lofty)—in this case as syn-
onymous with an expression like “fī al-ʿuluww.”
74 These verses are Q. al-Baqara 2:29, Āl ʿImrān 3:55, al-Nisāʾ 4:158, al-Anʿām 6:18, al-Naḥl
16:50, Fāṭir 35:10, al-Mulk 67:16–17, and al-Maʿārij 70:4.
75 See, for example, Q. Fuṣṣilat 41:29 and al-Tīn 95:5.

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This is precisely why I refer to his theory as one of “intertextuality.” The crit-
ical point for Ibn Taymiyya, ultimately, is that the texts of revelation, taken
collectively and considered in light of one other, are always fully independent
and self-sufficient in conveying—explicitly—the meanings we are intended to
take from them. This premise explains why I qualify Ibn Taymiyya’s principle
of intertextuality as being both semantically explicit, as all meanings are indi-
cated in an explicit (ṣarīḥ) fashion when revelation is considered as a whole,
and self-contained, as the collectivity of revealed texts stands in no need of an
independent source, such as speculative reason, to endorse, qualify, or modify
any of the (explicitly indicated) meanings contained within them.

2.3 Taʾwīl on the Basis of the Positions of the Salaf

In addition to immediate context and the principle of intertextuality, Ibn
Taymiyya recognizes a third authoritative determinant of meaning for revealed
texts, namely, the reported statements (aqwāl) of the Companions and the
Salaf, especially when these statements converge to form a consensus (ijmāʿ) or
quasi-consensus. Thus, we sometimes find the “taʾwīl” of a verse explicitly justi-
fied on the basis that it is from the “aqwāl of the Salaf” or because the Salaf were
unanimous in interpreting the verse this way. We may cite as an example Q. al-
Ḥadīd 57:4: “And He is with you wheresoever you may be.”76 Ibn Taymiyya cites
Abū ʿUmar al-Ṭalamankī (d. 429/1038), who, in his book al-Wuṣūl ilā maʿrifat al-
uṣūl, reports a “consensus among the Muslims of ahl al-sunna” that this verse,
as well as similar verses in the Qurʾān (wa-naḥw dhālika min al-Qurʾān), refers
not to God’s essence or very self (dhāt), which is “above [and not inside] the
heavens,” but rather to His knowledge.77 A similar verse is Q. al-Mujādila 58:7:
“Never is there a secret parley among three but that He is their fourth.”78 On
the meaning of this verse, Ibn Taymiyya cites Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr (d. 463/1071),
who states that “the learned (ʿulamāʾ) among the Companions and the Suc-
cessors, from whom knowledge of taʾwīl is taken, affirm unanimously, with
respect to the taʾwīl of this verse, that God is upon His throne and that His
knowledge is in all places, and no one whose opinion is deemed authoritative
has contradicted them in this.”79 This understanding is further supported by a
statement reported of Mālik b. Anas, as well as of numerous other authorities

76 “wa-huwa maʿakum aynamā kuntum.”

77 Darʾ, 6:250, line 15 to 6:251, line 3.
78 “mā yakūnu min najwā thalāthatin illā huwa rābiʿuhum.”
79 “ajmaʿa ʿulamāʾ al-ṣaḥāba wa-l-tābiʿīn alladhīna ḥumila ʿanhum al-taʾwīl qālū fī taʾwīl
qawlihi taʿālā … huwa ʿalā al-ʿarsh wa-ʿilmuhu fī kulli makān wa-mā khālafahum fī dhālika
aḥad yuḥtajju bi-qawlihi.” Darʾ, 6:255, lines 7–11.

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ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl, or what is revelation? 205

both before and after him, through authentic chains of transmission (asānīd
ṣaḥīḥa) to the effect that “God is in the heavens ( fī al-samāʾ),80 but His knowl-
edge is in all places.”81
As we have seen, the specific interpretations cited above with regard to
verses stating that God “is God in the heavens and the earth” are ultimately
justified by appeal to the consensus (ijmāʿ) of the Salaf. But if this is the case,
then we may well raise the question, How did the Salaf know that this was
the meaning? Was it because the Prophet had explicitly informed them that
this was the correct interpretation of these verses? Was it on account of their
preeminent understanding of the Arabic language that they could understand
this meaning from the language of the verses directly and immediately? Was
it by comparing, even implicitly, such verses with other verses affirming God’s
transcendence and understanding these in light of their (the Salaf’s) emerg-
ing appreciation of the overall ontology and theology of the Qurʾān? Though
Ibn Taymiyya does not address these questions directly in the Darʾ (at least
not in the context of the verses under consideration), it would seem safe to
assume that any of the three, or a combination of them, could be at work
in the case of any given report of the Salaf’s positions (aqwāl). Yet, however
the Salaf came to endorse a particular view, the point for Ibn Taymiyya is that
once we ascertain that a given understanding or interpretation of revelation
has been transmitted to us from the Salaf (maʾthūr ʿan al-salaf ), their opin-
ion becomes a binding and authoritative determinant of the textual meaning
of that verse. If the Salaf are known to have understood a verse “non-literally,”
such as their understanding that only God’s knowledge and not God Himself
is “in the heavens and on earth,” then such is the legitimate meaning of the
verse. If, on the other hand, the Salaf are known to have understood a verse
according to its more “literal,” or ḥaqīqa, sense (ḥaqīqa as understood by the
mainstream, that is, not according to Ibn Taymiyya’s contextual construal of it),
such as their affirmation that God is indeed “above” the heavens “ḥaqīqatan,”

80 Ibn Taymiyya, as mentioned above, explains the phrase “fī al-samāʾ ” (in the heavens) as
being synonymous with “fī al-ʿuluww,” stressing that God is not in the heavens—that is,
inherent in and confined by the created universe—but rather above them, that is, beyond
and transcendent to creation. The main reason for stressing that God Himself is “above
the heavens” while His knowledge is “in all places” is to avoid the theologically (and ratio-
nally) precarious suggestion that God could inhere in, and thus be limited by, His creation
(though His knowledge nonetheless encompasses all things). The objection of the later
Ashʿarīs that holding God to be “above” creation would entail corporealism (tajsīm) by
attributing to Him spatial ___location ( jiha) is a related but separate point with which we
deal more closely in the following chapter.
81 See Darʾ, 6:261, line 19 to 6:262, line 4.

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206 chapter 4

then such is likewise the only legitimate interpretation of the verse in ques-
tion. What Ibn Taymiyya opposes is that latter-day philosophers or theologians
should put forth a “metaphorical” or otherwise non-apparent interpretation
based on factors extrinsic to the revealed texts, such as speculative rational (or,
as Ibn Taymiyya might say, “putatively” rational) considerations, particularly if
these contradict the straightforward construal of a given text as transmitted on
the authority of the Salaf.

3 The Salaf and the Authority of Their Linguistic Convention (ʿurf )

In the preceding section, we examined Ibn Taymiyya’s views on the central-

ity of context in determining the meaning of linguistic utterances in general
and of the texts of revelation in particular. I have also mentioned another cru-
cial element of Ibn Taymiyya’s hermeneutics, namely, that of the larger, well-
known linguistic habits and conventions (ʿurf ) of the speech community in
which a given utterance is made.82 Ibn Taymiyya insists that any utterance
directed to a community of people is necessarily subject to due considera-
tion of both context and convention. This principle applies equally to the
words of divine revelation, for even though the source of the linguistic prod-
uct in this case is God, He nevertheless addresses His revelation to human
beings by clothing it in a particular human language. That language, like any
other, operates within a living speech community, and revelation addresses
that community in light of the community’s established linguistic conventions
at the time revelation supervenes upon it. This is simply another way of say-
ing that revelation came to the Prophet Muḥammad and his Companions in
their own language and that if it were to be clear and manifest (mubīn) to
them—which the Qurʾān persistently affirms that it is—then it could only be
sent to them in conformity with their established patterns of language use.
This fact lies at the base of Ibn Taymiyya’s insistence that revelation always
be understood and interpreted according to the known linguistic conventions
of the initial recipient community. Indeed, linguistic convention (ʿurf ) forms
the larger backdrop against which the previously discussed principle of con-
textual interpretation is possible. My ability to judge from context that a state-
ment such as “Can you please give me a hand with the yard work?” is really
a request for assistance (and not my actual hand) is a result of my broader

82 The notion of the “normative speech of the Arabs” as an important element of the
hermeneutic endeavor, one that is central to Ibn Taymiyya, goes at least as far back as the
tafsīr of Muqātil b. Sulaymān (d. 150/767). Gleave, Islam and Literalism, 84. On Muqātil’s
tafsīr more generally, see Versteegh, Arabic Linguistic Tradition, 11–22.

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ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl, or what is revelation? 207

familiarity with the conventions of current-day English speakers. It is this famil-

iarity that allows me to determine successfully that in such a context, “hand”
means “help.” Absent sufficient familiarity with the larger linguistic convention
of the relevant speech community, one would have no grounds for selecting
which of the possible meanings of a word is intended in a given context.
Yet, in some cases, revelation impinges upon and modifies the previously
established linguistic convention and related conceptual categories, shifting
the meanings and implications of existing terms, altering their moral and eth-
ical content (or redefining them altogether), or introducing new terms and
usages that inaugurate fresh conventions in the language that correspond to
novel conceptual innovations.83 This linguistic convention that is proper to rev-
elation is technically known as ʿurf sharʿī, or the “convention of revelation,”
and stands beside the general communal convention discussed above.84 An
example of this revelational convention (ʿurf sharʿī) is the word ṣalāh, which,
before the advent of revelation, designated any type of supplication but was
reassigned by the Qurʾān to refer specifically to the well-known Muslim ritual
prayer. Because revelation has impinged upon and modified a previous linguis-
tic convention, we must consider not only the wider context of the pre-existing
convention that formed the linguistic backdrop of the revealed texts but also
the larger worldview of revelation, taking into account new meanings, terms,
and conventions that revelation itself has introduced. Ibn Taymiyya’s key con-
tention, however, remains the same: namely, that in all cases, the meaning of
revelation can be determined in a self-referentially independent manner, that
is, on the basis of the texts themselves as interpreted in light of the larger lin-
guistic convention and the specific terminological and conceptual innovations
inaugurated by revelation. We must therefore judge any putative conclusions of
abstract reasoning in light of what we have determined revelation, on its own
terms, to be saying rather than reinterpret revelation to conform to what are
thought to be the conclusions of independent reason. I speak deliberately here
of the “putative” conclusions of abstract reasoning and of what are “thought” to
be the conclusions of independent reason since, for Ibn Taymiyya, pure reason
(ʿaql ṣarīḥ) will never judge to be true any proposition that stands in conflict
with the texts of the Qurʾān or the authenticated Sunna.

83 The definitive works on this topic remain Toshihiko Izutsu’s three masterly studies, Ethico-
Religious Concepts in the Qurʾan, The Structure of Ethical Terms in the Quran, and God and
Man in the Qurʾan. See also Bravmann, Spiritual Background.
84 For a more detailed discussion of ʿurf sharʿī, or the “convention of revelation,” see Vis-
hanoff, Formation, passim; Gleave, Islam and Literalism, 37–39, 176–194, and passim; and
Weiss, The Search for God’s Law, 138–143, 449.

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3.1 The Salaf’s Authority in Knowledge and the Understanding

of Revelation
Central to Ibn Taymiyya’s worldview is the notion that the Salaf were not only
the most pious of Muslim generations but also the most knowledgeable and
possessed of the best and most perfect understanding of the faith, quite apart
from their exemplary practice thereof. In establishing this view, he appeals,
inter alia, to a statement by ʿAbd Allāh b. Masʿūd, who describes the Com-
panions as “having the purest hearts, possessing the deepest knowledge, and
exhibiting the least unnatural strain and affectation (takalluf )” of all Muslim
generations.85 Ibn Taymiyya holds these three qualities—purity of heart, clar-
ity and depth of intellect, and, as a natural accompaniment to both, straightfor-
wardness and a lack of affectation—in very high esteem, and, as demonstrated
in this study, he places them at the center of his entire epistemic system. A
further statement in deference to the Companions’ perspicacity, paraphrased
from al-Shāfiʿī’s Risāla, declares that the Companions were “superior to us in
every rational matter, science, and merit and in every means by which knowl-
edge is gained or truth is apprehended; what they opine for us is of greater
worth than what we opine for ourselves.”86 Ibn Taymiyya adds to these acco-
lades his own contention that “every person knows that the Companions, the
Successors, and the Successors of the Successors are the most perfectly gifted
in intellect of all people.”87 And it is precisely these first three generations, from
the Companions to the Successors of the Successors, that Ibn Taymiyya defines
as the “Salaf” and whose linguistic convention and understanding of the texts
he takes as uniquely authoritative for all later generations.
As we saw briefly in chapter 3, Ibn Taymiyya was particularly concerned to
defend the unique normative status of the Salaf and early authorities in light of
the later contention that they were content merely to believe in and uphold the
language of the revealed texts (alfāẓ al-nuṣūṣ) while turning away from a deep
contemplation and profound understanding of their meanings.88 This assump-
tion about the Salaf and their beliefs eventually led to the assertion that the
later scholars (the khalaf ) had a greater knowledge and deeper understand-
ing of the revealed texts than the Salaf, whose approach—based, allegedly, on
an unreflective affirmationism devoid of sophistication and nuance—repre-

85 “abarr hādhihi al-umma qulūban wa-aʿmaquhum ʿilman wa-aqalluhum takallufan.” Darʾ,

5:69, lines 13–15.
86 “innahum fawqanā fī kulli ʿaql wa-ʿilm wa-faḍl wa-sabab yunālu bihi ʿilm aw yudraku bihi
ṣawāb wa-raʾyuhum lanā khayr min raʾyinā li-anfusinā.” Darʾ, 5:73, lines 1–3.
87 “kullu aḥad yaʿlamu anna ʿuqūl al-ṣaḥāba wa-l-tābiʿīn wa-tābiʿihim akmal ʿuqūl al-nās.”
Darʾ, 5:72, lines 1–2.
88 Darʾ, 5:378, lines 6–8.

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ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl, or what is revelation? 209

sented merely the “safer” way.89 Ibn Taymiyya asserts that later thinkers were
induced to adopt such a position precisely because of their belief that a proper
understanding of the texts required the extensive use of rationalistic taʾwīl (in
the third, technical sense discussed above), an enterprise of which the authori-
ties of the Salaf were found to be conspicuously innocent. These later thinkers,
Ibn Taymiyya explains, tended to view the Salaf as being aware that numerous
words in revelation could carry many different meanings, but, since there was
a danger of error in assigning one particular meaning to a verse over another,
they preferred to follow the safer (aslam) way by upholding the verbal form
(lafẓ) of the texts while refraining from definitively endorsing any particu-
lar interpretation of their meaning (maʿnā): in other words, they practiced
tafwīḍ.90 Ibn Taymiyya is keen to exonerate the Salaf and the early authorities of
this charge by demonstrating that they (1) affirmed in a straightforward man-
ner the divine attributes specified in the texts; (2) contemplated and deeply
understood the full import of these texts; and (3) actively refuted the meth-
ods and the discrete views of the negationists (nufāh) once these began to
crop up,91 demonstrating them to be contrary both to the texts of revelation
(as authentically understood by the earliest generations) and to the dictates of
sound reason. Consequently, Ibn Taymiyya considers the way of the Salaf to be
both the safest (aslam) and the most intellectually rigorous (aʿlam wa-aḥkam)
at the same time.92
In establishing what he purported to be the early community’s full-fledged
and consistent affirmationism, Ibn Taymiyya appeals to a number of early tafsīr

89 This is often expressed in the pithy formula “ṭarīqat al-khalaf aḥkam (or ‘aʿlam’) wa-ṭarīqat
al-salaf aslam” (the way of the khalaf is more exact [or “more learned”], and/but the way
of the Salaf is safer). See Darʾ, 5:378, lines 9–10.
90 Darʾ, 5:378, lines 15–18.
91 All earlier and later (non-Muʿtazilī) mutakallimūn in fact agree that the Companions and
Salaf performed this function—and were right to do so—in the face of the early sects
inspired by the likes of Jahm b. Ṣafwān, including the Muʿtazila. An Ashʿarī, for instance,
would hold the same opinion here as Ibn Taymiyya and congratulate the Salaf for honor-
ably discharging such a vital task. But from an Ashʿarī perspective, the taʾwīl engaged in
by the later Ashʿarī school (that of the so-called mutaʾakhkhirūn) has nothing to do with
the brazen negationism of the early sectarians. For his part, Ibn Taymiyya insists that early
negationism and later Ashʿarī kalām share, in fact, many of the same operative principles
and assumptions, just that the Ashʿarīs do not apply them as broadly as the Muʿtazila,
who, in turn, do not go quite as far in their negationism as the earlier sectarians or the
philosophers.
92 Darʾ, 5:378, line 19 to 5:379, line 4. For some examples Ibn Taymiyya gives of how the Salaf
were aware of and addressed a number of the theological issues raised by later groups,
albeit with terminology different from the technical language of the later mutakallimūn,
see Darʾ, 8:53.

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works that have the advantage, for him, of being based primarily on the spe-
cific interpretations transmitted from (maʾthūra ʿan) the Prophet, as well as
the Companions and Successors—precisely those generations he considered
uniquely authoritative.93 Ibn Taymiyya contends that such works of tafsīr—
in addition to other early works of Sunna (al-kutub al-muṣannafa fī al-sunna)
containing reports from the Prophet, the Companions, and the Successors—
unambiguously establish the universal affirmationism (ithbāt) of the early
community.94 In fact, he reports that their affirmationism is established
through an overwhelming abundance of reports from the tafsīr literature and
from other works that were transmitted in a mutawātir fashion and in which
one cannot find so much as a “single letter” (ḥarf wāḥid) that agrees with the
position of the early negationists.95 The combination of these reports attests
to a consensus (ijmāʿ) of the Salaf on the necessity of full affirmationism
with respect to the divine attributes. Furthermore, Ibn Taymiyya contends, the
Qurʾān itself does not contain a single explicit denial of any discrete attribute
of God.96 What it does contain are verses denying that God has any likeness
(mithl) or equal (kufuʾ), particularly the verses “There is none like unto Him”97
and “There is none comparable unto Him.”98 Yet these verses, Ibn Taymiyya

93 He mentions specifically the early works of ʿAbd b. Ḥumayd (d. 249/863), al-Ḥusayn
(“Sunayd”) b. Dāwūd (d. 226/840 or 841), ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī (d. 211/827), and Wakīʿ
b. al-Jarrāḥ (d. 197/812), then the tafsīrs of al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923), ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b.
Ibrāhīm Duḥaym (d. 245/859), Ibn Abī Ḥātim al-Rāzī (d. 327/938), Ibn al-Mundhir (d.
ca. 318/930), Abū Bakr ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (d. 363/974), Jaʿfar b. Ḥayyān (“Abū al-Shaykh”) al-
Aṣbahānī (d. 369/979), and Abū Bakr b. Mardawayhi (d. 410/1020) and similar works sub-
sequent to these, such as the tafsīrs of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, Isḥāq b. Ibrāhīm b. Rāhawayhi
(d. 238/853), Baqī b. Makhlad (d. 276/889), “and others.” For this list, see Darʾ, 2:21, line 10
to 2:22, line 5. See also Darʾ, 7:108, line 16 to 7:109, line 5 for a much more extensive list, as
well as Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima, 36–37, 51, 62–64.
94 See Darʾ, 2:20ff. for the explicitly affirmationist statements of numerous early authorities.
It is on the basis of these and similar statements that Ibn Taymiyya identifies those early
figures whom he calls to witness in defining the approach of “the Salaf and early authori-
ties” (al-salaf wa-l-aʾimma).
95 See Darʾ, 7:108, lines 11–13, where Ibn Taymiyya speaks of “al-tafāsīr al-thābita al-mutawā-
tira ʿan al-ṣaḥāba wa-l-tābiʿīn” and “al-nuqūl al-mutawātira al-mustafīḍa ʿan al-ṣaḥāba wa-
l-tābiʿīn fī ghayr al-tafsīr.”
96 Though he does not say so explicitly in this particular passage, it is clear that Ibn Taymiyya
means that the Qurʾān does not deny that God possesses what he refers to as “attributes
of perfection” (ṣifāt al-kamāl). It does, however, deny God’s possession of attributes that
entail deficiency or imperfection, such as the attribute of injustice, which is negated of
God on several occasions in verses such as Q. Fuṣṣilat 41:46: “wa-mā rabbuka bi-ẓallāmin
lil-ʿabīd” (And your Lord is in no wise unjust to [His] slaves). See additional references at
p. 36, n. 58 above.
97 “laysa ka-mithlihi shayʾ ” (Q. al-Shūrā 42:11).
98 “wa-lam yakun lahu kufuwan aḥad” (Q. al-Ikhlāṣ 112:4).

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ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl, or what is revelation? 211

contends, do not deny the very existence of God’s attributes; rather, they deny
any essential similarity or likeness (mumāthala) between the attributes of God
and those of created beings.99

4 Analysis of Terms to Detect and Correct for Semantic Shift

In chapter 2, we encountered a quotation attributed to Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal100 to

the effect that those who proffer abusive interpretations of scripture and false
religious doctrines “discourse on God and the Book of God with no knowledge
and speak in vague and ambiguous terms ( yatakallamūna bi-l-mutashābih min
al-kalām), fooling thereby the ignorant among men.”101 As it turns out, a signif-
icant portion of Ibn Taymiyya’s critique against the philosophers and theolo-
gians (Muʿtazilī and later Ashʿarī) is directed against their (mis)use of language,
a task he notes al-Ghazālī had undertaken before him.102 Throughout the Darʾ,
Ibn Taymiyya consistently inveighs against the use of “vague and ambiguous
terms” (alfāẓ mujmala mutashābiha) and, as mentioned earlier, goes so far as
to state that “the majority of disagreements among rational thinkers are due
to an equivocity of terms”103—a state of affairs that results in the untold cor-
ruption ( fasād) of both reason and religion. In fact, he states, every heretical
innovation (bidʿa) in belief and every alleged conflict between reason and reve-
lation can essentially be traced back to the use of vague and ambiguous terms,
terms that carry a range of various meanings and implications that are often
not fully understood or clearly conceptualized by those employing them. Such
terms—complete with the implicit meanings and assumptions they carry—
are accepted because of the truth they contain, but they end up serving as the
basis for an eventual contradiction with revelation on account of the falsehood

99 Darʾ, 7:111, lines 2–9. For a more extensive treatment of Ibn Taymiyya’s conception of what
it means for there to be “nothing like unto God,” see Darʾ, 5:83–85.
100 See pp. 115–116 above.
101 For the original of this quotation, see, inter alia, Darʾ, 1:221, line 11 to 1:222, line 2.
102 See, for instance, Darʾ, 6:295, lines 4–5, where he mentions al-Ghazālī “and others.”
103 “akthar ikhtilāf al-ʿuqalāʾ min jihat ishtirāk al-asmāʾ.”Darʾ, 1:233, lines 5–6 and 1:299, lines 3–
4. See also Darʾ, 1:274, line 18 to 1:275, line 3, where Ibn Taymiyya states that authentic
rational proofs or indicants (adilla) can never contradict one another and that later the-
ologians who claim an equivalence, or equipollence, of proofs (takāfuʾ al-adilla) or who
experience perplexity (ḥayra) over an issue do so only because of their faulty reasoning
and inference (istidlāl)—owing either to their personal inability or to the invalidity of
their arguments—and that “one of the greatest causes of this is vague terms [that car-
ry] ambiguous meaning” (min aʿẓam asbāb dhālika al-alfāẓ al-mujmala allatī tashtabihu
maʿānīhā). (See index of Arabic passages for original passage paraphrased here.)

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they also contain, falsehood that most people are unable to detect because of
the multi-layered ambiguity inherent in such terms.104 The trouble, accord-
ing to Ibn Taymiyya, lies in the fact that people adopt such terms wholesale
without careful analyzing their various meanings, then simply affirm or negate
the term as such, along with the different meanings and implications attached
to it, rather than first analyzing the term meticulously—or “critiquing” it, as
one might say today—then judging the truth or falsehood of each individual
meaning separately.105 As a result of this rampant terminological confusion,
and because revelation is primarily a phenomenon of language (a revealed
text) and rational discourse itself can only be conducted through the use of lan-
guage, Ibn Taymiyya is of the view that a great many of the philosophical and
theological issues debated—as well as the (in his view abusive) interpretations
often given in order to make revelation concord with the putatively rational
conclusions reached through such debates—can, in fact, be resolved through
a careful, methodical dissection of both the various terms used in revelation
and the terms used to express the rational arguments that are allegedly in con-
flict with revelation. Once the various meanings implied in a given term have
been patiently sifted and the measure of truth or falsehood of each meaning—
as judged by (sound) reason and (authentic) revelation—has been clarified,
then the doubts and confusions (shubuhāt) surrounding a given question can
be cleared up, whereupon the alleged conflict between reason and revelation
is revealed to have been a mere chimera.106
But what is the origin of such doubts and confusions (shubuhāt)? Ibn Tay-
miyya explains that the shubuhāt in question most often arise when the experts
of a given discipline adopt common words as technical terms through which
they communicate with one another, in the manner of craftsmen who
use everyday words in a specific technical sense when referring to particu-
lar aspects of their trade. Such terms, Ibn Taymiyya explains, are agreed upon
through a particular group convention (alfāẓ ʿurfiyya ʿurfan khāṣṣan), though
what this group means by these terms is different from what the terms are
understood to mean in the original linguistic convention of the larger speech
community (ghayr al-mafhūm minhā fī aṣl al-lugha). As an example, we may
cite the term jism (“body”), which is used in revelation in accordance with the
normal linguistic convention in reference to, say, the body of a man or an ani-
mal.107 The word jism is not used in revelation with reference to God, by way of

104 See Darʾ, 1:208, line 15 to 1:209, line 2.

105 See Darʾ, 9:152, lines 14–17.
106 Darʾ, 4:227, lines 9–12.
107 The word jism (pl. ajsām) appears twice in the Qurʾān, at Q. al-Baqara 2:247 and al-
Munāfiqūn 63:4. Two other common terms for “body” are also mentioned in the Qurʾān:

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ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl, or what is revelation? 213

either affirmation or negation, but when the philosophers apply it to God (by
way of negation), they do so in a manner that departs from the acknowledged
conventional meaning of the term. That is, they use the word in accordance
with their particular convention (ʿurf khāṣṣ) that defines “body” as any entity
of which it is possible to predicate distinct attributes (that is, attributes that
are distinct from one another and from the essence of the entity in which
they inhere). For instance, maintaining that God is not a “body” ( jism) is true
and valid according to the linguistic convention of the Arabs, since the word
jism as used in the Qurʾān and in Arab linguistic convention has very specific
meanings, none of which are applicable to God. But when the philosophers
say that God is not a “jism” and mean this according to their technical use of
the term (which is wide-ranging and essentially includes any entity of which
it is possible to predicate attributes or qualities), then negating that God is a
“jism”—when defined in this manner—indeed leads to a contradiction with rev-
elation. This is so because when the philosophers negate God’s being a “jism,”
they are actually negating a great deal more than what the word as used in the
Qurʾān and according to the linguistic convention of the Arabs actually means.
Such vague and ambiguous terms, according to Ibn Taymiyya, fall into two
main categories. The first category includes words that are used both in revela-
tion and in common everyday speech but that the philosophers (and
mutakallimūn) employ in a modified technical sense. This technical usage
results in ambiguity and confusion (ishtibāh wa-ijmāl), particularly when a
direct appeal is made to revelation in support of the philosophical views ex-
pressed by means of the terms in question. This phenomenon is clear from
the example of the word jism (“body”) above.108 The second category of vague
and ambiguous terms consists of words that do not appear in revelation but
that do exist in the everyday language of the Arabs, albeit, once more, with
widely shared conventional meanings that are radically at odds with the tech-
nical definitions given to them by later philosophers and theologians. Exam-
ples of such terms include words like tarkīb (composition), juzʾ (part), iftiqār
(dependence), and ṣūra (image, form). Additional terms Ibn Taymiyya cites in
this category include much of the basic vocabulary of philosophical discourse:
jawhar (substance), ʿaraḍ (accident), dhāt (essence), ṣifa (attribute), taḥayyuz
(occupying space), jiha (directionality or spatial ___location), ʿilla (cause), maʿlūl

the word jasad (pl. ajsād) appears four times, at Q. al-Aʿrāf 7:148, Ṭā Hā 20:88, al-Anbiyāʾ
21:8, and Ṣād 38:34, and the word badan (pl. abdān) appears once, at Q. Yūnus 10:92.
108 Another critical term in which an analogous semantic shift has occurred is the all-
important word wāḥid (one), which we investigate in greater detail below (see section
5, p. 215ff).

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(effect), wujūb (necessity), imkān (contingency), qidam (eternality), ḥudūth

(temporal origination), and others.109
In addition to the use of vague and ambiguous terms, Ibn Taymiyya also
notes that confusions can arise from a misconstrual of grammar. Similar to
the case of lexical items, such grammar-related confusions stem from a fail-
ure to account for the actual manner in which the language is conventionally
used, as distinguished from the abstract and idealized grammar projected by
the mind of the professional grammarian. As an example, Ibn Taymiyya cites
the manner in which many of the rationalists (nuẓẓār) interpret the use of cer-
tain passive participles (ism mafʿūl) in Arabic. He says that such thinkers often
encounter a passive participle and then, by deducing directly from the mor-
phological form (as opposed to the actual usage), claim that there must be an
agent involved. For instance, they might draw the conclusion that if God is said
to be “makhṣūṣ” (“specified” or “characterized”) by the possession of particular
attributes, then this must mean that He has a mukhaṣṣiṣ (“specifier” or “char-
acterizer”) external to Himself who conferred these attributes upon Him. Ibn
Taymiyya, however, argues that in the actual conventional use of the Arabic lan-
guage, certain passive participles have come to be used in a purely intransitive
sense, meaning (in the case of the word makhṣūṣ, for instance) only that the
thing is qualified by a certain characteristic or attribute, not that the attribute
in question has been conferred upon it by an external agent (as suggested by
the passive participle form when considered in the abstract). In actual usage,
then, the passive participle makhṣūṣ is equivalent in meaning to the active par-
ticiple mukhtaṣṣ, derived from the verb ikhtaṣṣa. This verb, derived from the
same root as makhṣūṣ, normally conveys the intransitive/mediopassive sense
of “to be specified or characterized by,” meaning simply “having or possessing
the characteristic of” with no implication that the characteristic in question
has been conferred upon its bearer by an external agent.110
Ibn Taymiyya contends that many of the terms used by the rationalists fall
into the same category as the word makhṣūṣ. That is, while such terms may
be, formally speaking, past participles of transitive verbs, they are nonetheless
used in a strictly intransitive or mediopassive sense. Technical terms that fall
into this category include the all-important words mawjūd (existent, existing),
makhṣūṣ (specified or characterized [by]), muʾallaf (made up [of], constituted

109 Darʾ, 1:222, lines 11–15.

110 Note that Form VIII (iftaʿala) of this particular verb (“ikhtaṣṣa”) carries the transitive
meaning of Form I as well, as evidenced in a verse such as “wa-Llāhu yakhtaṣṣu bi-
raḥmatihi man yashāʾ ” (And God singles out for His mercy whom He will) (Q. al-Baqara
2:105).

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ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl, or what is revelation? 215

[by]), murakkab (composite), and muḥaqqaq (realized; real, actual). As a ques-

tion of conventional usage, such terms do not necessarily mean (and, when
applied to God, definitely do not mean) that an external agent has conferred
the given quality on the entity characterized by it. However, many people mis-
interpret these and similar terms by construing them strictly on the formal
basis of their morphological pattern while disregarding their meaning as deter-
mined by their actual usage in the known convention of Arabic speakers. The
problem, for Ibn Taymiyya, is that such people have interpreted the morpholog-
ical form of the word too “literally,” mistakenly prioritizing abstract linguistic
forms, and the formal generalizations made about them, over the more rel-
evant criterion of their actual use in the known linguistic convention of the
relevant speech community.111 Ibn Taymiyya considers this yet another exam-
ple of the rationalists forcing language into their own intellectual mold and
grafting the conclusions of their rational speculations onto the pre-existing lin-
guistic convention. Ibn Taymiyya, once again, maintains that due consideration
of established linguistic norms is likely to clear up the issue under investigation
and, typically, to undercut the doctrines and assumptions that have come to be
attached to it through the speculations of the rationalists (nuẓẓār).

5 A Case Study: The Terms wāḥid, tawḥīd, and tarkīb

Ibn Taymiyya discusses at length the specific example of the all-important

words wāḥid (one) and tawḥīd (oneness of God), as well as the related notion
of tarkīb (composition). As we saw in chapter 1, the early Muʿtazila, influenced
by the Aristotelian distinction between essence and attributes, understood

111 Ibn Taymiyya’s critique of granting automatic precedence to formal grammatical and mor-
phological patterns over actual language use, given that such use does not always conform
mechanically to the strictures of an idealized system, was advanced in a much more stri-
dent and comprehensive form by the iconoclastic Ẓāhirī Andalusian grammarian Ibn
Maḍāʾ al-Qurṭubī (d. 592/1196), who, in his relatively short (seventy-page) Kitāb al-Radd
ʿalā al-nuḥāh, written towards the end of his life, calls for a fundamental overhaul of what
he considered the abstruseness, artificiality, and needless complication of the existing
linguistic sciences. In a spirit reminiscent of Ibn Taymiyya’s attack on the theoretical con-
structs of many of the theologians, Ibn Maḍāʾ took fellow grammarians to task for their
preoccupation with abstract notions like grammatical governance (ʿamal) and analogy
(qiyās), which needlessly complicated grammar and often had little bearing on the actual
functioning of the language or its correct use. For a summary presentation, see Versteegh,
Arabic Linguistic Tradition, 140–152. For more detailed treatments, see Nakamura, “Ibn
Maḍā’s Criticism of Arabic Grammarians,” esp. 98–111; Versteegh, “Ibn Maḍāʾ as a Ẓāhirī
Grammarian,” esp. 216–228; and Suleiman, Arabic Grammatical Tradition, 145–177.

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oneness—particularly that of God—in much the same way as Aristotle did,

that is, as perfect simplicity. According to this technical philosophical usage
(iṣṭilāḥ), that which is truly “one” is that whose essence is completely simple
(basīṭ) and entirely undifferentiated (lā yuʿlamu minhu shayʾ dūna shayʾ) and,
as a consequence, is necessarily devoid of any attributes distinct from essence.
On this view, if God were to possess attributes, He would no longer be truly
“one” (in the sense of being perfectly simple and undifferentiated); rather, He
would be “composite” (murakkab), that is, “composed” of His essence and His
attributes. On this understanding, then, the affirmation of divine attributes—
even those that seem to be affirmed unambiguously in revelation—would lead
to a contradiction with the even more fundamental principle, also affirmed
emphatically by revelation, that God is, first and foremost, one (wāḥid). Based
on the premise that affirming the divine attributes would compromise God’s
oneness, the philosophers and the Muʿtazila presume that if revelation is to
be deemed consistent (with itself and with reason), it cannot be held to affirm
both God’s oneness and His possession of myriad attributes, since oneness and
the possession of attributes are mutually exclusive and therefore contradic-
tory. On the basis of philosophical principles requiring that God be one, in
addition to the Qurʾān’s own emphatic insistence that God is one, the philoso-
phers and the Muʿtazila maintain that the internal and rational consistency of
revelation can be maintained only if God’s alleged attributes are interpreted
as metaphorical rather than real, that is, as mere names (asmāʾ) that do not
correspond to any actual extant qualities (ṣifāt) by which the divine essence
(dhāt) may be said to be qualified. From another angle, they argue that any-
thing that possesses attributes is necessarily a body ( jism), that all bodies are
divisible (munqasim), and that anything that is divisible cannot be said to be
“one.” Here, we find an example of a conclusion (namely, that an entity that
is truly one cannot be qualified by attributes) that has allegedly been reached
through reason but that is also asserted to concur with revelation, since rev-
elation also uncompromisingly declares the emphatic oneness of God. This
declaration of oneness is taken to be more fundamental than revelation’s simul-
taneous apparent affirmation of divine attributes. As a result, these qualities
are interpreted not as real attributes but as mere names in order to avoid
the implication that revelation, by affirming attributes of a God who is “one,”
is both internally inconsistent and in contradiction with the dictates of rea-
son.
The question of the rational coherence, let alone the necessity, of the view
that something that is truly one must be perfectly simple—and, therefore,
devoid of attributes so as not to be “composite”—is taken up at length in
the next chapter, in which we examine Ibn Taymiyya’s rational critique of the

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ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl, or what is revelation? 217

philosophers’ ontology and epistemology. Here, we explore the linguistic side

of Ibn Taymiyya’s endeavor, in which he is concerned to determine whether,
from a purely linguistic point of view, it is plausible to identify revelation’s insis-
tent affirmation of God’s oneness with the philosophers’ and the Muʿtazila’s
notion of oneness as pure simplicity devoid of any positive attributes (such as
those predicated of God in revelation). Presumably, a Muʿtazilī would argue
for the validity of this identification on the basis that if reason has discovered
that “one” means “simple” and if God and His revelation are rationally coher-
ent and not absurd or nonsensical, then Qurʾānic statements to the effect that
God is one must be meant as a declaration of His perfect simplicity and His
concomitant lack of real attributes. Ibn Taymiyya, by contrast, maintains that
revelation can reasonably be interpreted to mean only what the Prophet and
his Companions can plausibly be held to have understood from its wording, as
received and comprehended in the context of their own linguistic milieu and
thought world. For Ibn Taymiyya, then, the first question—prior to any rational
investigation or critique of the philosophers’ notion of oneness—is to identify
what the word “one” meant in the linguistic convention (ʿurf ) of the Prophet
and his Companions and, therefore, what the assertion of God’s oneness in the
Qurʾān must have meant to them, as a function both of their existing linguis-
tic convention and of the theology and overall worldview of the Qurʾān as it
impinged upon and modified that convention.
Starting with the linguistic meaning of “one” (wāḥid), Ibn Taymiyya asserts
that this word in the Arabic language (and in all languages, he avers112), as deter-
mined by its actual use among the language’s speakers, is only found to apply to
that which, in the terminology of the philosophers and the Muʿtazila, is consid-
ered “divisible” and a “body”—in other words, to an entity qualified by particu-
lar attributes. He remarks that Arabic speakers speak of “one man” (as opposed
to two men or three men), where the one man in question is a bodily entity
with various attributes, is divisible (that is, his limbs can be severed and sepa-
rated from him), and so forth. The Arabic word “one” in “one man,” therefore,
simply signifies a lack of plurality of entities (in this case, men), not the lack of
qualities or attributes proper to and inseparable from the (one) entity itself. To

112 Despite his strong “empiricism” and the importance he gives to the specific contextual-
ized use of a particular language (in this case Arabic), Ibn Taymiyya nevertheless hints at
the existence of universally shared notions and conceptions that are the same for all indi-
viduals in all cultures, irrespective of the specific languages in which they are expressed.
In fact, in another place in the Darʾ, he speaks specifically of “the meaning that does not
change according to the difference in languages” (al-maʿnā alladhī lā yakhtalifu bi-ikhtilāf
al-lughāt). Darʾ, 5:325, line 18.

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be “one” in the conventional use of the Arabic language thus simply means to be
a single instantiated particular entity (rather than a plurality of entities), one
that is necessarily and inescapably qualified by whatever range of attributes
are inherent to the species or class to which the entity in question belongs. Ibn
Taymiyya also calls to witness a number of Qurʾānic verses in which the word
“one” is used to refer to a single, whole entity invariably qualified by attributes
of some sort or another.113 In no circumstance, he argues, is the term “one” in
Arabic found to have been used by its speakers in the idiosyncratic and highly
restricted technical sense of the philosophers and the Muʿtazila. In fact, such a
usage would have been quite impossible since the distinction between essence
and attributes that it presupposes was unknown to the Arabs and formed no
part of their intellectual framework.114 And yet, God spoke to the Arabs in their
language, in terms that they could only have understood as a function of their
native frame of reference.
Beyond this, Ibn Taymiyya contends that what the philosophers refer to as
“one” in their technical discourse—namely, a perfectly simple essence unqual-
ified by any attributes whatsoever—is a notion of which most people have no
conception115 and of whose existence they have neither theoretical knowledge
(ʿilm) nor practical experience (khibra) such that their conventional language
should contain a word to express it. It goes without saying, he maintains, that
a term that is widely shared (mashhūr) among people and used by both the
general population (al-ʿāmma) and the specialists of a particular discipline (al-
khāṣṣa) cannot legitimately be construed to carry a meaning only conceived
by and known among the specialist few.116 In other words, since language is
shared by all members of the speech community equally, it must be assumed
to presuppose the conceptions (taṣawwurāt) that are common to all and not
those of a philosophical elite or any other group of specialists. (This is particu-
larly true of the language of revelation since revelation is explicitly addressed
to all people equally.) Moreover, Ibn Taymiyya contends, people know by the
light of their natural, inborn faculty of reasoning that the entity the philoso-
phers call “one” (namely, an entity devoid of any attributes whatsoever) could
only be conceived of theoretically in the mind but could not exist as such in

113 These verses are Q. al-Baqara 2:266; al-Nisāʾ 4:11; al-Tawba 9:6; Yūsuf 12:36, 12:41; al-Kahf
18:22, 18:26, 18:32, 18:49, 18:110; al-Qaṣaṣ 28:26, 28:27; al-Jinn 72:18, 72:22; al-Muddaththir
74:11; and al-Ikhlāṣ 112:4. (Darʾ, 7:115–116).
114 For an exhaustive treatment of Ibn Taymiyya’s critique of the philosophers’ theory of
essences, see Hallaq, Greek Logicians, esp. at xiv–xxvii.
115 “laysa huwa shayʾan yaʿqiluhu al-nās.” Darʾ, 7:116, line 14 (and lines 12–15 for general point).
116 “al-lafẓ al-mashhūr bayna al-khāṣṣ wa-l-ʿāmm lā yakūnu musammāhu mimmā lā yata-
ṣawwaruhu illā al-khāṣṣa.” Darʾ, 7:120, lines 17–18. Also Darʾ, 7:118, lines 8–9 and similar
at 7:120, lines 3–6.

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ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl, or what is revelation? 219

external reality.117 And even if, for the sake of argument, one allowed for the
existence or the possibility of the existence of such an entity in external reality,
one would still have to substantiate that such an entity is properly designated
by the term “one” (wāḥid) in the known linguistic convention of the seventh-
century Arabs to whom the oneness of God in the Qurʾān was initially pro-
claimed. Since, however, the word wāḥid in actual Arabic usage is known to
connote nothing of the specialized technical meaning of “one” as used by the
philosophers and Muʿtazilī theologians, one cannot legitimately appeal to such
verses as Q. al-Baqara 2:163: “And your God is one God” (wa-ilāhukum ilāhun
wāḥid) or Q. al-Ikhlāṣ 112:1: “Say, ‘He is God, [who is] One’” (qul huwa Llāhu
aḥad) as textual support for the denial of the divine attributes. Ibn Taymiyya
concludes that projecting the later technical, philosophical meaning of the
word “one” onto terms like wāḥid or aḥad as they are used in revelation con-
stitutes not only a falsification of ( firya ʿalā) the revealed texts and reason but
also a distortion and disruption of the manner in which language itself func-
tions as a tool for the communication of meaning among its speakers on the
basis of a necessarily transparent and commonly shared linguistic habitus.118
Indeed, as the Qurʾān itself informs us, “Never did We send a messenger except
[that he spoke] in the language of his people, that he might explain to them
clearly.”119
Such, then, is the case of the usage of the term “one” in the common speech
of the Arabs to whom the Qurʾān was initially revealed. But what of the partic-
ular use, if any, of the word “one” as employed by revelation specifically in rela-
tion to God? The oneness of God (tawḥīd) affirmed in the Qurʾān, Ibn Taymiyya
explains, entails not simply the affirmation that God is numerically singular
(that is, that there is only one God and no others) but, more specifically, the
affirmation of the exclusive divinity (ilāhiyya) of God and God alone, in other
words, that there is no other god (ilāh) rightfully deserving of worship save the
one true God. To put it differently, the point of the Qurʾān’s insistence on tawḥīd
is to assert not merely that God is one but that He is one God. Ibn Taymiyya cites
a ḥadīth and a number of Qurʾānic verses to support this conception of what it
means to declare that God is one.120 This understanding stands in contrast to
the definition that many mutakallimūn give of the word tawḥīd when they de-
fine it as consisting (merely) of God’s oneness in His essence, whereby He has
no part ( juzʾ) or counterpart (qasīm); His oneness in His attributes, wherein He

117 “bal ʿuqūl al-nās wa-fiṭaruhum majbūla ʿalā inkārihi wa-nafyihi.” Darʾ, 7:116, line 15.
118 Darʾ, 7:120, lines 7–8.
119 “wa-mā arsalnā min rasūlin illā bi-lisāni qawmihi li-yubayyina lahum” (Q. Ibrāhīm 14:4).
120 These verses are Q. al-Baqara 2:163; al-Naḥl 16:36, 16:51; al-Isrāʾ 17:46; al-Muʾminūn 23:117; al-
Ṣāffāt 37:35–36; Ṣād 38:5; al-Zumar 39:45; al-Zukhruf 43:45; and al-Mumtaḥana 60:4. (Darʾ,
1:224–225).

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has no like (shabīh); and His oneness in His actions, in which He has no part-
ner or co-sharer (sharīk). Yet this tripartite division of tawḥīd into oneness of
essence, of attributes, and of acts only partly overlaps with the tawḥīd affirmed
by revelation, which includes, as we have seen, the explicit affirmation, in word
and in deed, of God’s singular divinity (ulūhiyya) and His unique right to be wor-
shipped.121 In this manner, Ibn Taymiyya concludes, the later mutakallimūn fail
to include in the nominatum (musammā) of the word tawḥīd this aspect of di-
vinity and rightful worship that is essential to it while smuggling into it a range
of other meanings (based on the private and idiosyncratic technical usage of
the philosophers) that entail a contradiction of the plain sense of revelation
through a negation of the divine attributes unambiguously affirmed therein.
We have seen in the preceding two paragraphs that the Qurʾān uses the terms
wāḥid and tawḥīd, with respect to God, both in terms of a common everyday
meaning (namely, that there is only one entity who is God and not several) and
in terms of a novel meaning introduced by revelation (namely, that this numer-
ically singular God is alone deserving of worship). A problem arises, however,
when a word is used in a technical sense by a particular group and infused with
meanings not originally part of the semantic field assigned to it by its original
users. As we have seen above, Ibn Taymiyya concedes that when the philoso-
phers and Muʿtazila affirm that God has “no parts, no counterpart, and no like,”
this is a true statement that indeed conveys a (rationally and scripturally) valid
meaning, namely, the impossibility that God should separate into parts ( yata-
farraq), degenerate ( yafsud), or disintegrate ( yastaḥīl). This is so because God
is both “aḥad” (singularly and emphatically one) and “ṣamad” (which means,
for physical objects, that which is solid and has no hollow center, but which
also carries the abstract meaning of a “master or lord whose sovereignty and
power are complete and perfect”122). Yet the philosophers and the Muʿtazila
superimpose upon this correct meaning a negation of God’s being above His
creation (ʿuluwwuhu ʿalā khalqihi) and His being distinct and separate from it
(mubāyana). And they deny other such attributes on the grounds that affirming
them would entail that God is composite (murakkab) and therefore divisible
(munqasim), rendering Him in this manner “like” (mithl) or “similar to” (shabīh
bi) created things. In response, Ibn Taymiyya insists that those knowledgeable
of the Arabic language and the context of revelation know that such mean-
ings are simply not signified by the terms “composition” (tarkīb), “divisibility”

121 On this theme, see Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy, 26–29 (“The Centrality of Worship-
ping God Alone”) and Hoover, 120–122 (“Lordship and Divinity”). See also Hoover, “Hanbali
Theology,” 634–635. For Ibn Taymiyya’s theology more generally, see “Tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya”
(vol. 1 of MF) and “Tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya” (vol. 2 of MF).
122 “al-sayyid alladhī kamula suʾdaduhu.” Darʾ, 1:228, line 6.

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ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl, or what is revelation? 221

(inqisām), or “likeness”/“similarity” (tamthīl/tashbīh) in the commonly under-

stood Arabic language in which the Qurʾān was revealed.
As for the precarious term tarkīb (composition), Ibn Taymiyya cites several
common everyday meanings of this word, including (1) that which has been
put together or assembled by something else (mā rakkabahu ghayruhu), (2)
that which was disaggregated and subsequently came together (mā kāna muf-
tariqan fa-ijtamaʿa), and (3) that which can be dissevered or taken apart (mā
yumkinu tafrīq baʿḍihi ʿan baʿḍ),123 such as a man, an animal, or a plant.124 Now,
it is doubtless true, according to Ibn Taymiyya, that God is not composite in
any of these commonly understood senses. The philosophers (and particularly
Ibn Sīnā), however, have adopted the word “composition” (tarkīb) as a technical
term and endowed it with a number of meanings additional to its original con-
notations, among which is the notion that God must be devoid of all attributes
so as not to be “composed” of His essence (dhāt) and His would-be attributes
(ṣifāt).125 This conclusion is based on the premise that “every composite entity
(kullu murakkab) is dependent on (muftaqir ilā) its parts (ajzāʾihi)” or, alterna-
tively, dependent on “other than itself” (ghayrihi)—on the assumption that a
thing’s constituent parts are “other than” the thing itself taken as a compos-
ite whole.126 On this understanding, God’s would-be attributes are taken to be
“parts” (ajzāʾ) that are “other than” (ghayr) God Himself and upon which He
would be “dependent” (muftaqir) if He were indeed to possess such attributes.
Thus, not only would the possession of attributes make God “composite” and
therefore not “one” (in the specialized philosophical sense of perfectly simple),
but His alleged “dependence” on “other than” Himself would negate His perfec-
tion and divine self-sufficiency as well.
In this manner, Ibn Taymiyya remarks, the philosophers have negated God’s
ontological reality (ḥaqīqa) and attributes (ṣifāt) in the belief that, by doing
so, they were preserving the oneness (tawḥīd) of His essence (dhāt).127 Yet in
reality, Ibn Taymiyya insists, the distinction between essence and attributes is
a purely mental one since the various attributes of a given entity can only be
separated by the mind for the purpose of rational analysis but can never exist as
such—that is, separate from essence—in the outside world.128 In external real-

123 In another place, Ibn Taymiyya uses the words “that whose parts can be separated” (mā
yaqbalu tafrīq ajzāʾihi). Darʾ, 3:16, lines 3–4.
124 Darʾ, 1:280, lines 14–18. Also Darʾ, 3:16, lines 3–4.
125 For a list of the five technical usages that the philosophers added to the original nomina-
tum (musammā) of the word tarkīb, see Darʾ, 3:389, line 5 to 3:390, line 3. Also Darʾ, 5:142,
lines 1–9.
126 Darʾ, 3:16, lines 1–2.
127 Darʾ, 5:141, lines 17–18.
128 And it is only in this notional sense that one may legitimately describe an attribute as

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ity, there can exist only the thing’s essence as qualified by the various attributes
and properties concomitant to it.129 In short, according to Ibn Taymiyya, while
the mind may make a logical distinction between essence and attributes, the
ontological reality of any existent entity necessarily comprises both its essence
and its concomitant attributes as one (ontologically) inseparable and indivis-
ible whole. On this analysis, then, the philosophical maxim that “every com-
posite entity is dependent on what is other than it since it is dependent on
its part(s)”130 can, once the rational meanings have been stripped from the
technical jargon of the philosophers, be translated as “any entity qualified by
a necessary attribute concomitant to it can only exist along with its necessary
attribute.”131 And this meaning, Ibn Taymiyya asserts, is true (in fact, it is tauto-
logical) and conforms both with a sound rational analysis of the issue and with
the numerous scriptural dicta that unambiguously affirm specific attributes
of God—quite in spite of the fact that the philosophers have chosen to refer
to the inseparable attributes of an entity as “parts of” or as “other than” the
entity itself, or to describe the ontological concomitance (istilzām, talāzum)
between the entity’s essence and its attributes as the “dependence” (iftiqār) of
the former upon the latter, or to refer to an entity’s being qualified by necessary
attributes concomitant to it as a form of “composition” (tarkīb). Ibn Taymiyya’s
point is that if these are the specialized, technical meanings the philosophers
have given to the common terms “part,” “other,” “dependence,” and “composi-
tion,” then there is no rational or scriptural reason to deny the statement that
God is “composed” (of His essence and attributes) and therefore “dependent”
on “parts” that are “other than” He on this interpretation of the terms—quite
apart from the fact that such idiosyncratic meanings fly in the face of what
these words mean in the widely shared convention of Arabic speakers132 and
are therefore likely to be misleading and to give rise to numerous confusions
and errors on the level of both rational analysis and scriptural interpretation.

being “other than” the entity as a whole or, indeed, “other than”—in the sense of distinct
from—any of the entity’s other discrete attributes. See Darʾ, 1:281, lines 6–17.
129 “laysat lahu ḥaqīqa ghayr al-dhāt al-mawṣūfa [bi-ṣifātihā al-lāzima lahā].”Darʾ, 1:281, line 7
and Darʾ, 3:16–17, passim.
130 “kullu murakkab muftaqir ilā ghayrihi li-iftiqārihi ilā juzʾihi.” Darʾ, 3:12, lines 10–11. For Ibn
Taymiyya’s discussion of the word ghayr, see Darʾ, 1:281 and 3:16–17.
131 “al-mawṣūf bi-ṣifa lāzima lahu lā yakūnu mawjūdan bi-dūn ṣifatihi al-lāzima lahu.” Darʾ,
3:16, lines 11–12.
132 Ibn Taymiyya explicitly states that “referring to this meaning as ‘composition’ is a con-
vention that they [the philosophers] have established (waḍʿ waḍaʿūhu) and that does not
conform to the (conventional) language of the Arabs or to the language of any other com-
munity (laysa muwāfiqan li-lughat al-ʿArab wa-lā lughat aḥad min al-umam).” Darʾ, 1:281,
lines 2–3.

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ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl, or what is revelation? 223

Ultimately, a given question must be decided on the basis of a sound rational

analysis and a sound scriptural exegesis once the terms of the discussion have
been carefully analyzed and their various meanings separated, fully clarified,
and individually judged for their scriptural, as well as their rational, integrity.
We have seen above the example of a term used in revelation, wāḥid, and a
closely related term not used in revelation, tarkīb, both of which underwent
a significant semantic shift by being infused with unprecedented meanings
reflecting a novel conceptual framework alien to the intellectual and linguistic
habits of the early Muslims.133 This novel conceptual and linguistic schema was
then read back into revelation by later philosophers and theologians such that
the uncontroversial statement “God is one and incomposite”—understood in
accord with the original convention as carrying the (scripturally affirmed and
rationally coherent) meaning that there exists only one single entity who is
God and who alone deserves to be worshipped and who neither was assembled
nor is subject to disaggregation—was now taken to carry the (scripturally inde-
fensible and rationally incoherent) meaning that God, who is perfectly simple,
is absolute or unconditioned being (wujūd muṭlaq) possessing no attributes
whatsoever. That such a notion of “God” is radically at odds with the plain
sense of scripture (understood according to the linguistic convention of its
original recipients) is beyond question for Ibn Taymiyya since, at the time of
revelation, the words wāḥid (one), murakkab (composite), and related terms
carried none of the highly specialized meanings invested in them by later
philosophers attempting to express the assumptions and entailments of a for-
eign Weltanschauung in the Arabic language.134 But Ibn Taymiyya goes beyond
asserting the mere scriptural incompatibility of such a notion of God, argu-
ing that it is rationally indefensible as well since “unconditioned being” and
“unconditioned essence” not qualified by any attributes whatsoever are, he
insists, purely logical constructs that can exist only in the mind.135 The crucial
lesson to be drawn here, for Ibn Taymiyya, is that a statement such as “God is
one and incomposite” cannot be responsibly affirmed or negated categorically
until all its constituent terms have been carefully dissected, whereupon one

133 Indeed, the reader will note that, for Ibn Taymiyya, the all-important Qurʾānic term taʾwīl
has itself suffered a similar fate, as detailed above in section 1, pp. 184–185.
134 See von Weizsäcker, “Über Sprachrelativismus” for an insightful treatment of the manner
in which the modes of thought in the major world cultures (including the Islamic and
the European) are, to a considerable extent, bound to and determined by the specificities
of those cultures’ regnant languages—what the author refers to as the “Sprachbezogen-
heit der Denksysteme der großen Kulturen” (the language-boundedness of the thought
systems of the major cultures).
135 This topic is taken up in greater detail in the following chapter.

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should then proceed to affirm and deny the individual meanings thus identified
irrespective of the terms used to express them, for “rational inquiry is con-
cerned with meanings (maʿānī), not [the] mere technical terms (iṣṭilāḥāt)[by
which they are expressed].”136

…
We began this chapter with a Qurʾānic verse that states, “Never did We send a
messenger except [that he spoke] in the language of his people, that he might
explain to them clearly (li-yubayyina lahum).”137 In a sense, this chapter—
and indeed Ibn Taymiyya’s entire linguistic philosophy and hermeneutical
approach—can be seen as a commentary on and an elaboration of this and
similar verses. The fundamental fact of revelation is that it consists of a com-
muniqué from God on high to His human creatures here on earth. The mes-
sage is vital, the communication essential, and the stakes for human welfare in
this world and the next exceedingly high. If men are to be imparted the truth
about themselves and their Creator and are to be held morally accountable
for this truth in an eternal hereafter, then certainly, Ibn Taymiyya reasons, God
would not fail to communicate to them with utmost clarity and determinacy
the content of those beliefs and actions for which they will be held eternally
responsible. I pair the terms “clarity” and “determinacy” here deliberately, for
Ibn Taymiyya takes it as axiomatic that there is a strong correlation—or, as
he might say, a “talāzum,” or mutual implication—between clarity, on the one
hand, and a determinacy approaching univocity (particularly in broad theo-
logical matters), on the other. For Ibn Taymiyya, effective communication is
that which leaves the recipient with no doubt regarding the content of the mis-
sive and the intentions of the dispatcher. A highly indeterminate text open to
a multitude of contradictory readings138 would represent, for Ibn Taymiyya, a
consummate failure in effective communication, as it would leave each reader
to foist his own subjective opinions onto an essentially meaningless concate-
nation of ambivalent vocables. A text that can mean anything means, in fact,
nothing.

136 “wa-l-naẓar al-ʿaqlī innamā yakūnu fī al-maʿānī lā fī mujarrad al-iṣṭilāḥāt.” Darʾ, 10:239,
line 17. See similar at Darʾ, 1:282, lines 15–16; 1:296, lines 8–10; 1:299, lines 1–5; 3:237, lines 15–
16; and 9:291, line 17.
137 Q. Ibrāhīm 14:4.
138 I say specifically “contradictory readings” since Ibn Taymiyya does allow that the words
and verses of revelation can, to a limited degree, legitimately carry several meanings, but
these, he insists, are always complementary—highlighting various aspects of one and the
same reality—rather than contradictory. For a more detailed analysis, see Saleh, “Radical
Hermeneutics,” 131–136.

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ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl, or what is revelation? 225

Working from the premise that revelation is preeminently clear and intel-
ligible, Ibn Taymiyya elaborates a thoroughly language-based hermeneutic
that views the collective repository of revealed texts as fully independent and
self-sufficient in their conveyance of a unified, coherent, and comprehensi-
ble worldview and theology. The transparency and self-sufficiency of the texts
relieve the exegete of any need to rely on extra-textual sources in order to
comprehend revelation, particularly the notoriously contentious and parochial
“rational conclusions” (ʿaqliyyāt) of the divers schools of philosophy and spec-
ulative theology. Ibn Taymiyya’s interpretive method, as we have seen, builds
on a larger linguistic epistemology that posits that the meaning of any linguis-
tic utterance is solely determinable through a careful consideration of context,
judged against the backdrop of the known linguistic conventions of the speech
community to which the language is directed. Context and convention work
together to isolate, usually in a definitive manner, which of the various mean-
ings signified by a given word is meant in any given instance. Ibn Taymiyya’s
insistence on the inherent and hence inescapable contextuality of all linguistic
utterances (revelation or otherwise) renders redundant the traditional distinc-
tion between putatively “literal” (ḥaqīqa) and “figurative” (majāz) meanings
presupposed by the kind of “third-wave” taʾwīl beloved of the philosophers
and theologians but that Ibn Taymiyya insists was vehemently rejected by the
Salaf. If the apparent sense (ẓāhir) of any utterance is determined strictly as
a function of context, then there can never be any need to deflect a word
from its supposed primary meaning to a would-be secondary, “non-literal” one.
Given the central importance Ibn Taymiyya accords to context, I have quali-
fied his hermeneutics as a kind of “contextual taʾwīl,” an appellation he would
no doubt accept insofar as “taʾwīl” here is taken strictly in its original sense of
“tafsīr al-maʿnā,” or the explication of the straightforward lexical meaning of an
utterance-in-context.
Yet if we are to judge what a particular word must mean in a given con-
text, we can only do so if we are thoroughly familiar with the wider linguistic
conventions of our speech community, which dictate that a given word con-
ventionally carries such-and-such a meaning when used in such-and-such a
context. Absent this experiential familiarity with the discrete conventions of
a defined linguistic community, we would have no basis on which to pass an
accurate judgement on the contextualized meaning of an utterance. Given that
the Qurʾān was revealed to the Prophet Muḥammad and his Companions in the
seventh-century classical Arabic familiar to them, it is, naturally, their linguis-
tic convention (and related conceptual framework) that must be considered
the final determinant of what revelation meant to them. And what revelation
meant to them is, for Ibn Taymiyya, what revelation means, period. To enter-

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tain the possibility that revelation could have a “real” meaning at odds with
the understanding of the Salaf—only to be uncovered generations later via
the idiosyncratic conventions of a foreign society whose vocabulary, assump-
tions, and intellectual habits are other than those presupposed by the Qurʾān—
would not only amount to a fatal belying of the Qurʾān’s own self-proclaimed
clarity but also entail the categorical negation of the very essence of language
and the design and function of linguistic communication, be it divine or oth-
erwise.139
As the investigation we have conducted in this chapter makes clear, Ibn
Taymiyya seeks to effect a shift away from a hermeneutic that prioritizes ab-
stract speculation (and that endeavors to fit revelation into the mold of a preset
worldview allegedly derived on the basis of pure reason) towards a hermeneu-
tic that is thoroughly grounded in language and in which the revealed texts
are fully self-sufficient in their conveyance of theological and other truths to
mankind. In the next chapter, we turn our attention to how Ibn Taymiyya
deconstructs the basic assumptions of philosophy in order to reestablish the
connection—and the harmony—between authentic revelation (naql ṣaḥīḥ)
and his reconstructed notion of pure reason (ʿaql ṣarīḥ).

139 Once again, this should not be taken to mean that Ibn Taymiyya necessarily rejects the
prerogative of later generations to entertain their own personal or collective insights
regarding the revealed texts, provided these insights are complementary to, and never in
contradiction with, the meanings we can determine to have been understood by the Salaf.

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 chapter 5

Ṣarīḥ al-Maʿqūl, or What Is Reason?

Every time a man comes to us more disputatious than another, shall we

abandon what Gabriel has brought to Muḥammad (peace be upon him)
on account of such man’s controversy?
Mālik b. Anas1

∵
For Ibn Taymiyya, the question of the alleged conflict between reason and
revelation in medieval Islam, as we have seen, boils down most crucially to
a question of how to understand the revealed texts that concern the divine
attributes. In the last chapter, we explored Ibn Taymiyya’s approach to language
and textual interpretation in order to uncover his methodology for determin-
ing precisely what it is that revelation says. Here, we explore the main elements
of Ibn Taymiyya’s ontology and epistemology, both of which are central in his
bid to demonstrate that it is possible to maintain a plain-sense understand-
ing of scripture—in accord with what he claims to be the universal practice
of the Salaf—without running the risk of rational contradictions or falling into
assimilationism (tashbīh) of the type that would compromise God’s majesty,
uniqueness, and utter dissimilarity to all created things. In the current chapter,
we examine Ibn Taymiyya’s principal ontological and epistemological views. In
the final chapter, we then present and evaluate his use of the various tools he
has developed to resolve, once and for all, the centuries-long conflict between
reason and revelation that constitutes the subject of the Darʾ taʿāruḍ.
In a relatively brief passage in volume 7 of the Darʾ,2 Ibn Taymiyya outlines,
in an uncharacteristically explicit and theoretical fashion, the main compo-
nents of a comprehensive epistemological system in which he identifies three
fundamental sources of knowledge: (1) sensation (ḥiss), which comprises both
an outer (ẓāhir) and an inner (bāṭin) dimension; (2) reason (ʿaql), specifi-
cally the processes of discursive reasoning and rational inference (al-iʿtibār

1 “a-wa-kullamā jāʾanā rajul ajdal min rajul taraknā mā jāʾa bihi Jibrīl ilā Muḥammad (ṣallā
Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) li-jadal hādhā?” Cited at Darʾ, 1:191, lines 2–3.
2 Darʾ, 7:324, lines 8–17.

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228 chapter 5

bi-l-naẓar wa-l-qiyās) through which the particular knowledge provided by the

senses is universalized; and (3) transmitted reports (khabar),3 which include
but are not limited to the texts of revelation. In the following pages, I unpack
this passage by providing a detailed description of each individual source of
knowledge as it is presented in the Darʾ, along with the various principles
underlying its proper function and use. I then examine the twin principles
that Ibn Taymiyya posits as underlying and grounding these various sources of
knowledge, namely, the notion of the original normative disposition, or fiṭra,
and a substantially expanded application of the mechanism of recurrent mass
transmission, or tawātur.
Before delving into Ibn Taymiyya’s views on reason and the acquisition of
knowledge (that is, his epistemology), we must first explore his understand-
ing of ontology. Ontology and epistemology lend themselves to a joint treat-
ment since knowledge (a question of epistemology) is, for Ibn Taymiyya, first
and foremost a question of knowing what exists (a question of ontology)—
specifically, knowing what entities or kinds of entities enjoy substantive, extra-
mental existence in the external world ( fī al-khārij).4 Furthermore, Ibn Tay-
miyya’s critique of the ontology espoused by the philosophers and, he charges,
many of the mutakallimūn is central to his project in the Darʾ taʿāruḍ and
other works5 and must, therefore, be adequately accounted for if we are fully to
appreciate his attempted deconstruction and reconstruction of reason proper.
That is, Ibn Taymiyya is concerned not only to critique the philosophers’ mis-
handling of reason but also, more fundamentally, to question their assump-
tions concerning the very nature of reality itself, that reality about which they
purport to be reasoning. Finally, since a major pillar of Ibn Taymiyya’s project
rests on his contention that the philosophers are the victims of massive confu-
sion regarding what exists “out there” in extra-mental reality versus what exists
only in the mind, we must treat considerations of ontology and epistemology
in tandem if an accurate understanding of Ibn Taymiyya’s fundamentally epis-
temological project—namely, that of resolving the alleged conflict between
reason and revelation—is to be possible. Once we have probed Ibn Taymiyya’s
understanding of what reality consists of, we will be in a position to account for

3 The standard Arabic term used in this context is the (singular) word khabar (pl. akhbār), used
generically in reference to transmitted reports as a class. It is for this reason that I render sin-
gular “khabar” as “reports” or “transmitted reports” (in the plural).
4 See, for example, Darʾ, 6:98, line 4, where we read, “wa-laysa al-maqṣūd al-awwal bi-l-ʿilm illā
ʿilm mā huwa thābit fī al-khārij.”
5 Most notably his Kitāb al-Radd ʿalā al-manṭiqiyyīn, the strictly logical portions of which al-
Suyūṭī (in his Jahd al-qarīḥa) extracted from the metaphysical discussions. (See remarks in
Hallaq, Greek Logicians, liii–lv.)

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ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl, or what is reason? 229

his views on the various ways in which we gain knowledge of that reality. We
shall then be poised to consider, in the concluding chapter, how Ibn Taymiyya
marshals the various elements of his ontological and epistemological, as well as
his linguistic, reforms to dissolve certain key elements of philosophical thought
that he holds to be both rationally indefensible and, at the same time, primarily
responsible for the alleged contradictions between reason and revelation that
he set himself the task of refuting.

1 What Exists? Ibn Taymiyya’s Account of Reality

A recurrent theme that Ibn Taymiyya stresses in many of his writings is the
necessity of differentiating sharply between that which has purely mental
existence (such as universal concepts and notions existing in the mind) and
that which exists “out there” in external reality ( fī al-khārij).6 Ibn Taymiyya
often denotes this distinction with an alliterative pair of terms whereby men-
tal notions are said to exist fī al-adhhān (lit. “in [our] minds”), while externally
existent entities are said to exist fī al-aʿyān (lit. “among/as [extra-mental] enti-
ties”),7 that is, as independent, externally existent particulars.8 The various
notions that exist in the mind are said to be “maʿqūl” (mental, notional, log-
ical), while that which exists in the extra-mental world is, for Ibn Taymiyya,
invariably “maḥsūs” (perceptible, empirical). It is critical to grasp that, in Ibn
Taymiyya’s schema, maʿqūl (mental/notional) and maḥsūs (perceptible/
empirical) are mutually exclusive and logically exhaustive categories. Thus,
something exists either as a concept in the mind (like universals or abstract
numbers) or as a perceptible entity in the external world (ʿayn maḥsūs fī al-
khārij)9—only one or the other and never both. In Ibn Taymiyya’s words, “We
know of necessity that there is (in existence) only that which exists in and of
itself [i.e., independently in the external world] or that which is conceptual-

6 On mental concepts inhering only in the mind and being devoid of any external existence
independent of their particulars, see Hallaq, Greek Logicians, xxix.
7 See, e.g., Darʾ, 6:110, lines 9–10 (which is only one of many similar passages).
8 Ibn Taymiyya also refers to this with the typical phrase “aʿyān qāʾima bi-anfusihā.” See, e.g.,
Darʾ, 5:387, line 12, among others.
9 On the distinction between external and mental existence—that is, between what exists fī
al-aʿyān and what exists fī al-adhhān—see, e.g., Darʾ, 5:174, lines 11–16, where Ibn Taymiyya
critiques the philosophers for positing, alongside perceptible bodies (ajsām maḥsūsa), the
existence of “intelligible substances” ( jawāhir maʿqūla) like matter (in the abstract) and form,
externally existent universals associated with extant particulars (al-kulliyyāt [ fī al-khārij]
muqārinatan lil-aʿyān), and the Avicennian ten intellects. See also Darʾ, 5:135; Radd, 67.

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230 chapter 5

ized in the mind.”10 Below, I first present a synopsis of Ibn Taymiyya’s account
of what exists “out there” in the realm of extra-mental particulars ( fī al-aʿyān)
and how we can come to know it, then I explore Ibn Taymiyya’s account of what
subsists in the logical and conceptual world of the mind ( fī al-adhhān).

1.1 Self-Standing Entities (Aʿyān): The Realms of the Seen

and the Unseen
We begin our discussion with the realm of empirical reality—the maḥsūs, or
perceptible—the existing entities (aʿyān) of which are divided into two dis-
tinct sub-realms: the realm of the seen (ʿālam al-shahāda) and the realm of
the unseen (ʿālam al-ghayb). The term shahāda, a Qurʾānic term that signifies,
among other things, “that which is visible,”11 applies collectively to the entities
that are present (shāhid) and perceptible (maḥsūs) to us right now through our
various external senses, such as sight, hearing, or touch. Such entities include
essentially all the various objects we see, hear, taste, feel, and smell in our
daily lives, as well as the various events that we witness personally. The term
ghayb, also a Qurʾānic term,12 applies to anything that exists as an independent
particular (ʿayn) but is not perceptible to—or is “absent” (ghāʾib) from—our
external senses. Now, of the entities that are perceptible to us as part of our
visible (mashhūd) external reality, some possess an outward (ẓāhir) aspect as
well as an inward (bāṭin) aspect, both of which are equally perceptible. The out-
ward perceptible aspects of such an entity, such as the body of a human being,
are perceived through the external senses (ḥiss ẓāhir). The inner perceptible
aspects of, e.g., a human being, by contrast, include the subjective experience
of internal physical conditions like hunger and satiety, as well as emotional
or psychological states such as joy, anger, pain, and the like. And while a per-

10 “fa-innā naʿlamu bi-l-iḍṭirār annahu mā fī al-wujūd illā mā huwa mawjūd fī nafsihi aw mā

huwa mutaṣawwar fī al-dhihn.” Darʾ, 5:135, lines 16–17.
11 Derivatives of the root sh-h-d appear in the Qurʾān 157 times, with various meanings such
as “to see, to witness,” “to be present,” “to bear witness, testify,” and “to be martyred.” See
Gimaret, “S̲h̲ahāda,” EI2, 9:201a. For the term shahāda in the sense of the visible realm
in, e.g., the Qurʾānic description of God as “ʿālim al-ghayb wa-l-shahāda” (Knower of the
unseen and the seen), see Q. al-Anʿām 6:73; al-Tawba 9:94, 9:105; al-Raʿd 13:9; al-Muʾminūn
23:92; al-Sajda 32:6; al-Zumar 39:46; al-Ḥashr 59:22; al-Jumuʿa 62:8; and al-Taghābun 64:18.
12 Derivatives of the root gh-y-b, meaning “to be absent or hidden,” appear fifty-nine times in
the Qurʾān, most frequently in the sense of “what is hidden, inaccessible to the senses and
to reason—thus, at the same time absent from human knowledge and hidden in divine
wisdom.” MacDonald and Gardet, “al-G̲ h̲ ayb,” EI2, 2:1025a. The plural form, “ghuyūb,” also
appears four times, specifically in the description of God as “ʿallām al-ghuyūb” (the One
with full knowledge of unseen matters/realms/realities), at Q. al-Māʾida 5:109, 5:116; al-
Tawba 9:78; and Sabaʾ 34:48.

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ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl, or what is reason? 231

son’s inner aspect is not itself empirically perceptible to others, it neverthe-

less remains in essence perceptible, specifically to the person himself through
his own “internal sensation” (ḥiss bāṭin).13 In fact, Ibn Taymiyya states explic-
itly that “[a person’s] inner state (bāṭin) is not perceptible to us upon seeing
his outer form not because it is inherently imperceptible (lā li-ʿadam imkān
iḥsāsihi) but because his inner state is veiled (lākin li-iḥtijāb bāṭinihi) or on
account of another quality (aw li-maʿnā ākhar).”14 On the other hand, abstract
relational and intentional realities, such as amity and enmity, do not count as
perceptible (maḥsūs) for Ibn Taymiyya; rather, they are classified as “notions”
(maʿānī) enjoying mental existence in the mind. Thus, while the desire and
bloodlust that a wolf might feel upon eyeing a lone sheep are, like anger and
pain, perceptible realities that the wolf experiences through internal sensation
(ḥiss bāṭin), the sheep’s perception that the wolf harbors enmity towards her
or constitutes an enemy to her is, in essence, a relational judgement (ḥukm)
and, as such, exists as a mental or notional phenomenon in the mind of the
sheep. The fear, however, that is induced by the notional judgement of the
wolf’s enmity towards her is an internal (and hence “unseen,” or ghāʾib) per-
ceptible reality experienced by the sheep through her internal sensation.15
Notwithstanding the fact that these inner states inhere in what are otherwise
outwardly perceptible entities, the vast majority of what exists in the unseen
realm (that is, the ghayb) consists of various self-standing entities (aʿyān qāʾima
bi-anfusihā) and events that are, like all existing entities and events, in and of
themselves perceptible, though not (normally) perceptible to us through our
external senses. Nevertheless, Ibn Taymiyya allows that of the various entities
existing in the unseen realm, we can perceive, through a type of internal sen-
sation, the existence of both our souls and God. As for all other entities and
events that exist in the unseen realm—most notably angels and jinn, but also
eschatological events such as the life of the grave, the events of the resurrec-
tion and day of judgement, and the realities of heaven and hell—we can know
about them (to the extent we can know about them at all) only through what
Ibn Taymiyya identifies as our second major source of knowledge after sensa-
tion, namely, transmitted reports (khabar), which we examine in greater detail
below.
Now, the fact that entities existing in the unseen realm are not subject to
our empirical verification through external sense perception does not negate

13 See Darʾ, 6:108, lines 10–13.

14 Darʾ, 6:32, line 16 to 6:33, line 2.
15 See Darʾ, 6:44; also 6:52. Ibn Sīnā discusses this same example of the wolf and the sheep,
where he attributes the sheep’s sense of danger vis-à-vis the wolf to the estimative faculty
(wahm / al-quwwa al-wahmiyya). For more on Ibn Sīnā’s notion of wahm, see below, p. 273,
n. 159.

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232 chapter 5

their factual existence as objectively real, independent particulars. In fact, of

the two realms, it is the unseen that appears to be more fundamentally real,
and it is of note that in each of the ten instances in which the terms ghayb and
shahāda are mentioned together in the Qurʾān,16 the ghayb is invariably men-
tioned first. Yet we must not imagine the realm of the unseen and the realm
of the seen to be separated or sealed off from each other in any categorical
fashion. Of the two realms, the unseen is more comprehensive and seemingly
less restricted, with the intelligent beings inhabiting it, such as the angels and
jinn, appearing to have full access to our empirical realm (that of the shahāda),
though the reverse does not normally hold true. The inter-relational nature of
the seen and the unseen realms is further underscored by the fact that prophets,
for instance, are frequently given empirical access to various domains of the
unseen world, whereby they are able to perceive entities such as angels and
jinn (not normally perceptible to human beings) and to hear what they are say-
ing.17 Conversely, elements of the unseen realm occasionally impinge upon our
empirical (shāhid) realm, such as the occasion on which the angel Gabriel is
reported to have appeared to the Prophet Muḥammad at the time of the first
Qurʾānic revelation or the account in the well-known ḥadīth of Gabriel18 where
the angel Gabriel appeared in our visible, empirical realm in the form of a man
who interacted with the Prophet and his Companions directly.19
Finally, there is the soul (rūḥ), an independent particular (ʿayn) that exists
in the unseen realm yet is associated with the physical body for the duration of
a person’s worldly life. The soul is likewise able to perceive things that the body
cannot perceive, similar to the manner in which a person might experience
things imperceptible to other people during a state in which he is “discon-
nected,” to a degree, from his normal bodily perceptions, as in dream.20 Upon
death, the soul becomes more definitively disconnected from the body and
thus can see and sense (tarā wa-tuḥissu bi)21 things that it could not see and
sense while still associated with the body. If, Ibn Taymiyya urges, we realize that

16 See p. 230, n. 11 above.

17 Darʾ, 6:108, line 18 to 6:109, line 1. The Qurʾān, for instance, contains numerous passages in
which prophets are depicted as having direct interaction with the ghayb, or unseen realm.
See, e.g., Q. al-Naml 27:16–44 and Ṣād 38:36.
18 See, e.g., Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 24–25, where this ḥadīth appears at the very beginning of the first
“book” (Kitāb al-īmān) of the work. See also al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, 23 and 1199–1200.
19 See Darʾ, 6:32–33 and 6:108–109 on the definition of the ghayb and its relationship to the
seen.
20 With respect to the perception of the soul, Ibn Taymiyya seems to be speaking of the kind
of spiritual unveiling (kashf ) in which discrete elements of the unseen realm are disclosed
to a person as a divine favor.
21 Darʾ, 6:108, lines 16–17.

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ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl, or what is reason? 233

the soul can sense things that the body cannot and that some people can sense
with both their bodies and their souls that which others cannot, then we would
realize that the avenues and modalities of sensation (ṭuruq al-ḥiss)22 are, in fact,
numerous. Indeed, they are not limited simply to what the majority of people
are able to perceive in the visible realm via their bodily senses, as such senses
are normally apt to perceive only some of what exists in the external world.
It is in this expanded sense that Ibn Taymiyya maintains the view that every
self-standing entity (kullu qāʾim bi-nafsihi) is, in one way or another, percep-
tible ( yumkinu al-iḥsās bihi), whether it exist in the realm of the empirically
accessible or in that of the unseen.23
It emerges from the foregoing that the distinction between the seen and the
unseen realms, for Ibn Taymiyya, is not an absolute ontological distinction as
much as it is a relative (and, ultimately, an epistemological) one determined
by the particular range and limitations of normal human sense perception. All
things in existence—that is, all the self-standing entities of the seen and the
unseen realms—are perceptible in their own right, only that some of them
are perceptible to us in the current world (dunyā) through our external sen-
sation, while others have been placed categorically beyond the reach of our
senses (even when these senses are radically extended by, for example, the use
of scientific instruments). From a purely ontological perspective, both realms
are equally existent, equally real, equally “out there” ( fī al-khārij), and both
are equally populated by inherently perceptible, self-standing entities (aʿyān
maḥsūsa qāʾima bi-anfusihā) that exist in their own right, distinct from and
independent of other existent, self-standing entities.24
Beyond this ontological dimension, the notion of the “unseen” (ghayb) like-
wise comprises a temporal aspect, reflected in Ibn Taymiyya’s definition of the
ghayb as “that which is imperceptible to us now in the [current] world” (ghayr

22 Darʾ, 6:110, lines 3–4.

23 Darʾ, 6:110, lines 2–8. For important discussions on what exactly Ibn Taymiyya means by
his statement that all existing things are, in some sense, perceptible (maḥsūs), see Darʾ,
5:130–134, 5:168–175, and 6:32–33. See Darʾ, 5:173–174 for his criticism, in this regard, of
the Pythagoreans, the Platonists, and the Aristotelians and Darʾ, 5:175 on the Peripatetics’
insufficient response to the materialists.
24 The fundamental ontological distinction, as we shall see, is between the necessary, uncre-
ated, eternal, and indestructible existence of God, on the one hand, and the contingent,
created, temporal existence of everything other than God (both seen and unseen), on the
other. These qualities (necessity vs. contingency, eternity vs. temporality, etc.) are inherent
to the entity in question and are therefore true in an absolute sense; that is, they are not
relative to us as human beings, like the (relative) fact that some created, contingent reali-
ties happen to be perceptible to us in the current world (and are thus “shāhid,” or present
to us), while others happen not to be (and are thus “ghāʾib,” or absent from us).

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mashhūd lanā al-ān fī al-dunyā).25 So, in addition to those entities that exist
concurrently with us but in the unseen realm, the ghayb also includes, from
the perspective of its temporal aspect, all events that have occurred in the visi-
ble realm in the past and those that will occur in the visible realm in the future,
for although such events partake of the visible realm ontologically (that is, their
occurrence takes place in the ordinary realm of time and space and in a man-
ner analogous to the events we witness in our current empirical reality), they
are nevertheless not perceptible to us right now. The use of the word ghayb
in reference to future events in the visible realm of ordinary sense perception
is evidenced in a phrase such as “lā yaʿlamu al-ghayb illā Allāh”26 (lit. “God
alone knows the ghayb”), which is functionally equivalent to English “Only God
knows the future.” The use of the word ghayb in reference to past events in the
visible realm appears, for instance, in Q. Hūd 11:49, where, after a long passage
detailing the events of the life of Noah, God addresses the Prophet Muḥammad
with the words, “That is from the news of the unseen (anbāʾ al-ghayb) that We
reveal unto you (O Muḥammad).”27
Finally, in addition to its ontological and temporal dimensions, the realm of
the unseen is further composed of a spatial dimension, whereby even those
things that exist contemporaneously with me in the visible realm but that
are not immediately present to my sense perception right now are considered
“ghāʾib” (unseen, in the unseen realm) with respect to me. Falling under this
category of the unseen are essentially all places, persons, and events currently
existing in the world but of which I myself do not currently have direct empir-
ical experience through my external perception (ḥiss ẓāhir). When, at the end
of time, the current order of existence is destroyed and a new creation (khalq
jadīd)28 is brought about, the distinction between the visible world of ordi-
nary sense perception and the world of the unseen will be abrogated, the veil
currently concealing the latter from the former will be lifted, and all unseen
entities that are currently inaccessible to ordinary external sensation, includ-
ing God,29 will become directly perceptible—or “witnessed” (mashhūd)—and

25 See similar at Darʾ, 6:107, lines 13–14 and 9:15, lines 1–4.
26 Reminiscent of Q. al-Naml 27:65, which states, “Say, ‘None in the heavens and the earth
know the unseen save God, and they perceive not when they will be resurrected.’ ”
27 See similar at Q. Āl ʿImrān 3:44 and Yūsuf 12:102.
28 The expression khalq jadīd, in reference to the afterlife, appears eight times in the Qurʾān.
See Q. al-Raʿd 13:5 and al-Sajda 32:10 (a-innā la-fī khalqin jadīd); Ibrāhīm 14:19 and Fāṭir
35:16 (in yashaʾ yudhhibkum wa-yaʾti bi-khalqin jadīd); al-Isrāʾ 17:49 and 17:98 (a-innā la-
mabʿūthūna khalqan jadīdan); Sabaʾ 34:7 (innakum la-fī khalqin jadīd); and Qāf 50:15 (bal
hum fī labsin min khalqin jadīd).
29 This is a reference to the ruʾya (“beatific vision”) alluded to in Q. al-Qiyāma 75:22–23: “(22)
[Some] faces that day will be radiant, (23) gazing upon their Lord (ilā rabbihā nāẓira).”

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ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl, or what is reason? 235

experienced in an immediate fashion through the external senses. At that time,

Ibn Taymiyya affirms, what we used to merely know about with certainty we
will dramatically come to witness and experience directly. In other words, what
used to be merely ʿilm al-yaqīn (certain knowledge) will suddenly become for
us ʿayn al-yaqīn (certainty itself).30
The ontological affirmation of an unseen realm that lies beyond our current
sense perception raises an important epistemological question: How can we
come to know of the existence of such a realm and the realities that populate
it? Indeed, how do we come to know anything at all?

2 How Do We Know What Exists? The Primary Sources of Knowledge

If I have spent so much time in the preceding section elaborating Ibn

Taymiyya’s account of the seen and the unseen realms, it is primarily because
for him, to know is first and foremost to have knowledge of what exists “out
there” as independent, self-standing entities in the external world (aʿyān qāʾima
bi-anfusihā fī al-khārij). Only after accounting for the ontological question of
what exists can we consider the epistemological question of how precisely
we come to know what exists. A second reason for this elaboration, as I have
already suggested, is that a great deal of Ibn Taymiyya’s critique of philosoph-
ical discourse on the alleged conflict between reason and revelation can be
reduced to a question of confused ontology, namely, to the charge that the
philosophers have fatally confused that which has ontological existence in the
external world with that which has only logical existence in the mind. The
philosophers, Ibn Taymiyya tells us, claim that the ghayb mentioned in revela-
tion refers to that which is maʿqūl (that is, intelligible, in the realm of the intel-
lect), while the shahāda refers to the empirical world accessible to the external
senses.31 Ibn Taymiyya, by contrast, affirms that revelation does not, in fact,
differentiate between the ghayb and the shahāda on the grounds that one (the
ghayb) is intellectual (maʿqūl) in nature while the other (the shahāda) is empir-
ical (maḥsūs), as the philosophers surmise. Rather, it differentiates between
them on the grounds that the shahāda is visible to us now, while the ghayb is

30 This distinction between ʿilm al-yaqīn (the knowledge of certainty) and ʿayn al-yaqīn (the
“eye of certainty,” or certainty itself) is a direct reference to Q. al-Takāthur 102:5–7: “(5)
Nay! If only you knew with the knowledge of certainty (kallā law taʿlamūna ʿilm al-yaqīn)!
(6) You will surely see the hellfire; (7) then will you surely see it with the eye of certainty
(thumma la-tarawunnahā ʿayn al-yaqīn).”
31 See, e.g., Darʾ, 6:33, esp. lines 14–16; also Darʾ, 6:107, lines 15–16 and 9:15, lines 1–3.

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absent from our current empirical perception (ghāʾib ʿannā), though it is none-
theless fundamentally capable of being perceived ( yumkinu al-iḥsās bihi).32
Mental notions and categories, the stuff and contents of the mind—in other
words, that which is truly maʿqūl—are, for Ibn Taymiyya, an entirely separate
category that has nothing to do with the ghayb spoken of in revelation.

2.1 The First Source of Knowledge: Sensation (ḥiss)

Ibn Taymiyya has often been referred to as an empiricist (or otherwise associ-
ated with empiricism),33 and indeed he identifies the primary and most fun-
damental source of human knowledge as sensation (ḥiss). As we have seen,
sensation has both an external (ẓāhir) and an internal (bāṭin) dimension.34 It is
through external sensation—primarily by way of our physical senses—that we
come to know the objects of the empirical world around us, that world which
we have identified as the visible realm, or ʿālam al-shahāda. Through internal
sensation, by contrast, we experience various subjective emotional and psy-
chic states and also perceive the existence of both God and our own souls. Our
souls, in turn, may perceive through internal sensation certain unseen (ghāʾib)
realities that are currently veiled to our external senses. Other than God, our
souls, and what our souls may perceive in this manner, we have no access to
anything else in the unseen realm through our internal sensation (nor, by defi-
nition, can we access it through our external perception). Anything else in the
unseen realm that we can know about can only be known through a second,
critical source of knowledge, namely, transmitted reports, or khabar.

32 See, e.g., Darʾ, 9:14–15 (esp. 9:14, lines 17–18 and 9:15, lines 3–4).
33 See, e.g., Hallaq, Greek Logicians, xxxi, xxxiii–xxxiv, xlvii–l; Heer, “Ibn Taymiyah’s Empiri-
cism,” 113 and passim; von Kügelgen, “Poison of Philosophy,” 296; Marcotte, “Ibn Taymiyya
et sa critique,” 50. See also von Kügelgen’s useful summary of scholarly views on Ibn
Taymiyya’s “empiricism,” followed by her own pertinent comments and analysis, in “Ibn
Taymīyas Kritik,” 214–221. As von Kügelgen argues, the similarity between Ibn Taymiyya
and the later empiricists only goes so far. She further remarks (pp. 217–218) that Ibn
Taymiyya does not, in fact, criticize the Aristotelian search for the essence of things itself;
rather, he criticizes the presumption that this essence can be abstracted from particulars
with any kind of certainty.
34 In addition to external and internal perception, Ibn Taymiyya also counts the content of
recurrently mass transmitted reports (mutawātirāt), matters known through observation
or experience (mujarrabāt), and matters known by intuition (ḥadsiyyāt) as part of that
which we know through sensation. Von Kügelgen, “Ibn Taymīyas Kritik,” 196; Hallaq, Greek
Logicians, 144.

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ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl, or what is reason? 237

2.2 The Second Source of Knowledge: Transmitted Reports (khabar)

Sense perception, for Ibn Taymiyya, is the most immediate, necessary, and
undeniable source of knowledge. It is the source of all knowledge we have
about our empirical world, and, in a fundamental sense, it lies at the base of
all knowledge that we can have (even knowledge more proximately mediated
to us via reason or transmitted reports). Yet for all its immediacy, poignancy,
and undeniable concreteness, sensory knowledge is, ultimately, extremely lim-
ited, for it comprises only what each of us has personally witnessed him-
self. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a reality in which we had no knowl-
edge of anything other than what we have come to know directly through our
own limited sense perception. A moment’s reflection will reveal that the vast
majority of what we know about our world, both present and past, we have
come to know through another source (or collection of sources), which can
be grouped under the term “reports” (akhbār, sing. khabar). Literally every-
thing we know about the objects and events of the world other than those
we have personally witnessed—including past eras of human history as well
as currently existing lands and peoples in far-off places, not to mention the
ontological realm of the unseen (ghayb) proper—is ultimately based on some
type of reporting (ikhbār) or transmission (naql). For this reason, Ibn Taymiyya
describes reports as being more general and more comprehensive (aʿamm wa-
ashmal) than sense perception, although sense perception—particularly that
of sight—is more complete and more perfect (atamm wa-akmal).35 Indeed,
as the Arabic saying goes, “Hearing of a thing is not like seeing it.”36 Never-
theless, it is true that we can know through transmitted reports many times
more than any given person could possibly witness himself. In this sense, it
can be said that it is through reports that we are able to escape imprisonment
in the vivid but narrow confines of what is perceptible to each of us in the
current moment. And since “what is perceptible to each of us in the current
moment” is the very definition of the visible, or shāhid, realm, it follows that
anything we come to know through reports necessarily falls within the realm
of the unseen, or ghayb, in one manner or another. Yet even reporting is ulti-
mately grounded in sense perception (ḥiss), for anything accurately reported
to us concerning any event, person, or place must originally have been experi-
enced by someone through his senses, then passed on to others in the form of a
transmitted report. At the reception end of this transmission process, it is also

35 Darʾ, 7:324, lines 16–17.

36 “laysa al-mukhbar ka-l-muʿāyan.” Darʾ, 7:325, line 3. He goes on to add that “not everything
that is seen can be reported on, and the knowledge that comes about through reporting
is not like the knowledge that comes about through direct witnessing.”

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through our senses—primarily our sense of hearing, or samʿ—that we are able

to receive these reports.
The Arabic word samʿ, in this context, refers not just to hearing (reports) in
general but to hearing a very specific and special type of “report,” namely, divine
revelation (in the form of the Qurʾān and authenticated prophetic ḥadīth). Rev-
elation constitutes a report (khabar) insofar as it consists of “that of which
the prophets have brought [us] news concerning the unseen” (al-ghayb alladhī
akhbarat bihi al-rusul).37 The reports that constitute revelation are, like any
other transmitted report, ultimately based in sense perception, and this from
two perspectives. First, revelation initially enters our world as a recited text that
is first received, then subsequently transmitted, through samʿ (hearing), one of
our primary external senses. Second, insofar as revelation reports to us primar-
ily about the unseen realm, it is reporting about entities, realities, and events
that are inherently perceptible (maḥsūs) even if they are (normally) veiled to
our senses in the current world or have not yet come to pass. Even God Himself,
for Ibn Taymiyya, is “perceptible” (as must be the case for any existent reality
that is not merely a concept subsisting in the mind), in the sense that we can
perceive Him through our internal sensation in the current world and through
our external senses in the world to come. In sum, it is through transmitted
reports (khabar) that we come to know a great deal about our world, what it
currently contains and what has previously existed or occurred in it. Similarly,
everything we know about the currently existing, parallel realm of the unseen
(namely, that realm which is absent, by default, from human empirical experi-
ence in this world) is likewise known to us through transmitted reports—in this
case, the special set of “reports” that constitute divine revelation. Such reports
include information concerning the angels and jinn, heaven, hell, the primor-
dial covenant (al-mīthāq)38 and the creation of man, the life of the grave and
the events of the last day, and other such matters. They also include, naturally,
everything of which revelation informs us concerning the nature of God—
most importantly, for Ibn Taymiyya, God’s qualities and attributes.
Yet the world contains all manner of reports, and if we are dependent on
such reports for so much of what we claim to know about our world, how can

37 Darʾ, 9:14, line 16.

38 See Q. al-Aʿrāf 7:172: “And when thy Lord took from the Children of Adam, from their loins,
their progeny and made them bear witness concerning themselves, ‘Am I not your Lord?’
they said, ‘Yea, we bear witness’—lest you should say on the Day of Resurrection, ‘Truly
of this we were heedless’” (trans. The Study Quran). On this verse and the concept of the
primordial covenant, see Gramlich, “Der Urvertrag in der Koranauslegung (zu Sure 7, 172–
173).”

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ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl, or what is reason? 239

we distinguish authentic reports (those that Ibn Taymiyya refers to as khabar

ṣādiq, or “true reports”) from dubious ones? With respect to religious texts that
convey knowledge of the unseen—namely, the Qurʾān and the ḥadīth of the
Prophet—Ibn Taymiyya’s views are fairly standard in the context of the Islamic
scholarly tradition.39 Any ḥadīth that is considered authentic (ṣaḥīḥ) accord-
ing to the criteria of classical ḥadīth scholarship counts as a true report and
can be taken as a reliable indicator of truth about reality. Absolute certainty of
the veracity of a report’s content is, however, reserved to those texts that have
reached us through the process of tawātur, or recurrent mass transmission.
Mass transmitted (mutawātir) reports are those that have been passed down
from their origin on such a wide scale and from so many disparate and unre-
lated sources as to preclude the possibility that they could have been forged
through collusion or conscious agreement (tawāṭuʾ).40 The tradition of Islamic
textual criticism recognizes the entire text of the Qurʾān as mutawātir, in addi-
tion to a (widely disagreed upon) number of ḥadīth reports. The concept of
tawātur comprises not only the category of tawātur lafẓī, or verbatim tawātur,
in which the report in question has been transmitted word for word in a mas-
sively recurrent fashion, but also the (numerically more significant) category
of tawātur maʿnawī, or thematic tawātur, in which a common meaning is guar-
anteed through recurrent mass transmission despite (normally insignificant)
differences in the precise wording of the reports. It is of note that, for Ibn
Taymiyya, it is the same principle of tawātur—albeit not through the mech-
anism of formal ḥadīth reports supported by an explicit chain of transmission
(isnād)—that we have come to know, for example, the legendary generosity of
Ḥātim al-Ṭāʾī (d. 578 or ca. 605 CE) or, for that matter, the extraordinary life and
circumstances of the Prophet Muḥammad on the basis of which the authen-
ticity of his claim to prophecy can be substantiated.41
Apart from the transmission of texts, the principle of tawātur also operates
within the various religious scholarly disciplines to guarantee the authenticity
of the knowledge cultivated in a particular field of study—specifically fields in
which epistemic authenticity is directly linked to the faithful transmission of

39 For an overview of this tradition, see Brown, Hadith.

40 For a detailed study of Ibn Taymiyya’s views on tawātur, both as a topic of legal theory and
more generally, see El-Tobgui, “From Legal Theory to Erkenntnistheorie” (esp. 18–33 for his
views on tawātur as related to the transmission of texts). At Radd, 92–100, Ibn Taymiyya
argues against those logicians who deny the use of mass transmitted reports in establish-
ing knowledge, charging that such denial lies at the root of disbelief and heresy (ilḥād).
41 For Ibn Taymiyya’s discussion of the use of various classes of ḥadīth and the positions that
have been held with respect to them, see Darʾ, 3:383, line 12 to 3:384, line 6.

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an early normative doctrine, as is the case in the majority of the Islamic reli-
gious sciences. Authoritative tawātur in such cases is to be judged by—and
often only exists among—those most thoroughly versed in a particular field.
In this manner, certain opinions of the iconic early grammarian Sībawayhi (d.
ca. 180/796) may be mutawātir for the professional grammarian, though not for
the non-specialist public. A similar situation obtains in fields such as medicine
and the various Islamic religious disciplines.42 In this vein—and in light of his
overall theological concerns in the Darʾ taʿāruḍ—Ibn Taymiyya remarks that
the various reports (akhbār) we have from the Prophet’s Companions on fun-
damental theological issues (al-masāʾil al-uṣūliyya) are, in fact, far stronger and
greater in number than many of the legal ( fiqh) issues that are also mutawātir
and that everyone accepts without quarrel.43 In other words, there exists a par-
ticularly important subset of mutawātir reports that complement the set of
reports constituting the Qurʾān and Sunna, namely, the mutawātir transmission
of the positions and understandings—in creed as well as in legal matters—of
the early authoritative generations of Muslims, the so-called salaf al-ṣāliḥ, or
pious forebears.44 This subcategory of mutawātir transmission relates, inciden-
tally, to our discussion (in chapter 4) of the linguistic convention, as well as the
known positions (aqwāl), of the Salaf,45 to which Ibn Taymiyya accords such
primacy in his hermeneutics of revelation and, indeed, in his overall theory of
language and meaning.
To summarize, external reality is made up of innumerable discrete entities
(aʿyān), some of which (namely, those in the shahāda, or visible realm) are
empirically accessible to us now through our external senses (ḥiss ẓāhir), while
others of which (namely, those in the ghayb, or unseen realm) are currently hid-
den from our external senses. We come to know the independent entities of the
visible realm in a straightforward manner through our external sense percep-
tions. Whatever entities we know about in the unseen realm we come to know
primarily through the vehicle of transmitted reports (khabar). An exception to

42 For this discussion, see Darʾ, 8:44ff. Zysow (Economy of Certainty, 22) mentions that this
division of mutawātir reports into general (ʿāmm) and specialized (khāṣṣ) was “particu-
larly dear to Ibn Taymiyya.” See Zysow, 22, n. 88 for references to this division in numerous
other works of Ibn Taymiyya and the discussion in El-Tobgui, “From Legal Theory to Er-
kenntnistheorie,” 20–21.
43 See Darʾ, 7:32, lines 1–6.
44 On the elevation of exegetical reports from the Salaf to the status of certain, prophetic
knowledge, see S. Ahmed, “Ibn Taymiyyah and the Satanic Verses,” 78–86 and Saleh, “Rad-
ical Hermeneutics,” esp. 128–131.
45 See chapter 4, section 3 (p. 206ff.) above. On the role of pre-Islamic poetry as an attesta-
tion (shāhid) of correct Arabic language use, see Suleiman, Arabic Grammatical Tradition,
19–22.

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ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl, or what is reason? 241

this is an individual’s sensation of his own soul and of God, two perceptible,
self-standing particulars (aʿyān maḥsūsa qāʾima bi-anfusihā) that we can per-
ceive not through our external senses (at least not in this world in the case of
God) but through our internal sensation (ḥiss bāṭin).
If such is Ibn Taymiyya’s account of the maḥsūs, those objects that exist as
independent particulars in the external world ( fī al-aʿyān), then what is his
account of the maʿqūl—that which exists, according to him, purely in the mind
( fī al-adhhān)? We now consider this question at length.

3 The Realm of the Mind: What Exists fī al-adhhān?

3.1 Universals
We began this chapter by drawing attention to the fundamental distinction Ibn
Taymiyya makes between the realm of the “aʿyān” (external existence) and that
of the “adhhān” (mental existence). The conception of mental versus extra-
mental existence delineated above has direct consequences for Ibn Taymiyya’s
critique of the philosophers’ understanding of universals,46 a critique that rep-
resents a principal lynchpin in his overall project of deconstructing philoso-
phy and reconstructing in its place what he holds to be truly sound reason
(ʿaql ṣarīḥ). Ibn Taymiyya maintains that it is a matter of necessary knowledge
that all existents fall into one of two mutually exclusive categories: that which
exists independently (mawjūd fī nafsihi) in the external world and that which
exists conceptually in the mind (mutaṣawwar fī al-dhihn).47 In the preceding
section, we discussed Ibn Taymiyya’s contention that all externally existent
entities (aʿyān mawjūda fī al-khārij) are, of necessity, perceptible (maḥsūs),
either through external or through internal sensation. Ibn Taymiyya advances
this thesis primarily against the philosophers’ realist metaphysics, according
to which abstract entities—particularly universals—enjoy real, extra-mental
existence (whether independent of or inherent in instantiated particulars).48
Thus, according to the philosophers, in addition to the set of all existing indi-
vidual human beings, there exists universal man (al-insān al-kullī), or man
in an absolute or unconditioned sense (al-insān al-muṭlaq). The existence of

46 On the philosophers’ (particularly Ibn Sīnā’s) doctrine of universals, see Marmura, “Avi-
cenna’s Chapter on Universals in the Isagoge of the Shifāʾ ” and Marmura, “Quiddity and
Universality in Avicenna.”
47 Darʾ, 5:135, lines 16–17.
48 On Ibn Taymiyya’s critique of the philosophers’ realist conception of universals, see Hal-
laq, Greek Logicians, xx–xxiv.

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universal man is posited to be ontologically independent of the extant par-

ticulars, while the particulars are said (on the Platonic view) to “participate”
(tashtarik) in the universal49 or else (on the Aristotelian view) to inhere in each
of the particulars.50 It is by virtue of their participation in the universal that
the particulars can be said to belong to one and the same species (nawʿ). How,
then, do the philosophers account for the distinction between similar, though
not completely identical, entities, such as the distinct individuals of one and
the same species or individuals belonging to different species subsumed under
a common genus?
To explain this difference, the philosophers hold that every individual entity
is clearly distinct from every other individual entity and therefore differs from
it in certain respects, owing to a difference in the specific attributes partic-
ular to each entity that coexist in it alongside the common universal. Thus,
between any two individuals of a common species, there exist elements in
which they share (mā bihi al-ishtirāk), namely, the universal with all its con-
comitant attributes (lawāzim), as well as elements in which they differ (mā bihi
al-ikhtilāf ), namely, the accidental qualities or attributes that do not form part
of the essence and that differ from individual to individual within a species.
For example, we may posit the existence of two horses, a palomino thorough-
bred stallion and a roan-coated Arabian mare. Both are horses and thus (on
the Aristotelian interpretation) participate in the universal category “horse,”
by virtue of which they both possess four legs, a mane, a tail, and other such
attributes that are concomitant (lāzim) to universal horseness. Like all bodies,
they also participate in the universal attribute of “color,” though each has a dif-
ferent specific color. As both horses exist, they likewise participate in universal
existence (al-wujūd al-kullī) while each also exists as a distinct entity by virtue
of a particular existence specific to it (wujūd muʿayyan yakhuṣṣuhu). It is essen-
tial to retain that for the philosophers, not only does there exist between any
two similar but non-identical entities a common factor (qadr mushtarak) and
an element of differentiation (qadr mumayyiz), but the existence of the com-
mon factor is conceived of as involving an ontological, and not merely a logical
or notional, sharing (ishtirāk) as well.51 That is, the philosophers maintain that
there is an actual ontological co-sharing in one and the same universal with

49 On Plato’s doctrine of universals as self-standing Forms in which particulars participate,

see Shields, Ancient Philosophy, 68–88. See also MacLeod and Rubenstein, “Universals,”
section 2a, “Extreme Realism.”
50 On Aristotle’s doctrine of universals as inhering in multiple disparate particulars, see
MacLeod and Rubenstein, “Universals,” section 2b, “Strong Realism.”
51 Ibid., section 2, “Versions of Realism.”

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ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl, or what is reason? 243

respect to those aspects that are common to more than one individual. It is
this metaphysical notion of a real, ontological sharing that, according to Ibn
Taymiyya, led the philosophers to deny any positive attributes of God. This
denial is motivated by their view that sharing of any sort would imply an onto-
logical similarity between the two entities that share in the common universal,
a conclusion that flows from their erroneous attribution of objective, external
ontological existence to the universal concepts that Ibn Taymiyya insists inhere
only in the mind. Therefore, to free God from any similarity (tashbīh) to created
entities, the philosophers are forced to adopt a radically negationist theology
of attributes predicated on the denial of any and all existential predications
whatsoever (salb al-umūr al-thubūtiyya).52
In the face of this realist conception of universals, Ibn Taymiyya stridently
and repeatedly insists that the philosophers have committed a fundamental
category error by confusing purely logical reality with ontological reality. Ibn
Taymiyya’s rejection of the radical conceptual realism of the philosophers is
evident in his denial of the existence of quiddities prior to the existence of par-
ticulars. Among the quiddities that he denies are the “non-existent,” or maʿdūm
(affirmed by the Muʿtazila, the Shīʿa, and the later Sufi “monists”), the Pla-
tonic forms, Aristotelian prime matter (hayūlā; Greek ύλη/hyle), numbers as
conceived in the doctrine of the Pythagoreans, time and place, the essences of
species and genera, and the remaining universals.53 As a result of this denial,
Ibn Taymiyya has been described as adopting a “strict nominalist approach,”54
at least as far as universals are concerned. Such a nominalism is hardly unique
to Ibn Taymiyya, however, as it was also upheld by other figures such as Shi-
hāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī. Moreover, it has been remarked, such nominalistic
tendencies “do not seem to have been uncommon in the midst of Sunnī theol-
ogy and theory of law.”55 Apart from Ibn Taymiyya’s strongly anti-realist view of
universals, however, there are several other domains in which he, like his Peri-
patetic adversaries, was closer to being a “moderate realist,” such that we can
identify “major parts of human knowledge about particulars where he himself,
sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly, adheres to ‘moderate realism’ and
thus contradicts his absolute negation of it.”56

52 See, e.g., Darʾ, 9:339, lines 14–16: “idh yuthbitūna wujūdan muṭlaqan aw mashrūṭan bi-
salb al-umūr al-thubūtiyya aw al-thubūtiyya wa-l-ʿadamiyya wa-hādhā lā yakūnu illā fī al-
adhhān.” See similar discussion at Darʾ, 1:217, 1:286–289, and 5:140–145 (esp. 5:142–143).
53 Von Kügelgen, “Ibn Taymīyas Kritik,” 181–182; von Kügelgen, “Poison of Philosophy,” 293.
54 Hallaq, Greek Logicians, xlvi.
55 Ibid.
56 See von Kügelgen, “Poison of Philosophy,” 293. These points are further elaborated at von
Kügelgen, 306–322.

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Notwithstanding his moderate realism in domains related to particulars, Ibn

Taymiyya is consistent and unrelenting in his rejection of the philosophers’
realist ontology of universals. This is especially true for the so-called “natural
universal” (al-kullī al-ṭabīʿī) that pertains to extant genera and species57 (such
as the universal notion of “man” or “horse”), which, Ibn Taymiyya insists, can
only exist in the external world in the form of discrete, instantiated partic-
ulars.58 According to Ibn Taymiyya, from the similarities evident among, for
instance, individual horses, the mind abstracts ( yujarrid)59 from the empiri-
cally observed particulars the universal notion of “horse,” under which it then
classifies and subsumes all extant members of the class (in this case, all existing
horses).60 He notes, however, that “horse,” as a universal, is precisely a notion—
that is, a concept, or “maʿnā”. As such, it exists only in the mind and possesses,
independent of its externally existent particulars, neither existence nor reality
in the external world.61 Another way of stating the matter is that what exists in
the mind as a universal concept exists in the external world only in the form
of individual, instantiated particulars.62 As the universal itself exists only in
the mind, the particulars can be said to “participate” in the universal only in a
purely logical, not an ontological, sense.63 Indeed, Ibn Taymiyya insists that just
as there is no externally existing universal in which the individuals of a species

57 See Darʾ, 3:39, where Ibn Taymiyya identifies the natural universal with the “universal that
is unconditioned [by universality]” (al-kullī al-muṭlaq lā bi-sharṭ), that is, conceived such
that it can apply to actual extant particulars in the world. (See further on this at Darʾ,
4:254–255.)
58 “lā yūjadu illā muʿayyanan juzʾiyyan.” See Darʾ, 6:92, lines 11–12.
59 See, e.g., Darʾ, 6:275, line 16 and 10:103, lines 13–14 (with “yantaziʿ ” given as a synonym
of yujarrid at this latter). See also Darʾ, 6:32, line 10, where he speaks of “al-ʿaqliyyāt al-
kulliyya al-muntazaʿa min al-muʿayyanāt.” This is not to say, however, that all universals in
the mind are necessarily extracted from particulars. Ibn Taymiyya remarks that “the partic-
ulars [subsumed under some] universal propositions have existence in the external world,
while others are conceived of in the mind and do not exist as particulars” (wa-l-qaḍāyā
al-kulliyya tāratan yakūnu li-juzʾiyyātihā wujūd fī al-khārij wa-tāratan takūnu maqdūra fī
al-adhhān lā wujūda lahā fī al-aʿyān). Darʾ, 6:98, lines 1–3.
60 On this abstracting function of the mind, see Hallaq, Greek Logicians, xx, xxiii, xxxiii; von
Kügelgen, “Ibn Taymīyas Kritik,” 182.
61 Ibn Taymiyya maintains that the impossibility of a universal existing in the external world
qua universal is a proposition that is known to be true by necessity. Darʾ, 6:92, lines 10–11.
62 See, e.g., Hallaq, Greek Logicians, xxii, where he confirms that Ibn Taymiyya affirms this
view “in literally dozens of his treatises,” including Naqḍ al-manṭiq, Jahd al-qarīḥa, Muwā-
faqat ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl (i.e., Darʾ taʿāruḍ), Furqān, Kitāb al-Ulūhiyya, Kitāb al-Rubūbiyya,
and others. (See Hallaq, xxii, n. 52 for these works, with page references.) See also Darʾ,
4:255, line 2 (“kullī fī al-adhhān mukhtaṣṣ fī al-aʿyān”); Darʾ, 5:35, line 9: “states (aḥwāl) are
like universals; they exist in the mind, not as [externally existent] particulars”; and similar
at Darʾ, 5:90, 5:95, 5:141, 6:18, 6:26–27, 6:92, 6:95, 6:161–163, and 10:295.
63 See, inter alia, Darʾ, 4:254 and 5:90–95 (esp. at 5:93, 95).

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ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl, or what is reason? 245

participate (as per the Platonic model), so too is there no sense in which the
universal inheres, in a substantive ontological sense, in the individuals (as per
the Aristotelian model).64
In discussing the notion of abstract(ed) universals (al-kulliyyāt al-mujar-
rada) like absolute or unconditioned humanity (al-insāniyya al-muṭlaqa),
unconditioned animality (al-ḥayawāniyya al-muṭlaqa), unconditioned body
(al-jism al-muṭlaq), unconditioned existence (al-wujūd al-muṭlaq), and so forth,
Ibn Taymiyya remarks that “there exists nothing in external reality that is
unconditioned (muṭlaq) and non-particularized (ghayr muʿayyan). Rather, a
thing can only exist particularized (muʿayyan) and individuated (mushakh-
khaṣ), and that is what is perceptible (wa-huwa al-maḥsūs).”65 He goes on to
explain that those who are in error among the philosophers affirm the existence
of abstract mental concepts in the external world (al-ʿaqliyyāt al-mujarrada fī
al-khārij). Such philosophers include, in Ibn Taymiyya’s words,

the Pythagoreans, who affirm abstract numbers, and the followers of

Plato, who affirm the Platonic forms, such as abstract quiddities, abstract
prime matter, abstract duration, and an abstract void. As for the followers
of Aristotle, like al-Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā, they refuted their forebears’ posi-
tion [which consisted of] affirming such universals as being abstracted
from [i.e., independent of] particulars, but they [themselves] affirmed
them as being in association with the particulars (muqārina lil-aʿyān) …
Yet upon proper investigation, [it turns out that] there exists nothing in
the external world but particular entities with the qualities that subsist in
them (lam yūjad fī al-khārij illā al-aʿyān bi-ṣifātihā al-qāʾima bihā).66

Indeed, he explains further, any existing member of a given species—in fact,

any existing entity at all—is qualified by a separate existence that is unique to
it and in which nothing else shares (ontologically speaking) in any way. Thus,

this human being does not coincide with ( yuwāfiq) that one in his [spe-
cific] humanity ( fī nafs insāniyyatihi) [i.e., they are not one person] but
coincides with him in an absolute [or unconditioned] humanity (insā-
niyya muṭlaqa); yet it is impossible for this absolute to subsist in any

64 See Darʾ, 1:216 (esp. lines 12–15).

65 Darʾ, 5:174, lines 6–7.
66 Darʾ, 5:174, lines 8–16. (See index of Arabic passages.) For similar discussions, see, e.g., Darʾ,
6:29–32 and 10:171. On the jawāhir ʿaqliyya/maʿqūla, see, inter alia, Darʾ, 4:184, 5:146, 5:174,
5:202, 6:162–163, 7:126, 7:142, 7:221, 8:250, 9:124, 10:77–78, and 10:81–82.

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particular. The absolute in which they coincide cannot itself exist in the
external world, let alone be constitutive of (muqawwim li) any thing. Par-
ticular things are therefore not constituted by [anything absolute]; rather,
they are constituted only by that which is specific to them and in which
nothing else shares with them.67

The only “sharing” that occurs is their common subsumption by the mind
under a universal concept, which, being only a concept, enjoys no more than
logical existence in the mind.68
Given the radical particularity of each existing entity and its full ontological
independence from any other thing, how does Ibn Taymiyya account for the
nature of the similarity observed among existent entities that are subsumed,
by the mind, under a common universal? For any two things that exist, he
explains, there is necessarily that which they have in common ( jāmiʿ, or qadr
mushtarak) and that by which each is distinguished from the other ( fāriq,
or qadr mumayyiz). No matter how different the two things may be overall,
they nevertheless share, at a minimum, in the fact that they exist and, more
specifically, that each exists by virtue of an independent ontological reality
(ḥaqīqa) that constitutes its essence (dhātuhu), its self (nafsuhu), and its quid-
dity (māhiyyatuhu).69 Anything in which two distinct entities share is, neces-
sarily, an absolute or unconditioned notion (maʿnā muṭlaq) that, being univer-
sal and unqualified, can only exist in the mind. Thus, two animals are said to
share in an absolute or unconditioned animality (ḥayawāniyya muṭlaqa) that
exists as a concept in the mind only. Each one is, however, distinct from the
other by virtue of the particular, externally existent animality specific to it (al-
ḥayawāniyya allatī takhuṣṣuhu)70 and in which none other shares with it onto-
logically in any way. Notwithstanding, there exists a measure of resemblance
and similarity (tashābuh wa-tamāthul) among externally existing particulars,

67 Darʾ, 5:94, lines 3–8. (See index of Arabic passages.) For similar, see Darʾ, 5:112, 5:115–116,
5:150–151, 5:173–174, 6:26–27, 6:29–30, and 7:126, among others.
68 See, e.g., Darʾ, 5:139, lines 13–14: “lā shirkata fī al-aʿyān al-mawjūda al-juzʾiyyāt.” See also
Darʾ, 4:253, lines 16–17, where Ibn Taymiyya states, “laysa fī al-mawjūdāt shayʾāni mā
yattafiqāni fī shayʾ bi-ʿaynihi mawjūd fī al-khārij [such as a would-be externally existent
universal in which several objects partake on the level of their ontological reality and
makeup] wa-lākin yashtabihāni min baʿḍ al-wujūh” (There are no two existent entities
that share in any specific, externally existing thing, but rather they resemble each other
in some aspects).
69 See Darʾ, 5:83, line 18 to 5:84, line 1: “mā min mawjūdayni illā baynahumā qadr mushtarak
wa-qadr mumayyiz fa-innahumā lā budda an yashtarikā fī annahumā mawjūdāni thābi-
tāni ḥāṣilāni wa-anna kullan minhumā lahu ḥaqīqa hiya dhātuhu wa-nafsuhu wa-māhiyya-
tuhu.” See also von Kügelgen, “Poison of Philosophy,” 313–318.
70 Darʾ, 5:140, line 7.

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ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl, or what is reason? 247

as well as a measure of difference and contrariety (ikhtilāf wa-taḍādd).71 Yet the

perception of this resemblance and difference is a judgement (ḥukm) operated
by the mind after it has abstracted the qualities of each thing, then compared
and contrasted them for the purpose of classification.72 The essential point is
that the mere existence of similarity in certain respects does not involve any
ontological sharing or commonality between the two entities. This is because
sharing, for Ibn Taymiyya, is a strictly ontological category and it is clear that
the two entities in question are ontologically distinct, each fully particularized
and individuated and, hence, independent of the other. Ibn Taymiyya, in fact,
compares universal notions to generic terms (alfāẓ ʿāmma) with respect to how
each class relates to the specific entities it denotes. The applicability of univer-
sals to their particulars, he explains, is parallel to the universality or general
applicability of generic terms to the various objects they designate.73 Just as
there is no ontological commonality or sharing between two human beings
simply because the generic term “man” applies to both of them, so too is their
sharing in the concept or meaning (maʿnā) that is signified by the word (that
is, their sharing in all the concomitants of universal man that both necessarily
exhibit) purely a matter of cognition and mental recognition for the purposes
of logical classification. In external reality, although the meaning of the term
“man” applies to both individuals equally, each is nevertheless independent of
the other in his particular existence (wujūd muʿayyan) and his particular onto-
logical reality (ḥaqīqa muʿayyana) and in no way “shares with” the other in any
externally existing reality whatsoever.74
In short, every existent entity is none other than itself and does not share
ontologically in anything with any other entity. Any two existent entities are
said to be different (mukhtalif ) if difference is meant as the counterpart
(qasīm) of (ontological) sharing (ishtirāk). With respect to the two entities

71 See Darʾ, 5:93, line 10: “bayna al-muʿayyanāt tashābuh wa-ikhtilāf wa-taḍādd” and similar
at Darʾ, 5:89, lines 1–2 (“al-tamāthul wa-l-ikhtilāf wa-l-taḍādd wa-l-taghāyur al-lawāzim lil-
ḥaqāʾiq al-kathīra al-mukhtalifa”) and 5:96, lines 13–14.
72 On this process of abstraction, see Hallaq, Greek Logicians, xx, xxiii, xxxiii.
73 “iʿtabir ʿumūm al-maʿānī wa-l-ishtirāk fīhimā bi-ʿumūm al-alfāẓ wa-l-ishtirāk fīhimā.” Darʾ,
5:100, lines 1–2.
74 See Hallaq, Greek Logicians, xxii on each individual existent being unique “in the context
of a reality (ḥaqīqa) that is different from other realities.” In addition to the logical argu-
ments he advances, Ibn Taymiyya also rests his appeal for the radical uniqueness of each
individual on the Qurʾān (though he does not cite a specific verse). Ibid., xxii, n. 55. It
follows from this doctrine that individual objects classed by the mind under a common
genus or species are not, in fact, identical in essence since, for Ibn Taymiyya, the essence
of a thing is inseparable from its existence and the existence of each thing is unique to it
alone.

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exhibiting qualities or possessing attributes denoted by a single name—as in

both being “blue,” for example—then any two entities will, naturally, be more
or less similar (mutashābih) or different (mukhtalif ) depending on the num-
ber of qualities they have in common. Two instantiated instances of the color
white, for example, would not be “different” in this second (notional and qual-
itative) sense, although they are different in the first (ontological) sense since
each instance of white—existing, as it does, as a distinct instantiation of the
universal color inhering in a discrete entity—is ontologically distinct from the
other and does not share anything with it in terms of its ontological constitu-
tion or the reality of its external existence. Furthermore, there is no necessary
concomitance (talāzum) between the universals (as concepts in the mind) and
externally existing entities (al-mawjūdāt al-khārijiyya), for there may exist var-
ious discrete entities in the external world that a person perceives yet does
so without abstracting, or consciously conceiving of, a universal concept that
would subsume them. Conversely, one may conceive universal notions in the
mind (kulliyyāt maʿqūla) that do not correspond to any externally existing real-
ity but are only mental hypotheses (muqaddarāt dhihniyya),75 such as what
Ibn Taymiyya refers to as “inherently [that is, logically] impossible species” (al-
anwāʿ al-mumtaniʿa li-dhātihā), which would presumably include things like
the incoherent notion of a “square circle” or a “five-sided hexagon.” From this,
it follows that one may never infer that a thing exists, or could exist, in the exter-
nal world simply because it can be conceived of in the mind.76

3.2 Essence and Existence, Essence and Attributes

A related aspect of Ibn Taymiyya’s doctrine of universals involves the rela-
tionship between a thing’s essence (dhāt) or reality (ḥaqīqa) and its existence
(wujūd).77 The Peripatetic philosophers, Ibn Taymiyya informs us, posit an
independent essence or quiddity (māhiyya) to which existence is superadded,

75 See Darʾ, 6:98, line 5.

76 On this point in general, see Darʾ, 5:134, lines 9–15. But, one may ask, if something is logi-
cally incoherent (like a “five-sided hexagon”), then how can it even be conceived? Are we
to understand Ibn Taymiyya as simply saying that we can speak of such a thing although
we cannot properly conceive of it (as opposed to the fact that we can conceive of a uni-
corn, which, though not actually existent, nonetheless constitutes a logically coherent
notion)? It seems best to understand Ibn Taymiyya as maintaining that such notions can
be hypothesized (tuqaddar) in the mind, even if intrinsically incoherent. Their impossibil-
ity (imtināʿ) would then stem from the fact that they could not exist in external ontological
reality, precisely because they are logically incoherent.
77 See related discussion at Radd, 64–69, “al-kalām ʿalā al-farq bayna al-māhiyya wa-wujū-
dihā” and Hallaq, Greek Logicians, xx–xxiv.

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ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl, or what is reason? 249

resulting in the ontological instantiation of the particular object at hand.78 On

this view, then, any extant object in the world exists as a result of the accident
of existence being conferred upon its pre-existing essence. Yet here again, Ibn
Taymiyya insists that “essence” in the sense of a thing’s quiddity, or māhiyya (lit.
“what-it-is-ness”), is a notional reality that, as such, exists only in the mind.79
As for an externally existing object, its essence (dhāt) and reality (ḥaqīqa) are
none other than its very existence (wujūd), inclusive of all the various attributes
concomitant to it and without which it could not exist. Just as the universal is a
concept that only exists in the mind, so too are the separability of essence and
existence, on the one hand, and the separability of essence and attributes, on
the other, concepts that only exist in the mind. Stated another way, the mind
can very well conceive of a thing’s essence (that is, its quiddity) separately from
its existence, but just as we have seen with universal concepts, the essence so
conceived is merely an abstraction of the mind based on a particular existent
(or an imaginary object, such as a unicorn). As for the extant object, its essence
and its reality are synonymous with its factual, individual, particularized exis-
tence in the external world, inclusive of all the concomitant attributes by which
it is qualified, without which it could not exist, and in which it does not share
anything ontologically with any other existent object. In a sense, then, Ibn
Taymiyya conflates that a thing is with what the thing is, maintaining that the
two are only separable in the mind. In the real world, a thing both is (“inniyya”)
and is something (“māhiyya”) at one and the same time, with no objective onto-

78 On the relationship between essence and existence in Ibn Sīnā, see Lizzini, “Ibn Sina’s
Metaphysics” and, more extensively, Bertolacci, “The Distinction of Essence and Existence
in Avicenna’s Metaphysics,” as well as Wisnovsky, “Essence and Existence.” Wisnovsky
affirms that Ibn Sīnā does not, in fact, seem to have committed himself to the position
described here, despite the existence of a lone statement in his Taʿlīqāt to the contrary.
Rather, he seems to have held that “essence and existence are extensionally identical but
intensionally distinct,” meaning that “every essence must either be an individual existing
in the concrete, extra-mental world ( fī l-aʿyān), or a universal existing in the mind ( fī
ḏ-ḏihn)” (Wisnovsky, “Essence and Existence,” 28–29). This, as we shall see, is the same
position that Ibn Taymiyya advocates, and, in fact, it was Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī who advo-
cated most prominently for the position that Ibn Taymiyya holds here against the Peri-
patetics. Moreover, Ibn Taymiyya’s charge against the philosophers is identical to Shihāb
al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī’s charges against them. (Wisnovsky, 28–29).
79 See, e.g., Darʾ, 1:288, lines 1–3: “They distinguish in their logic between essence [or quid-
dity] and existence; had they explained ‘essence’ as that which is in the mind and ‘exis-
tence’ as that which is in [the realm of] external particulars, that would have been correct
and indisputable on the part of any rational person” ( farraqū fī manṭiqihim bayna al-
māhiyya wa-l-wujūd wa-hum law fassarū al-māhiyya bi-mā yakūnu fī al-adhhān wa-l-wujūd
bi-mā yakūnu fī al-aʿyān la-kāna hādhā ṣaḥīḥan lā yunāziʿu fīhi ʿāqil). See also Hallaq, Greek
Logicians, xvi–xx.

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logical distinction between its inniyya80 (its being, esse, “that it is,” or “thatness”)
and its māhiyya (its essence, quiddity, “what it is,” or “whatness”).81
It follows from this position that the existence of an entity can in no way
be superadded to a pre-existing essence or quiddity. Essence and attributes
can be conceived of as separate in the mind but do not exist separately—or
as separable—in the external world. Ibn Taymiyya identifies this as a key area
in which the philosophers have mistaken logical distinctions in the mind for
ontological reality in the outside world of existent entities. That is, they take
the logical distinctions of the mind as “primary,” in a sense, and simply assume
a direct correspondence between logical categories or distinctions and the
ontological reality of externally existing entities (ḥaqāʾiq).82 This prioritization
of logical notions and mental categories, together with the assumption that
they directly map onto ontological reality83—what we may call the philoso-
phers’ “intellectualization” or “rationalization” of reality—is a key target of Ibn
Taymiyya’s attack in the Darʾ taʿāruḍ against some of the most fundamental
assumptions driving the philosophers’ speculative enterprise. As we have seen,
Ibn Taymiyya argues against the philosophers that the very existence (wujūd)
of an entity, along with all its concomitant attributes and qualities, is identical
with that entity’s quiddity (māhiyya) and comprises its fundamental ontolog-
ical reality (ḥaqīqa) in the external world, in other words, as it factually exists
“out there” ( fī al-khārij), independent of our mental conception of it.84 Another
way of stating this is that a thing’s quiddity is none other than its very exis-
tence.85 That is, the question of what a thing is (its “what-ness”) is answered
by considering its factual existence (its “that-ness”)—in particular, not merely
the fact that it exists but, more relevantly, how it exists, with all its ontologically
inseparable concomitants (lawāzim).86

80 On the origins of inniyya/anniyya as a technical term, see Frank, “The Origin of the Arabic
Philosophical Term ‫انية‬.” For its use in Ibn Sīnā specifically, see Booth, Aristotelian Aporetic
Ontology, 111–112ff.
81 This would seem to be similar to Ibn Sīnā’s notion of God as possessing no quiddity
(māhiyya) separate from His being/existence (wujūd). See, for example, Acar, Talking
about God and Talking about Creation, 81–85.
82 See, for example, the discussion at Darʾ, 3:79.
83 See Gutas, “Logic of Theology,” 60–61; Adamson, “Non-Discursive Thought,” esp. 93–98.
84 “wujūd kulli shayʾ ʿayn māhiyyatihi fī al-khārij.” Darʾ, 3:248, line 13.
85 For this formulation, see Darʾ, 5:103, lines 7–8 and 5:104, lines 6–7. See similar at Darʾ,
1:293, lines 14–15: “bal māhiyyatuhu hiya ḥaqīqatuhu wa-hiya wujūduhu” (its essence is its
ontological reality and its existence). See also Darʾ, 5:102–104 for a discussion of the rela-
tionship between quiddity and existence more generally.
86 See also, e.g., Darʾ, 3:328, lines 6–7, where Ibn Taymiyya makes the point that “the essence
is more rightfully considered constitutive of the attributes than the attributes are of the
essence” (al-dhāt hiya aḥaqq bi-taqwīm al-ṣifāt min al-ṣifāt bi-taqwīm al-dhāt).

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ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl, or what is reason? 251

As an illustration of this principle, we may cite Ibn Taymiyya’s critique of

the philosophers for positing the independent external existence of intelligible
substances ( jawāhir maʿqūla) alongside perceptible bodies (ajsām maḥsūsa),
such as the well-known Aristotelian distinction between matter and form.87
While Ibn Taymiyya does not deny that extant objects are indeed made up
of matter existing in a particular form, he does deny—predictably—that the
abstract form enjoys an ontological existence separate from and independent
of matter that is then superimposed upon matter, resulting in the instanti-
ation of the object in question. Rather, Ibn Taymiyya insists, the only thing
that actually exists—in other words, the only thing that has an independent
ontological reality as a real entity existing “out there” ( fī al-khārij)—is the
form-endowed material object itself.88 The form is in no way separable from
the substantive existence of the object and can only be conceived of sepa-
rately from its material constitution as a result of the abstracting function
of the mind. The philosophers’ conception of form as an “intelligible sub-
stance” existing alongside body parallels, in a sense, their affirmation of uni-
versal concepts existing independent of—albeit in association with (muqārin
li)—the individual instantiated objects they subsume, whereas in reality, Ibn
Taymiyya counters, the only thing existing in the external world is the partic-
ular entities (aʿyān) themselves along with the attributes (ṣifāt) inherent in
them.89
Along the same lines, we may cite Ibn Taymiyya’s critique of Ibn Sīnā for
comparing the association (muqārana) of the soul with the body to that of uni-
versals with their particulars. Ibn Taymiyya refutes this confusion by pointing
out that unlike universal concepts, which only exist in the mind, the soul is a
particular entity (muʿayyan) that exists in its own right (that is, in the outside
world and not as a mere concept in the mind), and, like all externally existing
entities, it is perceptible (maḥsūs). On the nature of the soul and its relation-
ship to the body in contrast with the relationship of universal concepts to their
particulars, Ibn Taymiyya says:

The soul (rūḥ) is a particular and the body is a particular, and the associ-
ation of one with the other is possible. But they [the philosophers] con-
fuse [on the one hand] the association of the soul with the body and its

87 Darʾ, 5:174, lines 11–13. On the reception and elaboration of this doctrine by Ibn Sīnā, see
Bertolacci, “Doctrine of Material and Formal Causality.”
88 In this passage, Ibn Taymiyya says “a body and its accidents” ([lam] yūjad fī al-khārij illā
al-jism wa-aʿrāḍuhu). Darʾ, 5:174, line 14.
89 “lam yūjad fī al-khārij illā al-aʿyān wa-ṣifātuhā al-qāʾima bihā.” Darʾ, 5:174, lines 15–16.

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abstraction from it with [on the other hand] the association of universals
with their particulars and their abstraction from them. [Yet] the differ-
ence between the two is more patent than to require exposition …, for the
rūḥ, which is the rational soul (al-nafs al-nāṭiqa), exists in external reality
as an independent entity when it separates from the body. As for uni-
versal mental concepts that are abstracted from particulars (al-ʿaqliyyāt
al-kulliyya al-muntazaʿa min al-muʿayyanāt), they exist only in the mind
( fī al-adhhān), not as externally existent entities ( fī al-aʿyān). Thus, it is
necessary to differentiate between the dissociation of the soul from the
body (tajrīd al-rūḥ ʿan al-badan) and the abstraction of universals from
particulars (tajrīd al-kulliyyāt ʿan al-muʿayyanāt).90

The soul’s association with the body is thus a case of two particular, exter-
nally existing entities that are connected to each other and that can also
undergo dissociation (tajrīd) from each other, as happens upon the death
of the body. This, Ibn Taymiyya insists, is entirely different from the con-
tention that universals inhere in, or are associated with, their particulars in
the same manner as the soul may be said to indwell, or to be associated
with, the body. The confusion here, according to Ibn Taymiyya, results from
the fact that the philosophers have applied the terms “association” and “dis-
sociation” both to universals and to the soul analogically (bi-l-ishtirāk) while
failing to distinguish between the ontological dissociation of the soul from
the body (as two independent, perceptible entities), on the one hand, and
the logical abstraction (intizāʿ) of universals from their particulars carried
out by the mind, on the other. The common applicability of the same term
with the same meaning to two distinct entities neither entails nor implies any
essential similarity between the entities in question, since the term applies
to each in a manner commensurate with its own distinct ontological real-
ity, or ḥaqīqa. For Ibn Taymiyya, the “real story,” as we have seen, is not the
meaning or abstracted notion (maʿnā) existing in our minds but the factual,
particularized, individual existence (wujūd) of the thing in question. It is this
concrete existence that is constitutive of—in fact, is synonymous with—the
thing’s essence (dhāt) and factual ontological reality (ḥaqīqa) and that, fur-
thermore, determines the manner in which a common term and meaning
apply to it specifically, in contrast to how they might apply to another entity
of which the same term (and meaning) is predicated. In the case under dis-
cussion here, this means that one of the elements to which the terms “associ-
ation” and “dissociation” legitimately apply (namely, the soul) exists ontolog-

90 See Darʾ, 6:32, lines 1–12. (See index of Arabic passages.)

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ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl, or what is reason? 253

ically as an independent entity (ʿayn) in the external world, while the other ele-
ment to which they legitimately apply (namely, the universal) is but a logical
notion subsisting strictly within the confines of the mind.

4 The Structure of Reason91

What, then, is the structure of reason (ʿaql), according to Ibn Taymiyya, and
how does it function in the acquisition of knowledge? Ibn Taymiyya defines
reason as an “instinct in man” (gharīza fī al-insān)92 that is essentially endowed
with the capacity to perform three vital functions: (1) to abstract universals
from particulars, based on reason’s ability to recognize relevant similarities
between particular existents and abstract these into universal concepts;93 (2)
to confer assent (taṣdīq) or formulate judgements (aḥkām) in the form of pred-
icative statements relating to existent particulars;94 and (3) to draw inferences
of various sorts through which new knowledge is derived (essentially, by trans-
ferring a given judgement, or ḥukm, from a given subject or entity to a new
one).95 In the previous section, we addressed the first vital function of reason,
namely, the formation of universal concepts on the basis of the extant partic-
ulars delivered to it by the senses. In Ibn Taymiyya’s words:

What sense perception yields as a particular, reason and analogical infer-

ence yield as universal and absolute (or unconditioned). [These latter]

91 A summary of this section, including a substantial portion of the sub-section “Fiṭra: The
Original Normative Disposition” (p. 260ff. below), the entirety of the sub-section “Tawātur
as the Final Epistemic Guarantor” (p. 267ff. below), and related sections of chapter 6, has
appeared previously at El-Tobgui, “From Legal Theory to Erkenntnistheorie,” 34–54.
92 Darʾ, 6:50, line 5. See also Darʾ, 1:89, line 7 for reason as al-gharīza allatī fīnā (the instinct
that is within us).
93 See, e.g., Darʾ, 6:88, lines 9–10 (sāʾir al-qaḍāyā al-kulliyya allatī mabādiʾuhā min al-ḥiss) and
8:248, lines 8–9 (kamā yuqaddiru [al-dhihn] al-kulliyyāt al-mujarrada ʿan al-aʿyān), as well
as the discussion at Darʾ, 7:317–327.
94 On the term taṣdīq (assent) and the related term taṣawwur (conception), see Wolfson,
“The Terms Taṣawwur and Taṣdīq,” 114–119. For these terms in Ibn Sīnā specifically, see
Sabra, “Avicenna on the Subject Matter of Logic,” 757–761. (Cited in Hallaq, Greek Logi-
cians, xv, n. 20.)
95 See, e.g., Darʾ, 5:259ff. on al-iʿtibār wa-l-qiyās; Darʾ, 7:317–327 (esp. 7:322ff.) on logical
principles and rules of inference more generally; Darʾ, 2:218–219 on the burden of proof
between rational arguments and revealed texts and the three levels of rational refutation;
and Darʾ, 3:264, 3:305–318, 7:352, 7:374–382, and 7:388–389 on the use of rational inferences
and arguments in the Qurʾān. On the Qurʾān’s extensive deployment of rational argumen-
tation more broadly, see Gwynne, Logic, Rhetoric, and Legal Reasoning, passim.

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254 chapter 5

do not engender the knowledge of any particular [existent] thing; rather,

they render the specific general and the particular absolute [i.e., univer-
sal], for universals are only known through reason, just as particular exis-
tents are only known through sensation.96

As mentioned in our discussion of Ibn Taymiyya’s account of ontology above,

the universal notions—particularly the “natural universal” (al-kullī al-ṭabīʿī)
that subsumes extant objects—are derived from the particulars and are akin to
still-frame snapshots of the particulars’ essential qualities, recording and rep-
resenting ontological reality to the mind. In a sense, they form the raw data
about the world which the mind then processes and reasons about. As we
shall discover, this universalizing function of the mind, for Ibn Taymiyya, also
plays a crucial role in affording us access—in conjunction with transmitted
reports—to the realm of the unseen, insofar as it enables us to comprehend
and conceive what we are being told about this realm through the transmis-
sion of true reports (khabar ṣādiq). Even more important, this universalizing
function of the mind, as we explore in greater detail in chapter 6, is critical for
our knowledge of God and, specifically, for our ability to understand who God
is as a discrete personal being.97
In addition to the knowledge of externally existing objects appropriated and
registered by the mind in the form of universal concepts, the rational faculty
also has at its disposal certain logical axioms and relational principles that are
implanted in it a priori and that it therefore knows in a self-evident (badīhī)
manner.98 Related to though not identical with self-evident, a priori knowledge
is that which Ibn Taymiyya refers to as necessary or immediate (ḍarūrī) knowl-
edge,99 a type of knowledge that he often refers to interchangeably by the term

96 Darʾ, 7:324, lines 12–15. (See index of Arabic passages.)

97 See pp. 280–281, 284, and, more generally, 285–288 below.
98 See, e.g., Darʾ, 6:267 (al-ʿulūm al-badīhiyya); 6:112, 9:161 (al-qaḍāyā al-badīhiyya); 3:309
(ʿulūm badīhiyya awwaliyya yabtadiʾuhā Allāh fī qalb [al-insān]); 6:16 (al-badīha al-ṣaḥīḥa);
8:314 (al-muqaddima al-badīhiyya al-ṣaḥīḥa al-sharʿiyya).
99 See, e.g., Darʾ, 1:185, 3:96, 5:312, 6:268, 7:21 (al-ʿulūm al-ḍarūriyya); 3:418 (al-maʿārif al-
ḍarūriyya); 7:403 (al-qaḍāyā al-ḍarūriyya); 6:192 (al-umūr al-ḍarūriyya); 3:244, 6:11 (al-
ḍarūriyyāt); 8:264 (ḍarūrī fī al-ʿaql); 6:192 (ḍarūrāt al-ʿuqūl); 8:311 (badīhī ḍarūrī); 3:230
(qaḍiyya badīhiyya ḍarūriyya); 9:360 (al-maʿālim al-badīhiyya al-ḍarūriyya); 9:121–122
(ṭuruq ḍarūriyya); 6:50: reason as an “instinct in man” or “a kind of necessary knowledge”
(nawʿ min al-ʿulūm al-ḍarūriyya); 8:282: knowledge of the existence of the Maker (al-Ṣāniʿ)
ingrained of necessity in the human constitution (min lawāzim khalqihim ḍarūrī fīhim);
8:438 (and similar at 3:98–99, 8:488–489): knowledge of God “ḍarūriyya”; 9:422–425: on
four meanings of ḍarūra and the nature of ḍarūrī knowledge with respect to the knower.

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ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl, or what is reason? 255

fiṭrī100 (approximately, “innate”) or by the compound term ḍarūrī-fiṭrī.101 While

all a priori knowledge and axiomatic principles are, by definition, both innate
and necessary, not all necessary knowledge is a priori or innate, for Ibn Tay-
miyya recognizes a number of other sources of necessary knowledge. Finally,
and to complicate matters further, innate ( fiṭrī) knowledge only partly over-
laps with a priori and necessary knowledge, as fiṭrī knowledge is a considerably
wider and subtler category, as we shall see below.

4.1 Self-Evident and A Priori Knowledge

We have discussed Ibn Taymiyya’s strident insistence that universals (kulliyyāt)
are strictly conceptual or notional realities subsisting in the mind and that
the mind abstracts them from the existing particulars mediated to it through
the senses. Absent the instantiated particulars, there can be, quite simply, no
universals. This is most obviously the case with the natural universal (al-kullī
al-ṭabīʿī), which I have described as a kind of snapshot that the mind takes of a
particular class of entities in the external world. Yet Ibn Taymiyya also discusses
another kind of universal: namely, the universal rules of logic, such as the law of
non-contradiction, the law of the excluded middle, and the law of identity.102
Ibn Taymiyya repeatedly refers to such universal rules, and other self-evident

100 See, e.g., Darʾ, 6:14 (al-badīhiyyāt al-fiṭriyya); 3:317 (al-ʿulūm al-ḥissiyya al-fiṭriyya); 8:453
(al-maʿrifa al-fiṭriyya); 7:404 (al-qaḍāyā al-badīhiyya wa-l-maʿārif al-fiṭriyya); 8:314 (al-
ṭuruq al-fiṭriyya al-ʿaqliyya al-sharʿiyya al-qarība al-ṣaḥīḥa); 8:530 (al-maʿārif al-awwaliyya
al-fiṭriyya); 7:425 (irādāt fiṭriyya wa-ʿulūm fiṭriyya); 4:213 (ḥukm al-fiṭra awwalī badīhī); 6:112
( fiṭar al-nās); 7:403, 8:463 (al-fiṭra al-insāniyya); 7:25: looking upwards when supplicating
as fiṭrī ʿaqlī; 8:38: human beings mafṭūrūn to recognize the existence of the Creator.
101 See, e.g., Darʾ, 3:70 (al-fiṭra al-ḍarūriyya); 3:317 (al-ʿulūm al-ḍarūriyya al-fiṭriyya); 3:288 (al-
ʿulūm al-badīhiyya al-ḍarūriyya al-fiṭriyya); 6:14 (al-qaḍāyā al-fiṭriyya al-ḍarūriyya); 7:133
(al-umūr al-fiṭriyya al-ḍarūriyya); 8:489 (ʿulūm fiṭriyya ḍarūriyya); 3:309, 6:184 (muqaddi-
māt fiṭriyya ḍarūriyya); 6:72, 9:122: knowledge of God fiṭriyya ḍarūriyya; 3:87 (and similar at
8:348): rational proofs for the existence of God intuitive and necessary ( fiṭriyya ḍarūriyya);
6:272: false doctrines to which a person has been habituated “contradict his fiṭra and what
he knows of necessity” (tunāqiḍu fiṭratahu wa-ḍarūriyyatahu); 8:12 ff.: knowledge of reli-
gious matters fiṭrī-ḍarūrī vs. naẓarī; 5:312–313 (al-fiṭra allatī faṭara Allāh ʿalayhā ʿibādahu
wa-l-ʿulūm al-ḍarūriyya allatī jaʿalahā fī qulūbihim).
102 See, e.g., Darʾ, 1:289, 5:136–137, 5:324, 6:123, and 8:181 for the law of non-contradiction
(al-jamʿ bayna al-naqīḍayn) and the law of the excluded middle (rafʿ al-naqīḍayn / al-
khuluww ʿan al-naqīḍayn) together and Darʾ, 3:208–209, 3:224–226, 4:197, and 9:358 for
the law of non-contradiction alone. See, further, Darʾ, 4:144: even the essential difference
between God and creation reduces to an issue of the law of non-contradiction; 9:117–
119: Ibn Sīnā’s notion of the “eternal contingent” (al-mumkin al-qadīm) violates the law of
non-contradiction; 6:176: the position of those who negate the divine attributes (al-nufāh)
entails a violation of the law of the excluded middle; 3:362: the law of the excluded middle
is “min aẓhar al-umūr al-mumtaniʿa fī badīhat al-ʿaql”; 4:290: arguments of the opponent

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propositions, as being necessary (ḍarūrī), but he also applies a term to them

that he does not use nearly as liberally as “necessary” (or “necessary” coupled
with “innate,” i.e., ḍarūrī-fiṭrī). While Ibn Taymiyya obviously regards such fun-
damental rules of thought as necessary, he also refers to them as being badīhī,
or min al-badīhiyyāt, or min badāʾih al-ʿuqūl. The use of the term badīhī corre-
lates strongly with the notion of a priori knowledge, and we may tentatively
conclude, on the basis of his use of this term, that Ibn Taymiyya indeed regards
such universal logical notions as a priori in the true sense, that is, in the sense of
being present both in and to the mind prior to any encounter of the mind with
the external world via the senses.103 In another passage, he refers to “imme-
diate, certain, primary (or a priori) knowledge” (ʿilm ḍarūrī yaqīnī awwalī),
which he defines as “depending neither on discursive reasoning nor on demon-
stration; rather,” he continues, such knowledge “constitutes the very premises
and axioms upon which demonstrative proofs are built.”104 In support of this
interpretation of badīhī as a priori, we may cite, for instance, Ibn Taymiyya’s
characterization of violating the law of the excluded middle as being “the
most patently impossible of things fī badīhat al-ʿaql.”105 In another passage, he
describes the knowledge of the impossibility of an infinite regress of agents (al-
tasalsul fī al-fāʿilīn) as being “innate” ( fiṭrī) and “necessary” (ḍarūrī)—terms we
have seen before—but then he makes the further point that all premises in a
given argument must ultimately be based on “primordial, a priori knowledge
that God initiates in [a person’s] heart/mind” (ʿulūm badīhiyya awwaliyya yab-
tadiʾuhā Allāh fī qalb [al-insān]).106 Ibn Taymiyya’s pairing of the term badīhī

are weak and entail a violation of both laws; and, finally, 6:129–130 and 6:134 for the law of
the excluded middle specifically with respect to the divine attributes.
103 This contrasts with Wael Hallaq’s conclusion that Ibn Taymiyya recognizes no a priori
knowledge whatsoever and that all knowledge is ultimately derived from sense percep-
tion. See Hallaq, “Existence of God,” 61–63 (esp. 62, n. 66) and Hallaq, Greek Logicians,
xxx–xxxii. Von Kügelgen (“Poison of Philosophy,” 327) has shown that Ibn Taymiyya does
accept the external existence of universals (at least in some domains); she concludes that
“this adherence to ‘moderate realism’ stands in sharp contrast to his [Ibn Taymiyya’s] nom-
inalistic attitude of denying any extramental existence of universals whatsoever in the
course of his direct rejection of the real definition and the rules of syllogistic logic.” For
her larger discussion of Ibn Taymiyya as a “moderate realist” rather than a strict nominal-
ist, see von Kügelgen, 306–312.
104 “ʿilm ḍarūrī yaqīnī awwalī lā yatawaqqafu ʿalā al-naẓar wa-l-istidlāl wa-lā yatawaqqafu ʿalā
al-burhān bal huwa muqaddimāt al-burhān wa-uṣūluhu allatī yubnā ʿalayhā al-burhān.”
Darʾ, 3:317, lines 16–17.
105 “aẓhar al-umūr al-mumtaniʿa fī badīhat al-ʿaql.” Darʾ, 3:362, line 14.
106 Darʾ, 3:309, lines 15–16. See also Darʾ, 6:276, lines 17–18, where Ibn Taymiyya speaks of “al-
qaḍāyā al-mubtadaʾa fī al-nafs.”

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ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl, or what is reason? 257

with the term awwalī (initial) constitutes, to my mind, persuasive evidence that
he considers such logical universals to be truly a priori—particularly in light of
the latter part of the phrase, where he states that God “yabtadiʾ ” this knowledge
in the mind. This, it seems, could only mean that God places this knowledge in
the mind ab initio (“ibtidāʾan”), in other words, that He initiates this knowledge
in the mind, prior to and independently of the mind’s subsequent empirical
encounter with the world.
Yet Ibn Taymiyya seems to contradict this conclusion (namely, that the
mind possesses certain knowledge in an a priori fashion) in another passage,
where he states that judgements (al-qaḍāʾ bi-anna) such as that black and
white are contraries ( yataḍāddān), or that motion and rest are contradictory
( yatanāqaḍān), or that a body cannot be in two places at one and the same time
are akin to “all universal propositions that [, which?] originate in sense per-
ception (ḥiss).”107 Granted, the Arabic phraseology here is ambiguous, and we
cannot be altogether sure whether the relative pronoun allatī (“that/which”)
is meant restrictively, in the sense of “are like all universal propositions that
originate in sense perception” (to the exclusion of those universal propositions
that do not originate in sense perception), or non-restrictively, in the sense of
“are like all universal propositions, which originate in sense perception” (i.e., as
all universal propositions do). In another passage, however, Ibn Taymiyya cites
propositions of an even more abstract nature than the foregoing, such as the
proposition that any existent thing is either necessary or contingent, eternal
or temporal, self-standing (qāʾim bi-nafsihi) or subsistent in another (qāʾim bi-
ghayrihi), or the proposition that any two existent things either are contempo-
raneous with each other or exist at different times, are either distinct (mubāyin)
from each other or co-located (muḥāyith).108 In commenting on propositions of
this nature, Ibn Taymiyya states explicitly that “if we formulate in our minds a
universal judgement applicable to all external existents or to all mental notions,
such as [the propositions listed], our knowledge of these universal, generally
applicable propositions is mediated by what we know of external existents.”109
On the basis of this statement, it would seem that all universal notions—even
logical ones—are, for Ibn Taymiyya, ultimately abstracted from sense data. Yet

107 “ka-sāʾir al-qaḍāyā al-kulliyya allatī mabādiʾuhā min al-ḥiss.” See Darʾ, 6:88, lines 9–12. See
also the more general discussion at Darʾ, 6:88–89. On the difference between contrariety
(taḍādd) and contradiction (tanāquḍ), see Wisnovsky, Avicenna’s Metaphysics, 213.
108 See Darʾ, 6:127, lines 2–5.
109 “idhā ḥakamnā bi-ʿuqūlinā ḥukman kulliyyan yaʿummu al-mawjūdāt aw yaʿummu al-
maʿlūmāt mithl qawlinā … kāna ʿilmunā bi-hādhihi al-qaḍāyā al-kulliyya al-ʿāmma bi-
tawassuṭ mā ʿalimnāhu min al-mawjūdāt.” Darʾ, 6:127, lines 1–2 and 7–8.

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Ibn Taymiyya is adamant that such logical propositions are necessary (ḍarūrī),
innate ( fiṭrī), and self-evident (badīhī)—terms he never applies to the natural
universals (al-kulliyyāt al-ṭabīʿiyya) that correspond to the various species and
that are abstracted by the mind from the instantiated individuals of a given
class of objects.
How, then, can this apparent contradiction be resolved? The answer seems
to be that what is derived from the particulars is the specific content of the
propositions mentioned—that black and white, for example, or motion and
rest are opposites, that either a thing is self-standing or it subsists in some-
thing else (as an accident does), and so forth. What is logically necessary and
therefore a priori, however, is the universal relational judgement that two oppo-
sites, whatever they may be, cannot co-exist or cannot qualify one and the same
entity simultaneously (or any other such derivative formulation of the law of
non-contradiction). In other words, it is the abstract law itself that is a priori for
Ibn Taymiyya, it would seem, but not the specific, particularized instances in
the world to which the law applies. The knowledge that, for example, black and
white, as opposed to red and green, are opposites is not logically necessary and
can therefore only be discovered from our observation of the particular colors
that pigment our empirical reality. What is logically necessary—and, it would
seem, both self-evident (badīhī) and a priori (awwalī) for Ibn Taymiyya—is the
judgement that any two colors (or anything else) that are opposites are neces-
sarily subject to the law of non-contradiction. In other words, what the mind
knows in an a priori manner is the universal logical rule (as can be stated in uni-
versal terms) that for every x and y where x and y are opposites, x and y cannot
co-exist (or qualify one and the same entity simultaneously). This is the univer-
sal logical rule that is known a priori and that holds in all possible worlds. The
fact that in the contingencies of our particular world, x happens to be white
(and not red) and y happens to be black (and not green) is, once more, some-
thing we can only come to know on the basis of what we observe in the world
around us by means of our sense perception.
In sum, the built-in, a priori knowledge of the mind—which Ibn Taymiyya
also refers to as being innate ( fiṭrī) and necessary (ḍarūrī)—is the knowledge
of necessary logical relations and abstract principles (such as the law of the
excluded middle) that would apply to any thing or things in the event that they
should exist. Yet our knowledge of what actually does exist can never be derived
from abstract reason110 but can only be gained through sensation (as well as

110 With the sole exception of God, but then this is not really an exception at all, for the ratio-
nal inference that leads from the fact of the temporal origination of the world (ḥudūth

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ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl, or what is reason? 259

true reports). The legitimate judgements of reason, therefore, are invariably

cognitional (ʿilmī),111 notional (iʿtibārī),112 and relational (nisbī), never exis-
tential (wujūdī). Reason can never establish the factual existence of anything
(other than God), but once it has been provided with the knowledge of extant
particular realities through either sensation or true reports, it can and does
formulate logical judgements (aḥkām) concerning these existent realities in
accordance with the abstract logical principles that are embedded in it in an
a priori manner. This particular function of the mind, though seemingly too
obvious to warrant mention, is, in reality, an eminently important function for
Ibn Taymiyya, as it lies at the very basis of all thought and the construction of
all knowledge. In fact, Ibn Taymiyya relies extensively on the everyday, obvi-
ous, innate principles of the mind in the course of his argumentation against
the philosophers and the mutakallimūn. That is, he often seeks to refute their
doctrines on the grounds that, when taken to their logical conclusion, such
doctrines end up contradicting one or more of these basic, axiomatic rules of
thought and can therefore be known, by virtue of pure reason (ʿaql ṣarīḥ), to be
necessarily invalid ( fāsid) and false (bāṭil).
Thus far, we have become acquainted with two main functions of reason: (1)
to universalize the particulars of the empirical realm and (2) to apply the innate
rules of logic in order to pass judgements on how extant particulars must, log-
ically speaking, relate to one another. We have also seen that the innate logical
knowledge embedded in the mind in an a priori fashion is alternately referred
to by Ibn Taymiyya as being badīhī (self-evident), fiṭrī (innate), or ḍarūrī (nec-
essary). When applied to the kind of a priori knowledge discussed above, these
three terms are basically equivalent and interchangeable. Yet neither the con-
cept of what is innate ( fiṭra) nor the concept of necessity (ḍarūra) is simply
reducible to self-evident axioms (the badīhiyyāt). In other words, while that

al-ʿālam) to the conclusion that God must necessarily exist is, ultimately, based on the
rational consideration that a non-necessary and contingent world—such as we know ours
to be through our empirical experience of it—can be coherently accounted for only by
positing the existence of a necessary, all-powerful, transcendent Creator in order to avoid
an infinite regress of causes (the impossibility of which Ibn Taymiyya holds to be known
by logical necessity). From this perspective, the rational inference of the existence of God
can thus be seen as one more instance in which reason applies its innate and incontrovert-
ible logical principles (in this case, the impossibility of an infinite causal regress) to the
existential data about our contingent and non-necessary world that have been mediated
to it through our senses.
111 At, e.g., Darʾ, 5:91, 5:138, 10:52, 10:53, 10:66, 10:107, and 10:122. See also Darʾ, 5:102 (ʿilmī dhih-
nī) and 5:118 (dhihnī ʿilmī).
112 See, e.g., Darʾ, 3:20 (iʿtibārī lafẓī) and 9:114 (lafẓī iʿtibārī), 3:207 (nisbī iʿtibārī), 3:326 (dhihnī
iʿtibārī), and 5:141, 5:144 (ʿaqlī iʿtibārī).

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which is innate and that which is necessary both overlap with the a priori,
each also comprises further elements that distinguish it from the other as well
as from the self-evident axioms embedded in the mind. In the following two
sections, we examine each of these cognitive principles, fiṭra and necessity, in
turn.

4.2 Fiṭra: The Original Normative Disposition

Ibn Taymiyya’s conception of the fiṭra is a subtle one that is perhaps best
rendered by the term “original normative disposition.”113 The term fiṭra as it
appears in Ibn Taymiyya’s thought has been translated in various ways, most
often by terms such as “nature” or “constitution,” often qualified as being in
some sense innate (“natural,” “inner,” “inborn,” etc.).114 Now, while the fiṭra
for Ibn Taymiyya is doubtless innate, this term does not fully capture—or at
least does not underscore to the appropriate degree—the strong sense of nor-
mativity, both moral and cognitive, that Ibn Taymiyya accords to this “innate
disposition.” This fiṭrī disposition, in turn, derives its normativity, to a sub-
stantial degree, from the fact of its “originality,” that is, from the fact that the
fiṭra is that which is “there first,”115 that which is originally present (at least in

113 Ibn Taymiyya deals with the question of the fiṭra extensively at Darʾ, 8:359–535, as well
as in his “Risāla fī al-kalām ʿalā al-fiṭra” (in Majmūʿat al-rasāʾil al-kubrā, 2:332–349) and al-
Radd ʿalā al-manṭiqiyyīn, 420–432. Ibn Taymiyya’s notion of fiṭra has been discussed in
a number of previous studies. See, for instance, Holtzman, “Human Choice”; Kazi, “Rec-
onciling Reason and Revelation,” 207–313 (esp. 250–292 and 309–313); Gobillot, “L’épître
du discours sur la fiṭra”; and Vasalou, Theological Ethics, 56–105. See also Hoover, Ibn
Taymiyya’s Theodicy, 39–44 on the relationship between fiṭra and ʿaql and on the fiṭra
as a religious faculty; Anjum, Politics, Law, and Community, 215–265, esp. at 215–227 for
the role of the fiṭra as an alternative foundation for Ibn Taymiyya’s epistemology; and von
Kügelgen, “Poison of Philosophy,” 299ff. and von Kügelgen, “Ibn Taymīyas Kritik,” 192–199
(esp. at 194–198) on the epistemological function of the fiṭra more generally. On the role
of the fiṭra in coming to know the existence of God, see Hallaq, “Existence of God,” 55–66
and Özervarli, “Divine Wisdom,” 37–60. See also, on the fiṭra more generally, Gobillot, La
fitra and Adang, “Islam as the Inborn Religion of Mankind.”
114 See, e.g., Hoover: “natural constitution” (Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy, 39); Özervarli: “inner
nature” (“Qurʾānic Rational Theology,” 91) and “human nature” (Özervarli, “Divine Wis-
dom,” 38, 45, and passim); Hallaq: “innate intelligence” (Greek Logicians, xl), “natural
intelligence” (Greek Logicians, 27), “faculty of natural intelligence” (Greek Logicians, 167,
n. 1), “sound disposition” (Greek Logicians, 110), “instincts” (Greek Logicians, 163, translating
“fiṭar”); von Kügelgen: “inborn intelligence” (“Poison of Philosophy,” 298) and “angeborene
Intelligenz des Menschen” (von Kügelgen, “Ibn Taymīyas Kritik,” 195, as a gloss for “ʿaql,
fiṭra oder ġarīza”). See Holtzman, “Human Choice,” 184, n. 11 for various other transla-
tions found in the secondary literature, the diversity of which she cites as an indication of
“the complexity of the term fiṭra” (Holtzman, 184, n. 11). Holtzman herself leaves the term
untranslated.
115 The root f-ṭ-r in its most basic sense denotes splitting, cleaving, or breaking apart (hence

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ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl, or what is reason? 261

potentia) in a person’s constitution and which is ultimately determinative of

what a human being is (or ought to be).116 Ibn Taymiyya derives this normative
understanding of the original fiṭra in part from the famous prophetic ḥadīth
that states that “every child is born on [i.e., in a state of] the fiṭra” (understood
here as pure monotheism) and is only subsequently diverted by his parents (or
surrounding milieu) from this original potential to various forms of religion
that represent a departure from the innate monotheism moored in the fiṭra.117
The fact that the fiṭra is a morally normative concept and does not include
just any of the various appetites, drives, and inclinations often thought of as
“natural” in a human being is illustrated by the incident in which the angel
Gabriel, on the occasion of the Night Journey (isrāʾ) to Jerusalem, presented
the Prophet with a vessel of milk and a vessel of wine, then bade him choose
between the two. When the Prophet instinctively inclined to the milk over the
wine, Gabriel responded, “You have chosen the fiṭra, and had you chosen the

fuṭūr/faṭūr, “breakfast,” and fiṭr/ifṭār, “breaking one’s fast”). It also signifies making, cre-
ating, fashioning, or bringing into being, with the associated connotation of origination
(and perhaps, by extension, of originality). Derivatives of f-ṭ-r occur twenty times in the
Qurʾān: five times with the meaning of cleaving or sundering and thirteen times with the
meaning of creating, fashioning, or bringing into existence. The word fiṭra itself, denoting
something like “original disposition” or “primordial created state,” occurs in a single verse,
in conjunction with the verb faṭara, which has the sense of creating or originating. The
verse in question, Q. al-Rūm 30:30, reads: “So set thy face to the religion as a ḥanīf, [in] the
primordial nature from God upon which He originated mankind ( fiṭrat Allāhi llatī faṭara
l-nāsa ʿalayhā)—there is no altering the creation of God; that is the upright religion, but
most men know not” (trans. The Study Quran, with modifications).
116 Özervarli notes, in a similar vein, that a person’s fiṭra “consists of his or her original and
distinctive qualities that would direct activities if left unaffected by his or her family or
social environment” (emphasis mine). Özervarli, “Divine Wisdom,” 47.
117 The ḥadīth in question reads: “Every child is born on [i.e., in a state of] the fiṭra, then his
parents turn him into a Jew or a Christian—just as camels are reproduced from a whole
[and sound] animal: do you find any among them that are maimed?” Mālik b. Anas, al-
Muwaṭṭaʾ, 241. Nearly identical wording is found in Abū Dāwūd, Sunan, 7:97 and similar
in al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, 334, with the addition of “or they turn him into a Magian.” Slightly
different wording is reported in Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 1157–1158 and al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, 327–328,
1199. Muslim (Ṣaḥīḥ, 1158) reports an alternative version with the wording “born on the
creed/religion (ʿalā al-milla),” as well as two further versions (at Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 1158)—
“born on this creed/religion” and “on this fiṭra”—both containing the additional phrase
“until his tongue [is able to] express it ( yubayyina/yuʿabbira ʿanhu) [his true belief?].”
Finally, al-Bukhārī reports a version of the ḥadīth that more explicitly underscores the
role played by the parents in changing the original disposition/ fiṭra with which the child
is born: “There is no child born except that he is born on the fiṭra, then his parents make
him into a Jew or a Christian—just as you breed animals: do you find any among them that
are maimed until you go and maim them (ḥattā takūnū antum tajdaʿūnahā)?” Al-Bukhārī,
Ṣaḥīḥ, 1636.

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wine, your community (umma) would have gone astray.”118 That human beings
originally enter the world in a pure state is, finally, explicitly affirmed by the
Qurʾān itself, where we read, “Verily, We created man in the best of molds”119—
a state that, if subsequently lost (“then did We abase him [to be] the lowest of
the low”),120 we can only regain by the sincere practice of ethical monotheism
through belief in and full submission to God (“except such as believe and work
righteous deeds, for they shall have a reward unstinting”).121
While it is neither possible nor directly relevant to our immediate con-
cerns to provide here a full account of Ibn Taymiyya’s understanding of the
fiṭra,122 we may note that, in terms of its relevance to the question of reason
(ʿaql) and rational inference (naẓar), Ibn Taymiyya describes “sound fiṭra” (al-
fiṭra al-salīma) as the (intuitive) faculty by which one judges the soundness of
premises and the arguments based on them.123 Further, Ibn Taymiyya main-
tains that God has “made the fiṭra of people disposed to the apprehension and
cognition of the realities [of things]”—by means, it would seem, of a healthy
and functioning intuitive capacity. He speaks, instructively, of “ʿuqūl banī Ādam
allatī faṭarahum Allāh ʿalayhā” (the intellects of mankind upon which God
has originated them),124 which is reminiscent of Q. al-Rūm 30:30: “the primor-
dial nature from God upon which He originated mankind” ( fiṭrat Allāhi llatī
faṭara l-nāsa ʿalayhā). God is said to have faṭara (created, fashioned) the ʿuqūl
(minds, intellects) of mankind in a particular manner, a statement that makes
it quite evident that the fiṭra, for Ibn Taymiyya, closely overlaps with what we
might call innate or intuitive knowledge and, fundamentally, with reason (ʿaql)
itself.125 Indeed, he tells us, “were it not for this disposition [or capacity] of peo-
ple’s hearts/minds to apprehend these realities, there would be no discursive

118 “hudīta al-fiṭra (aw aṣabta al-fiṭra) a-mā law annaka akhadhta al-khamr ghawat umma-
tuka.” Al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, 852; Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 87; al-Tirmidhī, Jāmiʿ, 5:201–202. Al-Bukhārī,
Ṣaḥīḥ, 838 has “akhadhta al-fiṭra,” while Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 82 has “ikhtarta al-fiṭra” and does
not include the phrase “had you chosen the wine, your community would have gone
astray.”
119 “la-qad khalaqnā l-insāna fī aḥsani taqwīm” (Q. al-Tīn 95:4).
120 Q. al-Tīn 95:5.
121 Q. al-Tīn 95:6.
122 See p. 260, n. 113 above and p. 262, n. 125 (here below) for a full listing of relevant discus-
sions on the fiṭra, both in Ibn Taymiyya and more generally.
123 See, for example, Darʾ, 7:37, lines 17–19.
124 Darʾ, 7:38, line 5.
125 Notwithstanding, Ibn Taymiyya’s conception of the fiṭra goes beyond cognitive faculties
narrowly defined to include an important spiritual and ethical dimension, as discussed by,
for instance, Holtzman, “Human Choice,”passim; Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy, 39–44;
Anjum, Politics, Law, and Community, 223–227; and Vasalou, Theological Ethics, 65–92.

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ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl, or what is reason? 263

reasoning or rational inference, nor even any possibility of discourse or

speech.”126 Ibn Taymiyya draws a parallel between this disposition of the fiṭra
to recognize rational and inferential truths and the disposition of the body to
receive and benefit from nourishment through food and drink. Just as the body
is endowed with an innate capacity to distinguish—“intuitively,” as it were, and
with no reflection—between healthful and noxious foods, so does there exist
in the heart/mind ( fī al-qulūb) an even greater capacity to distinguish—again,
intuitively and without reflection—what is true from what is false.127
The fiṭra, however, can only perform this intuitive function successfully as
long as it is not undermined or rendered inoperable by being tampered with,
perverted, or otherwise deflected from its natural function. Such deformations
of the fiṭra with respect to reason (ʿaql) and rational inference (naẓar) can
occur, for example, when the intuitive judgements of native sound reason are
overridden by unfounded parochial doctrines. As a person becomes habitu-
ated to such modes of thinking over time, they become second nature to him
and, eventually, distort or displace the sound judgements of his original norma-
tive disposition. For Ibn Taymiyya, the standard point of reference concerning
“innate, necessary propositions” (qaḍāyā fiṭriyya ḍarūriyya) is “those who pos-
sess a sound fiṭra that has not been changed on account of inherited beliefs
or preconceived biases [stubbornly clung to].”128 He also refers to “those who
have not suffered a change in their innate disposition ( fiṭra) as a result of con-
jecture (ẓann) or preconceived bias (hawā).”129 In another place, he mentions
the presence of a shubha (doubt or confusion caused by specious objections
or counterarguments; pl. shubuhāt, shubah). He then comments, with regard
to the denial of God’s being above creation (ʿuluww) and His being distinct
and separate from it (mubāyana), that no one concedes such a denial to the
negationists (nufāh) by dint of his fiṭra (bi-fiṭratihi) once the proposition has
been properly understood.130 Rather, such a concession can only come about

126 Darʾ, 5:62, lines 9–11 (wa-jaʿala fiṭar ʿibādihi mustaʿidda li-idrāk al-ḥaqāʾiq wa-maʿrifatihā
wa-law lā mā fī al-qulūb min al-istiʿdād li-maʿrifat al-ḥaqāʾiq lam yakun al-naẓar wa-l-
istidlāl wa-lā al-khiṭāb wa-l-kalām). See also, e.g., Darʾ, 8:41, lines 2–3, where Ibn Taymiyya
makes the similar point that “[people’s] hearts/minds have been fashioned (mafṭūra) such
that [certain] realities (ḥaqāʾiq) become manifest to them, [realities] that they have an
[innate] capacity to receive” (wa-l-qulūb mafṭūra ʿalā an yatajallā lahā min al-ḥaqāʾiq mā
hiya mustaʿidda li-tajallīhā fīhā).
127 Darʾ, 5:62, lines 10–15. See also Hallaq, “Existence of God,” 55.
128 “ahl al-fiṭar al-salīma allatī lam tataghayyar fiṭratuhā bi-l-iʿtiqādāt al-mawrūtha wa-l-
ahwāʾ.” Darʾ, 6:14, lines 7–8.
129 Darʾ, 6:14, lines 9–10 (alladhīna lam yaḥṣul mā yughayyiru fiṭratahum min ẓann aw hawā).
130 See Darʾ, 6:271, lines 11–13.

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through the prolonged presence of doubt or confusion in the mind caused by

a specious objection (shubha), especially if the person in question is also sub-
ject to the vagaries of whim and preconceived bias (hawā) or has some ulterior
motive or personal interest (gharaḍ) in denying the truth.131 With the intro-
duction of ulterior motive—paired here with whim or obstinate personal opin-
ion (hawā)—in addition to (blind) imitation (taqlīd) and (unreflective) habit
(ʿāda), Ibn Taymiyya identifies a total of seven basic motives, some cognitive
and some moral, for suppressing the normative fiṭra. These “seven deadly sins”
of the fiṭra by which a person can undermine his own innate, normative dis-
position are (1) accepting (unexamined) inherited beliefs (iʿtiqādāt mawrūtha);
(2) following whims, preconceived biases, or stubbornly clinging to personal
opinion in the face of countervailing evidence (hawā); (3) engaging in conjec-
ture (ẓann); (4) entertaining doubts or confusions caused by specious objec-
tions (shubuhāt); (5) harboring ulterior motives or personal interests (gharaḍ);
(6) following habit (ʿāda) blindly without reflection; and (7) engaging in blind
imitation (taqlīd).132 If the fiṭra is to perform its vital cognitive functions prop-
erly, it must constantly be guarded from succumbing to these infirmities.

4.3 Ḍarūra (Necessity)

We have seen that, with respect to Ibn Taymiyya’s discussion of the innate,
a priori logical principles embedded in the mind ab initio, the terms badīhī
(self-evident, axiomatic), fiṭrī (innate, inborn), and ḍarūrī (necessary, imme-
diate) are basically equivalent. Yet just as the fiṭra comprises dimensions that
go beyond a priori logical axioms, so too is Ibn Taymiyya’s conception of ḍarūra,
or necessity, not simply reducible to primary axioms (badīhiyyāt). While all a
priori and axiomatic principles count, naturally, as necessary knowledge, Ibn
Taymiyya identifies at least three other types of necessary knowledge apart
from these. First, he speaks of an “empirical necessity” or “sensory necessity”
(ḍarūra ḥissiyya),133 by which he simply means to affirm that our external
senses (provided they are not impaired) yield necessary knowledge of the
particulars we perceive through them, such that our sensory knowledge of
the world is obvious, unreflective, and indubitable and can only be denied
through sophistry.134 Second, he mentions what we may call “linguistic neces-

131 “innamā yuwāfiquhum ʿalayhi man qāmat ʿindahu shubha min shubah al-nufāh lā siyyamā
in kāna lahu hawā aw gharaḍ.” Darʾ, 6:271, lines 13–15.
132 For more on the suppression of the fiṭra through these various motives and mechanisms,
see Darʾ, 6:271–272.
133 See Darʾ, 3:317, lines 11–12, where he mentions “ʿulūm[ihi] al-ḥissiyya al-ḍarūriyya.”
134 See, e.g., Darʾ, 3:428 (min aʿẓam al-mukābara wa-l-safsaṭa wa-l-buhtān); 9:248 (mukābara

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ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl, or what is reason? 265

sity” or “linguistically necessary knowledge,” which is presumably based on

a native speaker’s perfect familiarity with the precise linguistic conventions
of his speech community (a topic we examined at length in chapter 4). Ibn
Taymiyya alludes to this notion of linguistic necessity when, for example, he
prefaces an argument he is making on the basis of the known meaning of a
given word with the phrase “we know of necessity based on the language of the
Arabs (naʿlamu bi-l-iḍṭirār min lughat al-ʿArab) that …”135 Elsewhere he makes
a similar appeal to linguistic necessity when he asserts that knowledge of the
difference between a quality or attribute (ṣifa) and the entity qualified by it
(mawṣūf ) is “anchored in the innate nature of the mind and the languages
of various nations” (mustaqirr fī fiṭar al-ʿuqūl wa-lughāt al-umam).136 Here he
underscores the fact that innate, necessary knowledge lodged in the mind is
also, at least in some cases, reflected in certain universal linguistic conventions
shared across nations and peoples. Third, Ibn Taymiyya admits as necessary
knowledge the result of any valid process of rational inference that starts from
necessarily true premises, a process he refers to as naẓar ḥasan or ḥusn al-
naẓar.137 If the premises are necessary and the induction itself proceeds from
premises to conclusion in a valid manner, then the resultant knowledge, once
the rational faculty has carried out this inferential process, impresses itself on
the mind as a necessary and undeniable conclusion. As Ibn Taymiyya puts it,

Even [with respect to] knowledge that is acquired (muktasab) and that
comes about [for a person] through discursive reasoning (naẓar), [that
person] ultimately finds himself compelled to [accept] it (muḍṭarr ilayhi)
of necessity, for the knowing subject, once knowledge has come about
in his mind—either with or without an inferential proof or argument
(dalīl)—is unable to repel that knowledge from his mind.138

In this manner, even knowledge that is acquired through inference can, under
the right conditions, count as necessary, and hence certain, knowledge.

bayyina); 4:172, 5:196 (mukābara lil-ḥiss); 3:363, 4:192 (mukābara lil-ḥiss wa-l-ʿaql); 5:41
(mukābara lil-ḍarūra); 9:207 (al-muʿānada wa-l-jaḥd); 1:182, 1:185, 7:404, 8:219, and numer-
ous others (al-safsaṭa); 9:268 (al-muʿānada wa-l-safsaṭa).
135 Darʾ, 7:113, line 19.
136 Darʾ, 1:286, lines 5–6.
137 See, e.g., Darʾ, 3:261, line 15.
138 “wa-in kāna al-ʿilm alladhī ḥaṣala bi-iktisābihi wa-naẓarihi huwa muḍṭarr ilayhi fī ākhir al-
amr, fa-lā yumkinu al-ʿālim al-ʿārif baʿda ḥuṣūl al-maʿrifa fī qalbihi bi-dalīl aw bi-ghayr dalīl
an yadfaʿa dhālika ʿan qalbihi.” Darʾ, 9:28, line 19 to 9:29, line 3.

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In addition to necessary knowledge derived from the quaternity of (1) a pri-

ori intuitions/self-evident axioms, (2) sensation, (3) linguistic convention, and
(4) valid rational inference, there is a fifth major source of necessary knowl-
edge, namely, tawātur, which I have previously translated as “recurrent mass
transmission.” We have already encountered the concept and epistemic func-
tion of tawātur with respect to transmitted reports, our second main source
of factual knowledge about the world after sensation. As noted in that sec-
tion,139 all our knowledge about anything that is absent (ghāʾib) (defined as
that which is not available to our senses right now) ultimately comes to us by
way of reports. As we have seen, this holds true for any (non-religious) knowl-
edge we may have of past events or of places we have never visited, as well as,
naturally, (religious) knowledge of the unseen realm proper, that realm which
is conventionally veiled from human sense perception in this world. We saw
that Ibn Taymiyya, in accord with the mainstream tradition, accepts as true
reports (khabar ṣādiq) the entire text of the Qurʾān, as well as any ḥadīth that
has reached us through an authentic chain of transmission (isnād ṣaḥīḥ) as
determined by conventional Muslim ḥadīth scholarship. Yet we have also seen
that even in the case of ḥadīth reports, we can only claim absolute certainty
of the content they convey if the ḥadīth in question was transmitted through
tawātur (even if only tawātur maʿnawī, that is, recurrent mass transmission of a
common meaning, or theme, with differences in the exact wording). Regarding
instances of transmission external to the ḥadīth tradition, be they historical or
otherwise, it is likewise tawātur alone that can guarantee ultimate authenticity.
The certainty afforded to us by tawātur with respect to reports entails that at the
moment such reports come to be experienced as mutawātir by a knowing sub-
ject, the content of those reports becomes necessary knowledge for that person.
In fact, tawātur itself is often defined as that (generally unspecifiable) num-
ber of reports that is necessary and sufficient to engender in the heart/mind
of the knower a firm conviction (iʿtiqād jāzim)140 that the content reported is
definitively true. It is in this sense that tawātur is, for Ibn Taymiyya, one of the
fundamental sources of necessary knowledge. In this, he follows faithfully in
the tradition of Islamic jurisprudence and its discourse on the integrity of Mus-
lim textual transmission, especially that of ḥadīth.
At this juncture, however, Ibn Taymiyya surprises us with the insight—
seemingly unique to him—that the underlying logic of tawātur is, in fact, oper-
able on a scale much wider than the ___domain of ikhbār, or reporting, to which it

139 See p. 237ff. above.

140 See, e.g., Darʾ, 7:422, line 1, among others.

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ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl, or what is reason? 267

has conventionally been confined. Applying the concept of mass transmission

beyond the ___domain of texts (as discussed in legal theory) or the transmission
of more general historical and geographical knowledge (as theorized by the
mutakallimūn), Ibn Taymiyya calls the notion of tawātur into service as the
final guarantor of authenticity for practically all the other sources and avenues
of knowledge in his epistemological panoply that we have investigated over the
course of this chapter, including the self-evident axioms of reason, the norma-
tive fiṭra, and even sense perception itself. We examine the most important of
these applications of the principle of tawātur in the following section.

4.4 Tawātur as the Final Epistemic Guarantor

In a seemingly unprecedented move, Ibn Taymiyya takes the principle of
tawātur—well known primarily as the final guarantor of the authenticity of the
Qurʾānic text and a limited number of ḥadīth reports—and extends it dramat-
ically, making it the guarantor of his entire epistemic system.141 Although the
category known as ḥadīth reports can and does contain errors in the form of fal-
sified ḥadīth,142 we can, according to Ibn Taymiyya’s theory, nevertheless have
certain knowledge ( yaqīn) of a ḥadīth’s authenticity if it has been transmit-
ted through tawātur—defined as the transmission of a text, from its origin and
at every subsequent stage, by disparate sources in such numbers as to preclude
the possibility that the report in question could have been forged through collu-
sion or conscious agreement (tawāṭuʾ). Admittedly, empirical and a priori ratio-
nal knowledge differ from mutawātir reports in that they are immediate and
impose themselves on the mind directly with no need for confirmation through
corroboratory reports. Thus, when we say that the principle of tawātur, for Ibn
Taymiyya, applies to sensory knowledge and to the axiomatic principles of rea-
son, we must not understand him to be saying that our certainty of such knowl-
edge is dependent on tawātur in the manner in which our certainty of the con-

141 See, e.g., Darʾ, 5:319, line 19 to 5:320, line 6, where we read of what amounts to a kind
of “tawātur ʿaqlī” (specifically of the early community with regard to their affirmation
of the divine attributes), as well as Darʾ, 6:284, lines 19–20 for what amounts to a kind
of “tawātur fiṭrī” where Ibn Taymiyya speaks of “ṭawāʾif mutafarriqūna ittafaqū ʿalā dhā-
lika min ghayr muwāṭaʾa wa-dhālika yaqtaḍī annahum ṣādiqūna fīmā yukhbirūna bihi ʿan
fiṭarihim” (that is, they agreed in, essentially, a mutawātir fashion on the basis of a sound,
universally shared human fiṭra) and 8:43–45 for tawātur fiṭrī more generally (with interest-
ing analogies at 8:43). See also Darʾ, 6:12, line 19 to 6:13, line 1 (“al-khaṭaʾ ʿalā al-jamʿ al-kathīr
mumtaniʿ fī al-umūr al-ḥissiyya wa-l-ḍarūriyya”) and 6:13, lines 9–10 (“thabata anna hād-
hihi al-muqaddima badīhiyya li-annahu ittafaqa ʿalayhā umam kathīra bi-dūn al-tawāṭuʾ,”
that is, in a mutawātir fashion).
142 Or so-called “mawḍūʿāt,” on which see Brown, Hadith, 69–77. On the genre of mawḍūʿāt
works, or compilations of ḥadīth forgeries, see Brown, 99–100.

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tent of transmitted reports depends on tawātur.143 We are certainly justified

in claiming empirical knowledge of what we ourselves experience empirically
without waiting for such knowledge to be confirmed for us by the rest of
mankind. Similarly, the intuitive a priori maxims lodged in the mind impose
themselves as true on each individual mind directly and not through the
mutawātir accumulation of corroborative reports that other minds have like-
wise recognized them as true. An abandoned child growing up alone on a
deserted island—such as a Ḥayy b. Yaqẓān, for instance144—would certainly
still have access to both empirical and rational certitude. Ibn Taymiyya’s point,
rather, is that in the event that such necessary knowledge should somehow fall
prey to skepticism or doubt on account of some cognitive impediment, then a
sort of tawātur of the human fiṭra as a whole must be summoned to witness as a
corrective.145 Such doubt, for Ibn Taymiyya, may be induced by a number of fac-
tors. Primary among these is the prolonged exposure to specious philosophical
or theological doctrines built upon dubious, often highly recondite arguments
whose conclusions eventually entail a negation or contradiction of what is ulti-
mately known to be true by necessity. We may illustrate Ibn Taymiyya’s appeal
to tawātur in such cases by way of the following theological example.
In his theological treatise al-Arbaʿīn fī uṣūl al-dīn,146 Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī
asserts the well-known Ashʿarī doctrine that God is neither spatially located
( fī jiha) nor in a place (makān). According to the Ashʿarī view, this entails the

143 And tawātur alone, as we have seen, for although Ibn Taymiyya accepts reports that have
been determined to be true or accurate (ṣādiqa), such as the category of ḥadīth reports
classified as ṣaḥīḥ, it is nevertheless tawātur alone that guarantees that such transmitted
knowledge is definitively certain ( yaqīnī). This restriction of certitude to the realm of the
mutawātir would seem to entail a considerable narrowing of the circle of certain knowl-
edge (ʿilm) that is available to human beings. This apparent narrowing, however, is offset
by Ibn Taymiyya’s substantial broadening of the category of mutawātir itself in the guise
of what he defines as “functionally equivalent to the mutawātir” ( fī maʿnā al-mutawātir).
See El-Tobgui, “From Legal Theory to Erkenntnistheorie,” 19–21 (and passim).
144 In reference to the Andalusian philosopher Ibn Ṭufayl’s (d. 581/1185) famous philosophical
novel of the same name. Ibn Sīnā, Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī, and the famous physician
Ibn al-Nafīs (d. 687/1288) wrote other treatises also called Ḥayy b. Yaqẓān. All four treatises
have been published and introduced in one volume; see Yūsuf Zaydān, Ḥayy b. Yaqẓān: al-
nuṣūṣ al-arbaʿa wa-mubdiʿūhā.
145 See, for instance, appeals to “al-fiṭar al-salīma” at Darʾ, 4:207, 5:61, 7:37 and to “ahl al-fiṭar
al-salīma” at 6:14, lines 6–8: “bal al-marjiʿ fī al-qaḍāyā al-fiṭriyya al-ḍarūriyya ilā ahl al-fiṭar
al-salīma allatī lam tataghayyar fiṭratuhā bi-l-iʿtiqādāt al-mawrūtha wa-l-awhām” (The ref-
erence point with respect to necessary, innate propositions is those of sound disposition
whose fiṭra has not been altered through inherited beliefs or illusions).
146 See al-Rāzī, Arbaʿīn, 1:152–164 (“al-masʾala al-thāmina: fī annahu taʿālā laysa fī makān wa-lā
fī jiha”). For Ibn Taymiyya’s (partial) citation of and response to this section of the Arbaʿīn,
see Darʾ, 6:8–12ff.

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ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl, or what is reason? 269

corollary that He also cannot be said to interpenetrate ( yudākhil) or be con-

substantial with (sārī fī) the universe nor to be distinct and separate (mubāyin)
from it.147 This doctrine is put forward in order to avoid the attribution of spatial
___location or place to God for fear of falling into corporealism (tajsīm), a partic-
ularly offensive species of assimilationism (tashbīh). Al-Rāzī reports that those
who oppose this doctrine (such as the Ḥanbalīs and the Karrāmiyya in his day,
and later also Ibn Taymiyya) claim, as a matter of self-evident knowledge (ʿilm
badīhī), that for any two existing entities, either one must inhere in (be sārī fī)
the other (as an accident inheres in a substance) or the two must be distinct
and separate (mubāyin) from each other (as in the case of two independent
substances).148 Al-Rāzī counters the claim of self-evident knowledge in this
instance with several arguments.149 First, he argues that if the logical exhaus-
tiveness of the stated disjunction were truly self-evident (badīhī), it would not
have been possible for a large number of thinkers to deny it, as do, in fact, all
theological schools “save the Ḥanābila and the Karrāmiyya.”150 Second, while
the universal concept of man, for instance, subsumes extant individuals each
occupying a portion of space (ḥayyiz) and possessing dimension (miqdār), the
universal itself neither occupies space nor has any dimension. And while it is
true that universal man, or man per se (al-insān min ḥaythu huwa), is a concept
that exists only in the mind, it is nevertheless not impossible, al-Rāzī concludes,
for the mind to conceive of such a thing—a fact that thus prevents the propo-
sition of the opponent from being taken as self-evident. In a further argument,
al-Rāzī holds that while the mind readily judges, for instance, that affirmation
(ithbāt) and negation (nafy) are contradictory and mutually exclusive oppo-
sites, such is not the case with respect to the proposition that two extant entities
must necessarily be either consubstantial or distinct from each other. In fact,
it is quite possible for the mind to conceive of a third possibility, namely, that
the two entities are neither consubstantial nor distinct from each other. Rea-
son, al-Rāzī argues, is unable to form an immediate judgement concerning the
possibility or impossibility of this third proposition in the absence of a con-
clusive argument or proof (burhān),151 and this need for argument and proof

147 Darʾ, 6:8; al-Rāzī, Arbaʿīn, 1:152.

148 With regard to an existent that is neither inside the world nor outside it, Ibn Taymiyya
regards the knowledge of this impossibility as something that “people have affirmed with
their fiṭra and know through the innate axioms and necessary knowledge [implanted in]
their minds/hearts” (aqarra bihi al-nās bi-fiṭarihim wa-ʿarafūhu bi-badāʾih ʿuqūlihim wa-
ḍarūrāt qulūbihim). Darʾ, 6:112, lines 10–11.
149 See Darʾ, 6:9–10; Arbaʿīn, 1:152–155.
150 Darʾ, 6:9; Arbaʿīn, 1:152. On the Karrāmiyya, see Zysow, “Karrāmiyya.”
151 “Burhān” in Ibn Taymiyya (Darʾ, 6:10); al-Rāzī has “ḥujja” instead (Arbaʿīn, 1:154).

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means that no automatic judgement of the proposition’s impossibility can be

considered truly a priori or self-evident.
In response to these arguments,152 Ibn Taymiyya ultimately appeals to what
he argues is innate, axiomatic, self-evident (badīhī), and therefore necessary,
knowledge on the basis, essentially, of tawātur—the widespread transmission
among human beings of common basic knowables in a way that precludes
the possibility of collusion or conscious agreement (tawāṭuʾ) on their part.
Ibn Taymiyya observes that all human beings know, in an innate ( fiṭrī) and
self-evident fashion, that of any two existing entities, it is necessarily the case
either that one interpenetrates the other or that they are separate and dis-
tinct from each other. This is a straightforward case of the law of the excluded
middle: given that the propositions in question are mutually exclusive and log-
ically exhaustive, there exists no third possibility between them (the “middle”
is excluded). This being the case, one or the other of the two propositions must
be true; denying them both would entail a logical—and, consequently, also an
ontological—impossibility, akin to holding that a thing both exists and does
not exist at the same time. Such knowledge is “common to the members of
all nations whose innate nature has not been altered.”153 Here, Ibn Taymiyya
has essentially applied the theory of tawātur to the widespread attestations
of what disparate individuals report to be innate ( fiṭrī) or necessary (ḍarūrī)
knowledge to them. He states explicitly that we may claim “knowledge of the
factual truth (thubūt) of what people report in a mutawātir fashion with respect
to empirical and necessary knowledge,”154 with “necessary” here seemingly
used in the sense of what is innate ( fiṭrī) or self-evident (badīhī). Intentional
mendacity (taʿammud al-kadhib) on the part of a large number of disparate
individuals absent collusion or conscious agreement (tawāṭuʾ) is virtually
impossible in light of the conventional workings of the world ( yamtaniʿu fī
al-ʿāda). Ibn Taymiyya further affirms that mere error (khaṭaʾ) is also impossi-
ble with respect to a large number in matters of both empirical and necessary
(rational) knowledge,155 for it is impossible, given the conventional workings of
the world, that they should all concur fortuitously on one and the same error.
Yet if our knowledge of the law of the excluded middle is innate and self-
evident (badīhī), it would be surprising if it could somehow be overridden, par-
ticularly by a disputed premise that is not known by necessity—in the case at

152 See Darʾ, 6:12–19.

153 “hādhā amr muttafaq ʿalayhi bayna al-umam allatī lam tughayyar fiṭratuhā” (emphasis
mine). Darʾ, 6:12, line 9.
154 “wa-bi-mithl hādhā ʿulima thubūt mā yukhbiru bihi ahl al-tawātur mimmā yuʿlamu bi-l-ḥiss
wa-l-ḍarūra.” Darʾ, 6:12, lines 16–17.
155 “wa-l-khaṭaʾ ʿalā al-jamʿ al-kathīr mumtaniʿ fī al-umūr al-ḥissiyya wa-l-ḍarūriyya.”Darʾ, 6:12,
line 19 to 6:13, line 1.

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ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl, or what is reason? 271

hand, the contention that affirming God to be distinct and separate (mubāyin)
from the world entails assimilationism (tashbīh). We recall that, for Ibn Tay-
miyya, the proper functioning of all our epistemic faculties—including both
judging the soundness of the premises of an argument and simply retaining
a meaningful awareness of the self-evident, axiomatic principles of the mind
(that is, the badīhiyyāt)—is predicated in all cases on the health and proper
functioning of the fiṭra. It is precisely in this sense that Ibn Taymiyya, as dis-
cussed above, conceives of the fiṭra as undergirding all our various cognitive
and moral faculties and, when healthy, guaranteeing the veracity of their mutu-
ally corroborative witness to the truth. But as we saw above, the fiṭra is sus-
ceptible to both cognitive and moral corruption, the former induced by long-
standing habituation to beliefs that contradict what is intuitively known to be
true. In the event that the fiṭra has become cognitively impaired and a person
insists on maintaining a doctrine that is contradictory to necessary knowledge,
an appeal may be made to the mutawātir agreement of human beings on the
point in question as conclusive proof of the veracity of the proposition. This
mutawātir human agreement thus acts as a corrective to the erroneous doc-
trine that stands in opposition to it.
We can drive the same point home from another angle by stating the rela-
tionship between the fiṭra and necessary knowledge, as guaranteed through
tawātur, in a different way. For Ibn Taymiyya, human hearts/minds and cogni-
tive faculties (qulūb/ʿuqūl) are trustworthy as long as they are not corrupted,
that is, as long as they have not deviated from the normative fiṭra. However,
individual human beings may use their minds incorrectly and draw false con-
clusions if they have become accustomed to intellectual errors through the
adoption of specious assumptions and erroneous beliefs. But this raises the
following question: How can we, according to Ibn Taymiyya, correctly iden-
tify the content of sound human minds and uncorrupted intellectual faculties?
Ibn Taymiyya addresses this problem by carrying out an inductive survey of
mankind to observe what cognitive intuitions are common to all human minds.
Elements shared by all human intellects (apart from those of idiosyncratic
philosophers) are constitutive of a normative (cognitional) human nature or
disposition ( fiṭra). Thus, just as we can say that it is human nature to have two
eyes, since every human being we have ever encountered (apart from those
with impaired bodies) has two eyes, so can we assert with the same confidence
that it is human nature, for instance, to recognize the truth of the law of the
excluded middle or to intuit that any two existing entities must be either con-
substantial with or distinct from each other ontologically. The grounds for this
assertion lie in the fact that all people (apart from those whose intellects have
become corrupted through faulty philosophizing) consistently report that they

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instinctively recognize the necessary truth of these propositions. Mass report-

ing of this type amounts to a kind of pan-human tawātur on the level of rational
intuition and proper cognitive function. In this manner, tawātur reveals the
nature of the human mind and of the uncorrupted faculties of the intellect. It
is precisely by enabling an inductive study of human minds that tawātur allows
us to identify shared cognitive intuitions that, in turn, we may take as constitu-
tive of a normative cognitional fiṭra.
In summary, through his expanded conception of tawātur, tied to the
notion of the normative fiṭra, Ibn Taymiyya seeks to insulate what he observes
to be universally held, innate notions against the corrosive doubt engendered
by specious claims put forth in the name of a (pseudo-)philosophical “reason”
that would barter these basic intuitions for abstract mental constructs devoid
of any proper philosophical justification, let alone ontological reality. The epis-
temological significance of Ibn Taymiyya’s vindication, through the mecha-
nism of tawātur, not only of the integrity of human sense perception but, more
importantly, of what can be observed to be universally shared innate, intuitive,
a priori—and hence necessary—knowledge becomes clear when placed in the
context of his larger epistemological framework. Universally shared empirical
experiences and innate rational intuitions—guaranteed, in the final analysis,
by some type of pan-human tawātur based in the fiṭra—yield certain knowl-
edge that cannot reasonably be subjected to doubt. Being both immediate and
universal, such knowledge cannot be overturned or superseded by the deriva-
tive conclusions of speculative reason. This is particularly true when (as Ibn
Taymiyya contends is normally the case) the processes of inference involved,
as well as the assumptions and premises upon which they are based, are the
province of a restricted number of intellectuals—intellectuals who are com-
mitted to a particular school of thought, the fundamental premises of which
they have, more often than not, accepted and propagated on the basis of imita-
tion (taqlīd) and prior conscious agreement (tawāṭuʾ) rather than pure intellec-
tion, as they fancy. Even if comparatively large numbers of such thinkers agreed
among themselves on a position that conflicts with necessary knowledge (as
al-Rāzī holds to be the case with respect to the possibility of two existing enti-
ties being neither consubstantial with nor distinct from each other),156 this
would always fall short of the overwhelming tawātur by which the truth of the
opposite proposition has been established.157 In essence, Ibn Taymiyya insists

156 We recall al-Rāzī’s assertion that all major Islamic theological schools hold this view, with
the sole exception of the (numerically limited) Ḥanbalīs and Karrāmiyya. Al-Rāzī, Arbaʿīn,
1:152.
157 Not to mention that among the conditions of tawātur itself is that the information ulti-

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ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl, or what is reason? 273

that immediate and universally shared knowledge—gained through a combi-

nation of sense perception (ḥiss), self-evident axioms (badāʾih al-ʿuqūl),158 and
fundamental rational intuitions grounded in the normative fiṭra—cannot be
overridden by what he deems to be parochial conclusions derived speculatively
by the pre-committed adherents of an idiosyncratic philosophical doctrine.
It is important to underscore that Ibn Taymiyya in no manner intends to
delegitimize reason or its (valid) inferential operations per se. In fact, he is con-
cerned precisely to defend and to legitimate the innate and a priori knowledge
contained in the mind against claims that such knowledge may be subject to
vitiation by the deliverances of a posteriori inference. At the same time, we
must not understand Ibn Taymiyya to be privileging the innate knowledge of
the mind at the expense of the valid processes of rational investigation and
inference of that very same mind. Rather, he is simply affirming that the results
of discursive reasoning must be checked against the indubitably true contents
of necessary knowledge, the fundamental axioms of reason, and the (healthy)
fiṭra rather than the reverse.159 When the two are thought to conflict, it is either
the process of reasoned inference or the premises on which the inference is
based (or both) that have somehow gone wrong, not the obvious and widely-

mately be derived from sense experience, not from a conclusion reached through discur-
sive inference (naẓar).
158 Darʾ, 3:231, line 1 and 5:34, line 7. We also come across “badāʾih al-fiṭar” at Darʾ, 3:221, line 14.
159 The reverse occurs when, for example, that which Ibn Taymiyya asserts to be necessary
and immediate intuitive knowledge is taken as nothing more than “initial impressions.”
The philosophers, such as Ibn Sīnā, demote these “initial impressions” to the level of mere
estimation (wahm) and imagination (khayāl) that the intellect can then judge to be erro-
neous on the basis of discursive reasoning—reasoning that, Ibn Taymiyya charges, is often
based on faulty assumptions and premises. Such faulty assumptions might include, for
example, the belief that mental notions such as universals possess ontological reality out-
side the mind. Or, as in the case of al-Rāzī, one may realize that such notions indeed exist
only in the mind but nevertheless err by transferring the judgement (ḥukm) of what exists
in the mind to the realm of external existence without justification. (See Darʾ, 6:19–113.)
Ibn Sīnā’s main passage on the wahmiyyāt (estimative propositions) that Ibn Taymiyya
cites and critiques over the course of half a volume of the Darʾ (vol. 6) can be found in Ibn
Sīnā, Kitāb al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt, 1:341–363 (esp. 1:353–355) and Remarks and Admoni-
tions. Part One: Logic, 118–128 (esp. 123–124). (For a note of caution on the inadequacy of
existing editions of Ibn Sīnā’s Ishārāt, see Lameer, “Towards a New Edition of Avicenna’s
Kitāb al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt.”) On wahm in Ibn Sīnā, see Black, “Estimation (Wahm) in
Avicenna” and, on Ibn Sīnā’s epistemology more generally, Black, “Certitude, Justification,
and the Principles of Knowledge,” as well as Wisnovsky, “Avicenna.” See also Sophia Vasa-
lou’s incisive discussion of fiṭra in Ibn Taymiyya, specifically in the context of Ibn Sīnā’s
notion of wahm, in Vasalou, Theological Ethics, 56–79. For a critical take on Ibn Taymiyya’s
refutation of Ibn Sīnā’s wahmiyyāt, see Marcotte, “Ibn Taymiyya et sa critique.”

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shared notions rooted in the innate principles of reason and guaranteed by the
fiṭra—as per the maxim that “necessary knowledge cannot be contradicted by
the conclusions of discursive inference.”160 Where such a conflict is found to
arise, Ibn Taymiyya insists that if we conduct a critical review of the terms in
which the inference is stated (as per chapter 4) and of the substantive assump-
tions underlying its premises, we will realize in every case that it is the process
of discursive reasoning that has somehow gone astray and not the underlying
intuitions of the native intellect. In the case of al-Rāzī’s argument presented
above, the error involved is an easy one for Ibn Taymiyya to identify, as it is a
classic case of confusing what exists in the mind with what exists in external
reality, then assuming that the rational judgement (ḥukm) that applies to the
former is automatically transferable to the latter. Al-Rāzī’s error, according to
Ibn Taymiyya, lies specifically in the assumption that the mere ability of the
mind to formulate the proposition that two existent things might be neither
consubstantial with nor distinct from each other automatically translates into
the ontological possibility that such a thing could actually exist in the outside
world, thus making it necessary to go through a process of reasoned inference
to determine which of the three possibilities—consubstantial, distinct from,
or neither—is correct.
In light of the foregoing, it is important to re-emphasize that Ibn Taymiyya
nowhere insists, nor even suggests, that reason should somehow “submit” to
revelation in the sense that one should abandon a well-grounded rational
conclusion simply as a concession to sense perception or transmitted reports
(specifically, revelation). On the contrary, he holds, and attempts to substan-
tiate throughout the Darʾ taʿāruḍ, that the discordant inferential conclusion
is always the result of faulty inference—what we may call “naẓar sayyiʾ ” or
“sūʾ al-naẓar” (lit. “bad reasoning”), in contrast to Ibn Taymiyya’s ḥusn al-naẓar
(sound reasoning)—and that a thorough and properly grounded (linguistic
and) rational re-analysis of the matter will always reveal where the original
inference went wrong and establish that the valid conclusions of pure reason
(ʿaql ṣarīḥ) do not, in fact, conflict with our innate or empirical knowledge, on
the one hand, or with what we know to be the case from revelation, on the
other. Thus, while we may often be alerted to our errors in rational inference
by the other sources of certain knowledge and prompted thereby to correct
our reasoning, we are never asked to deny the legitimate and valid conclusions
of reason or to allow them simply to be overridden by “competing” sources
of knowledge. Indeed, we recall that Ibn Taymiyya takes it as a fundamental

160 “al-naẓariyyāt lā tuʿāriḍu al-ḍarūriyyāt.” Darʾ, 6:11, line 11.

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ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl, or what is reason? 275

premise of his epistemology that reliable sources of true knowledge are al-
ways—of necessity—complementary and corroboratory and that they can
never be in bona fide competition or conflict.

…
In this chapter, we have learned that reality, in Ibn Taymiyya’s account, con-
sists of two realms, the seen (shahāda) and the unseen (ghayb). The mind
acquires knowledge of what exists in the former by way of external sensation
(ḥiss ẓāhir), while it acquires knowledge of what exists in the latter primarily
through transmitted reports (khabar) as well as, to a limited degree, internal
sensation (ḥiss bāṭin). On the basis of the empirical knowledge provided to it
by the senses, the mind abstracts universal concepts that it holds as mental
representations of external reality. As the knowledge of the mind is purely cog-
nitional (ʿilmī) and notional (iʿtibārī), the rational faculty is unable to establish
the factual existence of any externally existent entity (although it can, once
more, affirm the existence of God on the basis of an innate, internal sensus
divinitatis).161 Reason nevertheless comes embedded with the innate ( fiṭrī) and
necessary (ḍarūrī) knowledge of certain fundamental axioms (badīhiyyāt), on
the basis of which we are able to confer rational assent (taṣdīq) or form logi-

161 It can also affirm this on the basis of a consideration of the temporal and non-necessary
nature of the universe, coupled with the mind’s innate knowledge of the impossibility
of an infinite causal regress. This argument, which Ibn Taymiyya holds to be that of the
Qurʾān itself, represents an instance of sound rational inference (ḥusn al-naẓar) and may
be referred to as the argument from “mujarrad al-ḥudūth” (though Ibn Taymiyya does
not give it a formal name), that is, the argument from the “mere fact of origination (of
the world).” For Ibn Taymiyya’s discussion of mujarrad al-ḥudūth in the Darʾ taʿāruḍ, see,
inter alia, Darʾ, 3:195–199ff. and, more extensively, Darʾ, 8:317–325 (esp. 8:319 and 8:321–
322). At Darʾ, 8:319, lines 2–5, for instance, Ibn Taymiyya says (in response to al-Bāqillānī
in Sharḥ al-Lumaʿ): “Knowledge of the temporal origination (ḥudūth) of that which comes
into being and inferring the existence of the Creator from this [knowledge] does not
require that [we] know [for instance] whether a drop of sperm is made up of individual
substances or matter and whether that [substance and matter] are eternal or temporally
originated. Rather, the mere fact of the origination (mujarrad ḥudūth) of that whose tem-
poral origination we witness [is sufficient to] indicate [or prove] that it has an Originator,
just as the temporal origination of all things that come into being indicates [or proves]
that they have an Originator.” (See index of Arabic passages.) Richard Frank points out
that al-Ashʿarī’s own argumentation for the existence of God, reasoning from creation to
a Creator given the contingency of the world, “follows the Qurʾān very closely …, rejecting
the more common kalām argument based on the nature of atoms and their inherent acci-
dents.” In this, al-Ashʿarī “differs from the practice of the leading Ashʿarite masters of later
generations.” See Frank, “Al-Ashʿarī’s Kitāb al-Ḥathth,” 127, n. 30.

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cal judgements (aḥkām) with respect to existing entities. The mind possesses
necessary knowledge of the external reality mediated to it by the senses, of its
own innate logical principles, and of whatever information has reached it by
way of reports (akhbār) that have been passed down through recurrent mass
transmission (tawātur) (such as, most importantly, the Qurʾānic text and a lim-
ited number of mutawātir ḥadīth reports). The principle of tawātur, however,
is not limited to guaranteeing the authenticity of verbal reports. It also serves
as the ultimate guarantor of the necessary knowledge mediated to the mind
by the senses, as well as of the axiomatic principles of reason and of the fiṭra
more generally, in the event that any of these sources of widely-shared, nec-
essary knowledge should come to be undermined, impugned, or subjected to
systematic doubt. Such doubt is typically the result of doctrines that have been
derived through discursive reasoning (naẓar) on the basis of dubious premises
that, Ibn Taymiyya contends, unambiguously contradict the necessary knowl-
edge attested to by any of the sources mentioned above.
Having laid out the fundamental components of Ibn Taymiyya’s attempted
hermeneutical, ontological, and epistemological reforms over the course of the
past two chapters, we now turn, in the final chapter, to consider how he applies
these tools to resolve, once and for all, the hitherto intractable “contradiction”
between reason and revelation, particularly with regard to the question of the
divine attributes.

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 chapter 6

Reason Reconstituted: The Divine Attributes and

the Question of Contradiction between Reason
and Revelation

1 Rational Inference and the Question of Qiyās al-ghāʾib ʿalā

al-shāhid

In chapter 5, we discussed Ibn Taymiyya’s charge against the philosophers that

their reasoning about the world and metaphysical realities rests upon a fun-
damentally unsound ontology that confuses, on numerous levels, the realm of
external ontological existence with the realm of notional or logical existence
in the mind. Specifically, we have seen that the philosophers adopt a realist
conception of universals on the basis of which they accord objective ontolog-
ical status to notional realities (such as universals) that, Ibn Taymiyya insists,
enjoy no more than intramental existence. As such intellectual realities are,
by definition, unseen (ghayr mashhūd) and imperceptible (ghayr maḥsūs), the
philosophers identify them with the ghayb spoken of in revelation, in contrast
to the shāhid realm of our ambient empirical reality. The result is a philosophi-
cal ontology that confines the perceptible (maḥsūs) to the empirical (shahāda)
while reducing the unseen (ghayb) to the mental or intellectual (maʿqūl). Such
a scheme entails—incoherently, for Ibn Taymiyya—the affirmation of exter-
nally existent realities that are entirely notional and unperceivable (such as
universals). Worse, insofar as the ghayb is reduced to the maʿqūl, the philoso-
phers’ schema at the same time necessarily precludes the existence of any inde-
pendent, self-standing entities (aʿyān qāʾima bi-anfusihā) in the ghayb, entities
that are inherently perceptible (though veiled to our senses at the current time)
and that exist independently of human reason and human minds. It is on the
basis of this ontology that the philosophers end up “intellectualizing” the var-
ious unseen (ghāʾib) realities affirmed in revelation, as in their identification
of angels with the “intellects” of the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic traditions or
the broader philosophical view that the events of the afterlife, including the
pleasures of paradise and the pains of hell, are merely graphic metaphors for
what will essentially be experienced in intellectual, rather than sensory, terms
in the hereafter.
This confusion in ontology, according to Ibn Taymiyya, has led to a parallel
confusion in the rational inferences the philosophers draw about the world.

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278 chapter 6

Such inferences may collectively be referred to as qiyās, a term that, for Ibn
Taymiyya, comprises both the categorical syllogism (qiyās al-shumūl1), which
operates on the basis of a universal middle term, and analogy (qiyās al-tamthīl),
which involves the assimilation of two particulars by virtue of a relevant shared
attribute without the mediation of a common universal.2 In both cases, an
inference is drawn by transferring a judgement (ḥukm), either from the uni-
versal to the particular (in the case of the categorical syllogism) or from the
particular to the particular (in the case of analogy).3 The particular kind of
inference relevant to the question of the divine attributes—and to the ghayb
more generally—is known as “qiyās al-ghāʾib ʿalā al-shāhid,” that is, “inferring
[something about] the unseen on the basis of the seen,” or, to put it in other
terms, transferring a judgement applicable in the realm of the shāhid to the
realm of the ghāʾib. Ibn Taymiyya identifies four different kinds of inference, or

1 A term that may have been coined by Ibn Taymiyya himself. Hallaq, Greek Logicians, xiv, n. 17.
2 The classic example of the categorical syllogism is “All men are mortal. Socrates is a man.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.” The judgement (ḥukm) of mortality is predicated of Socrates
since he is subsumed by the middle term “man” and thus falls under the universal proposi-
tion “All men are mortal.” A classic example of analogical reasoning, cited in Muslim juridical
texts, is the following: “Grape wine (khamr) is forbidden because it intoxicates. Date wine
(nabīdh) also intoxicates. Therefore, date wine is forbidden too.” Here the judgement (ḥukm)
of impermissibility is transferred from one particular (grape wine) to another particular (date
wine) because they share in a common relevant attribute, known as the ʿilla, or ratio legis (in
this case, intoxication). For Ibn Taymiyya’s criticism of the syllogism, see Hallaq, Greek Logi-
cians, xxvii–xxxii, as well as Rayan, “Ibn Taymiyya’s Criticism of the Syllogism” and Rayan,
“Criticism of Ibn Taymiyyah on the Aristotelian Logical Proposition.”
3 Ibn Taymiyya, in fact, argues that these two forms of inference are equivalent in substance
and that they differ only in form. The analogical syllogism, for instance, can easily be recast as
a categorical syllogism if the relevant attribute (that is, the ʿilla) has been correctly identified.
Using our example of grape wine, date wine, and the attribute of intoxication (see previous
note), we can say: “All intoxicants are forbidden. Grape wine (or date wine) is an intoxi-
cant. Therefore, grape wine (or date wine) is forbidden.” For Ibn Taymiyya’s discussion of the
substantive equivalence of analogy and the categorical syllogism, see Darʾ, 7:317–327 (esp.
7:318 and 7:322ff.), as well as Radd, 115–122. See, in addition, Radd, 200–201, “talāzum qiyās
al-shumūl wa-qiyās al-tamthīl wa-bayānuhu bi-l-amthila”; Radd, 201–203, “al-istiqrāʾ laysa
istidlālan bi-juzʾī ʿalā kullī,” where he explicitly denies that induction consists in inferring a
universal on the basis of particulars; Radd, 208–214 and 233–238, responding to the critiques
of the analogical syllogism put forth by Muslim rationalists; Radd, 348–351, “al-kalām ʿalā jins
al-qiyās wa-l-dalīl muṭlaqan”; and, especially, Radd, 364–384, “al-adilla al-qāṭiʿa ʿalā istiwāʾ
qiyās al-shumūl wa-l-tamthīl.” For a presentation of Ibn Taymiyya’s views on the subject, pri-
marily as expressed in his treatise Jahd al-qarīḥa, see Hallaq, Greek Logicians, xxvii–xxxix. A
brief discussion can also be found in Heer, “Ibn Taymiyah’s Empiricism.” Heer points out that
Ibn Taymiyya was not the first to argue for the equivalence of syllogism and analogy and that
he was preceded in this by both al-Fārābī and al-Ghazālī. See, e.g., al-Fārābī, “Kitāb al-Qiyās,”
36ff. and 54ff.; al-Ghazālī, Miʿyār al-ʿilm, 165–166ff.

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reason reconstituted 279

transfer of judgement, that one might make about the unseen realm on the
basis of the perceptible realm. These inferences concern (1) factual existence
(thubūt), (2) essential ontological reality (ḥaqīqa) or modality (kayfiyya), (3)
meanings and notions (maʿānī), and (4) logical principles and the fundamental
axioms of reason (badīhiyyāt). Ibn Taymiyya contends that making an analogy
from the seen (shāhid) to the unseen (ghāʾib) is illegitimate in the first two cases
but mandatory in the second two. How is this so?
Ibn Taymiyya maintains that it is invalid to draw an analogical inference
(qiyās) or to transfer a judgement (ḥukm) from the seen to the unseen in
terms of either the factual existence (thubūt) or the essential ontological real-
ity (ḥaqīqa) of something in the unseen realm. This is so because existence and
ontological reality are both existential categories, and reason (as we know from
chapter 5) cannot be used to establish the existence4 or the ontological reality
of anything in the ghayb.5 In order to establish what exists in external reality,
we are dependent on sensation (ḥiss) and transmitted reports (khabar). For our
knowledge of the essential reality (ḥaqīqa) of a thing, we are essentially depen-
dent on sensation alone since, according to Ibn Taymiyya, it is only through
direct empirical experience that we can gain any sense of a thing’s ontologi-
cal reality or its modality of being in the world. To put it another way, we can
only know what exists through sensation or reports, while we can only know
something about the essential reality of how a thing exists through sensation
alone. This being the case, we cannot, on the basis of reason, affirm the fac-
tual existence (thubūt) of something in the ghayb based on what exists in the
shahāda. We can only make such an affirmation if we have come to know of
the thing’s existence through one of the two sources of existential knowledge,
sensation or transmitted reports. Likewise, once we know of the existence of
something in the unseen realm, it is not legitimate for us, on the basis of rea-
son, to assume a common essential reality (ḥaqīqa) or equivalent modality of
being (kayfiyya) between this and what exists in the perceptible realm. When
Ibn Taymiyya states that the analogical inference from the seen to the unseen
(qiyās al-ghāʾib ʿalā al-shāhid) is “one of the most corrupt forms of analogy”
(min afsad al-qiyās) owing to the “(essential) difference in the ontological real-
ities [of things]” (li-ikhtilāf al-ḥaqāʾiq),6 it is qiyās primarily in this second sense
(the sense of transferring a judgement concerning the essential ontological
reality, or ḥaqīqa) that he has in mind. In short, since factual existence (thubūt)

4 See Darʾ, 5:254, lines 5–6, where he says, “lā siyyamā wa-l-umūr al-ghāʾiba laysa lil-mukhbarīna
bihā khibra yumkinuhum an yaʿlamū bi-ʿuqūlihim thubūt mā akhbara [Allāh wa-rasūluhu]
bihi.”
5 With the exception, once again, of God (as discussed previously).
6 See this formulation at Darʾ, 3:359, lines 10–11.

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and essential reality (ḥaqīqa) cannot be established by reason but can only be
known through sensation or reports, reason cannot serve as a basis to trans-
fer any judgement concerning either of these two things (factual existence or
essential reality) from the seen to the unseen realm. Existence and essential
reality in the unseen realm can only be established by the same means used
to establish them in the visible realm, namely, sensation or transmitted reports
for establishing factual existence (thubūt) and sensation alone for establishing
essential reality (ḥaqīqa) or modality (kayfiyya). Reason, for its part, can serve
neither to establish existence nor to make any judgement on essential reality
or modality in the absence of either reports or direct empirical experience.
Now, where we can, and indeed must, make an analogy from the visible to
the invisible realm is in terms of the second two categories mentioned above,
namely, the transference of meanings and notions (maʿānī) and the applica-
tion of fundamental logical and relational principles. What, for Ibn Taymiyya,
is the precise nature of the correspondence between the seen and the unseen
realms on the plane of meanings and notions? We recall that universal notions
existing in the mind are a mere representation, or snapshot, of the external
empirical realities mediated to the mind through the senses. Just as a cam-
era can capture only what is in front of it, so too are the universal notions
that the mind abstracts from particulars conditioned and determined by the
existential reality of whatever they are abstractions of. Nevertheless, we can
have some notional appreciation for entities in the unseen that are reported
to us through khabar thanks to the names (asmāʾ) by which these entities are
described to us, even if we have no direct empirical experience of them. This
is so because names (or “nouns,” asmāʾ) denote meanings (maʿānī), which are,
precisely, notional realities subsistent in the mind. Ibn Taymiyya, in fact, explic-
itly likens such maʿānī to universals insofar as both are originally abstracted
from particulars and reside as notions in the mind, notions that are capable of
subsuming, or of being applied to, any number of extant particulars. Now, since
the understanding and processing of meanings (and other universal notions)
is precisely what the mind is made to do, we are able to comprehend—both
semantically and notionally—something of those entities that resemble, in
some respects (min baʿḍ al-wujūh), what we know experientially in our own
empirical realm.
We may illustrate this point by way of an example. If, say, we are informed
through revelation that angels (existing in the realm of the ghayb) can see and
we also know what it means for us in the realm of the shahāda to see (namely,
to have visual apprehension of an object), then this shared meaning, which is
based on a type of analogical signification (ishtirāk maʿnawī), must be applied
to both the seen and the unseen realms equally. Thus, if angels see, this can

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only mean that they, like us, possess visual cognizance of objects since this is
what the word “to see” means. Were this meaning not intended to apply to the
angels when predicated of them, then revelation would simply not have used
this term in speaking of them. In other words, there is a meaningful semblance
of similarity (mushābaha, tashābuh) between what seeing means in the case of
angels in the ghayb and what it means in our case in the realm of the shahāda.
Were it not for this shared meaning (maʿnā mushtarak), the statement “angels
see” would have no appreciable meaning for us whatsoever, and it would be
nonsensical for revelation to have addressed us, concerning the angels, in these
terms. It is noteworthy, however, that we have not established the very existence
of the angels’ sight on the basis of analogical inference (qiyās) or the transfer-
ence of judgement (ḥukm) from the seen to the unseen; rather, the existence
(thubūt) of this reality is only known to us through transmitted reports (namely,
divine revelation). Nor would we be justified in assuming any parallel in the
essential ontological reality (ḥaqīqa) or the precise modality (kayfiyya) of the
angels’ seeing since we have no empirical experience of the angels themselves,
much less of the particular manner in which they see. Nevertheless, we can
know what it means for angels to see, even if we cannot know exactly how it
is that they do so. And, indeed, it is only by our transferring what it means to
see—that is, the meaning, or maʿnā, of seeing—from the visible to the invis-
ible that we can understand anything reported to us about the unseen realm.
Affirming a common meaning (maʿnā) of shāhid and ghāʾib entities while nev-
ertheless admitting a substantive difference in the ontological reality (ḥaqīqa)
or modality (kayfiyya) in which this meaning applies to each entity is simply
a rephrasing, in logical-rational terms, of our discussion in chapter 4. There,
we distinguished the taʾwīl of unseen entities that we can know (namely, taʾwīl
in the sense of explication of meaning, or tafsīr al-maʿnā) from the type of
taʾwīl that we cannot know (namely, taʾwīl in the sense either of modality or of
the ultimate reality or outcome of an affair [ḥaqīqat mā yaʾūlu ilayhi al-amr]).7
In order to underscore the ultimate dissimilarity in essential ontological real-
ity between the empirical and the invisible realms despite the applicability
of common names to both realms and the comprehensibility of the universal
meanings carried by these names, Ibn Taymiyya cites a saying of Ibn ʿAbbās to
the effect that “the only commonality between what exists in this world and
what exists in paradise is the names [by which each is described].”8

7 See chapter 4, p. 184ff. above.

8 “laysa fī al-dunyā mimmā fī al-janna illā al-asmāʾ.” Darʾ, 6:124, line 3. (See Darʾ, 6:124, n. 1 for
the sources of this statement.)

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282 chapter 6

Yet some of what exists in the universe does not fit into our conceptual
framework at all because, to use Ibn Taymiyya’s term, it has no counterpart
(naẓīr) in our empirical realm whatsoever. Where unseen realities bear no
meaningful resemblance whatsoever to any element of our experience, they
cannot be meaningfully named since there are no notions (maʿānī) or univer-
sals abstracted from our realm that could meaningfully apply to them. This is
why, in addition to all the pleasures of paradise, there exists, greater than all
the rest, “that which no eye has seen, nor ear has heard, nor has occurred to
the heart of any man.”9 Notably, we find in this statement not only the denial
of analogous empirical experience (no eye has seen and no ear has heard the
likes of it) but the denial of any notional resemblance as well. Our minds, of
course, can conceive of ( yataṣawwar) many things that do not, and even can-
not, exist in the empirical realm, yet we still have the ability to imagine them;
that is, they can exist as notions in our minds. But that which is reserved for
the inhabitants of paradise has neither any empirical nor any notional resem-
blance to anything we know: it surpasses even our (relatively expansive) powers
of imagination. Similarly, the soul (rūḥ) is not named or described any further;
it is simply described as being “of the affair of my Lord” (Q. al-Isrāʾ 17:85), a state-
ment that underlines its unique nature and essential dissimilarity to anything
else we know. Finally, while many of the attributes of God of which we have
been informed correspond to attributes of which we have some experience
(e.g., mercy, anger, kindness, majesty), the quintessential nature (kunh) of God
cannot be known to us at all, not even by way of correspondence, similarity, or
approximation. The complete and utter uniqueness and incomparability of the
divine essence is, presumably, why the Prophet is reported to have instructed
his followers not to ponder on God Himself but rather to ponder on His cre-
ation.10 Attempting to fathom God’s ultimate essence is, in fact, pointless, as

9 “mā lā ʿaynun raʾat wa-lā udhunun samiʿat wa-lā khaṭara ʿalā qalbi bashar” (Darʾ, 5:73,
lines 14–15)—part of a ḥadīth qudsī, reported in, e.g., al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, 1200; Muslim,
Ṣaḥīḥ, 1298.
10 “tafakkarū fī khalq Allāh wa-lā tafakkarū fī dhāt Allāh” (Ponder on the creation of God,
but ponder not on God’s essence) (Darʾ, 6:203, lines 9, 14)—reported as a saying of Ibn
ʿAbbās with a good chain of transmission (mawqūf ʿalā Ibn ʿAbbās bi-isnād jayyid). See,
inter alia, al-Bayhaqī, Kitāb Asmāʾ Allāh wa-ṣifātihi, 618, 887; Abū al-Shaykh al-Aṣbahānī,
Kitāb al-ʿAẓama, 1:212; Ibn Abī Shayba, al-ʿArsh wa-mā ruwiya fīhi, 342–344; al-Dhahabī,
Kitāb al-ʿArsh, 2:133–134; Ibn Ḥajar, Fatḥ al-Bārī, 13:383. Another report of this incident
relates that the Prophet saw a group of people and asked them, “What are you doing?” They
replied, “We are pondering on the Creator” (natafakkaru fī al-Khāliq). He said to them,
“Ponder over His creation but ponder not on the Creator, [for] you cannot encompass
His immensity” (tafakkarū fī khalqihi wa-lā tafakkarū fī al-Khāliq lā tuqaddirūna qadrahu).
This report was narrated through Ibn ʿAbbās and, with a stronger chain, as a mursal ḥadīth

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we can have no understanding of it whatsoever for the simple reason that it is

totally unlike—in every respect (min jamīʿ al-wujūh)—anything of which we
have any experience and, therefore, totally unlike anything of which we have
any knowledge.11
The second type of analogy between the seen and the unseen that Ibn
Taymiyya declares not simply legitimate but indeed mandatory is the analogi-
cal application to both realms of the basic rules of logic and the innate axioms
of reason—what he refers to as the badīhiyyāt. Such principles, being axiomatic
and a priori (as established in chapter 5), neither derive from nor are depen-
dent on empirical experience and, partly for this reason, are not confined to
the realm of empirical reality. By their nature, logical principles hold true uni-
versally and without exception. Thus, if it is true in our empirical realm that
a thing cannot simultaneously be and not be (an instance of the law of non-
contradiction), then the same must be true in the unseen realm as well. In fact,
our knowledge that this law holds true in our empirical realm is not based on
anything we have observed in that realm. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine what
it could even mean for us to have “observed” that something cannot both be and
not be at the same time. Rather, we simply know, as a matter of logical necessity,
that “to be” and “not to be” are mutually contradictory and logically exclusive
opposites and that, by definition, they cannot hold true for any given entity
at one and the same time. Being a question of (necessary) logic rather than
(contingent) ontology, this and similar principles hold true—in fact, must hold
true—by self-evident logical necessity in all possible worlds, including, natu-
rally, the world of the unseen. We are therefore perfectly justified in applying
such axioms to both realms of existence since, again, we are dealing with logical
and relational phenomena and passing judgements on their basis—this being
part and parcel of the rational faculty and, to a substantial degree, constitutive
of its very essence. It is important to underscore the fact that logical axioms
are applicable to both the seen and the unseen realms, for Ibn Taymiyya often
attempts to reduce his opponents’ theological positions to absurdity (positions
that, ultimately, relate to something in the unseen realm, namely, God) on
account of their violating one or another of these fundamental and universally
applicable rules of thought.12

(that is, one in which the name of the Companion[s] who initially transmitted the report
is not mentioned). See, e.g., Ibn al-Faḍl, Kitāb al-Targhīb wa-l-tarhīb, 1:390 (#672); Hannād
b. al-Sarī, Kitāb al-Zuhd, 469 (#945).
11 See, e.g., Darʾ, 5:73, lines 7–16.
12 Such as the notion, examined in chapter 5, that one could coherently maintain that God
is neither one with nor separate from the universe, neither inheres in it nor transcends it.
See p. 268–269ff. above.

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Now, Ibn Taymiyya accuses the philosophers of speculating about the un-
seen realm on the basis of the visible world in the first two domains dis-
cussed above, namely, factual existence (thubūt) and essential ontological real-
ity (ḥaqīqa). Yet the inference from the seen to the unseen, as we have learned,
is illegitimate in these domains since we cannot independently establish the
factual existence or the existential modality of any entity merely on the basis
of reason. It is precisely because the philosophers, in Ibn Taymiyya’s view, have
treated unseen entities as essentially analogous to those in the visible realm,
particularly in terms of essential reality (ḥaqīqa), that they then feel compelled
to deny what transmitted reports (khabar)—specifically those reports that
constitute revelation in the form of the Qurʾān and ḥadīth—affirm of unseen
realities such as the divine attributes so as to avoid the risk of likening God in
essence (that is, in His ḥaqīqa) to created things, which would be tantamount
to tashbīh, or assimilationism. But the philosophers’ belief that affirmation of
the divine attributes would entail such assimilation is a direct result of their
false assumption that the unseen realm (ghayb) is comparable to that of the
seen (shahāda). In other words, it is a result of the philosophers’ false start-
ing assumptions that they believe it possible to draw an analogy in terms of
essence, modality, and ontological reality between the seen and the unseen
realms. In this manner, they disavow the legitimate and required forms of anal-
ogy from seen to unseen—namely, the analogy that is necessarily involved in
the affirmation of a common meaning (maʿnā) and the common application
of universal logical principles—because of the implications they believe are
entailed by the illegitimate forms of analogy, those in which they have engaged
on the mistaken assumption that there exists an essential ontological similarity
between entities in the seen and the unseen realms that bear a common name.
In summary, the type of analogical inference (qiyās) from the empirically
accessible, “seen” realm (shahāda) to the unseen realm (ghayb) that Ibn Tay-
miyya holds to be both valid and necessary is a semantic and notional anal-
ogy on the basis of shared meanings, not an analogy related to factual exis-
tence (thubūt) or essential ontological reality (ḥaqīqa). Though we cannot, on
the basis of reason, deduce or infer the existence of anything in the unseen
realm (other than God), we can nevertheless draw upon the universal meanings
(maʿānī) and notions (also maʿānī) that reason has abstracted from the visible
realm—meanings and notions in terms of which our very language is pat-
terned, since it is through language that we name various existing objects—in
order to understand something about entities in the unseen realm on account
of these shared meanings (maʿānī mushtaraka). Nevertheless, we must recog-
nize that the ontological reality, or ḥaqīqa, of each entity is specific to the entity
in question, and in that sense, entities in the realm of the unseen are essentially

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dissimilar to those in the visible world—that is, dissimilar in essence, which,

for Ibn Taymiyya, is equivalent to a thing’s very ontological reality. Finally, from
a rational perspective, we must treat all realms of existence analogously with
respect to the fundamental rules of logic. As a consequence, we must apply log-
ical principles consistently both to the empirically accessible world around us
and to the world of the unseen that lies beyond our sensory perception.

2 Ibn Taymiyya’s Reforms Applied: The Question of the Divine

Attributes

We have seen over the course of this study that the philosophers, in essence,
make an appeal to reason (ʿaql) to argue that we must interpret the divine
attributes figuratively (via taʾwīl) since affirming them would, on their view,
entail that God and creatures participate ontologically in a common universal,
negating God’s unique and total dissimilarity to created beings and opening the
door to tashbīh (assimilationism). Ibn Taymiyya, for his part, insists that we are
able to understand God’s attributes by virtue of their subsumption, alongside
attributes present in our world, under a common meaning or notion (maʿnā).
This, however, leads to a question. When Ibn Taymiyya says that we can only
understand something if it possesses some resemblance to the created enti-
ties with which we are familiar, he explicitly uses the terms mushābaha and
mumāthala, cognates of tashbīh and mithl (as in the verse “laysa ka-mithlihi
shayʾ ”), respectively. How, then, does Ibn Taymiyya understand mushābaha
and mumāthala here in a manner that does not violate the import of this
verse? In answer to this question, he maintains that there is no escaping (lā
budda min) some element of commonality (qadr mushtarak) between any two
existing entities, so we ought to be forthright in admitting this. Denying this
premise directly entails a denial of God’s very existence since one could eas-
ily argue that if God is said to exist and we are said to exist, then this would
entail tashbīh because the word “existence” is being applied equally to God and
to us (al-ishtirāk fī ism al-wujūd). This is precisely why the Bāṭiniyya, accord-
ing to Ibn Taymiyya’s understanding (as we saw in chapter 3), did not affirm
God’s existence, nor, absurdly, did they affirm His non-existence (thus violat-
ing the law of the excluded middle). By contrast, some later Sufis reached the
opposite conclusion, maintaining instead that we do not exist—yet another
absurdity for Ibn Taymiyya, of the order he routinely dismisses as “known to be
false according to the necessary or self-evident principles of reason” (maʿlūm
al-fasād bi-ḍarūrat al-ʿaql or bi-l-badīha) and as “obstinately denying [what is
obvious to] the senses and reason” (mukābara lil-ḥiss wa-l-ʿaql).

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But if there must be some element of commonality among all things that
exist, including God and the created universe, where should we draw the line of
acceptable overlap? At existence? At life, knowledge, and power? At mercy and
retribution? Being separate from and above the universe? Possessing a hand?
Ibn Taymiyya’s answer to this question goes back to his conception of what
we have been referring to as a thing’s “essential ontological reality,” or ḥaqīqa.
This essential nature, for Ibn Taymiyya, can be reduced ultimately to the ques-
tion of a thing’s fundamental ontological status, and specifically to whether its
being, or its existence, is necessary, eternal, perfect, and indestructible, on the
one hand, or contingent, temporal, deficient, and subject to ultimate destruc-
tion, on the other. It goes without saying that the first set of qualities belongs to
God alone (qualities that, in fact, constitute the principle elements by virtue of
which He is God), while the second set of attributes applies to all entities other
than God, whether they exist in the visible world or in the realm of the unseen.
It is these four fundamental qualities (necessity vs. contingency, eternality vs.
temporality, perfection vs. deficiency, and indestructibility vs. destructibility)
that, for Ibn Taymiyya, define the ḥaqīqa, or fundamental essence, of any exist-
ing thing. Since this fundamental essence is entirely inseparable (outside the
mind) from a thing’s attributes, it follows that whatever attributes an entity
possesses apply to it in a manner commensurate with the entity’s underlying
ontological reality as determined by this limited set of crucial traits. Thinking
about it another way, we may say that all other attributes of a thing are “colored,”
or conditioned, by the ontological status (ḥaqīqa) of the essence in which they
adhere, as determined by the four traits enumerated above.
We may illustrate Ibn Taymiyya’s point by considering the attribute of knowl-
edge. While “knowledge” means the same thing with respect to God and to
humans, namely, cognition of a knowable, the knowledge predicated of human
beings applies to them in a manner commensurate with their underlying essen-
tial reality, namely, contingency, temporality, deficiency, and destructibility.
Like our very essence, the attribute of knowledge we possess is created, contin-
gent, non-necessary, limited, imperfect, and ultimately abrogable altogether—
as, for instance, through dementia or other memory loss and, eventually, in
a definitive manner through the death of the knower himself. God’s attribute
of knowledge, by contrast, is fully commensurate with the essential reality of
the (divine) essence in which it inheres. It is, therefore—like God Himself—
necessary, unlimited (that is, it encompasses all possible knowables), perfect,
and indestructible. So, while knowing means the same thing with respect to
us as it does with respect to God (cognizance of a knowable) and, therefore,
there exists a notional sharing between His knowing and ours, there is never-
theless a fundamental ontological distinction between the true reality (ḥaqīqa)

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of God’s (necessary and perfect) knowing, on the one hand, and our (contin-
gent, deficient, and limited) knowing, on the other. It is precisely here that the
fundamental—and, for Ibn Taymiyya, decisive—distinction lies between any
and all of the attributes of God and the attributes of created things. There is
indeed “nothing like unto Him” since He alone, along with all His qualities, is
necessary, eternal, perfect, and so on. It is in this crucial respect, and not in any
other, that there is no similarity (mushābaha) or likeness (mumāthala)—that
is, no ontologically relevant similarity or likeness—between God and anything
else. Nevertheless, there is (and necessarily so) a type of resemblance between
God and creation on the purely abstract level of universal meanings (maʿānī),
without which, once more, we would have no comprehension whatsoever of
anything that is absent from our senses. In the case at hand, the resemblance
arises from the fact that both types of entities in question are qualified by
the attribute of knowledge. We recall from our discussion in chapter 4 that
were it not for this shared meaning (maʿnā mushtarak), the phrase “God is All-
Knowing” would mean nothing to us at all. It would be the same, Ibn Taymiyya
remarks, as saying that God is “kajz” or God is “dīj” or other such nonsensi-
cal statements constructed of meaningless utterances (alfāẓ). Yet it is precisely
because the very essence and reality of a thing coincides, for Ibn Taymiyya, with
its concrete ontological existence and not with the notional reality of it as con-
ceived in the mind that he is confident in affirming all the attributes predicated
of God in revelation, without running the risk of falling into the relevant kind
of tashbīh (which is to say ontological, and not merely notional, tashbīh). For
Ibn Taymiyya, we make proper tanzīh of God not by denying of Him any and all
attributes that can also be truthfully predicated of a created entity; rather, we
do so in two distinct and very specific ways: (1) by affirming of His essence the
four essential qualities mentioned above and negating of Him their opposites
and (2) by affirming of Him only what Ibn Taymiyya calls “attributes of per-
fection” (ṣifāt kamāl), such as life, power, and knowledge, and negating of Him
their opposites (death, weakness, ignorance, and so forth). The first represents
a tanzīh of God’s essence; the second, a tanzīh of His attributes.
This way of looking at things allows God to be comprehensible to us—that
is, we can understand who God is in our minds/hearts—without, however, His
being “like” us or comparable to us in any ontologically relevant way, that is,
in any way that would compromise His divinity by implying anything of the
deficiency (naqṣ) or contingency by which we and every other created entity
are characterized. We can understand who God is precisely because we are
able to understand the meaning—and thus the taʾwīl in the sense of tafsīr al-
maʿnā (simple explication of the meaning)—of the terms used to denote His
attributes. Nonetheless, we can never fathom the true (ontological) reality—

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that is, the ḥaqīqa—of these attributes nor, a fortiori, of His quintessential
nature (kunh). This is true, as we have seen, because all existential knowledge is
based on sense perception, and we only have sensory experience of a created
and contingent empirical reality. We thus have no relevant experience in our
empirical world on the basis of which to make an analogy (qiyās) from it to the
realm of the unseen. And if this is true even with respect to the created entities
of the unseen realm, then it is, emphatically, even more true with respect to
God, the necessarily existent Creator of all contingent being.

3 Concluding Reflections

The Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wa-l-naql represents Ibn Taymiyya’s attempt to tran-
scend the centuries-old conflict between reason and revelation that had been
raging on the Islamic intellectual scene from as early as the beginning of the
second/eighth century. Though reason and revelation each make various kinds
of affirmations that may potentially come into conflict, we have seen that the
main focal point of this debate in medieval Islam centered on the question of
the divine attributes. The Qurʾān and prophetic ḥadīth ascribe to God a large
number of discrete qualities, some or all of which are denied by various philo-
sophical and theological schools of thought or interpreted in a metaphorical
fashion (via taʾwīl) on the basis of rational objections to the alleged impli-
cations of a straightforward, “literal” affirmation of the qualities in question.
Affirmation of the offending attributes is often believed to entail an unaccept-
able assimilation of God to created beings (tashbīh) or otherwise to infringe
upon philosophical notions of an utterly simple divinity uncompromised by
the “compositeness” allegedly entailed by the possession of particularizing
qualifications.
Ibn Taymiyya rejects in principle the type of rationalistic taʾwīl employed
by the philosophers, the Muʿtazila, and the later Ashʿarī theologians on the
grounds that it does violence to the language of revelation and, no less signifi-
cantly, is diametrically opposed to the radical affirmationism that he insists was
the universal stance of the Salaf and early authorities. Beyond this, he instinc-
tively rejects the purely abstract notion of God entertained by the philosophers,
for two main reasons: one ontological, the other moral and religious. Ontologi-
cally, as we have seen, Ibn Taymiyya insists that abstract notions can only exist
in the mind, with the result that the more God is conceived as being abstract
and wholly undefinable, the more He is reduced from the status of an objec-
tively existent personal God to that of an amorphous mental construct existing
solely in the mind of the philosopher. To Ibn Taymiyya’s mind, the philosophers’

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God simply does not and cannot exist in external reality—a fact that explains
his charge that they were de facto atheists,13 however lofty and laudable their
intentions may have been in attempting to safeguard our conception of God
from anthropomorphism and other unbecoming forms of assimilationism. In
addition to his ontological concerns, the moral and religious implications of
such an abstracted and ethereal view of God were naturally not lost on Ibn
Taymiyya either, and, in fact, they stand at the center of his motivations for
attempting to refute philosophically inspired “negationism” once and for all.
Indeed, one cannot very well pray to a God incapable of hearing one’s prayer,
nor yet draw close to a God who is unaware of one’s particular existence. The
loss of God’s intelligibility to us that is implicit in the philosophers’ radically
negative theology undermines our ability to relate to God in any meaningfully
personal manner and, therefore, thwarts what Ibn Taymiyya holds to be the
very purpose and pith of religion: namely, to know God (which requires that
He be reasonably intelligible to us), then, consequently, to love and to worship
Him. As man’s ultimate felicity is dependent precisely on his doing these three
things, any intellectual construct apt to foreclose one’s ability to do so must
needs be seen as a barrier to the achievement of that very felicity of the human
soul that both philosopher and theologian ultimately seek.
Yet in his affray against the philosophers, Ibn Taymiyya is not content sim-
ply to assert the preeminence of revelation over reason, bidding reason to
dutiful silence wherever revelation has spoken. Rather, he endeavors in the
Darʾ not merely to refute the individual arguments of the philosophers and
theologians but also to demolish the very foundations—linguistic, ontologi-
cal, and epistemological—on which their “negationism” is based. True to his
empiricist methodology, Ibn Taymiyya starts from the consideration of one
particular issue, that of the divine attributes. Yet in the process of attacking
and deconstructing an enormous array of arguments over the course of 4,046
pages of printed text, he implicitly constructs an alternative system of knowl-
edge based on a reformed approach to language, a reconstructed ontology, and
a broadly reconstituted notion of reason. Ibn Taymiyya secures a firm place in
his new epistemology for true reports (khabar ṣādiq)—particularly in the form
of authentic revelation (naql ṣaḥīḥ)—as a major source of objective knowledge

13 Ibn Taymiyya often refers to the philosophers as malāḥida, a term that is closer, in classical
usage, to “heterodox” or “heretical” than to outright “atheist” as implied by the term as it is
used today. However, he often charges them with taʿṭīl, that is, the comprehensive denial,
or “nullification,” of God’s attributes, which, he maintains, is equivalent to the negation of
God Himself. In Ibn Taymiyya’s writings, we also encounter the terms muʿaṭṭila and muʿaṭ-
ṭilat al-Ṣāniʿ, sometimes in reference to the philosophers as a whole, but more often to the
Bāṭiniyya as well as to the materialists (dahriyya), the Sumaniyya, and other such groups.

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about the world, in both its empirically accessible (“seen”) and its unseen
dimensions. While he relentlessly attacks the philosophers’ realist ontology of
universals, he nevertheless validates the abstracting and universalizing func-
tion of the mind and, in fact, makes this function the cornerstone of our
notional access to the realm of unseen realities, including the attributes of
God. Ibn Taymiyya’s insistent differentiation between the existential category
of essential ontological reality (ḥaqīqa), on the one hand, and the notional cat-
egories of universal concepts (kulliyyāt) and meanings (maʿānī), on the other,
allows him to uphold the integrity and the intelligibility of the language used
of God in revelation while simultaneously steering clear of tashbīh, interpreted
as the implication of any ontologically relevant similarity between the eter-
nal, necessary, and perfect God and His temporal, contingent, and necessarily
imperfect creatures. Ibn Taymiyya’s insistence on the ontological indivisibil-
ity of essence and existence—and particularly of essence and attributes—
allows him to articulate a limited, ontologically relevant set of divine attributes
(necessity, eternality, perfection, and indestructibility) that, above all else, are
what radically distinguishes God’s essential being from that of every other
existing thing. Being of the essence, these qualities pervade the divine being
and determine the ontological quality of all other attributes pertaining to God.
In doing so, they exonerate the divine attributes of any deficiency one might
erroneously attribute to them on account of the notional semblance they share
with corresponding attributes found in human beings or other created entities.
Ibn Taymiyya’s insistence on the universal applicability of the a priori logical
principles lodged in the mind allows him to dismiss out of hand a number of
“negationist” theses on the grounds that they run afoul of the elementary prin-
ciples of rational thought. Ultimately, Ibn Taymiyya grounds the final integrity
of his system, and indeed of all human knowledge, in the cognitive-moral
notion of the fiṭra, or original normative disposition, and in an expanded appli-
cation of the principle of tawātur, against which all sources of knowledge and
modes of cognition can ultimately be verified.
In broadening the sources of authentic knowledge, Ibn Taymiyya simulta-
neously widens the scope of the means and the steps by which knowledge
can arise in the mind of a given individual.14 Though knowledge itself is per-
fectly objective, in the sense that it corresponds to ( yuṭābiq) what is fac-
tual and true in and of itself (mā huwa thābit fī nafs al-amr), the discrete
process by which one acquires knowledge of any given knowable (maʿlūm)
is nevertheless personal, situational, specific, and individual. Typical of Ibn
Taymiyya’s thought, there are no universal rules or necessary order of steps

14 See Darʾ, 8:20–21 for Ibn Taymiyya’s discussion of this point.

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that apply to all cases. The various means of acquiring knowledge—sensation

(ḥiss), true reports (khabar ṣādiq), the self-evident axioms of reason (badīhiyyāt
al-ʿaql), sound inference (naẓar ḥasan), various incarnations of the mecha-
nism of tawātur, the possession of a sound cognitive-moral disposition ( fiṭra
salīma)—all stand objectively at every person’s disposal, yet there are often
numerous paths one can tread, various corroborative combinations of these
elements through which a person can attain knowledge of a given reality. What
ultimately counts is the result, namely, the occurrence of knowledge in the
heart/mind (ḥuṣūl al-ʿilm fī al-qalb). Some knowledge is gained empirically,
some through reports, some through rational inference, some by intuition, and,
as in the case of tawātur, the amount and the kind of corroborative evidence
necessary to bring about knowledge are not necessarily the same for each and
every person. It is misleading and abusive to confine knowledge in general to a
particular order (tartīb muʿayyan), as do the philosophers, or to confine knowl-
edge of God and the authenticity of revelation to a particular order, as do the
theologians, or to confine the means of progress along the spiritual path (al-
wuṣūl ilā Allāh) to a particular order, as do those who theorize Sufism; for, while
there may be a set order in the mind when one theorizes about the acquisi-
tion of knowledge, the manner in which knowledge actually comes about in
the external world ( fī al-khārij) is rarely, if ever, constrained by the theoreti-
cal order projected by the intellect. Indeed, Ibn Taymiyya remarks, the various
ways of coming by knowledge, the conditions attendant thereupon, and the
means (asbāb) and order of the steps (tartīb) through which knowledge is
attained are too diverse and expansive to be confined to only a few discrete
pathways or methods.15
Though Ibn Taymiyya does not say so himself, this idea of variegated yet
mutually corroborative paths to knowledge of a single fact or reality is rem-
iniscent of the transmission of mutawātir ḥadīth reports, whereby different
individuals may have one and the same ḥadīth from a varied conglomeration
of sources. Each is justified in claiming knowledge of the ḥadīth’s authenticity
since he has received it from enough mutually corroborative sources to experi-
ence within himself assurance (ṭumaʾnīna) and firm conviction (iʿtiqād jāzim)
that the ḥadīth is true. That is, each has justified and sufficient (though not
necessarily identical) grounds to hold that knowledge of the ḥadīth’s authen-
ticity has successfully “occurred in his heart/mind” (ḥaṣala fī qalbihi). As we
have seen, the idea and method of tawātur run consistently throughout Ibn

15 “wa-ṭuruq al-ʿilm wa-l-aḥwāl wa-asbāb dhālika wa-tartībuhu awsaʿ min an tuḥṣara fī baʿḍ
hādhihi al-ṭarāʾiq.” Darʾ, 8:21, lines 4–6.

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Taymiyya’s epistemology, whereby he appeals to some notion of tawātur as the

final justification even for knowledge that is essentially empirical, as well as for
knowledge that is of an intuitive or a priori nature. Thus, as we reflect upon
the underlying themes of Ibn Taymiyya’s approach to knowledge, inferences,
and proofs, it is not surprising to discover that he conceives of these in much
the same way across all domains. Beyond its thoroughgoing consistency, Ibn
Taymiyya’s epistemology represents an attempt to profile the sundry ways in
which knowledge is actually engendered in the real world. He presents this
epistemology as an alternative—and, to his mind, an antidote—to the various
methods and categories of the philosophers. In Ibn Taymiyya’s view, not only is
the way of the philosophers arbitrarily restrictive—with a heavy, almost exclu-
sive reliance on formal, syllogistic demonstration—but it is also anathema to
him insofar as he considers it to be based on a purely abstract and idealized
notion of what constitutes proof or a reliable indicator of knowledge.16
Ibn Taymiyya’s empirically grounded and widely cast epistemological frame-
work underscores a larger commitment on his part to a broad-based, funda-
mentally catholic vision of human knowledge.17 Ibn Taymiyya censures the
philosophers for presuming that theoretical or speculative reason holds pride
of place in the epistemic hierarchy, sometimes to the point that they allow
it to override more basic empirical or a priori knowledge, which, in turn,
they demote to mere “estimation” (wahm) or “imagination” (takhyīl) in order
to accommodate the deliverances of abstract speculation. For Ibn Taymiyya,
this state of affairs is entirely backward, for it is precisely the immediacy and
sheer self-imposition of these basic sources of knowledge that justify them
and ground their ultimate authority. This principle holds for Ibn Taymiyya’s
larger conception of “pure reason,” or ʿaql ṣarīḥ, as well. I have referred to Ibn
Taymiyya’s notion of reason primarily as “pure” or “true” or “sound” reason, but
his specific use of the term ṣarīḥ—as opposed to a term like salīm or ṣaḥīḥ—is
not, I think, a mere play on words for the sake of euphony, as when the phrase
“ʿaql ṣarīḥ” is paired with “naql ṣaḥīḥ.” Rather, his use of the term ṣarīḥ (clear,
pure, unadulterated) is deliberate, for it is precisely ṣarīḥ reason that is ṣaḥīḥ
reason: correct and valid.18 Sound reason and valid rational knowledge are

16 See Ibn Taymiyya, Radd, 88, “ḥaṣr al-ʿilm ʿalā al-qiyās qawl bi-ghayr ʿilm.” Also Radd, 122–
125, 162–163.
17 Yahya Michot has come to a similar conclusion. See, e.g., Michot, “Mamlūk Theologian’s
Commentary,” 170–172. See also Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy, 22.
18 Consider the following phrase: “al-ṭuruq al-fiṭriyya al-ʿaqliyya al-sharʿiyya al-qarība al-
ṣaḥīḥa.” Darʾ, 8:314, line 13. The various terms Ibn Taymiyya associates here—“innate”
( fiṭrī), “rational” (ʿaqlī), “scriptural” or “scripturally validated” (sharʿī), “commonplace,
familiar” (qarīb), and “valid, correct” (ṣaḥīḥ)—are a keen indicator of his overall views

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guaranteed by the same immediacy and self-imposition as all other sources of

knowledge—yet another instance of the consistency of Ibn Taymiyya’s thought
and methodology across various domains. This explains why arcane, circuitous,
highly speculative—and, therefore, highly contentious and disputed—prem-
ises and arguments necessarily arouse Ibn Taymiyya’s suspicion, as these epis-
temic vices are the polar opposite of those qualities that guarantee the integrity
of our knowledge in all other domains.19 Why then, Ibn Taymiyya seems to
be asking, should rational knowledge, to the exclusion of all other avenues
of knowing, form a singular exception to the rule of immediacy and intuitive
clarity? For Ibn Taymiyya, it is simply inconceivable that the propositions held
instinctively to be true in a natural and unaffected manner by multitudes of
average human beings could be subject to falsification on the basis of the
recondite philosophical musings of the few, who even have trouble reaching
agreement among themselves on the sundry conclusions of their speculative
endeavors. Overriding the intuitions of the many in favor of the speculations
of the few, he argues, would effectively destroy the possibility of any objective,
publicly shared rational knowledge whatsoever.
The foregoing considerations highlight Ibn Taymiyya’s acute sense of episte-
mological egalitarianism, at least concerning broad principles and basic infer-
ences. In Ibn Taymiyya’s epistemology, authentic knowledge is available to any-
one whose basic rational faculty and fiṭra are intact, not just an elite coterie
of philosophers who maintain an entirely different conception of reality from
that of the common man. He does, of course, admit that particular sciences,
be they religious or secular, are necessarily cultivated by specialists who, nat-
urally, know better and know more about the subject at hand than the non-
specialist. This holds true in such domains as law, ḥadīth, tafsīr, and grammar,
but also in non-religious sciences like physics, astronomy, and medicine. Yet
these individual sciences do not touch upon, nor purport to set the agenda for,
a larger epistemological project aimed at defining what does and does not con-
stitute ultimate truth and reality. In other words, they do not aim to underwrite
an entire Weltanschauung, as do the core philosophical disciplines of meta-
physics, ontology, and epistemology. It is inconceivable to Ibn Taymiyya that
foundational matters of such comprehensive reach, which determine to a large
extent a person’s fundamental existential orientation, should be captive to the

regarding the character of truth and of the pure reason (ʿaql ṣarīḥ) by which it is ascer-
tained, appropriated, and comprehended.
19 Recall from chapter 4 his citation of ʿAbd Allāh b. Masʿūd’s characterization of the Salaf
as “having the purest hearts, possessing the deepest knowledge, and exhibiting the least
unnatural strain and affectation (takalluf )” of all Muslim generations. (See p. 208 above.)

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ruminations of a small group of conflicted specialists. The basic facts about

reality, the universe, God, and man are truths available equally to anyone whose
fiṭra and reasoning have not fallen prey to corruption. Ibn Taymiyya holds this
position with respect to both rational and theological truths, for the Qurʾān is
addressed to the commoner as well as to the elite. Furthermore, he insists, it
conveys a unified and consistent doctrine that can be comprehended by all,
and in essentially the same terms. As in other fields of knowledge, some may
be more knowledgeable than others about the details of the specialized reli-
gious sciences, but there can be no fundamentally different mode of reading
the texts reserved for the elite (as advocated, for example, by Ibn Rushd).
Once again, we can discern a parallelism here in the way Ibn Taymiyya treats
rational knowledge and revealed knowledge, as both are integrated into an
organic epistemology characterized by a high degree of consistency and cor-
respondence among its various components. In the case of both religious and
non-religious knowledge, the basic principles are self-evident and known to
all, with details filled in by studied specialists. Yet the detailed knowledge of
the specialist serves primarily to elaborate the already existing, publicly shared
base of the knowledge in question; it does not, for Ibn Taymiyya, represent a
situation in which the “true” knowledge possessed by the elite constitutes a
fundamental departure from what is generally understood to be the case by the
common man. Ibn Taymiyya’s aversion to the convoluted nature of the philoso-
phers’ discourse and his disdain for what to him are their tortuous meanderings
and abstruse doctrines should in no way be taken as an indication of a shallow
wit on his part or an insufficient capacity truly to grasp and to come to terms
with his opponents’ contentions. Indeed, his ability to pen a work such as the
Darʾ taʿāruḍ establishes beyond any doubt that Ibn Taymiyya was no philosoph-
ical simpleton.
Of all the various elements of Ibn Taymiyya’s reconstituted rationality, per-
haps the most intriguing, original, and also the most subtle is his conception
of the nature and function of the fiṭra. While it is impossible to do justice to
our author’s understanding of the fiṭra in a few short paragraphs,20 our explo-
ration of reason and rationality in Ibn Taymiyya’s thought would be incomplete
were I not to offer, in closing, a few brief reflections on this central concept.
We encountered the concept of the fiṭra in chapter 5 primarily as a cogni-
tive faculty that overlaps to a considerable degree with the intuitive or a priori
knowledge lodged in the mind ab initio. Beyond this, however, Ibn Taymiyya
also suggests that the fiṭra is that faculty by which we judge both the soundness

20 For more extensive treatments of the fiṭra in Ibn Taymiyya, see sources listed at p. 260,
n. 113 above.

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of premises used in a demonstration and the soundness of the deductive

arguments built upon such premises.21 Yet the fiṭra is more than this. I have
suggested that an apt translation of the term fiṭra might be “original norma-
tive disposition,” and indeed, Ibn Taymiyya’s variegated appeals to the fiṭra in
diverse contexts indicate that we should regard fiṭra as a more general, under-
lying principle that has relevance to and informs the various other faculties
we possess—not only cognitive but moral-ethical and spiritual as well. In fact,
from Ibn Taymiyya’s perspective, it would be more accurate to say not that fiṭra
is a moral and cognitive faculty but rather that it is a moral cum cognitive fac-
ulty, as ultimately the two cannot be definitively separated. Perhaps we can best
understand Ibn Taymiyya’s point by considering the following anecdote.
Ibn Taymiyya relates that Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī and a certain Muʿtazilī theolo-
gian with whom he had been debating were one day visiting a Sufi shaykh in
Transoxania who claimed to have achieved certain knowledge (ʿilm al-yaqīn).22
Al-Rāzī and his companion were surprised at the shaykh’s claim since the two
of them had been debating theology for years, constantly refuting each other’s
arguments but never able to break through to any indisputably certain con-
clusions on the topics of contention between them. When asked how he had
achieved this certainty in knowledge, the shaykh responded, “[By] divine dis-
closures (or gifts in the form of insights) (wāridāt) that come over the soul
and that the soul is unable to deny.”23 Ibn Taymiyya reports that the Muʿtazilī
theologian, who had been complaining of doubts and confusions (shubuhāt)
burning up his heart, took to the way of the shaykh and eventually reached the
stage where God blessed him with similar gifts of divine insight, whereupon
he declared that if upholding the apparent (ẓāhir) sense of “The Most Merciful
has settled upon the throne”24 constitutes corporealism (tajsīm), then, by God,
he is a corporealist. Ibn Taymiyya reports that this (former) Muʿtazilī, having
returned to the way of affirmationism through the spiritual insights vouch-
safed directly to his heart, went on to become one of the most illustrious (Sufi)

21 See, for example, Darʾ, 7:37, lines 17–19, where he states, “wa-illā fa-man rajaʿa fī muqad-
dimātihā ilā al-fiṭar al-salīma wa-iʿtabara taʾlīfahā lam yajid fīmā yuʿāriḍu al-samʿiyyāt
burhānan muʾallafan min muqaddimāt yaqīniyya taʾlīfan ṣaḥīḥan” (Whoever judges the
premises [of an argument] and their manner of composition in light of his sound fiṭra
will not find any [conclusion] that contradicts revelation to rest on a demonstrative proof
validly constructed from definitively true premises). Here, Ibn Taymiyya explicitly states
that we must return to “sound fiṭra” to judge the premises (muqaddimāt) of an argument,
as well as the construction (taʾlīf ) of the demonstration itself.
22 For this anecdote, see Darʾ, 7:430, line 17 to 7:432, line 6.
23 “wāridāt taridu ʿalā al-nufūs taʿjizu al-nufūs ʿan raddihā.” Darʾ, 7:431, lines 7–8.
24 “al-Raḥmānu ʿalā l-ʿarsh istawā” (Q. Ṭā Hā 20:5).

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shaykhs of his day in the lands of Jurjan and Khwarizm. The point of this
episode, and Ibn Taymiyya’s approbatory citation of it, seems to be that certi-
tude in knowledge is achieved when the heart/mind (qalb) has come to experi-
ence whatever knowledge it possess as certain and entirely immune to doubt or
recusal. As we saw above with respect to knowledge more generally, one is not
necessarily obligated to follow a particular path to reach this certitude, nor does
this certitude necessarily have to be articulable through particular expressions
or modes of rational inference or analysis. In the case at hand, our theologian
and his shaykh appear to have gained and experienced certitude directly from
their fiṭra.25 If the fiṭra has been corrupted—through, for instance, the inculca-
tion of erroneous doctrines that contravene necessary and intuitive knowledge,
as was the case with the “negationism” of al-Rāzī’s companion—then there are
various ways in which this fiṭra can be resuscitated and returned to its original
state. This might involve a process of sound rational investigation (that is, ḥusn
al-naẓar and not the purely speculative argumentation of the philosophers and
mutakallimūn), or spiritual purification (as in this case of our theologian with
the burning heart), or other means. Ibn Taymiyya’s point is that regardless of
the means adopted, once the fiṭra has been rehabilitated to its natural, healthy
state, it is often able simply to recognize the truth as such, in much the same
way that the body possesses a capacity (quwwa) by which it instinctively dis-
tinguishes wholesome food from foul.26
The fact that the fiṭra is both a cognitive and a moral faculty introduces an
important ethical and existential dimension into the process of knowing—a
dimension that Ibn Taymiyya would argue is always present implicitly, albeit
usually unacknowledged. This conception of the fiṭra provides for a richer and
more nuanced account of knowledge and the process of coming to know. But
does the introduction of an ethical and moral aspect into the cognitive func-
tions of the fiṭra—and of the intellect more generally—render knowledge, for
all intents and purposes, hopelessly subjective? After all, the primordial fiṭra
with which each child is born27 is often corrupted, as we fail, more often than
not, to maintain it in its original normative state. In practice, this original nor-
mative fiṭra is routinely reshaped—and, indeed, corrupted—by the ambient
beliefs and practices of one’s society. On this point, Ibn Taymiyya makes what,

25 Ibn Taymiyya certainly holds that the healthy fiṭra can recognize the truth of the affirma-
tionists’ position regarding the divine attributes.
26 Darʾ, 5:62, lines 11–15.
27 From the ḥadīth “Every child is born on [i.e., in a state of] the fiṭra” (kullu mawlūd yūladu
ʿalā al-fiṭra). See discussion above at p. 260ff. For documentation of the ḥadīth itself, see
p. 261, n. 117.

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to my mind, is a remarkable observation regarding the relativity of what passes

for “reason” in a given culture. He observes, almost in passing, that “every nation
or society (umma) has what it calls ‘rational knowledge’ (maʿqūlāt).”28 In other
words, he is telling us, a great deal of what is taken as rationality in any given
time or place is ultimately determined by the dominant presuppositions and
mental habits of a people that, by virtue of their near ubiquity, take on the
appearance and force of necessary truths, simply given and utterly taken for
granted. Ibn Taymiyya, without a doubt, views the philosophers as being pre-
committed (quite in spite of themselves) to an intellectual system character-
ized by a very particular (not to mention peculiar) view of reason and reality, a
system that they have adopted, in essence, not as a matter of pure rational-
ity and the unbiased cogitations of objective reason but, rather, as a matter
of habituation to a transmitted doctrine and basing themselves, ultimately,
on the mere “imitation” (taqlīd) of their own earlier authorities—their own
“Salaf,” we might say.29 For Ibn Taymiyya, the philosophers’ idiosyncratic views
regarding the intelligible world, the various intellects, and so forth derive so
clearly from the parochial maʿqūlāt of one particular umma and lack any kind
of objective proof or verifiability whatsoever from either sense perception or
transmitted reports (in the form of authentic revelation); yet the philosophers
illegitimately universalize such “maʿqūlāt” and confound them with reason per
se. But longstanding acclimatization to essentially unfounded beliefs about the
world derived through pure speculation can eventually pervert the cognitive
dimension of the fiṭra. Add to this the moral corruptibility to which all are
susceptible in some measure and the primordial fiṭra would seem to be hope-
lessly and irretrievably lost. Between culturally inflected notions of rationality
and the capriciousness of our own selves, we would seem to be sunk in an
intractable quagmire of parochialism and subjectivity.
Yet Ibn Taymiyya is no postmodernist. Objective truth, he insists, not only
exists but is also ascertainable. In the previous chapter, we examined at length
the various means at our disposal for acquiring knowledge about the world—
in both its empirically accessible (shāhid) and its “hidden” or unseen (ghāʾib)

28 “mā min umma illā wa-lahum mā yusammūnahu maʿqūlāt” (emphasis mine). Darʾ, 5:243,
lines 16–17.
29 See Darʾ, 9:254, lines 16–17, where Ibn Taymiyya refers to Ibn Sīnā’s famous Kitāb al-
Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt as “the Qurʾān/holy writ (muṣḥaf ) of those philosophers” (also cited
in Michot, “Ibn Taymiyya’s Commentary on Avicenna’s Ishārāt, namaṭ X,” 120–121). See
similar at Darʾ, 6:19, lines 7–8, where he says that the Ishārāt is “like the Qurʾān to those
heretical philosophizers/pseudo-philosophers” (hiya ka-l-muṣḥaf li-hāʾulāʾi al-mutafalsifa
al-mulḥida) and Darʾ, 6:55, line 13, where he refers to namaṭ IX of the Ishārāt, “Maqāmāt
al-ʿārifīn,” as “the epilogue (khātima) of their muṣḥaf [i.e., the Ishārāt].”

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dimensions—such as sensation, transmitted reports (particularly revelation),

the apprehension of fundamental rational axioms, and sound inference. I have
also described Ibn Taymiyya’s understanding of the fiṭra as underlying—and
thus informing and affecting the functioning of—these other sources. Fiṭra
is to the moral-cognitive dimension of a man as health is to his body. Good
health entails the proper functioning of all our various sensory organs, limbs,
and other physiological systems. Ill health impairs them all alike. Indeed, Ibn
Taymiyya defines true rational knowledge (ʿaqliyyāt) as that which is intelli-
gible (maʿqūl) and recognizable as such to the healthy fiṭra.30 This being the
case, he suggests that one way of resolving intractable disputes over knowledge
and truth (such as those between al-Rāzī and his Muʿtazilī friend) is by seeking
recourse to those of sound fiṭra (like the Sufi shaykh from Transoxania). But if
the totality of our cognitive and moral faculties are dependent on the health of
the fiṭra and if the fiṭra itself is not immune to dereliction, then wherein lies the
ultimate grounding, and guarantee, of our faculties of reason and cognition?
The answer to this question brings us full circle. Ibn Taymiyya, we have
remarked, views reason and revelation as mutually concomitant (mutalāzi-
mān), each ultimately entailing the other. Following reason, he insists, must
eventually lead to the investigation and affirmation of the truth of revelation.
Starting with revelation quickens reason, inciting us to reflection and exem-
plifying the optimal use of reason and rational inference. Yet this concomi-
tance between reason and revelation involves a much deeper symbiosis. Rev-
elation is addressed to intelligent beings and cannot be properly understood
in the absence of pure reason (ʿaql ṣarīḥ) and sound rational investigation
(naẓar ḥasan), as we have explored over the course of this study. More sig-
nificantly, however, reason itself—particularly through its foundation in the
moral-cognitive faculty of the fiṭra—cannot hope to function properly and to
fulfill its own native potential without the guiding light of revelation and the
ethical practice of religion to which revelation summons.
Here, at the end of our journey, we recall the very first page of the Darʾ
taʿāruḍ, where Ibn Taymiyya cites the universal rule and its contention that,
should reason and revelation ever conflict, revelation must yield to reason since
it is the latter that grounds our rational assent to the authenticity of the for-
mer. While it is true, for Ibn Taymiyya, that our knowledge of the authenticity
of revelation is (or at least potentially is) grounded in reason, he is adamant
that pure reason and authentic revelation—ʿaql ṣarīḥ and naql ṣaḥīḥ—can
never conflict (as he argues most insistently in the Darʾ with respect to the

30 “al-ʿaqliyyāt al-ṣaḥīḥa mā kāna maʿqūlan lil-fiṭar al-salīma al-ṣaḥīḥat al-idrāk allatī lam yaf-
sud idrākuhā.” Darʾ, 7:43, lines 3–4.

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reason reconstituted 299

divine attributes). Yet beyond this mutual implication and harmonious con-
cordance, if it is true that reason, to a degree and from a certain perspective,
undergirds our knowledge of the authenticity of revelation, it is neverthe-
less revelation that, in a deeper and more all-embracing manner—precisely
through maintaining the moral and cognitive viability of the fiṭra—ultimately
grounds, preserves, and promotes the proper offices of reason.

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 appendix a

Summary Outline of the Darʾ taʿāruḍ

I. Volume 1
A. The universal rule for reconciling reason and revelation (4–8)
B. The two “innovated” methods of reconciliation: alteration of meaning (tab-
dīl) and presumption of ignorance (tajhīl) (8–20)
C. The goal of the Darʾ taʿāruḍ: To demonstrate the invalidity of the universal
rule (al-qānūn al-kullī) (20–24)
D. The beginning of Ibn Taymiyya’s detailed refutation of the universal rule
(86)
E. Arguments 1–19 (86–406)
1. Argument 1 (86–87)
2. Argument 2 (87)
3. Argument 3 (87–133)
4. Argument 4 (134–137)
5. Argument 5 (137)
6. Argument 6 (138–144)
7. Argument 7 (144–148)
8. Argument 8 (148–156)
9. Argument 9 (156–170)
10. Argument 10 (170–192)
11. Argument 11 (192–194)
12. Argument 12 (194)
13. Argument 13 (195)
14. Argument 14 (195–198)
15. Argument 15 (198–200)
16. Argument 16 (201–208)
17. Argument 17 (208–279)
18. Argument 18 (280–320)
19. Argument 19 (320–406)

II. Volume 2
A. What revelation indicates concerning God’s actions (3–147)
B. A discussion of the three main positions people hold on the question of
God’s actions (147–244)
C. The way of the authoritative scholars (aʾimma) on the question of the
Qurʾān (244–291)

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302 appendix a

D. Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal on God’s actions, with commentary by Ibn Taymiyya

(291–304)
E. The different positions held concerning the question of God’s speech and
the failure of the authors on uṣūl al-dīn to mention the position of the Salaf
(304–324)
F. Al-Rāzī on the question of the Qurʾān (324–344)
G. Al-Rāzī’s five proofs for the temporal origination of the world (344–399)
1. Al-Rāzī’s first proof: The impossibility of an infinite regress with
respect to motion (345–399)

III. Volume 3
A. Al-Rāzī’s four remaining proofs for the temporal origination of the world
(3–30)
B. Al-Āmidī’s method for proving the temporal origination of the world (30–
36)
C. The methods of the mutakallimūn for disproving the possibility of an infin-
ity (particularly an infinite causal regress) (44–62)
D. On proofs for the existence of God (72–118)
1. Al-Rāzī’s five proofs (72–87)
2. Al-Āmidī’s proof in his Abkār (88–99)
E. Five arguments for proving the impossibility of an infinite regress (99–104)
F. A discussion on knowledge, universals and particulars, deductive reason-
ing, the role of the fiṭra, and the status of signs (āyāt) as indicators of
knowledge (118–140)
G. Further discussion on causality and the nature of infinity (commenting on
al-Suhrawardī, al-Āmidī, Ibn Sīnā, and al-Abharī) (172–264)
H. A critique of Ibn Sīnā’s method for proving the existence of God; the way
of the fiṭra (264–269)
I. Further discussion of causes, causality, and infinite regress; prophetic
method grounded in both faith and rational demonstration (286–318)
J. Conceptions (taṣawwurāt) and the nature of definitions (318–333)
K. Various methods for proving the existence of God; a critique of Ibn Sīnā’s
notion of the “eternal contingent” (333–351)
L. Discussion of passages from al-Āmidī, al-Shahrastānī, al-Ghazālī, Ibn Ru-
shd, and Ibn al-Tūmart on various topics (351–454)

IV. Volume 4
A. The question of the advent of temporal events in God’s essence (18–115)
B. Al-Āmidī on God’s speech, corporealism, essence and existence, composi-
tion, and the advent of originated events in God’s essence (115–284)

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C. Al-Ghazālī’s charge that the philosophers are unable to prove the incorpo-
reality of God (284–295)

V. Volume 5
Arguments 20–42 (3–392)
A. Argument 20 (3–203)
B. Argument 21 (204–209)
C. Argument 22 (210–211)
D. Argument 23 (211–214)
E. Argument 24 (214–216)
F. Argument 25 (216–223)
G. Argument 26 (223–233)
H. Argument 27 (234–241)
I. Argument 28 (242–268)
J. Argument 29 (268–286)
K. Argument 30 (286–288)
L. Argument 31 (289–320)
M. Argument 32 (320–338)
N. Argument 33 (338–340)
O. Argument 34 (340–343)
P. Argument 35 (343–345)
Q. Argument 36 (345–346)
R. Argument 37 (357–358)
S. Argument 38 (359–363)
T. Argument 39 (363–370)
U. Argument 40 (370–374)
V. Argument 41 (374–387)
W. Argument 42 (387–392)

VI. Volume 6
Argument 43 (3–352)
A. Al-Rāzī on spatial ___location ( jiha) and place with respect to God (8–19)
B. Ibn Sīnā on the imaginative and estimative faculties, gnosis, and gnostics
(19–113)
C. A rebuttal of al-Rāzī’s argument that if the knowledge of God’s being above
(ʿuluww) were self-evident, it would not have been possible for large num-
bers of people to concur on denying it (113–288)
D. Further arguments by al-Rāzī on spatial ___location and a thing’s susceptibil-
ity of being pointed to (ishāra) (289–352)

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VII. Volume 7
A. Argument 43 (cont.) (3–140)
1. Further discussion and rebuttal of al-Rāzī on ʿuluww and jiha (3–
99)
2. Al-Bayhaqī’s epistle on the virtues of al-Ashʿarī (99–103)
3. Al-Ashʿarī on affirming the divine attributes in their obvious sense
bi-lā kayf (103–107)
4. A response to the claim that the early community did not understand
the Arabic of the Qurʾān to be affirming that God is in His essence
above the throne (107–127)
5. A response to the claim that the Qurʾān does not indicate God’s being
above or any of His attributes by way of either affirmation or nega-
tion (127–140)
B. Argument 44 (140–464)
1. Al-Ghazālī’s critique of kalām in the Iḥyāʾ (145–150, 157–186)
2. Al-Juwaynī on rational syllogism and analogy, with Ibn Taymiyya
arguing for their interchangeability (150–157)
3. Al-Ashʿarī’s Risāla ilā ahl al-thaghr on change, temporal origination,
signs of the existence of God in the universe, and proofs of prophet-
hood (186–224)
4. Ibn ʿAsākir on the authoritative scholars’ condemnation of ahl al-
kalām (242–257)
5. Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal on the question of the Qurʾān (257–276)
6. Al-Khaṭṭābī on kalām and those who pursue it (278–303)
7. Al-Bāqillānī on knowing the existence of God and the authenticity
of the Prophet through reason, the fiṭra, and revelation (304–310)
8. Al-Khaṭṭābī, with extensive comments by Ibn Taymiyya, on the var-
ious ways of gaining knowledge, the different kinds of qiyās, univer-
sals and particulars, the meaning of taʾwīl, and similar (310–344)
9. The dispute about whether knowledge of the existence of God re-
quires rational inquiry (naẓar) and the obligation to engage in naẓar
(352–464)

VIII. Volume 8
A. Discussions on the first obligation incumbent on a moral agent (5–47)
B. Ibn ʿAqīl and other mutakallimūn on the condemnation of kalām (47–
70)
C. On proving the existence of God (70–349)
1. Al-Ashʿarī, al-Bāqillānī, al-Rāzī, and Ibn Sīnā on proving the existence
of God (70–136)

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2. Al-Ghazālī’s charge that the philosophers are incapable of proving

the existence of God (with a brief response by Ibn Rushd) (136–139,
146–161)
3. A continuation of Ibn Rushd’s response to al-Ghazālī (163–215, 225–
244)
4. Ibn Taymiyya’s comments on the philosophers’ negative theology
and other topics related to the eternality vs. the origination of the
world (244–291)
5. Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī, al-Ashʿarī, and al-Bāqillānī on proving the
existence of God (295–349)
D. On the fiṭra (359–468)
1. Abū Yaʿlā, Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, al-Ṭabarī, and al-Khallāl on the fiṭra (359–
456)
2. Rational proofs establish that “every child is born on the fiṭra” (456–
468)
3. On the verse “I created jinn and men only to worship Me” (468–494)
4. Abū Muḥammad b. ʿAbdik al-Baṣrī on the fiṭra (494–535)

IX. Volume 9
A. On whether knowledge of the existence of God comes about through rea-
son or through revelation (3–66)
B. Ibn Rushd on the obligation of rational inquiry, the argument from the tem-
poral origination of accidents, infinities and infinite regresses, causality,
and Ibn Sīnā’s notion of the “eternal contingent” (68–132)
C. Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī on rational inquiry and proofs for the existence of
God, infinity and infinite sets, the temporal origination of the world, and
similar (133–177)
D. Al-Juwaynī on the impossibility of an infinite regress of temporally origi-
nated events (177–196)
E. Al-Rāzī on the temporal origination of the world (197–211)
F. Discussion of passages from al-Suhrawardī, Ibn Sīnā, al-Rāzī, and al-Āmidī
(221–272)
G. Discussion of passages from Thābit b. Qurra, with rebuttals (272–321)
H. Ibn Rushd on the proof for the existence of God based on providence
(ʿināya) and creation (ikhtirāʿ), the oneness of God, and divine knowledge
(321–402)
I. Ibn Malkā in Muʿtabar on the question of divine knowledge, with re-
sponses (402–441)

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X. Volume 10
A. Ibn Malkā’s citation of Ibn Sīnā, with a rebuttal by Ibn Taymiyya (3–36)
B. Al-Ṭūsī in Sharḥ al-Ishārāt, with rebuttal (44–84)
C. Al-Suhrawardī in Ḥikmat al-ishrāq (84–97)
D. A continuation of Ibn Sīnā’s discussion on the question of God’s knowledge
(98–133)
E. Al-Ghazālī on God’s knowledge (133–141)
F. Al-Rāzī on God’s knowledge, will, and action (141–159)
G. Ibn Sīnā on God’s knowing particulars in a universal manner (159–179)
H. Al-Ghazālī’s response to Ibn Sīnā on God’s knowledge of particulars (179–
187)
I. Ibn Taymiyya’s rebuttal of Ibn Sīnā (187–196)
J. Citation and discussion of Ibn Rushd
1. on God’s attributes of will, speech, hearing, and sight (197–225)
2. in response to the Ashʿarīs and the Muʿtazila on the question of the
divine attributes (225–243)
3. on divine transcendence (tanzīh) (243–251)
4. on the negation (nafy) of the divine attributes (251–259)
5. Further discussion of Ibn Rushd on the divine attributes (259–319)

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 appendix b

Detailed Outline of the Darʾ taʿāruḍ

Volume 1

Preliminaries

I. Foreword (ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbd al-Muḥsin al-Turkī) (‫ج‬-‫)ح‬

II. Editor’s preface (Muḥammad Rashād Sālim) (1–2)
III. Introduction (3–23)
A. Title of the work and number of volumes (4–7)
B. History of the composition of the Darʾ (7–10)
C. Subject of the Darʾ, with a summary description of its contents (10–
23)
IV. Documentary basis for the critical edition (23–70)
A. The ten manuscripts (23–64)
B. The abridgement (mukhtaṣar) of al-Hakārī (60–64)
C. Risālat Bayān khātam al-nabiyyīn (intercalated into Darʾ at 1:25–78) (64–
66)
D. The two previously printed editions (comprising only one-third of the
full work) (66–70)
V. The method followed in establishing the critical edition (70–73)
VI. Legend (to the documentary sources) (75)
VII. Sample photographs from selected manuscripts (77–91)

Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wa-l-naql

VIII. Opening supplication (3)

IX. The universal rule (al-qānūn al-kullī) for reconciling reason and revelation (4–
8)
X. The two “innovated” methods of reconciliation (8–20)
A. Alteration of meaning (tabdīl), comprising two types: (8–15)
1. Instilling illusions and false imaginings (wahm and takhyīl) (8–11)
2. Distorting meaning through figurative interpretation (taḥrīf and
taʾwīl) (12–15)
– The word taʾwīl (14–15)
B. Presumption of ignorance and misguidance (the method of tajhīl and
taḍlīl) (15–19)

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308 appendix b

C. Summary (19–20)
XI. The goal of the Darʾ taʿāruḍ: To demonstrate the invalidity of the universal
rule (al-qānūn al-kullī) (20–24)
XII. Excursus (consisting of the text of Risālat Bayān khātam al-nabiyyīn, in which
Ibn Taymiyya responds to six questions on various general topics) (25–78)
– The foundations (uṣūl) of the mutakallimūn are not the true foundations
of religion (38–43)
– The permissibility of addressing specialists using their technical terms (43–
46)
XIII. Ibn Taymiyya’s summary response to the universal rule (78–86)
XIV. The beginning of Ibn Taymiyya’s detailed refutation of the universal rule,
from various “points of view” (wujūh) [hereafter rendered as “arguments”]
(86)
XV. Argument 1 (86–87)
XVI. Argument 2 (87)
XVII. Argument 3 (87–133)
A. Negation of the principle that reason grounds revelation (87–91)
B. Response to those who say, we give priority over revelation to that ratio-
nal knowledge by which we have come to know the truth of revelation
(6 points) (91–100)
C. On proving the existence of God from the temporal origination of acci-
dents (100–133)
1. The prophets did not call people to believe in God through this
method (100–104)
2. A response to those who claim that Abraham used this argument
(5 points) (104–130)
3. A response to those who hold that revelation does not use this
argument but that reason requires it (5 points) (130–133)
XVIII. Arguments 4–9 (134–170)
A. Argument 4 (134–137)
B. Argument 5 (137)
C. Argument 6 (138–144)
D. Argument 7 (144–148)
E. Argument 8 (148–156)
F. Argument 9 (156–170)
XIX. Argument 10 (170–192)
A. Prioritizing revelation does not entail the invalidity of revelation in and
of itself (171–176)
– Two objections, with rebuttal (173–176)
B. Those to whom this work (the Darʾ) is addressed (176–177)

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C. Objection: The validity of revelation is affirmed (only) as long as it does

not contradict reason, with rebuttal (7 points) (177–192)
XX. Argument 11: Much of what is called a proof is not a proof (192–194)
XXI. Argument 12: All rationally derived conclusions that contradict revelation are
known by reason to be invalid (194)
XXII. Argument 13: Those revealed matters that reason is said to contradict are
known of necessity to be part and parcel of the religion (195)
XXIII. Argument 14: Knowledge of the intentions and objectives of the Prophet is
both necessary and certain knowledge (195–198)
XXIV. Argument 15: The opposite of a “sharʿī” proof is not a rational one but an inno-
vated one (198–200)
XXV. Argument 16: The opponents end up with either taʾwīl or tafwīḍ, both of which
are invalid (201–208)
XXVI. Argument 17 (208–279)
A. “Innovated” rational discourse is built on vague and ambiguous state-
ments that contain both truth and falsehood (208–222)
B. The people of innovation use the words of the Qurʾān, Sunna, and the
Arabic language but intend them in senses that differ from their con-
ventional meanings (222–223)
C. The meaning of “tawḥīd” in the Qurʾān and Sunna is different from what
the people of innovation mean by it (224–228)
D. On the necessity of either refraining from the use of innovated terms or
accepting only those terms whose meaning conforms with the Qurʾān
and Sunna (229–240)
E. Words are of two kinds: Those used in revelation and those without a
basis in the revealed texts (240–249)
1. Example of the word ruʾya with respect to seeing God in the here-
after (250–254)
2. Example of the word jabr in the discussion on free will and deter-
minism (254–256)
3. The question of the verbal recitation (lafẓ) of the Qurʾān (256–271)
4. General discussion of the importance of clarifying the meaning of
terms; discussion of contradiction, difference, and similarity (271–
278)
5. The meaning of God’s “settling on the throne” (278–279)
XXVII. Argument 18 (280–320)
A. The rational arguments that form the basis for opposing scriptural
proofs are invalid and contradictory (280)
B. The meaning of murakkab (composed) and iftiqār (dependence) (280–
282)

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C. The doctrine of those who negate the divine attributes, with rebuttal (3
points) (282–292)
D. Is God’s existence the same as His essence or superadded to it? (292–
296)
E. Recognizing misguidance and avoiding it (296–310)
F. The invalidity of appealing to the argument for the existence of God
from accidents on the basis of the story of Abraham (4 points) (310–320)
XXVIII. Argument 19 (320–406)
A. The invalidity of the argument for the existence of God from the tem-
poral origination of motion and accidents (320–327)
B. The views of the mutakallimūn and the philosophers concerning the
divine will (327–334)
C. Al-Urmawī’s objection to al-Rāzī, with Ibn Taymiyya’s response to al-
Urmawī (334–351)
D. Rebuttal of the philosophers’ doctrine of the eternality of the world
1. Discussion of the different kinds of infinite regress (tasalsul) and
which among them are possible or impossible (351–370)
2. Discussion of whether one of two equally possible contingents
can come about without a determining cause (al-tarjīḥ bi-lā mu-
rajjiḥ) (371–374)
E. Every argument used by the negationists proves the opposite of their
position (374–377)
F. Al-Abharī’s refutation of the philosophers’ argument for the eternality
of the world (377–385)
G. Al-Abharī’s rebuttal of al-Rāzī’s arguments for the temporal origination
of bodies, with commentary by Ibn Taymiyya (385–406)

Volume 2

I. What revelation indicates concerning God’s actions (3–147)

A. The question of the existence of voluntary actions in God and the Salaf’s
positions on it (18–115)
[Consists almost entirely of citations from numerous figures, without
commentary by Ibn Taymiyya.]
B. What the Qurʾān indicates concerning the question of God’s actions (115–
124)
C. What the Sunna indicates concerning God’s actions (124–147)
II. A discussion of the three main positions people hold on the question of God’s
actions (147–244)

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[Includes Ibn Taymiyya’s commentary on excerpts from al-Rāzī, al-Āmidī, Ibn

Malkā, and al-Juwaynī, as well as some objections by the mutakallimūn to al-
Rāzī and Ibn Taymiyya’s response to them.]
III. The way of the authoritative scholars (aʾimma) on the question of the Qurʾān
(244–291)
[Consists of Ibn Taymiyya’s commentary on ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Kinānī regarding
the Qurʾān and the divine attributes. Includes a digression (pp. 282–288) con-
taining a response by Ibn Taymiyya to the philosophers on the question of the
infinite regress.]
IV. Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal on God’s actions, with commentary by Ibn Taymiyya (291–304)
V. The various positions concerning the question of God’s speech (304–309)
VI. The failure of authors on uṣūl al-dīn to mention the position of the Salaf (con-
cerning God’s speech) (309–324)
VII. Resuming the discussion of al-Rāzī’s position on the question of the Qurʾān (324–
344)
VIII. Al-Rāzī’s five proofs in the Arbaʿīn for the temporal origination of the world with
an objection to each by al-Urmawī, followed by comments from Ibn Taymiyya
(344–399 …)
A. Al-Rāzī’s first proof: The impossibility of an infinite regress of motions (pre-
sented in six arguments) (345–399)

Volume 3

I. Continuation of the discussion on the temporal origination of the world (3–44)

A. Al-Rāzī’s four remaining proofs from the Arbaʿīn for the temporal origi-
nation of the world with an objection to each by al-Urmawī, followed by
comments from Ibn Taymiyya (3–30)
B. Al-Āmidī’s method for proving the temporal origination of the world, with
al-Āmidī’s objection to al-Rāzī and Ibn Taymiyya’s commentary (30–36)
C. Another method by a mutakallim for proving the temporal origination of
the world (36–44)
II. The methods used by the mutakallimūn to disprove the possibility of an infinity
(in general and of an infinite causal regress in particular), with commentary on
each method by Ibn Taymiyya (44–62)
III. Various positions people hold on the simultaneous association of the effect with
the secondary cause (62–72)
IV. On proofs for the existence of God (72–118)
A. Al-Rāzī’s five proofs for the existence of God, with commentary by Ibn
Taymiyya (72–87)

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B. Al-Āmidī’s proof for the existence of God in his Abkār, with comments by
Ibn Taymiyya (88–99)
C. Ibn Taymiyya’s discussion of five arguments used for proving the impossi-
bility of an infinite regress (99–104)
D. Ibn Taymiyya’s comments on al-Rāzī’s, al-Juwaynī’s, and Abū al-Qāsim al-
Anṣārī’s proofs for the existence of God (106–118)
V. Important epistemological discussions, including topics such as self-evident and
necessary knowledge, universal propositions and their relation to particulars,
deductive reasoning, the role of the fiṭra, and the status of signs (āyāt) as indica-
tors of knowledge (118–140)
VI. Al-Rāzī’s agreement with Ibn Sīnā, and Ibn Rushd’s criticism of Ibn Sīnā, on top-
ics such as the existence of God in light of causality, the two kinds of circularity
and the two kinds of infinite regress, and the non-self-sufficiency of natural or
other secondary causes (140–162)
VII. Al-Rāzī’s position on Ibn Sīnā’s proof for the Necessarily Existent, with Ibn
Taymiyya’s comments on Ibn Sīnā (162–172)
VIII. Further discussion on causality, infinite regress, the nature of infinite sets, simul-
taneous versus consecutive infinite sets, etc., where Ibn Taymiyya cites and re-
sponds to passages from al-Suhrawardī, al-Āmidī, Ibn Sīnā, and al-Abharī (172–
264)
IX. The different methods for proving the existence of God, the correct way that con-
forms with the fiṭra, and Ibn Taymiyya’s critique of Ibn Sīnā’s method and that
of his followers (264–269)
X. The falsehood of the philosophers’ view that the perfection of the soul lies solely
in acquiring knowledge of the intelligibles (269–277)
XI. Al-Āmidī’s endorsement of the methods of the later theologians in proving the
existence of God, with comments by Ibn Taymiyya (277–286)
XII. Further discussion of causes, causality, and infinite regress (286–318)
– The prophetic manner of dealing with these issues is grounded in both faith
(īmān) and rational demonstration (burhān) (308–318)
XIII. Discussion of conceptions (taṣawwurāt) and the nature of definitions (318–333)
XIV. Overview of the various methods used for proving the existence of God, fol-
lowed by a critique of Ibn Sīnā’s notion of the “eternal contingent” (al-mumkin
al-qadīm) (11 points) (333–351)
XV. Citation and discussion of passages from al-Āmidī, al-Shahrastānī, al-Ghazālī,
Ibn Rushd, and Ibn Tūmart on topics such as particularization, composition,
God’s being above and separate from creation, and the temporal origination of
bodies (351–454)

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Volume 4

I. On the weakness of the responses of al-Rāzī, al-Āmidī, and others to the

philosophers’ argument for the eternality of the world based on the perfec-
tion of the divine attributes (10 points) (3–18)
II. Discussion of the question of the advent of temporal events in God’s essence
(ḥulūl al-ḥawādith fī dhāt Allāh) (18–115)
A. Al-Āmidī’s discussion of the impossibility of the advent of temporal
events in God’s essence, with comments by Ibn Taymiyya (18–45)
– Historical overview of various positions (22–27)
B. Rebuttal of the philosophers’ arguments for the impossibility of the
advent of temporal events in God’s essence (5 points) (45–61)
C. Al-Āmidī’s third and fourth arguments, with comments by Ibn Taymiyya
(62–82)
D. Al-Āmidī’s method for proving the impossibility of the advent of tem-
poral events in God’s essence, with a rebuttal by Ibn Taymiyya (9 points)
(82–96)
E. Al-Āmidī’s response to the Karrāmiyya on this question (6 points), with
commentary by Ibn Taymiyya (96–115)
III. Citation and discussion of al-Āmidī
A. on the question of God’s speech, with comments by Ibn Taymiyya (115–
137)
B. on the negation of corporealism (tajsīm): Five main arguments, with
responses and commentary by Ibn Taymiyya (137–237)
C. on the question whether God’s existence is superadded to His essence
(237–245)
D. on the refutation of composition (tarkīb) in God’s being, with responses
and commentary by Ibn Taymiyya (245–266)
E. Al-Āmidī’s seventh point against the Karrāmiyya on the question of the
advent of originated events in God’s essence (266–267)
F. Continuation of al-Āmidī’s refutation of God’s being a body, with com-
ments by Ibn Taymiyya (267–284)
IV. On al-Ghazālī’s charge in the Tahāfut that the philosophers are incapable
of proving that the First One (God) is not a body, with comments by Ibn
Taymiyya (284–295)

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314 appendix b

Volume 5

(Resumption of Ibn Taymiyya’s discrete arguments against the universal rule)

I. Argument 20 (3–203)
A. On how the materialist atheists are able to get the better of those who
deny the divine attributes (namely, by showing that their position log-
ically commits them to a more systematic denial of the texts and rein-
terpretation of them via taʾwīl) (3–6)
B. Al-Ashʿarī in the Ibāna on his commitment to the way of Aḥmad b. Ḥan-
bal (6–10)
C. Ibn Sīnā in the Aḍḥawiyya on taʾwīl and the non-literal meaning of the
texts, with comments by Ibn Taymiyya (10–36)
D. Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī on the divine attributes, with comments by Ibn
Taymiyya (followed by a passage from Abū al-Ḥasan al-Taymī on the real
existence of the attributes) (36–50)
E. Ibn Sīnā in the Aḍḥawiyya and Ishārāt on the divine attributes, with
comments by Ibn Taymiyya (50–108)
F. Al-Āmidī on the divine attributes and the relationship of universals to
particulars, with comments by Ibn Taymiyya (108–128)
G. Ibn Sīnā in the Ishārāt on universals, with comments by Ibn Taymiyya
(128–152)
H. Al-Rāzī’s failure to distinguish between cause (ʿilla) and condition
(sharṭ) (152–157)
I. Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal on the relationship of the divine attributes to God’s
essence, with comments by Ibn Taymiyya (157–186)
J. Al-Juwaynī on the divine attributes, with comments by Ibn Taymiyya
(186–203)
II. Arguments 21–30 (204–288)
A. Argument 21 (204–209)
B. Argument 22 (210–211)
C. Argument 23 (211–214)
D. Argument 24 (214–216)
E. Argument 25 (216–223)
F. Argument 26 (223–233)
G. Argument 27 (234–241)
H. Argument 28 (242–268)
I. Argument 29 (268–286)
J. Argument 30 (286–288)
III. Argument 31 (289–320)

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A. Al-Rāzī in Nihāyat al-ʿuqūl on what can be known only through reason,

only through revelation, and through both, as well as the argument from
the temporal origination of bodies, with comments by Ibn Taymiyya
(289–295)
B. Objection: What if the specific rational grounds by which we know the
authenticity of revelation do not contradict what revelation affirms of
God’s attributes and actions but other rational considerations do?, with
response by Ibn Taymiyya (10 points) (295–320)
– Al-Dārimī in al-Radd ʿalā al-jahmiyya, with comments by Ibn Tay-
miyya (302–312)
IV. Argument 32 (320–338)
– Al-Rāzī on the status of revealed indicants (adilla samʿiyya), with com-
ments by Ibn Taymiyya (328–338)
V. Arguments 33–36 (338–346)
A. Argument 33 (338–340)
B. Argument 34 (340–343)
C. Argument 35 (343–345)
D. Argument 36 (345–346)
VI. Al-Ghazālī on taʾwīl in the Iḥyāʾ, with comments by Ibn Taymiyya (347–357)
VII. Arguments 37–42 (357–392)
A. Argument 37 (357–358)
B. Argument 38 (359–363)
C. Argument 39 (363–370)
D. Argument 40 (370–374)
E. Argument 41 (374–387)
F. Argument 42 (387–392)

Volume 6

Argument 43 (3–352)

I. Al-Rāzī in Lubāb al-Arbaʿīn on spatial ___location ( jiha) and place (makān) with
respect to God, with commentary by Ibn Taymiyya (8–19)
– Knowledge of God’s being above (ʿuluww) is innate and necessary knowl-
edge (11–19)
II. Ibn Sīnā in the Ishārāt and Shifāʾ on the imaginative and estimative faculties,
with comments and a rebuttal by Ibn Taymiyya (19–59)
III. Ibn Sīnā in the Ishārāt on gnosis (ʿirfān) and gnostics (ʿārifūn), with comments
by Ibn Taymiyya (59–87)

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IV. Resumption of Ibn Taymiyya’s discussion of Ibn Sīnā on the estimative faculty
(al-quwwa al-wahmiyya) (87–113)
V. Rebuttal of al-Rāzī’s argument in the Arbaʿīn that if the knowledge of God’s
being above (and, hence, His being separate from and spatially located with
respect to creation) were self-evident, it would not have been possible for large
numbers of people to concur on denying it. (All items include comments by
Ibn Taymiyya.) (113–288)
A. Al-Rāzī’s first argument
1. First response to al-Rāzī’s first argument (113–267)
(a) ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Kinānī and Ibn Kullāb on ʿuluww and istiwāʾ
(115–127)
(b) Response to those who refrain from ascribing either of two
opposite properties to God (e.g., being either inside or out-
side the universe) on the grounds that anything susceptible
of such qualification can only be a body (4 points) (127–137)
(c) Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal on the affirmation of ʿuluww and istiwāʾ
and his discussion of God’s being “with” creation (137–149)
(d) Al-Rāzī’s response in the Arbaʿīn to those who hold that God
indwells in the universe (al-ḥulūliyya) (149–163)
(e) Ibn ʿArabī on the relation between the necessary and the
contingent (163–186)
(f) Al-Abharī on an infinite regress of motions (186–197)
(g) Al-Ashʿarī, al-Bāqillānī, Abū Yaʿlā, and Ibn Rushd on ʿuluww,
istiwāʾ, and jiha (197–226)
(h) Ibn Rushd on seeing God in the hereafter (al-ruʾya) (226–
249)
(i) The position of the Salaf and authoritative scholars on
God’s being above (ʿuluww) and His being distinct and sep-
arate from creation (mubāyana) (250–267)
– The meaning of “istiwāʾ ” (258–260)
2. Second, third, and fourth responses to al-Rāzī’s first argument
(267–272)
B. Al-Rāzī’s second through sixth arguments, with responses by Ibn Tay-
miyya (272–288)
VI. Further arguments by al-Rāzī in the Arbaʿīn and Lubāb al-Arbaʿīn on spatial
___location ( jiha) and a thing’s susceptibility of being pointed to (ishāra), with
responses by Ibn Taymiyya (289–352)

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Volume 7

Argument 43 (cont.)

I. Rebuttal of al-Rāzī and establishing God’s being above (ʿuluww) through ratio-
nal proofs (3–10)
II. Further arguments by al-Rāzī in Lubāb al-Arbaʿīn concerning spatial ___location
( jiha) and being above (ʿuluww) with respect to God, with responses by Ibn
Taymiyya (10–99)
III. Al-Bayhaqī’s epistle on the virtues of al-Ashʿarī (in which Ibn Taymiyya en-
dorses al-Bayhaqī’s and Ibn ʿAsākir’s defense of al-Ashʿarī’s integrity) (99–
103)
IV. Al-Ashʿarī in the Ibāna on affirming the divine attributes in their obvious sense
bi-lā kayf, with comments by Ibn Taymiyya (103–107)
V. Objection, raised by those who deny the attributes, that the early commu-
nity, based on their knowledge of the Arabic language, did not understand
the Qurʾān to be affirming that God is in His essence above the throne, with
Ibn Taymiyya’s response (4 points) (107–127)
VI. Response to those who claim that the Qurʾān does not indicate God’s being
above or any of His attributes by way of affirmation or negation (127–140)

Argument 44 (All items include comments by Ibn Taymiyya.) (140–464)

VII. Al-Ghazālī’s critique of kalām in the Iḥyāʾ (145–150)

VIII. Al-Juwaynī in the Burhān on rational syllogism and analogy based on the texts,
Ibn Taymiyya’s identification of these as qiyās al-shumūl and qiyās al-tamthīl,
respectively, and his argument for their interchangeability (150–157)
IX. More by al-Ghazālī on kalām in the Iḥyāʾ (157–186)
X. Lengthy citation from al-Ashʿarī’s Risāla ilā ahl al-thaghr on change, temporal
origination, signs of the existence of God in the universe, proofs of prophet-
hood, and similar (186–224)
XI. Al-Shahrastānī in Nihāyat al-iqdām on the temporal origination of the world
(224–229)
XII. Al-Rāzī on proving the existence of God (229–236)
XIII. Ibn Taymiyya’s comments on Abū Naṣr al-Sijzī’s remark in the Ibāna that al-
Ashʿarī, after forty years with the Muʿtazila, abandoned the branches ( furūʿ)
of their doctrine but not the principles (uṣūl) (236–242)
XIV. Ibn ʿAsākir in Tabyīn kadhib al-muftarī on the authoritative scholars’ condem-
nation of the people of kalām (242–257)
XV. Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal in al-Radd ʿalā al-jahmiyya on the Qurʾān (257–276)

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XVI. Al-Ashʿarī in the Maqālāt on the Najjāriyya (276–278)

XVII. Al-Khaṭṭābī in the Ghunya on kalām and those who pursue it (278–303)
XVIII. Al-Bāqillānī in Sharḥ al-Lumaʿ on knowing the existence of God and the
authenticity of the Prophet Muḥammad on the basis of reason, the fiṭra, and
revelation; the Qurʾān’s use of, and directing its readers to the use of, rational
arguments (304–310)
XIX. Resumption of al-Khaṭṭābī’s discussion in the Ghunya; al-Khaṭṭābī in Shiʿār
al-dīn, with extensive comments by Ibn Taymiyya, on the various ways of gain-
ing knowledge, the different kinds of qiyās, categorical syllogism and analogy
used in an a fortiori mode with reference to God, universals and particulars,
seen and unseen, the meaning of taʾwīl, the difference between qiyās and ijti-
hād in law vs. theology, the ultimate equivalence of categorical syllogism and
analogy, and the parallel between rational and legal sciences (310–344)
XX. Ibn Rushd in al-Kashf ʿan manāhij al-adilla [hereafter Manāhij] on the four
groups of Muslims (Ashʿarīs, Muʿtazila, Bāṭiniyya, and Ḥashwiyya) (345–352)
XXI. The dispute concerning the basis of our knowledge of the existence of God
and how it comes about (352–406)
A. Those who say that our knowledge of the existence of God only comes
about through rational inquiry (naẓar) (352–355)
B. Al-Rāzī, al-Āmidī, and Ilkiyā al-Harrāsī on our innate knowledge of the
existence of God (355–396)
C. Al-Shahrastānī in Nihāyat al-iqdām on the fact that the fiṭra bears wit-
ness to the existence of God (396–406)
XXII. On the question of the obligation to engage in rational inquiry to arrive at
knowledge of God’s existence (wujūb al-naẓar) (406–464)
A. Ibn Ḥazm in Kitāb al-Fiṣal on people’s positions regarding wujūb al-
naẓar (406–407)
B. Al-Ashʿarī in some of his writings on the first moral obligation (namely,
whether it is an obligation to engage in rational inquiry) (407–409)
C. Ibn Ḥazm’s rebuttal of those who declare rational inference of the exis-
tence of God to be obligatory (409–440)
D. Al-Juwaynī on negating the obligation of rational inquiry (440)
E. Discussion of excerpts from Abū Isḥāq al-Isfarāyīnī, Abū Yaʿlā, Ibn al-
Zāghūnī, and the sharḥ (attributed to al-Māturīdī) of Abū Ḥanīfa’s al-
Fiqh al-akbar on the obligation of rational inquiry (440–464)

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Volume 8

(All items include comments by Ibn Taymiyya.)

I. Discussion regarding the first obligation incumbent on a moral agent: Ex-

cerpts from Abū al-Faraj al-Maqdisī, Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī, and Ṣadaqa b.
al-Ḥusayn (5–47)
II. Ibn ʿAqīl and other mutakallimūn on the condemnation of kalām (47–70)
III. The question of the existence of God (70–349)
A. Al-Ashʿarī in the Lumaʿ on proving the existence of God, al-Bāqillānī’s
commentary on al-Ashʿarī, and an excerpt by Ilkiyā al-Harrāsī (70–103)
B. Al-Bāqillānī on the meaning of khalq (creation) (103–108)
C. Al-Rāzī in Nihāyat al-ʿuqūl and Ibn Sīnā in the Ishārāt on the question
of proving the existence of God (108–136)
D. Al-Ghazālī’s charge in the Tahāfut that the philosophers are incapable
of proving the existence of God and Ibn Rushd’s response in Tahāfut al-
Tahāfut (136–139)
E. The invalidity and falsehood of Aristotle’s and his followers’ discourse
on God (6 points) (139–145)
F. Remainder of al-Ghazālī’s discussion in the Tahāfut on the philoso-
phers’ inability to prove the existence of God (146–161)
G. The invalidity of the philosophers’ doctrine concerning the possibility
of an infinite causal regress (3 points) (161–163)
H. Continuation of Ibn Rushd’s response to al-Ghazālī (163–215)
I. Critique of Ibn Rushd on the passionate motion (ḥaraka shawqiyya) of
the heavens (6 points) (217–225)
J. Continuation of Ibn Rushd’s response to al-Ghazālī (225–244)
K. Ibn Sīnā in the Ishārāt, with Ibn Taymiyya’s comments regarding the
“tawḥīd” of the philosophers and their negative theology, their doctrine
of the world as the effect of a necessary cause (maʿlūl ʿilla wājiba), and
other topics related to the eternality vs. the temporal origination of the
world (244–291)
L. On the impossibility of a temporally originated existent coming into
being without an originator (291–295)
M. Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī, al-Ashʿarī (Lumaʿ), and al-Bāqillānī (Sharḥ al-
Lumaʿ) on proving the existence of God (295–349)
IV. Abū Yaʿlā in the Muʿtamad on the obligation to engage in rational inquiry
(wujūb al-naẓar) (349–359)
V. On the fiṭra (359–468)
A. Abū Yaʿlā, Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr (Tamhīd), al-Ṭabarī (Tafsīr), and al-Khallāl
( Jāmiʿ) on the meaning of the fiṭra (359–456)

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320 appendix b

B. Rational proofs establish that “every child is born on the fiṭra” (8 points)
(456–468)
C. On the verse “I created jinn and men only to worship Me” (468–494)
D. Abū Muḥammad b. ʿAbdik al-Baṣrī in Uṣūl al-sunna wa-l-tawḥīd on the
fiṭra (494–535)

Volume 9

(All items include comments by Ibn Taymiyya.)

I. On whether knowledge of the existence of God comes about through reason

or through revelation (3–66)
A. Ibn Abī Mūsā in Sharḥ al-Irshād (3–18)
B. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb b. Abī al-Faraj al-Maqdisī (18–36)
C. Abū Yaʿlā’s view that it is not obligatory to engage in rational inquiry
(naẓar) to know the existence of God (36–38)
D. Abū al-Faraj al-Maqdisī on the obligation to know the existence of God
on the basis of revelation (38–45)
E. Ibn al-Zāghūnī on the obligation to engage in rational inquiry (naẓar)
to know the existence of God (45–49)
F. Al-Kalwadhānī in the Tamhīd on whether reason can judge the right-
ness or wrongness of actions and whether it can serve as the basis for
moral obligation, prohibition, and permission (50–66)
II. Ibn Rushd in the Manāhij on whether rational inquiry is obligatory (and for
whom), the argument from the temporal origination of accidents, infinities
and infinite regresses, causality, and Ibn Sīnā’s notion of the “eternal con-
tingent that is necessary by virtue of other than itself” (al-mumkin al-qadīm
al-wājib bi-ghayrihi) (68–132)
III. Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī in Ghurar al-adilla on rational inquiry and proofs for
the existence of God, infinity and infinite sets, the temporal origination of the
world, and similar (133–177)
IV. Al-Juwaynī in the Irshād on the impossibility of an infinite regress of tempo-
rally originated events (177–196)
V. Al-Rāzī in al-Mabāḥith al-mashriqiyya on the temporal origination of the
world (197–211)
VI. On the theologians (ahl al-kalām) being closer to Islam than the philosophers
(3 points) (211–221)
VII. Discussion of passages from al-Suhrawardī (221–233)
A. in the Talwīḥāt, with responses (6 points) (221–228)

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B. in Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, with responses (5 points) (228–233)

VIII. Ibn Sīnā in the Ishārāt and al-Rāzī in Sharḥ al-Ishārāt, with responses (5
points) (233–247)
IX. Discussion of passages from al-Āmidī (247–251)
A. in Daqāʾiq al-ḥaqāʾiq (247–249)
B. in Abkār al-afkār (249–251)
X. Ibn Sīnā in the Ishārāt and al-Rāzī in Sharḥ al-Ishārāt (252–272)
XI. Extensive discussion of passages from Thābit b. Qurra in Talkhīṣ mā baʿda al-
ṭabīʿa, with rebuttals (28 points total) (272–321)
XII. Return to a discussion of Ibn Rushd (321–402)
A. in the Manāhij on proof for the existence of God (as illustrated in the
Qurʾān) on the basis of providence (dalīl al-ʿināya) and creation (dalīl
al-ikhtirāʿ) and proofs for the oneness of God (with Ibn Rushd’s critique
of the arguments of the mutakallimūn and comments by Ibn Taymiyya)
(321–383)
B. in Ḍamīma fī masʾalat al-ʿilm (an appendix to the Manāhij, on the ques-
tion of knowledge) (383–402)
XIII. Discussion of Ibn Malkā (and his citation of Aristotle) in the Muʿtabar on the
question of divine knowledge, with responses (402–441)

Volume 10

(All items include comments by Ibn Taymiyya.)

I. Ibn Malkā’s citation in the Muʿtabar from Ibn Sīnā’s Kitāb al-Najāh, with a
rebuttal by Ibn Taymiyya (16 points) (3–36)
II. Brief passages by al-Rāzī (Sharḥ al-Ishārāt) and al-Āmidī (36–38)
III. Al-Ṭūsī in his Sharḥ al-Ishārāt, with rebuttal (20 points) (44–84)
IV. Al-Suhrawardī in Ḥikmat al-ishrāq (84–97)
V. Continuation of Ibn Sīnā’s discussion on the question of divine knowledge
(98–133)
A. Ibn Sīnā in the Najāh (98–100)
B. Ibn Malkā’s objection to Ibn Sīnā (100–110)
C. Return to Ibn Sīnā’s discussion, with al-Ṭūsī’s commentary (110–117)
D. Al-Rāzī’s objection to Ibn Sīnā (in Sharḥ al-Ishārāt) (117–133)
VI. Al-Ghazālī on God’s knowledge in the Tahāfut (133–141)
VII. Al-Rāzī on God’s knowledge, will, and action in Tahāfut al-tahāfut (141–159)
VIII. Ibn Sīnā in the Ishārāt on God’s knowing particulars in a universal manner,
with al-Ṭūsī’s commentary (in Sharḥ al-Ishārāt) (159–179)

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322 appendix b

A. Al-Ghazālī’s response to Ibn Sīnā on God’s knowledge of particulars in

the Tahāfut (179–187)
B. Ibn Taymiyya’s rebuttal of Ibn Sīnā (4 points) (187–196)
IX. Citation and discussion of Ibn Rushd (197–319)
A. in the Manāhij (197–251)
1. on God’s attribute of will (197–199)
2. on God’s attribute of speech (199–224)
3. on God’s attributes of hearing and sight (224–225)
4. in response to the Ashʿarīs and the Muʿtazila on the question of
the divine attributes (225–243)
5. on divine transcendence (tanzīh) (243–251)
B. Ibn Rushd in Tahāfut al-tahāfut on the negation (nafy) of the divine
attributes (251–259)
C. Return to Ibn Rushd on the divine attributes in the Manāhij (259–319)

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Glossary of Arabic Terms

A
ʿadam: non-existence. Opposite of wujūd.
maʿdūm: non-existent. Opposite of mawjūd.
ahl al-qibla: lit. people of the qibla, or direction of prayer (Mecca). Refers, essentially,
to all those who associate themselves with Islam or identify themselves as Mus-
lims (as long as they recognize the qibla and, by extension, the basic rites of Islam,
such as the daily prayer). The term, as it is often used, is deliberately agnostic with
respect to the correctness or orthodoxy of the belief or practice of those to whom
it is applied. One may concede that a person or group is part of ahl al-qibla while
nonetheless judging that person or group to be wildly heterodox or dangerously
astray.
aḥwāl (sing. ḥāl): “states.” Concept developed originally by the Muʿtazila as a theory
regarding the nature of the divine attributes. Conceiving of God’s qualities as “states”
rather than attributes proper was meant to avoid the implication of a plurality of
eternal entities alongside God. The term was later adopted into the Ashʿarī theory
of attributes.
ākhira: the hereafter, in contrast to the life of this world, or dunyā.
ʿāmm: general, generally applicable; generic; non-specialized.
ʿāmma: the general public, common people, non-specialists. Contrasted with khāṣ-
ṣa.
ʿaql: reason, intellectual faculty; (pl. ʿuqūl) intellect, mind.
ʿaqlī: rational (said, e.g., of a science, an indicant, a proof, an objection).
ʿaqliyyāt: rational matters; rational knowledge, conclusions derived through discur-
sive reason.
al-ṣifāt al-ʿaqliyya: see ṣifa
ʿaql ṣarīḥ (also ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl): pure, authentic, sound natural reason. The unadul-
terated native human capacity for sound reasoning. Held by Ibn Taymiyya to be
fully congruent with naql ṣaḥīḥ, or authentic revelation.
maʿqūl: intelligible (adj.); (pl. maʿqūlāt) intelligible (n.), object of intellection or
rational apprehension.
ʿuqalāʾ (sing. ʿāqil): people of intellect, rational persons, rational human beings,
those endowed with reason.
ʿaraḍ (pl. aʿrāḍ): accident (phil., as opposed to substance).
ṭarīq (or ṭarīqat) al-aʿrāḍ: see ṭarīq
ʿarsh: throne, particularly God’s throne as mentioned in numerous verses of the Qurʾān.
aṣḥāb (sing. ṣāḥib): lit. companions. Refers to the direct students or immediate follow-
ers of a renowned figure.

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324 glossary of arabic terms

asmāʾ Allāh al-ḥusnā: the Most Beautiful Names of God (usually numbered at ninety-
nine, drawn mostly from descriptions of God in the Qurʾān).
atbāʿ (sing. tābiʿ): general term referring to the followers of a renowned figure (subse-
quent to the generation of his direct students or immediate followers).
athar (pl. āthār; also maʾthūrāt): lit. trace, vestige. A verbal report transmitted from
(maʾthūr ʿan) the Prophet or early generations of Muslims, typically not vetted
through the mechanisms of formal ḥadīth criticism.
awwalī: primary, a priori.
awwaliyyāt: primary concepts, a priori premises or propositions.
ʿayn (pl. aʿyān): discrete, extra-mental entity; concrete entity; particular. “Concrete”
here implies perceptibility, and perhaps also causal efficacy, but not necessarily
materiality or corporeality.
fī al-aʿyān: existing as a discrete entity in the extra-mental world. Contrasted with
fī al-adhhān.
muʿayyan: particular, particularized; (pl. muʿayyanāt) particular (n.), particular
entity in the external world.

B
badīhī: self-evident, axiomatic, self-evidently true without need for inference or appeal
to other evidence. Contrasted with naẓarī.
badīhiyyāt (also badāʾih, badāʾih al-ʿuqūl): self-evident axioms or principles of rea-
son. Contrasted with naẓariyyāt.
basīṭ: simple, incomposite, not compound. Antonym of murakkab.
bāṭil: false, invalid; falsehood. Antonym of ḥaqq.
mubṭil: one who falsifies or invalidates; one who seeks to undermine something by
declaring it false or invalid.
bāṭin: hidden, non-manifest; internal, inward, inner (as in ḥiss bāṭin, or internal per-
ception); esoteric. Contrasted in all senses with ẓāhir.
Bāṭinī (pl. Bāṭiniyya): esotericist. One who claims that the revealed texts harbor a
hidden, true meaning often at odds with their overt sense. Often used with spe-
cific reference to the Ismāʿīlīs.
bayān: see mubīn
bidʿa (pl. bidaʿ): a heretical innovation in religion, whether on the level of creed or
practice. The direct opposite, in Ibn Taymiyya’s usage, of shirʿa.
bidʿī: “innovated” (as a departure from normative belief and practice). Contrasted by
Ibn Taymiyya with sharʿī (revealed, scriptural) in reference not only to inauthen-
tic ḥadīth and other textually transmitted religious material but also, in the realm
of reason, to faulty assumptions, premises, and arguments that lead to erroneous
conclusions.
mubtadiʿ: “innovator.” A purveyor of heretical innovations in religious matters.

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bi-l-ḍarūra: see ḍarūrī

bi-l-iḍṭirār: see bi-l-ḍarūra, under ḍarūrī
bi-lā kayf : see kayfiyya
bi-nafsihi: see nafs
burhān (pl. barāhīn): proof; evincive proof, conclusive argument; demonstration,
demonstrative proof.

D
dahriyya: lit. “eternalists.” Usually translated as “materialists.” Refers to the adherents
of any belief that holds the material universe to be both eternal and ultimate and
therefore denies the existence of a Creator.
dalīl (pl. adilla, dalāʾil): indicant, (piece of) evidence (rational or revealed); proof; argu-
ment. See also istidlāl.
dalāla: indication; proof value or fact of being a proof; signification, import, or
meaning (of a word or expression).
madlūl: the thing indicated or proved; the thing or meaning signified by a word or
expression, designatum.
ḍarūrī: necessary, immediate. Includes, for Ibn Taymiyya, any knowledge, even if infer-
ential, that imposes itself on the mind such that the mind cannot repel or deny it
once it is known.
ḍarūra (and iḍṭirār): necessity, immediacy, non-inferential quality (of a proposition
or knowledge).
bi-l-ḍarūra (also ḍarūratan or bi-l-iḍṭirār): necessarily, by necessity; immediately,
non-inferentially.
maʿlūm min al-dīn bi-l-ḍarūra: “known of necessity to be (part and parcel) of the
religion.” Refers to beliefs, practices, commands, and prohibitions that are so
well-known and germane to the faith that no Muslim, scholar or layman, can be
unaware of them.
dawr: circularity (of an argument or, e.g., of causes and effects).
dhāt: essence; (very) self or being; (pl. dhawāt) entity. Dhāt translated as “essence” can
refer to a thing’s quiddity, or essential qualities, as well as to the thing itself, its very
being (that in which its qualities inhere). Synonymous, in all senses, with German
Wesen.
dhātī: essential, pertaining to the essence or the very being of a thing.
dhawq: lit. tasting. Refers to the subjective experience of spiritual or other unseen real-
ities or to the direct, intuitive apprehension of meta-rational truths; (pl. adhwāq) an
instance of such an experience and/or the discrete knowledge acquired through it.
dhihn (pl. adhhān): mind; intellect.
dhihnī: mental, logical, in the mind (as opposed to externally existent; in this sense,
contrasted with khārijī). See also muqaddarāt dhihniyya, under taqdīr.

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fī al-adhhān: existing only in the mind, such as logical and mathematical principles
and, according to Ibn Taymiyya, universal concepts. Contrasted with fī al-aʿyān
or fī al-khārij.
dīn: religion; the religion of Islam, or submission to God; (pl. adyān) religion (generic).
See also maʿlūm min al-dīn bi-l-ḍarūra, under ḍarūrī, and uṣūl al-dīn, under uṣūl.
dunyā: the life of this world, in contrast to the hereafter, or ākhira.

F
falāsifa (sing. faylasūf ): the Muslim Peripatetic philosophers, including al-Kindī, al-
Fārābī, Ibn Rushd, and, most saliently, Ibn Sīnā.
fāsid: (1) invalid, unsound; (2) false, wrong; (3) foul, corrupt. In the first two senses,
opposite of ṣaḥīḥ and, in the third, opposite of ṣāliḥ.
fasād: invalidity, unsoundness; falseness, wrongness; corruption. See also mafsada.
fī al-adhhān: see dhihn
fī al-aʿyān: see ʿayn
fī jiha: see jiha
fī al-khārij: see khārijī
fiʿl (pl. af ʿāl): act, action.
fī makān: see makān
fī nafs al-amr: see nafs
fiqh: law, jurisprudence. See also uṣūl al-fiqh, under uṣūl.
faqīh (pl. fuqahāʾ): legal scholar, jurisprudent.
fitna (pl. fitan): discord, dissension; trial; temptation.
fiṭra: the innate or original, God-given, normative disposition of the human being; God-
given natural human constitution. Ibn Taymiyya ascribes a significant role to fiṭra
as a cognitive-moral faculty that has the ability to recognize truth from falsehood
and right from wrong, and the ability to distinguish between sound and unsound
rational premises.
fiṭrī: innate, normative, stemming from the original, God-given, normative human
disposition.

G
ghāʾib: see ghayb
ghayb: a Qurʾānic term referring to the unseen realm, in contrast to the shahāda, or
visible realm. Includes anything that lies beyond our empirical access at the cur-
rent time, including past and future events in the empirical world, in addition to
the ontological realm of the unseen proper, the realm of beings such as angels and
jinn as well as God.
ghāʾib: unseen, lying beyond our current empirical access. Contrasted with shāhid.
ghayr maḥsūs: see ḥiss
ghulāh (also ghālūn): extremist sectarians.

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H
ḥadd (pl. ḥudūd): definition.
ḥādith (also muḥdath): temporally originated, non-eternal; created. Contrasted with
qadīm.
ḥawādith (also muḥdathāt): temporally originated things or events, that which has
come into existence after not being.
ḥudūth: temporal origination, non-eternality, createdness (e.g., ḥudūth al-ʿālam:
createdness/non-eternality of the world). Contrasted with qidam.
muḥdith: that which creates, brings about, or causes temporal things to exist (i.e.,
God).
ḥads: intuition.
ḥadsiyyāt: matters known by intuition.
ḥāfiẓ (pl. ḥuffāẓ): master of ḥadīth, known for the large quantity of ḥadīth expertly
memorized. Also used to refer to someone who has memorized the entire Qurʾān.
ḥifẓ: memory; expert mastery of ḥadīth (including expert memorization of a large
number thereof).
ḥāl: see aḥwāl
ḥāll ( fī): see ḥulūl
ḥaqīqa (pl. ḥaqāʾiq): the true or essential ontological reality of an existent thing, its
modality of being or how it exists; the “real” or literal sense of a word or expression.
Contrasted in this latter sense with majāz.
ḥaqq: true, real; truth. Antonym of bāṭil.
al-Ḥaqq: God (the Ultimately True or Real).
ḥashwī (pl. ḥashwiyya): crass literalist (whose literalism leads to blatant theological
anthropomorphism).
hawā (ahwāʾ): caprice, whim; preconceived bias, obstinate personal opinion; stub-
bornly clinging to a preconceived opinion in the face of countervailing evidence.
hayūlā (Greek ύλη/hyle): prime matter.
ḥayyiz (pl. aḥyāz): the portion of space occupied by a thing possessing dimension.
mutaḥayyiz: occupying space; spatially extended. “Occupying space” is appropriate
in the context of kalām, which conceives of space as existing in its own right
independent of objects which then come to occupy it. “Spatially extended” is
appropriate in the context of the Aristotelian conception of space as the exten-
sion of objects themselves (a conception shared by Ibn Taymiyya).
taḥayyuz: the fact of occupying space or being spatially extended.
ḥifẓ: see ḥāfiẓ
hijra: refers to the emigration of the Prophet Muḥammad and his nascent community
from Mecca to Medina in the year 622 CE. The Islamic (lunar) calendar is referred to
as the hijrī calendar because it begins in this year (i.e., AH 1 = 622 CE).
ḥiss: sensation, sense perception. Divided, according to Ibn Taymiyya, into an outer
(ẓāhir) and an inner (bāṭin) capacity to sense.

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ḥiss bāṭin: internal sensation.

ḥiss ẓāhir: external sensation, perception through the external senses.
maḥsūs: perceptible, sensible, perceivable.
ghayr maḥsūs: imperceptible, insensible, unperceivable.
ḥujja (pl. ḥujaj): argument; proof.
ḥukm (pl. aḥkām): (logic) judgement; proposition; qualification, predication; charac-
teristic; (law) judgement; ruling.
ḥulūl ( fī): lit. entering or being inside of; inhering in, being immanent in, indwelling;
supervening in or upon. As a theological term, can be translated as “pantheism”
(sometimes also as “incarnation[ism],” depending on the context). Opponents of
the doctrine of waḥdat al-wujūd (such as Ibn Taymiyya), for instance, typically
charge that it entails ḥulūl, the notion that God is immanent in, one with, or indis-
tinguishable from the universe.
ḥāll ( fī): inherent or immanent (in); indwelling (in); supervening (in or upon).
ḥusn al-naẓar: see naẓar

I
iḍāfī: relational, relative (and, in this sense, synonymous with nisbī). Sometimes used
in the more specific sense of “co-relative.”
iḍmār: implicit signification; ellipsis.
iftiqār: see muftaqir
iḥtiyāṭ: (law) precaution. Exercising legal scrupulousness to avoid all possibility of
falling outside the bounds of the revealed law (Sharīʿa).
ijmāʿ: consensus, juristic or scholarly consensus, communal consensus. Carries a strong
sense of normativity, whether in the field of law, practice, or creed.
ijmāl: ambiguity caused by the use of equivocal language (i.e., that fails to clarify the
meaning of a vague term or to distinguish between the like or overlapping meanings
of a polysemous expression). Similar, in this sense, to tashābuh.
mujmal: vague or ambiguous (with respect to speech, a word, or an expression).
Similar, in this sense, to mutashābih (and mushtabih).
ikhtilāf : difference of opinion, point of disagreement; that which distinguishes two
otherwise similar things. Contrasted in this latter sense with tashābuh (and related
terms). Latter sense also rendered by the phrase mā bihi al-ikhtilāf, the opposite of
mā bihi al-ishtirāk.
ilāhiyya: see ulūhiyya
ilāhiyyāt: metaphysics (lit. [the science of] divine things). Primarily used in philo-
sophical works. Largely synonymous with mā baʿda al-ṭabīʿa.
ilḥād: deviation, heterodoxy, heresy; disbelief; atheism.
mulḥid (pl. malāḥida): someone who holds a deviant or heretical position that
entails a denial of fundamental tenets of the faith; disbeliever; atheist.

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ʿilm: knowledge; (pl. ʿulūm) field of knowledge or science; Wissenschaft. Opposite of

jahl.
ʿilmī: epistemic; cognitive, cognitional. More generally, “scientific,” based on or hav-
ing to do with ʿilm, or knowledge.
imkān: see mumkin
imtināʿ: see mumtaniʿ
inniyya: a thing’s being or the fact that it is (its “thatness”), in contrast to its māhiyya
(essence, quiddity), or what it is (its “whatness”).
inqisām: see munqasim
intifāʾ: the absence or non-existence of a thing, the fact that something does not obtain
or is not the case. Contrasted with thubūt.
intisāb: see muntasib
intizāʿ: abstracting, abstraction (e.g., of universal concepts from particulars). See also
tajrīd, under mujarrad.
ishtibāh (and ishtabaha): see tashābuh
ishtirāk: sharing, co-sharing (as in the partaking of universals in the particulars that
are instantiations of them).
qadr mushtarak: common element, common factor (in which two or more things
share). Also referred to by the phrase mā bihi al-ishtirāk, the opposite of mā bihi
al-ikhtilāf.
ishtirāk (lafẓī) / ishtirāk al-alfāẓ: homonymy or polysemy; equivocity.
lafẓ mushtarak: homonym or polyseme; equivocal term.
ishtirāk al-asmāʾ: equivocity of terms.
ishtirāk maʿnawī: May be translated as “analogical signification.” This refers to one
word being applied analogically (with the same meaning) to two things that nev-
ertheless differ substantially in their underlying ontological reality. For example,
“knowledge” with respect to both God and us means “cognition of a knowable,”
but it applies to God in a necessary and perfect manner while it applies to us con-
tingently and deficiently. Ibn Taymiyya appeals to the concept of ishtirāk maʿnawī
to preserve the comprehensibility of revealed language about God while attempt-
ing to avoid assimilationism, or tashbīh.
isnād (pl. asānīd): chain of transmission (particularly of a ḥadīth report).
isnād ṣaḥīḥ: an authentic chain of transmission. A ḥadīth with an isnād ṣaḥīḥ enjoys
the highest level of epistemic probability, falling short only of the complete cer-
tainty ( yaqīn) afforded by tawātur.
istiʿāra: metaphor. See also majāz.
istiʿdād: disposition, potentiality; capacity; preparedness, receptivity.
istidlāl: inference, reasoning; argumentation; deduction, demonstration. See also dalīl.
istighātha: lit. entreating for help. Refers to the practice of beseeching the Prophet
Muḥammad or a deceased pious figure after him (see walī) to intercede on one’s
behalf with God for the fulfillment of one’s need. Though permitted by some schol-

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ars, Ibn Taymiyya condemned istighātha (and the related practice of tawassul) as a
violation of the principle of tawḥīd.
istiḥsān: juristic preference. A method of legal reasoning in which the ruling engen-
dered by a strict analogy (qiyās) is set aside in favor of an alternative ruling judged
preferable on the basis of a relevant text, consensus, or necessity.
iṣṭilāḥ: technical usage; (pl. iṣṭilāḥāt) (also muṣṭalaḥ, pl. muṣṭalaḥāt) technical term.
iṣṭilāḥī: technical (said of a term, meaning, or usage).
istiṣḥāb (also istiṣḥāb al-ḥāl): (law) presumption of continuity, whereby a previously
existing state is presumed to continue in the present unless the contrary is estab-
lished. For example, inheritance may not be claimed from a missing person until it
is proved that he is dead (as his previous living state is presumed still to obtain until
the establishment of positive evidence to the contrary).
istiṣlāḥ: (law) Refers to the consideration of benefit, or maṣlaḥa, in deciding the legal
status (whether permitted or prohibited) of a thing or an action, particularly in cases
not covered by the Qurʾān, Sunna, or juristic consensus (ijmāʿ).
maṣlaḥa mursala: textually unattested benefit. Refers, in the context of istiṣlāḥ, to
the consideration of benefits that are not explicitly indicated in the Qurʾān or
Sunna.
istiwāʾ: settling; sitting, being seated. Used specifically in reference to God’s “settling
on the throne” (al-istiwāʾ ʿalā al-ʿarsh). Whether God’s istiwāʾ should be understood
literally or interpreted figuratively through taʾwīl was a major point of contention
among various schools of theology.
ithbāt: affirmation, specifically of the divine attributes; affirmationism (as a doctrine
affirming the reality of the divine attributes). Contrasted with nafy, taʿṭīl, and tajah-
hum.
muthbita (also muthbitūn): “affirmationists.” Those who affirm the reality of the
divine attributes. Contrasted with nufāh, muʿaṭṭila, and jahmiyya.
iʿtibārī: notional; mentally considered, posited in the mind (as opposed to something
that exists externally, irrespective of our mental consideration of it).
iʿtibār: mental consideration, notion, being of reason (ens rationis).

J
jadal: dialectic; argumentation, controversy.
jahl (also jahāla): ignorance; not knowing. Opposite of ʿilm. The Qurʾān associates faith
(īmān) with knowledge, while contrasting this latter only to ignorance (and not, e.g.,
to belief).
Jāhiliyya: the Age of Ignorance (in reference to the period of idolatry and iniquity
prior to the advent of Islam).
jahmī (pl. jahmiyya): “negationist.” One who denies the reality of the divine attributes.
The name is derived from Jahm b. Ṣafwān. Jahmiyya is largely synonymous with

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nufāh or muʿaṭṭila, but carries a stronger polemical charge. Contrasted with muth-
bita.
tajahhum: the doctrine of the jahmiyya, negationism. Adopting a doctrine that
entails denying the reality of the divine attributes. Synonymous with nafy and
taʿṭīl. Contrasted with ithbāt.
jawāz: possibility; permissibility.
jāʾiz: possible; permissible.
jawhar (pl. jawāhir): substance; atom (in the context of kalām).
jawāhir maʿqūla: intelligible substances.
jiha (pl. jihāt): lit. direction; (tech.) directionality or spatial ___location.
fī jiha: lit. in a direction; (tech.) spatially located, referring to a thing’s being in a (par-
ticular) direction vis-à-vis other objects such that it can be pointed to as being
here or there. Occurs in the theological debate regarding whether God is spatially
located ( fī jiha) with respect to creation (and whether we can, therefore, point
to Him as being literally “up there” with respect to the world).
jism (pl. ajsām): body.
tajsīm: corporealism (a subset of tashbīh). Attributing a body or corporeal proper-
ties to God. See also tashbīh.
mujassim: corporealist, one who attributes a body or corporeal properties to God.
jumhūr (pl. jamāhīr): the majority, large majority (e.g., of scholars who hold a partic-
ular view); the masses, the common people.
juzʾī: particular, a particular. Contrasted with kullī, referring to a universal.
juzʾ (ajzāʾ): part.

K
kadhib: falsehood (incl. of an assertion or proposition); lying, mendacity.
makdhūb: fabricated (said especially of a forged or unsound ḥadīth report).
kalām: speech, discourse; discursive or rational theology.
mutakallim (pl. mutakallimūn): speaker; theologian (specifically one who engages
in systematic discursive theology).
kashf : unveiling, spiritual unveiling. See also mushāhada.
kayfiyya (also kayf ): the modality or qualitative reality of a thing’s existence, its “how.”
bi-lā kayf : the theological position of affirming seemingly anthropomorphic attri-
butes of God mentioned in revelation, negating their similarity to human at-
tributes but refraining from inquiry into their precise nature or modality.
khabar (pl. akhbār): report; instance of reporting. Can also refer, in a general sense, to
revelation (in consideration of the fact that it reaches us, ultimately, by way of verbal
reports or transmission).
al-ṣifāt al-khabariyya: see ṣifa
khalaf : the later scholars. Juxtaposed to the Salaf, or early normative forebears.

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khārijī (also fī al-khārij): externally existent, existing in the world outside the mind.
Contrasted with dhihnī (mental, logical) or fī al-adhhān.
khāṣṣa: specialists (in contrast to the ʿāmma, the non-specialist general public); the
elite.
kullī: universal. Contrasted with juzʾī, referring to a particular.
kulliyyāt: universals, universal concepts.
kulliyyāt mujarrada: abstract(ed) universals. Those universal concepts abstracted
by the mind from extant particulars.
kunh: quintessential nature, inner core or essence.
kursī: God’s “footstool,” mentioned in the Qurʾān in addition to the divine throne, or
ʿarsh.

L
lafẓ (pl. alfāẓ): (1) utterance; (2) word, term, expression, vocable; (3) verbal form, word-
ing, language; (4) (also talaffuẓ) verbalization, verbal recitation, vocal pronunciation
(of the Qurʾānic text). Contrasted, in sense (3), with maʿnā.
lafẓ mushtarak: see ishtirāk
lāzim: (li) concomitant to, entailed or implied by; (pl. lawāzim) concomitant (n.); con-
sequent (n.); (logical) consequence, implication.
talāzum: mutual concomitance, mutual entailment, mutual implication.
mutalāzim(ān): mutually concomitant, mutually entailing, mutually implied.

M
mā baʿda al-ṭabīʿa: metaphysics (lit. what is beyond [‘meta’] nature [or physics]). Pri-
marily used in philosophical works. Largely synonymous with ilāhiyyāt.
mā bihi al-ikhtilāf : see ikhtilāf
mā bihi al-ishtirāk: see ishtirāk
madhhab (pl. madhāhib): school, school of thought (especially legal); doctrine, posi-
tion, teaching (of a person or school).
madlūl: see dalīl
maʿdūm: see ʿadam
mafhūm: sense, meaning, signification; linguistic implication, implied meaning; (pl.
mafāhīm) concept.
mafsada (pl. mafāsid): detriment. Opposite of maṣlaḥa. See also fasād, under fāsid.
māhiyya: essence, quiddity. What a thing is (its “whatness”) as opposed to that it is (its
inniyya, or “thatness”).
maḥsūs: see ḥiss
majāz: non-literal or figurative meaning of a word or expression, in contrast to its
ḥaqīqa (“real” or literal) sense. Often translated by the more specific term “meta-
phor,” which is, more properly speaking, istiʿāra.

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makān (pl. amkina, amākin): place.

fī makān: subject or confined to place; existing in a (specific) place
makdhūb: see kadhib
maʿnā (pl. maʿānī): (1) meaning, signification; (2) notion, concept, intentional object;
(3) quality, property; (4) entity. Often contrasted, in the first sense, with lafẓ.
ṣifāt al-maʿānī: see ṣifa
al-ṣifāt al-maʿnawiyya: see ṣifa
maqāṣid (sing. maqṣid): aims, intentions, objectives; higher objectives or purposes (of
the revealed law, or Sharīʿa).
maʿqūl: see ʿaql
maʿrifa (pl. maʿārif ): knowledge; cognizance, cognition. Also, experiential knowledge
or the knowledge of familiarity, in contrast to knowledge of a propositional kind
(similar to French connaître vs. savoir, German kennen vs. wissen, or Persian shenākh-
tan vs. dānestan). Can therefore refer by extension to spiritual gnosis, or direct,
experiential knowledge of God.
marjūḥ: non-preponderant (in reference to the non-literal meaning of a word in con-
trast to its primary or obvious sense); less probative, of lesser probative value (in
reference to the weaker of two positions, arguments, or pieces of evidence). Con-
trasted in both senses with rājiḥ. See also tarjīḥ.
maṣlaḥa (pl. maṣāliḥ): benefit (personal or public); interest, good; common good. The
promotion of maṣlaḥa among the general public, as opposed to purveying knowl-
edge of ultimate truth, is considered by the philosophers to be the main purpose
and value of revealed religion. Opposite of mafsada.
maṣlaḥa mursala: see istiṣlāḥ
mathal (pl. amthāl): parable (such as the amthāl mentioned in the Qurʾān), allegory;
analog; likeness or similitude.
tamthīl: the use of parable or allegory, allegorization; analogy; likening or striking a
similitude.
maʾthūr and maʾthūrāt: see athar
matn (pl. mutūn): the text of ḥadīth, as opposed to its isnād, or chain of transmission.
mawjūd: see wujūd
mawqūf : contingent (ʿalā, on).
mawṣūf : see ṣifa
milla (pl. milal): religion, religious community.
miqdār: measure; quantity; dimension; magnitude, volume, spatial expanse.
mirāʾ: disputation, disputatiousness.
mirya: doubt.
al-mīthāq: the “primordial covenant,” referenced in Q. al-Aʿrāf 7:172, in which God
caused all human souls ever to be to bear witness against themselves that He is their
Lord.

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muʿaṭṭila: see taʿṭīl

muʾawwal: see taʾwīl
muʿayyan: see ʿayn
mubāyana: being distinct and separate from, particularly with respect to God’s distinc-
tion and separateness from creation.
mubāyin: distinct and separate (li, from), especially of God with respect to creation.
mubīn: clear, manifest (particularly with respect to the meaning of revelation).
bayān: clarity (particularly of the meaning of revelation); (also tibyān) elucidation,
clarification.
muftaqir (ilā): lit. in want or need (of); (tech.) ontologically dependent (on).
iftiqār: lit. want, need; (tech.) ontological dependence (of one entity on another).
More literally, the ontological “poverty” of one thing in relation to another, as in
the case, for instance, of creation in relation to God.
muḥāyith: co-located, occupying the same space or ___location.
muḥdath: see ḥādith
muḥdith: see ḥādith
muḥkam: lit. firmly established, solid; (tech.) determinate (in meaning). A Qurʾānic
term often translated as “clear” or “unambiguous” in reference to verses that are
understood to be determinate in meaning and meant in a literal sense (and, hence,
not open to figurative interpretation through taʾwīl). Contrasted with mutashābih.
mujarrabāt: experiential matters, matters known through observation or experience
(such as astronomy).
mujarrad: abstract; abstracted from matter or from particulars.
tajrīd: abstraction (as in tajrīd al-kulliyyāt ʿan al-muʿayyanāt, or the abstraction
of universals from particulars; also tajrīd al-rūḥ ʿan al-badan, referring to the
“abstraction” or dissociation of the soul from the body upon death). Sometimes
rendered as intizāʿ.
kulliyyāt mujarrada: see kullī
mujassim: see jism
mujmal: see ijmāl
mulḥid: see ilḥād
mumāthala: similarity or likeness. Synonymous with mushābaha.
tamthīl: likening or assimilating God to created beings (synonymous in this sense
with tashbīh). Also, allegory.
mumkin: possible (as opposed to impossible), contingent (as opposed to necessary).
Contrasted with mumtaniʿ (impossible) and wājib (necessary).
imkān: possibility, contingency.
mumtaniʿ: impossible. Contrasted with mumkin (possible, contingent) and wājib (nec-
essary).
imtināʿ: impossibility.

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munqasim: divisible.
inqisām: divisibility.
muntasib (ilā): someone affiliated or associated (with) (e.g., a doctrine, religion, school
of thought, scholarly authority).
intisāb (ilā): affiliation or association (with) (e.g., a doctrine, religion, school of
thought, scholarly authority).
muqaddarāt dhihniyya: see taqdīr
muqallid: see taqlīd
murād: meaning, intended meaning (of speech or a speaker); intention or objective.
murajjiḥ: see tarjīḥ
murakkab: see tarkīb
musammā (pl. musammayāt): nominatum, the object or concept to which a noun
(ism) refers.
mushābaha: see tashābuh
mushabbih: see tashbīh
mushāhada: that which is observed; spiritual witnessing, direct witnessing of unseen
realities (through kashf, or spiritual unveiling).
mushakhkhaṣ: individuated.
tashkhīṣ: individuation.
mushtarak: see ishtirāk
mutaʾakhkhirūn: the later authorities of a pursuit or discipline. In the context of Ashʿarī
kalām, “al-mutaʾakhkhirūn” refers to the generations following (and possibly includ-
ing) al-Juwaynī (d. 478/1085). Contrasted with mutaqaddimūn.
mutaḥayyiz: see ḥayyiz
mutakallim: see kalām
mutalāzim(ān): see lāzim
mutaqaddimūn: the early authorities of a pursuit or discipline. In the context of Ashʿarī
kalām, “al-mutaqaddimūn” refers to al-Ashʿarī (d. 324/935 or 936) and the first sev-
eral generations after him, up to (and possibly including) al-Juwaynī (d. 478/1085).
Contrasted with mutaʾakhkhirūn.
mutaṣawwar: see taṣawwur
mutashābih and mushtabih: see tashābuh
mutawātir: see tawātur
muthbita (and muthbitūn): see ithbāt
muṭlaq: absolute; unconditioned (specifically in reference to a universal concept con-
sidered apart from any particularizing factors).

N
nafs: (pl. anfus) self; (pl. nufūs) soul.
al-nafs al-nāṭiqa: the rational soul.
nafsī: essential, proper to the very being of a thing.

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ṣifa nafsiyya: see ṣifa

bi-nafsihi: by virtue of itself (as in wājib bi-nafsihi, or necessary by virtue of itself).
See also qāʾim bi-nafsihi, under qāʾim.
fī nafs al-amr: in and of itself, intrinsically.
nafy: negation, specifically of the divine attributes; negationism (as a doctrine that
entails negating or also, for Ibn Taymiyya, reinterpreting figuratively through taʾwīl)
some or all of the divine attributes in order to avoid tashbīh. Largely synonymous
with taʿṭīl or tajahhum. Contrasted with ithbāt, or affirmationism.
nufāh: “negationists.” Those who deny the reality of the divine attributes (or also,
for Ibn Taymiyya, reinterpret them figuratively through taʾwīl). Often used inter-
changeably with muʿaṭṭila or jahmiyya. Contrasted with muthbita.
naql: lit. transmission. Refers in the Darʾ primarily to revelation, consisting of the
(transmitted) texts of the Qurʾān and authenticated prophetic ḥadīth. Largely syn-
onymous with samʿ and with sharʿ.
naqlī: revelational, scriptural. Largely synonymous with samʿī and sharʿī.
naql ṣaḥīḥ (also ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl): authentic divine revelation, as preserved and
transmitted in the form of the Qurʾān and the body of authenticated prophetic
ḥadīth. Held by Ibn Taymiyya to be fully congruent with ʿaql ṣarīḥ, or pure,
authentic, sound natural reason.
naẓar: discursive reasoning, rational or discursive inference; rational inquiry.
naẓarī: discursive, inferential (in contrast to badīhī); theoretical (as in al-ʿaql al-
naẓarī: theoretical reason).
naẓariyyāt: propositions or knowledge derived through discursive inference or
other rational inquiry. Contrasted with badīhiyyāt.
ḥusn al-naẓar (also naẓar ḥasan): sound reasoning, sound rational inference. The
conclusions of ḥusn al-naẓar, according to Ibn Taymiyya, are always found to be
in accord with revealed knowledge.
nuẓẓār: translated as “rationalists.” Refers to those who engage in systematic dis-
cursive reasoning, especially in the realm of theology. Normally used by Ibn
Taymiyya in reference to rationalistically inclined mutakallimūn like al-Rāzī.
nisbī: relational, relative. Often synonymous with iḍāfī.

Q
qāḍī (pl. quḍāh): judge.
qāḍī al-quḍāh: chief justice (lit. judge of judges).
qadīm: eternal, beginningless, pre-eternally existent. Contrasted with ḥādith (or muḥ-
dath).
qidam: eternality, beginninglessness, pre-eternal existence. Contrasted with ḥu-
dūth.
qadr mushtarak: see ishtirāk

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qāʿida (pl. qawāʿid): term used by Ibn Taymiyya to refer to a treatise (such as al-Qāʿida
al-Murrākushiyya). Otherwise means rule; base, basis.
qāʾim: subsisting, subsistent (bi, in).
qāʾim bi-nafsihi (or bi-dhātihi, pl. qāʾima bi-anfusihā/bi-dhātihā): self-subsisting,
existing by virtue of itself (said of God); self-standing (said of other entities),
independent, existing as a discrete entity independent of other things (in con-
trast, e.g., to a concept, which subsists in the mind, or an attribute, which subsists
in a substance or entity). Etymologically parallel and semantically equivalent to
German selbständig.
qāma bi: to subsist in (as attributes in a substance or entity).
qalb (pl. qulūb): heart; also, mind. Considered a primary seat of cognition, involved in
both discursive reasoning and primary rational intuition as well as the moral-cum-
cognitive intuitions grounded in fiṭra.
al-qānūn al-kullī (also qānūn al-taʾwīl): the “universal rule” of the later theologians for
reinterpreting figuratively or suspending judgement on the meaning of scripture
when it is found to conflict with reason.
qānūn al-taʾwīl: see al-qānūn al-kullī
qarāʾin (sing. qarīna): circumstantial or contextual evidence; context (by which to
understand the meaning of a linguistic utterance). In this latter sense, synonymous
with siyāq/siyāq al-kalām.
qarāʾin maʿnawiyya: the non-verbal context of an utterance (indispensable, accord-
ing to Ibn Taymiyya, for determining the meaning of a word in any given instance
of verbal communication).
qarn (pl. qurūn): generation. For Ibn Taymiyya, the term “Salaf” refers to the first three
generations (qurūn) of Muslims, namely, the Prophet’s Companions (ṣaḥāba), the
Successors (tābiʿūn), and the Successors of the Successors (tābiʿū al-tābiʿīn).
qasīm (pl. aqsimāʾ, qasāʾim, qusamāʾ): counterpart.
qaṭʿī: definitive, conclusive (said of an argument, piece of evidence, or other indicant
of knowledge). Contrasted with ẓannī.
qaṭʿ: definitiveness, conclusiveness. Contrasted with ẓann.
qaṭʿiyyāt (also qawāṭiʿ): definitive matters, propositions of conclusive certainty.
Contrasted with ẓanniyyāt.
qawl (pl. aqwāl, aqāwīl [pej.]): statement; position, doctrine.
al-qāʾilūna bi …: those who hold the position/adhere to the doctrine of …
qidam: see qadīm
qiyās (sometimes pluralized as maqāyīs): analogy, legal analogy, analogical inference;
syllogism, syllogistic demonstration; (occasionally) rational inference more gener-
ally.
qiyās al-khalf : indirect proof or syllogism (a species of proof by contradiction). In-
volves assuming the opposite of a proposition p, showing that −p leads to a con-

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tradiction, and therefore concluding p. Converse of the reductio ad absurdum,

which starts by assuming a proposition p, then shows that p leads to a contradic-
tion or absurdity and therefore concludes −p.
al-qiyās al-mustaqīm: (when contrasted with qiyās al-khalf ) direct proof or syllo-
gism, i.e., the standard form of the syllogism that draws a direct inference from
premises to conclusion (as opposed to establishing a conclusion based on the
absurdity or contradictoriness of its opposite).
qiyās al-tamthīl: analogy, legal analogy; analogical syllogism. Otherwise known sim-
ply as qiyās. The term qiyās al-tamthīl seems to be specific to Ibn Taymiyya, who
was keen to make the point that analogy, proceeding from particular to partic-
ular, and the syllogism, proceeding from universal to particular, are essentially
equivalent, the one readily being converted into the other. Juxtaposed with qiyās
al-shumūl.
qiyās al-shumūl: Ibn Taymiyya’s term for a categorical syllogism, which he juxta-
poses with qiyās al-tamthīl.
qiyās al-ghāʾib ʿalā al-shāhid (also al-qiyās bi-l-shāhid ʿalā al-ghāʾib): drawing an
analogy between the seen and the unseen realms, drawing an inference or trans-
ferring a judgement from the seen to the unseen.
quwwa (pl. quwā): potency, potentiality; capacity; faculty (as in al-quwwa al-ʿāqila: the
rational faculty).
bi-l-quwwa: potential, potentially, in potentia.
bi-l-fiʿl: actual, actually, in actu.

R
rājiḥ: preponderant (in reference to the primary or most obvious meaning of a word);
more probative, of greater probative weight (in reference to the stronger of two posi-
tions, arguments, or pieces of evidence). Contrasted in both senses with marjūḥ. See
also tarjīḥ.
raʾy: reasoned or considered opinion. As a technical term, refers specifically to earlier,
less formalized methods of legal reasoning.
rūḥ (pl. arwāḥ): spirit, soul.
ruʾya: seeing, vision. Specifically, the beatific vision, or seeing of God in the hereafter.

S
ṣaḥāba (sing. ṣaḥābī): the Companions of the Prophet Muḥammad.
ṣaḥīḥ: correct; valid, sound (as opposed to fāsid); authentic (said, e.g., of a transmitted
text, specifically a text of revelation). See also naql ṣaḥīḥ and ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl, under
naql.
sajʿ: rhymed prose.
Salaf (also al-salaf al-ṣāliḥ): the normative early community, pious forebears. Confined,

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for Ibn Taymiyya, to the first three generations of Muslims, those of the Companions
(ṣaḥāba), the Successors (tābiʿūn), and the Successors of the Successors (tābiʿū al-
tābiʿīn). Juxtaposed with the khalaf, or later scholars.
salb: negation; stripping away.
al-ṣifāt al-salbiyya: see ṣifa
ṣāliḥ: good, right; wholesome, healthful; righteous. Opposite of fāsid.
samʿ (also samāʿ): hearing, sense of hearing; revelation (in consideration of the fact
that it comes to us, in the first instance, through our hearing of the revealed text of
the Qurʾān and the prophetic ḥadīth). Nearly synonymous in this latter sense with
naql (lit. “transmission”) as well as with sharʿ.
samʿī: revealed, revelational, scriptural. Largely synonymous in this sense with naqlī
and sharʿī.
samʿiyyāt: a term referring collectively to the revealed texts (which have come to us
by way of “hearing”), namely, the Qurʾān and the body of authenticated prophetic
ḥadīth.
samāʿ: see samʿ
al-Ṣāniʿ: the Maker, the Creator, God. Non-Qurʾānic term used, however, by both phi-
losophers and theologians alike.
ṣarīḥ: pure, unadulterated, clear. See also ʿaql ṣarīḥ and ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl, under ʿaql.
shabīh: see tashābuh
shahāda: a Qurʾānic term referring to the visible or seen realm to which we have cus-
tomary empirical access, contrasted with the habitually unseen realm, or ghayb.
shāhid: seen, visible; existing in the realm to which we have empirical access. Con-
trasted with ghāʾib.
shakk (pl. shukūk): doubt.
sharʿ: lit. revealed law, lex. Also commonly used as a synonym of dīn with reference to
the religion as a whole. Can also refer to revelation specifically, which is the most
common usage of the term in the Darʾ. Synonymous in this latter sense with naql
and samʿ.
sharʿī: revealed, revelational, prescribed by or known on the basis of revelation.
Often synonymous with naqlī and samʿī. Frequently contrasted with ʿaqlī (ratio-
nal), but set by Ibn Taymiyya in contrast to bidʿī (innovated) instead.
sharīʿa (pl. sharāʾiʿ): revealed law; normative law of a (religious) community. Can
also refer, in some contexts, to religion, or revealed religion, more generally.
Largely synonymous with shirʿa.
Sharīʿa: the revealed law of Islam.
sharāʾiʿ [also]: religious practices; (religious) laws, ordinances; religious teachings
or precepts.
shirʿa: revelation, scripture; scriptural or revealed religion. Largely synonymous
with sharīʿa. Also refers, in Ibn Taymiyya’s usage, to that which is scripturally

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or religiously legitimated or approved. In this latter sense, the direct opposite

of bidʿa.
shirk: idolatry, polytheism, paganism.
shubha (pl. shubuhāt, shubah): specious objection or counterargument; doubt or con-
fusion; point of doubt or confusion (caused by specious objections or counterargu-
ments raised against a doctrine, belief, or other affirmation).
ṣifa (pl. ṣifāt): attribute, quality.
mawṣūf : the entity qualified by an attribute or quality.
al-ṣifa al-nafsiyya: “attribute of the essence.” That which defines or describes what
a thing is in itself without any additional qualification. In the case of God, this
attribute is existence itself.
al-ṣifāt al-salbiyya: attributes of negation (often called “negative attributes”). At-
tributes that negate the ascription of a quality to the entity in question. God’s
oneness, for example, is a negation of multiplicity; His self-sufficiency is a nega-
tion of need; His eternality is the negation of a beginning or end to His existence;
etc.
ṣifāt al-maʿānī: real, or “entitative,” attributes. Specifically, God’s attributes, such as
life, knowledge, power, and will, considered as real entities (maʿānī) subsisting
in His essence.
al-ṣifāt al-maʿnawiyya: predicative attributes, or attributes of predication. Namely,
the qualifications entailed by the presence of the real attributes (such as God’s
“being powerful,” a ṣifa maʿnawiyya entailed by His real attribute of power).
al-ṣifāt al-ʿaqliyya: rational attributes. Those divine attributes that can be known
through reason independently of revelation, such as God’s existence, eternality,
oneness, life, knowledge, power, and will.
al-ṣifāt al-khabariyya: revealed attributes. Refers to those divine attributes that can-
not be derived through reason but can only be known on the basis of revelation.
Often refers specifically to those revealed attributes that lay at the center of the
controversy over tashbīh and taʾwīl, such as God’s hands, eyes, face, or settling on
the throne.
siyāq (also siyāq al-kalām): context (i.e., in light of which the meaning of a linguistic
utterance is understood). Synonymous in this sense with qarīna/qarāʾin.
sūra (pl. suwar): chapter of the Qurʾān (as in Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, the Chapter of Women).
ṣūra (pl. ṣuwar): form; image.

T
tabādur (ilā al-dhihn): occurring first (to the mind). Said of that meaning, among sev-
eral meanings of a polysemous word, that first comes to mind upon hearing the term
outside a particular context.
tabdīl: alteration (of meaning). Term used by Ibn Taymiyya in reference to two sub-

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categories of altering the meaning of revelation in the face of an alleged rational

contradiction, namely, al-wahm wa-l-takhyīl (see wahm) and al-taḥrīf wa-l-taʾwīl
(see taḥrīf ).
tābiʿūn (sing. tābiʿī): the Successors (i.e., the generation immediately following that of
the Prophet and his Companions).
tābiʿū al-tābiʿīn (also atbāʿ al-tābiʿīn): the Successors of the Successors (i.e., the second
generation after that of the Prophet and his Companions).
tafrīq: disseverance, disassembling, taking apart.
tafsīr: Qurʾānic exegesis.
tafwīḍ: lit. consigning, entrusting. Suspension of meaning, that is, denying the literal
meaning of a Qurʾānic verse or ḥadīth taken to entail anthropomorphism but con-
signing or entrusting (“tafwīḍ”) its true meaning to God rather than proffering a
particular figurative interpretation through taʾwīl.
taḥayyuz: see ḥayyiz
taḥrīf : alteration, change; distortion.
al-taḥrīf wa-l-taʾwīl (rendered as “taḥrīf and taʾwīl”): term used by Ibn Taymiyya to
denote the philosophers’ and theologians’ use of what he considers unjustified
figurative interpretation of revelation in the face of an alleged rational contra-
diction.
ṭāʾifa (pl. ṭawāʾif ): faction (political or ideological, including in reference to religious
creeds or sects).
tajahhum: see jahmī
tajrīd: see mujarrad
tajsīm: see jism
takāfuʾ al-adilla: equivalence, or equipollence, of proofs. The fact of two or more proofs
or arguments for different positions appearing to have equal probative weight,
resulting in an inability to decide the matter at hand.
takalluf : unnaturalness of manner, unnatural strain and affectation.
takhṣīṣ: particularization (of a general, or ʿāmm, lexical term or legal ruling); God’s act
of determining or specifying the particular attributes of a thing, including the thing’s
very instantiation through “specifying” it with the attribute or quality of existence
over that of non-existence.
takhyīl: “imaginalization” or imaginative evocation. Refers to the philosophers’ doc-
trine that statements in revelation pertaining to, e.g., the afterlife are not literally
true but only imaginative representations of abstract realities that lie beyond the
grasp of non-philosophers. See also al-wahm wa-l-takhyīl, under wahm.
talāzum: see lāzim
tamthīl: see mathal and mumāthala
tanzīh: God’s incomparability or radical dissimilarity to any created thing; affirming
God’s incomparability or dissimilarity by declaring Him free of (“tanzīh”) creaturely

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attributes. Often translated as “transcendence,” which entails that God is wholly

beyond and independent of the material universe or any characteristics thereof.
Contrasted (positively) with tashbīh.
taqdīr: supposition, assumption, hypothesis.
muqaddarāt dhihniyya: mental hypotheses; suppositions, hypotheticals. Objects,
relations, or states of affairs hypothesized by the mind, without regard to the pos-
sibility of their existence in the external world.
taqlīd: imitation, blind imitation; (law) legal conformism. Following a position or opin-
ion on the basis of authority. In theology, this refers to belief in God absent any
rational reflection whatsoever, resulting (for most theologians) in an absence of
valid belief. Upon the perception of basic rational reasons for believing in God, a
person ceases to be a muqallid. In law, a person may practice taqlīd either with or
without possessing knowledge of the underlying evidence in support of the legal
doctrines of one’s school.
muqallid: an “imitator,” someone who practices taqlīd.
ṭarīq (and ṭarīqa, pl. ṭuruq): method, way; also, argument.
ṭarīq (or ṭarīqat) al-aʿrāḍ: the way/method of proving the existence of God from the
temporal origination of accidents or, more simply, the argument from accidents.
See also ʿaraḍ.
tarjīḥ: (linguistic) determination of the preponderant, or dominant, meaning of a pol-
ysemous word (see also rājiḥ and marjūḥ); (ontological) selection (and instantia-
tion) of a specific quality or state from a potentially infinite set of possibilities. A
thing only is, for example, because its existence has been selected and instantiated,
through tarjīḥ, over its non-existence.
murajjiḥ: that which selects and instantiates a specific quality or state from a poten-
tially infinite set of possibilities. In a theological context, God is the ultimate
murajjiḥ as sufficient cause for the existence and particular characteristics of the
universe and all that it contains.
tarkīb: composition, compositeness.
murakkab: composed, composite. Antonym of basīṭ.
tasalsul: infinite regress.
tasalsul al-ʿilal (or al-tasalsul fī al-ʿilal): infinite regress of causes, infinite causal
regress.
tasalsul al-āthār (or al-tasalsul fī al-āthār): infinite regress of effects.
tasalsul al-fāʿilīn (or al-tasalsul fī al-fāʿilīn): infinite regress of agents.
tasalsul al-shurūṭ (or al-tasalsul fī al-shurūṭ): infinite regress of conditions (as
opposed to strict causes, or ʿilal).
tasalsul al-ḥawādith (or al-tasalsul fī al-ḥawādith): infinite regress of (temporally
originated) events.
tasalsul al-ḥarakāt (or al-tasalsul fī al-ḥarakāt): infinite regress of motions.

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taṣawwuf : Sufism; Islamic mysticism. More generally, purification of the heart and
actions through spiritual and moral discipline of the soul. Synonymous, in this latter
sense, with tazkiya.
taṣawwur (pl. taṣawwurāt): conception, conceptualization.
mutaṣawwar: conceived, conceptualized (as in mutaṣawwar fī al-dhihn: conceived
of or conceptualized in/by the mind).
taṣdīq: assent (logic); (pl. taṣdīqāt) assertion, judgement; proposition.
tashābuh (and ishtibāh): (1) (also mushābaha) similarity or likeness; (2) ambiguity
caused by the use of equivocal language (i.e., that fails to clarify the meaning of a
vague term or to distinguish between the like or overlapping meanings of a poly-
semous expression); (3) indeterminacy (in meaning). Contrasted in the first sense
with ikhtilāf. Similar in the second sense to ijmāl.
tashābaha (and ishtabaha): (1) to be alike or similar; (2) to be vague, ambiguous,
equivocal (said of speech, a word, or an expression); (3) to be indeterminate (in
meaning).
mutashābih (and mushtabih): (1) (also mushābih) similar, like; (2) vague or ambigu-
ous (with respect to speech, a word, or an expression). Similar in this sense to
mujmal; (3) indeterminate (in meaning). Often translated, in this last sense, as
“figurative” or “metaphorical” with respect to Qurʾānic verses whose literal mean-
ing is understood to entail tashbīh and that must therefore be interpreted figu-
ratively through taʾwīl. Contrasted, in the first sense, with mukhtalif and, in the
second and third senses, with muḥkam.
shabīh: like, likeness (of).
tashbīh: “assimilationism.” The ascription to God of attributes shared by created beings
in a way that fails to uphold His utter dissimilarity to material or temporal entities
(synonymous in this sense with tamthīl). A particularly offensive form of tashbīh is
tajsīm, or corporealism. Contrasted (negatively) with tanzīh.
mushabbih: “assimilator.” Someone who ascribes material, temporal, or other crea-
ture-like qualities to God. Sometimes translated as “anthropomorphist,” though
this is too narrow as tashbīh includes the likening of God to any created entity,
not just human beings.
tashkhīṣ: see mushakhkhaṣ
taʿṭīl: lit. nullification. Refers, in a theological context, to the denial (especially the com-
prehensive denial) of the reality of the divine attributes. Largely synonymous with
nafy or tajahhum. Contrasted with ithbāt.
muʿaṭṭila: those who “annul” or deny the reality of the divine attributes. Largely syn-
onymous with nufāh and jahmiyya. Contrasted with muthbita.
tawassul: lit. taking means or seeking an intermediary. Refers to the practice of sup-
plicating God through (or by the intermediation of) the Prophet Muḥammad or a
deceased pious figure after him (see walī). This typically involves mentioning the

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righteous person’s name and/or rank while petitioning God for one's need. Though
permitted by the majority of classical scholars, Ibn Taymiyya condemned this type
of tawassul (and the related practice of istighātha) as a violation of the principle of
tawḥīd.
tawāṭuʾ: collusion or conscious agreement. Used specifically in the definition of tawā-
tur, where a report is considered mutawātir if, at every level of transmission, it has
been conveyed by a number of people so large and disparate as to preclude the pos-
sibility of their having colluded or consciously agreed on a forgery.
tawātur: recurrent mass transmission of a report, beginning at its origin, on such a wide
scale as to preclude the possibility of collusion or conscious agreement on a forgery.
Normally applies to the ___domain of transmitted verbal reports (especially ḥadīth),
but Ibn Taymiyya expands the concept of tawātur significantly to make it the final
guarantor of his entire epistemic system.
mutawātir: recurrently mass transmitted on such a wide scale as to preclude the
possibility of collusion or conscious agreement on a forgery.
tawḥīd: oneness of God, divine unicity; affirming the existence of one, singular God
with no plurality; monotheism. Ibn Taymiyya distinguishes three subcategories of
tawḥīd: (1) tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya, or the “oneness of lordship,” referring to God’s sta-
tus as sole Creator, Master, and Sustainer of the universe; (2) tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya, or
the “oneness of divinity or Godhood,” referring to God’s worthiness of being wor-
shipped, loved, and obeyed for His sake, alone and without partner; and (3) tawḥīd
al-asmāʾ wa-l-ṣifāt, or the “oneness of names and attributes,” referring to the fact that
God’s divine names and attributes are solely and uniquely His and are not shared in
or partaken of by any creature.
taʾwīl: a Qurʾānic term meaning explication or elucidation, or referring to the realiza-
tion, fulfillment, or outcome of a matter. As a later technical term, taʾwīl refers to the
figurative or metaphorical (re)interpretation of a text, particularly Qurʾānic verses
and ḥadīth reports whose obvious sense is thought to entail anthropomorphism.
muʾawwal: refers to the non-apparent, non-literal sense of a word that is given
precedence over the overt meaning in an instance of taʾwīl. Contrasted with
ẓāhir.
tazkiya: Purification of the heart and actions through spiritual and moral discipline of
the soul. Synonymous with taṣawwuf (in this sense only).
thiqa: term used to designate a reliable authority in ḥadīth transmission.
thubūt: (1) the real or factual existence of something, the fact that something obtains or
is the case; (2) (of transmitted texts, especially revelation) authenticity, established
textual integrity. Contrasted in the first sense with intifāʾ.
thābit: factually existing; obtaining or being the case; (with respect to transmitted
texts, especially revelation) authentic, of established textual integrity.
tibyān: see mubīn

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glossary of arabic terms 345

U
ulūhiyya (also ilāhiyya): divinity, Godhood. More fundamentally, being worthy of wor-
ship, love, and obedience as a god.
ʿuluww: lit. height, highness; being above. Refers to God’s being above the created uni-
verse (ʿuluww Allāh ʿalā khalqihi). Whether God’s ʿuluww should be understood liter-
ally or interpreted figuratively through taʾwīl was a major point of contention among
various schools of theology.
umma (pl. umam): nation. Refers primarily to the collective body of Muslims, con-
ceived as a religious/religio-political community distinct from other human group-
ings.
ʿuqalāʾ: see ʿaql
ʿurf : convention; linguistic convention (of a speech community, indispensable for
determining the meaning of a given utterance).
uṣūl (sing. aṣl): principles; foundations.
uṣūl al-dīn: the principles or foundations of religion, in reference to the sources and
justificatory grounds for belief. Sometimes translated as “theology,” but not nec-
essarily in the formal sense of discursive kalām.
uṣūl al-fiqh: foundations of jurisprudence, legal theory.

W
waḍʿ: (1) convention; (2) a word’s putative initial assignation to a given meaning; the
meaning to which a word is considered to have been initially assigned; coinage (of
a new term with a particular meaning).
waḥdat al-wujūd: the “unity of being.” Mystical doctrine associated with the Sufi school
of Muḥyī al-Dīn b. ʿArabī (d. 638/1240), criticized as entailing pantheism (ḥulūl) by
its opponents. Ibn Taymiyya strongly opposed the doctrine of waḥdat al-wujūd.
wahm: estimation. The ability to apprehend the meaning of sensible objects, draw
inferences therefrom, and act accordingly (like a sheep sensing the danger of a
nearby wolf and fleeing). Also, the ability to experience an event or state as real
in the mind irrespective of its actual occurrence in the outside world.
al-quwwa al-wahmiyya: the estimative faculty.
wahmiyyāt: products of the estimative faculty; events or states experienced as real
in the mind irrespective of their occurrence in the outside world.
al-wahm wa-l-takhyīl (rendered as “wahm and takhyīl”): term used by Ibn Taymiyya
for the philosophers’ doctrine that statements in revelation pertaining to, e.g.,
the afterlife are not literally true but only imaginative representations of abstract
realities that lie beyond the grasp of non-philosophers.
wajh (pl. wujūh): aspect, angle, consideration; point, argument, point of argument
(used by Ibn Taymiyya in reference to his discrete arguments against the universal
rule).

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346 glossary of arabic terms

wājib: necessary (as a qualification of ontological modality, the opposite of possible

or contingent); obligatory (as a moral-legal qualification of acts). Contrasted, in the
first sense, with mumkin (possible, contingent) and mumtaniʿ (impossible).
wājib al-wujūd: the Necessarily Existent, God.
wujūb: necessity (ontological); obligatoriness, being obligatory (moral-legal).
walī (pl. awliyāʾ): lit. close friend (of God). Righteous person of high spiritual rank,
saint.
waqf : suspension of judgement. Refraining from committing to one of two or more
opposing views, arguments, or positions.
wāqifa: those who hold an agnostic stance on a question by suspending judgement
or refraining from committing to a particular view on it.
waraʿ: moral scrupulousness, scrupulous piety; pious restraint (from committing ac-
tions of even slightly questionable moral probity).
waṣf (pl. awṣāf ): description.
wujūb: see wājib
wujūd: existence. Opposite of ʿadam.
mawjūd: existing, existent (opposite of maʿdūm); (pl. mawjūdāt) existent (n.), exist-
ing thing, being, entity.

Y
yaqīn: certainty, certitude. Contrasted with ẓann.
yaqīnī: certain, known with certainty, definitive. Contrasted with ẓannī.
yaqīniyyāt: certain premises; matters known with certainty. Contrasted with ẓan-
niyyāt.

Z
ẓāhir: (1) apparent, manifest; (2) external, outward, outer (as in ḥiss ẓāhir, or external
sensation); (3) the apparent, obvious, or literal meaning of a word, expression, or
text. Contrasted in the first two senses with bāṭin and in the third with muʾawwal.
ẓann: inconclusiveness, probability (in contrast to yaqīn or qaṭʿ). Can be translated in
some contexts as conjecture, supposition, or even suspicion.
ẓannī: inconclusive, probabilistic, non-definitive; suppositional, conjectural; sus-
pect. Contrasted with yaqīnī or qaṭʿī.
ẓanniyyāt: non-certain or probabilistic premises; probabilistic or non-definitive
matters; matters of supposition or conjecture. Contrasted with yaqīniyyāt or
qaṭʿiyyāt/qawāṭiʿ.

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Glossary of Proper Names

A
ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar (d. 73/693): Companion of the Prophet and son of the Caliph ʿUmar
b. al-Khaṭṭāb. Was active in narrating traditions from the Prophet and gained a rep-
utation for his precision in recalling events that took place during the Prophet’s life.
ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, Abū Bakr (d. 363/974): Ḥanbalī muḥaddith and jurist who transmitted
the Kitāb al-Amr of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal.
ʿAbd b. Ḥumayd (Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd b. Ḥumayd) (d. 249/863): Early
muḥaddith who compiled his own musnad work. Prominent ḥadīth scholars nar-
rated from him, including al-Bukhārī, al-Tirmidhī, and Muslim.
ʿAbd al-Jabbār, al-Qāḍī Abū al-Ḥasan (d. 415/1025): Major Muʿtazilī theologian, a
Shāfiʿī, who presented a systematic discussion of Muʿtazilī doctrine in his ten-
volume work al-Mughnī fī abwāb al-tawḥīd wa-l-ʿadl.
ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī (d. 561/1166): Well-known Sufi and Ḥanbalī scholar in Baghdad
who, after his death, became the eponym of the Qādiriyya Sufi order. Was greatly
respected by Ibn Taymiyya, who wrote a commentary on ʿAbd al-Qādir’s mystical
treatise Futūḥ al-ghayb.
al-Abharī, Athīr al-Dīn (d. 663/1264 or 1265): Influential philosopher, astronomer, as-
trologer, and mathematician. His philosophical tracts Īsāghūjī and Hidāyat al-ḥikma
are commonly taught in seminaries and other scholastic settings around the world.
Abū Ḥanīfa, al-Nuʿmān b. Thābit (d. 150/767): Founder and eponym of the Ḥanafī
school of law. Studied with many noteworthy jurists and theologians, particularly
the Kufan legal scholar Ḥammād b. Sulaymān. Some report that he met the Prophet’s
Companion Anas b. Mālik and therefore counts as a Successor (tābiʿī).
Abū al-Hudhayl al-ʿAllāf (d. between 226/840 and 235/850): Early theologian, often
considered the first systematic Muʿtazilī thinker. Introduced the theory of atomism
into theology, but all of his writings have been lost.
Abū Muʿādh al-Tūmanī (death date unknown): A leader of the Murjiʾa and head of the
Tūmaniyya sub-faction of them. Held that faith (īmān) does not shield one against
disbelief (kufr). Defined faith as consisting of certain traits (khiṣāl); abandoning one
or more of these traits entails disbelief. Al-Ashʿarī reports that he followed Zuhayr
al-Atharī in many of the latter’s opinions.
Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī (d. 386/996): Sufi ascetic and preacher famous for his Qūt al-qulūb,
a 48-chapter treatise on Sufi piety and practice that is styled after a manual of
jurisprudence.
Abū ʿUbayda, Maʿmar b. al-Muthannā (d. ca. 210/825): Arabic philologist and exegete
from Basra of non-Arab, Jewish origin. Was accused of being a shuʿūbī (opponent of
Arab cultural and political supremacy) and a Khārijī.

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348 glossary of proper names

Abū Yaʿlā b. al-Farrāʾ (al-Qāḍī Abū Yaʿlā) (d. 458/1066): Prominent Ḥanbalī jurist and
theologian, referred to by fellow Ḥanbalīs for centuries simply as “al-qāḍī.” Author
of many works, the most famous of which is his Kitāb al-Muʿtamad, one of the first
major Ḥanbalī works of theology written on the model of a formal kalām treatise.
Abū Zahra, Muḥammad (d. 1394/1974): Prominent twentieth-century Azharī legal
scholar. Wrote over thirty books and one hundred articles on Islamic law, Qurʾān
commentary, ḥadīth, theology, and other topics.
ʿĀʾisha bt. Abī Bakr (d. 58/678): The Prophet’s third wife. Over one thousand prophetic
ḥadīth are said to have been related on her authority, around three hundred of which
are recorded in the Ṣaḥīḥ collections of al-Bukhārī and Muslim.
Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. ca. 200 CE): Peripatetic philosopher and commentator
on Aristotle. Known in the Arabic biographical tradition as al-Iskandar al-Afrūdīsī
al-Dimashqī.
ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/661): Last of the four Rightly Guided Caliphs. Cousin and son-in-
law of the Prophet Muḥammad and an important figure for both Sunnīs and Shīʿīs.
His reign as caliph was rife with conflict. Assassinated by an agent of the Khawārij.
al-Āmidī, Sayf al-Dīn (d. 631/1233): Major later Ashʿarī theologian and legal scholar.
Criticized by Ibn Taymiyya for suspending judgement (waqf ) on a number of central
theological and legal issues.
al-Āmulī, Karīm al-Dīn (d. 710/1310 or 1311): Prominent Egyptian Sufi who, along with
Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh al-Iskandarī, opposed Ibn Taymiyya for his denunciation of various
beliefs and practices that he considered reprehensible innovation (bidʿa).
al-Anṣārī, Abū al-Qāsim (d. 512/1118): Shāfiʿī mutakallim and Sufi who studied under
al-Juwaynī and wrote a commentary of the latter’s Irshād. Was noted for his intelli-
gence and for his writings on asceticism, worship, and kalām.
al-Aṣbahānī, Dāwūd (see al-Ẓāhirī, Dāwūd b. Khalaf)
al-Aṣbahānī, Jaʿfar b. Ḥayyān (“Abū al-Shaykh”) (d. 369/979): Muḥaddith from Isfahan.
Teacher of the prominent ḥadīth scholars Ibn Mandah and Ibn Mardawayhi.
al-Aṣfahānī (occasionally al-Aṣbahānī),1 Shams al-Dīn Maḥmūd (d. 749/1349): Persian
theologian and scholar. Raised in Isfahan but spent most of his life in Syria, then
Egypt. Was known for his exegetical writings as well as his works in the rational
sciences. Ibn Taymiyya met him while in Damascus and was impressed by his eru-
dition.
al-Ashʿarī, Abū al-Ḥasan (d. 324/935 or 936): Founder of the Ashʿarī school of the-
ology. Studied under the head of the Muʿtazila in Basra, Abū ʿAlī al-Jubbāʾī, but
publicly renounced his Muʿtazilī affiliations at the age of forty. Subsequently dedi-

1 The Arabic nisba adjective derived from the Iranian city of Isfahan appears variously as
al-Aṣbahānī, al-Aṣfahānī, and al-Iṣfahānī. I have cited each figure’s name according to the
spelling most commonly found in the biographical dictionaries and/or on the title pages of
the figure’s published works.

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glossary of proper names 349

cated himself to a systematic defense of traditional doctrine using the methods of

the mutakallimūn.
al-Ashʿarī, Abū Mūsā (d. ca. 42/662): Companion of the Prophet and ancestor of the
famous theologian Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī.
ʿAssāf al-Naṣrānī (“the Christian”) (death date unknown): Christian from Suwaydāʾ,
in southwestern Syria, alleged to have publicly insulted the Prophet Muḥammad in
693/1294. This incident marked Ibn Taymiyya’s first incursion into political life.
Averroes (see Ibn Rushd)
Avicenna (see Ibn Sīnā)

B
al-Baghdādī, ʿAbd al-Qāhir (d. 429/1037 or 1038): Ashʿarī theologian who taught and
lived in Nishapur and Khurasan. His Kitāb Uṣūl al-dīn is a systematic treatise that
covers the views of various Muslim sects on central topics of theology.
al-Baghdādī, Abū al-Barakāt b. Malkā(n) (d. 560/1164 or 1165): Jewish convert to Islam
and philosopher. Parts of his most famous work, Kitāb al-Muʿtabar, were derived
from Ibn Sīnā’s Shifāʾ, though he was also critical of this latter. Composed a number
of novel works in both philosophy and medicine.
al-Bāhilī, Abū al-Ḥasan (d. ca. 370/980): Ashʿarī theologian from Basra and one of the
direct pupils of Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī.
Baqī b. Makhlad (d. 276/889): Cordovan muḥaddith who helped introduce ḥadīth stud-
ies in Andalusia. Traveled to Baghdad and other cities in Iraq where he came into
contact with prominent ḥadīth scholars, including Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal. Wrote a tafsīr
of the Qurʾān.
al-Bāqillānī, al-Qāḍī Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. al-Ṭayyib (d. 403/1013): Prominent
Ashʿarī theologian and Mālikī legal scholar. Played a pivotal role in consolidating
and systematizing early Ashʿarī kalām. Ibn Taymiyya considers him the best of the
Ashʿarī mutakallimūn.
al-Barbahārī, al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī (d. 329/941): Prominent Ḥanbalī scholar who was the dis-
ciple of Sahl al-Tustarī. Famous mainly for his connection with rioting in Baghdad
in defense of Ḥanbalī doctrine in the 320s/930s.
al-Baṣrī, Abū al-Ḥusayn (d. 436/1044): Muʿtazilī theologian and legal scholar who
was often accused of being influenced by the philosophers for his criticism of the
Bahshamiyya Muʿtazila. His teachings influenced the famous Ashʿarī master al-
Juwaynī.
al-Baṣrī, Abū Muḥammad b. ʿAbdik (d. 347/958 or 959): Important Ḥanafī scholar who
wrote Sharḥ al-Jāmiʿayn, among other works, and who taught and transmitted the
Ḥanafī madhhab.
al-Baṣrī, al-Ḥasan (d. 110/728): Exegete and pietist belonging to the generation of the
Successors (tābiʿūn). Known for his knowledge of asbāb al-nuzūl (the “occasions of
revelation”) and universally revered by later schools of law, theology, and Sufism.

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350 glossary of proper names

Baybars (see al-Jāshnikīr, Rukn al-Dīn Baybars)

al-Bayḍāwī, Nāṣir al-Dīn ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar (d. 685/1286 or 691/1292): Shāfiʿī jurist,
Ashʿarī theologian, and Qurʾān commentator best known for his tafsīr work, Anwār
al-tanzīl wa-asrār al-taʾwīl.
al-Bayhaqī, Abū Bakr Aḥmad (d. 458/1066): Ashʿarī theologian and Shāfiʿī jurist
who provided a foundation for the doctrines of the Shāfiʿī school of law using
ḥadīth.
Burghūth, Muḥammad b. ʿĪsā (d. 240/854 or 241/855): “Jahmī” theologian and inter-
locutor of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal during the miḥna (inquisition).
al-Buwayṭī, Abū Yaʿqūb b. Yaḥyā (d. 231/846): Prominent legal scholar and top student
and companion of al-Shāfiʿī, reputed for his great learning and piety. Listed by al-
Baghdādī (in Kitāb Uṣūl al-dīn) as one of the “mutakallimūn among the jurists and
authorities of the legal schools.”

D
al-Dārimī, Abū Saʿīd ʿUthmān b. Saʿīd (d. ca. 280/894): Prominent muḥaddith, Ḥanbalī
jurist, and theologian. Student of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal and other prominent experts of
law and ḥadīth. Composed a great musnad work in ḥadīth as well as the polemical
treatise al-Radd ʿalā al-Jahmiyya.
al-Dawānī, Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Asʿad (d. 908/1502): Prominent philosopher and
theologian who authored numerous commentaries on well-known works of philos-
ophy, logic, and Sufism. Wrote original works on these topics, as well as on Qurʾānic
exegesis, dogmatic theology, and ethics (akhlāq).
al-Dhahabī, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad (d. 748/1348): Shāfiʿī historian, biographer, and
ḥadīth expert with a strong leaning towards the methodology of ahl al-ḥadīth. Was
critical of Ibn Taymiyya’s polemics against the ʿulamāʾ and accused him of having
“swallowed the poison of the philosophers.”
Ḍirār b. ʿAmr (d. ca. 200/815): Important Muʿtazilī theologian who tried to spread the
methods of kalām among the public. Held that belief was linked to intellectual
understanding.
Duḥaym, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Ibrāhīm (d. 245/859): Prominent Damascene jurist and
muḥaddith. Al-Bukhārī, Abū Dāwūd, and al-Nasāʾī, along with numerous others,
relate ḥadīth from him.

F
al-Fārābī, Abū Naṣr Muḥammad (d. ca. 339/950): Foundational figure in Islamic phi-
losophy, referred to as the “Second Teacher” (i.e., after Aristotle). Was an authority in
logic and Neoplatonism and regarded the language of revelation as merely a popular
expression of philosophical truth.

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glossary of proper names 351

G
al-Ghazālī, Abū Ḥāmid (d. 505/1111): One of the most pivotal figures in all Islamic
thought. Synthesized and profoundly influenced the subsequent development of
Islamic theology, legal theory, and Sufism. Among his most famous works are Tahā-
fut al-falāsifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers) and Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn (The Reviv-
al of the Religious Sciences).

H
Ḥafṣ al-Fard, Abū ʿAmr (or Abū Yaḥyā) (fl. ca. 200/815): Well-known theologian, either
from Egypt or later migrated there. Sources vary regarding his theological views, with
some claiming he belonged to the Mujbira, others to the Ḍirāriyya or the Najjāriyya,
and others to the Muʿtazila. Also known for debating al-Shāfiʿī.
Ḥājjī Khalīfa, Muṣṭafā b. ʿAbd Allāh (Kâtip Çelebi) (d. 1067/1657): Prolific Ottoman
historian, bibliographer, and geographer. Name derives from his secretarial post in
the Ottoman bureaucracy.
al-Ḥamawī, Ibn Wāṣil (d. 697/1298): Shāfiʿī scholar and historian. Studied discursive
theology and philosophy with the foremost authority of his time, al-Khusrūshāhī,
but did not write on theology. Most famous for his historical chronicle on the Ayyu-
bids and his work on logic.
al-Harawī, ʿAbd Allāh al-Anṣārī (d. 481/1089): Ḥanbalī and well-known Sufi. Studied
ḥadīth and tafsīr at an early age, beginning with Shāfiʿī teachers but subsequently
becoming a Ḥanbalī. His Dhamm al-kalām wa-ahlihi is a key text for understanding
the critique of rational theology in Islam.
al-Harawī, Abū Dharr al-Anṣārī (d. 434/1043): Mālikī scholar and shaykh of the ḥaram.
Transmitted ḥadīth in Khurasan and Baghdad. Was a student of al-Bāqillānī.
al-Ḥārith al-Muḥāsibī (see al-Muḥāsibī)
Ḥarmala b. Yaḥyā, Abū ʿAbd Allāh (d. 243/858): Legal scholar and muḥaddith, student
and companion of al-Shāfiʿī. Listed by al-Baghdādī (in Kitāb Uṣūl al-dīn) as one of
the “mutakallimūn among the jurists and authorities of the legal schools.”
Hārūn al-Rashīd (Abū Jaʿfar Hārūn al-Manṣūr) (r. 170–193/786–809): Fifth Abbasid
caliph, whose era is often romanticized as a golden age. In reality, his turbulent reign,
marred by political disturbances, marked a turning point in Abbasid rule and inau-
gurated the political unraveling of the empire.
Ḥātim al-Ṭāʾī (d. 578 or ca. 605 CE): Pre-Islamic Arab poet famed for his legendary gen-
erosity.
al-Ḥillī, Jamāl al-Dīn (“al-ʿAllāma”) (d. 726/1325): Famous Shīʿī jurist who was given
the epithet “al-ʿAllāma” (the “eminently knowledgeable one”). Came from a presti-
gious family of Shīʿī theologians and studied under Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī. Is said to
have written over five hundred books; the eight that survive are highly regarded in
Shīʿism.

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352 glossary of proper names

I
Ibn ʿAbbās, ʿAbd Allāh (d. ca. 68/687): Paternal cousin of the Prophet, prominent Com-
panion, and highly regarded exegete. Known for his expertise on the life and sayings
of the Prophet, legal matters, and the rulings of the first three caliphs.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, Yūsuf b. ʿAbd Allāh (d. 463/1071): Cordovan scholar of fiqh and
the science of genealogy who was considered the best muḥaddith of his era.
Leaned towards Ẓāhirī teachings early on, but later in life became a Mālikī, then
a Shāfiʿī.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, Shams al-Dīn (d. 744/1344): Ḥanbalī scholar and student of Ibn
Taymiyya. Wrote the most complete and authoritative source for Ibn Taymiyya’s life,
al-ʿUqūd al-durriyya min manāqib Shaykh al-Islām Aḥmad b. Taymiyya.
Ibn Abī al-Ḥadīd, ʿIzz al-Dīn (d. 656/1258): Muʿtazilī theologian with Shīʿī inclinations.
Was also a poet, historian, literary theorist, and an administrative official in Abbasid
Baghdad. Known for his commentary on Nahj al-balāgha, a compilation of sayings
attributed to ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib.
Ibn Abī Ḥātim al-Rāzī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (d. 327/938): Erudite muḥaddith from Rayy
(near present-day Tehran). Highly regarded by the scholars of his era and noted for
his contributions to the ḥadīth-critical science known as “impugning and validation”
(al-jarḥ wa-l-taʿdīl).
Ibn Abī Mūsā (al-Hāshimī), al-Sharīf Abū ʿAlī Muḥammad (d. 428/1036 or 1037): Ḥan-
balī scholar and judge. Composed al-Irshād ilā sabīl al-rashād on creed and law, as
well as a commentary on al-Khiraqī’s work on Ḥanbalī fiqh.
Ibn Abī Shayba, Abū Bakr (d. 235/849): Muḥaddith and historian from Iraq. Came from
a family of religious scholars and wrote several books, including Muṣannaf Ibn Abī
Shayba, one of the first ḥadīth compilations in the muṣannaf genre (in which ḥadīth
are arranged by topic).
Ibn ʿAqīl, Abū al-Wafāʾ ʿAlī (d. 513/1119): Ḥanbalī jurist and theologian who supported
Ashʿarī-style methods of kalām. Known for his learning and piety and was an impor-
tant legal authority for generations of Ḥanbalī jurists.
Ibn ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn (d. 638/1240): Famous Andalusian Sufi known for his contro-
versial mystical monism. Author of many works, two of his most famous being al-
Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya and Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam. Ibn Taymiyya strongly opposed Ibn ʿArabī’s
notion of what came to be called the “unity of being,” or waḥdat al-wujūd.
Ibn al-ʿArabī, al-Qāḍī Abū Bakr (d. 543/1148): Muḥaddith from Seville who studied
under al-Ghazālī in the East. Wrote books on ḥadīth, law, the Qurʾān, and a variety
of other topics. Was not universally accepted as an authority on ḥadīth.
Ibn ʿAsākir, Abū al-Qāsim ʿAlī (d. 571/1176): Shāfiʿī ḥadīth master (“ḥāfiẓ”) and his-
torian who forcefully defended the legitimacy of rational theology. Came from a
distinguished political family in Damascus that produced a number of Shāfiʿī schol-
ars.

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Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh al-Iskandarī (d. 709/1309): Well-known, influential Sufi shaykh of the
Shādhilī order and a fierce adversary of Ibn Taymiyya on account of the latter’s crit-
icism of Ibn ʿArabī and other Sufi figures.
Ibn al-Fāriḍ, ʿUmar b. ʿAlī (d. 632/1235): Renowned Sufi poet from Cairo who was a
Shāfiʿī in law and a well-known mystic. His poetry was censured for its use of a
female beloved to symbolize God, but he is regarded as one of the greatest Arab
poets and, for many, a saint (walī).
Ibn al-Farrāʾ, (al-Qāḍī) Abū Yaʿlā (see Abū Yaʿlā b. al-Farrāʾ)
Ibn Fūrak, Abū Bakr Muḥammad (d. 406/1015): Ashʿarī theologian, Shāfiʿī jurist, and
ḥadīth scholar. Studied kalām under al-Bāhilī, a direct student of Abū al-Ḥasan al-
Ashʿarī. Wrote over one hundred works in legal theory, Qurʾānic exegesis, and theol-
ogy, including the well-known Ṭabaqāt al-mutakallimīn.
Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī (d. 852/1449): Well-known Egyptian judge, historian, and ḥadīth
scholar. Most famous for his large number of works in the ḥadīth sciences, widely
considered the summation of the discipline.
Ibn Ḥanbal, Aḥmad (d. 241/855): Iconic theologian, jurist, and muḥaddith who founded
the Ḥanbalī school of Sunnī law. Widely acclaimed across school boundaries as a
hero of the miḥna for refusing to compromise on the uncreatedness of the Qurʾān.
His foremost work is his Musnad collection of prophetic ḥadīth.
Ibn Ḥazm, Abū Muḥammad ʿAlī b. Saʿīd (d. 456/1064): Ẓāhirī jurist, theologian, and
poet from Andalusia. Was the greatest (and last major) exponent of the Ẓāhirī
school. Was also a skilled littérateur and historian of Muslim schismatics, on which
he wrote his well-known Kitāb al-Fiṣal fī al-milal wa-l-ahwāʾ wa-l-niḥal.
Ibn Isḥāq (b. Yasār b. Khiyār), Muḥammad (d. ca. 150/767): Born in Medina, was one
of three main authorities on the life of the Prophet. Was also trained in akhbār and
ḥadīth transmission. His Sīra has been lost, but we have a version of it that was edited
and compiled by Ibn Hishām (d. 218/833).
Ibn al-Jawzī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAlī (d. 597/1201): High-profile Ḥanbalī jurist, muḥad-
dith, historian, and preacher from Baghdad who was partial to rationalist theology of
the Ashʿarī type. Was a prolific writer whose biographies, in addition to his sermons,
were highly acclaimed by Ibn Taymiyya.
Ibn Karrām, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad (d. 255/869): Founder of the Karrāmiyya the-
ological sect, which flourished from the third/ninth century until the Mongol inva-
sions. His doctrine was widely criticized for its excessive literalism and its anthro-
pomorphism. His works have been lost and are only known through second-hand
citation in other texts.
Ibn Kathīr, Ismāʿīl b. ʿUmar (d. 774/1373): Syrian Shāfiʿī and ḥadīth scholar, student of
Ibn Taymiyya. Author of the historical work al-Bidāya wa-l-nihāya, a large compila-
tion of ḥadīth, and a well-known work of tafsīr. Also wrote a biographical dictionary
of Shāfiʿī scholars, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya (not to be confused with Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī’s
Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya al-kubrā).

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354 glossary of proper names

Ibn Khuzayma, Abū Bakr Muḥammad (d. 311/924): Shāfiʿī jurist and ḥadīth scholar
from Nishapur to whom later Shāfiʿī’s referred as “the supreme scholar.” Known for
his mastery of ḥadīth and his defense of the evolving school of Sunnī ḥadīth schol-
ars.
Ibn Kullāb, Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh (d. ca. 241/855): Forerunner of al-Ashʿarī in the
period of the miḥna. Was a “semi-rationalist” who used some kalām argumentation
in defense of (more or less) traditionalist theological positions.
Ibn Maḍāʾ al-Qurṭubī (d. 592/1196): Ẓāhirī Andalusian grammarian. His Kitāb al-Radd
ʿalā al-nuḥāh calls for a fundamental overhaul of what he considered the abstruse-
ness, artificiality, and needless complexification of the existing linguistic sciences.
Ibn al-Mājishūn, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Abī Salama (d. 164/780 or 781): Early Medinan legist,
muftī of Medina, and contemporary of Mālik b. Anas. Biographical dictionaries
record a rivalry between him and Mālik. Wrote works on law, of which only frag-
ments have survived.
Ibn al-Mājishūn, ʿAbd al-Malik b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (d. 213/828 or 214/829): Son of ʿAbd al-
ʿAzīz b. Abī Salama b. al-Mājishūn (see foregoing entry). Was an accomplished legist
and muftī of Medina in his own right.
Ibn Makhlūf, Zayn al-Dīn (d. 718/1318): Mālikī judge of Cairo who played a large role in
many of Ibn Taymiyya’s troubles after the latter’s arrival in Egypt.
Ibn Mardawayhi, Abū Bakr (d. 410/1020): Composed a mustakhraj on al-Bukhārī’s
famous Ṣaḥīḥ. Was highly esteemed by his contemporaries for his contributions to
the fields of ḥadīth and tafsīr, including a lengthy work of Qurʾānic exegesis.
Ibn Masʿūd, ʿAbd Allāh (d. 32/652 or 653): Companion of the Prophet and promi-
nent Qurʾān reciter. Also known for his transmission of ḥadīth and Qurʾānic exe-
gesis.
Ibn Mujāhid (al-Ṭāʾī), Abū ʿAbd Allāh (d. 360s/970s or 370s/980s): From Basra, was a
pupil of Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī at the time of the latter’s death. Among his students
were al-Bāqillānī and al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī.
Ibn al-Mundhir, Abū Bakr Muḥammad (d. ca. 318/930): Prominent Shāfiʿī jurist and
exegete considered by some classical scholars to have reached the highest level of
ijtihād (that of mujtahid muṭlaq). His legal writings are quoted extensively.
Ibn al-Nafīs, ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Abū al-Ḥasan (d. 687/1288): Famous physician and prolific
author who also studied grammar, logic, and the Islamic religious sciences. He (in
addition to Ibn Sīnā, al-Suhrawardī, and Ibn Ṭufayl) wrote a philosophical treatise
named Ḥayy b. Yaqẓān
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Dimashqī, Muḥammad b. Abī Bakr (d. 842/1438): Damascene
ḥadīth master (“ḥāfiẓ”) and historian. Wrote an extensive defense of Ibn Taymiyya
called al-Radd al-wāfir ʿalā man zaʿama bi-anna man sammā Ibn Taymiyya “Shaykh
al-Islām” kāfir (The ample response to those who claim that whoever calls Ibn
Taymiyya “Shaykh al-Islam” is a disbeliever).

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Ibn Qalāwūn, al-Nāṣir Muḥammad (r. 709–741/1310–1341): Mamluk sultan whom Ibn
Taymiyya petitioned to dispatch an army to Syria. His tumultuous reign took place
over three periods. Also known as al-Malik al-Nāṣir.
Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 751/1350): Famous student of Ibn Taymiyya who synthe-
sized, organized, and popularized his master’s teachings. Produced a large body of
writing. His students include Ibn Kathīr and Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī.
Ibn Qudāma, Muwaffaq al-Dīn (d. 620/1223): Ḥanbalī (and anti-Ashʿarī) scholar and
traditionalist (i.e., non-speculative) theologian. Known for his works on Ḥanbalī law
and legal theory, al-Mughnī, al-ʿUmda, and Rawḍat al-nāẓir.
Ibn Qutayba, Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh (d. 276/889): Prolific polymath and littér-
ateur of Persian origin best known for his contributions to Arabic literature. Also
wrote on Qurʾānic exegesis, ḥadīth, theology, law, and the natural sciences. Well-
known works include Mushkil (also Gharīb) al-Qurʾān, Taʾwīl mukhtalif al-ḥadīth,
and ʿUyūn al-akhbār.
Ibn Rāhawayhi, Isḥāq b. Ibrāhīm (d. 238/853): Renowned jurist from Khurasan who
was given the sobriquet “leader of the believers (amīr al-muʾminīn) in ḥadīth.” Stu-
dent and travel companion of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal.
Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Aḥmad (d. 795/1393): Famous Ḥanbalī
muḥaddith whose al-Dhayl ʿalā Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanābila is considered an important
source for Ibn Taymiyya’s biography.
Ibn Rushayyiq, Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh (d. 749/1349): Ibn Taymiyya’s personal scribe
and one of his closest associates. Wrote a catalogue of Ibn Taymiyya’s works,
Asmāʾ muʾallafāt Ibn Taymiyya, and endeavored to collect all of Ibn Taymiyya’s writ-
ings.
Ibn Rushd (Lat. Averroes), Abū al-Walīd Muḥammad (d. 595/1198): Important Mālikī
jurist, famed “Commentator of Aristotle,” and last of the major Muslim Peripatetic
philosophers. Author of Faṣl al-maqāl on the relationship between reason and reve-
lation and of a refutation of al-Ghazālī’s Tahāfut al-falāsifa, titled Tahāfut al-tahāfut.
Ibn Sabʿīn, ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq (d. 669/1271): Andalusian philosopher and Sufi in the way
of Ibn ʿArabī. Was respected for his knowledge of medicine and alchemy but was
marginalized and exiled for his daring Sufi ideas. Categorized by Ibn Khaldūn as a
monist.
Ibn Saʿd, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad (d. 230/845): Basran muḥaddith who was a client
(mawlā, pl. mawālī) of the Banū Hāshim and who traveled to study and to collect
ḥadīth. Famous for his Kitāb al-Ṭabaqāt al-kabīr, a biographical dictionary of over
four thousand ḥadīth narrators.
Ibn Ṣaṣrā, Najm al-Dīn (d. 723/1322): Shāfiʿī judge and chief qāḍī of Damascus. Stud-
ied ḥadīth, jurisprudence, and grammar. Re-opened the case against Ibn Taymiyya’s
Wāsiṭiyya and resigned when the third council refrained from condemning the trea-
tise.

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Ibn Shākir (al-Kutubī), Muḥammad (d. 764/1363): Syrian historian whose two surviv-
ing works were well-regarded and often cited. His Fawāt al-wafayāt is an important
source for the biography of Ibn Taymiyya.
Ibn Sīnā (Lat. Avicenna), Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn (d. 428/1037): Famous physician and the
most important figure of the Muslim Peripatetic tradition. Took up many of the
questions that had been put forth in kalām, and his metaphysical theses, in turn,
were taken up and debated by kalām theologians. Exercised an enormous influence
on subsequent philosophy, kalām, Sufism, and Muslim thought in general.
Ibn Taymiyya, ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm (d. 682/1284): Ibn Taymiyya’s father. An accomplished
Ḥanbalī scholar and author of numerous writings, including the additions he made
to the well-known work of Ḥanbalī legal theory begun by his own father (Majd al-
Dīn), al-Musawwada fī uṣūl al-fiqh.
Ibn Taymiyya, Fakhr al-Dīn (d. 622/1225): Uncle of Ibn Taymiyya’s grandfather (Majd
al-Dīn). A scholar of Ḥanbalī law and ḥadīth with knowledge of poetry and literature
as well.
Ibn Taymiyya, Majd al-Dīn (d. 653/1255): Ibn Taymiyya’s grandfather and an impor-
tant Ḥanbalī authority. Began the well-known work of Ḥanbalī legal theory al-
Musawwada fī uṣūl al-fiqh, which was continued by his son, ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm, and
eventually completed by Ibn Taymiyya himself.
Ibn Ṭufayl, Abū Bakr Muḥammad (d. 581/1185): Andalusian philosopher, royal physi-
cian, and close confidant of the second Muwaḥḥid (“Almohad”) caliph, Abū Yaʿqūb
Yūsuf. Ibn Taymiyya labeled him one of the “heretical mystics” (malāḥidat al-ṣūfiy-
ya). His only surviving work is the philosophical allegory Ḥayy b. Yaqẓān.
Ibn Tūmart, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad (d. 524/1130): Berber leader who founded the
Muwaḥḥid movement. Studied with al-Ghazālī in the East and subsequently led an
opposition against the Murābiṭūn (“Almoravids”). His intransigence in “exhorting to
good and forbidding evil” often led to riotous anger and brought him harm.
Ibn al-Zāghūnī, Abū al-Ḥasan (d. 527/1132): Eminent Ḥanbalī jurist of Baghdad and
teacher of the renowned Ḥanbalī jurist Ibn al-Jawzī. Like his student, Ibn al-Zāghūnī
held theological positions close to those of the mutakallimūn.
al-Ījī, ʿAḍud al-Dīn (d. 756/1355): Shāfiʿī jurist and well-known later Ashʿarī theologian.
Served as judge in Sulṭāniyya for the last Ilkhanid sultan, Abū Saʿīd, and later as chief
qāḍī in Shiraz.
al-ʿIjlī, Muḥammad b. Nūḥ (d. 218/833): Scholar who, along with Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal,
doggedly refused to assent to the doctrine of the created Qurʾān. Died in chains
(during the miḥna) while being transported from the Byzantine border to Bagh-
dad.
al-Ikhnāʾī, Taqī al-Dīn (d. 750/1349): Mālikī chief judge in Damascus who opposed Ibn
Taymiyya on the issue of visiting graves. Ibn Taymiyya composed a refutation against
him titled Kitāb al-Radd ʿalā al-Ikhnāʾī.

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glossary of proper names 357

Ilkiyā al-Harrāsī, Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ṭabarī (d. 504/1110): Shāfiʿī jurist born in Tabaristan.
Studied under al-Juwaynī at the Niẓāmiyya madrasa in Baghdad, where he was an
associate of al-Ghazālī. Was accused of holding Bāṭinī beliefs and imprisoned but
was later exonerated and released.
al-Isfarāyīnī, Abū Isḥāq (d. 418/1027): Ashʿarī theologian and Shāfiʿī jurist who was
one of the leading figures in the development of Ashʿarī doctrine in his generation.
Fought against anthropomorphism in Nishapur, along with Ibn Fūrak. None of his
works are extant, but references to them are found in other works.
al-Iskāfī, Abū Jaʿfar (d. 240/854): Baghdādī Muʿtazilī theologian who was the first to
focus the discussion of Q. Āl ʿImrān 3:7 on the notion of ambiguity, defining muḥkam
verses as those that are univocal or determinate in meaning and mutashābih verses
as those that are indeterminate and admit of more than one interpretation.

J
al-Jaʿd b. Dirham (executed between 105/724 and 120/738): Early heretical figure exe-
cuted by Khālid al-Qasrī, Umayyad governor of Iraq, for rejecting the divine attri-
butes and being one of the first to hold that the Qurʾān was created.
Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 148/765): Sixth Shīʿī Imam revered by the generality of Muslims for
his piety, asceticism, and erudition. Eponym of the Jaʿfarī school of law, though none
of his own juridical works have survived. Left behind many children, the most note-
worthy being his successor, Imam Mūsā al-Kāẓim.
Jahm b. Ṣafwān (d. 128/746): Early heretical figure from Khurasan who was a pupil of al-
Jaʿd b. Dirham. Adopted jabrī views in theology, tending towards a strict determin-
ism and categorical denial of human free will. His views on the issue were supported
by the ruling Umayyads.
al-Jāshnikīr, Rukn al-Dīn Baybars (Baybars II) (d. 709/1310): Burjī Mamluk sultan
and disciple of the shaykh Naṣr al-Manbijī. His short rule ended when he was
imprisoned then killed in Cairo by al-Malik al-Nāṣir (Ibn Qalāwūn). Not to be con-
fused with the famous Baybars I (Rukn al-Dīn Baybars al-Bunduqdārī), who died in
676/1277.
al-Jīlānī, ʿAbd al-Qādir (see ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī)
al-Jubbāʾī, Abū ʿAlī Muḥammad (d. 303/915 or 916): Leading authority of the Basran
Muʿtazila of his day and teacher of al-Ashʿarī, who later turned against Muʿtazilī
kalām and worked to refute al-Jubbāʾī’s teachings. No complete work of his has sur-
vived.
al-Jubbāʾī, Abū Hāshim ʿAbd al-Salām (d. 321/933): Son of Abū ʿAlī al-Jubbāʾī and one
of the last Muʿtazila to exert a direct influence on Sunnī thought. None of his works
have survived.
al-Junayd al-Baghdādī (d. ca. 297/910): Influential early Sufi from Baghdad and the
greatest exponent of “sober” Sufism. Rejected the ecstatic utterances of other early

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358 glossary of proper names

Sufis, such as al-Ḥallāj, and his thought laid the foundations for later Sufism. Highly
respected by Ibn Taymiyya, who refers to him as “our shaykh.”
al-Jurjānī, ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Sharīf (d. 816/1413): Legist, linguist, theologian, philos-
opher, and noted astronomer. Among his best-known works is his Taʿrīfāt (Defini-
tions), a glossary covering some two thousand terms from the religious disciplines,
philosophy, and science.
al-Juwaynī, Abū al-Maʿālī (“Imām al-Ḥaramayn”) (d. 478/1085): Major Shāfiʿī jurist,
legal theoretician, and Ashʿarī theologian. Taught al-Ghazālī at the Niẓāmiyya ma-
drasa in Baghdad. Was a bridge between the early and the later Ashʿarī doctrines,
distinguished primarily by the later school’s open endorsement of taʾwīl (rather than
tafwīḍ) for dealing with scriptural passages thought to entail tashbīh.

K
al-Kalwadhānī, Abū al-Khaṭṭāb Maḥfūẓ (d. 510/1117): Ḥanbalī jurist noted for his intel-
ligence, diligence in jurisprudential matters, erudition in writing, and prodigious
knowledge of ḥadīth. Was a disciple of Abū Yaʿlā.
al-Karābīsī, Abū ʿAlī (d. 245/859 or 248/862): Shāfiʿī jurist and theologian. Held that
the verbal pronunciation (talaffuẓ) of the Qurʾān was created, which earned him
the reprimand of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal and subsequent friction with the Ḥanbalīs.
al-Karkhī, Abū al-Ḥasan (d. 340/952): Influential Ḥanafī legal theorist and contempo-
rary of al-Ashʿarī. Was a Muʿtazilī, according to al-Dhahabī, and wrote a book on
legal maxims.
al-Khallāl, Abū Bakr (d. 311/923): Prominent Ḥanbalī muḥaddith, legal scholar, and
theologian. Very little is known about his life. Although his writings were very impor-
tant, only a few fragments have survived.
al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Abū Bakr Aḥmad b. ʿAlī (d. 463/1071): Ḥanbalī who later
showed a preference for the Shāfiʿī legal school and Ashʿarī theology. Collected
ḥadīth and also studied law. Famous for his biographical encyclopedia, Tārīkh Bagh-
dād, which includes almost eight thousand scholars and personalities in Baghdad’s
cultural and political scenes.
al-Khūnajī, Afḍal al-Dīn (d. 646/1248): Top logician of his day and a judge of Per-
sian origin best known for his logical treatise Kashf al-asrār ʿan ghawāmiḍ al-afkār.
Modified a number of Ibn Sīnā’s positions. His importance was recognized by Ibn
Khaldūn.
al-Kinānī, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (d. between 218/833 and 240/854 or 855): Disciple of al-Shāfiʿī
who accompanied him to Yemen. Known for his debate against Bishr al-Marīsī con-
cerning the ontological status of the Qurʾān.
al-Kindī, Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb b. Isḥāq (d. ca. 252/866): First Muslim philosopher of note
and the only one of Arab descent (and thus nicknamed faylasūf al-ʿArab, or “the
philosopher of the Arabs”). Sought to bridge the gap between philosophy and reli-

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gion, advocated for the application of rational philosophical methods to the texts of
revelation, and inclined towards some Muʿtazilī doctrines.

M
Maimonides (Mūsā b. Maymūn) (d. 601/1204): Jewish physician and philosopher who
was born in Andalusia and died in Egypt. Considered one of the most influential
Jewish thinkers of the Middle Ages, famous especially for his work Dalālat al-ḥāʾirīn
(The Guide for the Perplexed). Was greatly influenced by al-Fārābī, as well as by Ibn
Sīnā and al-Ghazālī.
Mālik b. Anas, Abū ʿAbd Allāh (d. 179/795): Famous jurist and founder of the Mālikī
school of law. Spent most of his life in Medina. His Kitāb al-Muwaṭṭaʾ is the old-
est surviving collection of ḥadīth. Ibn Taymiyya praises Mālik’s methodology for its
close following of the prophetic Sunna as embodied in the practice of the people of
Medina (ahl al-Madīna).
al-Maʾmūn, Abū al-ʿAbbās (r. 198–218/813–833): Seventh Abbasid caliph and son of the
famed Hārūn al-Rashīd. Was known for his love of knowledge and intellectualism.
Founded the Bayt al-Ḥikma (“House of Wisdom”) as a public institution in Baghdad
and also took part in executing the miḥna.
al-Manbijī, Naṣr b. Sulaymān (d. 719/1319): One of the leading members of the Dama-
scene disciples of Ibn ʿArabī. Spiritual advisor to Baybars al-Jāshnikīr. Ibn Taymiyya
sent him a letter condemning the monism of Ibn ʿArabī.
al-Maqdisī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb b. Abī al-Faraj (d. 536/1141 or 1142): Ḥanbalī jurist who was
referred to as the “shaykh of the Shām,” the same honorific held by his father, Abū
al-Faraj al-Maqdisī.
al-Maqdisī, Abū al-Faraj al-Shīrāzī (d. 486/1093): Leading Ḥanbalī scholar in his day,
originally from Shiraz. Studied under Abū Yaʿlā in Baghdad, then moved to Jerusalem
(Ar. Bayt al-Maqdis, hence “al-Maqdisī”). Wrote several important works in theology
and law and was responsible for spreading the Ḥanbalī school in the Levant.
Mattā b. Yūnus, Abū Bishr (d. 328/940): Nestorian Christian scholar of logic and
teacher of al-Fārābī. Commented on Aristotle and promoted the reception of Peri-
patetic philosophy in the Islamic world by translating texts from Syriac into Ara-
bic.
al-Māturīdī, Abū Manṣūr (d. ca. 333/944): Ḥanafī theologian, jurist, and exegete from
Samarqand. Founder of one of the two main schools of Sunnī kalām. His theology
is very close, in most points, to that of Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī.
Muḥammad b. al-Hayṣam (d. 407[?]/1016 or 1017): Karrāmī theologian who, in elabo-
rating the school’s theology and technical vocabulary, attempted to rectify a number
of Ibn Karrām’s positions. Upheld God’s being above and separate from creation.
Reinterpreted the term jism (“body”) to mean simply any thing that existed as an
independent or self-standing (qāʾim bi-dhātihi) entity.

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Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 37/657): Younger Companion of the Prophet
Muḥammad and son of the Prophet’s cousin Jaʿfar, brother of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib. Was
martyred at the Battle of Ṣiffīn.
al-Muḥāsibī, (Abū ʿAbd Allāh) al-Ḥārith (d. 243/857): Famous early Sufi and imme-
diate forerunner of al-Ashʿarī. Was a “semi-rationalist” who used some measure of
kalām argumentation in defending traditionalist theological positions.
Mujāhid b. Jabr (d. between 100/718 and 104/722): Successor (tābiʿī) and well-known
early exegete. Was said to be the most reliable in tafsīr in his era.
Muqātil b. Sulaymān (d. 150/767): Qurʾān commentator whose works on tafsīr are
important owing to their early date. Also transmitted ḥadīth but was reproached for
being inaccurate with isnāds. Was also accused of anthropomorphism and having
sectarian leanings.
al-Muqtadir bi-Llāh (Abū al-Faḍl Jaʿfar al-Muʿtaḍid) (r. 295–320/908–932): Thirteenth
Abbasid caliph and youngest (thirteen years old) at the time of his accession to the
throne.
al-Mutawakkil, Jaʿfar b. al-Muʿtaṣim (r. 232–247/847–861): Tenth Abbasid caliph.
Ended the miḥna, deposed the Muʿtazila, and inaugurated a return to Sunnī
orthodoxy. Emphasized his adherence to Ḥanbalī doctrine and the way of ahl al-
ḥadīth.
al-Mutayyam, ʿAbd Allāh b. Khiḍr al-Ḥarīrī (d. 731/1331): Damascene shaykh of Anato-
lian origin who, along with a colleague of his, wrote a lengthy elegy (marthiya) for
Ibn Taymiyya. In it, we read of “hundreds of thousands” of mourners and “multitude
upon multitude” of women in attendance at Ibn Taymiyya’s obsequies.

N
al-Najjār, al-Ḥusayn b. Muḥammad (d. ca. 220/835): Theologian during the reign of al-
Maʾmūn. His views influenced the early Muʿtazila, and his opinions helped enable
Sunnī scholars to defend traditional doctrines through reasoned arguments.
al-Nasafī, Abū al-Barakāt Ḥāfiẓ al-Dīn (d. 701/1301 or 710/1310): Ḥanafī jurist and a
representative of post-Ghazālī Ashʿarī kalām. Wrote Kitāb al-Manār fi uṣūl al-fiqh
on the foundations of law, a number of legal commentaries, and a tafsīr of the
Qurʾān.
al-Naẓẓām, Abū Isḥāq (d. between 220/835 and 230/845): Theologian from the Basran
school of the Muʿtazila. His writings have been lost, but many fragments have been
preserved in the works of other scholars. His eccentric views were condemned even
by his fellow Muʿtazilīs.
Niẓām al-Mulk (active 455–485/1063–1092): Famous Seljuq vizier who established
posts specifically for teaching Ashʿarī theology in the major madrasas of his empire.
The most famous such school was the Niẓāmiyya of Baghdad, whose chair was held
by al-Juwaynī, then by his student, al-Ghazālī.

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P
Proclus (d. 485 CE): Head of the Platonic Academy in Athens and a scholastic system-
atizer of Neoplatonic thought. Was a link between ancient and medieval philoso-
phy, and translations of his thought played an important role in medieval Arabic
thought.

Q
al-Qalānisī, Abū al-ʿAbbās (fl. second half of the third/ninth century): Follower of Ibn
Kullāb and an immediate forerunner of al-Ashʿarī. Like al-Muḥāsibī, can be consid-
ered a “semi-rationalist” who used some kalām argumentation in defending (more
or less) traditionalist theological positions.
al-Qazwīnī, Jalāl al-Dīn (also Imām al-Dīn) b. ʿUmar (d. 739/1338): Shāfiʿī judge in
Damascus who questioned Ibn Taymiyya on charges of anthropomorphism after
the publication of his treatise al-Fatwā al-Ḥamawiyya, which was hostile to Ashʿarī
doctrine and to kalām in general. Was known as the khaṭīb (preacher) of Damascus.
al-Qūnawī, ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn (d. 729/1329): Shāfiʿī chief judge and follower of Ibn ʿArabī. He,
along with the Mālikī chief judge, al-Ikhnāʾī, sentenced Ibn Taymiyya to prison in
the citadel of Damascus for his treatise Risāla fī ziyārat al-qubūr, which condemns
visiting the graves of the awliyāʾ and seeking intercession through them.
al-Qūnawī, Ṣadr al-Dīn (d. 673/1274): Prominent disciple of Ibn ʿArabī, interpreter of
Ibn ʿArabī’s thought, and author of important original works on theoretical Sufism.
al-Qushayrī, Abū al-Qāsim (d. 465/1073): Shāfiʿī jurist, theologian, and well-known
Sufi. Studied theology and legal theory with Ashʿarī scholars. Composed, among
other works, a mystical tafsīr and a famous treatise on Sufism, al-Risāla al-Qushay-
riyya.

R
Rabīʿa b. Abī ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Farrūkh (d. ca. 136/753 or 754): Famous Successor (tābiʿī)
who served as a notable muftī in Medina. Was renowned for his exercise of juridi-
cal reasoning (ijtihād al-raʾy), on account of which he was nicknamed “Rabīʿat
al-Raʾy.” Had many famous disciples, the most prominent of whom was Mālik b.
Anas.
al-Rāghib al-Aṣfahānī (occasionally al-Aṣbahānī), Abū al-Qāsim al-Ḥusayn (d. ca. 502/
1108): Religious and literary scholar who influenced al-Ghazālī. His tafsīr has been
only partially preserved, along with quotations in other manuscripts. His best-
known work is a treatise on ethics titled al-Dharīʿa ilā makārim al-Sharīʿa.
al-Rāzī, Fakhr al-Dīn (d. 606/1209): Renowned Persian Shāfiʿī theologian, polymath,
and exegete whose zealous defense of Sunnism made him an adversary of the
Muʿtazila. Was one of the main architects of “philosophical theology” in the cen-
tury after al-Ghazālī. Last great Ashʿarī theologian before Ibn Taymiyya, and it is

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al-Rāzī’s articulation of the universal rule of interpretation that Ibn Taymiyya sets
out to refute in the Darʾ taʿāruḍ.

S
Ṣadaqa b. al-Ḥusayn (al-Baghdādī), Abū al-Faraj (also known as Ibn al-Ḥaddād al-
Baghdādī) (d. 573/1177): Ḥanbalī chronicler and literary figure who inclined towards
philosophy and adhered to some aspects of Muʿtazilī kalām. Known for his chroni-
cle, which is a continuation of the work of his teacher, Ibn al-Zāghūnī.
al-Ṣafadī, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Khalīl b. Aybak (d. 764/1363): Philologist, littérateur, and biog-
rapher who met Ibn Taymiyya as a young man. Wrote innumerable works, including
the 22-volume biographical encyclopedia al-Wāfī bi-l-wafayāt.
al-Ṣanʿānī, ʿAbd al-Razzāq b. Hammām (d. 211/827): Renowned Yemeni scholar who
taught Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal. His surviving works are important for the study of early
Islamic law, ḥadīth, and exegesis because they cite older sources and material that
have otherwise been lost.
al-Ṣanʿānī, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl (d. 1182/1768): Born outside Sanaa, Yemen. Articu-
lated a juristic philosophy that stressed the need for evidence and proof in adducing
verdicts. His commentary on Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī’s Bulūgh al-marām stands as one
of the most popular commentaries on the text today.
al-Sanūsī, Muḥammad b. Yūsuf (d. 895/1490): Prominent late Ashʿarī theologian and
Sufi whose works were widely taught up through the nineteenth century. His Ṣughrā
al-ṣughrā sets out the essentials of belief on the basis of methodical argumentation.
al-Shaʿbī, Abū ʿAmr ʿĀmir b. Sharāḥīl (d. between 104/722 or 723 and 106/724 or 725):
Successor (tābiʿī) and early muḥaddith who reported ḥadīth from several prominent
Companions, including Saʿd b. Abī Waqqāṣ and Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī. Reports that
he knew five hundred of the Prophet’s Companions.
al-Shāfiʿī, Muḥammad b. Idrīs (d. 204/820): Iconic jurist and theologian, student of
Mālik b. Anas, and eponym of the Shāfiʿī school of law. Defined Sunna strictly as
that of the Prophet, augmented the importance of ḥadīth as a fundamental source
of law, and helped systematize legal reasoning in the form of juridical analogy
(qiyās).
al-Shahrastānī, Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Karīm (d. 548/1153): Ashʿarī theologian and his-
torian most known for his work Kitāb al-Milal wa-l-niḥal, a non-polemical study of
religious communities and philosophies that is often considered the first systematic
study of religion.
al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī (see al-Jurjānī)
al-Shawkānī, Muḥammad b. ʿAlī (d. 1250/1834): Writer, teacher, and muftī from Yemen
whose work al-Badr al-ṭāliʿ bi-maḥāsin man baʿda al-qarn al-tāsiʿ contains important
information on the biography of Ibn Taymiyya.
al-Shīrāzī, Abū al-Faraj (see al-Maqdisī, Abū al-Faraj)

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al-Shīrāzī, Ṣadr al-Dīn (Mullā Ṣadrā) (d. 1050/1640): Persian Shīʿī philosopher, theolo-
gian, and mystic who laid the basis for a new school of theosophical Shīʿism known
as al-ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya, or “transcendent theosophy.”
Sībawayhi, Abū Bishr ʿAmr b. ʿUthmān (d. ca. 180/796): Early grammarian of Persian
origin whose only known work, Kitāb Sībawayhi, is the founding text of the science
of Arabic grammar.
al-Ṣibghī, Abū Bakr b. Isḥāq (d. 342/953 or 954): Shāfiʿī jurist and muḥaddith from
Nishapur. Authored a number of texts on theological matters, including works on
the names and attributes of God, the nature of faith, and the divine decree.
al-Sijistānī (also al-Sijzī2), Abū Yaʿqūb (d. ca. 361/971): Persian Ismāʿīlī (“Bāṭinī”) mis-
sionary, Neoplatonic philosopher, and theologian who was executed by the Saffarid
governor of Sijistan.
al-Sijzī, Abū Naṣr (d. 444/1052): Ḥanafī scholar from Sijistan who wrote a refutation of
those who denied that the letters and sounds of the recited Qurʾān were constitutive
of God’s word (kalām Allāh).
al-Ṣīrāfī, Abū Saʿīd (d. 368/979): Theologian, jurist, and philologist who is best known
for his two works on grammar and his debate with the logician Mattā b. Yūnus on the
relationship between, and the relative merits of, Arabic grammar and Aristotelian
logic.
al-Subkī, Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn (d. 725/1325): Ashʿarī jurist and grandfather of the famed Tāj al-
Dīn al-Subkī.
al-Subkī, Tāj al-Dīn (also Ibn al-Subkī) (d. 771/1370): Author of the great Shāfiʿī bio-
graphical dictionary Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya al-kubrā, as well as a compendium of legal
theory, Jamʿ al-jawāmiʿ fī uṣūl al-fiqh. Was a sharp critic of Ibn Taymiyya’s theological
views, especially the doctrine that God is literally “upward” with respect to creation.
al-Subkī, Taqī al-Dīn (d. 756/1355): Chief qāḍī of Syria and father of Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī.
Was greatly esteemed for his mastery of various fields, including language, exege-
sis, jurisprudence, and ḥadīth. Was highly critical of Ibn Taymiyya and wrote several
tracts in refutation of him and his student, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya.
Sufyān b. ʿUyayna (d. 198/814): Famous early muḥaddith, exegete, and jurist from
Mecca. Belonged to the generation of the Successors of the Successors (tābiʿū al-
tābiʿīn). Al-Dhahabī refers to him as “shaykh al-Islām.”
al-Suhrawardī, Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar (d. 632/1234): Important Sufi figure who advocated a
strong relationship between Sufism and the caliphate. Left behind a large body of
writings, including a famous comprehensive handbook of Sufism, ʿAwārif al-maʿārif.
Not to be confused with Shihāb al-Dīn Yaḥyā al-Suhrawardī al-Maqtūl (see following
entry).

2 The name “al-Sijzī” is a common shorthand form of the nisba adjective “al-Sijistānī,” in refer-
ence to those who hail from the region of Sijistan in eastern Iran.

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al-Suhrawardī (al-Maqtūl), Shihāb al-Dīn Yaḥyā (executed 587/1191): Persian mys-

tic put to death for heresy in Aleppo. Founder of the Ishrāqī (“Illuminationist”)
school of philosophy, which incorporated Zoroastrian and Platonic elements and
arose as an alternative to the Peripatetic tradition of mainstream falsafa. Not to
be confused with (Shihāb al-Dīn) Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī (see previous
entry).
al-Ṣuʿlūkī, Abū Sahl (d. 369/980): Shāfiʿī legal scholar during the formative period of
the school. Taught law, theology, and ḥadīth in Nishapur.
Sunayd b. Dāwūd, al-Ḥusayn (d. 226/840 or 841): Early muḥaddith and exegete. Nar-
rated ḥadīth from ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Mubārak, Ḥammād b. Zayd, and Abū Bakr b.
ʿAyyāsh, among others.
al-Surramarrī, Abū al-Muẓaffar Jamāl al-Dīn (d. 776/1374): Ḥanbalī scholar and ḥadīth
master (“ḥāfiẓ”). Younger contemporary of Ibn Taymiyya in Damascus. Authored
more than one hundred works on law, ḥadīth, and other subjects.
al-Suyūṭī, Jalāl al-Dīn (d. 911/1505): Shāfiʿī jurist from Egypt and the most prolific author
in the corpus of Islamic literature. Wrote extensively on the Qurʾān, ḥadīth, history,
biography, and other topics. Famously defended both Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn ʿArabī.
Wrote an epitome of Ibn Taymiyya’s Kitāb al-Radd ʿalā al-manṭiqiyyīn called Jahd
al-qarīḥa fī tajrīd al-Naṣīḥa.

T
al-Ṭabarī, Muḥammad b. Jarīr (d. 310/923): Shāfiʿī jurist, historian, and famous exegete
celebrated for his forty-volume historical chronicle and his voluminous compen-
dium of Qurʾān commentary. Was also the founder of his own, short-lived legal
school.
al-Taftāzānī, Saʿd al-Dīn (d. 793/1390): Ashʿarī scholar who wrote on grammar, rhetoric,
theology, logic, law, and exegesis. Many of his writings are commentaries that were
widely used as textbooks in madrasas. Wrote on both Ḥanafī and Shāfiʿī law (it is not
clear to which school he belonged).
al-Ṭaḥāwī, Abū Jaʿfar b. Muḥammad (d. 321/933): Former Shāfiʿī who became one of
the top Ḥanafī authorities of his day, as well as a leading scholar of ḥadīth. Most
famous today for his statement of creed, known as al-ʿAqīda al-Ṭaḥāwiyya.
al-Ṭalamankī, Abū ʿUmar (d. 429/1038): Andalusian scholar who wrote on theology, the
Qurʾānic sciences, and asceticism. Taught a large number of students.
Taşköprüzade, Ahmet Efendi (d. 968/1561): Ottoman historian and chronicler. Wrote
a famous biographical dictionary of Ottoman scholars called al-Shaqāʾiq al-Nuʿmā-
niyya fī ʿulamāʾ al-dawla al-ʿUthmāniyya.
al-Thaqafī, Abū ʿAlī Muḥammad (d. 328/940): Shāfiʿī jurist and ascetic. Highly praised
by his contemporaries, with some describing him as the “proof of God” (ḥujjat Allāh)
of his era.

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Themistius (d. 387CE): Hellenic philosopher and statesman who lived most of his life
in Constantinople. Known in Arabic mainly as a commentator on Aristotle. Ibn al-
Nadīm bills him “a scribe of Julian the Apostate.”
al-Tilimsānī, ʿAfīf al-Dīn (d. 690/1291): Sufi poet and follower of Ibn ʿArabī. Wrote a
commentary on the Most Beautiful Names of God (asmāʾ Allāh al-ḥusnā) as well as
an epistle on poetic meter and prose.
al-Ṭūfī, Najm al-Dīn (d. 716/1316): Ḥanbalī legal scholar who was partial to rationalist
kalām theology of the Ashʿarī type and was accused of having Shīʿī leanings. Known
in particular for his theory of maṣlaḥa, or public interest, in law.
al-Tustarī, Sahl b. ʿAbd Allāh (d. 283/896): Influential Sufi whose thought was im-
mersed in Qurʾānic exegesis. Only two works attributed to him have survived, a tafsīr
and a collection of aphorisms.

U
Ubayy b. Kaʿb (d. ca. 35/656): Served as a scribe to the Prophet in Medina. Knew
the Qurʾān by heart and was one of the few to set it down in writing during the
Prophet’s lifetime. Played an active role as an early collector and transmitter of the
Qurʾān.
ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (d. 101/720): Fifth Umayyad caliph, revered for his piety. Has
sometimes been referred to as the fifth Rightly Guided Caliph. Often celebrated as
the embodiment of a just and pious ruler.
al-Urmawī, Sirāj al-Dīn (d. 682/1283): Shāfiʿī logician and scholar of legal theory. Author
of several works in logic, legal theory, and theology as well a commentary on Ibn
Sīnā’s Ishārāt.
ʿUrwa b. al-Zubayr b. al-ʿAwwām (d. 93/711 or 712 or 94/712 or 713): Successor (tābiʿī),
respected muḥaddith, and one of the so-called Seven Jurists of Medina. Was also a
recognized authority on the early history of Islam and composed one of the first
writings on the Prophet’s biography (no longer extant, but known to us through the
famous Sīra of Ibn Isḥāq).

W
Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ (d. 197/812): Renowned muḥaddith from Iraq. His works include a
tafsīr, a collection of ḥadīth, the historical work al-Maʿrifa wa-l-tārīkh, and numer-
ous other writings.
al-Walīd b. Yazīd (al-Walīd II) (r. 125–126/743–744): Umayyad caliph who faced oppo-
sition throughout his brief reign and was killed during a short siege on his palace.
The Qadarī doctrine gained ascendancy for a brief time during the political revolt
against his rule.
al-Wāqidī, Muḥammad b. ʿUmar (d. 207/823): Historian, legal scholar, and frequently
cited authority on early Islamic history. Known for his Kitāb al-Maghāzī.

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Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ (d. 131/748 or 749): Theologian and ascetic known primarily as the founder
of the Muʿtazilī school of theology. Very little is known about his life, and none of
his writings have been preserved.
al-Wāthiq, Abū Jaʿfar Hārūn b. Muḥammad (r. 227–232/842–847): Ninth Abbasid
caliph and last of the three who presided over the execution of the miḥna.

Y
Yaḥyā b. ʿAdī (d. 363/974): Syriac Jacobite Christian translator, logician, and student of
al-Fārābī who translated and commented on works of Aristotle. In some of his trea-
tises, he applied the methodology of demonstrative logic to kalām concepts.
Yūḥannā b. Ḥaylān (fl. early fourth/tenth century): Nestorian Christian scholar who
came to Baghdad from Marv during the reign of the Abbasid caliph al-Muqtadir bi-
Llāh (r. 295–320/908–932). Was one of the teachers of al-Fārābī.

Z
al-Ẓāhirī, Dāwūd b. Khalaf al-Aṣbahānī (d. 270/884): Freed slave of the Abbasid caliph
al-Mahdī. Well-known jurist with strongly literalist views (hence “al-Ẓāhirī”). Held
the Qurʾān to be created, earning him broad scholarly condemnation. Known for a
number of idiosyncratic views.
Zayd b. ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn (d. 122/740): Great-grandson of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib. Narrated
ḥadīth from his father, Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn, and his brother, al-Bāqir, among others.
Praised in Sunnī sources for refusing to impugn Abū Bakr and ʿUmar.
al-Zinjānī, Abū al-Qāsim Saʿd b. ʿAlī (d. 471/1078): Sufi scholar, ḥadīth master (“ḥāfiẓ”),
and shaykh of the ḥaram, known for his ascetic piety.
Zuhayr al-Atharī (death date unknown): Relatively obscure Murjiʾī figure. Held that
God is everywhere in His essence but simultaneously “seated upon the throne” and
that God is not a body. Held that the Qurʾān, as God’s speech, was originated in time
(muḥdath) but not created (makhlūq). Affirmed the faith (īmān) of the grave sinner
and adopted Muʿtazilī views on the divine decree (qadar).
al-Zuhrī, Ibn Shihāb (d. 124/742): Early advocate of documenting ḥadīth, is often cred-
ited with having been the first to compile a sunan work at the request of ʿUmar b.
ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. Noted also for his mastery of jurisprudence. Mentioned with admira-
tion and reverence by his contemporaries and successors.

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‫‪Index of Arabic Passages‬‬

‫‪The following index provides the original Arabic of selected passages in the Darʾ taʿāruḍ that‬‬
‫‪appear in this work in English translation. Passages from authors other than Ibn Taymiyya are‬‬
‫‪reproduced as cited by Ibn Taymiyya in the Darʾ. In most cases, Ibn Taymiyya’s citation of these‬‬
‫‪passages is identical to how they appear in the authors’ own original works (as attested in either‬‬
‫‪published or manuscript1 form). Any discrepancies (invariably minor and of little or no conse-‬‬
‫‪quence for the meaning) are indicated below in footnotes. Passages are listed by page number in‬‬
‫‪the order of their appearance in this book.‬‬

‫‪Passages from Ibn Taymiyya in the Darʾ taʿāruḍ‬‬

‫‪p. 107‬‬ ‫فأراد هؤلاء أن يجمعوا بين نصر ما اشتهر عند أهل السنة والحديث و بين موافقة الجهمية في تلك‬
‫الأصول العقلية التي ظنها صحيحة‪ ،‬ولم يكن لهم من الخـبرة المفصلة بالقرآن ومعانيه والحديث‬
‫وأقوال الصحابة ما لأئمة السنة والحديث فذهب مذهبا مركبا من هذا وهذا وكلا الطائفتين‬
‫ينسبه إلى التناقض‪.‬‬

‫‪p. 107, n. 114‬‬ ‫ولما كان الأشعري ونحوه أقرب إلى السنة من طوائف من أهل الكلام كان انتسابه إلى أحمد‬
‫أكثر من غيرهكما هو معروف في كتبه‪.‬‬

‫‪p. 108‬‬ ‫]الشهرستاني … والقاضي أبو بكر وأبو المعالي والقاضي أبو يعلى وا بن الزاغوني وأبو الحسين‬
‫البصري ومحمد بن الهيصم‪ 2‬ونحو هؤلاء من أعيان الفضلاء المصنفين[ تجد أحدهم يذكر في‬
‫مسألة القرآن أو نحوها عدة أقوال للأمة و يختار واحدا منها والقول الثابت عن السلف والأئمة‬
‫كالإمام أحمد ونحوه من الأئمة لا يذكره الواحد منهم‪ ،‬مع أن عامة المنتسبين إلى السنة من جميع‬
‫الطوائف يقولون إنهم متبّ عون للأئمةكمالك والشافعي وأحمد وا بن المبارك وحماد بن ز يد وغيرهم‪.‬‬

‫‪p. 109‬‬ ‫ثم إنه ما من هؤلاء إلا من له في الإسلام مساع مشكورة وحسنات مبرورة وله في الرد على‬
‫كثير من أهل الإلحاد والبدع والانتصار لـكثير من أهل السنة والدين ما لا يخفى على من‬
‫عرف أحوالهم وتكلم فيهم بعلم وصدق وعدل وإنصاف‪.‬‬

‫‪p. 109‬‬ ‫لـكن لما التبس عليهم هذا الأصل المأخوذ ابتداء عن المعتزلة وهم فضلاء عقلاء احتاجوا إلى‬
‫طرده والتزام لوازمه فلزمهم بسبب ذلك من الأقوال ما أنكره المسلمون من أهل العلم والدين‪،‬‬
‫وصار الناس بسبب ذلك منهم من يعظمهم لما لهم من المحاسن والفضائل ومنهم من يذمهم لما‬
‫وقع في كلامهم من البدع والباطل‪ ،‬وخيار الأمور أوساطها‪.‬‬

‫‪1 As catalogued by Muḥammad Rashād Sālim (ed. of the Darʾ) in the critical notes he provides‬‬
‫‪for the passages in question.‬‬
‫‪2 Ibn Taymiyya has “al-Haytham,” but Sālim corrects this to “al-Hayṣam.” See Darʾ, 2:307, n. 1.‬‬

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‫‪index of arabic passages‬‬ ‫‪399‬‬

‫‪p. 124‬‬ ‫يميل ]ا بن رشد[ إلى باطنية الفلاسفة الذين يوجبون إقرار الجمهور على الظاهر كما يفعل ذلك‬
‫من يقول بقولهم من أهل الكلام والفقه والحديث‪ .‬ليس هو من باطنية الشيعةكالإسماعيلية‬
‫ونحوهم الذين يظهرون الإلحاد و يتظاهرون بخلاف شرائع الإسلام‪ ،‬وهو في نفي الصفات‬
‫أسوأ حالا من المعتزلة وأمثالهم‪ ،‬بمنزلة إخوانه الفلاسفة الباطنية‪.‬‬

‫وإنما يحصل النور والهدى بأن يقابل الفاسد بالصالح والباطل بالحق والبدعة بالسنة والضلال ‪p. 129, n. 200‬‬
‫بالهدى والـكذب بالصدق‪ ،‬و بذلك يتبين أن الأدلة الصحيحة لا تعارض بحال وأن المعقول‬
‫الصريح مطابق للمنقول الصحيح‪.‬‬

‫‪pp. 132–133‬‬ ‫قول القائل‪ :‬إذا تعارضت الأدلة السمعية والعقلية أو السمع والعقل أو النقل والعقل أو الظواهر‬
‫النقلية والقواطع العقلية أو نحو ذلك من العبارات فإما أن يجمع بينهما وهو محال لأنه جمع بين‬
‫النقيضين وإما أن يردّا جميعا وإما أن يقَّدم السمع وهو محال لأن العقل أصل للسمع‪ ،‬فلو قدمناه‬
‫عليهكان ذلك قدحا في العقل الذي هو أصل النقل والقدح في أصل الشيء قدح فيه‪ ،‬فكان‬
‫تقديم النقل قدحا في النقل والعقل جميعا فوجب تقديم العقل ثم النقل إما أن يتأول وإما أن‬
‫يف َو ّض‪.‬‬

‫‪p. 153‬‬ ‫أن يقال‪ :‬إذا تعارض الشرع والعقل وجب تقديم الشرع لأن العقل مصّدِق للشرع في كل ما‬
‫أخبر به والشرع لم يصدق العقل في كل ما أخبر به ولا العلم بصدقه موقوف على كل ما يخـبر‬
‫به العقل‪.‬‬

‫‪pp. 154–155‬‬ ‫هذا القرآن أو الحكمة الذي بلغته إلينا قد تضمن أشياء كثيرة تناقض ما علمنا بعقولنا‪ ،‬ونحن إنما‬
‫علمنا صدقك بعقولنا فلو قبلنا جميع ما تقوله مع أن عقولنا تناقض ذلك لكان ذلك قدحا فيما‬
‫علمنا به صدقك‪ ،‬فنحن نعتقد موجب الأقوال المناقضة لما ظهر من كلامك وكلامك نعرض‬
‫عنه لا نتلقى منه هدى ولا علما‪.‬‬

‫‪p. 169‬‬ ‫يعلم أهل العقل المتصفون بصريح العقل أن في المنطق من الخطأ البين ما لا ر يب فيه‪،‬‬
‫كما ذكر في غير هذا الموضع‪ .‬وأما كلامه ]أرسطو[ وكلام أتباعه كالإسكندر الأفروديسي‬
‫و برقلس وثامسطيوس والفارابي وا بن سينا والسهروردي المقتول وا بن رشد الحفيد وأمثالهم‬
‫في الإلهيات فما فيه من الخطأ الـكثير والتقصير العظيم ظاهر لجمهور عقلاء بني آدم بل في‬
‫كلامهم من التناقض ما لا يكاد يستقصى‪.‬‬

‫‪p. 192, n. 45‬‬ ‫فالعلم بالاستواء من باب التفسير وهو التأو يل الذي نعلمه‪ ،‬وأما الـكيف فهو التأو يل الذي لا‬
‫يعلمه إلا الل ّٰه وهو المجهول لنا‪.‬‬

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‫‪p. 211, n. 103‬‬ ‫فالأدلة الدالة على العلم لا يجوز أن تكون متناقضة متعارضة‪ ،‬وهذا مما لا ينازع فيه أحد من‬
‫العقلاء‪ .‬ومن صار من أهل الكلام إلى القول بتكافؤ الأدلة والحـيرة فإنما ذاك لفساد استدلاله‪،‬‬
‫إما لتقصيره وإما لفساد دليله ؛ ومن أعظم أسباب ذلك الألفاظ المجملة التي تشتبه معانيها‪.‬‬

‫‪p. 245‬‬ ‫]وإنما يثبت العقليات المجردة في الخارج الغالطون من المتفلسفة[ كالفيثاغور ية الذين يثبتون‬
‫العدد المجرد والأفلاطونية الذين يثبتون الـم ُثل الأفلاطونية‪ ،‬وهي الماهيات المجردة والهيولى‬
‫المجردة والمدة المجردة والخلاء المجرد‪ .‬وأما أرسطو وأصحابهكالفارابي وا بن سينا فأبطلوا قول‬
‫سلفهم في إثباتها مجردة عن الأعيان ولـكن أثبتوها مقارنة للأعيان‪ ،‬فجعلوا مع الأجسام‬
‫المحسوسة جواهر معقولةكالمادة والصورة‪ ،‬وإذا حقق الأمر عليهم لم يوجد في الخارج إلا الجسم‬
‫وأعراضه‪ .‬وأثبتوا في الخارج أيضا الكليات مقارنة للأعيان‪ ،‬وإذا حقق الأمر عليهم لم يوجد‬
‫في الخارج إلا الأعيان بصفاتها القائمة بها‪.‬‬

‫‪pp. 245–246‬‬ ‫فهذا الإنسان لم يوافق هذا في نفس إنسانيته وإنما وافقه في إنسانية مطلقة‪ ،‬وتلك المطلقة يمتنع‬
‫أن تقوم بالمعيَ ّن ؛ فالتي وافقه فيها يمتنع أن تكون بعينها موجودة في الخارج فضلا عن أن تكون‬
‫مقوِ ّمة لشيء من الأشياء‪ ،‬والأشياء المعينة لا تق َو ّم بها ولا يقوِ ّمها إلا ما هو مختص بها لا ي َشركها‬
‫فيه غيره‪.‬‬

‫‪pp. 251–252‬‬ ‫لـكن الروح معينة والبدن معين ومقارنة أحدهما الآخر ممكن‪ ،‬وهؤلاء يشتبه عليهم مقارنة‬
‫الروح للبدن وتجر يدها عنه بمقارنة الكليات المعقولة لجزئياتها وتجر يدها عنها‪ ،‬والفرق بين هذا‬
‫وهذا أبين من أن يحتاج إلى بسط‪ .‬وهم يلتبس عليهم أحدهما بالآخر فيأخذون لفظ »التجر يد«‬
‫و »المقارنة« بالاشتراك و يقولون‪ :‬العقول المفارقة للمادة‪ ،‬ولا يميزون بين كون الروح قد تكون‬
‫مقارنة للبدن و بين المعقولات الكلية التي لا ٺتوقف على وجودِ معين‪ ،‬فإن الروح – التي هي‬
‫النفس الناطقة – موجودة في الخارج قائم بنفسه ]‪ [sic‬إذا فارقت البدن‪ .‬وأما العقليات الكلية‬
‫المنتزعة من المعينات فإنما هي في الأذهان لا في الأعيان‪ ،‬فيجب الفرق بين تجر يد الروح عن‬
‫البدن وتجر يد الكليات عن المعينات‪.‬‬

‫‪pp. 253–254‬‬ ‫فما أفاده الحس معينا يفيده العقل والقياس كليا مطلقا فهو لا يفيد بنفسه علم شيء معين‬
‫لـكن يجعل الخاص عاما والمعين مطلقا‪ ،‬فإن الكليات إنما تعلم بالعقل كما أن المعينات إنما تعلم‬
‫بالإحساس‪.‬‬

‫‪p. 275, n. 161‬‬ ‫يحدث والاستدلال به على ثبوت الصانع ليس مفتقرا إلى أن يعُ لم هل في‬
‫العلم بحدوث ما َ‬
‫النطفة جواهر منفردة أو مادة وهل ذلك قديم أو حادث‪ ،‬بل مجرد حدوث ما شهد حدوثه‬
‫يدل على أن له محدثا كما يدل حدوث سا ئر الحوادث على أن لها محدثا‪.‬‬

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‫)‪Passages from authors other than Ibn Taymiyya (as cited in the Darʾ‬‬
‫‪al-Juwaynī, al-ʿAqīda al-Niẓāmiyya‬‬
‫‪p. 111‬‬ ‫ذهب أئمة السلف إلى الانكفاف عن التأو يل وإجراء الظواهر على مواردها وتفو يض معانيها‬
‫إلى الرب تعالى‪ ،‬والذي نرتضيه رأيا وندين الل ّٰه به عقلا اتباع سلف الأمة فالأولى الاتباع وترك‬
‫الابتداع‪.‬‬

‫‪Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, al-Radd ʿalā al-jahmiyya wa-l-zanādiqa‬‬

‫‪pp. 115–116‬‬ ‫الحمد لل ّٰه الذي جعل في كل زمان فترة من الرسل بقايا من أهل العلم يدعون من ضل إلى‬
‫الهدى و يصبرون منهم على الأذى‪ ،‬يحيون بكتاب الل ّٰه الموتى و يبص ّرون بنور الل ّٰه أهل العمى‪،‬‬
‫فكم من قتيل لإ بليس قد أحيوه وكم من ضال تائه قد هدوه‪ ،‬فما أحسن أ ثرهم على الناس وأقبح‬
‫أ ثر الناس عليهم‪ ،‬ينفون عن كتاب الل ّٰه تحر يف الغالين وانتحال المبطلين وتأو يل الجاهلين الذين‬
‫عقدوا ألو ية البدعة وأطلقوا عنان الفتنة‪ ،‬فهم مختلفون في الكتاب‪ ،‬مخالفون للكتاب‪ ،‬متفقون‬
‫على مفارقة الكتاب‪ ،‬يقولون على الل ّٰه وفي الل ّٰه وفي كتاب الل ّٰه بغير علم‪ ،‬يتكلمون بالمتشابه من‬
‫جهّال الناس بما يلب ّسون عليهم‪ ،‬فنعوذ بالل ّٰه من فتن المضلين‪.‬‬
‫الكلام و يخدعون ُ‬

‫‪Ibn Sīnā, al-Aḍḥawiyya fī al-maʿād‬‬

‫‪p. 120‬‬ ‫الإقرار بالصانع موحدا مقدسا عن الـكم والـكيف والأ ين ومتى والوضع والتغير‪ ،‬حتى يصير‬
‫الاعتقاد به أنه ذات واحدة لا يمكن أن يكون لها شر يك في النوع أو يكون لها جزء وجودي‬
‫كمي أو معنوي‪ ،‬ولا يمكن أن تكون خارجة عن العالم ولا داخلة فيه ولا حيث تصح الإشارة‬
‫إليه أنه هنا أو هناك‪3.‬‬

‫‪pp. 120–121‬‬ ‫ولو ألقي هذا على هذه الصورة إلى العرب العار بة أو العبرانيين الأجلاف لتسارعوا إلى العناد‬
‫واتفقوا على أن الإ يمان المدعو إليه إ يمان بمعدوم أصلا‪4.‬‬

‫‪p. 121‬‬ ‫هب أن هذهكلها موجودة على الاستعارة فأ ين التوحيد والعبارة المشيرة بالتصريح إلى التوحيد‬
‫المحض الذي تدعو إليه حقيقة هذا الدين القيم المعترف بجلالته على لسان حكماء العالم قاطبة؟‪5‬‬

‫‪p. 121‬‬ ‫فظاهر من هذا كله أن الشرائع واردة بخطاب الجمهور بما يفهمون‪ ،‬مقر با ما لا يفهمون إلى‬
‫أفهامهم بالتمثيل والتشبيه‪ ،‬ولو كان غير ذلك لما أغنت الشرائع البتة‪6.‬‬

‫”‪3 Ibn Sīnā: “bi-ḥaythu taṣiḥḥu” (in addition to “ḥaythu taṣiḥḥu”); “annahu hunāka‬‬
‫)”‪4 Ibn Sīnā: “wa-l-ajlāf ” and “min al-ajlāf ”; “īmān maʿdūm” (in addition to “īmān bi-maʿdūm‬‬
‫‪5 Ibn Sīnā: “maʾkhūdha ʿalā al-istiʿāra”; “fa-ayna al-nuṣūṣ [also: al-nuṣūṣ al-tawḥīdiyya] al-mu-‬‬
‫”‪shīra ilā al-taṣrīḥ bi-l-tawḥīd al-maḥḍ‬‬
‫”‪6 Ibn Sīnā: “li-khiṭāb‬‬

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‫‪Ibn Rushd, al-Kashf ʿan manāhij al-adilla‬‬

‫‪p. 122‬‬ ‫]فقد ظهر لك من هذا أن[ إثبات الجهة واجب بالشرع والعقل وأنه الذي جاء به الشرع وانبنى‬
‫عليه فإن إ بطال هذه القاعدة إ بطال للشرائع‪7.‬‬

‫‪p. 123‬‬ ‫فإن المقصود الأول في العلم في حق الجمهور إنما هو العمل فما كان أنفع في العمل فهو أجدر‪،‬‬
‫فأما المقصود بالعلم في حق العلماء فهو الأمران جميعا‪ :‬أعني العلم والعمل‪8.‬‬

‫‪al-Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn‬‬

‫‪p. 126‬‬ ‫وحد الاقتصاد بين هذا الانحلال كله و بين جمود الحنابلة دقيق غامض لا يطلع عليه إلا‬
‫الموفقون الذين يدركون الأمور بنور إلهي لا بالسماع‪ ،‬ثم إذا انكشفت لهم أسرار الأمور على ما‬
‫هي عليه نظروا إلى السمع والألفاظ الواردة فما وافق ما شاهدوه بنور اليقين قرروه وما خالف‬
‫أولوه‪.‬‬

‫‪al-Khūnajī (as reported by al-Tilimsānī in Sharḥ Mawāqif al-Niffarī)9‬‬

‫‪p. 146‬‬ ‫ا بن تيمية‪ :‬أموت ولم أعرف شيئا إلا أن الممكن مفتقر إلى الممتنع ]ثم قال[ الافتقار وصف‬
‫سلبي‪ :‬أموت ولم أعرف شيئا‪.‬‬

‫التلمساني‪ :‬وقد نقل إلي من حضر وفاة الأفضل الخونجي رحمه الل ّٰه وسمع منه عند الموت قوله‪:‬‬
‫»نهاية ما وصلت إليه أني علمت أني لا أعلم شيئا غير مسألة واحدة وهو كون هذا المصنوع‬
‫مفتقر ]‪ [sic‬إلى صانع« والفقر يرجع عندي أنا إلى أمر سلبي فما علم شيئا أصلا‪.‬‬

‫‪al-Ghazālī, Tahāfut al-falāsifa‬‬

‫‪p. 146‬‬ ‫فألزمهم تارة مذهب المعتزلة وأخرى مذهب الـكرامية وطورا مذهب الواقفية ولا أتنهض ذابا‬
‫عن مذهب مخصوص‪.‬‬

‫‪al-Rāzī, Nihāyat al-ʿuqūl fī dirāyat al-uṣūl‬‬

‫‪p. 152‬‬ ‫فثبت أن العلم بالأصول التي يتوقف على صحتها نبوة محمد عليه السلام علم جلي ظاهر وإنما طال‬
‫الكلام في هذه الأصول لرفع هذه الشكوك التي يثبتها المبطلون … فثبت أن أصول الإسلام‬
‫جلية ظاهرة‪ ،‬ثم إن أدلتها على الاستقصاء مذكورة في كتاب الل ّٰه تعالى خالية عما يتوهم معارضا‬
‫لها‪10.‬‬

‫‪7‬‬ ‫”‪Ibn Rushd: “wa-anna ibṭāl‬‬

‫‪8‬‬ ‫”‪Ibn Rushd: “bi-l-ʿilm”; “wa-ammā‬‬
‫‪9‬‬ ‫‪I include the original quotation from al-Tilimsānī’s Sharḥ here after Ibn Taymiyya’s para-‬‬
‫‪phrase of it in the Darʾ, as it is clear that he reproduces the passage only loosely.‬‬
‫‪10‬‬ ‫”‪Al-Rāzī: “li-dafʿ hādhihi al-shukūk allatī laffaqahā‬‬

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index of arabic passages 403

al-Ḥillī, Nihāyat al-wuṣūl ilā ʿilm al-uṣūl

p. 194, n. 52 ‫ بل كل لفظ ترجح معنى فيه‬،‫]وفيه نظر لـ[عدم اختصاص الظاهر بما دل بالأصل أو العرف‬
.‫فهو ظاهر بالنسبة إليه‬

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Index of Ḥadīth

Page ref. Text of ḥadīth

199 “The Black Stone is the right hand of God on earth; whoever shakes it and kisses
it, it is as if he had shaken and kissed the right hand of God.”
175 “Disputation (mirāʾ) with respect to the Qurʾān is disbelief.”
261, 261n.117, “Every child is born on [i.e., in a state of] the fiṭra, then his parents turn him into
296n.27 a Jew or a Christian—just as camels are reproduced from a whole [and sound]
animal: do you find any among them that are maimed?”
variant: “turn him into a Jew or a Christian or a Magian”
variant: “born on the creed/religion (ʿalā al-milla)”
variant: “born on this creed/religion, until his tongue [is able to] express it
( yubayyina ʿanhu)”
variant: “born on this fiṭra, until his tongue [is able to] express it ( yuʿabbira
ʿanhu)”
variant: “do you find any among them that are maimed until you go and maim
them?”
29n.29 “For whomever God desires good, He grants him understanding in religion.”
282n.9 “God, blessed and exalted is He, has said, ‘I have prepared for my righteous ser-
vants that which no eye has seen, nor ear has heard, nor has occurred to the heart
of any man.’”
232 The ḥadīth of Gabriel:
In the words of ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb (as narrated by his son): “One day when we
were with the Messenger of God,1 a man came upon us with bright white clothes
and pitch black hair. No signs of travel could be seen upon him, yet none of us
knew him. He sat before the Prophet, pressed his knees against [the Prophet’s]
knees, and placed his hands upon his thighs. He then said, ‘O Muḥammad! Tell me
about islām (submission).’ The Messenger of God replied, ‘Islām is to testify that
there is no god but God and that Muḥammad is the Messenger of God, to perform
the prayer, to give alms, to fast the month of Ramaḍān, and to perform pilgrimage
to the House [i.e., the Kaʿba] if you are able to.’ The man replied, ‘You are correct.’”
ʿUmar said, “We found it strange that he should ask him [the Prophet] then con-
firm his response. Then the man said, ‘Tell me about īmān (faith).’ The Prophet
replied, ‘Īmān is to believe in God, His angels, His books, His messengers, and the
last day, and to believe in the divine decree (qadar), the good of it and the bad.’
He said, ‘You are correct.’ Then he said, ‘Tell me about iḥsān (excellence).’ The
Prophet replied, ‘Iḥsān is to worship God as if you saw Him, for if you see Him
not, [know that] surely He sees you.’ Then the man said, ‘Tell me about the Hour.’
The Prophet replied, ‘The one being inquired has no more knowledge of it than
the one inquiring.’ So he said, ‘Then tell me about its signs.’ The Prophet replied,

1 The original version of the ḥadīth includes the standard phrase “May the peace and blessings
of God be upon him” (ṣallā Llāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) each time the name of the Prophet is
mentioned.

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index of ḥadīth 405

‘[Among its signs are] that a slave girl will give birth to her mistress and that you
will see barefoot, naked, destitute shepherds vying with one another in the con-
struction of tall buildings.’” ʿUmar said, “Then he left, and I stayed back awhile.
Then the Prophet said to me, ‘ʿUmar, do you know who the inquirer was?’ I
replied, ‘God and His Messenger know best.’ He said, ‘It was Gabriel, who came
to teach you your religion.’”
282n.10 It was related that the Prophet saw a group of people and asked them, “What
are you doing?” They replied, “We are pondering on the Creator.” He said to them,
“Ponder over His creation but ponder not on the Creator, [for] you cannot encom-
pass His immensity.”
26 “Satan shall come to you and say, ‘Who created this?’ and ‘Who created that?’ until
he says, ‘Who created your Lord?’ So if anyone of you should reach this point, let
him seek refuge in God and desist.”
variant: “… let him say, ‘I have believed in God and His messengers.’ ”
variant: “People will continue to pose questions until they ask, ‘Who created
God?’”
174n.107 “The scholars are the heirs of the prophets. The prophets bequeathed neither
dīnār nor dirham; rather, they bequeathed knowledge. So whoever takes it [pro-
phetic knowledge] has taken a generous share.”

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Index of People and Places

ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar 43n.77 al-Ashʿarī, Abū Mūsā 48

ʿAbd al-Jabbār, al-Qāḍī Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAssāf al-Naṣrānī 81, 86
110n.133, 199n.62 Averroes. See Ibn Rushd
ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī 88 Avicenna. See Ibn Sīnā
Abrahamov, Binyamin 45
Abū Ḥanīfa 43n.77, 89n.36 Baghdad 38–39, 46, 48–49
Abū al-Hudhayl al-ʿAllāf 41 al-Baghdādī, ʿAbd al-Qāhir 43, 65 n.198
Abū Muʿādh al-Tūmanī 105 al-Baghdādī, Abū al-Barakāt 75
Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī 87 al-Bāhilī, Abū al-Ḥasan 51 n.128
Abū ʿUbayda, Maʿmar b. al-Muthannā al-Bāqillānī, Abū Bakr 40, 52–53, 63–66,
185n.14 107, 109–110, 117
Abū Yaʿlā b. al-Farrāʾ (al-Qāḍī Abū Yaʿlā) and bi-lā kayf doctrine 65
107 on universal rule 135
Abū Zahra, Muḥammad 13 works of
Adamson, Peter 57 Daqāʾiq al-ḥaqāʾiq 143 n.29
Ahmed, Asad Q. 12 al-Taqrīb wa-l-irshād 189
Ahmed, Shahab 12 al-Barbahārī, al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī 40, 45
ʿĀʾisha bt. Abī Bakr 190–191 al-Baṣrī, Abū al-Ḥusayn 64n.195, 107, 110 n.133
Alexander of Aphrodisias 54, 169 al-Baṣrī, al-Ḥasan 34, 41, 43 n.77, 192
Alexandria 92 Baybars. See al-Jāshnikīr
Ibn Taymiyya’s exile to 83–84, 86 al-Bayḍāwī, ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar 51
ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib 31, 43n.77 al-Bayhaqī, Abū Bakr; Fī faḍāʾil al-Ashʿarī
al-Āmidī, Sayf al-Dīn 110, 194n.52 106
on divine attributes 112, 118 Bukhara 60
al-Iḥkām fī uṣūl al-aḥkām 90n.42 Burghūth, Muḥammad b. ʿĪsā 170n.96
pseudo-philosophical, quasi-Muʿtazilī al-Buwayṭī, Abū Yaʿqūb 43 n.77
approach of 114
suspension of judgement of 146–147 Cairo 84, 96
ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd 39, 41 Ibn Taymiyya’s banishment to/imprison-
al-Āmulī, Karīm al-Dīn 83 ment in 82–83, 86
Aristotle 10, 54, 56, 57–58, 60, 126, 128, 169, Calder, Norman 12
216 Cordoba 67
al-Ashʿarī, Abū al-Ḥasan 40, 45, 48–52, 63,
65, 186n.17 Damascus 31, 38–39, 78–79, 84–85, 87
on divine attributes 50, 106, 117 and trials of Ibn Taymiyya 96
doctrine of 51–52 al-Dawānī, Jalāl al-Dīn 71 n.236
on existence of God 275n.161 al-Dhahabī, Shams al-Dīn 93–95
and Muʿtazila 49, 92, 111 on Ibn Taymiyya 95 n.59, 95 n.60
works of Ḍirār b. ʿAmr 170n.96
al-Ibāna ʿan uṣūl al-diyāna 51
Istiḥsān al-khawḍ fī ʿilm al-kalām Egypt 79, 87
51n.126 Eichner, Heidrun 76
al-Lumaʿ 51n.126 El-Rouayheb, Khaled 12, 73n.242
Maqālāt ghayr al-Islāmiyyīn 143n.29
Maqālāt al-Islāmiyyīn 51, 104 Fakhry, Majid 12
Risāla ilā ahl al-thaghr 108 Farab 57

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al-Fārābī 40, 54, 61, 67, 169, 245 Gutas, Dimitri 10, 12
on allegorical interpretation of scripture Gwynne, Rosalind Ward 25 n.17
60
on apodictic demonstration 59n.173 Ḥafṣ al-Fard 170n.96
on equivalence of syllogism and analogy Hallaq, Wael 11 n.21, 11 n.23, 83, 256n.103
278n.3 al-Ḥamawī, Ibn Wāṣil 147
Kitāb al-Jadal 59n.174 Ḥanbaliyya madrasa (Damascus) 79, 86
as “materialist (pseudo-)philosopher” al-Harawī, ʿAbd Allāh al-Anṣārī 71, 88
113, 117 al-Harawī, Abū Dharr al-Anṣārī 109
on reason and revelation 119–120 al-Ḥārith al-Muḥāsibī. See al-Muḥāsibī
on relationship between philosophy and Ḥarmala b. Yaḥyā 43 n.77
religion 58–59 Harran 78, 86
Frank, Richard 275n.161 Hārūn al-Rashīd 38, 46 n.93
Fūda, Saʿīd 100n.84 Ḥātim al-Ṭāʾī 239
Heer, Nicholas 150
Galston, Miriam 59n.173 Hijaz 38, 89
Genghis Khan 20 al-Ḥillī, Jamāl al-Dīn 194n.52
al-Ghazālī, Abū Ḥāmid 5, 16, 25n.18, 40, 51, Hoover, Jon 106 n.108, 115 n.151, 119n.157,
55, 61–62, 63, 68–70, 87, 108, 118–119, 122 n.172
194n.52, 278n.3
on attributes 112 Ibn ʿAbbās, ʿAbd Allāh 189–190, 281
on existence of God 151–152 Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr 192n.44, 204
on kalām 62, 65–66, 70, 75 Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī 94, 97–98
on knowledge 66, 126 Ibn Abī al-Ḥadīd, ʿIzz al-Dīn 146
on philosophy/philosophers 66–68, 92, Ibn ʿAqīl 71, 97, 106
124n.186, 125, 129, 146 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Abū Bakr 107–109, 117
on Qurʾān 161n.74 and articulation of universal rule 134
on reason and rationality 127–128 Ibn ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn 40, 118
on spiritual unveiling (kashf ) 71, 125, mystical monism of 82, 86, 88
146 and unity of being (waḥdat al-wujūd)
studies on 118n.153 113
and Sunna 70, 112 Ibn ʿAsākir 47 n.101, 71
works of Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh al-Iskandarī 83
Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn 67, 70, 125 Ibn al-Fāriḍ, ʿUmar 88
al-Iqtiṣād fī al-iʿtiqād 67 Ibn Fūrak 51 n.129, 65 n.198
Jawāhir al-Qurʾān 125n.192 Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī 93
al-Maḍnūn bihi ʿalā ghayr ahlihi Ibn Ḥanbal, Aḥmad 40, 44, 52, 88–89, 91,
125n.192 114, 117, 192–193
Mishkāt al-anwār 69 as champion of orthodoxy 115
Miʿyār al-ʿilm fī fann al-manṭiq 67 on divine attributes, taʾwīl of 202–
al-Munqidh min al-ḍalāl 70 203
al-Mustaṣfā min ʿilm al-uṣūl 90n.42 and miḥna 46
Qānūn al-taʾwīl 134 al-Radd ʿalā al-jahmiyya wa-l-zanādiqa
al-Qisṭās al-mustaqīm 161n.74 115–116, 202
al-Risāla al-Laduniyya 70 on rational arguments 114–115
Tahāfut al-falāsifa 62, 67–68, 124, and Salaf 96
125n.192, 129, 146 Ibn Ḥazm 12, 90 n.40, 106
Gleave, Robert 189n.27 Ibn Isḥāq 190
Griffel, Frank 150 Sīra of 32 n.43

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408 index of people and places

Ibn al-Jawzī 97, 106 on eternal contingent (al-mumkin al-

Ibn Karrām 105, 117 qadīm) 255 n.102
Ibn Kathīr, Ismāʿīl b. ʿUmar 94 on God 61, 66, 120–121, 250 n.81
Ibn Khaldūn 29n.31, 66, 69 and kalām 54, 60–62, 63, 73
Ibn Khuzayma 40, 45 on knowledge and reason 126–127
Ibn Kullāb 39–40, 105–107 metaphysics of 67, 76
on doctrine of divine attributes 48, 105, on reason and revelation 119–120
117 studies on 119 n.155
as one of the “mutakallimat ahl-ḥadīth” on terms 221
107 on wahmiyyāt 231 n.15, 273 n.159
Ibn Maḍāʾ al-Qurṭubī; Kitāb al-Radd ʿalā al- Ibn Taymiyya, Fakhr al-Dīn 79
nuḥāh 215n.111 Ibn Taymiyya, Majd al-Dīn 79
Ibn al-Mājishūn, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Abī Salama Ibn Taymiyya, Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad 12, 16
192 on al-Āmidī 112, 114
Ibn al-Mājishūn, ʿAbd al-Malik b. ʿAbd al- on al-Ashʿarī 106–107, 109–111, 114
ʿAzīz 192n.44 on atheists (malāḥida) 140
Ibn Makhlūf, Zayn al-Dīn 94 belief/creed of 86, 91, 159
Ibn Masʿūd, ʿAbd Allāh 190, 208 biography of 78–85
Ibn Mujāhid (al-Ṭāʾī), Abū ʿAbd Allāh sources of 78 n.2
52n.128 tabular summary of 86–87
Ibn al-Nafīs 268n.144 character of 80, 93–95
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Dimashqī 98 on context 18, 182, 193–197, 201, 206–
Ibn Qalāwūn, al-Nāṣir Muḥammad 81, 207, 225
83n.20, 86 Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wa-l-naql 84, 99
Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya 84, 97n.67, 144n.31, arguments (wujūh) of 8 n.8, 77
181n.5, 194n.51, 201 studies/scholarship on 11, 13, 15
Ibn Qudāma; Rawḍat al-nāẓir wa-junnat al- text of 9–12
munāẓir 90n.42 on doubt 268
Ibn Qutayba 40, 45, 47, 189 as empiricist 236
Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī 93–94 epistemology of 17–19, 227–228, 272,
Ibn Rushayyiq; Asmāʾ muʾallafāt Ibn 292–294
Taymiyya 97, 99 erudition of 9–10, 80, 87, 94
Ibn Rushd 5, 16, 25n.18, 58–60, 67, 72, 119, on essence 218, 221–222, 236 n.33, 248–
169 250, 286–287
critique of Ashʿarīs 92 and al-Fārābī 60
critique of al-Ghazālī 123–124 fatwās of 84–85, 87, 91
on knowledge 126 on fiṭra 260–264, 294–296, 298
studies on 119n.156 on al-Ghazālī 112, 124–125, 127, 146
works of on God’s attributes 210, 285, 287, 288,
Faṣl al-maqāl 40, 119n.157, 122n.171 290
al-Kashf ʿan manāhij al-adilla and God’s oneness 217–220
119n.157, 122 and Ḥanbalīs 91, 95
Ibn Sabʿīn 88 on ḥaqīqa 99, 185 n.14, 188–189, 191–192,
Ibn Ṣaṣrā 82 246–247, 248–250, 286–287
Ibn Sīnā 5, 16, 40, 58–59, 63–64, 68, 75–76, hermeneutics of 17, 182–183, 206, 224–
113, 117, 119–121, 169, 245, 268n.144 225
al-Aḍḥawiyya fī al-maʿād 101, 119n.157, on Ibn Ḥanbal 44, 106, 114–115
120, 136 on Ibn Rushd 122–124
Avicennian turn 92 on Ibn Sīnā 62, 120–121, 251

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imprisonment of 81, 83–85, 86 and prohibition of disputation with

on inference, types of 278–279, 284, 292 respect to 175
on intertextuality, principle of 202, 204 and prohibition of the use of false
on al-Juwaynī 118 arguments 174
on kalām theologians/mutakallimūn recurrent (mutawātir) transmission of
105–107, 113, 122, 147, 166, 213, 228, 259 the meanings of 171–172
on knowledge 126, 257–259, 265, 273, on al-Rāzī 76, 112, 114, 132–133, 134 n.7,
275–276, 286, 289–294 144, 145, 274
a priori 255–260 on reason 104, 128–129, 209, 212, 253,
certitude in 296–297 273–274, 289
necessary 255, 264, 270 pure/sound (ʿaql ṣarīḥ) 6, 18,
and reason 253–254 76 n.259, 104, 114, 147, 169, 175–176,
on language 8, 13, 17–19, 182–183, 193– 207, 226, 241, 259, 274, 292, 298
195, 215, 289 and role of 180 n.3
legal views of 95–96 on reason and revelation, agreement
as literalist or textualist 201–202 between 8, 17, 129–130, 141–142, 167–
memory (ḥifẓ) of 98 168, 173, 227–228, 288–289
moderate realism of 243–244, 256n.103 and refutation of Shīʿism 100
on Muʿtazila 109, 209n.91, 288, 295 on revelation 128–129, 150–151, 199 n.62
on names 281 meaning of 181–182, 197–198
on negationism/negationists 114–115, on Salaf 91, 96, 227
128n.198, 138–139, 141, 170, 176, 209, 263, authority and normative understand-
289–290 ing of 114–115, 180, 182, 208–210,
as nominalist 243 226, 240
ontology of 17, 19, 227–228, 254, 277, 286, linguistic convention of 201, 206,
289 225
opponents/opposition of/to 80–82, 85, on meaning of Q. Āl ʿImrān 3:7 190–
94–97 193
on perceptible/empirical vs. men- taʾwīl of 204–205
tal/notional 229, 241 universal affirmationism of 103–105,
on perceptibles 237–238 113–114, 185, 288
on philosophers (critique of) 18, 127– on scripture and rational arguments
129, 143, 294, 297 150–151, 154, 181
on divine attributes 243 on seen and unseen realms 231, 233, 275,
on essence/quiddity and existence 280, 283–284
76, 250–252 on tawātur 18, 228, 239–240, 266–268,
on language 211 270–272, 276, 291
logic of 61, 92 on taʾwīl 184–185, 187, 189–190, 202,
ontology of 228, 235, 277 223 n.133, 288
on revelation 127–128 on terms/words, use of 211–215, 222–
on universals 229n.9, 241, 243, 277 223
philosophy of 13, 15, 17 on theologians 175, 211
on proofs 147, 292 trials of 80, 96
on Qurʾān 128n.199, 158, 165–166, 170, on universal rule (of interpretation),
198, 200, 247n.74, 266, 284 refutation of 6, 14, 16, 77, 148–149,
and argument for existence of God 150–152, 155, 156, 163, 168–169, 172
from mere fact of origination on universal rules of logic 255–258
275n.161 on universals and particulars 244,
and linguistic convention 206–207 247

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works of 97–102, 148 al-Jurjānī, al-Sharīf 71 n.236

al-ʿAqīda al-Wāsiṭiyya 82, 86, 96, 100 al-Juwaynī (“Imām al-Ḥaramayn”) 40, 63,
Bayān talbīs al-Jahmiyya fī taʾsīs 64–66, 67, 92, 107, 109, 117–118
bidaʿihim al-kalāmiyya 99 on divine attributes 65
al-Fatwā al-Ḥamawiyya al-kubrā 81, on taʾwīl 65, 111
86, 100 and universal rule 135
al-Furqān bayna al-ḥaqq wa-l-bāṭil works of
134n.7 al-ʿAqīda al-Niẓāmiyya 64, 111
Iqtiḍāʾ al-ṣirāṭ al-mustaqīm li- Kitāb al-Irshād 111
mukhālafat aṣḥāb al-jaḥīm 100
al-Jawāb al-ṣaḥīḥ li-man baddala dīn Kaḥḥāla, ʿUmar 48 n.110
al-Masīḥ 100 al-Karābīsī, Abū ʿAlī 43 n.77
Kitāb al-Īmān 99, 197 al-Karkhī, Abū al-Ḥasan 186 n.17
Kitāb Minhāj al-sunna 100 al-Khallāl, Abū Bakr 40, 45
Kitāb al-Radd ʿalā al-manṭiqiyyīn 83, al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī 48 n.110
86, 92, 101, 182 al-Khūnajī, Afḍal al-Dīn 112 n.142
Majmūʿat al-rasāʾil al-kubrā 101 Kashf al-asrār ʿan ghawāmiḍ al-afkār 146
Majmūʿat al-rasāʾil wa-l-masāʾil 101 al-Kindī 39, 54
Majmūʿ fatāwā Shaykh al-Islām Aḥmad Fī al-falsafa al-ūlā 56–57
b. Taymiyya 101, 182 on nature of God 56–57, 58–59, 63
Muqaddima fī uṣūl al-tafsīr 99, 182 rational methodology of, as applied to
al-Qāʿida al-Murrākushiyya 100 revelation 55
al-Radd ʿalā falsafat Ibn Rushd 101 on relationship between philosophy
“Risāla fī al-qiyās” 89n.34, 90n.42 and religion 55
al-Risāla fī ziyārat al-qubūr wa-l- Krawietz, Birgit 13, 99 n.72
istinjād bi-l-maqbūr 85
al-Risāla al-Tadmuriyya 100 Maʿbad al-Juhanī 34
Sharḥ awwal al-Muḥaṣṣal 158 Mahdi, Muhsin 56n.153
Tafsīr Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyya Maimonides (Mūsā b. Maymūn) 58
99n.73, 101 Mālik b. Anas 89, 191, 204, 227
Ibn Ṭufayl 125, 268n.144 al-Maʾmūn, Abū al-ʿAbbās 39, 46 n.93
Ibn al-Zāghūnī 107 al-Manbijī, Naṣr 82, 86
al-Ījī, ʿAḍud al-Dīn 51, 71n.236 Martin, Richard 12
al-ʿIjlī, Muḥammad b. Nūḥ 46n.95 Mattā b. Yūnus, Abū Bishr 57, 58 n.168
al-Ikhnāʾī, Taqī al-Dīn 85 al-Māturīdī, Abū Manṣūr 32 n.39
al-Isfarāyīnī, Abū Isḥāq 51n.129, 107, 117 Medina 31
al-Iskāfī, Abū Jaʿfar 186n.17 Michot, Yahya 9, 80, 120
Muḥammad (Prophet) 96, 136, 210, 234
al-Jaʿd b. Dirham 35, 103, 116 and appearance of Gabriel 232
Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq 43n.77 intentions and objectives of 171–172
Jaffer, Tariq 76–77, 148n.43 as intermediary 83
Jahm b. Ṣafwān 32n.41, 34–35, 103, 116, and language/linguistic convention of
209n.91 198, 206, 217, 225
al-Jāshnikīr, Rukn al-Dīn Baybars (Baybars II) message of 173, 176
83 veracity of 150–152, 155
Jesus 35 Muḥammad b. al-Hayṣam 107
al-Jubbāʾī, Abū ʿAlī 49, 110n.133 Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar b. Abī Ṭālib 190
al-Jubbāʾī, Abū Hāshim 110n.133 al-Muḥāsibī, al-Ḥārith 39–40, 43 n.77, 47–
al-Junayd al-Baghdādī 87 48, 108 n.121

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index of people and places 411

Mujāhid b. Jabr 189 al-Mulakhkhaṣ fī al-ḥikma wa-l-manṭiq

Muqātil b. Sulaymān 206n.82 76
al-Mutawakkil, Jaʿfar b. al-Muʿtaṣim 47 Nihāyat al-ʿuqūl fī dirāyat al-uṣūl 133,
al-Mutayyam, ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥarīrī 85n.27 152

Nagel, Thomas 50 Ṣadaqa b. al-Ḥusayn 106

al-Najjār, al-Ḥusayn b. Muḥammad 170n.96 al-Ṣafadī, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Khalīl b. Aybak
Naranj, mosque of 82 148 n.43
al-Nasafī, Ḥāfiẓ al-Dīn 71n.236 Sālim, Muḥammad Rashād (ed. of the Darʾ)
al-Naẓẓām, Abū Isḥāq 134n.7 4, 144 n.31
Nishapur 67 al-Ṣanʿānī, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl 144 n.30
Niẓāmiyya madrasa (Baghdad) 67 al-Sanūsī, Muḥammad b. Yūsuf 51, 71 n.236
Niẓām al-Mulk 71 al-Shaʿbī, Abū ʿAmr ʿĀmir 43 n.77
al-Shāfiʿī, Muḥammad b. Idrīs 43 n.77,
Ormsby, Eric 24n.9 89 n.36, 199 n.62
Osman, Amr 202 al-Risāla 29–30, 208
Özervarli, Sait 13 al-Shahrastānī
al-Shahrastānī, ʿAbd al-Karīm 61, 71 n.236,
Plato 57 107, 144, 151
Proclus 169 Kitāb al-Milal wa-l-niḥal 104, 174
al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī. See al-Jurjānī
al-Qalānisī, Abū al-ʿAbbās 40, 47–48, 108 al-Shāṭibī, Abū Isḥāq 89 n.35
al-Qazwīnī, Jalāl al-Dīn 81 Shihadeh, Ayman 75
al-Qūnawī, ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn 85 al-Shīrāzī, Ṣadr al-Dīn (Mullā Ṣadrā) 72
al-Qūnawī, Ṣadr al-Dīn 88 Sībawayhi 240
al-Qushayrī, Abū al-Qāsim 87 al-Ṣibghī, Abū Bakr b. Isḥāq 108 n.121
al-Sijistānī, Abū Yaʿqūb; al-Aqālīd al-
Rabīʿa (b. Abī ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Farrūkh) 191 malakūtiyya 137–138
al-Rāghib al-Aṣfahānī 151 al-Sijzī, Abū Naṣr 109
Rayy 74 al-Ṣīrāfī, Abū Saʿīd 58 n.168
al-Rāzī, Fakhr al-Dīn 5, 6, 71n.236, 74– Spevack, Aaron 12
75, 110, 114, 118–119, 134n.7, 144–145, Street, Tony 145 n.34
148n.43, 180, 295 al-Subkī, Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn 76n.266
on attributes 112 al-Subkī, Tāj al-Dīn; Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya al-
on conclusive proofs 157–159 kubrā 145 n.34
epistemological skepticism of 144–145, al-Subkī, Taqī al-Dīn, on Ibn Taymiyya 94
268 Sufyān b. ʿUyayna 191
on universal rule (of interpretation) 40, al-Suhrawardī, Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar 87
77, 104, 119, 132–134, 151, 159 al-Suhrawardī (al-Maqtūl), Shihāb al-Dīn
works of 40, 72, 169, 268 n.144
Aqsām al-ladhdhāt 144 and criticism of Peripatetics on essence
al-Arbaʿīn fī uṣūl al-dīn 100, 268– and existence 249 n.78
269 as nominalist 243
Asās al-taqdīs 132 Sukkariyya Ḥanbalī madrasa 79, 86
al-Mabāḥith al-mashriqiyya 75 al-Ṣuʿlūkī, Abū Sahl 51 n.128
Mafātīḥ al-ghayb (al-Tafsīr al-kabīr) al-Surramarrī, Abū al-Muẓaffar 98
76–77 al-Suyūṭī, Jalāl al-Dīn 25 n.18
Muḥaṣṣal afkār al-mutaqaddimīn wa-l- Syria [greater] 38, 79, 87
mutaʾakhkhirīn 75, 100

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al-Ṭabarī, Muḥammad b. Jarīr 40, 45, on Qurʾān’s dialectical argumentation

188 25 n.17
al-Taftāzānī, Saʿd al-Dīn 71n.236, 73n.242 von Kügelgen, Anke 11 n.21, 236n.33,
al-Ṭaḥāwī, Abū Jaʿfar 40, 44, 51 256 n.103
al-Ṭalamankī, Abū ʿUmar; al-Wuṣūl ilā
maʿrifat al-uṣūl 204 al-Walīd b. Yazīd (al-Walīd II) 34
Tamer, Georges 13 Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ 39, 41
Taşköprüzade, Ahmet Efendi 48n.110 al-Wāthiq, Abū Jaʿfar 40, 47
al-Thaqafī, Abū ʿAlī 108n.121 Watt, Montgomery 44
Themistius 169 Winter, Tim 73n.242, 74
al-Tilimsānī, ʿAfīf al-Dīn 88 Woodward, Mark 13
al-Ṭūfī, Najm al-Dīn 97
Tus 67 Yaḥyā b. ʿAdī 57, 58 n.168
al-Tustarī, Sahl 87 Yūḥannā b. Ḥaylān 57
Yunus Ali, Mohamed 194n.51, 196, 201
Ubayy b. Kaʿb 190
ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz 43n.77 al-Ẓāhirī, Dāwūd b. Khalaf al-Aṣbahānī
Umayyad Mosque (Damascus) 79, 43 n.77
86 Zayd b. ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn 43 n.77
ʿUrwa b. al-Zubayr 190–191 al-Zinjānī, Abū al-Qāsim 109
Zuhayr al-Atharī 105
al-Zuhrī, Ibn Shihāb 43 n.77
van Ess, Josef 24n.9

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Index of Qurʾānic Verses

Verse no. Page ref. Translation of verse or relevant verse segment1

al-Baqara
2:3 27n.24 “those who believe in the unseen (al-ghayb)”
2:29 203n.74 “then He directed Himself (istawā) towards the heaven”
2:30 24n.8 “Truly, I [God] know what you know not”
2:105 214n.110 “And God singles out ( yakhtaṣṣu) for His mercy whom He will”
2:163 219, “And your God is one God (ilāhun wāḥid); there is no god but He, the Most
219n.120 Merciful, the Compassionate”
2:185 25n.13 “The month of Ramaḍān is that in which the Qurʾān was sent down as
guidance to mankind, as clear proofs of guidance, and as a criterion of
judgement ( furqān)”
2:210 121 “Do they await anything other than that God and the angels should come
to them in the shadows of clouds and that the matter be settled?”
2:216 24n.8, “And God knows and you know not”
25n.11
2:232 24n.8, “And God knows and you know not”
25n.11
2:247 212n.107 “Indeed, God has chosen him [Ṭālūt] over you and increased him abun-
dantly in knowledge and body ( jism) [i.e., stature]”
2:266 218n.113 “Would one of you (aḥadukum) like that he should have a garden of palm
trees and grapes”
Āl ʿImrān
3:4 25n.13 “and He sent down the Criterion (al-Furqān)”
3:7 99n.74, “He it is who has sent down to you (O Muḥammad) the Book. In it
99n.75, are verses that are muḥkam; they are the mother of the Book. Others
123n.176, are mutashābih. But those in whose hearts is perversity follow the part
123n.177, thereof that is mutashābih, seeking discord and searching for its taʾwīl;
183, 184, and none knows its taʾwīl save God. And those firmly grounded in knowl-
185, 186, edge say, ‘We believe in the Book; the whole of it is from our Lord.’ And
189–190 none shall grasp the message save men of understanding” (Yusuf Ali, with
modifications)
3:44 234n.27 “That is from the news of the unseen (anbāʾ al-ghayb) that We reveal unto
you”
3:45 35n.57 “O Mary! God sends you glad tidings of a word (kalima) from Him whose
name is the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary”
3:55 203n.74 “when God said, ‘O Jesus! I will take you back and raise you unto Me’”
3:66 24n.8, “Behold! You are those who dispute concerning that whereof you have
25n.11, 174 knowledge; so why do you dispute concerning that whereof you have no
knowledge? And God knows and you know not”

1 All translations are mine except where indicated in parentheses. “SQ” denotes The Study
Quran.

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3:98–99 175n.118 “(98) Say, ‘O people of the book! Why do you disbelieve in the signs of
3:99 176n.119 God, while God is a witness over what you do?’ (99) Say, ‘O people of the
book! Why do you divert from the way of God those who believe and seek
to make it crooked, while you are witnesses?’ ”
3:108 36n.58 “And God wills no wrong for the worlds [i.e., His creation]”
3:117 36n.58 “And God wronged them not; rather, it is they who wrong themselves”
3:138 25n.14, “This [Qurʾān] is an elucidation (bayān) for mankind, and guidance, and
182n.8 an admonishment for the God-fearing”
al-Nisāʾ
4:11 218n.113 “and if there be (only) one (wāḥida) [female heir], then she receives half”
4:17 24n.8 “God only accepts the repentance of those who do evil in ignorance (bi-
jahāla) and then turn quickly in repentance” (SQ)
4:46 193n.49 “Among those who are Jews are those who distort the meaning of the word
( yuḥarrifūna l-kalima ʿan mawāḍiʿihi)” (SQ)
4:82 2n.2, 23n.2 “Do they not consider ( yatadabbarūn) the Qurʾān (with care)? Had it
been from other than God, they would surely have found therein much
discrepancy” (Yusuf Ali)
4:158 203n.74 “Rather, God raised him [Jesus] up to Himself”
4:174 25n.12, “O mankind! Verily there has come to you an evincive proof (burhān) from
182n.8 your Lord, and We have sent down to you a clear light (nūran mubīnan)”
al-Māʾida
5:13 193n.49 “they distort the meaning of the word ( yuḥarrifūna l-kalima ʿan mawā-
ḍiʿihi)” (SQ)
5:15 182n.8 “There has come to you from God a light and a clear Book (kitāb mubīn)”
5:50 24n.8 “Is it the judgement of the Age of Ignorance (al-Jāhiliyya) that they seek?”
5:109 230n.12 “Verily, You are the One with full knowledge of unseen matters (ʿallām al-
ghuyūb)”
5:116 230n.12 “Verily, You are the One with full knowledge of unseen matters (ʿallām al-
ghuyūb)”
al-Anʿām
6:3 202, 203 “And He is God in the heavens and on the earth”
6:18 203n.74 “And He is the dominant one over His servants ( fawqa ʿibādihi), and He
is the wise, the aware”
6:59 3n.4 “And not a leaf falls but that He knows it”
6:73 230n.11 “Knower of the unseen and the seen” (ʿālim al-ghayb wa-l-shahāda)
6:130 175n.113 “‘O company of jinn and mankind! Did not messengers come unto you
from among yourselves, recounting unto you My signs and warning you
of the meeting with this your day?’ They will say, ‘We bear witness against
ourselves.’ The life of this world deluded them, and they bear witness
against themselves that they were disbelievers.” (SQ, with modifications)
al-Aʿrāf
7:33 174 “that you say of God that which you know not”
7:35–36 175n.113 “(35) O Children of Adam! Should there come unto you messengers from
among yourselves, recounting My signs unto you, then whosoever is rev-
erent and makes amends, no fear shall come upon them, nor shall they
grieve. (36) But those who deny Our signs and treat them with disdain, it
is they who are the inhabitants of the Fire. They shall abide therein.” (SQ)

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7:45 176n.119 “those who divert from the path of God and seek to make it crooked and
who disbelieve in the hereafter”
7:54 191 “then He settled upon the throne” (thumma stawā ʿalā l-ʿarsh)
7:86 175n.118, “And lie not in wait on every path, threatening and diverting from the way
176n.119 of God those who believe in Him and seeking to make it crooked”
7:148 212n.107 “And Moses’s people, after he [had gone], took a calf [made] of their
ornaments—a body ( jasadan) that lowed” (SQ, with modifications)
7:169 174 “Was not the covenant of the Book taken from them that they would
ascribe naught to God but the truth?”
7:172 238n.38 “And when thy Lord took from the Children of Adam, from their loins,
their progeny and made them bear witness concerning themselves, ‘Am I
not your Lord?’ they said, ‘Yea, we bear witness’—lest you should say on
the Day of Resurrection, ‘Truly of this we were heedless’ ” (SQ)
7:176 2n.3, 24n.7 “perchance they may reflect” (laʿallahum yatafakkarūn)
7:180 193n.50 “And leave those who deviate ( yulḥidūn) with regard to His names” (SQ)
al-Anfāl
8:6 174 “They dispute with you (O Muḥammad) concerning the truth after it was
made manifest”
al-Tawba
9:6 218n.113 “And if anyone (aḥad) from among the idolaters seeks your protection,
then give him protection, that he might hear the word of God”
9:70 36n.58 “but God was surely not one to wrong them; rather, it was they who
wronged themselves”
9:78 230n.12 “the One with full knowledge of unseen matters” (ʿallām al-ghuyūb)
9:94 230n.11 “Knower of the unseen and the seen” (ʿālim al-ghayb wa-l-shahāda)
9:105 230n.11 “Knower of the unseen and the seen” (ʿālim al-ghayb wa-l-shahāda)
Yūnus
10:24 24n.7 “Thus do We explain the signs in detail for a people who reflect ( yatafak-
karūn)”
10:92 212n.107 “This day shall We save you [Pharaoh] in your body (bi-badanika) [i.e.,
preserve your corpse] so that you might be a sign for those [who come]
after you”
Hūd
11:1 99n.76 “a Book whose verses have been made firm (uḥkimat)”
11:18–19 175n.118 “(18) And who does greater wrong than one who fabricates a lie against
11:19 176n.119 God? They will be brought before their Lord, and the witnesses will say,
‘These are the ones who lied against their Lord.’ Behold! The curse of God
is upon the wrongdoers, (19) those who divert from the way of God and
seek to make it crooked and who disbelieve in the hereafter.” (SQ, with
modifications)
11:29 24n.8 “but I [Noah] see that you are an ignorant people (qawman tajhalūn)”
11:49 234 “That is from the news of the unseen (anbāʾ al-ghayb) that We reveal unto
you (O Muḥammad)”
11:101 36n.58 “And We wronged them not, but they wronged themselves”

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Yūsuf
12:1 182n.8 “These are the verses of the clear Book (al-kitāb al-mubīn)”
12:36 218n.113 “And two young men entered the prison with him [Joseph]. One of them
(aḥaduhumā) said, ‘Truly, I see myself [in a dream] pressing wine’ ”
12:41 218n.113 “As for the one of you (aḥadukumā), he will give his master wine to drink”
12:102 234n.27 “That is from the news of the unseen (anbāʾ al-ghayb) that We reveal unto
you (O Muḥammad)”
al-Raʿd
13:3 24n.7 “Verily in that are signs for a people who reflect ( yatafakkarūn)”
13:5 234n.28 “Shall we indeed be [raised] in a new creation (khalqin jadīd)?” (SQ)
13:9 230n.11 “Knower of the unseen and the seen” (ʿālim al-ghayb wa-l-shahāda)
Ibrāhīm
14:2–3 175n.118 “(2) God, unto whom belongs whatsoever is in the heavens and whatso-
14:3 176n.119 ever is on the earth. Woe to the disbelievers for a severe punishment, (3)
those who prefer the life of this world over the hereafter and who divert
from the way of God and seek to make it crooked; it is they who are far
astray.” (SQ, with modifications)
14:4 179, 219, “And never did We send a messenger except [that he spoke] in the lan-
224 guage of his people (bi-lisāni qawmihi), that he might explain to them
clearly”
14:19 234n.28 “If He willed, He would do away with you and bring [in your place] a new
creation ( yaʾti bi-khalqin jadīd)”
al-Ḥijr
15:1 182n.8 “These are the verses of the Book and a clear Qurʾān (Qurʾān mubīn)”
al-Naḥl
16:11 24n.7 “Verily in that is a sign for a people who reflect ( yatafakkarūn)”
16:33 36n.58 “And God wronged them not; rather, it was they who wronged them-
selves”
16:36 219n.120 “And We indeed sent unto every community a messenger [who said],
‘Worship God and shun false deities!’ Then among them were those whom
God guided; and among them were those who were deserving of error”
(SQ with modifications)
16:44 2n.3, 24n.7 “and that perchance they may reflect” (wa-laʿallahum yatafakkarūn)
16:50 203n.74 “They fear their Lord above them (min fawqihim), and they do as they are
commanded”
16:51 219n.120 “And God said, ‘Take not two gods. Verily, He is but one God (ilāhun
wāḥid), so fear Me’”
16:69 24n.7 “Verily in that is a sign for a people who reflect ( yatafakkarūn)”
16:74 24n.8, “Verily, God knows and you know not”
25n.11
16:78 24n.8 “And God brought you forth from the wombs of your mothers not know-
ing anything”
16:89 25n.15 “And We sent down unto you the Book as a clarification of all things
(tibyānan li-kulli shayʾ)”
16:103 182n.8 “and this is a clear Arabic tongue (lisān ʿarabī mubīn)”
16:118 36n.58 “And We wronged them not; rather, it was they who wronged themselves”

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al-Isrāʾ
17:36 174 “And pursue not that of which you have no knowledge”
17:46 219n.120 “And whenever you mention your Lord alone (waḥdahu) in the Qurʾān,
they turn their backs in aversion” (SQ, with modifications)
17:49 234n.28 “Shall we indeed be resurrected as a new creation (khalqan jadīdan)?”
17:85 24n.5, “Say, ‘The soul (rūḥ) is of the affair of my Lord, and you have been given
24n.10, of knowledge but little’”
282
17:98 234n.28 “Shall we indeed be resurrected as a new creation (khalqan jadīdan)?”
al-Kahf
18:1 176n.119 “Praise be to God who sent down the Book upon His servant and placed
therein no crookedness”
18:22 218n.113 “and ask not any one (aḥadan) among them about them [i.e., their num-
ber]”
18:26 218n.113 “and He makes no one (aḥadan) a partner unto Him in His judgement”
(SQ)
18:32 218n.113 “And set forth for them the parable of two men: For one of them (aḥadi-
himā) We made two gardens of grapevines” (SQ)
18:45 36n.59 “And God has power over all things”
18:49 36n.58, “And your Lord does wrong unto none” (wa-lā yaẓlimu rabbuka aḥadan)
218n.113
18:56 174, “And those who disbelieve dispute with vain argument in order to confute
175n.114 therewith the truth”
18:110 218n.113 “and [let him] make no one (aḥadan) a partner unto his Lord in worship”
(SQ)
Maryam
19:65 145 “Have you knowledge of anything like unto Him?”
Ṭā Hā
20:5 145, 191, 295 “The Most Merciful has settled upon the throne” (al-Raḥmānu ʿalā l-ʿarsh
istawā)
20:88 212n.107 “So he brought forth for them a calf [consisting of] a body ( jasadan) that
lowed”
20:110 145 “And they encompass Him not in knowledge” (SQ)
20:123– 175n.113 “(123) He [God] said, ‘Get down from it, both of you together, each of you
126 an enemy to the other. And if guidance should come unto you from Me,
then whosoever follows My guidance shall not go astray, nor be wretched.
(124) But whosoever turns away from the remembrance of Me, truly his
shall be a miserable life, and We shall raise him blind on the Day of Resur-
rection.’ (125) He will say, ‘My Lord! Why have You raised me blind, when
I used to see?’ (126) He [God] will say, ‘Thus it is. Our signs came to you,
but you forgot them. Even so, this day shall you be forgotten!’” (SQ, with
modifications)
al-Anbiyāʾ
21:8 212n.107 “And We did not make them [the Messengers] bodies ( jasadan) that ate
not food, nor were they immortal” (SQ, with modifications)

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al-Muʾminūn
23:92 230n.11 “Knower of the unseen and the seen” (ʿālim al-ghayb wa-l-shahāda)
23:117 219n.120 “And whosoever calls upon another god along with God, for which he has
no proof, his reckoning is with God” (SQ)
al-Nūr
24:19 24n.8, “And God knows and you know not”
25n.11
al-Furqān
25:1 25n.13 “Blessed is He who revealed the Criterion (al-Furqān) to His servant, that
he might be a warner unto the worlds”
25:33 187n.20 “And they come not to you (O Muḥammad) with any parable but that We
bring you the truth and a better explanation (aḥsana tafsīran)”
25:63 24n.8 “And the servants of the Most Merciful are those who walk on the earth
humbly, and when the ignorant ones address them, they say, ‘Peace!’ ”
al-Shuʿarāʾ
26:2 182n.8 “These are the verses of the clear Book (al-kitāb al-mubīn)”
26:195 182n.8 “in a clear Arabic tongue (lisān ʿarabī mubīn)”
al-Naml
27:1 182n.8 “These are the verses of the Qurʾān and a clear Book (kitāb mubīn)”
27:16–44 232n.17 [Extended account of the story of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba]
27:55 24n.8 “Nay, but you are an ignorant people (qawmun tajhalūn)!” (SQ)
27:65 234n.26 “Say, ‘None in the heavens and the earth know the unseen (al-ghayb) save
God, and they perceive not when they will be resurrected’ ”
al-Qaṣaṣ
28:2 182n.8 “These are the verses of the clear Book (al-kitāb al-mubīn)”
28:26 218n.113 “One of them ( f.) (iḥdāhumā) said, ‘O father! Hire him [Moses]’ ”
28:27 218n.113 “Indeed, I wish to marry you [Moses] to one of (iḥdā) these two daughters
of mine”
al-ʿAnkabūt
29:40 36n.58 “And God was surely not one to wrong them; rather, it was they who
wronged themselves”
al-Rūm
30:9 36n.58 “And God was surely not one to wrong them; rather, it was they who
wronged themselves”
30:21 24n.7 “Verily in that are signs for a people who reflect ( yatafakkarūn)”
30:30 260n.115 “So set thy face to the religion as a ḥanīf, [in] the primordial nature from
God upon which He originated mankind ( fiṭrat Allāhi llatī faṭara l-nāsa
ʿalayhā)—there is no altering the creation of God; that is the upright reli-
gion, but most men know not” (SQ, with modifications)
al-Sajda
32:6 230n.11 “Knower of the unseen and the seen” (ʿālim al-ghayb wa-l-shahāda)
32:10 234n.28 “Shall we indeed be [raised] in a new creation (khalqin jadīd)?”
al-Aḥzāb
33:27 36n.59 “And God has power over all things”

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Sabaʾ
34:7 234n.28 “that you shall be [raised] in a new creation (khalqin jadīd)”
34:48 230n.12 “the One with full knowledge of unseen matters” (ʿallām al-ghuyūb)
Fāṭir
35:10 145, “To Him ascends the goodly word and He raises up righteous deeds”
203n.74
35:16 234n.28 “If He willed, He would do away with you and bring [in your place] a new
creation ( yaʾti bi-khalqin jadīd)”
35:44 36n.59 “Truly, He is all-knowing, all-powerful”
Yā Sīn
36:68 2n.1 “Will they not then understand?” (a-fa-lā yaʿqilūn)
36:69 182n.8 “It is but a reminder and a clear Qurʾān (Qurʾān mubīn)”
al-Ṣāffāt
37:35–36 219n.120 “(35) Indeed, whenever it was said to them, ‘There is no god but God,’ they
would wax arrogant (36) and say, ‘Shall we abandon our gods on account
of a mad poet?’”
Ṣād
38:5 219n.120 “‘Did he make the gods (just) one God (ilāhan wāḥidan)? Indeed, that is
a thing most strange!’”
38:34 212n.107 “And We indeed tried Solomon, and We cast a body ( jasadan) [i.e., a
corpse] upon his throne, then he repented”
38:36 232n.17 “So We made the wind subject to him [Solomon], blowing gently at his
command whersoever he willed”
al-Zumar
39:9 24n.6 “Say, ‘Are those who know equal to those who know not?’ ”
39:42 24n.7 “Verily in that are signs for a people who reflect ( yatafakkarūn)”
39:45 219n.120 “And whenever God alone is mentioned, the hearts of those who believe
not in the hereafter recoil (in disgust); but whenever those besides Him
are mentioned, behold, they rejoice”
39:46 230n.11 “Knower of the unseen and the seen” (ʿālim al-ghayb wa-l-shahāda)
39:64 24n.8 “Say, ‘Is it something other than God that you bid me worship, O ignorant
ones?’”
39:71 175n.113 “And those who disbelieve will be driven unto Hell in throngs, till when
they reach it, its gates will be opened and its keepers will say unto them,
‘Did not messengers from among you come to you, reciting unto you the
signs of your Lord and warning you of the meeting with this your day?’
They will say, ‘Yea, indeed!’ But the word of punishment has come due for
the disbelievers” (SQ)
Ghāfir
40:4 175n.114 “None but those who disbelieve dispute concerning the signs of God, so
let it not delude thee that they are free to come and go in the land” (SQ)
40:5 175n.114 “And they disputed with vain argument in order therewith to confute the
truth, so I [God] took them to account; [see,] then, how My punishment
was”

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Fuṣṣilat
41:29 203n.75 “we shall put them under our feet so that they may be among the lowliest
(min al-asfalīn)”
41:40 193n.50 “Truly those who deviate ( yulḥidūn) with regard to Our signs [i.e., re-
vealed verses] are not hidden from Us” (SQ)
41:46 36n.58, “And your Lord is in no wise unjust to [His] slaves”
210n.96
41:53 166 “We shall show them Our signs in the horizons and in themselves until it
becomes clear to them that it is the Truth”
al-Shūrā
42:11 99n.77, “There is none like unto Him (laysa ka-mithlihi shayʾ), and He is the all-
145, hearing, all-seeing”
210n.97
al-Zukhruf
43:2 182n.8 “By the clear Book (al-kitāb al-mubīn)!”
43:42 36n.59 “for truly, We have power over them”
43:45 219n.120 “And ask those of Our messengers whom We sent before you: Did We
appoint gods to be worshipped besides the Most Merciful?”
43:76 36n.58 “And We wronged them not; rather, it is they who were the wrongdoers”
al-Dukhān
44:2 182n.8 “By the clear Book (al-kitāb al-mubīn)!”
al-Jāthiya
45:13 24n.7 “Verily in that are signs for a people who reflect ( yatafakkarūn)”
Muḥammad
47:24 2n.2 “Do they not consider ( yatadabbarūn) the Qurʾān (with care), or are there
locks upon [their] hearts?”
al-Fatḥ
48:10 121 “God’s hand is over their hands”
al-Ḥujurāt
49:6 24n.8 “lest you harm a people out of ignorance (bi-jahāla)”
Qāf
50:15 234n.28 “Nay, but they are in doubt regarding a new creation (khalqin jadīd)” (SQ)
al-Qamar
54:5 25n.16 “consummate wisdom (ḥikma bāligha), but the warnings were of no avail”
al-Ḥadīd
57:4 204 “And He is with you wheresoever you may be”
al-Mujādila
58:7 204 “Never is there a secret parley among three but that He is their fourth”
al-Ḥashr
59:21 2n.3, 24n.7 “perchance they may reflect” (laʿallahum yatafakkarūn)
59:22 230n.11 “Knower of the unseen and the seen” (ʿālim al-ghayb wa-l-shahāda)

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al-Mumtaḥana
60:4 219n.120 “There is indeed a beautiful example for you in Abraham and those with
him, when they said to their people, ‘Truly we are quit of you and of all
that you worship apart from God. We have rejected you, and enmity and
hatred have arisen between us and you forever, till you believe in God
alone’” (SQ)
al-Jumuʿa
62:8 230n.11 “Knower of the unseen and the seen” (ʿālim al-ghayb wa-l-shahāda)
al-Munāfiqūn
63:4 212n.107 “And when you see them, their bodies (ajsāmuhum) impress you”
al-Taghābun
64:18 230n.11 “Knower of the unseen and the seen” (ʿālim al-ghayb wa-l-shahāda)
al-Ṭalāq
65:12 203 “that you may know that God has power over all things and that God
encompasses all things with His knowledge”
al-Mulk
67:3–4 23n.3 “(3) … No want of proportion will you see in the creation of the Most Mer-
ciful. So turn your sight again: do you see any flaw? (4) Then turn your
sight twice more; (your) sight will come back to you feeble and weary.”
67:8–9 175n.113 “(8) … Whenever a group is cast therein [i.e., in hell], its keepers ask them,
‘Did not a warner come unto you?’ (9) They say, ‘Indeed, a warner came
unto us, but we denied him and said: God did not send anything down;
you are in naught but great error.’” (SQ)
67:16–17 203n.74 “(16) Do you feel secure that He who is in the heavens ( fī al-samāʾ) will not
cause the earth to engulf you while it churns? (17) Or do you feel secure
that He who is in the heavens will not unleash a torrent of stones upon
you? Soon shall you know how My warning is.” (SQ, with modifications)
al-Maʿārij
70:4 203n.74 “The angels and the Spirit ascend unto Him on a day whose measure is
fifty thousand years”
al-Jinn
72:18 218n.113 “and that the mosques belong to God, so call upon no one (aḥadan) along
with God”
72:22 218n.113 “Say, ‘None will protect me from God’ (lan yujīranī min Allāhi aḥadun)”
al-Muddaththir
74:11 218n.113 “Leave Me alone (waḥīdan) with the one I created”
al-Qiyāma
75:22–23 234n.29 “(22) [Some] faces that day will be radiant, (23) gazing upon their Lord
(ilā rabbihā nāẓira).”
al-Tīn
95:4 262 “Verily, We created man in the best of molds”
95:5 203n.75, “then did We abase him [to be] the lowest of the low (asfala sāfilīn)”
262

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95:6 262 “except such as believe and work righteous deeds, for they shall have a
reward unstinting”
al-Takāthur
102:5–7 235n.30 “(5) Nay! If only you knew with the knowledge of certainty (ʿilm al-yaqīn)!
(6) You will surely see the hellfire; (7) then will you surely see it with the
eye of certainty (ʿayn al-yaqīn).”
al-Ikhlāṣ
112:1 219 “Say, ‘He is God, [who is] One (aḥad)’ ”
112:4 210n.98, “And there is none comparable unto Him”
218n.113

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Index of Subjects

Abbasids 38 al-tamthīl, as compared to categorical

absolute/unconditioned (muṭlaq) 245–246 syllogism (qiyās al-shumūl) 278
being (wujūd) 223 from the seen (shāhid) to the unseen
notion (maʿnā) 246 (ghāʾib) 64, 279, 283–284, 288
abstract angels 231–232, 238, 277, 280–281
concepts 92, 245 Gabriel 232, 261
expressions 197 anthropomophism 17, 42, 81, 83, 86, 97,
abstraction(s) 35, 245 137 n.17, 289
mental/of the mind 198, 249 apodictic
speculative 37 certitude 70
of universals from particulars 252, 253 methods 59
accidents 117 a posteriori inference 273
ʿaraḍ, pl. aʿrāḍ 104, 213 apparent (ẓāhir) 194–198, 295
proof of God based on the tempo- vs. non-apparent (muʾawwal) 198
ral origination of (ṭarīq al-) 108, sense/meaning 184–185, 186, 225
110n.128 a priori [knowledge] 255–258, 273, 283,
temporal origination of (ḥudūth al-) 294
106 See also axioms
acts/actions awwalī 18, 258
of God/divine 8, 104–106, 169, 220 badīhī 256
negation of 114 principles 268, 290
human 34, 75 ʿaql (reason) 8
adhhān (mental existence). See mind(s) See also rational; reason
affirmation(ism) 19, 102–104, 165, 176, 208– Arab(s)/Arabic 120
210, 288, 295 -Islamic philosophical tradition ( falsafa)
of divine attributes 122 54, 59, 60
ithbāt 102, 116, 210, 269 language, understanding of 205
affirmationists 103, 111, 113, 142, 170 See also language/linguistic
afterlife 62, 277 speech of 25 n.18
See also hereafter; resurrection ʿaraḍ (accident). See accidents
agent, external 214–215 argumentation 25, 59 n.174
aḥwāl (sing. ḥāl; states) 52n.135, 244n.62 Greek methods of 41–42
allegorization (“qarmaṭa”) 7 methods/modes of 41, 60, 101
of revelation ( fī al-naqliyyāt) 7 fig. 1, 143 speculative 296
fig. 2 argument(s) 73, 174
allegory 7, 69 See also rational
See also analogy; likeness deductive 295
tamthīl 121 for the existence of God from motion
ambiguity 212–213 (ṭarīqat al-ḥarakāt) 108
See also confusion lit., aspects, viewpoints (wajh, pl. wujūh)
ambiguous/indeterminate (mutashābih) 7–8, 148–149
185–187, 211 Aristotelian
See also mutashābih -Avicennian philosophical tradition 77
analogy/analogical reasoning 50, 91 elements (in Near Eastern intellectual
qiyās 66, 89–90, 92, 215n.111, 279, 281, environment) 32
284, 288 on essence 236 n.33

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logic 66, 68, 73n.242, 130 affirmation of 100, 103, 112, 122, 138,
matter vs. form 251 142, 145, 165, 170–171, 176, 181, 216,
prime matter (hayūlā; Greek ύλη/hyle) 284, 288
243 al-Ashʿarī on 50, 106, 117
syllogisms/reasoning 68–69, 92, 128, vs. attributes of created things 211,
161n.74 286
See also syllogism(s) beyond human comprehension
tradition 277 47 n.102, 51
Aristotelianism 32, 40, 62, 124n.186 denial/negation of 41, 57, 103, 105,
Aristotelians 233n.23 108, 112–114, 117, 124, 137, 139–140,
ascetics 114, 117 142, 173, 220–221, 243, 255 n.102
ahl al-ʿibāda 175 essential (nafsī) 65
Ashʿarī(s) 6–7, 84, 109–110, 142–143, 170, face, hands, settling on throne 65,
209n.91 69, 111, 117–118, 180
authorities 111 Muʿtazila on 50 n.120, 105, 108, 111,
creed of 100 113, 117, 217
on God 268 not identical to God or other than 48
Ibn Rushd’s critique of 92 oneness of 219–220
kalām 65, 112 ontological questions of 37, 290
vs. Muʿtazilī 132 predicated in revelation 36 n.60, 110
negationism of early 138 quintessential nature of 188
new-school orthodoxy 180 Salaf on 103, 116–117, 180, 209–210
and remnant of iʿtizāl 114 symbolic reality of 147
taʾwīl of 288 of knowledge 112, 286–287
theological school 30n.35 metaphorical interpretation of 216
theology 5, 72 of a name 248
assent (taṣdīq) 253, 275 and qualities of humans 50–51, 102, 282,
assimilationism (tashbīh) 103, 138–139, 290
140, 180–181, 227, 269, 271, 284, 288– Qurʾān as 34–35
289 ṣifa, pl. ṣifāt 104, 213, 221, 251, 265
See also like(ness); similar (mutashābih)/ ʿaqliyya (rational) 248
similarity; tashbīh al-kamāl (of perfection) 210 n.96,
association, and dissociation (of soul and 287
body) 252 khabariyya (revealed) 65, 69, 111, 161,
assumptions 91, 159–160, 211, 226, 228, 180
273n.159 universal 242
false 284 authentic/authenticity 267
astronomy 7, 143 ṣaḥīḥ 239
āthār (reports) 191 thubūt 157, 160, 162, 164 n.80
See also reports authority(ies) 113, 208
atheists 56, 289 early 190–191
See also heresy/heretic(s) of early community 88, 103, 104 n.98
malāḥida 140 aʾimmat al-salaf /al-salaf wa-l-aʾimma
atomism 56, 65 103, 105–106, 111
attributes 171, 214 of legal schools (arbāb al-madhāhib)
essential and/vs. volitional 105, 117 43 n.77
of God/divine 6, 8, 17, 19, 65, 105–106, or pious forebears (al-salaf al-ṣāliḥ) 240
121, 169, 176, 185, 217–219, 282, 285–286, prophetic 176
289–290 of Salaf 208, 210

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on taʾwīl 184–185, 193 or certitude ( yaqīn) 7, 17, 71, 101, 142–

awwalī/awwaliyya 256–257 143, 235, 268 n.143
See also a priori; axioms vs. probability 163
axioms/axiomatic principles 91, 254–255, of reports 239
267 chain of transmission (isnād, pl. asānīd)
badīhiyyāt 264, 275, 283 161, 239
aʿyān (external existence), realm of 241 authentic (ṣaḥīḥ) 205, 266
See also existence Christian(s)/Christianity 32, 143
ʿayn al-yaqīn (certainty itself) 235 and claims of Jesus’s divinity 35
See also certain/certainty and fiṭra 261 n.117
theological discourse of 53, 100
Bāṭiniyya (esotericists) 113, 285, 289n.13 clarity 182, 224
on figurative interpretation (taʾwīl) 138 classical period (of Muslim civilization) 12
Bayt al-Ḥikma (“House of Wisdom”) 39 clear
being (inniyya) 249–250 declaration (balāgh mubīn) 176
See also essence; quiddity(ies) or determinate (muḥkam) 185–186
belief(s) 211, 262, 296 or manifest (mubīn) 18, 182, 199, 206
erroneous 271 cognitional (ʿilmī) 259, 275
in a non-existent (al-īmān bi-maʿdūm) collusion, or conscious agreement (tawāṭuʾ)
121 239, 267, 270, 272
orthodox 171 commonality/common factor 247
bias, preconceived (hawā) 263–264 qadr mushtarak 242, 246, 285–286
See also whim common folk/people 69, 95, 114, 117, 135,
bidʿa ([reprehensible] innovation) 83 293–294
See also innovation See also masses
bidʿī-ʿaqlī, bidʿī-samʿī (innovated rational, general population (al-ʿāmma) 120–121,
innovated revelational) 165 218
bi-lā kayf (doctrine). See modality communication 181, 198–199, 219, 224
binary(ies) 163 linguistic 226
See also dichotomy(ies) communicative process 196, 198
certainty vs. probability 168 community, early 88, 114–115, 209–210
more probative vs. less probative (rājiḥ– See also authority(ies); umma
marjūḥ) 168 salaf 46, 101, 106, 111
reason vs. revelation (ʿaql–naql) 168 See also Salaf
scripturally validated vs. innovated Companions (of Muḥammad, ṣaḥāba)
(sharʿī–bidʿī) 164 43 n.77, 116, 136, 142 n.26, 170, 188–189,
Black Stone 199–200 198, 208, 232, 240
body(ies) 232 See also Salaf
jism (pl. ajsām) 212–213 interpretations transmitted from
as divisible, munqasim 216 (maʾthūra ʿan) 210
perceptible 229n.9, 251 reported statements (aqwāl) of 204
burhān (pl. barāhīn; evincive proof), Qurʾān on taʾwīl 190–191
as 25 understanding of/language of 217
See also demonstration; proof(s) composite (murakkab) 139, 215, 216, 220,
223
capacity (quwwa) 296 composition (tarkīb) 18, 138, 184, 213, 215,
certain/certainty 134, 144, 157, 159 220–222, 223
definitively ( yaqīnī) 268n.143 of bodies, argument for the existence of
vs. fallacious 163 God from the (ṭarīqat al-tarkīb) 108

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conceptions (taṣawwurāt) 218 covenant, primordial (mīthāq) 238

conclusive (qaṭʿī) 156–158, 162 created/createdness 180
concomitant/concomitance (lāzim, talāzum) See also uncreatedness
242, 248, 250 makhlūq 34–35, 46
See also entailments order 23
confusion 112n.142, 144, 147, 212–213, 222 of Qurʾān 39, 46, 105, 117, 147
of philosophers 235, 251–252, 277 See also Qurʾān)
conjecture (ẓann) 263–264 universe/world 46, 64
consensus creation 203n.73, 282
degree of 91–92 of man 238
ijmāʿ (scholarly and/or communal agree- new (khalq jadīd) 234
ment) 70, 84, 101, 170, 204–205 of the world/cosmos 56, 106
consequences 159–160 by God, willful 61, 76
See also assumptions Creator, God as 34, 56, 159, 258 n.110
consequents (lawāzim) 147 creed/creedal stances 9, 26, 81–82, 86, 91,
See also concomitant 159, 240
consubstantial, vs. distinct 269, 271–272, of Ashʿarī(s) and Māturīdīs 100
274 crusaders 81
content (matn) [i.e., of a ḥadīth] 161
context 201, 206, 225 dalāla (as import of revealed texts) 162,
and meaning of language and texts 193– 164 n.80
197 See also indicant(s); proof(s)
siyāq, qarāʾin 18, 182, 198 ḍarūra, concept of 264
contextuality, of linguistic utterances See also necessary/necessity
225 ḍarūrī (necessary, immediate) 264
contingent/contingency(ies) 35, 180, 258, -fiṭrī 255, 256
286–287 death 232
imkān/mumkin 64, 139, 214 attribute of 287
vs. necessity 286 deeds, righteous/good 127, 262
contradictions 162, 169, 227 See also acts/actions
See also reason and revelation deficiency (naqṣ), or contingency 287
with revelation 211, 213 demonstration (burhān) 59, 295
contradictory 224, 257, 271 demonstrative
arguments/statements 156, 171–172 faculties 128
mutually 216, 269, 283 sciences 59 n.174
convention 201, 206–207, 213, 225 dependence (iftiqār) 222
conviction, firm (iʿtiqād jāzim) 266, 291 determinacy 224
corporealism (tajsīm) 138, 205n.80, 269, determinism 33, 36–37
295 dhāt (essence). See essence
corporeality 65 dialectic ( jadal) 59
correlation (talāzum) 224 See also disputation
See also concomitant/concomitance; dialectical
entailments argumentation, in Qurʾān 25 n.17
corruption thinking 32
fasād 211 dichotomy(ies). See also binary(ies)
of fiṭra 296–297 ḥaqīqa–majāz 185 n.14
counterpart 122, 220 reason vs. revelation 163
naẓīr 282 sharʿī–ʿaqlī (scriptural vs. rational) 17,
qasīm 219, 247 164–167

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sharʿī–bidʿī (scripturally validated vs. divisible/divisibility (munqasim, inqisām)

innovated) 17, 164–167 220–221
difference, and contrariety (ikhtilāf wa- divorce (ṭalāq) 84, 91
taḍādd) 247 Ibn Taymiyya’s fatwās on 87
different (mukhtalif ) 247–248 doctrine (madhhab) 107, 111
differentiation 17 See also school(s)
element of (qadr mumayyiz) 242 doubt 112 n.142, 123, 155, 175, 212, 268, 272, 276
between ḥaqīqa and notional categories and confusions (shubuhāt) 212, 295
290 dreams 232
digressions/tangents (in Ibn Taymiyya’s
work) 98–99 elect/elite 69, 180, 293–294
dimension (miqdār) 269 vs. average man 98
See also space intellectual 126–127
disagreement 211 philosophical 120–122, 124, 218
ikhtilāf, points of 89–90 ellipsis (iḍmār) 158
or discord, internal 142–143 elucidation (bayān) 188
theological and philosophical 183– See also clarity; clear
184 Qurʾān as 25
disbelief 172, 174 emanation, doctrine of 61, 75
and encouraging/diverting others from empirical/seen 19, 236, 290
God’s path 175–176 See also shahāda; visible
and heresy (ilḥād) 239n.40 experience 281, 288
disbelievers 175 knowledge 268, 274–275
disclosures, divine (or gifts in the form of necessity or sensory necessity (ḍarūra
insights) (wāridāt) 295 ḥissiyya) 264
discord ( fitna) 116, 185 observation 166–167
discourse or perceptible (maḥsūs) 229, 230, 235
Christian theological 53, 100 realm/world 27 n.24, 166, 237, 283
Islamic 54n.142, 73 of the shahāda 232, 277
kalām 47–48, 75, 144 shāhid 128, 297
modes of 59–60 empiricism 217n.112, 236
philosophical 143, 213, 235, 294 entailments (lawāzim) 109–110, 117
rational 33, 70, 212 See also concomitant
technical 218 entities 245
discursive abstract 241
inference 142 consubstantial vs. distinct 271
reasoning 77, 256, 262–263, 273n.159, externally existent/extra-mental ( fī al-
274, 276 aʿyān) 18, 229–230, 252
naẓar 265, 272n.157, 276 externally existing (al-mawjūdāt al-
and rational inference (al-iʿtibār bi-l- khārijiyya) 248
naẓar wa-l-qiyās) 227–228 independent/discrete/existing (ʿayn,
disputation aʿyān) 230, 240, 253
art of 75 qualified by (mawṣūf ) 265
formal 33 self-standing (qāʾim bi-nafsihi/qāʾima bi-
mirāʾ, re. Qurʾān 175 anfusihā) 231, 233, 235
people of 123 vs. subsistent in another (qāʾim bi-
dissociation (tajrīd), of soul from body 252 ghayrihi) 257
distinct (mubāyin), vs. co-located (muḥāyith) enumeration, and division (al-sabr wa-l-
257 taqsīm) 64

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epistemology 101, 131, 293 of independent, self-standing entities

of Ibn Taymiyya 17–19, 227–228, 272, (aʿyān qāʾima bi-anfusihā) 277
292–294 See also entities
linguistic 225 realms of 285
Qurʾānic 24 wujūd 242, 248–250, 252
equivocity of terms (ishtirāk al-asmāʾ) 183, mawjūd vs. ghayr mawjūd 113
211 existential (wujūdī) 259
errors 222, 270 existent(s) 241
eschatological events 231 external 257
See also resurrection mawjūd 214
esotericism, mystical 118 particular 253–254
esotericist philosophers (bāṭiniyyat al- experience
falāsifa) 124 empirical/seen 281, 288
essence 61, 73 practical (khibra) 218
and/vs. attributes 215, 218, 221–222, 249– spiritual 127
250 subjective (dhawq) 125
and/vs. existence 247n.74, 249, 290 explication 189
dhāt 213, 216, 221, 246, 248–249, 252 See also exegesis
as one (dhāt wāḥida) 120 tafsīr 188, 191–192
divine (See God) of meaning (al-maʿnā) 225, 281
of language 226 straightforward 185, 225, 287
and oneness of God 219–220 external (ẓāhir) 236
or quiddity (māhiyya) 246, 248–250 See also apparent; obvious
pre-existing 249–250
essential (nafsī) 65 faith 24, 39, 121, 159
estimation (wahm) 273n.159, 292 See also belief(s)
See also wahm falsafa 39
estimative faculty (wahm/al-quwwa al- See also philosophy
wahmiyya) 231n.15 classical, on Aristotelian lines 72
eternal mutual influence with respect to kalām
contingent (al-mumkin al-qadīm) 73–74
255n.102 falsehoods/false 109, 173–174, 211–212
qadīm 46, 138–139 bāṭil 200, 259
Qurʾān as 35 faṭara (created, fashioned) 262
vs. temporal 233n.24, 257, 290 See also fiṭra
eternality, vs. temporality 286 fatwās 81
eternity (of the universe/world) 62, 68, 101 on God’s being above (ʿuluww) 100
evil 34, 174 of Ibn Taymiyya 84–85, 87, 91
exegesis [Qurʾānic] (tafsīr) 31–32, 36n.60, figurative. See interpretation(s)
79, 86, 171 fiqh 31
See also tafsīr See also jurisprudence; law
Ibn Taymiyya’s works on 99 fiṭra 203, 262–263, 298
existence 61, 73, 76, 138–139, 249–250 definition of 260–262
of Creator 133, 147, 275n.161 normative 18, 228, 261, 264, 271–273, 290,
See also Creator 293–296
external 248 sound (salīma) 262, 291
factual (thubūt) 139, 162, 279–281, fiṭrī (innate, inborn) 255, 264
284 forebears, pious (al-salaf al-ṣāliḥ) 136
of God (See God) See also Salaf

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form(s) 229n.9, 251 as Maker (al-Ṣāniʿ) 120

Aristotelian, vs. matter 251 as Necessarily and Beginninglessly
Platonic 243, 245 Existent 27
ṣūra (image, form) 213 as the Omniscient (al-ʿAlīm) 138
f-q-h [root] 29n.29 as One (wāḥid/aḥad) 216, 220
free will 33–34, 36–37, 39 as perceptible 238, 241
f-ṭ-r [root] 260n.115 quintessential nature (kunh) of 282,
fuʾād, as locus of rational reflection 24 288
See also heart(s) as ṣamad (Lord of perfect sovereignty)
fuqahāʾ (sing. faqīh) 114, 117 220
See also jurists; scholars as self-necessary/necessarily exis-
tent by virtue of Himself (wājib
genera 244 al-wujūd bi-dhātihi) 61, 139
ghayb (adj. ghāʾib; unseen, absent) 230, as the True One (al-Ḥaqq) 55, 57
234, 240, 266, 278–281 necessary existence of 258 n.110
See also unseen ontological reality (ḥaqīqa) of 221, 286–
vs. shahāda 284 288
gh-y-b [root] 230n.12 perfection of 221, 286–288
God power of 41, 104–105, 203, 286–287
as above (ʿuluww) [creation] 100, in relation to places/above, etc. 202–
203n.73, 205n.80, 220, 263 203, 205 n.80
acts/actions of 8, 47n.102, 117 as settling (istiwāʾ) [on the throne] 100–
attributes of 6, 8, 36n.60, 37, 48, 100, 117, 101, 104, 117, 180, 192
140, 179–180, 188, 238 and spatial ___location ( jiha) 121–122, 268–
See also attributes 269
knowledge 61, 105, 117, 203, 286–287 speech of 117
and creation 61, 76, 145, 205n.80, submission to 262
255n.102 transcendence of 205
dissimilarity to/distinct/separate from uniqueness of 180, 282
101, 102, 180, 202–203, 220, 263, 269, in unseen realm (ghayb) 19
271 and use of terms 213
descending (nuzūl) 100 word of (kalimat Allāh) 35
divinity of, as exclusive (ilāhiyya) and and world/universe 61, 138
singular (ulūhiyya) 219–220 god (ilāh) 219
essence of 37, 47n.102, 105, 120, 139, 188, grammar (Arabic) 28, 31–32, 37, 39, 41, 58,
202, 204, 282–283, 287 171, 214, 215 n.111, 240
existence of 64–66, 113, 137, 150–152, 166, graves, visiting of 85
231, 236, 250n.81, 275n.161, 285–286 Greek
argument for, from accidents 108 methods 33 n.44, 39, 41–42
and footstool (kursī) 169 philosophy/thought 31–33, 37, 53
and ghayb 234 reasoning 41–42
and hands, face 65, 111, 121, 180, 200
in heavens and on earth 202–203, 205 habit (ʿāda) 263–264
knowledge of 203, 204–205 ḥadīth 26 n.19, 30, 41, 49, 183, 238–239, 266,
names of 19, 100, 169, 170 282 n.10, 284, 288
nature of 36–37, 102, 137, 220, 268–269 ahl al- (people of) 29, 39, 44–45, 89,
as all-powerful/just 36–37 106–107, 146
as Creator 34, 56, 159, 258n.110 authenticity of 160, 238, 267
as living 138–139 classical sources of 26

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content (matn) of 161 heresiographical literature 80

criticism 171 heresy/heretic(s) 124–125, 140 n.23
discipline of 28, 31–32, 37, 39 ilḥād/malāḥida 172
falsified/fabricated (makdhūb) 171, 173 philosophers as 289 n.13
Ibn Taymiyya’s grounding in 80 hermeneutic(s)
revelation in form of/as proof texts 160, language-based 225–226
166, 283 principles, of Ibn Taymiyya 17, 182–183,
scholars of 45, 114, 117 206, 224–225
strict adherence to 29 Qurʾānic 90, 182
transmission of mutawātir 291 heterodox, philosophers as 289 n.13
and use of reason 29n.31 heterodoxy 162
Ḥanafī(s) 44, 100 Hishāmiyya 105
Ḥanbalī(s) 5, 50n.126, 84, 91, 95, 181n.5, 269 homonymy or polysemy (ishtirāk) 158
on amodal (bi-lā kayf ) approach 50 “horseness” (as example of univeral concept)
doctrine and practice 95, 106 242, 244
ikhtilāf (difference) among 91 humanity. See also man
jurisprudence 88 as absolute, unconditioned 245
polemics against kalām 71 and relationship to God 128 n.198
rational argumentation of 115n.151
rigidity ( jumūd) of 126 iftiqār (dependence) 213
school 43, 79, 80, 84, 87, 88, 90–91, 106 ignorance 24, 287
traditionalism 53 presumption of (tajhīl) 135–137, 176
ḥaqīqa. See also ontological; reality ijmāʿ (scholarly and/or communal agree-
of attributes 286–288 ment) 84, 101, 170, 204–205
definition of 188, 197, 286–287 See also consensus
–majāz distinction 191, 194n.51 ijtihād 89 n.34, 90
–maʿnā (existential/ontological vs. ilāhiyyāt (metaphysics). See metaphysics
semantic/notional) 191 ʿilla
hawā (pl. ahwāʾ) cause 213
biased whim 175 relevant attribute, or ratio legis 278 n.2,
preconceived bias 263–264 278 n.3
whim/obstinate personal opinion (cling- ʿilm (knowledge) 23n.1
ing to) 264 See also knowledge
Ḥayy b. Yaqẓān 268 al-tawḥīd (of the oneness of God) 70
hearing (samʿ) 238 al-yaqīn (certain) 235
See also sensation/sense perception images 127
heart(s) (qalb, pl. qulūb) 263, 271, 296 imaginalization/imaginative evocation
heaven(s) 231, 238 (takhyīl) 60, 117
See also paradise imagination (khayāl, takhyīl) 273n.159,
and God, as in/above 202–203, 205 292
Hebrew (tribes) 120 imitation (taqlīd) 264, 272, 297
hell 231, 238, 277 imperceptible (ghayr maḥsūs) 277
Hellenism 31–32, 73n.242 impossibility (imtināʿ) 248 n.76
Hellenistic inconclusive (ẓannī) 156–158, 161
Christian theologians 37 indestructibility, vs. destructibility (of divine
commentators 54 vs. creaturely attributes) 286
Neoplatonism 32 indeterminate (mutashābih) 123, 185
hereafter 127–128, 170–171, 277 See also ambiguous
See also afterlife indicant(s) 164–167

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See also proof(s); scriptural internal (bāṭin) 236

definitive (scriptural) (adilla qaṭʿiyya) See also inner
101 interpretation(s) 182
transmitted textual (adilla naqliyya) See also taʾwīl
134n.7 allegorical 60
individuated (mushakhkhaṣ) 245 figurative
inference(s) 253, 273, 292 majāz 8, 18, 99, 136, 158, 181, 183, 185,
See also indicant(s); proof(s) 191, 195
faulty 274 taʾwīl 17–18, 42, 103, 116, 122–124,
involving transfer of judgement 278– 130, 133, 135–137, 138, 161, 185, 187,
279 200
istidlāl 211n.103 literal 122–123
reasoned/rational 273–274 of meanings, metaphorical 69, 141, 170,
naẓar 262–263 193–195, 206, 216, 288
from seen to unseen 277–285 non-apparent (muʾawwal) 198
sound 298 transmitted from (maʾthūra ʿan) the
rational (naẓar ḥasan/ḥusn al-naẓar) Prophet 210
180n.3, 275n.161, 291 intertextuality 199, 201
infinite regress (tasalsul) principle of 202–204
of agents, impossibility of 256 intuition(s)/intuitive 293
of causes, argument for the existence of faculty 262–263
God from 26–27, 258n.110, 275n.161 matters known by (ḥadsiyyāt) 236 n.34
innate 260 invalid/false 165
fiṭrī 256, 258–259, 263, 270, 275, 292n.18 See also falsehoods/false
inner (bāṭin) 227, 231 fāsid and bāṭil 259
innovation/innovator(s) (bidʿa, pl. bidaʿ) invisible. See unseen
70, 109, 116, 164, 211 inward (bāṭin) 230
ahl al-bidaʿ 107 See also inner
mubtadiʿ 101 Ishrāqī (Illuminationist school) 40, 72
vs. scripture/religion (shirʿa) 164 Islam(ic) 171, 173
instinct (bi-l-fiṭra) 152 defense of 33, 125
See also fiṭra order, as multiethnic 38
intellect(s) 24–25 religious sciences 28, 240
of Aristotelian and Neoplatonic traditions scholarship, post-classical 12
277 Islamism 10
human/of mankind 262, 271–272 Ismāʿīlīs 113, 124, 172
people of 169 istiḥsān (juristic preference) 44, 89 n.34,
ten Avicennian 229n.9 90 n.42
intellectual istiwāʾ (Ibn Taymiyya’s treatise on) 101
capacities 155 See also God
context 20, 102 iʿtizāl, remnants of 108, 117
faculties, uncorrupted 271–272 See also Muʿtazila
habits 226
intelligence, pure natural (ʿaql ṣarīḥ) 8 jabrī (determinist/denying free will) 34
See also rational; reason Jabrīs (proponents of determinism) 36
intelligible (maʿqūl) 298 Jahmiyya 111, 114, 202
vs. shahāda (empirical world) 235–236 jawhar (substance) 213
substances ( jawāhir) 229n.9, 251 Jews 143
inter-confessional (debate) 33 and fiṭra 261 n.117

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jiha (directionality or spatial ___location) 213 Khawārij 43 n.77

and God 121–122, 268–269 knowable (maʿlūm) 290
jinn 231–232, 238 knowledge 66, 155, 164, 259, 286–287, 291–
jism (pl. ajsām). See body(ies) 294, 296–297
judge (qāḍī) 52, 80 acquired (muktasab) 265
judgement, day of 161, 166, 190, 231 and/vs. action 123, 128
judgement(s) a priori 255, 257–258, 273
ḥukm, pl. aḥkām 231, 247, 253, 259, attribute of 112, 286–287
273n.159, 274, 276 authenticity of 239
qaḍāʾ 257 certain 76, 112, 126, 147, 160, 172, 186, 265,
rational 155 272, 296
relational 231, 258 yaqīn 186, 235, 267, 295
sound 263 vs. conjecture 156 n.60, 162–163
suspension of (waqf ) 112 definitive 134
those who suspend (al-wāqifa) 146 and disputation 174
transferring empirical 268, 274–275
from seen to unseen realm 279–285 given but little 24, 27
from universal to particular 278 God’s 41, 61, 104, 190, 254
jumhūr, pl. jamāhīr (masses) 120, 122–123 ʿilm 101, 268 n.143
See also common folk/people patent and evident ( jalī ẓāhir) 152
Jundishapur, school of 31 people of (ahl al-) 115–116
jurisprudence 29, 31n.36, 80, 88 and Qurʾān 23–24
jurists 29n.31, 31, 43n.77, 124 those firmly grounded in (al-rāsikhūna
See also scholars fī al-) 186, 189–190
juzʾ (part) 120, 139, 213, 219 indicators of 168
innate/intuitive 262, 273
kalām 33, 38, 40, 42, 61, 72, 75, 118–119, 125, fiṭrī 18, 152
141 necessary 18, 152, 255, 264, 266, 268,
arguments 32n.43, 68, 275n.161 270–271, 273, 276
al-Ashʿarī and/Ashʿarīs 51, 53, 71–72, 75, objective 128, 135, 289
97 rational 150, 170, 297–298
later Ashʿarī 92, 209n.91 and reason 149, 160, 253
development of 43, 113 religious 123, 266
discourse 47–48, 144 sensory 267
early 48, 62 See also sensation/sense perception
vs. later 62, 65 sources of 152, 227–228, 231, 236, 237,
al-Ghazālī on 62, 65–66, 70, 75 255, 267, 275, 279, 289–291
and Ibn Sīnā 54, 61–62 theoretical (ʿilm) 218
influence on falsafa 73–74 transmitted (samāʿ) 126
and mutakallimūn, Ibn Taymiyya on true 128, 135, 298
105–107, 113, 122, 147, 166, 213, 228, 259 Kullābīs 170
new 53, 63, 92
permissibility (istiḥsān) of 50n.126 language/linguistic 58, 60, 158, 198, 206,
and philosophy 55–56, 60, 63 289
sunnī vs. bidʿī 91 of Arabs 213, 222 n.132, 265
theologians 60, 141, 166 conventions (ʿurf ) 18, 182–183, 186, 190,
Karrāmiyya 146, 170, 269 192, 194–195, 198, 201, 206, 208, 214–215,
khalaf (later scholars) 208 217, 225, 265
vs. salaf 101 of first community 112

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of Salaf 192, 201 rules/laws of 140, 259, 283, 285

of speech community 212, 225 universal 255
Ibn Taymiyya on 8, 13, 17–19, 182–183, science of 169
193–195, 215, 289 of tawātur 266
necessity/linguistically necessary knowl- as tool for theology 64
edge 264–265 logical. See also universal
philosophy of 58, 182 constructs (in the mind) 223
of revealed texts/Qurʾān 180, 208, vs. ontological reality 243
221 principles 77, 259, 279, 284–285
sciences 215n.111 logos 35
as tool of communication 219 lubb, as locus of rational reflection 24
last day, events of 238
See also resurrection madhhab (pl. madhāhib). See school(s)
law/legal 16, 31–32, 37, 39, 41, 95–96, 171 maḥsūs (perceptible/empirical) 229
abstract 258 See also empirical; perceptible
analogy (qiyās) 66 majāz 193–197
fiqh 28–29, 240 See also interpretation(s)
and government, sacred vs. secular 19 makhṣūṣ (specified or characterized by) 214
of Ibn Ḥanbal 88 malāḥida (sing. mulḥid; heretics; atheists)
scholars 114, 175 140 n.23
schools 80, 95–97 philosophers as 289 n.13
theory and theorists 29–30, 197 maʿlūl (effect) 213–214
law of excluded middle 133, 139–140, 157, Mamluks 72, 79
255–256, 258, 270–271, 285 man. See also humanity
law of identity 255 as absolute or unconditioned (al-insān
law of non-contradiction 133, 139n.22, 156– al-muṭlaq) 241
157, 255, 258, 283 and God, relationship between 36
lexicographers 197 as sign of God 23
lexicon 158 universal (al-insān al-kullī) 241–242
life 286–287 maʿnā (lexical signification) 191–192
in the grave 231, 238 See also meaning(s); notion(s)
like(ness). See also similar (mutashābih)/sim- maʿnawī (qualitative) 65
ilarity Manichaeans 56
mithl, mumāthala 210, 220, 287 Manichaeism 32
shabīh 220 maʿqūl. See intelligible
similarity, likening (tamthīl/tashbīh) maraboutism 83
180–181, 221 maṣlaḥa (utility, public interest) 89 n.34,
literal. See also interpretation(s) 90 n.42
ḥaqīqa [usage/sense] (as literal meaning) masses 40, 124, 180
8, 18, 99, 179, 184–185, 194–195, 205 See also common folk/people; humanity;
vs. figurative (majāz) meanings 225 man
literalism 18, 183, 201 communicating with 59–60
anthropomorphic 181 vs. elite 121
literalist(s) 30n.33 jumhūr, pl. jamāhīr 120, 122–123
vs. textualist(s) 201–202 materialism (dahriyya) 32
logic 58, 61, 68 materialist(s) 56, 233n.23
Greek 101 dahriyya 104 n.99, 289 n.13
and kalām 65 (pseudo-)philosophers (al-mutafalsifa
and philosophical terminology 58 al-dahriyya) 113

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matter 229n.9 Mongol(s) 9, 20, 79

vs. form 251 and invasion of Damascus 81–82
Māturīdīs, creed of 100 threats 84, 86
mawjūd (existent, existing). See existent(s) monotheism 262
Mazdaism 32 Christianity as rival 32
meaning(s). See also interpretation(s) Islamic 35 n.57
alteration of (tabdīl) 135–136 moral
assigning a definite, particular (tafwīḍ) interest (maṣlaḥa) 135
133, 209 license/wrongdoing 159
common 284, 285 responsibility 37
dalāla 164n.80 scrupulousness (waraʿ) 89
everyday 220–221 muḥkam
as explicit (ṣarīḥ) 200, 204 determinate, vs. mutashābih (indetermi-
intended (al-murād) 196, 198 nate) 185–186
maʿnā, pl. maʿānī 185, 224 as literal 183
al-ḥaqīqa (proper) 196 verses 99, 186
Ibn Taymiyya’s theory of 188, 197, mujtahid 84, 90
199, 252, 279–280, 290 murakkab. See composite
mushtarak (shared) 247, 280–281, Murjiʾa 105
284, 287 mushābaha. See similar (mutashābih)/simi-
ṣarf al- (deflection of) 196 larity; tashbīh
proper (al-ḥaqīqa) 196 Muslims 20, 24 n.9, 143
transposition of (naql) 158 as ahl al-qibla 105
–use distinction 201 early 28, 31–32, 70, 223, 240
medicine 171 first three generations (qurūn) of 91, 103,
mental 142 n.26, 208
constructs, abstract 272 mutaʾakhkhirūn (later school, Ashʿarī) 53,
existence 229, 231 62, 65, 66, 69, 183, 187, 209 n.91
vs. extra-mental existence 241 mutakallimūn 46, 145, 167, 173, 209 n.91, 267
hypotheses (muqaddarāt dhihniyya) and “equivalence of proofs” (takāfuʾ al-
248 adilla) 147
metaphors 7, 51, 121, 135–136, 183, 277 and Ibn Sīnā 55, 61, 74, 120–121
metaphysics 60–61, 67–68, 76, 143, 169, Ibn Taymiyya on 105–107, 122, 147, 228,
293 259
miḥna (“inquisition”) 39–40, 46, 115, 117 mutakallimat ahl al-ḥadīth (ḥadīth folk
mind(s) 274, 282 specialized in kalām) 107
See also mental rationalistic, on meaning of revelation
and cognitive faculties (ʿuqūl) 271 179
fī al-adhhān (intramental, logical, and tawḥīd 219–220
conceptual) 18, 229–230, 241, and taʾwīl 122, 136, 184
252 and technical terms 212–215
theoretical constructs/order of 197, 218, use of term 38
291 mutaqaddimūn (early authorities, Ashʿarī)
miracles 56, 150–152 53, 62, 65, 109, 135 n.11
modality, or “how” (kayf /kayfiyya) 185, 188, mutashābih. See also indeterminate
190–192, 279–281 as ambiguous 211
bi-lā kayf doctrine 65 as figurative 183
moderate path (ḥadd al-iqtiṣād) 126 as similar 248
modernity (Islamic) 19 verses 186–187, 189–190, 193

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mutawātir (highly recurrent or mass trans- extreme 113, 117–118, 138–139

mitted report) 105, 134n.7, 210, 271 Ibn Taymiyya on 114–115, 128 n.198, 138–
See also reports 139, 141, 176, 209 n.91, 289
Muʿtazila (sing. Muʿtazilī) 6–7, 109, 146, 170, of Muʿtazilīs 110
243 nafy 103–104, 116, 173, 180
and/vs. affirmationists 113, 176, 295 vs. affirmation (ithbāt) 269
and al-Ashʿarī/Ashʿarīs 71, 92, 111, 132 tajahhum 104 n.99, 110
deposing of 40, 47 negationist(s) 170
on divine attributes 50n.120, 105, 108, Ibn Taymiyya on 170, 209, 263, 290
111, 113, 117, 217 jahmī, jahmiyya 104, 107
doctrines 39, 49, 65, 108, 111, 180 nufāh 138, 209–210, 263
five principles (al-uṣūl al-khamsa) of 41 theology of attributes 243
Ibn Taymiyya on 109, 209n.91, 288, 295 Neoplatonism 32, 54, 56, 61–62, 277
internal discord of 142–143 Night Journey (isrāʾ), to Jerusalem 261
and kalām 43, 63, 106 nominalism 243
methods/views of 41–42, 49–50 nominalist, Ibn Taymiyya as 92, 256n.103
and one/oneness (tawḥīd) 41, 217–219 nominatum/a (musammā, pl. musammayāt)
as people of (divine) justice and unic- 138, 189, 220
ity (ahl al-ʿadl wa-l-tawḥīd) 57 non-apparent (muʾawwal) 191
on Qurʾān as created 46 non-eternality, of the world 39
rise of 39, 53 non-existent (maʿdūm) 113, 121, 243
theses of 42, 55–56, 117 non-literal/figurative (majāz) meaning 191,
mutually exclusive 229, 241, 269–270 193–194
and contradictory 216, 269 See also interpretation(s)
opposites 191 non-particularized (ghayr muʿayyan) 245
mystical monism/system (of Ibn ʿArabī) 82, non-preponderant (marjūḥ) 184, 191, 195
86, 88 normativity (of fiṭra) 260–261
notional (iʿtibārī) 259, 275
names 281 notion(s)
asmāʾ 19, 100, 189, 216, 280 abstract 215 n.111, 288
ishtirāk al- 183 maʿnā, pl. maʿānī 231, 244, 282, 284
of God 19, 100, 114, 169, 170 See also meaning(s)
naql ṣaḥīḥ (authentic revelation) 292, 298 universally shared 217 n.112
See also revelation nullification/denial, of divine attributes
naẓar (discursive reasoning/rational inquiry) (taʿṭīl) 103, 180, 289 n.13
63–64, 64n.191
ḥasan/ḥusn al- (sound rational investiga- obligatory (wājib) 111
tion/inference/reasoning) 265, 274, See also necessary
296, 298 observation 236n.34
naẓar sayyiʾ or sūʾ al-naẓar (lit. “bad rea- empirical 166–167
soning”) 274 obvious or overt (ẓāhir) 199–200
necessary/necessity 139 See also apparent
vs. contingent/contingency 233n.24, sense of revealed texts 135, 158, 179–181
257, 286, 290 See also revelation
ḍarūrī 256, 258–259 one
knowledge 254, 270, 275 aḥad, wāḥid 219–220
wājib 61, 138–139 See also wāḥid
negationism 296 in Arabic 218–219
and condemnation by Salaf 116–117 as lack of plurality 217–218

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oneness. See also tawḥīd perplexed/perplexity 144, 147, 169

of divine essence, attributes, and acts See also confusion
219–220 ḥayra 112 n.142, 211 n.103
of God 112, 216–217, 219–220 pessimism, epistemological (of al-Rāzī)
notion/concept of 56–57 76 n.259
ontological agnostic (of later mutakallimūn) 147
concomitance (istilzām, talāzum) 222 philosophers 6, 55–56, 123, 126–127, 143, 173,
constitution 248 285
necessity (wujūb) 64 arguments against 250–251, 259, 289,
reality(ies) (ḥaqīqa, pl. ḥaqāʾiq) 246– 294
247, 250, 252 as atheists (malāḥida) 288–289
ontology 235, 283, 289, 293 categories/methods of 292
confusion in 277 confusion of 228, 243
of Ibn Taymiyya 17, 19, 227–228, 254, 277, differences among 143
286, 289 esotericist (bāṭiniyyat al-falāsifa) 124
opinion, reasoned (raʾy) 29, 44, 175 vs. masses 124
ahl al-raʾy 29, 39, 89 on meaning of revelation 179–180
opposites 176, 258, 269, 283, 287, 293 and negationism 113, 138
See also contradictions and one/oneness 217–219
mutually exclusive 191 tawḥīd of 101, 122
optimism, epistemological (of Ibn Taymiyya) taʾwīl of 122, 184, 288
76n.259 technical/specialized words used by
origination. See temporal origination 213, 220–223
orthodox(y) 45, 66, 86, 115, 142n.26, 143 on universals 241, 244
belief 171 philosophical
vs. heterodox(y) 91 elite (khāṣṣa) 120
Sunnī 39–40, 117 nomenclature, formal 35–36
outer/outward (ẓāhir) 227, 230 See also terms
See also obvious tradition, independent 72
philosophy 16, 63, 66, 68, 80
parables (amthāl) 165 See also kalām
paradise 277, 282 Arabic 12
See also heaven(s) of Ibn Taymiyya 13, 15, 17
parochialism, intellectual/epistemic 297 and Islamic discourse 73–74
part ( juzʾ) 120, 139, 219 and religion 55, 58
particularization (takhṣīṣ) 158, 203 terms and categories of 75
particulars 236n.33, 242–244, 246–247, 254, and theology 73
255, 258–259 piety (taʾalluh) 125
ʿayn, aʿyān, muʿayyan 230, 232, 245, 251 Platonic
perceptible (maḥsūs) 229, 230–231, 233, forms 243, 245
238, 241, 245, 251, 277 view, of the relationship of universals to
See also empirical particulars 242
bodies (ajsām) 229n.9, 251 Platonists 233n.23
perception, external (ḥiss ẓāhir) 234 poetics (shiʿr) 59
See also sensation/sense perception populace. See common folk/people
perfect, vs. imperfect 290 prayer(s) 171, 173, 207
perfection, vs. deficiency 286 precedence/priority
Peripatetic(s) 126, 233n.23, 248, 249n.78 of conclusive indicants, over inconclusive
tradition (Muslim) 54 ones 157–159, 162–163

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of opinion, over revelation/Qurʾān and qidam (eternality) 214

Sunna 170, 174–175 See also eternal
of reason, over revelation (or of revelation denial of 41
over reason) 133, 141, 149, 152–153, qiyās (analogy; analogical reasoning) 19,
155, 156, 159, 163, 175–176, 289 29 n.31, 30, 278–279
of scriptural, over rational proof 161–162 See also analogy
predestination 36, 39, 42 qiyās al-ghāʾib ʿalā al-shāhid (or al-qiyās
preferability (tafḍīl) 88n.33 bi-l-shāhid ʿalā al-ghāʾib) 50, 278–280
preference. See precedence/priority qualification (waṣf ) 189
premises 93, 262, 273, 276, 295n.21 quality(ies) (ṣifa, pl. ṣifāt) 216, 265
soundness of 294–295 See also attributes
true 265 quiddity(ies) 76, 243, 250
preponderant (rājiḥ) [meaning] 191, 194– māhiyya 246, 248–250
195, 201 Qurʾān 88–89, 116, 123
See also probative value See also revelation; scripture; taʾwīl
present (shāhid) 230 addressed to/recipients of 28, 187, 206,
See also empirical; seen; visible 294
primary/preponderant, vs. secondary/non- ambiguous (mutashābih) verses of 184,
preponderant (meaning) 193 185–186, 193, 199
principles (uṣūl) 93, 152 and argumentation 25, 32 n.43
probability 157 on attributes 35, 65, 145, 210, 288
ẓann 17 authenticity of 160, 267
See also conjecture; inconclusive as Book of God 115–116
probative value, possessing (rājiḥ) 157–158, as clear and manifest (mubīn) 18, 182–
162 183, 185, 206
See also preponderant as clear/clarity of 25, 166, 174, 184, 226
proof(s) 292 and contradictions 42, 170, 172
adilla 114, 170 and disputation 175
burhān 123, 269 exegesis (tafsīr) of 28, 37, 39, 41, 69
equivalence of (takāfuʾ al-adilla) 147, figurative/metaphorical expressions of
211n.103 121
in and of itself ( fī nafs al-amr) 161 See also interpretation(s)
valid vs. invalid 165 hermeneutics of 90, 182–183
prophecy, reality of 150 Ibn Taymiyya on 91, 93, 128 n.199,
prophethood 154, 172 158, 165–166, 207, 217–218, 223 n.133,
prophets 55, 232 247 n.74
method of calling to religion 147 and logic 68
providence, divine 61 meanings of 171–172, 185
Pythagoreans 233n.23, 243, 245 as mutawātir 239–240
nature of, as created or uncreated 35,
qadar (divine decree) 27 37, 39, 41, 44 n.81, 46, 105, 117, 147
Qadarīs (Qadariyya; proponents of free will) and parables in 165
34, 36, 43n.77 and plain sense of 6, 42
qalb, as locus of rational reflection 24 and rational
See also heart(s) methods 49, 70
al-qānūn al-kullī (the universal rule). See uni- objections 158
versal rule proofs 25 n.18, 45, 166
qarāʾin (context) 18, 182, 198 and reason/reflection 24–26, 27 n.24,
Qarāmiṭa 7n.5, 172 64 n.191, 77, 154

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as report 238–240, 266, 276, 284 rationality 58, 130, 294, 297
revealed to Muḥammad, in Arabic 225, Greek model of 127
232 types of 60
and seen/unseen realms 232 raʾy (reasoned opinion). See opinion
on state of humans 262 realism (of Ibn Taymiyya) 243–244,
and taʾwīl 184–185, 187, 189–190, 256 n.103
223n.133 reality(ies)
as word of God/God’s speech 34, 37, 46 abstract 231
external 274
rājiḥ. See preponderant fī al-khārij 229, 250–251
rational extra-mental 228
ʿaqlī 28, 97, 164, 292n.18 ḥaqīqa, pl. ḥaqāʾiq 19, 188–189, 248–250
argumentation 25n.17, 27, 49, 103–104, essential ontological 279–281, 284,
116, 130, 173 286, 290
arguments 110–111, 113–115, 117, 140–141, ontological/ultimate 188–192
142, 149, 151–152, 154 witnessing (mushāhada) of 71
assent (taṣdīq) 253, 275 nature of 228
attributes (ṣifāt ʿaqliyya) 112 notional, in the mind 249
axioms 298 sensory 122
certainty 63, 127, 160 transcendent 127
coherence 216 reason 8, 27, 36, 39, 76, 127, 128, 136,
conclusions 160 140 n.24, 148, 154–155, 200, 279, 297
ʿaqliyyāt/maʿqūlāt 151, 181, 225, 297 abstract 183, 258
demonstration (burhān) 70, 126, 165 ʿaql 24, 37, 227, 253, 262–263, 285
discourse 33, 70, 212 and authenticity of texts 164 n.80
faculty(ies) 27, 148, 155, 254, 275 category of 167–168
indicants/proofs 156, 161–162, 164, conclusions reached through 216
211n.103 congruent with Qurʾān 49 n.116
inquiry/inference 26–27, 64, 120, 277 contradictions with 170–171, 216
naẓar 70n.227, 112n.142, 152, 265 to determine meaning 193
qiyāsayn (of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal) 115 human 23–24, 30 n.35, 77, 126
intuition 272 Ibn Taymiyya’s deconstruction and recon-
methods 39, 93 struction of 130–131, 228, 289
necessity (ḍarūra) 142 as instinct in man (gharīza fī al-insān)
objections 6, 8, 110, 141 253
muʿāriḍ ʿaqlī 103, 158, 180–181, 186 and knowledge 17, 27 n.24, 135, 150
principles 77 and nature of/comprehension of God
proofs/arguments 70, 159, 166 37, 47 n.102
dalīl ʿaqlī/adilla ʿaqliyya 157–158, principles of 114, 285
170–171, 211n.103 pure/sound (ʿaql ṣarīḥ) 18, 76 n.259, 93,
reflection 27n.24, 64n.191 104, 114, 147, 169, 209, 212, 226, 241, 259,
sciences 28, 63, 97 292, 298
soul (al-nafs al-nāṭiqa) 252 and agreement/harmony with reve-
speculation 180, 183, 215 lation 129–130, 141–142, 175–176,
rationalism 30, 37, 97 207
theological 44 and authentic revelation (naql ṣaḥīḥ)
rationalist(s) 30, 35, 170, 179 6
nuẓẓār 112n.142, 144, 214–215 Ibn Taymiyya on role of 180 n.3
/textualist cleavage 37 and innate/empirical knowledge 274

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to reach truth 95, 118 transmitted (khabar, pl. akhbār) 18, 231,
as valid/true vs. invalid/false 167 236, 240, 266, 275, 276, 279–280, 284,
reason and revelation 16–17, 114, 125, 148, 298
181, 216, 274 as part of unseen realm 237
See also precedence/priority true (ṣādiq) 239, 254, 266, 289, 291
binary of 163, 168 resemblance. See also like(ness); similar
reason vs. revelation (ʿaql–naql) 168 (mutashābih)/similarity
conflict between 6–8, 16–17, 116–117, between God and created things (tanzīh),
129–131, 132, 137, 179, 288 denial of 41
causes of 211–212 mithl/mumāthala 285
contradiction between 6, 84, 90, 118, 153, and similarity (tashābuh wa-tamāthul)
156, 161, 169, 171–172, 176, 179 246
al-Fārābī on 58, 60 resurrection
Ibn Taymiyya’s resolution of 8, 17, 142, events of 231
167–168, 173, 227–228 physical/bodily 56, 68, 101, 113, 117, 159
as mutually concomitant (mutalāzimān) revelation 24, 56, 70, 73n.243, 93, 106, 148,
298 200
paradigm 23, 25, 148 See also reason and revelation; scripture
and reconciliation between 30n.35, 119 and abrogation 172
relationship of 4–5, 15, 25, 58, 78, 102, as ambiguous/indeterminate 123, 192
119, 129 and analogy 90
al-Shāfiʿī on 30 and appeal to reflect/consider/rea-
works relevant to 99 son/ponder 130
reasoning. See also analogy; discursive in Arabic 198–199
abstract 207 and attributes 103, 140
formal deductive 69 See also God
Islamic theological 69 authentic (naql ṣaḥīḥ/ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl)
istidlāl 158, 211n.103 6, 17, 130, 142, 147, 289, 298
in law/legal 29–31 authenticity/validity of 93, 104, 133, 137,
methods of 69, 77 149–153, 155, 162, 167, 171, 212, 298–299
orthodox vs. heterodox 91 -based (naqlī) 97
sound (ḥusn al-naẓar) 64n.191 as a category 168
See also rational and certain ( yaqīn) knowledge 112
reflection 25 clarity (bayān) of 192
relational as clear, manifest (mubīn) 183, 199, 206,
judgement 231, 258–259 225
phenomena 283 as consistent with itself and reason 216
principles 254, 280 content of 172
religion 135, 289 context of 220
falsification of 116 contradictions with 171–172, 176, 211, 213
milla 120 on ghayb and shahāda 235–236
popular, and excesses of 100 as grounded in reason 150, 159
purpose of 119 as images and metaphors 135
truth of 25 imperative (inshāʾī) and declarative
religious teachings (sharāʾiʿ) 121–122 (ikhbārī) statements of 175
reports and language of/linguistic conventions
recurrently mass transmitted (mutawātir, 59, 119–120, 127, 206–207, 212, 288
pl. mutawātirāt) 171–172, 236n.34, 239–240 for masses/people 124, 180, 218
and statements (aqwāl) 204 meaning of 137, 207, 226

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obvious sense/outward meaning of 124, of ḥadīth 124

127, 176, 185 later (khalaf ) 208
opposition to 174 learned (ʿulamāʾ) 204
or religion (sharīʿa) 165 legal ( fuqahāʾ, sing. faqīh), 114 (See also
over reason 289 jurists)
See also precedence/priority school(s)
and philosophical tradition 77 method of early (ṭarīq al-mutaqaddimīn),
plain sense of 6, 103–104, 117, 121, 141, 155, vs. later (ṭarīq al-mutaʾakhkhirīn) 66
179–181, 220 of thought 16, 80, 102, 135, 142, 169, 272,
purpose of 120 288
and rational arguments 152 madhhab (pl. madhāhib) 44
as source of (objective) knowledge 128, science(s)
130 demonstrative 59 n.174
as straightforward 142 Islamic religious 28, 240
text(s) of 25, 193, 196, 203–204, 228 linguistic 215 n.111
transmitted from Salaf (maʾthūr ʿan al- of logic 169
salaf ) 205 rational 28, 63, 97
as transmitted report 238, 281, 284 and revelation 19
revelational/transmitted (naqlī) 29 scriptural/scripturally validated 292 n.18
reversability principle 53, 64, 66 indicant/proof 134, 156–159, 161–162,
reward, and punishment 169 164–165, 167–168, 196
rhetoric (khiṭāb) 59 vs. innovated 164–165, 167
ruʾya (“beatific vision”) 234n.29 scripture. See also Qurʾān; revelation
authentic 163
Sabians, of Harran 31 or religion (shirʿa) 164
saints, cult of 83 and outward meanings of 121
sajʿ (rhymed prose), in Ibn Taymiyya’s writ- plain-sense understanding of 175, 223,
ing 98 227
Salaf 88, 89, 91, 103–104, 141, 180, 182, 187– and rational arguments 150–151
188, 225–226, 227, 288 seen. See also visible
affirmationism of 113, 208 realm of 232–233, 280, 283–284
consensus (ijmāʿ) of 205, 210 shahāda 230, 275, 284
on createdness of the Qurʾān 117 self-evident
on divine attributes 116–117, 210 axioms (badīhiyyāt) 259, 271, 291
and early authorities (al-salaf wa-l- badāʾih al-ʿuqūl 273
aʾimma) 105, 210n.94 badīhī 18, 254, 258–259, 264, 270
linguistic conventions of 192, 201 knowledge (ʿilm) 269–270
normative understanding/status of 114– principles of demonstration 59 n.174
115, 208–209 semi-rationalists 48
positions/reported statements (aqwāl) of sensation/sense perception 237, 258, 280,
96, 107, 185, 204–205, 240 288, 298
on taʾwīl 116, 190–191, 193 ḥiss 18, 227, 233, 236, 237, 257, 273, 275,
ṣarīḥ (clear, pure, unadulterated) 292 279, 291
Satan 155 external (ẓāhir) 230, 240, 275
scholars 114, 174 internal (bāṭin) 231, 241, 275
authoritative, of the early community shahāda (visible realm) 230, 235, 240
(aʾimmat al-salaf ) 46, 105 See also seen
firmly grounded in knowledge 123, and ghayb 232
186 realm of 280–281

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shāhid 284 sīra [biography], of the Prophet Muḥammad

vs. ghāʾib 233n.24 26
realm 50, 237, 277–278 siyāq (context) 18, 182, 198
Shaqḥab, battle of 82, 86 skepticism 127, 268
sharʿ (revelation) 165 See also doubt
sharʿī of Islamicists, regarding authenticity of
-ʿaqlī (scripturally validated rational) 17, ḥadīth 26 n.19
165–166 sophistry (safsaṭa) 7, 59 n.174
–bidʿī (scripturally validated vs. inno- fī al-ʿaqliyyāt 7 fig. 1, 143 fig. 2
vated) 17, 164 soul(s) 231–233, 236, 241
-samʿī (scripturally validated revelational) indwelling in body 252
165–166 rūḥ 232, 251, 282
Sharīʿa 91 space (ḥayyiz) 269
sharing (ishtirāk), ontological vs. logi- occupying (taḥayyuz) 213
cal/notional 242–243, 247 spatial
sh-h-d [root] 230n.11 dimension 234
Shīʿa 105, 124, 142–143, 243 ___location ( jiha) [re. God] 205 n.80
of Kasrawān 81–82, 86 specialists [of particular discipline] (al-
Shīʿism 100 khāṣṣa) 218
shirʿa (revealed religion) 164 species 242–245, 258
shirk (idolatry) 83 speculation(s) 172, 201, 293
shubha (pl. shubuhāt, shubah; doubt or con- See also conjecture
fusion) 148n.43, 263–264 abstract 226, 292
ṣifa (pl. ṣifāt; attribute) 213 speech 136
See also attributes See also language/linguistic
khabariyya (revealed) 69 of Arabs 192, 206 n.82
sight/seeing 237, 280–281 community 206–207
signification of God 41
analogical (ishtirāk maʿnawī) 280 types of, imperative 175, 191
dalāla 157, 160, 170 spiritual
(See also proof(s)) experience 127
signs 152 insights 295
similar (mutashābih)/similarity 246–247, unveiling (kashf ) 71, 125, 146, 232 n.20
248 state (ḥāl) 104
See also assimilationism; tashbīh See also aḥwāl
mushābaha, tashābuh 281, 285, Stoic elements (in Near Eastern intellectual
287 environment) 32
or likeness (mumāthala) between subjectivity 297
attributes of God and those of created Successors (tābiʿūn; ca. 100–170/718–786)
beings 211 43 n.77, 116, 136, 142 n.26, 204, 208
tashbīh, between God and created entities interpretations transmitted from
243 (maʾthūra ʿan) 210
similitude (tashbīh). See assimilationism; Successors of the Successors (tābiʿū al-tābiʿīn;
tashbīh ca. 170–220/786–835) 116, 142 n.26, 208
simple (basīṭ) 139, 216 Sufi(s) 114, 117, 285
simplicity (of God, without positive monists, and quiddities 243
attributes) 217 orders, Qādirī 88 n.31
sin 34 Sufism 72, 88 n.32
sinner, status of grave 41 tradition of 87

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Sumaniyya 32, 104n.99, 289n.13 takhyīl (“imaginalization,” or imaginative

Sunna 27, 93, 116, 166, 171–172, 173, 198 evocation) 60, 292
ahl al-sunna 43, 46, 106–107, 204 See also imagination
al-Ashʿarī/Ashʿarīs on 107–110 wahm and 135–136
conformity to 191 tanzīh (denial of resemblance between God
contradictions with 170 and created things) 41
distance from 142–143, 170 of God’s essence and attributes 287
early works of 210 tarjīḥ (preponderant, predominance) 158
and al-Ghazālī 70, 112 tarkīb. See composition
and Ḥanbalīs 88–89, 91, 106 taṣawwuf 125
Ibn Taymiyya’s use of the term 142n.26 See also Sufism
as mutawātir 171, 240 tashbīh (assimilationism) 6, 19, 50 n.120, 111,
and opinion given priority over 175 113, 117, 137, 285
al-Shāfiʿī on 29–30 ontological vs. notional 287, 290
supplication (for divine aid) (istighātha) 83 similitude 121
ṣūra (image, form) 213 taʿṭīl (denial/nullification, of God’s attri-
suspension of meaning (tafwīḍ) 130, 135–136 butes). See nullification
See also tafwīḍ tawassul (supplication for divine aid) 83,
syllogism(s)/syllogistic 92, 165 85
arts 59 tawātur (recurrent mass transmission) 18,
categorical (qiyās al-shumūl), as com- 134 n.7, 228, 239–240, 267–268, 270,
pared to analogy (qiyās al-tamthīl) 276, 291–292
278 lafẓī (verbatim) 239
demonstration 126 maʿnawī (thematic) 239, 266
direct or standard, vs. indirect 64 pan-human 272
figures 69n.219 as source of knowledge 266–267
symbolic tawḥīd (oneness of God) 18, 70, 184, 215,
exegesis (tafsīr), of Qurʾān 69 220–221
or allegorical language, vs. literal 120 and common people 120, 122
symbolism, theory of (i.e., allegory, tamthīl) doctrine/notion of 41, 120–121
69 of philosophers 101
syntax 158 taʾwīl 6, 8, 19, 40, 65, 69, 111, 183, 202,
Syriac (language) 31 223 n.133
from Companions and Successors 204
tabādur 196–197 contextual 202, 225
taḍlīl, tajhīl and 135–137, 176 definition of 186 n.16, 187–190
tafsīr (Qurʾānic exegesis/explication) 76– figurative interpretation 6, 122, 126,
77, 80, 188 285
of early scholars/Companions 187, 189– meanings of 184, 189, 193
190 metaphorical interpretation 141, 288
early works of 209–210 negationist 122
al-maʿnā (simple explication of meaning) by philosophers and mutakallimūn 122,
225, 287 184
tafwīḍ (entrusting meaning to God) 103, 111, qānūn al- (“[univeral] rule of”) 69 n.224,
116, 141, 183, 185, 186, 209 77 n.269
taḥrīf 193n.49 rationalistic 209
and taʾwīl 135–136 as tafsīr al-maʿnā (simple explication of
tajhīl, and taḍlīl 135–137, 176 meaning) 281, 287
See also ignorance taḥrīf and [by mutakallimūn] 135–136

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Taymiyyan pyramid 7, 89, 104, 130, 142–143, speculative 28, 37, 74, 225
148 traditionalist 97
technical (iṣṭilāḥī) meaning/usage 184, 216, throne [of God] 145, 169, 180, 191–192, 203,
224 204
temporal origination thubūt 162
of accidents See also authentic
ḥudūth al-aʿrāḍ 106 authenticity (of Qurʾānic text) 157, 160,
ṭarīq al-aʿrāḍ 110n.128 162, 164 n.80
of bodies (ḥudūth al-ajsām) 64 factual existence 19
of events 117 (See also existence)
ḥudūth/ḥawādith 104, 105–106, 214, factual truth 270
275n.161 traditionalism 12, 46 n.94
muḥdath 138–139 Ḥanbalī(s) 53
of the universe 8, 258n.110 philosophical 93
of the world (ḥudūth al-ʿālam) 65, theological 97
112–113 transcendence/transcendent 127–128
terms (alfāẓ) See also unseen
common philosophical 221–223 divine/of God 103, 205
conventional meanings of 213 theosophy (ḥikma mutaʿāliya) (of Mullā
generic (ʿāmma) 247 Ṣadrā) 72
of particular group convention (ʿurfiyya translation movement, Greco-Arabic 38–
ʿurfan khāṣṣan) 212–213 39, 53–54
particularization of (takhṣīṣ) 158 transmission (naql) 237
technical 18, 212–214 See also revelation
as used by rationalists 214–215 trials (of Ibn Taymiyya) 80, 96
vague and ambiguous (mujmala mutashā- truth/true 25, 125, 141–142, 152–153,
biha) 183, 211–214 268 n.143
textual criticism (of ḥadīth) 239 about God, man, world 127
textualism 30, 202 factual (thubūt) 270
theological 92 vs. false(hood) 130, 147, 212, 263
textualist(s) 35 indicators of 163, 168
as opposed to literalist 30, 201 in one [opinion] (al-ḥaqq fī wāḥid) 90
theologians 25n.18, 45, 119, 124 questions of ultimate 28
See also mutakallimūn of revelation 149–150
defined 43 through reason 128, 136
on muḥkam and mutashābih 186– unitary, normative 89
187
theology 16, 30n.35, 63, 77, 80, 97, 217 ʿulamāʾ (religious scholars) 46, 186, 204
Ashʿarī 5, 72 umma 114, 262, 297
dialectical 144 See also community
discursive 25n.18, 146–147, 171–172 unconditioned/absolute. See absolute
foundations of (uṣūl al-dīn, al-masāʾil al- uncreated, vs. created 233n.24
uṣūliyya) 114, 158, 240 uncreatedness [of Qurʾān] 35, 37, 39, 41, 46,
rational vs. scriptural 166 105, 117, 147
kalām 33, 67, 72, 125 unicity 7
negative 57 See also tawḥīd
non-speculative 42–43, 97 of truth 89, 90 n.40, 142–143
and philosophy 54n.142, 73 unity of being (waḥdat al-wujūd), of Ibn
Qurʾānic rational 92 ʿArabī 113

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universal rule (of interpretation) (al-qānūn utterances (alfāẓ) 287

al-kullī/qānūn al-taʾwīl) 6, 77n.269, 110, See also language; speech; terms; words
132–135, 137, 141, 153, 173, 298
and compatibility with Islamic revelation valid, correct (ṣaḥīḥ) 292 n.18
173 veracity 154
Ibn Taymiyya’s refutation of 6, 14, 16, 77, See also authentic
148–149, 150–152, 155, 156, 163, 168–169, verbal form (lafẓ) 200–201, 209
172 visible. See also shahāda; shāhid
Ibn Taymiyya’s understanding of 130, external reality (mashhūd) 230
298 or seen (shahāda) 27 n.24
al-Rāzī on 40, 77, 104, 119, 159 realm 50, 234, 236, 237
universal(s) 101, 243–244, 247–248, 249, world of sense perception/empirical vs.
277–278, 282, 290 world of unseen 50, 234
common 242–243, 246, 278, 285 vocabulary 73, 226
concepts See also terms; words
God’s knowledge of (as opposed to volition, assertion of human 34
particulars) 68 See also free will
“horseness” as example of 242, 244
or notions 229, 246–248, 251–252, wāḥid (one) 18, 184, 213n.108, 215, 223
254, 257, 269 linguistic meaning of 217
existence (al-wujūd al-kullī) 242 wahm (pl. wahmiyyāt; estimative proposi-
known through reason 254 tions) 273n.159
kullī, pl. kulliyyāt 18, 255, 290 and takhyīl 135–137
mujarrada (abstract) 245 walī (pl. awliyāʾ; person of high spiritual
ṭabīʿiyya (natural) 244, 254, 255, 258 rank) 83
linguistic principles 198 visiting graves of 85
logical notions/rules 255–258 waṣiyya (testament) (of al-Rāzī) 145 n.34
meanings (maʿānī) 19, 284, 287 weakness (attribute of) 287
middle term 278 whim (hawā, pl. ahwāʾ) 175
and particulars 251–252, 253 wisdom (ḥikma) 55, 154
Aristotelian model/view 242, 245 Qurʾān as consummate (bāligha) 25
unseen 169, 290 witnessed (mashhūd) 234
ghayb (n.)/ghāʾib (adj.) 27n.24, 233, 277, women 79, 85
297 words 201
realities 141, 236, 277 See also literalism; terms
realm 19, 230–232, 234, 237–238, 275, lafẓ (pl. alfāẓ) 198, 201
284 as technical terms 212, 224
ghayr mashhūd 277 world 238
metaphysical, vs. empirical (“seen”) 19 destruction of 56
modality of 190 external ( fī al-khārij) 228
realities 50, 185, 188 present/current (dunyā) 128, 233
ʿuqalāʾ (sing. ʿāqil) (rational persons) 157, worship, acts of 159
171 wujūb (necessity) 214
ʿuqūl (minds, intellects) 262
uṣūl al-dīn 43n.78, 99 Ẓāhirīs 106, 201–202
See also principles; theology ẓāhir (apparent) meaning 191
uṣūl al-fiqh 67, 194n.51, 197 See also apparent; obvious
uṣūlī taxonomy (of ẓāhir and muʾawwal
meanings) 198

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