Ibn Taymiyya: Life, Times, and Intellectual Profile

Abstract

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 heresiographical 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 IbnTaymiyya’s family fled southwest toDamascus