Ibn Taymiyya

A Hanbali scholar of Mamluk Damascus, imprisoned repeatedly and dying in the citadel, Ibn Taymiyya held that the Qur'an, the Sunna and the understanding of the first generations (the salaf) are the whole of religion, and that the later theology (kalam), Greek philosophy and the monism of Ibn Arabi are innovations. In “Averting the Conflict between Reason and Revelation” he argued that sound reason never contradicts the text, and in “Against the Greek Logicians” that universals exist only in the mind and that syllogism yields no certain knowledge of real things. He affirmed God's names and attributes as revealed, “without asking how,” held that God acts in time and creates perpetually, taught that acts are good or evil in themselves though obligation comes by command, defended a middle path on free will between compulsion and self-creation, and in the “Correct Answer” answered Christian claims about the Trinity, the Incarnation and the Scriptures point by point. His fatwas on fighting the Mongols, on visiting tombs and on the public conduct of non-Muslims made him the model of the activist scholar.

Why he matters: Thomas Michel, S.J., translated the “Correct Answer” so that Catholics could read the strongest medieval case against their faith from the Muslim side, and the dialogue documents since Nostra Aetate have had to reckon with the scripturalism he founded. He is also, with Scotus, a near-contemporary witness to the late medieval turn from universals to the singular and from analogy to a common concept of being, reached from the opposite religion.