Taqi al-Din al-Subki's Biography of Ibn Taymiyya: A Contemporary's Testimony in Ibn Hajar's Hand

The text and its copy

This is a short epistle by the Shafiʿi jurist Taqi al-Din ʿAli ibn ʿAbd al-Kafi al-Subki (d. 756 AH) on the life of his contemporary Ahmad ibn ʿAbd al-Halim Ibn Taymiyya al-Hanbali (d. 728 AH). Its value lies in its being the testimony of a scholar who lived through the events, attended some of the sessions held concerning Ibn Taymiyya, and reported from other witnesses by name. The published edition reproduces a copy in the hand of the hafiz Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalani, as its title page indicates, and traces of his pen appear in annotations recorded by the editor in the footnotes, for example:

The hafiz Ibn Hajar wrote the word "kadha" (sic) above the name of God^[5]

Such notes show that the copyist read what he copied with a critical eye, flagging problematic places in the original without altering it. The text ends with its date of composition, in Safar 755 AH, on the outskirts of Damascus, about a year before al-Subki's death.

Acknowledgement of his learning and intelligence

Al-Subki opens the notice with Ibn Taymiyya's lineage, his birth in 661 AH and his upbringing in Damascus, and acknowledges his early brilliance:

He possessed exceptional intelligence and memory.^[1]

He explains why many people, among the common folk and some jurists, were drawn to him by the abundant knowledge he possessed, both memorised and transmitted, and by his distributing money entrusted to him by merchants to the needy among the people of hadith and learning. Al-Subki does not conceal that he had admirers among the scholars themselves, mentioning

a group of hadith scholars and men of merit who loved and revered him^[2]

and who recorded his affairs and interpreted his words in the best light. The notice thus does not portray Ibn Taymiyya as a man of little learning, but as a scholar of vast memory in whose choices and method, in al-Subki's view, errors occurred.

Al-Subki's method of reporting

Al-Subki does not merely pass judgements; he takes care to name the sources of his reports. At times he relates what he himself witnessed in the sessions he attended; at others he cites witnesses by name, as when he says he heard Shaykh Taj al-Din Ibn ʿAtaʾ Allah al-Iskandari speaking to Shaykh Shams al-Din al-Jazari about Ibn Taymiyya's influence on the people of Damascus^[2]. He also mentions that his fame had spread far and wide, and that most people saw only the outward side of his affairs. This reliance on direct observation and hearing makes the text an important historical document, although the reader must distinguish within it between the information al-Subki reports and the assessment he offers: the former is testimony about events, the latter the opinion of a jurist with his own scholarly stance on contested questions.

Points of criticism

According to al-Subki, the difficulty began after 690 AH, when Ibn Taymiyya voiced doctrinal positions on the divine descent, istiwaʾ and similar matters; sessions were then held in the presence of judges and scholars in Damascus^[1], and the matter was later taken up in Egypt^[2]. He faults him for a method of disputation that turned everything he learned towards what was already settled in his mind, and, when scholars pressed him on a statement, presented it under another meaning^[2].

Al-Subki then lists legal and doctrinal questions on which, in his view, Ibn Taymiyya stood alone: the rejection of seeking help (istighatha) and intercession (tawassul) through the Prophet ﷺ, his position on oaths by divorce, his refusal to count a triple divorce pronounced in a single formula as three, and his rejection of travelling to visit the Prophet's ﷺ grave, the issue for which he was imprisoned in the citadel of Damascus until his death in 728 AH. Al-Subki notes that he refuted him on oaths by divorce in a volume he entitled:

"Al-Tahqiq fi masʾalat al-taʿliq"^[3]

He adds that he later found a treatise by him arguing for the eventual extinction of Hellfire, and that those closest to him, such as the hafiz al-Dhahabi, objected to it during his lifetime.

The declared purpose: counsel

Al-Subki is keen to present his words as counsel in religion and a warning against being drawn to Ibn Taymiyya's singular positions, not as a personal attack; he describes his approach as stating part of what he knew by way of justice and fairness,

without excessive praise or injustice^[4]

He argues that a scholar addressing the general public is bound to speak clearly, not in words the listener takes at face value which are then turned to another interpretation when challenged.

Notes for the reader

This text should be read as the testimony of a contemporary Shafiʿi jurist who was a party to some of these disputes, not as a neutral biography. It combines explicit acknowledgement of the breadth of Ibn Taymiyya's learning and intelligence with sharp criticism of his choices and method. Researchers will benefit from comparing it with the biographies written by Ibn Taymiyya's students and admirers, in order to grasp the full picture of a figure who provoked, and still provokes, wide scholarly debate. The transmission of the text in Ibn Hajar's hand, with its careful annotations, also gives it documentary value for the history of this debate.