Appropriation of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya 5
ously: that is to say, 20th century Western scholarship on this author
hardly exists. Even Henri Laoust (1905–1983), the frontrunner of Ibn
Taymiyya studies, and, some decades later, the “voice in the wilder-
ness” of George Makdisi (1920–2002) – who explored the Sunni revival
and the decisive role of Ḥanbalism – did not have much to say about
Ibn al-Qayyim.^6 Of course, the excessive media hype since the killing
of Anwar al-Sadat in 1981 has widely broadcasted allegations of Ibn
Taymiyya’s proto-fundamentalism and of his siring of modern terror-
ism; however, this did nothing to encourage scholarly publications on
his “well-known” student. Neither did this occur in the wider research
about Salafism or Muslim reformers. Although it has been common
wisdom for a long time that Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim were
rediscovered and appropriated especially by early Salafi writers in the
decades around the turn of the 20th century,^7 we can speak neither of a
sketchy outline of the oeuvre of Ibn al-Qayyim nor of in-depth studies
of major traits. As a rule, Ibn al-Qayyim is referred to only in passing,
this acknowledgment being more ceremonial than expressing genuine
interest in his writings.^8 Most importantly, throughout the 20th century,
not a single book on him was published^9 ; meanwhile, other (mediocre)
premodern Muslim writers received extensive monographic treatment.
6 See Sourdel, Dominique and Sourdel-Thomine, Janine: Henri Laoust 1905–1983,
in: Revue des études islamiques 52 (1984), pp. 3–16; Laoust, Henri: Ibn Ḳ ayyim
al-Djawziyya, in: EI^2 , vol. 3, pp. 821–822. Although George Makdisi in his Ibn
Taymīya. A Ṣūfī of the Qādiriya Order (in: The American Journal of Arabic
Studies 3 (1975), pp. 118–129) ventured to point out – see also his article on The
Hanbali School and Sufism, in: Boletin de la Asociacion Española de Orientalistas
15 (1979), pp. 115–126 – the Sufi dimension of Ibn Taymiyya’s thought at a time
when the Hanbali scholar was still perceived as an arch-enemy of Sufism, he did
not wrestle with Ibn al-Qayyim, whose work is so strongly immersed in Sufi
topics, rhetoric and emotional dispositions. The Sufi influence on Ibn al-Qayyim
has more recently been demonstrated by Anjum and Schallenbergh. In general,
there are various reasons why “the entire school of Ḥanbalī thinkers suffered
from an unjustified negligence by Western research for many decades”, as is told
by Bori and Holtzman, Introduction, p. 36.
7 His work was appropriated, by, for instance, Muhammad ʿAbduh, Muḥammad
Rashīd Riḍā, and certain members of the Iraqi al-Ālūsī family; this is not to men-
tion earlier scholars, such as Ibrāhīm al-Qūrānī, Shāh Walī Allāh al-Dihlawī and
Muḥammad al-Shawkānī.
8 Bell as the foremost exception is tackled here a bit later.
9 We are speaking here only about official publications on the book market; oth-
erwise worth mentioning is an unpublished dissertation by Nawir Yuslem Nur-
bain: Ibn Qayyim’s Reformulation of the Fatwā, Ph. D. thesis, Montreal 1995.
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