288 Anke von Kügelgen
pret the words of the prophets in accordance with their own opinions.
Thus, under the pretense of explaining the intentions of the proph-
ets and by misusing language, they often say the opposite of what is
revealed. Among them Ibn Taymiyya counts “many kalām theologians
and others,” naming “the Muʿtazila, the Kullābiyya, the Sālimiyya, the
Karrāmiyya and the (Twelver) Shia.”^146
Ibn Taymiyya’s leading criterion of distinction among the different
thinkers is in fact their attitude towards the veracity of the prophet,^147
and – on first glance – not their epistemology, as one might expect in
regard to the main aim of Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wal-naql. Ibn Taymiyya
obviously regarded “veracity” (ṣidq) as the most important attribute
of the prophet, as Shahab Ahmed has shown with the example of Ibn
Taymiyya’s interpretation of the so-called Satanic verses.^148 In fact,
however, the criterion of veracity is closely linked to Ibn Taymiyya’s
concept of cognition, since he regards the messages of the prophets as
being in full congruity with “clear reason” and as bearing reasonable
proofs themselves and teaching rational methods (see below chapters
10.2, 11–12). It is not astonishing that his general judgment about “the
people of delusion and suggestion” (I. 1), i. e., about those who either
impute that the prophets lie or are less knowledgeable than certain
groups of wise men (the philosophers or the Sufi masters), is mark-
edly stern. He repeatedly calls them heretics (malāḥida),^149 classifies
146 Ibn Taymiyya, Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql, vol. 1, pp. 8, 12–13. For the schools men-
tioned by Ibn Taymiyya, see the respective entries in the 1st and 2nd edition
of The Encyclopaedia of Islam (Kullābīya s. v. Ibn Kullāb; according to Ibn
Ḥazm, he belonged to the Ashʿariyya; Ibn Taymiyya, Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql,
vol. 1, p. 13, n. 2; Ibn Taymiyya calls him a predecessor of al-Ashʿarī (after
Michot, Ibn Taymiyya, p. 25, n. 4)).
147 There is a striking resemblance between Ibn Taymiyya’s classification and a
typology of one of Ibn Taymiyya’s main enemies, namely Ibn ʿArabī, who
in his al-Futūḥāt al-makkiyya classifies people in six groups with respect to
their belief in the veracity of the prophets. Jon Hoover, to whose monograph
I owe my knowledge of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s typology (Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy,
pp. 46–47), referred to Ibn al-ʿArabī’s typology to point to still another simi-
larity between the two thinkers. It would be worthwile to study both typolo-
gies in a comparative way.
148 Ahmed, Shahab: Ibn Taymiyyah and the Satanic Verses, in: Studia Islamica
87 (1988), pp. 67–124, esp. pp. 100–105; see also Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya’s
The odicy, p. 44.
149 Ibn Taymiyya, Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql, vol. 8, pp. 242–243; vol. 9, p. 123; vol. 10,
p. 270. Mulḥid (pl. malāḥida) is difficult to render in another language, because
of its use in the senses of “deviator, apostate, heretic, atheist” (Madelung, Wil-
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