348 Georges Tamer
sion of the oneness of truth seriously.^94 As the study makes clear, some
of his positions can be considered “Averroistic”; these positions, none-
theless, serve Ibn Taymiyya’s fundamental conviction of the absolute
primacy of Koran and sunna over philosophical reasoning – and this is
doubtlessly contra Averroes.
3. Ibn Taymiyya’s Resumption of
the Philosophical Discourse in Islam
In a monograph on the resumption of philosophy in Islam, the Moroc-
can scholar ʿAbd al-Ḥakīm Ajhar extensively examines a number of Ibn
Taymiyya’s teachings.^95 His analysis includes Ibn Taymiyya’s concept
of God’s oneness (tawḥīd), the relationship between God’s essence and
attributes,^96 and Ibn Taymiyya’s teaching in regards to God’s eternal
creation of the world and to locating the accidents (ḥawādith) in the
divine essence.^97 Through this selection of purely metaphysical topics,
the author intends to demonstrate that Ibn Taymiyya revived Islamic
philosophy after it was stalemated by the death of Ibn Rushd. After
presenting Ajhar’s conception of Ibn Taymiyya as a philosopher and
the justification he offers for this view, I will present a summary of his
analysis of Ibn Taymiyya’s main philosophical assertions.
Ibn Taymiyya, so Ajhar, possesses “an intellectual project” and “a
philosophical position which resembles any other philosophical posi-
tion in the history of philosophy in Islam”. His worldview is coherent
and “based on clear and solid philosophical and logical foundations”.
Ajhar describes this aspect of Ibn Taymiyya’s thought as “the other
hidden side” which is difficult to discover because of Ibn Taymiyya’s
use of “a twofold language”,^98 with which he articulated one truth in
a philosophical and a religious way. Unlike Ibn Rushd, however, he
did not attempt to establish a philosophical system paralleling religion;
rather, moving uniquely and rationally, he treated highly speculative
94 A similar conclusion is in von Kügelgen, Dialogpartner, p. 476.
95 Ajhar, ʿAbd al-Ḥakīm: Ibn Taymiyya wa-stiʾnāf al-qawl al-falsafī fī al-Islām,
Casablanca and Beirut 2004.
96 Ibid., pp. 43–93.
97 Ibid., pp. 145–226. The middle chapter (pp. 97–141) deals with several theologi-
cal and philosophical teachings on the originating of the world (ḥudūth) and
causality, which build Ibn Taymiyya’s background in dealing with the topic.
98 Ibid., p. 13.
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