The Relation of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya 159
agreement within the school or the complication of multiple versions
of Aḥmad’s position, but he does bring them up notably less often
than mainstream Ḥanbalī writers.^21 His fundamentalism thus mani-
fests itself not only in avoiding the complexity of accumulated tradi-
tion by reaching behind it to the opinion of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal but
also in downplaying the difficulty of knowing what Aḥmad actually
said.
Why, then, should Ibn Taymiyya have been, if not a major figure in
the Ḥanbalī legal tradition, at least a much more prominent one than
his disciple Ibn al-Qayyim? As an example of Ibn Taymiyya’s legal
writing, I have examined two short works, al-Qawāʿid al-nūrāniyya,
just quoted concerning takhrīj, and al-Masāʾil al-māradīniyya.^22 It
transpires first that Ibn Taymiyya’s approach is somewhat closer to
Ibn Qudāma’s than Ibn al-Qayyim’s: the Prophet is cited twice as
often as Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, and Ibn Taymiyya regularly acknowledg-
es alternative versions of Aḥmad’s own position. Qualitatively, Ibn
Taymiyya much more often describes legitimate disagreement, usu-
ally among different schools but also sometimes within the Ḥanbalī
school; for example, to observe that the tenth- and eleventh-century
ʿUkbaris such as Abū Ḥafṣ and Abū ʿAlī b. Shihāb on the one hand
and the Baghdadis such as Abū ʿAbd Allāh b. Ḥāmid and the kadi
Abū Yaʿlā on the other disagreed over a certain property transfer.^23
Ibn Taymiyya did not write as a typical Ḥanbalī, and that evidently
limited his effect on the elaboration of Ḥanbalī rules. Sometimes he
proposes rules completely at odds with the Ḥanbalī tradition; for
example, he proposes that Muslims should be allowed to inherit from
non-Muslims, lest anyone refrain from converting to Islam for fear
of missing an inheritance – an opinion that not even Ibn al-Qayyim
21 E. g., Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Aḥkām ahl al-dhimma, pp. 452–453, where he
names five disciples who related three different versions of Aḥmad’s position on
the question of whether someone may inherit from a Muslim who has converted
to Islam some time between the Muslimʾs death and the division of his property.
By contrast, Ibn Qudāma names only two versions of Aḥmadʾs position on this
point: Ibn Qudāma: al-Mughnī, ed. by ʿAbd Allāh ʿAbd al-Muḥsin al-Turkī and
ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Muḥammad al-Ḥulw, Cairo 1406–11/1986–90, vol. 9, p. 160.
22 Ibn Taymiyya, Taqī al-Dīn: al-Masāʾil al-māradīniyya, ed. by Muḥammad
Ḥāmid al-Fiqī, Cairo 1980.
23 Ibn Taymiyya, Taqī al-Dīn: al-Qawāʿid al-nūrāniyya al-fiqhiyya, ed. by
Muḥammad Ḥāmid al-Fiqī, Cairo 1370/1951, p. 106. On Abū Ḥafṣ al-ʿUkbarī
(d. 387/997), see Laoust, Califat, p. 88; on Ibn Shihāb al-ʿUkbarī (d. 428/1037),
ibid., p. 98; on Ibn Ḥāmid (d. 403/1012–13), ibid., pp. 93–94.
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