194 Claudia Preckel
school of law, have often relied on fatwas from Saudi-Arabian scholars,
who are adherents of the Ḥanbalī school of law. A close look at these
Saudi scholars who are now quoted by Ahl-i Ḥadīth scholars shows
that they often refer to Ibn Taymiyya.^100
Ibn Taymiyya was eager to spread his interpretation not only of
Muslim law but also of what he considered the “real Sunni creed”.
Some of his works contain the expression “dogmatics” (ʿaqīda) and
are written in response to the request of petitioners from a certain city,
for example, for two Syrian towns, al-ʿAqīda al-ḥamawiyya al-kubrā
(The Great Creed of Hama), al-ʿAqīda al-tadmuriyya (The Creed of
Palmyra) and, for an Iraqi town on the Tigris, al-ʿAqīda al-wāsiṭiyya
(The Creed of Wasit). These late medieval writings later became rele-
vant for the instruction of the Arabian Wahhabiyya as well as the Ahl-i
Ḥadīth. Ṣiddīq Ḥasan owned several manuscripts and printed copies
of all three works.
6.1.1. Ibn Taymiyya’s ʿAqīda wāsiṭiyyaAmong the three ʿaqīda works mentioned, al-ʿAqīda al-wāsiṭiyya,^101
was especially widely used for the purpose of instruction. The main
reason for this is that it was relatively easy to understand. Its composi-
100 For example, the book by the famous Salafi Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī (d. 1999):
The Prayer as Offered by Allah’s Messenger (Kitāb Ṣifāt ṣalāṭ al-nabī), trans-
lated from Arabic into English by the Ahl-i Ḥadīth scholar A. Q. Naqvi, pub-
lished by the Maktaba-yi Tarjumān, Delhi 2002, is full of quotations of Ibn al-
Qayyim and Ibn Taymiyya (e. g. pp. 124, 127, 129). In his introduction, Naqvi
compared al-Albānī to Ibn Taymiyya, because both of them “were thrown
behind the prison bars”. The maybe most visible network link between the
Ahl-i Ḥadīth and the Wahhabiyya was that created by Masʿūd ʿĀlam Nadwī
(d. 1954), who wrote a famous book on the founder of the Wahhabiyya. The
book has been re-published since its first publication in the 1940s; Nadwī,
Masʿūd ʿĀlam: Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Muḥammad. Ek maẓlūm awr bad-nām
muṣliḥ (A Wrongfully Treated and Defamed Reformer), Lahore n. d. The book
was also translated into English by Muhammad Rafiq Khan and published
under the title Mohammad Bin Abdul Wahhab. A Slandered Reformer, Ben-
raris 1982. The book contains numerous quotations from Ibn Taymiyya, e. g.
pp. 11, 95, 98 and in the bibliography.
101 For a short introduction and an English translation, see Swartz, Merlin: A Sev-
enth-century (A. H.) Sunni Creed. The ʿAqīda wāsiṭiyya of Ibn Taymīya, in:
Humaniora Islamica 1 (1973), pp. 91–131. A French translation was made by
Henri Laoust, see Ibn Taymiyya: La profession de foi d’Ibn Taymiyya. Texte,
traduction et commentaire de la Wāsiṭiyya, Paris 1986.
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