18 Alina Kokoschka and Birgit Krawietz
ever, did not invest any energy or diligence into pre-structuring his
posthumous fame either by means of systematic presentation, by con-
venient arrangement or by attentive care to his works. It is uncertain
whether he regarded all the pieces of writing he haphazardly handed
out in response to fatwa requests as really part of his oeuvre – indeed, it
is uncertain whether he thought in such terms at all. He developed the
issuing of religious legal advice into a central means of self-articulation
in order to express his own intellectual concerns; the short form of
“the fatwa became for him a major vehicle for the expression of his
ideas”.^74 Ibn Taymiyya at times even gave different titles to one and the
same piece of his writing^75 and there are many other circumstances that
impede a precise mapping of his output. Nevertheless, an astonishing
amount of his writing has survived the centuries, although already his
contemporaries did not have a clear overview of it. Certain aspects of
Ibn Taymiyya’s work might have failed the test of time were it not for
the devoted efforts of his admirers, be they Ibn al-Qayyim or others.
It is a lucky historical coincidence that such an impulsive author, who
constantly shifted from one topic to the other and from one front to
the next, was preserved, (re-)arranged, systematized and further devel-
oped by willing admirers.
Any description of Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya seems to start with
the remark that he was a prolific writer. However, this does not quite
imply that he was productive in the fullest sense of the word; rather,
without stating it too bluntly, the expression conveys a certain reser-
vation about the quality of his output. Some scholars have no qualms
about airing their disregard for him. The main assumption behind
both approaches is the epigonal character of his person and oeuvre.
In probably involuntary irony, the editors of Aḥkām ahl al-dhimma
hail Ibn al-Qayyim as “the second master of Islam” (shaykh al-islām
al-thānī) in conjunction with the first master of Islam (shaykh al-islām
al- awwal) Ibn Taymiyya.^76 The label “polygraph” is likewise problem-
74 Weiss, Bernard: Ibn Taymiyya on Leadership in the Ritual Prayer, in: Muham-
mad Khalid Masud, Brinkley Morris Messick, and David Stephan Powers (eds.):
Islamic Legal Interpretation. Muftis and Their Fatwas, Cambridge, MA, and
London 1996, pp. 63–71, here pp. 63–64.
75 Ibn Taymiyya: A Muslim Theologian’s Response to Christianity. Ibn Taymiyya’s
al-Jawāb al-ṣaḥīḥ, edited and translated by Thomas F. Michel, Delmar 1984,
p. 68.
76 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Aḥkām ahl al-dhimma, p. 11. Another service by
Abū Zayd, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, pp. 129–156, delves into the relationship
between Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim.
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