262 Anke von Kügelgen
less, like his schoolfellow, Ibn al-Jawzī accused “the philosophers” of
unbelief because of their metaphysical tenets that contradict religious
dogmas^29 and is notorious for his active persecution of philosophers of
his time.^30 In contrast to Ibn Taymiyya, however, he does not consider
logic to be Satan misleading the philosophers, but the use of reason
in the sphere of the metaphysical world. The divine world is, for this
Ḥanbalī, still a realm that is beyond the scope of reason.^31 Therefore,
obviously, Ibn al-Jawzī makes no attempt to prove the untenability of
their tenets. Not all Ḥanbalīs prior to Ibn Taymiyya, however, shared
Ibn al-Jawzī’s fideistic attitude. Ibn ʿAqīl (d. 513/1119), for instance,
viewed the relation between revelation and reason in a different way.
After his abjuration of the Muʿtazilī teaching and “other innovators’“
teachings he had adopted in his youth and whom Ibn Taymiyya then
much respected for his adherence to “the pure sunna”,^32 he holds that
“reason conforms with revelation, and nothing in revelation contra-
dicts reason.” This conviction is based on the view that it is reason that
conceives God’s existence and leads men to live according to His com-
mands.^33 Ibn ʿAqīl thus opens the sphere of reason for the Ḥanbalīs;
29 Ibn al-Jawzī, Talbīs Iblīs, pp. 55–59; idem, The Devil’s Delusion (1935),
pp. 15–20.
30 Laoust, Henri: Le Hanbalisme sous le califat de Bagdad (241/855–656/1258),
in: Revue des études islamiques 1 (1959), pp. 67–128, here 112–115; Hartmann,
Angelika: an-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh (1180–1225). Politik, Religion, Kultur in der
späten ʿAbbāsi den zeit, Berlin and New York 1975, p. 258.
31 See above, n. 28 and 29.
32 Ibn Taymiyya, Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad: Naqḍ al-manṭiq, ed. by Muḥammad b.
ʿAbd al-Razzāq Ḥamza, Sulaymān b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ṣanīʿ and Muḥammad
Ḥāmid al-Fīq, Cairo 1370/1951, p. 135; Makdisi, George: Ibn ʿAqīl et la résur-
gence de l’Islam traditionaliste au XIe siècle (Ve siècle de l’Hégire), Damascus
1963, pp. 508–509; idem: Ibn ʿAqīl. Religion and Culture in Classical Islam,
Edinburgh 1997, pp. 48–49. For his abjuration see Makdisi, Ibn ʿAqīl et la résur-
gence, pp. 424–441.
33 Ibn ʿAqīl, Abū al-Wafā: al-Taʿlīqāt al-musammāt “Kitāb al-Funūn”, ed. by
George Makdisi, Beirut 1970–1971, vol. 2, p. 509 inna al-ʿaql muṭābiq lil-sharʿ,
wa-innahu lā yaridu al-sharʿ illā bi-mā yuwāfiqu al-ʿaql. This and other of Ibn
ʿAqīl’s opinions about reason were scrutinized by Makdisi, Ibn ʿAqīl, pp. 92–99
(I follow his translation, p. 97). With another Ḥanbalī, Ibn Qudāma (541/1146–
620/1223), who like Ibn Taymiyya severely condemned kalām theology, logic
met in jurisprudence a strong Ḥanbalī advocate (Hallaq, Wael B.: Logic. Formal
Arguments and Formalization of Arguments in Sunnī Jurisprudence, in: Ara-
bica 37 (1990), pp. 315–358, here 322–327; Makdisi, Ibn ʿAqīl, pp. 47–48. Hallaq
exposes the strong impact of Aristotelian and Stoic logic on several eminent
jurists as “successors” of al-Ghazālī and Ibn Qudāma, like, among others, the
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