Appropriation of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya 19
atic, inasmuch as it relieves readers of the burden of pondering the
question wes Geistes Kind der Autor ist and trying to make sense of his
writings. That is to say, this label may restrict, from the start, a perspec-
tive on a writer’s consistence, inner convictions, developing agendas,
decisive turns and so forth in favour of a tempting logic of sheer num-
bers. This is dangerous and misleading, all the more so since in 1979
Bell already identified certain phases of and the influences dominating
Ibn al-Qayyim’s works, signalling that “the various shifts in stress or
disciplinary framework discernible in the writings of Ibn al-Qayyim
correspond to fairly distinct periods in his career.”^77 Therefore, turn-
ing him into a copy of Ibn Taymiyya and perceiving him mainly as his
master’s voice – an allegation already lodged by his contemporaries –
blocks important avenues of research. Though even from the start this
allegation of imitation and slavish adherence loomed large on the part
of the enemies, Abū Zayd still feels the need to dedicate a section of 17
pages to maintain that “Ibn al-Qayyim is no copy of his master (laysa
nuskha min shaykhihi) Ibn Taymiyya.”^78
From the beginning and to this day, however, the allegation of mere
replication could not be strictly upheld, given Ibn al-Qayyim’s schol-
arly stature and output. As such, we find the similarly widespread and,
in fact, complementary narrative of a sort of against-all-odds-creativ-
ity. It is pointed out that, at the most, he managed to find a niche for
himself while still generally following the path of Ibn Taymiyya: “Ibn
Qayyim absorbed all the ideas of his master and took extraordinary
pains to revive the popularity of his works but at the same time he
carved out a separate identity for himself.”^79 In that sense, the “separate
identity” conceded to or defended for Ibn al-Qayyim seems to consist
primarily of the empty spots that Ibn Taymiyya’s sweeping brush left
untouched or that the latter took no interest in covering. This iden-
tity henceforth appears as scattered individual topics associated with
the name of Ibn al-Qayyim and resurfacing in 20th-century Western
scholarship on a piecemeal basis, as has been demonstrated, such as
the issue of children or prophetic medicine. Despite the importance
granted to those works, their status is still minimized by the impres-
sion of a second-class originality, in the sense that Ibn al-Qayyim
managed to use the energy that was left to him – i. e., not already
77 Bell, Love Theory, p. 101.
78 For historical details, see Abū Zayd, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, pp. 139–156.
79 Ahsan, Sayyid: Life and Thoughts of Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, Aligarh
1988, p. 33.
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