The Poison of Philosophy 277
(al-naql/al-sharʿ), holding that they thereby missed the right path to
truth.^102 His vigorous and eminent rebuttal of all schools and individu-
als adopting that rule was most probably written between 713/1313–
1314 and 717/1317–1318,^103 i. e., some years after Ibn Taymiyya had
started his work on al-Radd ʿalā al-manṭiqiyyīn. This work is known
under several titles. Ibn Taymiyya himself refers to it mostly as Darʾ
taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wal-naql, but other titles of this work, like Bayān
muwāfaqat al-ʿaql al-ṣarīḥ lil-naql al-ṣaḥīḥ express more precisely Ibn
Taymiyya’s intention to prove the congruity of “clear reason” with
sound religious tradition.^104 No complete copy of Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql
wal-naql has come down to us. Large or small parts of it are preserved
in less than ten manuscripts; by collating them, Muḥammad Rashād
Sālim reconstructed the work as a whole. Only four of the manuscripts
are dated; the oldest one dates from 737–738/1336–1338,^105 one either
102 Ibn Taymiyya, Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql, vol. 1, pp. 5–6; vol. 9, pp. 66–68 (among
many other instances, see vol. 11, “Fahāris al-aʿlām”). Ibn Taymiyya is well
aware of al-Ghazālī’s different stages and ways of searching for the truth, but
rejects them all (Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql, vol. 1, pp. 162–163). For Ibn Taymiyya’s
borrowing of arguments from his forerunners, see below.
103 Ibn Taymiyya, Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql, vol. 1, introduction, p. 9.
104 Ibid., introduction, p. 6. (I follow the English translation by Michot, A
Mamlūk Theologian’s Commentary, p. 156). Other titles are al-Jamʿ bay-
na al-maʿqūl wal-manqūl and further slight variations (Ibn Taymiyya, Darʾ
taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql, vol. 1, introduction, pp. 5–7). Under the heading Bayān
muwāfaqat ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl li-ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl, the first third of it had already
been published – based on one single manuscript with many amendations by
the editors – in Cairo 1321–1322/1903–1905 at the margins of Ibn Taymiyya’s
Minhāj al-sunna al-nabawiyya fī naqḍ kalām al-shīʿa wal-qadariyya (the
origin of the manuscript of Bayān is not indicated and the scarcity of cop-
ies lamented, see Ibn Taymiyya, Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql, p. 69); there exist several
reprints of this edition (for the exact correspondence of pages, see Hoover,
Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy, p. 240). In a second edition of Minhāj al-sunna in
Cairo 1370/1950–1951 (reprint: Beirut 1985), Muḥammad Muḥyī al-Dīn ʿAbd
al-Ḥamīd and Muḥammad Ḥāmid al-Fiqī edited a manuscript of Muwāfaqat
ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl li-ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl from Medina that is now lost (Ibn Taymiy-
ya, Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql, introduction, pp. 69–70). In 1987, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf ʿAbd
al-Raḥmān published Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wal-naql aw-Muwāfaqat ṣaḥīḥ
al-manqūl li-ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl in five volumes without any hint either of his
manuscript basis or to Sālim’s edition; annotations are limited to Hadith refer-
ences and names of people and there are no indices; I therefore do not refer to
it. In fact, the congruity of clear reason and sound religious tradition is a sub-
ject that Ibn Taymiyya upholds and treats in many of his writings, see Hoover,
Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy, p. 20, n. 7.
105 Ibn Taymiyya, Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql, vol. 1, pp. 48–55.
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