Law and Order According to Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya 403
this could seem paradoxical, since Ibn Taymiyya was a fierce opponent
of Ibn ʿArabī’s legacy. Still, let us not forget that, in his formative years,
Ibn Taymiyya was a great admirer of Ibn ʿArabī. That being the case,
he might have read al-Futūḥāt al-makkiyya, Ibn ʿArabī’s masterpiece.^8
In the 66th chapter of his book, the great mystic discusses prophecy as
being justified by the legal management and the divine laws, al-siyāsa
al-sharʿiyya wal-nawāmīs al-ilāhiyya.^9 Here, Ibn ʿArabī used siyāsa
sharʿiyya in a double sense: on the one hand, in a practical/political sense
referring to the way the Prophet rules over his community; on the other
hand, he also intended a metaphysical sense in which God manages his
universe, choosing a messenger by way of emanation (fayḍ ilāhī). In
addition, Ibn ʿArabī distinguished between prophetic policies (siyāsāt
nabawiyya, revealed by God) and wisdom policies (siyāsāt ḥikmiyya),
inspired by reason. Compared to the latter, the main characteristic of
the former is that it encompasses both worldly human affairs and those
of the hereafter.^10 As such, it is the expression of the divine management
of the world.^11 In a similar fashion, Ibn Taymiyya describes his book as
being a short treatise containing epitomes of divine management and
prophetic rule (risāla mukhtaṣara fīhā jawāmiʿ min al-siyāsa al-ilāhiyya
wal-ināba al-nabawiyya).^12 Conversely, Ibn Taymiyya followed a dif-
ferent line of reasoning. As I will show later, Ibn Taymiyya focused main-
ly on the conduct of human affairs as essential for the divine order. As
a result, his work has much in common with juridical works concerned
with administrative, financial and criminal laws. In particular, siyāsa
sharʿiyya draws on the political literature of al-Aḥkām al-sulṭāniyya by
such jurists as ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Māwardī (d. 450/1058) and al-Qāḍī
Abū Yaʿlā b. al-Farrāʾ (d. 458/ 1066).^13
Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim. In the absence of the original source, we cannot
be sure whether Ibn ʿAqīl was the first to use the term. See Ibn Qayyim al-
Jawziyya, Shams al-Dīn: al-Ṭuruq al-ḥukmiyya fī al-siyāsa al-sharʿiyya, ed. by
Nāyif b. Aḥmad al-Ḥamad, Mecca 1428/2008, p. 29.
8 On the place of Sufism in the life and ideas of Ibn Taymiyya, see Makdisi,
George: Ibn Taymīya. A Ṣūfi of the Qādiriya Order, in: American Journal of
Arabic Studies 1 (1973), pp. 118–129.
9 Ibn ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn: al-Futūḥāt al-makkiyya, Cairo 1405/1985, vol. 1,
p. 100.
10 Ibid., pp. 102–103.
11 Ibid., pp. 100–101.
12 Ibn Taymiyya, al-Siyāsa al-sharʿiyya, p. 4.
13 Nimrod Hurvitz recently wrote a comparative study of these two works (the
content of al-Māwardī’s book being the most original); see Hurvitz, Nimrod:
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