Law and Order According to Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya 419
it is necessary to consider the difference between the motivations of
the two authors in taking up the task of writing on the subject. Ibn
Taymiyya seems to have composed his treatise as advice (nuṣḥ) to the
Mamluk prince Jamāl al-Dīn Āqqush al-Manṣūrī (d. 720/1320–21), the
governor of Damascus, who requested the author to write a treatise on
siyāsa.^84 As such, it can be considered a piece of juristic political advice.
For his part, Ibn al-Qayyim was also asked by an anonymous person
from Tripoli about the validity of a judgment by a judge or a gover-
nor who judges according to the physiognomy (firāsa) and contextual
evidence (qarāʾin) and who might use violence to investigate the case.^85
The difference between these purposes probably explains the differ-
ence in the structure of the books: Ibn Taymiyya touches upon several
points such as rulership, criminal punishments, jihad, whereas Ibn al-
Qayyim focuses mainly on the judicial methods that enable an effective
legal investigation. In this sense, Ibn Taymiyya tackled the theoretical
background of the discussion of socio-political questions, remaining
careful because his primary audience was the political authority. In
contrast, Ibn al-Qayyim had to explicate a rather limited and technical
question that could be useful only if applied in a judicial system.
Accordingly, when Ibn al-Qayyim, on the margin of his main pur-
pose, discusses general questions of siyāsa, he quotes or paraphrases
the style of his teacher.^86 Conversely, when he remains focused on judi-
cial questions, he reveals much broader knowledge of fiqh and hadith
than his master. With this in mind, Ibn al-Qayyim did not challenge
the methodology of Ibn Taymiyya. For the most part, it is a scriptural
reasoning methodology that relies mostly on the Koran, the traditions
and the Companions’ judicial and political practices. The two authors
intervene rarely to only “glorify” or to draw conclusions from these
precedents. Besides, they emphasize the qualities of legal knowledge
and moral authority of the salaf, early pious Muslims, as models of just
rulers and judges. If we assume with Wael Hallaq that, in early Islam,
legal authority was “personal and private and that it was in the persons
of the individual jurists (be they laymen or on occasion caliphs)”,^87
then we can note at this level that the contribution of Ibn Taymiyya
and Ibn al-Qayyim is to have shifted the embodiment of the authority
84 Ibn Taymiyya, al-Siyāsa al-sharʿiyya, p. 4.
85 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, al-Ṭuruq al-ḥukmiyya, pp. 3–4.
86 Ibid., p. 245.
87 Hallaq, Wael: An Introduction to Islamic Law, Cambridge and New York 2009,
p. 35.
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