Tomb of Ibn Taymiyyah

7/27/2019 Tomb of Ibn Taymiyyah

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The Tomb of Hafidh Ibn Taymiyyah in Damascus

Source: http://www.wilayat.net (A Shia website)



Jean Michot (also known as Yahya Michot), is a Belgian Muslim, widely

acknowledged as an expert on, and an admirer of, Ibn Taymiyyah, who gained some notoriety in

he late 1990s for publishing Le Statut des Moines in Lebanon in 1997. This pamphlet included a

ranslation of a short work by the famed 13th-14th century Muslim scholar Ibn Taymiyya, called

On the Statute o of Monks', which has been read as a call for the killing of Christian monks if

hey are found outside their monasteries in a Muslim country.

Following is an excerpt from an article of his which was published online by

http://www.interfacepublications.com . [Unfortunately, the article has been taken off the web (bywhom?) despite its gaining wide readership in a short time!]

n this handsomely illustrated article Yahya Michot compares the condition of the tombs in

Damascus of the Sufi theosophist, Muˆy‚ l-D‚n ibn Àrab‚ and that of the scholar-activist and

heologian Ibn Taymiyya. The article includes translation of parts of a contemporary record of the

funeral of Ibn Taymiyya, following his death as a prisoner in the citadel of Damascus. The

funeral was attended by almost the entire population of the city, not least its womenfolk: the great

haykh himself never married. He was, notwithstanding his undeserved reputation as the scourge

of the mystics, buried next to his brother in the so-called Cemetery of the Sufis.

During the French Mandate in the inter-war years of the last century, the colonial power razed the

Cemetery and replaced it with a modern hospital: only one grave was spared -- that of Ibn

Taymiyya. Now, that solitary grave, virtually inaccessible in a back courtyard of the hospital's

maternity ward and surrounded by heavy metal bars, lies ruined and cluttered with litter, even its

very modest headstone broken.

The contrast with the burial-place of Ibn Àrab‚ could not be greater: his remains are housed (in a

manner reminiscent of Catholic saintly relics) in a glass enclosure within a sumptuously ornate

mausoleum, continually attended by the saint's devout followers, as also by tourists. Whereasaround the tomb of Ibn Àrabi one hears the soothing hum of pious invocations; around that of

bn Taymiyya, it is the cries of women in labour. Again, whereas at the mausoleum of the saint

one can buy any number of editions of his works (authentic or apocryphal), in even the best

bookshops of Damascus one can scarcely find a single work of the scholar-activist, Ibn

Taymiyya, albeit he was and remains one of the most influential thinkers of the Mamluk period.

The article tries to understand this neglect of the memory of Ibn Taymiyya in the very city in

which he studied and taught, in which he became famous, and for whose defence he inspired his

fellow-Muslims to resist invading Tatars/Mongols so that Damascus was spared the fate that had

befallen Baghdad. Finally, Yahya Michot appeals, in this penultimate year before the 700th

anniversary of Ibn Taymiyya's death, for some minimum of repairs and cleaning up of the site.

You can read a PDF of the article (10 pp.) by following this link .

Following is an excerpt from: http://kgn786.com

Allama Ahmad bin Ali Basri states in the book ‘Faslul Khitaab fi Rad’di Dalaalati Ibn Abdil

Wahab’ as follows :



From amongst the things he (Ibn Abdul Wahab Najdi) said is, ‘if I attain the opportunity to do

o, then I will break down the Rauda of Holy Prophet ( ى ا ع ي و وس م) .’

A pamphlet published in 2007 by the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,

endorsed by Abdulaziz Al Sheikh, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, and distributed at the

Prophet's ( ى ا ع ي و وس م) Masjid, reads as follows:

The green dome shall be demolished and the three graves flattened in the Prophet's ( ى ا

ي و وس م) Masjid; according to Alawi, Executive Director of the London based Islamic

Heritage Research Foundation. This shocking sentiment was echoed in several speeches by

Ibn al-Uthaymeen, one of Saudi Arabia's most prominent Wahhabi clerics, who delivered

ermons in Makkah's Grand Masjid for over 35 years: 'We hope one day we will be able to

destroy the green dome of the Prophet Muhammed ( ى ا ع ي و وس م) he said, in a

recording provided by Al Alawi. The other sects, like Ahle Hadith, Deobandis, Jama'at-e-

Islami, Tabhlighee Jama'at, etc., also say that green dome of Prophet Mohammad ( ى ا

ي و وس م) should be destroyed.

The same Wahhabis acted differently when the Sufi cemetery was razed by Syrian Wahhabis to

make way for the University of Damascus and its campus in that city - King Abd al-Aziz Ibn

Saùd of Saudi Arabia intervened personally to preserve intact the graves and tombs of Ibn

Taymiyya and his student Ibn Kathir.

From http://www.seekingilm.com :

Shaykh ‘l-Islam al-Hafiz Taqiyyu ‘d-Din ‘Ali Ibn Àbdi ‘l-Kafi as-Subki writes in the Preface of

his book ad-Durratu ‘l-Mudiyyah :

“By his claims Ibn Taymiyyah innovated foul things in the usul of belief, and infringed the

foundations of Islam, and in the same time covered himself under the pretext of following the

Book and Sunnah, outwardly showing that he was a caller to Truth and a guide to heaven, while

on the contrary he deviated from following the Book and Sunnah to innovation, and deviated

from the consensus of the Muslims by infringing the ijma`. He said what leads to the attribution

of a body and of composition to the Divine Essence, and that it is not impossible that Allah iscomposed by parts. He said that the Essence of Allah Taàla contains contingent elements

hawadith) that the Qur’an is also contingent, and that Allah spoke it after it was not, that He

peaks and keeps silent, and that phenomena take place in Him in the same way they take place in

created beings. He crossed the limit to the point of claiming that the world is eternal, and was

coherent with this assumption to the point of claiming that there is no beginning for the

contingencies, Hence, he confirmed that – according to his opinion – the eternal attributes [of

Allah ] are contingent and the contingent created entities are eternal. None has ever joined those

wo opinions together in any religion. He was not among the seventy-three groups into which the



Ummah is divided [i.e. he is neither a Sunni, nor a member of one of the seventy two heretic

ects, but rather the founder of a new sect of his own]. In spite of all of this being horrible kufr, it

s little compared to what he innovated in the furu’.”

Generally the scholars maintained that he “repented” from heresy before his death.

Both Hafith Ibn Hajr and ا قا ض ش ي اب ا دين ا نوير ي affirmed its authenticity, as well as others.

Suffice to say that these two men are not liars, nor deemed untrustworthy in narration, unlike theexample of Hamdhani and Imam Juwayni. The quote of Ibn Hajr quoting Barzaali reads:

An enquiry [of his position] was conducted with several scholars [in Cairo] and a written

tatement was written against him, in which he said: “I am Ashàri,” and his handwriting is found

with what he wrote verbatim, namely: “I believe that the Qur’an is a meaning which exists in

Allah ’s Essence (mi`na qaa’imun bi dhaat Allaah), and it is an Attribute from the pre-eternal

Attributes of His Essence (wa huwa Sifatun min Sifaati dhaatihi al-qadeema), and that it is

uncreated (wa huwa ghayru makhlooq), and that it does not consist in the letter nor the voice (waaysa bi Harfin wa la Sawt), and that His saying: “The Merciful established Himself over the

Throne” is not taken according to its external meaning (laysa àla zaahirihi), and I don’t know in

what consists its meaning, nay only Allah knows it, and one speaks of His “descent” in the

ame way as one speaks of His “establishement” (wa al-qawlu fi al-nuzooli kal-qawli fi al-

stiwaa’).”

t was written by Ahmad ibn Taymiyya and they witnessed over him that he had repented of his

own free will from all that contravened the above. This took place on the 25th of Rabee` al-

awwal of the year 707 and it was witnessed by a huge array of scholars and others.

Documents

Tomb of Ibn Taymiyyah