perhaps this too is attributable to what I have already noted in the preceding paragraph.

– The book’s importance and its influence on later generations –

It has already been stated that this work is the most significant biography of Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah. Its importance is evident from the following points:

– Its author was one of the Shaykh’s own pupils, directly receiving from him, witnessing many of the events first-hand, and learning from others who had done the same.

– It is the most extensive biography of the Shaykh, whether compared to those written by contemporaries or by later scholars.

– The author is scrupulous in reporting and sourcing: he either attributes a report to a well-known book, naming it explicitly; cites a chain of transmission from which he heard it; copies from the autographs of earlier authors; quotes from Ibn Taymiyyah’s own hand; or reproduces the handwriting of some of the Shaykh’s companions. At other times he relies on his own auditions from transmitters or on what he personally witnessed.

– The book has preserved for us precious passages and rare works that are known only through this compilation: the complete preface of Tanbīh al-rajul al-ʿāqil (Alerting the Discerning Man); the Shaykh’s debates with Ibn al-Wakīl; his treatise on the Mongol invasion and its comparison with what the Quran relates about the Day of the Trench; ʿImād al-Dīn al-Wāsiṭī’s work al-Tadhkira wa-l-iʿtibār wa-l-intiṣār li-l-abrār (Remembrance, Reflection, and the Triumph of the Righteous); the Shaykh’s letters to his relatives and companions; his letters from prison; and many of the poems composed in his praise.

These qualities have made the book the primary reference for all subsequent writers of his biography,