He outstripped (1) all the early front-runners; his worship was long and unbroken—boredom and weariness never reached him.

None after the Companions matched him in prodigious knowledge (2) and in an asceticism beyond all reckoning.

⦗165⦘ The road he trod had already been walked—before his own footsteps—by Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq or ʿUmar.

He was a school unto himself: while the four schools voiced their opinions, they merely followed in the wake of the first champions, racing after them.

When, before his time, they had raised the lofty structures of their legal traditions, he too built and restored all that they had built and restored.

Like the great Imams, he revived their age, as though he had lived among them—an awaited figure.

If they are all exalted together as the grammatical subject, his right is exaltation too, for he is indeed their predicate.

Shall a man of his stature be cast aside among you, left neglected until, by deliberate design, his innocent blood is spilt?

He is a treasure of hopes for others, yet from you he receives only calamities and changing fortunes.

By Allah, had he been in a land other than yours (3), companies from among you would have been crowding at his doors.

Is someone like Ibn Taymiyyah to be forgotten in his prison cell until he dies, no eye ever consoled by gazing upon him?

Are Ibn Taymiyyah’s enviers to rejoice in his confinement, while you yourselves supply the very first excuses for keeping him there?

Ibn Taymiyyah sits captive in prison; the prison is but a scabbard, while he is the keen, well-forged sword.

A man like Ibn Taymiyyah is pelted with every harm, yet no speck is brushed away from him, no glance of concern bestowed.

A man like Ibn Taymiyyah—his luxuriant branches are left to wither (4), and no one gathers the blossoms from his boughs.