My sorrow has only deepened, my distress grown more acute, and I am now certain that death is hastening the end of my days.
Alas for the hearts that have been shattered by grief: a grave, unprecedented calamity has overtaken them.
They are pained by the loss of the one who kept them company; with his passing their hopes and aspirations have been dashed.
O you who weep through [this] (1) long night, sobbing without cease and never tiring of your tears,
redouble your weeping—let the torrents fall; perhaps your flowing tears will wash the burning from your face.
Know that heaven and earth are mourning Ibn Taymiyyah, as are the plains and the mountains.
This pious imam, the brilliant (2) and noble master—outstanding, quick-witted, encyclopedic, ever-reverent—
a savant, an imam, God-fearing, ascetic, scrupulous; a lion, a man of resolve, chaste, peerless, heroic.
Knowledge, forbearance, and refined manners were his very nature; gentleness, generosity, and beneficence were perfectly joined in him.
What can an eloquent tongue possibly say of his merits, when renunciation was his path and knowledge wedded to practice his way?
God graced the days of this world with his presence; his learning was an ocean from which people drank their fill.
He was to the world like the sun at its rising—today there is for him neither substitute nor equal.
He was granted right guidance at the very dawn of his life, and at its close he embodied guidance in its fullest form.
Always he held fast to Allah and was given victory, trusting, relying, and finding sufficiency in Him alone.
By Allah, what a man Abū al-‘Abbās was! Among all created beings scarcely can his like be found.
By God, no reproacher with his rebuke will ever turn me away from him (3); far be it from me that censure should distract me from his memory.