—rare and rigorously scrutinised, marked by meticulous verification and genuine originality. Everyone who has studied them—provided he was not blinded by tribal bigotry or by unthinking imitation—has borne witness to this.
The scholars’ commendations of him:
Al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Kathīr said in al-Bidāyah wa-l-Nihāyah (14/118–119): “Hardly did he hear anything without committing it to memory. He then devoted himself to the sciences; he was intelligent and possessed a prodigious store of memorised material. He became an imam in Qur’anic exegesis and its related disciplines, fully versed in fiqh, so much so that people said he knew the jurisprudence of the legal schools better than their own adherents, whether of his time or later. He was thoroughly acquainted with the points of difference among the jurists, with the principles and the subsidiary rulings, with grammar and language, and with the various transmitted and rational sciences. No gathering was convened, and no specialist spoke with him in any discipline, without thinking that discipline was Ibn Taymiyyah’s own field, for he appeared perfectly versed and fully proficient in it. As for hadith, he carried its banner: he was a ḥāfiẓ, able to distinguish its sound reports from its weak ones, intimately familiar with its narrators, and deeply grounded in the subject. He authored many works and produced valuable notes on both principles and subsidiary issues …” End quote.
Al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Mizzī, praising him, said1: “I have never seen his like, nor has he seen anyone the like of himself. I have not seen anyone more knowledgeable of the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of His Messenger, or more devoted to following the two, than he.”
Al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Daqīq al-ʿĪd said: “When I met Ibn Taymiyyah I saw a man with every science arrayed before his eyes; he would take from them whatever he wished and leave whatever he wished.”
Shaykh Ibrāhīm al-Raqī said: “Knowledge is to be taken from Ibn Taymiyyah and he is to be followed in the sciences. If he lives long, he will fill the earth with knowledge, and he is upon the truth; yet the people are bound to oppose him, for he is an heir to prophetic knowledge.”
The Chief Judge Ibn al-Ḥarīrī said: “If Ibn Taymiyyah is not Shaykh al-Islām, then who is?”