All the foregoing words of commendation for Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah from those leading scholars were cited by Shaykh Marʿī b. Yūsuf al-Ḥanbalī in his book al-Kawākib al-Durriyyah.
Refuting the objections raised against the Shaykh
His opponents, ancient and modern alike, have found him intolerable and have hurled various accusations at him. One such allegation is the fabrication of the traveller Ibn Baṭūṭah, who wrote in his Riḥlah regarding Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah:
“I was then in Damascus and I attended him on a Friday while he was admonishing the people from the mosque pulpit. Among his words he said, ‘Allah descends to the heaven of this world just as my descent here,’ whereupon he stepped down one rung of the pulpit.”
This slander was refuted by the eminent scholar Shaykh Muḥammad Bahjat al-Bayṭār¹ as follows:
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Ibn Baṭūṭah neither heard from nor met Ibn Taymiyyah. He reached Damascus on Thursday, 19 Ramaḍān 726 AH, whereas Shaykh al-Islām had been imprisoned in the Citadel of Damascus at the beginning of Shaʿbān that same year and remained there until Allah took him on the night of Monday, 20 Dhū al-Qaʿdah 728 AH. How, then, could Ibn Baṭūṭah have seen him preaching from the mosque pulpit when, at that very time, he was in prison?
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Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah did not preach from the mosque pulpit; rather, he would sit on a chair. Al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Dhahabī said of him, “His fame spread widely …”