on the basis of his opponents’ claims. The enemies of the religion are ever at odds with the callers to truth: they plot against them, while the latter repel their schemes, expose their falsehoods, and reveal their true nature to the people.

Shaykh al-Islam emerged in an age when Islam was a stranger and Muslim unity had splintered. Sects that opposed the way of the pious predecessors, in creed and in practice alike, had multiplied, and intellectual stagnation and blind imitation weighed heavily on the scholarly climate. Deviant Shiʿi groups, heterodox Sufi orders, grave-worshippers, the deniers of Allah’s attributes, and the Qadariyyah all surfaced, while scholastic theology and philosophy rose to such dominance that, for most educated people, they displaced the Qur’an and Sunnah as sources of argument. All this unfolded within the Muslim community itself. From without, the enemies of Islam converged, invading Muslim lands; the Mongol armies swept through, ravaging territories and massacring their inhabitants.

Amid this gloom, Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah shone as a radiant light, endowed with authentic, abundant knowledge. He taught students, authored books and epistles, issued fatwas on contemporary issues, debated the deviants, refuted the charlatans, and confronted the various sects and factions. He answered the Shiʿites and the Qadariyyah; he countered the scholastic theologians and the philosophers; he refuted the negators and the allegorists with regard to the divine attributes—among them the Jahmiyyah, Muʿtazilah, and Ashʿaris—and he dealt with heterodox Sufis, grave-worshippers, and other innovators. He roused those sunk in juristic rigidity and intellectual lethargy, restoring fiqh to its sound foundations and pure sources, authenticating what is valid and discrediting what is spurious, until he returned to the Shariʿah its pristine purity and to the religious sciences their original clarity.

His books bear witness to this, forming an immense scholarly treasure. Alongside his towering intellectual effort, he also took part in jihad for the sake of Allah: he bore arms and fought the Mongols on several occasions, greatly boosting the morale of the combatants until they were victorious.