who lit the candles and dazzled minds, playing a major role in the scholarly revival of that era and the ages that followed—among them Ibn Taymiyyah, may Allah have mercy on him. Whoever reads his works and all that he contributed to the Arabic and Islamic library will perceive intellectual maturity and the weighing of opinions against the standard of the Quran and Sunnah, far removed from the blind imitation and partisanship that afflicted the scholars of his day. This inevitably led to controversy between him and them, for the Shaykh—may Allah have mercy on him—followed the evidence and cared little for the identity of the speaker, whoever he might be. If a statement agreed with his method of reasoning, he would adopt it, accept it, and commend it; otherwise he would reject it and warn against it.

I shall conclude this discussion of the scholarly aspect by citing some of what the Shaykh’s contemporaries said about him—testimonies that bear witness to the breadth of his knowledge in every discipline, the depth of his thought, his independence, and the vastness of his reading:

Al-Dhahabī, as transmitted by Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, said:
“...He authored numerous works and became one of the great scholars during the lifetime of his teachers. His major writings were carried far and wide, and by this time his compositions may number four thousand folios or more. He delivered a tafsir of the Book of Allah for years, reciting it from memory on Fridays. His intelligence was incandescent. He had heard a vast amount of hadith, and his teachers numbered more than two hundred (1). His knowledge of tafsir reached its pinnacle, and his mastery of hadith—its transmitters and its sound and weak reports (2) …”