And look: the name of Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah al-Numayri now fills the earth—so where is the memory of the man who denounced him to the ruler, or of the one who threw him into jail? One of the very issues for which he was imprisoned was his view that a triple pronouncement of divorce counts as only one divorce, a view that is the official legal opinion in our time.

Likewise, the material written on the life of Imām Aḥmad—may Allah have mercy on him—far exceeds, many times over, all that has been written on the caliphs who jailed him, together with their ministers and executioners combined. “So take heed, O people of insight.” (2) [al-Hashr].

I return to my point: whenever the Shaykh writes on any subject, he identifies and refutes whatever innovations may be attached to it; he never ignores them. Among his books that fall into this category are:
(a) Rules Concerning Funerals and Their Innovations;
(b) The Prophet’s Prayer Described from the Opening Takbīr to the Taslīm as Though You See It;
(c) The Rites of Ḥajj and ʿUmrah in the Book and the Sunnah and the Reports of the Predecessors, together with a Survey of the Innovations People Have Added.

(3) His—may Allah have mercy on him—adherence to the methodology of the hadith scholars.
Most of the Shaykh’s works are hadith-based: they deal with hadith issues or discuss questions from a hadith perspective. Anyone with the slightest familiarity with his writings knows this, so there is no need to elaborate.

(4) His—may Allah have mercy on him—concern for the jurisprudence of hadith.
It has become common in shallow academic circles to claim that the Shaykh is “only” a hadith scholar and not a jurist, yet anyone who reads his works will find the very opposite. Books that attest to his mastery of the jurisprudence of hadith include:
(a) Rules Concerning Funerals and Their Innovations;
(b) Perfect Counsel on the Rulings of Wiping;
(c) The Prophet’s Prayer Described from the Opening Takbīr to the Taslīm as Though You See It;
(d) The Rites of Ḥajj and ʿUmrah in the Book and the Sunnah and the Reports of the Predecessors, together with a Survey of the Innovations People Have Added.

Because the Shaykh grounded the rulings in these works squarely on hadith, following the approach of the “jurist-hadith scholars,” people have made the claims they have. Yet he also paid close attention to the classical manuals of fiqh, reading and studying them; among them is:
(a) Zād al-Maʿād, upon which he wrote The Excellent Notes on Zād al-Maʿād.