It has also been said that he was from the Banu Sulaym ibn Mansur, a branch of Qays ʿAylan ibn Mudar.

Al-Tajibi states in his Barnamaj (reading register): “A small, carefully selected section from the hadith of Ayyub … I recited it in its entirety at the Qassāʿīn school in Damascus to the erudite imam, the memorizer, the wonder of the age for his preservation of texts, chains of transmission, the statements of the scholars, and the jurisprudence of the early predecessors—Taqi al-Din Abu al-ʿAbbas Ahmad ibn ʿAbd al-Halim ibn ʿAbd al-Salam al-Sulami al-Harrani, known as Ibn Taymiyyah—may Allah cause benefit through him.” (8)

His birth, upbringing, and family:

Shaykh al-Islam was born on Monday, the tenth—some say the twelfth—of Rabiʿ al-Awwal in the year 661 AH, in Harran (9), a town in the Jazirah region between Iraq and Greater Syria (10), now located in south-eastern Turkey.

He remained in his birthplace until the age of seven (11). In 667 AH he moved with his family to Damascus because of the oppression of the Tatars. They travelled by night, carrying their books on a cart (12) for want of riding animals, for the enemy had left no livestock in the town save the plough oxen. The oxen, exhausted by the cart’s weight, stopped, and the enemy nearly caught up with them. They implored Allah and sought His aid; the oxen then moved on with the cart, and they escaped safely. (13)

His grandfather, Abu al-Barakat Majd al-Din ʿAbd al-Salam, was a jurist, hadith expert, scholar of uṣūl, and grammarian—one of the eminent scholars of his time. (14)

His father, Shihab al-Din ʿAbd al-Halim ibn ʿAbd al-Salam, was also a distinguished scholar. He served as a mufti, held a teaching chair in the Great Mosque of Damascus, and was appointed head of the Sukariyya Dar al-Hadith. (15)