Section Three:
This section comprises the following:

1. The scholars who tackled the issue of the extinction of Hellfire other than Ibn Taymiyyah.
2. Shaykh al-Islam’s position on that question, together with the scholars’ views on it and a discussion of those views.

Here are the details:

First: Scholars who addressed the extinction of Hellfire apart from Ibn Taymiyyah.

Before we set out to determine Shaykh al-Islam’s stance on the matter, it is important to note who else has spoken about it. Whoever surveys the subject in its appropriate sources will find that scholars—both before and after Ibn Taymiyyah—have treated it: sometimes by citing the reports transmitted from the early generations, and at other times by merely referencing the opinion and mentioning the divergence surrounding it.

A number of scholars have pointed this out, among them:

• ʿAbd ibn Ḥumayd, who quoted the narrations in his Tafsir (1);
• ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq ibn ʿAṭiyyah al-Andalusi in his Tafsir (2);
• Fakhr al-Razi in his Tafsir (3);
• al-Qurtubi in al-Tadhkirah (4);
• Ibn Abī al-ʿIzz al-Ḥanafī in Sharḥ al-Taḥāwiyyah (5);
• Ibn al-Qayyim in Hādī al-Arwāḥ (6), whose treatment is the most extensive; and
• Muhammad al-Amin al-Shinqiti in his book Dafʿ Ihām al-Idtirāb