the view that the Fire will one day cease to exist; accordingly, he must accept the testimony of the eminent pupil, Ibn al-Qayyim, in what he transmitted from him (1). This, I shall show, is the position most consistent with affirming the attribution of the treatise to the Shaykh and with clearing Ibn al-Qayyim and others of any misunderstanding.

In another passage he says:

“As for Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah, even though his closest disciple attested that he authored his famous work on this momentous question—a work in which Ibn al-Qayyim neither affirmed nor denied the point—none of Ibn Taymiyyah’s writings on this grave and critical subject have reached us (2). The same is true of what Ibn al-Wazīr (3) and al-Ṣanʿānī (4) mentioned. He maintained that the manuscript kept at Maktab al-Islāmī, which al-Albānī cited in the introduction to ‘Rafʿ al-Astār’ (Lifting the Veils), cannot be validly ascribed to Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah” (5).

A reply to this has already been provided when discussing the attribution of the book to its author (6).

Section Three
A number of scholars have held that Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah leaned toward the view that the Fire will come to an end. Among them are al-Saffārīnī in Lawāmiʿ al-Anwār (Flashes of Lights) (7); Shaykh Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān in his book Yaqẓat Uli al-Iʿtibār mimma Warrada fī Dhikr al-Nār wa-Aṣḥāb al-Nār (The Awakening of the People of Reflection to the Reports on the Fire and Its Inhabitants) (8); and Shaykh al-Ālūsī in Jalāʾ al-ʿAynayn fī Muḥākamat al-Aḥmadayn (Clearing the Eyes in the Adjudication between the Two Aḥmads) (9).