Date of Its Composition

In the first edition, I had concluded that identifying the emir for whom this treatise was written and determining when he assumed the governorship of Damascus would enable us to date its composition. I concluded that it was composed in 709 AH, the year in which Emir Āqush became governor of Damascus and Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyya was released from imprisonment in Egypt. That was my position until I recently came across a new manuscript of the book—the oldest surviving copy—which was transcribed in Cairo in 705 AH by one of Ibn Taymiyya’s students—namely, [name omitted in the source]. This demonstrated that the work had been composed earlier, before 709 AH.

This manuscript is dated to the first ten days of Muharram 705 AH. The Shaykh must therefore have written the work sufficiently earlier for it to have been copied in Egypt by that early date. It may thus have been composed in 704 AH or even earlier.

Dr. Isām Yahyā, a professor of history, had written to me from France concerning the date when Governance According to the Sacred Law was composed. From the historical information mentioned by Ibn Taymiyya, he had concluded that it was written before 709 AH, and he published a study on the subject in French. I agreed with his conclusion and sent him a copy of the newly discovered Princeton manuscript, which confirms it.