The Image of Sheikh Ibn-Taimiyyah in the Writings of Shihab al-Din al-Marjani

According to the Tatar Muslim scholar Rizaeddin Fakhreddin (1858–1936), the first of the Muslims of Russia who studied the heritage of the medieval scholar Ibn-Taimiyyah (1263–1328), was famous Tatar historian and theologian Shihab al-Din al-Marjani (1818–1889). In his treatise “Ibn-Taimiyyah”, Fakhreddin cited a brief note by Marjani about this Sheikh, where he was characterized as a Muslim “heretic” in terms of Sunni dogma. Since Muslim Tatar reformers (Jadids) mostly spoke positively about the Sheikh, Fakhreddin wondered what Marjani relied on when referring  to the “heresy” of Ibn-Taimiyyah. He could not answer this question in his time. Therefore,  the purpose  of this study is to find out how Marjani in his writings assessed Sheikh Ibn Taimiyyah in general.  In order  to do this, we present  the identified  fragments  of Arabic texts about  this famous theologian  from two works of Marjani,  with Russian translation and commentary, and analyse the briefly presented material.

The  main  sources  for  our  study  were  the  third  volume  of “Wafiyyat al-aslaf”,  the biographical  work of Sh. Marjani,  and his theological  work “al-‘Azb al-furat”.  Both works are written in Arabic. The first is available only as a manuscript, and the second one as a manuscript, and as a printed version. In our study, we found fragments about Ibn-Taimiyyah in these sources, provided  them  with  a Russian  translation, gave short  comments,  analysed  these  fragments and compared  them with the texts of the original  sources,  from which Marjani  borrowed  the information about the Sheikh.

Marjani clarified his attitude  towards  the Sheikh in two fragments  from his footnotes to the commentary  of Jalal al-Dawwani,  and in the third fragment  from the work “Wafiyyat al-aslaf”. In the last work, the Tatar author relied on sources such as “Mir’at al-jinan” of al-Yafi‘i, who was a contemporary of the Sheikh, and “Sharh al-‘aqaid al-‘adhudiyyah”  of al-Dawwani, who read some works of the Sheikh. Marjani himself was not familiar with the specific works of Ibn-Taimiyyah. He recognized  the high status  of Ibn Taimiyyah.  as one of the important scholars of the Hanbali Madhhab and as an expert of Hadiths, but also emphasized that from the point of view of traditional Sunnis, the Sheikh professed some “heresies” (bid‘ah) in the field of dogma and issued rare fatwas that contradict to four Sunni Madhhabs.

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