Muslim saints contested: Ibn Taymiyya’s critique of al-Qushayrī’s Risāla

Abstract

Abstract This article analyses Ibn Taymiyya’s neglected commentary on ʿAbū al-Qāsim al-Qushayrī ’s Epistle on Sufism (al-Risāla al-Qushayriyya fī ʿilm al-taṣawwuf), in which he wages several intellectual battles simultaneously: with Ashʿarī theologians of earlier centuries, such as al-Qushayrī himself; with his Ashʿarī contemporaries like Ibn Jahbal al-Kilābī; and with advocates in Damascus and Cairo of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s monistic teachings. Ibn Taymiyya deploys a set of historical and discursive arguments rooted in the early Sufi historiography to argue that both Ashaʿrīs and monistic-minded Sufis do not have a rightful claim to the heritage of the early Sufi authorities. In the struggle to define ‘Islamic orthodoxy’, Ashaʿrīs and Ḥanbalīs evince two radically different approaches to Sufi sayings. Al-Qushayrī and Ibn Jahbal affirm the harmony between Sufi utterances and the rational proofs of speculative theology (kalām), while, in stark contrast, Ibn Taymiyya accentuates their ascetic-mystical connotations. This Ḥanbalī–Ashʿarī debate comprised two conflicting attitudes to the notion of ‘Muslim sainthood’ (wilāya): the Ashʿarīs insisted that early Sufi saintly figures (awliyāʾ) mastered the principles of kalām in order to explain the nature of God to different classes of the Muslim community, while Ibn Taymiyya believed that this type of theological reasoning undermined the very foundations of the spiritual teachings of the early Sufis and retarded the spiritual growth of those who undertook the Sufi path. These polemical exchanges demonstrate that Sufi figures, concepts, images, and texts became central to the articulation of theological arguments during the early Mamluk sultanate.