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

Abstract

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.