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The Removal of Blame from the Great Imams: Raf al- Malām ‘an al-A’immat al-A’lām By Ahmad Ibn ‘Abd Al-Halim Ibn Taymiyyah

رفع الملام عن الائمة الاعلام

Translation and Annotation by Abdul Hakim Al-Matroudi

THE REMOVAL OF BLAME FROM THE GREAT IMAMS

Book introduction

Aḥmad b. ‘Abd al-Halim b. ‘Abd al-Salām b. ‘Abd Allāh b. Abi ‘l-Qāsim al- Khidr b. Muhammad b. Taymiyyah (661-728/1263–1328) is arguably the most distinguished and influential medieval Hanbalī jurist and perhaps one of the most prolific among them.

He was born in Harrān (present-day Turkey) and lived during the era of the first Mamlūks (648–784/1250–1382).

However, he was forced to move from his native region and take up residence in Damascus due to the Mongol onslaught from the East.” He lived in turbulent times when Muslim political fragmentation was clearly visible.

Moreover, legal fanaticism and doctrinal laxity prevailed in Muslim lands and he is historically portrayed as someone who sought to rectify both religious and political disparities and deviancies which led to open encounters with his contemporaries as well as to long spells in prison.

Ibn Taymiyyah is often seen through a simplistic anti-rationalist prism, that is, as someone with strict and literal inclinations towards Hadith which he over emphasised and preferred to acceptance of broader legal theories and principles.

The present text would suffice to undermine that view. Raf al- Malam ‘an al-A’immat al-A’lam is a short text in which the reader observes Ibn Taymiyyah as a jurist par excellence.

In this treatise, which has a balanced tone and is couched in erudite language, he proceeds to argue as to why a mujtahid might depart from directly acting upon a ḥadīth text and follow instead his methodological principles (uşūl).

This forms the basis of his delineating the reasons underlying the disagreements found among Muslim jurists in general and their holding differing legal opinions and proffering divergent arguments in support of those opinions.

It is interesting that Ibn Taymiyyah turned down the request of some of his students to compose a treatise in the Science of Jurisprudence (uşūl al-fiqh) which would contain all of his jurisprudential opinions and preferences in order to be used as a basis for issuing legal verdicts (fatāwā).

He justified his refusal by pointing out that rulings on jurisprudential issues are based upon independent reasoning (ijtihād) and there is no harm for the subject of the law (mukallaf) to imitate a mujtahid for that purpose.

Thus, Ibn Taymiyyah did not see the existence of various jurisprudential approaches to be problematic; rather, he believed that the real problem lay in intolerance and fanaticism.

In Raf al-Malām, Ibn Taymiyyah pleads for tolerance by identifying the different possible causes for jurisprudential disagreements (ikhtilaf, and seeks to absolve the mujtahid of any blame in committing an error and/or in departing from a hadīth in his judgment.

No doubt, Ibn Taymiyyah’s espousal of this position was an outcome of various contributory factors.

In what follows, I hope to give to the reader a glimpse of Ibn Taymiyyah’s life and thought which would hopefully provide some insight into the reasons underpinning this sensitivity.

The first section of this Introduction will focus on some of the statements of his contemporaries as mentioned in the biographical sources, which reflect their opinions regarding Ibn Taymiyyah’s “natural and acquired attributes.” The next section will present some of the unique features of Ibn Taymiyyah’s scholarship, such 6