Ibn Taymiyya and his Times

Edited by Yossef Rapoport and Shahab Ahmed

Taq? al-D?n Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328) is one of the most controversial thinkers in Islamic history. Today he is revered by what is called the Wahhabi movement and championed by Salafi groups who demand a return to the pristine golden age of the Prophet. His writings have been a source of inspiration for radical groups to justify acts of violence and armed struggle.
In order to explain the widespread present-day influence and prominence of a rather obscure medieval figure, this volume offers a fresh perspective on his life, thought and legacy. The articles contained herein, written by some leading authorities in the field, study Ibn Taymiyyas highly original contributions to Islamic theology, law, Quranic exegesis and political thought. Contrary to his current image as an anti-rationalist puritan, this collection shows Ibn Taymiyya to be one of the most intellectually rigorous, complex, and interesting personages in Islamic history.
This is the first comprehensive academic treatment of Ibn Taymiyya to appear in a Western language in over half a century. It should be of major importance to scholars of Islamic intellectual history, as well as to students of modern Islamic movements and ideologies.
 

Author Description
Yossef Rapoport (PhD, Princeton) has been a Fellow in Arabic at the Oriental Institute, Oxford, and is currently a Lecturer in the Department of History at Queen Mary University of London. He has published on Islamic law, gender, cartography and the economic history of medieval Islam. He is the author of Marriage, Money and Divorce in Medieval Islamic Society (Cambridge University Press, 2005), and co-editor of The Book of Curiosities: A Critical Edition (Internet publication, 2007).
 
Shahab Ahmed (PhD, Princeton) is Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies at Harvard University. He has also been Assistant Professor of Classical Arabic Literature at the American University in Cairo, Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows, Visiting Scholar in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, and Higher Education Commission of Pakistan Visiting Scholar in the Islamic Research Institute, Islamabad.

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