The death of Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyya

Ahmad ibn ʿAbd al-Halim ibn Taymiyya died a prisoner in the citadel of Damascus after paper and pen had been withheld from him. All of Damascus came out at his funeral, until it was said none stayed behind but one excused — sealing a life that filled the world with knowledge and jihad.

Ibn Taymiyya was born in Harran in 661 AH, and his family migrated with him to Damascus before the Mongol advance. He excelled in the sciences until he gave fatwas and taught before the age of twenty, and gathered of the branches of knowledge what astonished his contemporaries. His student al-Dhahabi said of him: it was as though the Sunnah were before his eyes.

He stood against the Mongols on the day many fled, addressed Ghazan to his face, steadied the people on the day of Shaqhab and gave them the ruling to break their fast, and struggled with his tongue and pen against innovations, writing "Minhaj al-Sunna," "Darʾ al-Taʿarud" and the "Fatawa," gathered into scores of volumes.

He was tested repeatedly and imprisoned in Egypt and Syria, and would say: What can my enemies do to me? My Paradise and garden are in my breast. He was held at the end of his life in the citadel of Damascus over a fatwa; when he was barred from writing he read and worshipped until he died on the night of 20 Dhu'l-Qaʿda 728 AH, and a countless multitude accompanied his funeral.