Ibn Taymiyyah, Syirian scholar and theologian (d. 1328)
Taqī ad-Dīn ʾAḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm ibn ʿAbd al-Salām al-Numayrī al-Ḥarrānī (Arabic: تقي الدين أحمد بن عبد الحليم بن عبد السلام النميري الحراني, January 22, 1263 – September 26, 1328), known simply Ibn al-Taymiyyah (ابن تيمية), was a Sunni Islamic scholar, muhaddith, polymath, theologian, judge, philosopher, and sometimes controversial thinker and political figure. He is known for his diplomatic involvement with the Ilkhanid ruler Ghazan Khan and for his involvement at the Battle of Marj al-Saffar which ended the Mongol invasions of the Levant. A member of the Hanbali school, Ibn Taymiyyah's iconoclastic views on widely accepted doctrines of his time such as the veneration of saints and the visitation to their tomb-shrines made him unpopular with many scholars and rulers of the time, under whose orders he was imprisoned several times.A polarising figure in his own times and in the centuries that followed, Ibn Taymiyyah has become one of the most influential medieval writers in contemporary Islam, where his particular interpretations of the Qur'an and the Sunnah and his rejection of some aspects of classical Islamic tradition are believed to have had considerable influence on contemporary ultra-conservative movements such as Salafi-Jihadism. Particular aspects of his teachings had a profound influence on Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the founder of the Hanbali reform movement practiced in Saudi Arabia, and on other later Wahabi scholars. Rashid Rida considered him as the renewer of the Islamic 7th century of Hijri year. Moreover, Ibn Taymiyyah's controversial fatwa allowing jihad against other Muslims is referenced by al-Qaeda and other jihadi groups. Their reading of Ibn Taymiyyah's thought has been challenged by recent scholarship.