his life and works.pdf

B IRGIT K RAWIETZ U NIVERSIT?T T üBINGEN Ibn Qayyim al-Jawz|yah: His Life and Works * There is hardly another Muslim Mamluk polymath of such standing who at the same time is best known as the student of someone else. Despite his own extraordinary scientific output, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawz|yah (1292–1350) was Taq| al-D|n Ah ?mad Ibn Taym|yah's (1263–1328) most famous and important student. Even centuries later, he is still primarily known and defined by his relation and service to his master, whose works piled and whose legal doctrines and hermeneutical and theological convictions he defended. While Ibn Taym|yah led a life characterized by conflict on several fronts, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawz|yah—with the exception of a few incidents—was a rather bookish man who preferred pious scientific endeavors to confrontations of any kind. B IOGRAPHICAL S KETCH The full name of this scholar in the shadow is Abu ≠ ‘Abd Alla ≠h Shams al-D|n Muh ?ammad ibn Ab| Bakr ibn Ayyu ≠b ibn Sa‘d ibn H ?ar|z ibn Makk| Zayn al-D|n al-Zur‘| al-Dimashq| al-H ?anbal|, known as Shams al-D|n Ibn Qayyim al-Jawz|yah, or simply Ibn al-Qayyim. It is, however, wrong to say Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawz|yah, since the element "Qayyim" is the first part of a genitive clause. Being in the status constructus, "Qayyim" takes no article. 1 Nevertheless, this is a frequent mistake. The article, however, returns when one uses the short version Ibn al- Qayyim. Ibn al-Qayyim's father, Abu ≠ Bakr, took care of the Damascene Jawz|yah madrasah, so that the term means nothing more than "son of the superintendent (qayyim) of the Jawz|yah." 2 There is no need to dwell in this article on the ?Middle East Documentation Center. The University of Chicago. *This article is a by-product of my splendid isolation in the stacks of Harvard's marvelous Widener Library. My research there in 2000–3 was made possible by the German munity, the "Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft" or DFG. I am inde