© 2003 by Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies
A Maml
k Theologian’s Commentary on Avicenna’s Ris
la A
awiyya
Being a Translation of a Part of the Dar
al-ta
ru
of Ibn Taymiyya, with Introduction, Annotation, and Appendices Part I
Faculty of Theology, Oxford University
One would not expect a 
anbal
doctor to use philosophy against other theologians, yet this is just what Ibn Taymiyya (d. Damascus, 728/1328) does in his Averting the Conflict between Reason and [religious] Tradition (ed. M. R. S
lim, v. 10–87). In order to refute the Mutazil negation of the divine attributes, he quotes the hermeneutical pages of Avicenna’s Epistle for the Feast of the Sacrifice and comments on them at length. Though he finally refuses Avicenna’s philosophy of the prophetic predication, he praises some of his attacks on negationist Kalm and makes them his own—against e.g. Ab
l-usayn al-Ba
r, whose Sources of the Proofs he also quotes and discusses.
This translation of Ibn Taymiyya’s commentary on the A
awiyya is the first into a European language; it is accompanied by notes including original English versions of various other Taymiyyan texts. The introduction examines the fate of Avicenna’s epistle in Islamic thought and underlines the importance of Ibn Taymiyya’s commentary as, first, a milestone on the road that led to its transmission to Europe by Andrea Alpago’s Latin translation (1546); second, a testimony on the destiny of falsafa under the Mamlks; and, third, a work illuminating the evolution of hermeneutics and philosophy of prophethood from Avicenna to Averroes.
Appendices explore (i) the scientific personality of Alpago’s mentor in Damascus, the ‘shaykh of the physicians’ Ibn al-Makk (d. 938/1532); (ii) Ibn Taymiyya’s knowledge of Ab Yaqb al-Sijistn’s thought; and (iii) his typology of absolute existence.