Ibn Taymiyyah's Letters from Prison - Paperback

by Muhammad Abdullah (Contribution by), Ibn Taymiyyah (Author)

We listened to the reviews! Sept 2026 FULLY REVISED & IMPROVED EDITION
Now professionally typeset with corrected formatting, improved readability, cleaner page layout, and carefully reviewed text presentation throughout.

Discover a more personal and reflective side of Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah (Ibn Taymeeyah) through this remarkable collection of letters. Best known for his uncompromising defense of Islamic belief, powerful theological writings, and forthright religious arguments, Ibn Taymiyyah was also a devoted son, compassionate teacher, spiritual adviser, and deeply committed servant of Islam.

Ibn Taymiyyah's Letters from Prison brings together correspondence that reveals the scholar beyond the debates. Written with sincerity, faith, patience, and concern for those around him, these letters offer readers valuable insight into Islamic spirituality, faith during hardship, patience in Islam, Islamic theology, Muslim scholarship, Da'wah, and the life and thought of Ibn Taymiyyah.

The letters were selected and introduced by Shaykh Muhammad Sulaiman al-Abdah, an Islamic scholar and teacher who studied and taught within religious institutions and devoted his later work to Islamic Da'wah.

Readers interested in classical Islamic literature, Sunni Islam, Islamic history, Islamic philosophy and theology, Muslim scholars, spiritual resilience, and the writings of Ibn Taymiyyah will find this collection particularly valuable.

This revised edition has been prepared with readability in mind, giving Ibn Taymiyyah's words the clean and accessible presentation they deserve.

Explore the letters and discover the scholar, teacher, son, believer, and defender of faith behind one of the most influential names in Islamic intellectual history.

Author Biography

Taqi ad-Din Ahmad ibn Taymiyyah, known as Ibn Taymiyyah for short, was a controversial medieval Sunni Muslim theologian, jurisconsult, logician, and reformer. A member of the Hanbali school of jurisprudence founded by Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Ibn Taymiyyah was also a member of the Qadiriyya Sufi order founded by the twelfth-century mystic and saint Abdul-Qadir Gilani. A polarizing figure in his own lifetime, Ibn Taymiyyah's contentious and iconoclastic views on such widely accepted Sunni doctrines of the medieval period such as the intercession of saints and the veneration of saint's tombs made him very unpopular with the vast majority of the orthodox religious scholars of the time, under whose orders he was imprisoned several times during his life. Often viewed as a minority 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 by some scholars to have had considerable influence on contemporary Wahhabism, Salafism, and Jihadism. Indeed, 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 known as Wahhabism, and on other later Wahabi scholars. Moreover, Ibn Taymiyyah's controversial fatwa allowing jihad against other Muslims, is referenced to by Al-Qaeda and other jihadi groups. Ibn Taymiyyah did not marry. Living during the troubled times of the Mongol invasions, Ibn Taymiyyah was forced to leave his native Harran at the age of six, in order to seek refuge with his father and three brothers in Damascus.