In Defense of the Four Imams

Ibn Taymiyah was born in Harran in the year 661 AH, and his
father and family relocated to Damascus in his youth. In Damascus
he embarked upon his formal studies with a number of the major
scholars of the city and excelled in hadith, fiqh, tafsir, and other
sciences. He was known to be a major depository of knowledge until
it was said of him that he had greater mastery of the various legal
schools than even their exponents among his contemporaries. He
was reverentially referred to as “Shaykh al-Islam” by those who
respected him. And, the great Shafi’i contemporary Ibn al-
Zamlakani reportedly said of him, “e conditions of juristic
independence (ijtihad) were brought together in their appropriate
fashion with respect to him.” But, like so many others before him,
Ibn Taymiyah was tested by both the limitations of his knowledge
and the jealousy of some of his peers. Consequently, much of his life
was spent imprisoned in the Damascus citadel due to being
perceived as a threat to Islamic orthodoxy and public order