About The Book

"This is a commentary by the famous Imam on the Futuh al-Ghaib, a collection of 78 discourses by Shaikh 'Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani. In it is to be found the clear approval that the Imam had for the Sufi path, provided that the commandments of the Sacred Law (Shari'a) are faithfully observed. In it Ibn Taimiyya extols several of the great Sufi saints (awliya'), and elucidates many of the discourses of Shaikh 'Abd al-Qadir.

This may surprise those who have been informed that Imam ibn Taimiyya was opposed to Sufism and was hostile to it. It is a fact that the Imam himself was a sufi, having taken the cloak (khirqa) of the Qadiris from Abi ibn Qudama who received it from Imam Muwaffaq ibn Qudama. As he said himself, 'There are but two between me and Shaikh 'Abd al-Qadir,' "

About The Author

Shaykh al-Islam Taqi ud-Din Abu'l-Abbas Ahmad Ibn al-Halim ibn Abd al-Salam Ibn Taymiyyah al-Hanbali was born in, 661 AH (1263 AC) in Haran, which is now in Eastern Turkey, near the border of northern Iraq.. His family had long been renowned for its learning , among his teachers, was Shams ud-Din Al-Maqdisi, first Hanbali Chief Justice of Syria following the reform of the judiciary by Baibars. The number of Ibn Taymiyyah's teachers exceeds two hundred. Ibn Taymiyyah was barely seventeen, when Qadi Al-Maqdisi authorized him to issue Fatwa (legal verdict). Qadi remembered with pride that it was he who had first permitted an intelligent and learned man like Ibn Taymiyyah to give Fatwa.

At the same age, he started delivering lectures. When he was thirty, he was offered the office of Chief Justice, but refused, as he could not persuade himself to follow the limitations imposed by the authorities. Imam Ibn Taymiyyah's education was essentially that of a Hanbali theologian and jurisconsult. But to his knowledge of early and classical Hanbalism, he added not only that of the other schools of jurisprudence but also that of other literature. He had an extensive knowledge of Quran, Sunnah, Greek philosophy, Islamic history, and religious books of others, as is evident from the variety of the books he wrote.