Ibn Taymiyya in the context of "Aniconism in Islam"

Wahhabism is a Salafi revivalist movement within Sunni Islam named after the 18th-century Hanbali scholar Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. It was initially established in the central Arabian region of Najd and later spread to other parts of the Arabian Peninsula, and was the official policy of Saudi Arabia until 2022. Despite being founded on the principles of Sunni Islam, the Hanbalite scholars Ibn Taimiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim in particular, Wahhabism may also refer to doctrinal differences distinct from other forms of Sunni Islam. Non-Wahhabi Sunnis also have compared Wahhabism to the belief of the Kharijites and loyalist monarchism despite the two belief systems being contradictory to each other.

The Wahhabi movement staunchly denounced rituals related to the veneration of Muslim saints and pilgrimages to their tombs and shrines, which were widespread amongst the people of Najd. Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab and his followers were highly inspired by the Hanbali scholar Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328 CE/AH 661–728) who advocated a return to the purity of the first three generations (salaf) to rid Muslims of bid'a (innovation) and regarded his works as core scholarly references in theology. While being influenced by Hanbali school, the movement repudiated taqlid to legal authorities, including oft-cited scholars such as Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim (d. 1350 CE/AH 751).

Mahmud Ghazan (also Ghazan Khan, sometimes westernized as Casanus; 5 November 1271 – 11 May 1304) was the seventh ruler of the Mongol Empire's Ilkhanate division in modern-day Iran from 1295 to 1304. He was the son of Arghun, grandson of Abaqa Khan and great-grandson of Hulegu Khan, continuing a long line of rulers who were direct descendants of Genghis Khan. Considered the most prominent of the Ilkhans, he is perhaps best known for converting to Islam and meeting Imam Ibn Taymiyya in 1295 when he took the throne, marking a turning point for the dominant religion of the Mongols in West Asia.

One of his many principal wives was Kököchin, a Mongol princess (originally betrothed to Ghazan's father Arghun before his death) sent by his great-uncle Kublai Khan.

Sayyid Muhammad Rashīd Rida Al-Hussaini (Arabic: سيد محمد رشيد رضا الحسيني, romanized: Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā; 1865 – 22 August 1935) was an Islamic scholar, reformer, theologian and revivalist. An early Salafist, Rida called for the revival of hadith studies and, as a theoretician of an Islamic state, condemned the rising currents of secularism and nationalism across the Islamic world following the abolition of the Ottoman sultanate. He championed a global pan-Islamist program aimed at re-establishing a Caliphate to unite diverse peoples under a single global Islamic authority.

As a young hadith student who studied al-Ghazali and Ibn Taymiyya, Rida believed reform was necessary to save the Muslim communities, eliminate Sufist practices he considered heretical, and initiate an Islamic renewal. He left Syria to work with Abduh in Cairo, where he was influenced by Abduh's Islamic Modernist movement and began publishing al-Manar in 1898. Through al-Manar's popularity across the Islamic world, Rida became one of the most influential Sunni jurists of his generation, leading the Arab Salafi movement and championing its cause.

Abu al-Fida Isma'il ibn Umar ibn Kathir al-Dimashqi (Arabic: أبو الفداء إسماعيل بن عمر بن كثير الدمشقي, romanized: Abū al-Fidā' Ismā'īl ibn 'Umar ibn Kathīr al-Dimashqī; c. 1300–1373), known simply as Ibn Kathir, was an Arab Islamic exegete, historian and scholar. An expert on tafsir (Quranic exegesis), tarikh (history) and fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), he is considered a leading authority on Sunni Islam.

Born in Bostra, Mamluk Sultanate, Ibn Kathir's teachers include al-Dhahabi and Ibn Taymiyya. He wrote several books, including a fourteen-volume universal history titled al-Bidaya wa'l-Nihaya (Arabic: البداية والنهاية).

Wahdat al-wujūd (Arabic: وحدة الوجود "unity of existence, oneness of being") is a doctrine in the field of Islamic philosophy and mysticism, according to which the monotheistic God is identical with existence (wujūd) and this one existence is that through which all existing things (mawjūdāt) exist. This doctrine, which in recent research is characterized as ontological monism, is attributed to the Andalusian Sufi Ibn Arabi (d. 1240) but was essentially developed by the philosophically oriented interpreters of his works. In the Early Modern Period, it gained great popularity among Sufis. Some Muslim scholars such as Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1329), ʿAbd al-Qādir Badā'ūnī (d. 1597/98) and Ahmad Sirhindi (d. 1624), however, regarded wahdat al-wujūd as a pantheistic heresy in contradiction to Islam and criticized it for leading its followers to antinomianist views. In reality, however, many advocates of wahdat al-wujūd emphasized that this teaching did not provide any justification for transgressing Sharia. The Egyptian scholar Murtada al-Zabidi (d. 1790) described wahdat al-wujūd as a "famous problem" (masʾala mashhūra) that arose between the "people of mystical truth" (ahl al-ḥaqīqa) and the "scholars of the literal sense" (ʿulamāʾ aẓ-ẓāhir). The Ni'matullahi master Javad Nurbakhsh (d. 2008) was of the opinion that Sufism as a whole was essentially a school of the "unity of being".

Another name for this doctrine is Tawhid wujūdī ("existential monism, doctrine of existential unity"). The adherents of Wahdat al-Wujūd were also known as Wujūdis (Wujūdīya) or "people of unity" (ahl al-waḥda).

Shaykh al-Islam (Arabic: شيخ الإسلام, romanized: Shaykh al-ʾIslām, lit. 'Elder (sheikh) of Islam') was used in the classical era as an honorific title for outstanding scholars of the Islamic sciences. It first emerged in Khurasan towards the end of the 4th Islamic century. In the central and western lands of Islam, it was an informal title given to jurists whose fatwas were particularly influential, while in the east it came to be conferred by rulers to ulama who played various official roles but were not generally muftis. Sometimes, as in the case of Ibn Taymiyyah, the use of the title was subject to controversy. In the Ottoman Empire, starting from the early modern era, the title came to designate the chief mufti, who oversaw a hierarchy of state-appointed ulama. The Ottoman Sheikh al-Islam performed a number of functions, including advising the sultan on religious matters, legitimizing government policies, and appointing judges.

With the abolition of the Caliphate in 1924, the official Ottoman office of Shaykh al-Islām, already in decline, was eliminated. Modern times have seen the role of chief mufti carried out by grand muftis appointed or elected in a variety of ways.

Shams ad-Dīn ʾabū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn ʾAbī Bakr ibn ʾAyyūb az-Zurʿī ad-Dimashqī al-Ḥanbalī (29 Jan. 1292–15 Sep. 1350 CE / 691–751 AH), commonly known as Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah ("The son of the principal of [the school of] Jawziyyah") or Ibn al-Qayyim ("Son of the principal"; ابن القيّم) for short, or reverentially as al-Imam Ibn al-Qayyim in Sunni tradition, was an important medieval Islamic jurisconsult, theologian, and spiritual writer. Belonging to the Hanbali school of Fiqh (Islamic Jurisprudence), of which he is regarded as "one of the most important thinkers," Ibn al-Qayyim was also the foremost disciple and student of Ibn Taymiyyah, with whom he was imprisoned in 1326 for dissenting against established tradition during Ibn Taymiyyah's famous incarceration in the Citadel of Damascus.

Of humble origin, Ibn al-Qayyim's father was the principal (qayyim) of the School of Jawziyyah, which also served as a court of law for the Hanbali judge of Damascus during the period. Ibn al-Qayyim went on to become a prolific scholar, producing a rich corpus of "doctrinal and literary" works. As a result, numerous important Muslim scholars of the Mamluk period were among Ibn al-Qayyim's students or, at least, greatly influenced by him, including, amongst others, the Shafi historian Ibn Kathir (d. 774/1373), the Hanbali hadith scholar Ibn Rajab (d. 795/1397) and Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani (d. 852/1449). In the present day, Ibn al-Qayyim's name has become a controversial one in certain quarters of the Islamic world due to his popularity amongst many adherents of Salafism, who see in his criticisms of such widespread Sufi practices of the medieval period associated with veneration of saints and the veneration of their graves and relics a classical precursor to their own perspective.