Just a few decades after his death, Syrian Hanbali scholar Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) was criticized by detractors for affirming an eternal universe in agreement with Aristotelian philosopher Avicenna. This publication makes available a previously unpublished response on this topic by Ibn Qadi al-Jabal (d. 1370), Ibn Taymiyya's last theological disciple in medieval Damascus, referred to here as "The Last Taymiyyan".
Necessary for a complete picture of Ibn Taymiyya's historical reception in 14th century Damascus, as well as broader social and intellectual history of the Middle Ages, this text should be of interest to intellectual historians who work on the intersection between speculative theology and cosmology in the late Middle Ages, as the translation provides a useful point of entry into the conceptual vocabulary of the subject matter in the Arabic philosophical tradition - and to what extent premodern religious thinkers were able to contemplate a universe beyond finite "creation ex nihilo".
Modern scholarship of medieval Islam, particularly by Jon Hoover, has separated between Ibn Taymiyya's medieval political career colored by terrible sectarian strife, and his activity as an intellectual in a period of emergent Muslim scholasticism. While commonly restricted in popular associations with purist Salafist fideism, and used since his 19th-20th century reception to legitimize an intolerant attitude towards diverse Muslim intellectualisms, this document by one of Ibn Taymiyya's earliest interpreters is a vivid example of a more salutary form of participation in philosophical discourse characteristic of broader post-classical Muslim thought.
