al-Ikhtiyarat al-Fiqhiyya li Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyya lada Talamidhihi
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al-Ikhtiyarat al-Fiqhiyya li Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyya lada Talamidhihi (The Jurisprudential Choices of Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyya According to His Students) is a specialized compilation of Islamic jurisprudence compiled and arranged by Sami bin Muhammad bin Jad Allah . Conceived and supervised by the Saudi scholar Bakr Abu Zayd, the work extracts and categorizes the legal preferences (ikhtiyarat) and juristic rulings of Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728 AH / 1328 CE) transmitted throughout the writings of his disciples .
Background and Purpose
The compiler explains that Ibn Taymiyya's jurisprudential heritage is preserved through two primary channels: direct writings, treaties, and fatwas, and secondary transmissions preserved by subsequent scholars . Chief among these secondary sources are the books composed by Ibn Taymiyya's direct students, which contain extensive quotes and legal determinations . Because these transmissions were scattered across numerous extensive treatises and remained difficult for researchers to access comprehensively, the project was established to assemble every available legal ruling and benefit transmitted from him in his students' published works into a single ordered reference .
Sources and Methodology
The compiler surveyed the printed works of Ibn Taymiyya's students—including Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Ibn Muflih, Ibn Abd al-Hadi, and al-Tufi—extracting their direct citations of Ibn Taymiyya's views . In addition to definitive legal choices (ikhtiyarat), the work incorporates supplementary juristic benefits, such as Ibn Taymiyya's explanations of authoritative texts, statements regarding consensus (ijma'), affirmations or negations of scholarly disagreement, and juristic derivations (takhrij) .
The methodology applied in organizing the collection includes:
- Arrangement: Structuring the legal issues according to standard fiqh chapters, using the organizational outline of Ibn Muflih's legal compendium al-Furu' as the primary template .
- Classification: Assigning a thematic title and a sequential reference number to each issue .
- Chronological ordering of narrators: Placing multiple transmissions on the same topic under a single heading, ordered according to the death dates of the transmitting students, with concise reports presented before detailed ones .
- Variant positions: Documenting issues where Ibn Taymiyya held more than one opinion, instances where he explicitly retracted an earlier view, and questions on which he withheld judgment (tawaqqaf) .
- Textual cross-referencing: Quoting the exact passages from the source works, documenting page and volume numbers across different printed editions, and collating differences where applicable .
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