al-Safadiyya
- Author died
- 728 AH
- Editions
- Maktabat Ibn Taymiyyah
al-Safadiyya (The Safadian Treatise) is a theological and polemical treatise by the Hanbali scholar Ibn Taymiyya (661–728 AH / 1263–1328 CE), written to refute philosophical doctrines regarding prophetic miracles and the eternity of the world.
Background and Purpose
The work originated as a response to a formal inquiry sent to Ibn Taymiyya from the city of Safad concerning a Muslim who asserted that the miracles of the prophets were merely psychic or soul-based powers (quwa nafsaniyya). As was his practice with fatwas and treatises addressed to specific locales, the author named the response after the town of the inquirer. In his opening ruling, Ibn Taymiyya declared the assertion that prophetic miracles are natural psychic powers to be false and an act of disbelief (kufr), stating that whoever insists on such a belief after the establishment of proof is to be called to repent.
Content and Arguments
In the treatise, Ibn Taymiyya expands his answer into an extensive critique of philosophical theology, focusing particularly on the Peripatetic tradition and Islamic philosophers such as Ibn Sina and al-Farabi. The primary subjects addressed include:
- Prophethood and Miracles: Refuting the philosophical claim that prophethood consists of three acquired faculties—a theoretical cognitive power (al-quwwa al-qudsiyya), an imaginative faculty that visualizes forms and hears internal voices, and an active soul-power that influences external matter—which philosophers used to reduce miracles, saintly wonders, and sorcery to psychic influences.
- Eternity of the World: Invalidating the philosophers' doctrine of the pre-eternity of the cosmos (qidam al-'alam) and demonstrating the corruption of their cosmological arguments concerning emanations and the ten separate intellects.
Reception and Editions
The treatise is recorded in classical biographical bibliographies; Ibn Taymiyya's student Ibn 'Abd al-Hadi listed it in al-'Uqud al-Durriyya as a work known as al-Safadiyya, describing it as a refutation of the philosophers regarding their claim that prophetic miracles are psychic powers and a rebuttal of their doctrine of the world's pre-eternity.
The text was edited in modern times by Muhammad Rashad Salim and published in two parts bound in a single volume by Maktabat Ibn Taymiyya in Cairo, and issued in Riyadh by Dar al-Fadila with identical pagination.
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