- Lived:
- 1263–1328 · born in Ḥarrān (in today's southeastern Turkey), lived and died in Damascus, with prison stays in Cairo and Alexandria
- Tradition:
- Islamic; Ḥanbalī law and theology — the scripture-first school — turned into a one-man demolition campaign against Greek logic, speculative theology, and mystical metaphysics
- The Big Idea:
- Scripture and the sound human heart know God better than any syllogism ever will — so the grand rational systems built on top of revelation aren't just unnecessary, they're the disease pretending to be the cure.
- In their words:
- "What can my enemies do to me? My paradise is in my breast; wherever I go, it goes with me. My imprisonment is retreat, my execution is martyrdom, my exile is travel." (as reported by his student Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya)
- If you remember one thing:
- The man caricatured as the godfather of modern fundamentalism was also one of the most original philosophical critics of the Middle Ages — and you can't understand his afterlife, from jihadi pamphlets to university seminars, without holding both facts at once.