One or two versions of al-Siyāsa al-shari'iyya of Ibn Taymiyya? And what do they tell us?

Ibn Taymiyya’s al-Siyāsa al-sharʿiyya fī iṣlāḥ al-raʿī wa-l-raʿiyya is a very famous book. Al- Siyāsa al-sharʿiyya is also a complex work that displays a variety of meanings cohabiting rather harmoniously. The generic and synthetic nature of this treatise, together with Ibn Taymiyya’s controversial legacy, has opened the way to many different claims of what the treatise is about. To some extent, the purpose of the present paper is simple. I intend to present and discuss the contents of Ibn Taymiyya’s al-Siyāsa al-sharʿiyya through a close reading of the text that will take into account two different editions of it so far unnoticed by Western scholars. By so doing, I hope that some of the prevailing ideas about what al-Siyāsa al-sharʿiyya fī iṣlāḥ al-raʿī wa-l-raʿiyya is can be complemented by new perspectives. In particular, I shall argue that the common view that the book is about the coercive power of the state as in punishment, jihad and public order is to be partially revisited and that pursuing a study of the text’s manuscript tradition is an urgent scholarly task. By focusing on the existence of different versions of Ibn Taymiyya’s treatise on siyāsa, the present paper also raises questions about their possible meanings.