Ḥadīth Culture and Ibn Taymiyya’s Controversial Legacy in Early Fifteenth Century Damascus. Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Dimashqī and His al-Radd Al-Wāfir (d. 842/1438)

Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn (d. 842/1438) was a respected and rather mainstream voice of the post-canonical ḥadīth culture of the time. His ability to eschew polarities and embrace a strategy of accommodation is an interesting episode in the history of Ibn Taymiyya’s legacy. Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn's standing by his vociferous Ḥanbalī colleague, as well as the texture of his work as a whole, cannot be understood without taking his scholarly and devotional commitment to the Prophets’ legacy into account. Despite Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn's al-Dimashqī's divergence with Ibn Taymiyya on some of the latter’s most typical battlefields, mawlid and ziyāra in particular, Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn rescued from charges of unbelief all those who acknowledged that Ibn Taymiyya deserved the honorific of shaykh al-islām. Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn did this both by avoiding delving into any controversial Taymiyyan issues and by reporting materials that shed light on Ibn Taymiyya’s commitment and participation in the local culture of ḥadīth transmission.