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His life in prison

Ibn Taymiyya referred to his imprisonment as "a divine blessing". During his incarceration, he wrote that, "when a scholar forsakes what he knows of the Book of God and of the sunnah of His messenger and follows the ruling of a ruler which contravenes a ruling of God and his messenger, he is a renegade, an unbeliever who deserves to be punished in this world and in the hereafter."

During his imprisonment, he encountered opposition from the Maliki and Shafi'i Chief Justices of Damascus, Taḳī al-Dīn al-Ikhnāʾī. He remained in prison for over two years and ignored the sultan's prohibition, by continuing to deliver fatwas. During his incarceration Ibn Taymiyya wrote three works which are extant; Kitāb Maʿārif al-wuṣūl, Rafʿ al-malām, and Kitāb al-Radd ʿala 'l-Ikhnāʾī (The response to al-Ikhnāʾī). The last book was an attack on Taḳī al-Dīn al-Ikhnāʾī and explained his views on saints (wali).

When the Mongols invaded Syria in 1300, he was among those who called for a Jihad against them and he ruled that even though they had recently converted to Islam, they should be considered unbelievers. He went to Egypt in order to acquire support for his cause and while he was there, he got embroiled in religious-political disputes. Ibn Taymiyya's enemies accused him of advocating anthropomorphism, a view that was objectionable to the teachings of the Ash'ari school of Islamic theology, and in 1306, he was imprisoned for more than a year. Upon his release, he condemned popular Sufi practices and he also condemned the influence of Ibn Arabi (d. 1240), causing him to earn the enmity of leading Sufi shaykhs in Egypt and causing him to serve another prison sentence. In 1310, he was released by the Egyptian Sultan.

In 1313, the Sultan allowed Ibn Taymiyya to return to Damascus, where he worked as a teacher and a jurist. He had supporters among the powerful, but his outspokenness and his nonconformity to traditional Sunni doctrines and his denunciation of Sufi ideals and practices continued to draw the wrath of the religious and political authorities in Syria and Egypt. He was arrested and released several more times, but while he was in prison, he was allowed to write Fatwas (advisory opinions on matters of law) in defense of his beliefs. Despite the controversy that surrounded him, Ibn Taymiyya's influence grew and it spread from Hanbali circles to members of other Sunni legal schools and Sufi groups. Among his foremost students were Ibn Kathir (d. 1373), a leading medieval historian and a Quran commentator, and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziya (d. 1350), a prominent Hanbali jurist and a theologian who helped spread his teacher's influence after his teacher's death in 1328. Ibn Taymiyya died while he was a prisoner in the citadel of Damascus and he was buried in the city's Sufi cemetery.