Seeking Forgiveness (ISTAGFAR) By Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah

Description

Some of the topics discussed in this book:

• Does one seek forgiveness for doing something wrong, or for violating a prohibition?
• Is one required to seek forgiveness for what he did while unaware?
• Is one required to seek forgiveness for what they thought about but did not act upon?
• If one repents for a sin and then commits it later, is his original repentance invalid or not?

About The Author

Shaykh al-Islam Taqiuddin Ahmad Abdul-Halim Ibn Taymiyyah was born in , 661 AH (1263 AC) in Haran, which is now in Eastern Turkey, near the border of northern Iraq.

His family had long been renowned for its learning , among his teachers, was Shams ud-Din Al-Maqdisi, first Hanbali Chief Justice of Syria following the reform of the judiciary by Baibars. The number of Ibn Taymiyyah’s teachers exceeds two hundred. Ibn Taymiyyah was barely seventeen, when Qadi Al-Maqdisi authorized him to issue Fatwa (legal verdict).

Qadi remembered with pride that it was he who had first permitted an intelligent and learned man like Ibn Taymiyyah to give Fatwa. At the same age, he started delivering lectures. When he was thirty, he was offered the office of Chief Justice, but refused, as he could not persuade himself to follow the limitations imposed by the authorities.

Imam Ibn Taymiyyah’s education was essentially that of a Hanbali theologian and jurisconsult. But to his knowledge of early and classical Hanbalism, he added not only that of the other schools of jurisprudence but also that of other  literature.

He had an extensive knowledge of Qur’an, Sunnah, Greek philosophy, Islamic history, and religious books of others, as is evident from the variety of the books he wrote.