Ibn Taymiyyah

Born in Harran in 1263 and displaced by the Mongol invasion, Ibn Taymiyyah learned Islamic jurisprudence in Damascus and quickly became the most combative scholar of his age. He fought personally in campaigns against the Shias of Kisrawan, whom he accused of aiding Crusaders and Mongols, and issued rulings condemning tomb visitation and practices he saw as corrupting Sunni orthodoxy. His insistence that reason and revelation aligned, and his rejection of dominant theological schools, earned him repeated imprisonment and the censoring of his works. He died in a Damascus prison in 1328, dismissed by many contemporaries as an extremist. Centuries later, his treatises resurfaced as the intellectual backbone of Wahhabism, Salafi jihadism, and movements from the Muslim Brotherhood to al-Qaeda - all seizing on his doctrine that faith without righteous rule is no shield from rebellion.