It was on the suggestion of this Sheikh that ibn Taimiyyah...

It was on the suggestion of this Sheikh that ibn Taimiyyah was ordered to be imprisoned in the dungeon of the mountain citadel with his two brothers for a year and a half.[^4] He also suffered imprisonment at different places for his fatwas (legal decisions) and rasa’il (treatises) against certain social and religious practices; these excited the indignation of the scholars of his time, until at last he was interned in the citadel of Damascus on Sha‘ban 726/July 1326.

Here his brother Zain al-Din was permitted to stay with him, while ibn Taimiyyah’s student ibn Qayyim al-Jauziyyah was retained in the same prison for his support. In this prison, ibn Taimiyyah wrote books and pamphlets defending his own view, and it is said that here he prepared a commentary on the Holy Qur’an in 40 volumes called al-Bahr al-Muhit .

Some of these books fell into the hands of his enemies and he was most ruthlessly deprived of his books, and pen and ink, after which he wrote with charcoal. Having been left alone in prison, he passed his time in devotion to God until his death on Monday, the 20th of Dhu'l Qa‘dah 728/ 27 September 1328.[^5] Ibn Taimiyyah was a prolific writer.

Nobody could give a definite number of his works though al-Kutubi tried to enumerate them under different heads.[^6] He left innumerable books, religious decisions, letters, and notes, most of which he composed while he was in prison. Al-Dhahabi gives the number to be approximately 500.

In his Rihlah , ibn Battutah says that he himself happened to be in Damascus at the time of the last imprisonment of ibn Taimiyyah, and that the Sultan al-Malik al-Nasir released ibn Taimiyyah after the completion of al-Bahr al-Muhit , but on a Friday, while he was delivering the Jum‘ah sermon on the pulpit of the city mosque, he uttered the following words, “Verily, Allah comes down to the sky over our heads in the same fashion as I make this descent,” and he stepped down one step of the pulpit.

This was vehemently opposed by a faqih (jurist), but ibn Taimiyyah had his supporters who attacked the fiqih and beat him severely with fists and shoes, causing his turban to fall down to the ground and making his silken shashia (cap) visible on his head. People objected to his wearing the silken cap and brought him to the house of the Hanbalite Qadi ‘Izz al-Din ibn Muslim, who ordered him to be imprisoned and put to torture.