Written by Ash-Shaykhul Islaam Ibn Taymiyyah and Abridged By Shaykh ‘Abdullah al-Ghunayman is One of Shaykh al-Islaam's classical works and considered a thorn in the side of the Shi’a Ar-Rafidah and the Qadariyyah. This work is based on extensive debates of the Imam with the aforementioned groups and thus covers a lot of their defunct arguments. It has been abridged so as to make the work of the Shaykh easier for readers to read and digest.

Shaykh al-Islaam Taqi ud-Din Abu’l-Abbas Ahmad Ibn al-Halim ibn Abd al-Salam Ibn Taymiyyah al-Hanbali 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, the 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 years old 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 he refused it 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 Quran, Sunnah, Greek philosophy, Islamic history, and religious books of others, as is evident from the variety of the books he wrote.