“The real prisoner is the one whose heart is locked away from his Lord, and the real captive is the one taken captive by his desires.”

Ibn al-Qayyim records this in al-Wabil as-Sayyib among his memories of his teacher’s imprisonment in the citadel of Damascus, where Ibn Taymiyyah died in 728 AH / 1328 CE. In the same passage he writes: “Allah knows, I never saw anyone with a better life than his” — despite the narrowness of his living, the threats and the confinement.