Ibn Taymiyyah and Imam Ali's caliphate

As the ideologue of Salafi thought and Wahhabism, Ibn Taymiyyah has particular thoughts. There are many books and articles aiming to study and criticize his views. The present article aims firstly to gather Ibn Taymiyyah’s views on Imam Ali’s caliphate and secondly to criticize and scrutinize them and specifically tries to answer these two questions of whether he accepts Imam Ali’s caliphate or not? In addition, whether he treats Imam Ali as the other caliphates or he treats the Imam with blaming, weakening his authority and casting doubt on his personality? So based on the method of archival research the article studied Ibn Teymiyyah’s works and finally through analyzing the statements tries to gain his opinion in this matter. The result is that Ibn Tayymiyyah’s statements about Imam Ali’s caliphate are not steady and coherent: in some of his words, Ibn Taymiyah considered the Imam as the last caliph of the rightly guided caliphs but elsewhere he cast doubts about the legitimacy of the Imam’s caliphate and even subjected it to the blame and calumniation.