Most discussions on 14th century Ḥanbalī scholar Ibn Taymīya summarize his thought as the call to a primitivist “return” to a pristine Islamic doctrine. However, such a representation of Ibn Taymīya’s thought is an inadequate assessment of the thousands of pages on theology he wrote over the course of his life. A reengagement with his major works in fact provides us with rare insights into his unique accomplishments as a keen documentarian, or even intellectual historian of Islamic thought. Throughout his works, Ibn Taymīya expertly demonstrates the contingent nature of Islamic orthodoxies as they are constructed within history. This paper aims to shed light on this underappreciated aspect of his thought. Illustrative examples will be presented in this paper from Ibn Taymīya’s work al-Tisʿīnīya, a book on the temporal nature of the Qurʾān, a seminal doctrine for the development of rivaling Islamic orthodoxies by the Muʿtazilite, Ashʿarite, and Ḥanbalī schools. The text gives us an opportunity to witness his method in action and compare it with that of his contemporaries: Unlike the more commonly referenced books of dialectic theology (kalām) which tackle such topics on theoretical principles outside the purview of history, Ibn Taymīya situates the theological premises at stake within the history of Islamic thought, documenting doctrinal developments and changes over the course of time even within the Sunnī collective to which he belongs. From one perspective, Ibn Taymīya’s approach can be seen as the product of a general trend within Ḥanbalism and the ahl al-ḥadīth to critique doctrines by their “genealogy,” separating “authentic” doctrines from “innovated” ones by looking at them from the perspective of their transmission by “authoritative” or “heretical” figures respectively. However, Ibn Taymīya’s undoubtedly novel contribution is that he moves beyond genealogies of authority to something more akin to the “genealogy of ideas,” or what we now call “intellectual history.” This method does not limit the criterion of authenticity to chains of individuals, but extends the genealogical method to the navigation of philosophical first principles, which though contingent on their specific historical actors, can explain the development of ideas on a level that transcends sectarian affiliation. As this paper will show, It is this method that not only facilitates his critique of Muʿtazilite and Ashʿarite kalām, but explains his own admitted break with the self-styled traditionalist Ḥanbalī school of his time.