Abd al-Aziz Ibn Baz

On Thursday morning, 13 May 1999, Ibn Bāz died at the age of 86. He was buried in Al Adl cemetery, Mecca.

His obituary in The Independent said "His views and fatwas (religious rulings) were controversial, condemned by militants, liberals and progressives alike". He was also criticised by hardline Salafi jihadists for supporting the decision to permit U.S. troops to be stationed in Saudi Arabia in 1991.

Ibn Baz is often said to have believed that the Earth was flat. Author Robert Lacey says that Ibn Baz gave an interview "in which he mused on how we operate day to day on the basis that the ground beneath us is flat ... and it led him to the belief that he was not afraid to voice and for which he became notorious." Though satirized for his belief, "the sheikh was unrepentant. If Muslims chose to believe the world was round, that was their business, he said, and he would not quarrel with them religiously. But he was inclined to trust what he felt beneath his feet rather than the statements of scientists he did not know." According to Lacey, Ibn Baz changed his mind about the earth's flatness after talking to Prince Sultan bin Salman Al Saud who had spent time in a space shuttle flight in 1985.

In 1981 he was awarded the King Faisal International Prize for Service to Islam. He was the only Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia not to come from the Al ash-Sheikh family.

Ibn Baz has been associated with some members of the 20 November–4 December 1979 takeover of the Grand Mosque (Masjid al-Haram) in Mecca. The two-week-long armed takeover left over 250 dead, including hostages taken by the militants. According to interviews taken by author Robert Lacey, the militants, led by Juhayman al-Otaybi, were known as Al-Ikhwan (named after the Ikhwan army that which Juhayman's father served in or the hostel, Beit al-Ikhwan, in which Juhayman lived in). Al-Ikhwan were former students of Ibn Baz and other high ulema under the Al-Jama’a Al-Salafiya Al-Muhtasiba (literally, the Salafi Group that Commands Right and Forbids Wrong"), before breaking off from the group due to their extremism and militantism. Juhayman declared his brother-in-law, Mohammed al-Qahtani, to be the Mahdi. The Mabahith (secret police) of the Minister of Interior, Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, had identified Mohammed al-Qahtani and a number of the Ikhwan as troublemakers. They had them imprisoned months before—only to release them at the request of Sheikh Ibn Baz.

In 1966, when Ibn Baz was vice-president of the Islamic University of Medina, he wrote an article denouncing Riyadh University for teaching the "falsehood" that the earth rotates and orbits the sun. In his article, Ibn Baz claimed that the sun orbited the earth, and that "the earth is fixed and stable, spread out by God for mankind and made a bed and cradle for them, fixed down by mountains lest it shake". As a result of the publication of his first article, Ibn Baz was ridiculed by Egyptian journalists as an example of Saudi primitiveness, and King Faisal was reportedly so angered by the first article that he ordered the destruction of every unsold copy of the two papers that had published it. In 1982 Ibn Baz published a book, Al-adilla al-naqliyya wa al-ḥissiyya ʿala imkān al-ṣuʾūd ila al-kawākib wa ʾala jarayān al-shams wa al-qamar wa sukūn al-arḍ ("Treatise on the textual and rational proofs of the rotation of the sun and the motionlessness of the earth and the possibility of ascension to other planets"). In it, he republished the 1966 article, together with a second article on the same subject written later in 1966, and repeated his belief that the sun orbited the earth. In 1985, he changed his mind concerning the rotation of the earth (and, according to Lacey, ceased to assert its flatness), when Prince Sultan bin Salman returned home after a week aboard the space shuttle Discovery to tell him that he had seen the earth rotate.

In addition, there was controversy concerning the nature of the takfir (the act of declaring other Muslims to be kafir or unbelievers) which it was claimed Ibn Baz had pronounced. According to Malise Ruthven, he threatened all who did not accept his "pre-Copernican" views with a fatwa, declaring them infidels. Ibn Baz wrote a letter to a magazine in 1966 responding to similar accusations:

Ibn Baz's second article written in 1966 also responded to similar accusations:

However, Malise Ruthven and others state that it is incorrect to report that Ibn Baz believed "the earth is flat" Professor Werner Ende, a German expert on Ibn Baz's fatwas, states he has never asserted this. Abd al-Wahhâb al-Turayrî calls those that attribute the flat earth view to Ibn Baz "rumour mongers". He points out that Ibn Baz issued a fatwa declaring that the Earth is round, and, indeed, in 1966 Ibn Baz wrote "The quotation I cited [in his original article] from the speech of the great scholar Ibn Al-Qayyim (may Allah be merciful to him) includes proof that the earth is round."

During the Persian Gulf War Ibn Bāz issued a fatwa allowing the deployment of non-Muslim troops on Saudi Arabian soil to defend the kingdom from the Iraqi army. Some noted that this was in contrast to his opinion in the 1940s when he contradicted the government policy of allowing non-Muslims to be employed on Saudi soil. However, according to The New York Times, his fatwa overruled more radical clerics. In response to criticism, Ibn Baz condemned those who "whisper secretly in their meetings and record their poison over cassettes distributed to the people".

In 1927, when he was sixteen, he started losing his eyesight after a serious infection in his eyes. By the time he was twenty, he had totally lost his sight and had become blind. At that time, Saudi Arabia lacked a modern university system. Ibn Baz received a traditional education in Islamic literature with Islamic scholars.

Sheikh Abd al Aziz ibn Abdullah ibn Baz (Arabic: عبد العزيز بن عبد الله بن باز, romanized: ʿAbd al ʿAzīz bin ʿAbdullāh bin Bāz, 21 November 1912 – 13 May 1999) was a Saudi Arabian Islamic scholar who served as the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia from 1993 until his death in 1999. According to French political scientist Gilles Kepel, ibn Baz was a "figurehead" whose "immense religious erudition and his reputation for intransigence" gave him prestige among the population of Saudi Arabia. He "could reinforce the Saud family's policies through his influence with the masses of believers". His death left the government without a comparable figure from amongst Salafi scholars to "fill his shoes". He was a leading proponent of the Wahhabism school of thought.

Ibn Baz was born in the city of Riyadh during the month of Dhu al-Hijjah, 1912 to a family with a reputation for their interest in Islam. His father died when he was only three. By the time he was thirteen, he had begun working, selling clothing with his brother in a market. He also took lessons in the Qur’an, Hadith, Fiqh, and Tafsir, with the man who would precede him as the country's top religious official, Muhammad ibn Ibrahim Al ash-Sheikh.