of great scope and tremendous worth, in which the Shaykh refuted the philosophers and the speculative theologians (1).
He also penned a separate work of roughly one volume in which he answered the objections that Kamal al-Din Ibn al-Sharishi raised against the aforementioned book [q 12] (2)(3).
As for the Shaykh’s own compositions, legal opinions, maxims, replies, epistles, and other beneficial writings, they simply defy calculation. I know of no one among the earlier Imams (4) or the later ones who gathered what he gathered, authored what he authored, or even came close to it (5). Most of these writings he dictated straight from memory, and many of them he composed while in prison (6), with none of the reference books he would ordinarily require at his disposal.
(1) The book was published by Imam University in Riyadh in eleven volumes, edited by Dr. Muhammad Rashad Salim. Ibn al-Qayyim praises it in his Nuniyyah:
“Read the book Reason and Revelation; nowhere in existence does it have a second equal.”
(2) He is Ahmad b. Muhammad b. Ahmad al-Bakri, Kamal al-Din al-Sharishi al-Shafi‘i, the qadi (d. 718/1318). See Dhayl Tarikh al-Islam, pp. 150–151, and al-Durr al-Kaminah, 1:252.
(3) Mentioned by Ibn Rashiq, p. 295 (within his Jamʿ).
(4) So in the autograph and in its abridgment al-Kawakib, p. 77; the other copies read al-ummah (the community), and F has mutaqaddim al-ummah (one of the early masters of the community).
(5) Al-Hafiz al-Dhahabi states in Siyar, 21:367, in the biography of Ibn al-Jawzi: “I have never known anyone who authored what he authored.” I add: the prolific authors have been listed by Jamil al-Azm in ʿUqud al-Jawhar and by Muhammad Khayr in a separate study. There is no doubt that Shaykh al-Islam is among the most prolific of them and the strongest in substance and research.
(6) F reads: “… by imprisonment,” while K has: “and many …”.