• A Treatise Refuting those who claim that Paradise and Hell will pass away (1).
• Al-Ḥamawiyyah al-Kubrá (2).
• Al-Ḥamawiyyah al-Sughra (3).
As for Al-Ḥamawiyyah al-Kubrá, he dictated it in the time between the ẓuhr and ʿaṣr prayers. It was composed in answer to a question that reached him from Ḥamāh in the year 698 AH, and the very act of writing it led to various incidents and ordeals. In this work the Shaykh discussed the Qur’anic verses concerning the divine attributes and the hadiths transmitted on the subject, and he said in its highly significant introduction:
“Our position regarding them is precisely what (5) Allah and His Messenger have stated, what the earliest predecessors among the Emigrants and the Helpers affirmed, along with those who followed them with excellence, and what the Imams of guidance after (6) those have declared…"
(1) Ibn Rashiq (p. 287) states that the work comprises “about twenty folios,” adding that the author composed it during his last imprisonment. It has been published in a 118-page edition prepared by Dr. Muhammad al-Samhari (Dar Balansiyya).
(2) Ibn Rashiq (p. 296) writes: “The Hamawiyya fatwa, sixty folios; he wrote it between the noon and afternoon prayers.” It appears in Majmu al-Fatawa 5:5–120 and has also been issued separately, edited by Hamad al-Tuwayjiri (Dar al-Sumay‘i).
(3) The treatise was first printed in India in 1295 AH/1878 CE. Indications are that the shaykh initially dictated al-Hamawiyya al-Sughra (the minor Hamawiyya), then later added many passages and quotations from the mutakallimun (dialectical theologians) and philosophers—about one-third of the total—so that this expanded version became al-Hamawiyya al-Kubra (the major Hamawiyya). Allah knows best.
I have collated the citations from al-Hamawiyya used by the author against the printed Fatawa edition, which I label (T), and against a Turkish manuscript copied in 730 AH, which I label (M).
(4) The word “ma” is absent from manuscripts F and K.
(5) The other copies and M read: “qalahu” (“he said it”).
(6) Manuscripts F and K read: “min baʿd” (“afterwards”).