agreement with the doctrinal beliefs of the people of the faith (1). It must therefore be construed only in a way that accords with those beliefs, and one should not seize upon it to rebut him when a sounder construction is possible. Still, it would have been preferable for him not to set the matter forth so plainly. I have heard that he auditioned Sunan Abī Dāwūd from the jurist-judge Abū ʾl-Fath al-Ḥākamī al-Ṭūsī (2); and that, through Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Khuwārī—the father of ʿAbd al-Jabbār—he received the reading of Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim’s work al-Mawlid, transmitted by Abū Bakr b. al-Ḥārith from Abū ʾl-Shaykh, from Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim himself.

I say: What ʿAbd al-Ghāfir found fault with in Abū Ḥāmid’s al-Kīmiyāʾ has many counterparts sprinkled throughout his other writings. Abū Bakr Ibn al-ʿArabī went so far as to remark, “Our shaykh Abū Ḥāmid swallowed the philosophers; he then tried to disgorge them, but could not.”

In al-Muʿjam of Abū ʿAlī al-Ṣadfī—which Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ prepared for him—we read:

“Shaykh Abū Ḥāmid is a man about whom alarming reports circulate, yet he authored monumental works. He went to extremes in the Sufi path, devoted himself entirely to championing their school, and became its spokesman. In that vein he produced his famous treatises, but they contain passages that have been censured and have led many people to harbor misgivings about him—Allah knows best what is in his heart. A decree from the sultan here in the Maghrib, backed by a juristic fatwa, ordered those books burned and the people kept away from them, and that order was carried out.”

He was born in 450 AH.

I add: Scholars have always differed, and each scholar speaks of another on the basis of his own ijtihād; each is excused and, God willing, rewarded. Whoever, however, is stubborn or breaks the consensus is blameworthy. To Allah all affairs ultimately return.