read that work beyond a few scattered passages. If Allah grants length of days, I shall return to it at leisure and lift the veil of confusion from people’s hearts. Know that I have met his disciples, and each of them depicted some facet of his state so vividly that it was as though I had witnessed it myself. I shall therefore confine myself to describing his condition and the character of his book, together with brief notes on the doctrines of the monotheistic theologians, the Sufis, the practitioners of symbolic allusion, and the philosophers, for his book wavers among these various paths.

Al-Māzarī then commended Abū Ḥāmid in matters of jurisprudence, saying: “In fiqh he is more proficient than he is in its principles. As for kalām—the discipline that underpins the creed—he did write on it, yet he was not deeply versed in it. I noticed this lack of proficiency because he studied philosophical sciences before mastering uṣūl. Philosophy endowed him with audacity regarding abstract meanings and made it easy for him to assault established truths, for philosophers pursue whatever crosses their minds, unchecked by the Sacred Law. A friend of his informed me that he was devoted to the Rasaʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ, fifty-one epistles authored by someone who had delved into both the transmitted sciences and speculative wisdom, blending the two.

There was also a man called Ibn Sīnā who flooded the world with writings; his command of philosophy led him to attempt to reinterpret the fundamentals of belief in philosophical terms. He refined this effort until he achieved what no one else had. I have examined several of his volumes and found that Abū Ḥāmid relies on him for most of what he cites of philosophical learning.

As for Sufi doctrines, I do not know on whom he chiefly depended. However, in some marginalia written by one of his associates I saw him mention Ibn Sīnā’s books and their contents, and then the works of Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī; in my opinion it is the latter on whom he relied for his Sufi views. I was also informed that Abū Ḥayyān compiled a vast collection in this field, and the Ihyāʾ contains many unreliable reports.

He added: It is the practice of the truly scrupulous not to say, “Mālik said” or “al-Shāfiʿī said” regarding matters whose attribution has not been firmly established for them.