He said: He would offer three hundred rakʿas (units of prayer) every day and night, stand for the night-vigil, and, whenever possible, carry provisions in secret to the homes of widows and orphans. His eyesight weakened because of abundant weeping and constant reading, and in the science of hadith he was the unrivalled scholar of his age.

He also said: In Dhu al-Qaʿda of the year 596 AH the affair of al-Ḥāfiẓ ʿAbd al-Ghanī became public. He persisted in the doctrine he had openly professed, and the jurists unanimously issued a fatwa declaring him an unbeliever and an innovator who could not be left among the Muslims. He therefore requested a respite of three days so that he might leave the town, and his request was granted.

I say: I have found Abū al-Muẓaffar prone to exaggeration and lacking scrupulousness in what he records—Allah is the ultimate Judge—and he had Shiʿi leanings. I saw one of his works on the subject that contained many harmful notions (1). Had the jurists really agreed on excommunicating him, as he claims, they could not have allowed him to remain alive; for in Damascus his brother Shaykh al-ʿImād, Shaykh Muwaffaq al-Dīn, his brother the exemplar Shaykh Abū ʿUmar, the eminent scholar Shams al-Dīn al-Bukhārī, the rest of the Hanbalīs and several other adherents to the hadith tradition were all of the same view as he was. There were also many scholars in the city who did not declare him an unbeliever—true, they did not openly endorse the wording he had uttered when pressed; yet had he refrained from those expressions and confined himself to the language of the revealed texts, he would have spoken well and remained unharmed—and that is the preferable course, for there is no good in expansive wording that gives rise to misimpressions.

The worst thing he said was to pronounce the scholars present misguided and to claim that he alone possessed the truth. By that utterance he sowed evil, corruption and the seeds of tribulation. May Allah have mercy on them all and forgive them. The intent of both sides was only to exalt the Creator, Exalted be He; yet the most perfect way to magnify and declare Him transcendent is to abide by the wording of the Book and the Sunnah, and that is the path of the early generations, may Allah be pleased with them.