I had met him in al-Raqqah in the year 270 AH. He asked me about Junayd, and I replied, “They are pointing to something they call the ‘second differentiation’ and ‘sobriety’.”
He said, “Tell me something of it.”
When I explained it, he laughed and asked, “What does Ibn al-Khalanjī say?”
I answered, “He does not associate with them.”
He continued, “And Abū Aḥmad al-Qalānisī?”
I said, “At times he differs with them, and at times he concurs.”
He then asked, “So what do you say?”
I replied, “What could I possibly say?” Then I added, “I suppose that what they are calling a second differentiation is in fact one of the very springs of union (jamʿ); they only imagine that it takes them out of union.”
He said, “That is exactly the case. You must have heard this from al-Qalānisī.”
I said, “No.”
When I later reached Baghdad I related this to Abū Aḥmad al-Qalānisī, and he was delighted by al-Nūrī’s remark.
As for Abū Aḥmad himself, sometimes he would say, “It is sobriety (ṣaḥw) and departure from union,” and at other times, “Rather, it is something within union.”
Subsequently al-Nūrī attended their discussion and declared, “It is neither a spring of union nor sobriety arising from union; they have merely gone back to what they already know.”
After that, Ruwaym and Ibn ʿAṭāʾ said, “Al-Nūrī states a thing and its opposite; we recognize this only as the doctrine of the Sophists and those who follow them.” (1)
Estrangement grew between them, and he often expressed astonishment at them. They reported this to Junayd, who rebuked them, saying, “Do not speak that way about Abū al-Ḥusayn. He is simply a man whose mind may have changed.”
Thereafter Abū al-Ḥusayn withdrew from them all and shunned them. Illness overcame him, he lost his sight, and he took to the open plains and the cemeteries, experiencing states whose full account would be lengthy.
I heard a number of people say, “Whoever saw al-Nūrī after his return from al-Raqqah but had not seen him before that, it is as though he never saw him at all, so great was his transformation.”