distinguishes a man as an adherent of al-Ashʿarī; for this reason the scholars explicitly recorded their disagreement with him over it. As for the rest of the questions, he is not confined to one side alone; on each side there are various groups ⦗1⦘. Consequently, whoever opposes him in this distinctive tenet can no longer be regarded as following him ⦗2⦘.

Moreover, when he says “our companions,” he means the Shāfiʿīs; and when he speaks of al-Ashʿarī he says, “the Ashʿarīs hold…,” thereby excluding them from the designation “our companions.” Yet Abū al-Qāsim was driven by personal inclination and lacked insight into the core principles over which the scholars disagreed ⦗3⦘, even though he was trustworthy in his transmissions and knowledgeable in his own field, such as history and the like.

Section

Al-Ashʿarī’s own doctrine—and that of his contemporaries such as Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Qalānisī ⦗4⦘ and the like, as well as the earlier leaders of the school such as Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allah ibn Saʿīd ibn Kullāb ⦗5⦘, and the later leading disciples who learned directly from him, such as Abū ʿAbd Allah ibn Mujāhid ⦗6⦘, the teacher of Qāḍī Abū Bakr ibn al-Bāqillānī, and Abū al-Ḥasan al-Bāhilī ⦗7⦘, the teacher of Ibn