Third Chapter: His Ordeals and Passing
[His Ordeals]
There can be no doubt that a scholar endowed with learning of such scope and depth, with an intellect so independent, whose prolific pen produced works so numerous that his contemporaries confessed their inability to list them all, and whose courage enabled him— as mentioned earlier— to stand firm before the Mongols, while also combating the people of passion and innovation in his age, would inevitably draw opposition. He took a decisive stand against the Batinī Shīʿah who had sided with the Mongols and the Christians (1); he likewise dedicated himself to lifting the veil from certain Sufis who employed sleight-of-hand to sway the masses and who had likewise aligned themselves with the Mongols. Furthermore, he—may Allah have mercy on him— confronted the jurists of his day, whom the currents of sectarian partisanship and intellectual rigidity had swept into blind imitation of their predecessors, so that every legal or theological opinion had followers who deemed it the sole truth and everything else error, even when the evidence showed otherwise.

A man possessed of such qualities—so rare among his peers—was bound to have jealous rivals lying in wait, seeking to bring him down. Their efforts never slackened, nor did their resolve weaken, in pursuit of that goal.

The first ordeal that befell the Shaykh, according to reliable transmitters, occurred in 698 AH, when the people of Ḥamā wrote to him asking about the divine attributes with which Allah has described Himself in the Quran.