Its title appears as at-Tisʿīniyya fī ar-Radd ʿalā man Qāla bi an-Nafsī (The Ninetyfold Treatise in Refutation of Those Who Affirm the Self-Speech) by Shaykh al-Islam, the eminent scholar Ibn Taymiyyah—may Allah have mercy on him.

In MS (S) (1) we read: “This epistle, entitled ‘the Tisʿīniyya,’ is by Shaykh al-Islam, the ocean of rational and transmitted sciences, Taqī al-Dīn Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm ibn Taymiyyah—may Allah sanctify his soul.”

In MS (T) (2) it is described as: “His book known as ‘the Tisʿīniyya,’ a refutation—drawn from ninety angles—of the heretical factions: the atheists, the zindīqs, the Jahmiyyah, the Muʿtazilah, and others who tread their path.”

Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī (d. 744 AH) said (3) when listing the Shaykh’s works: “He has a book, composed during his ordeal in Egypt, in two volumes, in which he refuted those who maintain kalām nafsī (inherent, internal speech) from roughly eighty angles.”

Ibn al-Qayyim (d. 751 AH), in his work Asmāʾ Muʾallafāt Ibn Taymiyyah (4), followed Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī in adopting this designation.

Yet we find him—may Allah have mercy on him—in the Nūniyya poem (5) designating the work as “the Tisʿīniyya,” and explaining—as will be seen—that the name derives from his refutation of those who affirm kalām nafsānī in ninety distinct ways. He says:

“So too his Ninetyfold Treatise, wherein he
Refuted those who spoke of Self-Speech divine;
Ninety proofs laid bare its falsity—
I mean that speech of the self, lone and confined.”

He—may Allah have mercy on him—also states in Badāʾiʿ al-Fawāʾid (6), after noting that the Kullābiyyah stand alone among all sects in claiming that the meanings of the Torah, the Gospel, and the Zabūr