and the Zabūr, and that the Quran and all the other revealed scriptures are one—
“...This is a claim whose falsity is established by ninety irrefutable proofs that cannot be overturned; Shaykh al-Islam cited them in the Egyptian Replies...”
As for Ibn Shākir al-Kutubī (1) (d. 764 AH) and Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Ṣafadī (2) (d. 764 AH), both of them list among the Shaykh’s works on the fundamentals of faith a book entitled Ibtāl al-kalām an-nafsānī (Invalidating Self-Speech), in which he disproved the doctrine from roughly eighty angles.
Ibn Rajab (3) (d. 795 AH) likewise reports that among the major and distinguished works the Shaykh authored in Egypt is al-Miḥnah al-Miṣriyyah (The Egyptian Ordeal), in two volumes.
Thus the book has been referred to by more than one name and has carried more than one title. From what has preceded, however, we may say that the designation found in the original manuscript is the most fitting to serve as the title of this work, for it embraces most of the headings cited in the sources just mentioned. We shall nonetheless add the word bil-kalām (concerning speech) found in the listings of Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, Ibn al-Qayyim, Ibn Shākir, and al-Ṣafadī, so that its title becomes:
at-Tisʿīniyya fī r-Radd ʿalā man Qāla bil-Kalām an-Nafsī
(The Ninetyfold Treatise in Refutation of Those Who Assert Self-Speech)
Reason for the Name
The work is called “the Ninetyfold Treatise” because the Shaykh—may Allah have mercy on him—demolished the claim that Allah’s speech is merely a meaning residing within the Divine Self by approximately ninety distinct proofs. The book takes its name from these arguments, though by extension it also contains further refutations of other issues, such as the questions of direction, corporeality, and the impropriety of exposing the masses to the ḥadiths and verses dealing with the Divine attributes.
The title page of MS (T) already records: “...and of those who followed their path, from ninety angles.”
Ibn al-Qayyim likewise made explicit mention of these proofs, as noted earlier, when he said: