“…
Ninety angles have I exposed its falsity—
I mean the speech of the self, that solitary meaning.”
And he also said:
“Its invalidity rests upon ninety proofs that cannot be overturned; the Shaykh cited them in the Egyptian Replies.”
This shows that the title “at-Tisʿīniyya” (The Ninetyfold Treatise) refers precisely to those proofs.
As for the indication by Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, Ibn al-Qayyim, Ibn Shākir, and al-Ṣafadī that the arguments number “about eighty,” this may be because they left out some subsidiary branches of certain proofs, or because the intended count actually comes to a few and eighty, as they themselves hinted. Whoever made them ninety simply regarded everything beyond eighty as falling under the rubric of ninety—and Allah knows best.
[Its ascription to the author]
It is firmly established that the book before us is one of the works of Shaykh al-Islām Taqī al-Dīn Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm ibn Taymiyyah—may Allah have mercy on him—for the following reasons:
- Every manuscript I have consulted in preparing this edition attributes the work to him.
- The biographical sources(1) that record the Shaykh’s life and catalogue his writings mention the book and assign it to him; Ibn al-Qayyim’s single verse in the Nūniyya—
“And likewise the Tisʿīniyya is his”—
would by itself suffice. - The Shaykh’s distinctive style, recognizable to anyone who has read his works with care, pervades the text.
- Within the treatise he himself cites several of his other writings.(2)
[Date of composition]
As noted above, the reason for composing this book was what was contained in a document that was sent