Abū’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Makhlūf al-Mālikī, who had drafted one of the sheets that the two envoys once brought to the Shaykh from the assembled emirs and judges. Since Ibn Makhlūf al-Mālikī died in 718 AH, it is certain that this book was written before that date.
- From the foregoing it is evident that the date found in the base manuscript is a copyist’s error, the two dates having a similar appearance.
As for the date that appears in (Ṭ) (1), the publisher reproduced it from the exemplar without verification, as is clear from the fact that, when he compiled a table of contents for the book, he began it with the words:
“The preface of the ‘Treatise of the Nineties,’ which sets out the ordeal that befell Ibn Taymiyyah after a quarter of the eighth century at the hands of the emirs and judges, the fabrications they made against him in the small sheets they sent him, and his reply to the last sheet in which they asked him to affirm the negation of direction and spatial extension….”
He then quoted the substance of that sheet, already referred to above.
As has been mentioned, this sheet reached the Shaykh—may Allah have mercy on him—and he gave a brief reply because the envoy pressed him for an immediate answer; later he furnished a detailed response from many angles, all of which are contained in the book before us. That took place in Egypt in 706 AH.
Allah knows best.
[The Author’s Methodology in the Book]
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The Shaykh—may Allah have mercy on him—grounds his evidence in the Qur’an and the Sunnah, and in what is firmly established from the Imams of the Salaf.
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He first presents the opponent’s view, out of scholarly integrity, and pinpoints the issues that will be subject to discussion.
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He fashions his rebuttal to match the opponent’s formulation; thus, if the contrary idea is cast in philosophical terms, we find him replying with philosophical arguments that expose the opponent’s weaknesses.