the criteria by which a legally accountable person acquires the designation of īmān in the Sacred Law consist of many qualities and diverse convictions. Although they differ over the particulars—details we have already presented—they also disagreed about attaching to īmān matters that do not fall under assent itself for the sake of validating the name. Among such matters are refraining from killing the Messenger, from harming him ⦗1⦘, and from venerating idols; these are acts of omission. As for positive deeds, they include supporting the Messenger and defending him. Some held that all of this is, legally speaking, annexed ⦗2⦘ to assent, while others maintained that these are grave sins whose violation does not expel a person from īmān.
Al-Naysābūrī ⦗3⦘ said, “This is the sum of our teachers’ statements on the issue.” He added ⦗4⦘: “The people of ḥadīth were of the opinion that īmān comprises every act of obedience, both obligatory and supererogatory. They expressed it by saying that it is to carry out whatever Allah has commanded, whether as a duty or a recommendation, and to refrain from whatever He has forbidden—whether by absolute prohibition ⦗5⦘ or by mere disapproval ⦗6⦘. This was also the view of Abū ʿAlī al-Thaqafī ⦗7⦘.”
'Al-Asmā’ wa-l-Ṣifāt: They agreed…'. No source on Abu Ishāq and his writings mentions a work entitled Al-Asmā’ wa-l-Ṣifāt—though some of his works were listed above—but they simply note that he authored numerous treatises difficult to catalogue, among them Al-Jāmi‘ fī Uṣūl al-Dīn and Al-Radd ‘alā al-Mulhidīn in five volumes. It is possible that this treatise, along with the one preceding it, was subsumed under that al-Jāmi‘. And Allah knows best.
(1) In all manuscripts: ta‘ẓīmahū (“its exaltation”) and al-muṯbat min al-īmān (“that which is affirmed from faith”), a reading that may suit the context.
(2) At fī al-īmān (“in faith”): they held that the entire phrase should be annexed.
(3) In al-Juwaynī’s Sharḥ al-Irshād; cf. its recension in Ibn Taymiyya’s Kitāb al-ʾĪmān, p. 121, with minor variations in wording.
(4) The speaker is an-Nīsābūrī.
(5) The term nahā (“prohibition”) is omitted in manuscript S.
(6) So in all manuscripts; the correct reading may be wa-adaban (“and as an admonition”), as found in Ibn Taymiyya’s Kitāb al-ʾĪmān. The editor notes that in the Indian edition of Kitāb al-ʾĪmān (printed 1311 AH) it appears as idhnan (“permission”), which he used when collating a Ḥijāz manuscript.
(7) He is Abū al-ʿAlī Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Thaqafī an-Nīsābūrī, the jurist.