al-Hasan al-Ashʿarī, and Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Qalānasī—men who had adopted the foundational principles of kalām on tawḥīd from the Muʿtazilites and who disagreed with them in some matters while agreeing in others—allowed elements of that innovated tawḥīd, which conflicts with the tawḥīd revealed by Allah, to creep into their discourse. The scholars of the time would alert people to this. Shaykh al-Islām (1) said:
“I heard ʿAdnān (2) ibn ʿAbdah al-Numayrī say, ‘I heard Abū ʿUmar (3) al-Bustāmī say: Abū al-Hasan al-Ashʿarī was at first an adherent of the Muʿtazilite school; then he recanted and spoke against them (4). Yet his doctrine (5) remains one of negation (taʿṭīl); he merely shifted from blunt assertion to artful ambiguity.’”
And (6) Shaykh Abū Naṣr al-Sijzī (7) said in his epistle to the people of
(1) Abu Ismaʿīl al-Harawī, Dhamm al-Kalam, vol. 7 (Tabaqāt 9), folio 3.
(2) In Dhamm al-Kalam: “I heard al-Hakīm ʿAdnān.”
(3) The original reads “ʿAmr.” However, manuscripts S, T, Dhamm al-Kalam, and standard biographical sources agree that he is Abū ʿUmar Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn b. Muḥammad b. al-Haytham al-Bustāmī, the preacher and theologian. See: al-Baghdādī, Tarīkh Baghdād, 2:247-248; Ibn ʿAsākir, Tabyīn Kaḏīb al-Muftarī, pp. 236-238; al-Dhahabī, Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalāʾ, 17:320; al-Subkī, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya, 4:140-142.
(4) In Tabyīn Kaḏīb al-Muftarī (pp. 38-45), Ibn ʿAsākir examines Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī’s supposed affiliation with the Muʿtazila—his forty-year adherence and subsequent renunciation. He also quotes Abū Bakr b. Furak on al-Ashʿarī’s return to Sunni doctrine and lists his later refutations of Muʿtazilite arguments, exposing their deceptions. See the same source, pp. 128-136.
(5) In Dhamm al-Kalam: “madhhabahu.”
(6) The Shaykh (may Allah have mercy on him) notes in Darʾ Taʿārruḍ al-ʿAql wa-l-Naql, 7:236, that this remark of Abū Naṣr appears in al-Ibāna.
(7) The original reads “al-Sakhzī,” which is incorrect. He is Abū Naṣr ʿUbayd Allāh b. Saʿīd b. Ḥātim al-Sijzī al-Wā’ilī al-Bakrī, a hadith memorizer. Al-Dhahabī describes him as “the shaykh of al-Ḥaram and the author of al-Ibāna al-Kubrā on the uncreatedness of the Quran.”