He (1) said: “I heard (2) Aḥmad ibn Abī Rāfiʿ, together with a number of others, speak of how uncompromising Abū Ḥāmid al-Isfarāʾīnī (3) was toward al-Bāqillānī (4).”

Shaykh Abū al-Ḥasan al-Karajī (5) said:

“It is well known how severe Shaykh Abū Ḥāmid was with the practitioners of kalām. He even distinguished the foundations of Shāfiʿī legal theory from the principles of al-Ashʿarī, and Imām (7) Abū Bakr (8) al-Zādhqānī transmitted this distinction from him (6)—a copy of it is in my possession. Following his example, Shaykh Abū Isḥāq al-Shīrāzī adopted the same stance in his two books, al-Lumaʿ and al-Tabṣirah: whenever al-Ashʿarī’s position happened to agree with one of the views held by our school, he would single it out, saying, ‘This is the opinion of some of our companions, and it is also the view of the Ashʿarīs.’ He never counted them among the true followers of al-Shāfiʿī; rather, he kept his distance from them and from their methodology in the principles of jurisprudence—let alone their doctrines concerning the fundamentals of faith (9).”

I say: Abū Muḥammad al-Jūwaynī, and his teacher Abū Bakr al-Qaffāl al-Marwazī (10),