the falsity of the claim that giving transmitted revelation precedence over reason undermines revelation by undermining its foundation, since it has become clear that this does not undermine its foundation.

This argument originated with the Jahmiyyah, the Muʿtazilah, and others like them; it was not the position of al-Ashʿarī or the leading scholars among the Companions. Rather, later Ashʿarīs adopted it from the Muʿtazilah when they inclined towards a form of Jahmī doctrine—indeed, towards philosophy—and departed from the position of al-Ashʿarī and the leading scholars among the Companions. These scholars did not acknowledge any conflict between transmitted revelation and reason; instead, they undertook to establish rational proofs consistent with revelation.

Thus, al-Ashʿarī affirmed through revelation the attributes known through transmitted reports, and affirmed through reason those attributes that can be known through both reason and revelation. He did not establish through reason anything that he set against revelation, but rather what supported it; and through revelation he affirmed what reason could not establish.

These later thinkers opposed him and the leading scholars among the Companions on both counts: they did not use revelation as evidence to affirm the attributes, and they opposed what it indicated with what they claimed were rational arguments.

What the imams of the Sunnah criticized in Ibn Kullāb al-Ashʿarī were remnants of Jahmī and Muʿtazilī doctrine, such as accepting the validity of the method based on accidents and the composition of bodies, and denying that Allah is characterized by acts subsisting in Him which He wills and chooses. Similar issues also perplexed scholars more knowledgeable than al-Ashʿarī about the Sunnah, hadith, and the statements of the early generations and the imams, such as al-Hārith al-Muhāsibī, Abū ʿAlī al-Thaqafī, and Abū Bakr ibn Ishāq al-Sibghī, although it has been said that