were justified in assuming authority, and claimed that none of this accorded with reason or sound judgment—Allah brought forth from the descendants of Abū Mūsā al-Ash'arī an imam who rose to defend Allah’s religion and strove with his tongue and pen against those who barred others from Allah’s path. He made it still clearer to those possessed of certainty that what the Quran and Sunnah taught, and what the early generations of this community upheld, accorded with sound reason and judgment.”

The substance of the letter was to dispel the turmoil that had arisen and reassure the people of the Sunnah.

Abū al-Qāsim ibn 'Asākir said:

“The persecution mentioned by Abū Bakr al-Bayhaqī spread, and the turmoil which he urged should be extinguished in his letter flared up, only because of the directive to revile the followers of Shaykh Abū al-Hasan al-Ash'arī during the reign of Sultan Tughril Beg and the vizierate of Abū Nasr al-Kundurī. The sultan was an upright Muslim and a Sunni, whereas his vizier was a Mu'tazilī and a Rāfidī. When the sultan ordered that religious innovators be cursed from the pulpits at Friday prayers, al-Kundurī, to indulge his resentment and gratify his spite, coupled the name of the Ash'arīs