of Allah Most High and the words of His prophets, peace be upon them, and what may not be used as evidence. They therefore rejected the use of what the prophets and messengers brought as evidence concerning the attributes of Allah Most High and other matters about which they spoke, supposing that reason contradicted these teachings. Some of them may add that transmitted evidence does not yield certainty. We have discussed this claim of theirs concerning transmitted evidence at length elsewhere.

As for this rule they formulated, others had preceded them in it, including Abū Hāmid. He adopted it as a rule when answering questions put to him concerning texts that the questioner found problematic, such as the questions posed to him by Judge Abū Bakr ibn al-ʿArabī. Judge Abū Bakr al-ʿArabī disagreed with him on many of those answers and used to say:

“Our teacher Abū Hāmid became deeply immersed in the philosophers’ thought. He then tried to extricate himself, but could not.”

He also reported from Abū Hāmid his denial that he used to say:

“My knowledge of hadith is meagre.”