Shaykh Abū al-Hasan said:

“I heard the jurist and imam Abū Mansūr Saʿd ibn ʿAlī al-ʿIjlī say: ‘I heard several shaykhs and imams in Baghdad—I think Shaykh Abū Ishāq al-Shīrāzī was one of them—say: “Abū Bakr al-Bāqillānī used to go to the bathhouse with his face veiled, for fear of Shaykh Abū Hāmid al-Isfarāyīnī.”’”

Abū al-Hasan said:

“Shaykh Abū Hāmid’s stern opposition to the speculative theologians is well known. He even distinguished al-Shāfiʿī’s principles of jurisprudence from those of al-Ashʿarī, and Abū Bakr al-Zādhaqānī took this down from him. I have that account in my possession.

“Shaykh Abū Ishāq al-Shīrāzī followed his example in his two books, al-Lumaʿ and al-Tabsirah. Even when al-Ashʿarī’s position agreed with an opinion held by jurists of our school, he distinguished it, saying: ‘This is the position of some of our jurists, and the Ashʿarīs also hold it.’ He did not count them among al-Shāfiʿī’s followers. They disdained association with them and their doctrine in the principles of jurisprudence, let alone the fundamentals of religion.”

I say: What is reported here from Shaykh Abū Hāmid and other leading Shāfiʿī jurists who formulated legal opinions within the school is well known from their works on the principles of jurisprudence and other subjects.

Shaykh Abū Hāmid, Judge Abū al-Tayyib, Abū Ishāq al-Shīrāzī, and several others have discussed this. They explained how al-Shāfiʿī and other imams differed from Ibn Kullāb and al-Ashʿarī on the question of speech, in which he stood apart from Ibn Kullāb, and al-Ashʿarī from others. In all the other questions, however, Ibn Kullāb and al-Ashʿarī had no