two or more positions, as his writings attest. Nevertheless, the scholars criticized him and his approach, which rested on this question, at a length too great to recount here, just as earlier scholars had criticized Ibn Kullāb and those who agreed with him. Abū Ismā‘īl al-Ansārī even reported:

“I heard Ahmad ibn Abī Rāfi‘ and many others speak of Abū Hāmid’s severity—meaning al-Isfarāyīnī—toward Ibn al-Bāqillānī.”

He said:

“I conveyed Abū Sa‘d’s message to his son Sālim in Baghdad: ‘If you intend to return to Herat, do not go near al-Bāqillānī.’”

He said:

“I heard al-Husayn ibn Abī Umāmah al-Mālikī say: ‘I heard my father say: “May Allah curse Abū Dharr al-Harawī, for he was the first to bring speculative theology to the Sanctuary and the first to spread it among the people of the Maghrib.”’”

I say: Abū Dharr is well known for his learning, religious devotion, knowledge of hadith and the Sunnah, his undertaking to transmit al-Bukhārī’s collection from his three teachers, and his other merits and virtues. He had come to Baghdad from Herat, adopted Ibn al-Bāqillānī’s approach, and brought it to the Sanctuary. Some scholars criticized him and his approach, including Abū Nasr al-Sijzī, Abū al-Qāsim Sa‘d ibn ‘Alī al-Zanjānī, and others like them among the foremost scholars and men of religion, for reasons this is not the place to discuss. He was among those who preferred the approach of al-Sibghī and al-Thaqafī to that of Ibn Khuzaymah and other scholars of hadith like him. People from the Maghrib would perform the pilgrimage, meet him, and learn hadith and this approach from him. He would direct them to its source, and some of them would then travel east, as did Abū al-Walīd