When ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Mubārak was asked, “By what do we recognize our Lord?” he replied, “By the fact that He is above His heavens, upon His Throne, separate from His creation.” The same declaration was made by all the leading Imams—Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, Isḥāq ibn Rāhwayh, ʿUthmān ibn Saʿīd, al-Bukhārī, and others. Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq ibn Khuzayma, known as the “Imam of the Imams,” even said: “Whoever does not affirm that God is above His heavens, upon His Throne, distinct from His creatures, must be summoned to repent; if he repents, so be it, but if he refuses he is to be put to death.” This is related from him by al-Ḥākim Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Naysābūrī, by his colleague who bore the title Shaykh al-Islām, Abū ʿUthmān al-Ṣābūnī, and by others.

The senior shaykhs listed by Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī in Ṭabaqāt al-Ṣūfiyya and by Abū al-Qāsim al-Qushayrī in the Risāla likewise adhered to the creed of Ahl al-Sunna wa-l-Jamāʿa and to the methodology of the hadith scholars. Among them were al-Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ, al-Junayd ibn Muḥammad, Sahl ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Tustarī, ʿAmr ibn ʿUthmān al-Makkī, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Khafīf al-Shīrāzī, and many others. Their pronouncements are preserved within the Sunnah, and they authored works devoted to it. Some later figures among them adopted the approach of certain scholastic theologians in secondary doctrinal matters, yet none embraced the path of the philosophers. Philosophizing only emerged among Sufis of a still later period. Consequently, one now finds Sufis at times following the way of the hadith-oriented shaykhs—these are their best and most eminent representatives; at other times embracing different Sufi creeds; at still other times adopting the creed of the kalām-based Sufis, who rank below the former; and at yet other times espousing the creed of the philosopher-Sufis—such as these heretics.

For this reason Ibn ʿArabī, at the very outset of al-Fatūḥāt, cites three creeds: first, an abridged creed drawn from Abū al-Maʿālī’s Irshād, complete with its scholastic proofs