al-Ashʿarī’—may Allah be pleased with him—to make it easier for anyone wishing to acquaint himself with his doctrines as a whole, their principles, rules and foundations, and the bases upon which he structured his arguments against his opponents among the ranks of the innovators and the sects of misguidance. It was intended to facilitate the seeker’s task, sparing him the need to search through his scattered books, whether those difficult to find or those well known and widely available. I did not mix what I collected with the views of others among our earlier scholars or our later shaykhs, since my aim was to present his views alone. For his views—may Allah be pleased with him—became numerous and extensive owing to his many writings, his expansive discussions, his detailed treatment of every area of dispute with his opponents, the abundance in his time of the false claims of the misguided and the specious arguments of the innovators, and his defence of the truth in refuting every group with the utmost clarity and to the fullest extent possible.” He said:

“Since the pioneering shaykh and foremost imam, ‘Abū Muhammad ʿAbd Allāh ibn Saʿīd’—may Allah be pleased with him—was the one who laid the groundwork for these rules and established these principles and objectives through the clarity with which he distinguished between the proofs of truth and the specious arguments of falsehood; who drew attention to the methods of argument concerning these matters and showed where to connect and separate, to group and distinguish; who unravelled the fabric of falsehood,