unharmed by those who oppose them. For discussing this would make the book too lengthy. At the end of this book, we shall devote a chapter to detailing the points on which they differ, explaining their agreement on principles and foundations, and showing that their disagreements follow the pattern we have described.

What I shall now relate, before anything else, from the words of our shaykh “Abū al-Hasan”—may Allah have mercy on him—in his book on the doctrines of those who face the qiblah demonstrates what I am saying. It also shows that the doctrine of the shaykh and peerless imam, “Abū Muhammad ʿAbd Allāh ibn Saʿīd”—may Allah be pleased with him—was that of the leading scholars of hadith and their imams concerning fundamental principles and the subsidiary matters connected with them. Among them, he was granted special assistance from Allah Most High in elucidating Allah’s signs and proofs and making His evidence and its distinctiveness manifest.

He thus stood before them as a means by which they could rise, defending the people of the Sunnah and the community against the distortions of innovators, exposing the alterations made by the sects that espouse falsehood, and explaining the ruling on adhering to the Book and the Sunnah and shunning personal whims and religious innovation. Our shaykh “ʿAlī ibn Ismāʿīl al-Ashʿarī” merely built upon the foundations he had laid, organized his discourse around what he had refined, and developed subsidiary conclusions from the principles he had established, without overturning any of his foundations,