summary because it forms the basis for the detailed account he transmits from him. His error in this transmission lies in his statement about Abū al-Hasan: “He reported that Ibn Kullāb’s followers held these views and more.” Abū al-Hasan’s actual wording, however, is:

“As for the followers of ‘Abd Allāh ibn Sa‘īd al-Qattān, they hold most of the views we have related from Ahl al-Sunnah. They affirm that the Creator has always been living, knowing, powerful, hearing, seeing, mighty, magnificent, majestic, great, one who addresses, wills, and speaks, and generous. They affirm knowledge and power”—and so on.

Thus, Abū al-Hasan stated that they held most of the views of the people of hadith, not all of them, and that these are the matters they intend. He therefore reported that they added something in certain respects and omitted something in others. He did not say that they held the views of the people of hadith and more besides. A scribal misreading may, however, occur in the wording “more than he related,” through the omission of the letter mīm or its merging with another in the script.

How could Abū al-Hasan say that? He related that the people of hadith held that faith consists of words and deeds, and that it increases and decreases. Yet Ibn Fūrak related that Ibn Kullāb denied that deeds constitute faith and that faith increases and decreases, along with other matters, since he belonged to the Murji’ah.

Moreover, Ibn Fūrak said: “Our shaykh, in al-Maqālāt, after mentioning the doctrines of the Imāmiyyah, the Khawārij, the Mu‘tazilah, and the Najjāriyyah concerning the major questions of theology, said: ‘This