Sufism. This work is better and more accurate than Abū al-Qāsim’s account, and closer to the teachings of the early generations of this ummah, its leading scholars, and its foremost masters. Likewise, Maʿmar ibn Ziyād al-Asfahānī, the Sufi master, and Abū ʿAbd al-Rahmān Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Sulamī, who compiled the sayings of the Sufis, both stand higher in this regard and are further removed from religious innovation and personal inclination than Abū al-Qāsim.

Although Abū ʿAbd al-Rahmān ranked below the other of these two men, he rejected the Kullābī school and regarded its adherents as innovators—the very school that Abū al-Qāsim champions. He also wrote a work condemning speculative theology that contradicts the position Abū al-Qāsim champions. Abū ʿAbd al-Rahmān was the most eminent of those from whom