I say: The shaykhs are not referring to the method pursued by the speculative theologians of reasoning from bodies and accidents and all that this entails. Rather, they reject it, as Abū ‘Abd al-Rahmān al-Sulamī, Shaykh al-Islām al-Ansārī and others have reported from them.

Abū al-Qāsim, however, considers this method sound. This is one of the matters in which he differed from the shaykhs of the Sufi tradition.

In his biography of Shaykh Abū ‘Alī ibn al-Kātib, who accompanied Abū ‘Alī al-Rūdhbārī and others and lived beyond 340 AH, Abū al-Qāsim reports that he said: “The Mu‘tazilites declared Allah free of imperfections on the basis of reason, and erred; the Sufis declared Him free of imperfections on the basis of knowledge, and were correct.”

I say: In the language and counsels of the Sufis, ‘knowledge’ often means the revealed law, as in the saying of Abū Ya‘qūb al-Nahrajūrī: “The best spiritual states are those accompanied by