Then he said:

“We want you to write down your creed for us.”

I replied:

“Write it down.”

He then instructed Shaykh Kamāl al-Dīn to write, and he wrote down for him the main articles of belief concerning the divine attributes, divine decree, faith, the threat of punishment, leadership, and relative merit.

These were that the creed of Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamā‘ah entails believing in what Allah has said of Himself and what His Messenger has said of Him, without distortion or denial, without specifying how His attributes are, and without likening them to those of creation; and that the Quran is Allah’s speech, uncreated: from Him it began, and to Him it returns.

It also entails believing that Allah is the Creator of everything, including people’s actions and all else; that whatever Allah wills happens, and whatever He does not will does not happen; that He commands obedience, loves it, and is pleased with it, while He forbids disobedience and hates it. The servant truly acts, and Allah creates his action.

Faith and religion consist of words and deeds, and increase and decrease. We do not declare anyone who faces our direction of prayer an unbeliever on account of sins, nor do we hold that any believer will remain in the Fire forever. The caliphs after Allah’s Messenger were Abū Bakr, then ‘Umar, then ‘Uthmān, then ‘Alī. Their rank in merit follows their order in the caliphate, and whoever places ‘Alī ahead of ‘Uthmān has disparaged the Emigrants and the Helpers.

I stated this, or something to this effect. So much time has now passed that I do not remember the precise wording of what I dictated, but it was written down at the time. I then said to the emir and those present:

“I know that some people tell lies about me, just as they have done more than once before. If I dictate my creed from memory, they may say, ‘He concealed part of it;