[Shaykh ʿAlam al-Dīn reported that the Shaykh—may Allah sanctify his soul—said at the gathering of the sultan’s deputy, al-Afram, when asked about his creed, having brought his creed, “al-Wāsitiyyah”: “I wrote this some seven years ago, before the Tatars came to Syria.” It was then read aloud at the gathering.

ʿAlam al-Dīn further reported that the Shaykh said:

“The reason I wrote it was that one of the judges of Wāsit, a man of virtue and religious devotion, complained of the people’s plight in their lands under Tatar rule: the prevalence of ignorance and injustice] (*) and the fading away of religion and knowledge. He asked me to write a creed for him. I told him, ‘People have already written down the creeds of the imams of the Sunnah.’ But he persisted in his request, saying, ‘I want only a creed that you yourself write.’ So I wrote this creed for him while sitting after the ʿAsr prayer.

“The emir then signalled to his scribe, who read it aloud to those present, word for word. One of them objected to my statement in it:

‘Part of faith in Allah is to believe in what He has described Himself with and what His Messenger has described Him with, without distortion or negation, without specifying how His attributes are or likening them to those of creation.’

“What he meant was that this rules out figurative reinterpretation—that is, diverting an expression from its apparent meaning—whether obligatory or permissible.