namely, that on Monday, 8 Rajab, the sultan’s deputy assembled the four judges, their deputies, the muftis, and the shaykhs: Najm al-Dīn, Shams al-Dīn, Taqī al-Dīn, and Jamāl al-Dīn; Jalāl al-Dīn, the deputy of Najm al-Dīn; Shams al-Dīn ibn al-ʿIzz, the deputy of Shams al-Dīn; ʿIzz al-Dīn, the deputy of Taqī al-Dīn; Najm al-Dīn, the deputy of Jamāl al-Dīn; Shaykh Kamāl al-Dīn ibn al-Zamalkānī, Shaykh Kamāl al-Dīn ibn al-Sharshī, and Ibn al-Wakīl, of the Shāfiʿīs; Shaykh Burhān al-Dīn ibn ʿAbd al-Haqq, of the Hanafīs; Shaykh Shams al-Dīn al-Harīrī, of the Mālikīs; Shaykh Shihāb al-Dīn al-Majd, of the Shāfiʿīs; Shaykh Muhammad ibn Qawwām; and Shaykh Muhammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Urmawī.
The sultan’s deputy then asked about the creed. He replied:
“Creed is not for me—or anyone greater than me—to determine. Rather, creed is taken from Allah, glorified and exalted is He, and His Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and from that upon which the early generations of the Muslim community reached consensus. It is taken from the Book of Allah Most High, from the hadiths recorded by al-Bukhārī and Muslim and other well-known hadiths, and from what is authentically established from the early generations of the Muslim community.”
The emir said, “We want you to write us a statement of the creed.”
The shaykh replied, “If I say something now from memory, the liars may say, ‘He concealed part of it or compromised.’ Instead, I shall bring what I wrote several years before this gathering, before the Tatars arrived.”
I then brought al-Wāsitiyyah. It was given this name because the man who requested it from the shaykh was one of the judges of Wāsit, a follower of al-Shāfiʿī, who had come to perform Hajj some ten years earlier. He was a man of great righteousness and devotion, and he asked the shaykh to write a creed for him. The shaykh said to him: