and since the eras of the Companions and the Followers passed without resorting to figurative interpretation, that abstention is the path to be followed. Therefore, the verse of establishment, the verse of coming, and His words, “for what I created with My Own Hands” ⦗1⦘ are all to be treated in the same way.

335 – The ḥāfiẓ and authoritative scholar ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Rahāwī said: I heard ʿAbd al-Raḥīm ibn Abī al-Wafā al-Ḥājī say: I heard Muḥammad ibn Ṭāhir al-Maqdisī say: I heard the man of letters Abū al-Ḥasan al-Qayrawānī in Nishapur say—he used to attend the lessons of the professor Abū al-Maʿālī al-Juwaynī, reading speculative theology with him—he said:

I heard the professor Abū al-Maʿālī today say, “My companions, do not busy yourselves with kalām (speculative theology). Had I known that kalām would land me where it has, I would never have engaged in it.”

305 – I say: Its chain of transmission is sound, linked entirely through ḥuffāẓ up to Abū al-Ḥasan al-Qayrawānī; as for the latter, I have no further information about him at present.

336 – The jurist Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Rustamī—who granted an authorization to Karīmah—said:

The imam, Abū al-Fatḥ Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Faqīh, related to us: We entered upon the imam Abū al-Maʿālī Ibn al-Juwaynī to visit him during the illness that led to his death. They seated him upright, and he said to us, “Bear witness that I have retracted every statement in which I opposed the doctrine of the righteous predecessors, and that I die upon the faith on which the old women of Nishapur die.”

I say: This is what some of the leading scholars mean when they advise, “Hold fast to the religion of the old women”—that is, they believe in Allah upon the innate disposition of Islam and know nothing of speculative theology.

Our teacher, the distinguished scholar Abū al-Fatḥ al-Qushayrī⦗2⦘ used to say:

I have outstripped the multitude and risen to the heights;
I journeyed on, leaving them behind in the trackless wastes.