and I plunged into seas whose depths no one can fathom,
and I drove my soul across the desolate tracts 1 of the wastes;
I delved into endless thoughts, yet at last my choice
returned to esteeming the faith of the old women.

306 – I said: Among the verses composed by Abū al-Maʿālī (may Allah have mercy on him) are:
“The furthest advance of reason is but a tether,
and the ultimate outcome of men’s opinions is misguidance.
Our spirits dwell estranged from our bodies,
and the summit of our worldly life is harm and affliction.”

He also said:
“I read fifty thousand, within fifty thousand; then I milked the Muslims—by their very Islam—of those writings and of their outward sciences. I sailed the boundless ocean and dived into that from which the Muslims were forbidden” (I say: he means speculative theology), “all of it in search of the truth, thinking myself safe from blind imitation” (I say: what then of one who is drowning in taqlīd and even compels others to it!). “Now I have come back from all that effort to the word of truth: ‘Hold fast to the religion of the old women.’ If the Truth does not overtake me with His grace so that I die upon the religion of the old women and my end is sealed with the truth and the word of sincerity, then woe to Ibn al-Juwaynī.”

I copied this from Shadharat al-Dhahab 3/361–362.

307 – I said: The author, may Allah have mercy on him, is pointing out that this is not a ḥadīth, even though it is commonly cited on the tongues of some jurists as “a ḥadīth of al-Ghazālī.” The very words of the biographer that I have just quoted from Shadharat al-Dhahab hint at this, so take note. See my discussion of it in my book al-Aḥādīth al-Ḍaʿīfah wa-al-Mawḍūʿah, no. 53.

337 – Abū Manṣūr ibn al-Walīd al-Ḥāfiẓ said in a letter to al-Zanjānī: ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Ḥāfiẓ in Ḥarrān narrated to us; al-Ḥāfiẓ Abū al-ʿAlāʾ narrated to us; Abū Jaʿfar ibn Abī ʿAlī al-Ḥāfiẓ narrated:
“I heard Abū al-Maʿālī al-Juwaynī when he was asked about Allah’s words, ‘The All-Merciful rose over the Throne.’
He said, ‘Allah was when there was no Throne’—and he began to flounder in his speech—so I said, ‘We know what you are hinting at, but do you have any escape from the incontrovertible necessities?’ He replied, ‘What do we intend by this statement, and what…’”