mentioned a large number of Allah’s most beautiful names1.

Our shaykh, Dr. Alī ibn Nāsir Faqīhī, said in the introduction to his critical edition of Ibn Mandah’s aforementioned book:

“The author of this book lived in the fourth century AH (310–395 AH). His book encompasses the categories of Allah’s oneness mentioned in the Book of Allah Most High: His oneness in His lordship, His exclusive right to be worshipped, and His oneness in His names and attributes. He began with Allah’s oneness in His lordship, using it as evidence for His exclusive right to be worshipped. He then introduced a heading on Allah’s oneness in His names, and from there proceeded to His exclusive right to be worshipped, covering this from chapter forty-two to chapter fifty. He then returned to complete his discussion of the names of Allah Most High. Next, he addressed Allah’s oneness in His attributes, discussing this separately from the names of Allah—Mighty and Majestic is He. He then returned to Allah’s oneness in His lordship, explicitly identifying it at the end of the book. In presenting his evidence for these matters, he did not go beyond the Book of Allah, the Sunnah of His Messenger—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—and the statements of the early generations, as the reader will find in the book.

“This classification, which the book encompasses, refutes Abū Hāmid ibn Marzūq, who maintains in his book entitled ‘Seeking Nearness to Allah through the Prophet and the Ignorance of the Wahhabis’ that dividing Allah’s oneness into His oneness in His lordship and His exclusive right to be worshipped, and saying that the polytheists believed in the former but not the latter without thereby entering Islam, constitutes an innovation devised by Ibn Taymiyyah, in which Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhāb followed him…”2.

I say: Perhaps, then, the writer picked up this fabrication of his from Abū Hāmid ibn Marzūq and repeated it. For the followers of whims inherit their innovations, just as the people of the Sunnah inherit the truth from