About the Text

This text is of particular importance due to being from the Bijaya region of North Africa in modern-day Algeria from the eighth century. The text is written around a hundred years or earlier than the books of Imam Al-Sanusi, and is part of the larger Kalami tradition in Maliki North Africa. It is written at the same general era as Al-Aqida Al-Burhaniyya - a highly influential and very popular Aqida text- and al-Murshida by Ibn Tumart, and represents another puzzle piece in the North African kalam traditional that culiminated at the hands of Imam Al-Sanusi and Ibn Zikri Al-Tilmisani in Tilmisan. While this text is very obscure unlike a text like Al-Aqida Al-Burhaniyya, this book is of particular importance because it contributes towards understanding the discourse of theology and Kalam in North Africa in that era. The book is remarkably clear and lucid and very thoughtfully organized. However, its terminology is much closer to the terminology of the early Ash’aris, i.e., not as clear-cut as the books of Imam Al-Sanusi and later Ash’aris, who wrote at a time when Kalam nomenclature had totally stabilized.

In this prelude, the Imam explains why the book is split up into its organizational structure and how it is exhaustive in terms of the subjects of inquiry (masaa'il) with regards to rational inquiry and theology.

Here, he explains that all of inquiry related to God is either in regards to His essence or His attributes. His attributes either affirm meanings that are necessary to Him, negate meanings that are impossible for Him, or affirm meanings that are possible for Him.

This is important because it shows a clear relationship between Aqida and rational inquiry. This statement is particularly interesting because it shows that Aqida in its early sources, which explicated the attributes by dividing them into the negative attributes (sifat salbiyya), positive attributes (sifaat ul ma'ani and ma'nawiyya), and the attributes related to His actions (sifaat ul af'al) were carefully taking into consideration the three rational judgements of necessity, possibility, and impossibility, even if they did not mention the three judgements outright in the beginnings of their work such as how later scholars like Imam Al-Sanusi and others popularized.

In other words, inquiry about Divinity (Ilahiyyaat) is split up into 2 categories:

1. Inquiry related to the Divine Essence (Al-Sifa al-Nafsiyya, etc.)
2. Inquiry related to His attributes. This is further split into three categories:

• His attributes of transcendence
• His attributes of nobility (i.e., the positive attributes)
• Attributes of His actions.

These three categories related to His attributes line up with the three rational categories, which is why in later texts, the subject matter of Aqida with respect to Divinity is stated to be "knowledge of what is necessary, possibile, and impossible" in the right of God.

In this section, the Imam mentions the obligation of knowing the propositions of Kalam. He starts with this chapter for two reasons. Firstly, according to the Ash'ari school, the obligation of knowing Allah and His attributes is the first obligation for an individual to fulfill when they become morally accountable after they pass the age of puberty. Secondly, the Imam mentions that it is not permitted for one to be ignorant in the matters of Aqida and to blindly imitate another. This is particularly important because it validates Imam Al-Sanusi's claim that the early scholars of the Ash'ari school all held that blind imitation (taqlid) is not acceptable for matters of belief, which became a subject of controversy at his time until present day. While Imam Al-Ghabrini is not an early scholar of the school, it shows that Imam Al-Sanusi was not alone in this position, and other highly important scholars earlier than him in North Africa held the same positions, lending support to Imam Al-Sanusi's position and demonstrating that Imam Al-Sanusi did not deviate from normative Ash'ari positions in his opinions.

Here, Imam Al-Ghabrini takes one out of the two positions of the Ash'ari school for the question of "is the existence of something the same as its essence?"

Imam Al-Ghabrini takes the position of Imam Al-Ash'ari, which held that yes, the existence of something the same as its essence. In other words, the attribute of existence is not a meaning additional to the essence, nor is the necessity additional to the essence either. Based on this position, the attribute of existence, which is known as the attribute of identity (sifat ul-nafsiyya) is not truly an attribute in the strictest sense of the word in Kalam, but is considered an attribute out of pedagogical exigency since it provides a useful organizational structure.

This line is highly reminiscent of the famous line found in Al-Aqida Al-Tahawiyya:

مَا زَالَ بِصِفَاتِهِ قَدِيمًا قَبْلَ خَلْقِهِ، لَمْ يَزْدَدْ بِكَوْنِهِمْ شَيْئًا لَمْ يَكُنْ قَبْلَهُمْ مِنْ صِفَتِهِ، وَكَمَا كَانَ بِصِفَاتِهِ أَزَلِيًّا كَذَلِكَ لَا يَزَالُ عَلَيْهَا أَبَدِيًّا.

"He with His attributes is pre-eternal before His creation. His attributes did not increase at all by their [the creation] coming into existence from what was already there. As He was with His attributes pre-eternally, He remains as He is everlastingly.

In this section, the Imam begins to talk about the attributes of Allah that negate meanings that are rational impossible for Him as a necessary existence.

Complex: in philosophy, "complex" refers to when an essence is made up of multiple parts.

Here, the Imam responds to the invalid positions held by the peripatetic philosophers and those from the Muslim world that followed them, as well as responding to other positions that may have held that God was composed of a body or other beliefs.

Note that the Imam does not explicate the rational proofs for these positions. Since the purpose of this text is meant to be a collection and summarization of the creed of Sunni Islam, the Imam lists the positions and responds to commonly held heterodixical positions, but does not include the proofs as the proofs are discussed and analyzed in lengthier texts.

Dependence is of two types: dependence on a locus and dependence on a creator i.e., a specifier. Here, the Imam says that the Divine Essence and attributes are independent, i.e., they are not in need of any creator or specification. If they were in need of specification, they would require a specifier to have made that specification. It would be a logical contradiction because it would necessitate multiplicity in pre-eternality (ta'addud al qudama). That is an impossibility because specificity can only exist where one thing precedes another, and there is no such thing as preceding in pre-eternality, because time, i.e., sequence does not exist in that context.

An accident (عرض) is a temporal property of a physical substance.

Here, the Imam explicitly mentions the Sunni position with regards to created power, which has no causal efficacy. Imam Al-Sanusi in his text Al-Muqaddimat summarizes these positions:

والمَذاهِبُ في الأفعال ثلاثة: مذهب الجبرية ومذهب القَدَرِيَّةِ ومذهب أهل السُّنَّة.

There are three positions regarding actions: The position of the Jabariyyah, the position of the Qadariyyah, and the position of Ahl al-Sunnah. فمذهب الجبرية: وجود الأفعال كلِّها بالقدرة الأزليّة فقط من غير مقارنةٍ لقدرةٍ حادثةٍ.

The position of the Jabariyyah: is that the existence of all actions is only through Divine Ability without being accompanied by temporal ability.

ومذهب القدريّة: وجود الأفعال الإختياريّة بالقدرة الحادثة فقط مباشرة أو تولّدًا.

The position of the Qadariyyah: is that the existence of voluntary actions is only through temporal ability, both directly and transitively.

ومذهب أهل السّنّة: وجود الأفعال كلِّها بالقدرة الأزليّة فقط مع مقارنة الأفعال الاختياريّة لقدرةٍ حادثةٍ لا تأثير لها لا مباشرة ولا تولُّدًا.

The position of Ahl al-Sunnah: is that the existence of all actions is only through Divine Ability, along with voluntary actions being accompanied by temporal ability which does not have any effect to it, neither directly, nor transitively.

وأمّا الكَسْبُ: فهو عبارةٌ عن تعلّق القدرةِ الحادثةِ بالمقدور في محلّها من غير تأثير.

As for acquisition: it is defined as the connection of temporal ability with its appropriate action, without any causality.

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With regards to the creation of everything including good and evil, Imam Al-Laqqani summarizes in his Jawharat al-Tawhid :

وجائزٌ في حقه ما أمكنا إيجاداً اعْداماً كرزقه الغنى

It is possible in His right what is possible... creating or annihilation, such as His giving wealth.

وجَائزٌ عَليْه خَلْقُ الشَّرِّ والخيْرِ كالإسلامِ وجَهْلِ الكُفرِ

It is possible for him to create evil... And good, such as Islam and the ignorance of disbelief.

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This is summarized in Jawharat al-Tawhid by the lines:

واخِتْيرَ أَنَّ اسْماهُ تَوْقِيفيَّةْ كذَا الصِّفاتُ فاحفَظِ السّمعيَّةْ

The preferred opinion is that His Names are only transmitted... likewise the Attributes, so memorize the transmissions.

In other words, according to the strongest position in the Ash'ari school, the Names and Attributes of Allah are only established by virtue of transmission and cannot be established by means that do not give certainty.

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Here, Imam Al-Ghabrini specifically mentions the protocol on how to understand and interpret statements found in the transmitted sources of the Qur'an and Sunnah that when understood literally, would contradict a rational necessity for Allah or would cause a rational impossibility to be affirmed for Him. All of the examples that he mentions of time, space, sitting, walking, etc., are in reference to either verses from the Qur'an with that phrasing, or strong or weak Hadith narrations.

Here, he mentions both of the valid positions of Sunni Islam- commonly referred to as ta'wil and tafwid. He makes sure to mention that in either case, one first must negate any meanings that can be understood that would cause the affirmation of a meaning that does not befit His majesty, i.e., causes a rational contradiction or implies a deficiency. This is referred to as tanzih.

Here, Imam Al-Ghabrini mentions the origins of the universe and negates its eternality which was an opinion held by the peripatetic philosophers and other heterodox groups. The peripatetic philosophers believed in a type of primordial eternal matter that was uncreated. Other groups held that the universe's parts were temporal but the set of parts was eternal (al-qidam al-naw'i). Here, the Imam responds to these and all other positions that held that the universe was created from nothing and started from non-existence and came into existence.

The Imam negates the possibility of the creation of the universe being due to a necessitating cause (illa), nor due to it being a natural attribute (tabi'a). A necessitating cause is something whose existence rationally necessitates the existence of another thing. A tabi'a is the same thing, however it adds that it is an existence that rationally necessitates the existence of another thing in the presence of certain conditions and in the absence of certain limiting factors.

In other words, the universe is not intrinsically everlasting, and it cannot sustain itself. This goes back to the verse of the Qur'an,

كل شيء هالك إلّا وجهه

"Everything is perishing except His countenance". Here countenance, which literally translates to "face", means His essence.

The Imam here mentions the important subject of Prophecy which composes the second main subject of Aqida.

Imam Al-Ghabrini also brings up the matter of rational good and evil (al tahsin wal taqbih al-aqli), which is in reference to the question of whether things are good or evil intrinsically, or whether there must be an external judgement to deem something as good or evil.

The Imam mentions that only the Divine Law can make something be considered good or evil. He means that only the Divine Law can deem something to be considered commendable presently and rewarded (in the hereafter) in the future. This position of the Ash'ari school is often misunderstood to mean that nothing good and evil can be known by the intellect, which is incorrect. The Ash'ari school only holds that the goodness or evil of actions cannot be known through the intellect. One reason is because it is impossible for one to know what will be rewarded in the hereafter without revelation.

This subject is of importance not only in the science of Kalam, but also in the science of Usul as well. Ibn Juzay al-Kalbi summarizes the discussion excellently below: ` [Chapter Six: Good and Bad] [الباب السادس: في الحسن والقبح] They are used in three (separate) usages:

وهما يطلقان بثلاث إطلاقات:

The first: good refers to what is in accordance to one's desire or predisposition, and bad refers to what contradicts it. أحدها: إن الحسن ما وافق الطبع أو الغرض والقبيح ما خالفه. The second: good is what is an attribute of completion, and bad is what is an attribute of imperfection.

There is no difference of opinion that good and bad with these two usages does not depend on the revelation of the Divine Law.

والثاني: إن الحسن ما كان صفة كمال والقبح ما كان صفة نقص، ولا خلاف أن الحسن والقبح بهذين الإطلاقين لا يفتقر فيهما إلى ورود شرع.

The third: good is what Allah has praised, and bad is what Allah censures and punishes. This [category] is where the difference of opinion occurs.

والثالث: إن الحسن ما مدحه اللَّه، والقبيح ما ذمه اللَّه وعاقب عليه، وفي هذا وقع الخلاف Al-Ash'ari says: it is not known and not established except by the Divine Law.

The Mu'tazila said: rather the intellect necessitates its certainty even before the Prophets, blessings and peace of Allah be upon them. It does not depend on the Divine Law to identify it, except for the fact that they made three categories for it:

فقال الأشعري: إنه لا يعلم ولا يثبت إلا بالشرع،

وقالت المعتزلة: بل العقل اقتضى ثبوته قبل الرسل صلوات اللَّه عليهم، ولا يفتقر في معرفته إلى شرع، إلا أنهم جعلوه ثلاثة أقسام:

A category that the intellect knows self-evidently, such as the goodness of telling the truth for one who will benefit, and the badness of lying for the one who will be harmed.

A category that the intellect knows through reflection, such as the goodness of telling the truth for someone who will be harmed, and [badness] of lying for the one who will benefit.

A category that the intellect cannot arrive to, such as the obligation of fasting the last day of Ramadan and the prohibition of fasting on the first day of Shawwal.

قسم علمه العقل ضرورة، كحسن الصدق النافع، وقبح الكذب الضار.

وقسم علمه العقل نظرًا، كحسن الصدق الضار والكذب النافع.

وقسم لم يصل إليه العقل، كوجوب صيام آخر يوم من رمضان وتحريم أول يوم من شوال.

In the first two, the Divine Law came to emphasize what the intellect already knew about them. For the third, the Divine Law came to clarify what could not have been reached, while also acknowledging that the goodness of all of them was established even before the Divine Law.

According to Al-Ash'ari, the Divine Law is the what caused the good or bad [of the action] to come into existence for all of the categories. So, there was no judgement before the revelation of the Divine Law.

Al-Abhari said: Things were all prohibited before the Divine Law, and Abu Al-Farj said they were permissible, and people other than them reserved judgement.

فالأولان ورد الشرع مؤكدًا لما علمه العقل فيهما، والثالث ورد الشرع فيه مظهرًا لما لم يصل العقل إليه مع أن حسن جميعها وقبحه كان ثابتًا لها قبل الشرع (١)،

وعند الأشعري أن الشرع هو الذي أنشأ الحسن أو القبح في الجميع، فإنه لا يثبت حكم قبل ورود الشرائع.

وقال الأبهري: الأشياء قبل ورود الشرع على المنع وقال أبو الفرج على الإباحة (٢) وتوقف غيرهما (٣).

`

Gharad (ulterior motive), refers to when someone does something in order to achieve a secondary purpose. For example, if a human being wants water, they would use a pump to extract the water from a well. The purpose of them using the pump is not intended in and of itself, but rather it is to achieve a gharad or ulterior motive, which is to acquire water. Allah's actions, although all of them are done for a wisdom sometimes known to Him alone, do not have ulterior motives. See Sharh Tahdhib al-Sanusiyya by Sh. Saeed Fodeh, pg. 78.

In what way are the miracles corroborations of Prophecy? In Al-Murshid Al-Mu'in, Ibn Ashir explains how miracles act as corroborations for Prophets because they take the place of God saying that this claimant of prophecy is truthful:

لَـــوْ لَمْ يَكُنوا صَادِقينَ لَلَزِمْ أَنْ يَكْذِبَ الإِلَـهُ في تَصْـديقهم​

Were they not to be truthful, it would necessitate that God lied when He affirmed their trustworthiness:

إذْ مُعْجِزَاتُهُمْ كَقَوْلِـهِ وَبَـــرْ صَدَقَ هَذأ العَبْدُ في كُـلِّ خَبَـرْ​

Because their miracles are like Him, the Truthful, saying: "This slave of mine is truthful in every declaration."

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In other words, miracles act as a stand-in for God saying "this slave of mine is truthful." The reason why they act as a stand-in can be understood with a famous example or thought experiment of a king who appoints an advisor to go to a people to do a task. The advisor goes to the people and they ask him for proof that the king sent them. He replies and tells them that the proof that he was sent by the king is that the king will do something very unusual tomorrow and do something he never did before, such as stand up, walk around his throne three times and then jump up and down ten times. The only way that the advisor could know this is if the king had given him prior knowledge of that beforehand. So the next day, the people watch the king, and he indeed does exactly as the advisor claimed that he would do. Since the advisor's intimate knowledge of the king entails that he is in direct communication with the king, it is known immediately without need for reflection that the advisor was telling the truth when he said the king ordered them to do the task.

Abrogation is a tenet of belief held by Sunni Islam and denied by some Shia sects and by the Jews, who held that the law of the Torah cannot be abrogated by another Prophet's law. This is also a matter discussed in Usul ul-Fiqh. Ibn Juzay summarizes:

والنسخ جائز عقلًا وواقع شرعًا، وأنكره اليهود لعنهم اللَّه وقالوا يلزم منه البداء وهو محال على اللَّه، وقولهم باطل، والدليل على بطلانه من ثلاثة أوجه:

Abrogation is rationally possible and a reality known scripturally. The Jews, may Allah curse them, denied it, holding that it necessitates Him having imperfect knowledge, and the proof of its invalidity is from three perspectives:

والنسخ جائز عقلًا وواقع شرعًا، وأنكره اليهود لعنهم اللَّه وقالوا يلزم منه البداء وهو محال على اللَّه، وقولهم باطل، والدليل على بطلانه من ثلاثة أوجه:

Abrogation is rationally possible and a reality known scripturally. The Jews, may Allah curse them, denied it, holding that it necessitates Him having imperfect knowledge, and the proof of its invalidity is from three perspectives:

والنسخ جائز عقلًا وواقع شرعًا، وأنكره اليهود لعنهم اللَّه وقالوا يلزم منه البداء وهو محال على اللَّه، وقولهم باطل، والدليل على بطلانه من ثلاثة أوجه:

• الأول: ما اتفقت عليه الأمم من نكاح الأخوات غير التوأمة في زمان آدم، ثم تحريمه في جميع الملل (٤).

• The first: what is agreed upon by all nations that the marriage of siblings other than twins during the time of Prophet Adam (peace be upon him) [was permitted], then was forbidden for all other nations.

• الثاني: أن اليهود وافقوا على أن شريعتهم نسخت ما قبلها، فلما جاز ذلك يجوز أن ينسخها ما بعدها.

• The second: that the Jews concede that their law abrogated what was before that, so if that is possible, then it is possible for something after it to abrogate it.

• الثالث: الفرق بين النسخ والبداء هو أن يظهر له ما كان خفيًّا عليه، والنسخ ليس كذلك، إنما هو كتحديد مدة للحكم مثل أن يأمر السيد عبده بعمل فإذا بلغ منه المقدار الذي أراد السيد، رفع يده عنه وأمر بعمل آخر (٥).

• The third: the difference between abrogation and imperfect knowledge is that it [imperfect knowledge] is that something that was previously unclear to Him becomes clear to Him, and abrogation is not that. It is only like the limiting of the duration of a ruling, such as a master commanding his slave to do an action. When it reaches the amount that the master wants, he ceases it and commands him to another order.

The proof for why the Prophets must be infallible is also mentioned by Ibn Ashir:

لَـوْ انْتَفَى التَّبْليغُ أوْ خَانوا حُتِمْ أن يُقْلَبَ المَنْهِيُّ طَاعَةَ َ لَهُـــمْ​

Were they to withhold the message or to commit treachery, it would necessitate forbidden actions becoming acts of obedience for them.

In other words, since it was previously established that the Prophets are totally truthful as corroborated by their miracles, when they tell the people that they were sent to be guides to be followed, this is known to be certainly true. If they were to then go ahead and do something that appears sinful, it would lead to a clear contradiction: either they were not truthful about being guides, or the thing they did was not sinful. Since it is already known with absolute certainty that they were truthful since they were corroborated by miracles, the first possibility is impossible, and the answer is that the thing they did not is sinful. In other words, anything that they do cannot be sinful.

In terms of the verses or reports that reach us where it may be incorrectly understood that they were sinful, it must be interpreted based on the same methodology as how the other ambiguous verses related to anthropomorphism are interpreted as Imam Al-Ghabrini mentioned previously.

In other words, the saintly miracle (karama) of the righteous and God's beloved servants are true. The Imam responds to the implicit question: if the saints have miracles, what is the difference between theirs and the Prophets. He responds by explaining that those miracles are different than the miracles of the Prophets because the miracles of the saints are due to their obedience to the Noble Prophets. While the miracles of the saints are gifts given to them for wisdoms known to Allah, the miracles of the Prophets are given to the Prophets as corroborations and witnesses to their truthfulness and Prophethood. So, the primary difference is that the Prophets' miracles are accompanied by a claim to Prophecy, while the gifts of the saints (awliya) are not accompanied by any such claim. In fact, as the Imam indirectly puts it, the gifts of the saints can even be understood to be extensions of the miracles of the Prophets they follow.

The Imam then goes on to affirm matters known only through transmission by way of Prophecy, such as the existence of Paradise and Hellfire and the Day of Resurrection. These positions were denied by many groups outside of Islam. Some, like the pagan Arabs or atheists denied them outright, deeming them to be absurd or implausible. Others, like the falasifa deemed them to be absurd or implausible, so they understood the physical realities of the Day of Judgement, like the Scales, to be metaphorical and to not be understood literally. The Imam states each of these one by one and mentions that they are real and true (haqq), i.e., they are real, existent, physical realities.

The Imam also affirms the position of Sunni Islam with regards to the believer who committed major sins without repentence. The position of the early heretical group, the Khawarij, believed that the committing of major sins would take someone out of the fold of Islam. The position of another early heretical group, the Mu'tazila, held that such a person would have a middle status of neither in Hell, nor in Paradise, and they would remain in a middle state (al-Manzil bayna al-manzilatayn). The position of Sunni Muslims has always been that their affair is in accordance to the will of Allah, but no believer will remain in Hellfire for eternity.

Although the establishment of the Caliph is a matter related to fiqh and not related to Aqida, it is often mentioned as one of the last few topics in Aqida for several reasons. One reason is because the establishment of the Caliphate or a leader for the Muslims is a matter for which there is scholarly consensus. Another reason is because heretical groups like the Shi'a held beliefs opposite to Sunni Islam, believing that the existence of the Caliphate or Imamate and its continuation is a precondition for the religion or a rational necessity or a credal necessity, or the likes.

First draft completed on the second of Dhul Qa'da, 1446 A.H by Uthman and Dhoha Qureshi.