'Aqeedatut-Tahaawiyyah
In the Name of Allâh, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful
by Imâm Abû Ja'far at-Tahâwî PrefaceIn the Name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate.
Imam Tahawi's al-'Aqidah, representative of the viewpoint of ahl-al- Sunnah wa-al-Jama'a, has long been the most widely acclaimed, and indeed indispensable, reference work on Muslim beliefs, of which this is an edited English translation .
Imam Abu Ja'far Ahmad bin Muhammad bin Salamah bin Salmah bin 'Abd al Malik bin Salmah bin Sulaim bin Sulaiman bin Jawab Azdi, popularly known as Imam Tahawi, after his birth-place in Egypt, is among the most outstanding authorities of the Islamic world on Hadith and fiqh (jurisprudence). He lived 239-321 A.H., an epoch when both the direct and indirect disciples of the four Imams- Imam Abu Hanifah, Imam Malik, Imam Shafi'i and Imam Ahmad bin Hanbal - were teaching and practicing. This period was the zenith of Hadith and fiqh studies, and Imam Tahawi studied with all the living authorities of the day.
Al-'Aqidah, though small in size, is a basic text for all times, listing what a Muslim must know and believe and inwardly comprehend. There is consensus among the Companions, Successors and all the leading Islamic authorities such as Imam Abu Hanifah, Imam Abu Yusuf, Imam Muhammad, Imam Malik, Imam Shafi'i and Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal on the doctrines enumerated in this work. For these doctrines shared by ahl-al-sunnah wa-al-Jama'ah owe their origin to the Holy Qur+an and consistent and confirmed Ahadith - the undisputed primary sources of Islam.
Being a text on the Islamic doctrines, this work draws heavily on the arguments set forth in the Holy Qur'an and Sunnah. Likewise, the arguments advanced in refuting the views of sects that have deviated from the Sunnah, are also taken from the Holy Qur'an and Sunnah.
As regards the sects mentioned in this work, a study of Islamic history up to the time of Imam Tahawi would be quite helpful. References to sects such as Mu'tazilah, Jahmiyyah, Qadriyah, and Jabriyah are found in the work.
Moreover, it contains allusions to the unorthodox and deviant views of the Shi'ah, Khawarij and such mystics as had departed from the right path. There is an explicit reference in the work to the nonsensical controversy on khalq-al -Qu'ran in the times of Ma'mun and some other 'Abbasid Caliphs.
While the permanent relevance of the statements of belief in al-'Aqidah is obvious, the historical weight and point of certain of these statements can be properly appreciated only if the work is used as a text for study under the guidance of some learned Person able to elucidate its arguments fully, with reference to the intellectual and historical background of the sects refuted in the work. Such study helps one to better understand the Islamic doctrines and avoid the deviations of the past or the present.
May Allah grant us a true undersanding of faith and include us with those to whom Allah refers as 'those who believe, fear Allah and do good deeds'; and 'he who fears Allah, endures affliction, then Allah will not waste the reward of well-doers.'
Iqbal Ahmad A'zami
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In the Name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate
Praise be to Allah, Lord of all the Worlds
The great scholar Hujjat al-lslam Abu Jaafar al-Warraq al-Tahawi al-Misri, may Allah have mercy on him, said: This is a presentation of the beliefs of ahl-al-Sunnah wa al-Jama'ah, according to the school of the jurists of this religion, Abu Hanifah an-Nu'man ibn Thabit al-Kufi, Abu Yusuf Ya'qub ibn Ibrahim al-Ansari and Abu 'Abdullah Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Shaybani, may Allah be pleased with them all, and what they believe regarding the funda- mentals of the religion and their faith in the Lord of all the Worlds.
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1. We say about Allah's unity believing by Allah's help - that Allah is One, without any partners.
2. There is nothing like Him.
3. There is nothing that can overwhelm Him.
4. There is no god other than Him.
5. He is the Eternal without a beginning and enduring without end.
6. He will never perish or come to an end.
7. Nothing happens except what He wills.
8. No imagination can conceive of Him and no understanding can comprehend Him.
9. He is different from any created being.
10. He is living and never dies and is eternally active and never sleeps.
11. He creates without His being in need to do so and provides for His creation without any effort.
12. He causes death with no fear and restores to life without difficulty.
13. He has always existed together with His attributes since before creation.
Bringing creation into existence did not add anything to His attributes that was not already there. As He was, together with His attributes, in pre-eternity, so He will remain t hroughout endless time.
14. It was not only after the act of creation that He could be described as 'the Creator' nor was it only by the act of origination that He could he described as 'the Originator'.
15. He was always the Lord even when there was nothing to be Lord of, and always the Creator even when there was no creation.
16. In the same way that He is the 'Bringer to life of the dead', after He has brought them lo life a first time, and deserves this name before bringing them to life, so too He deserves the name of 'Creator' before He has created them.
17. This is because He has the power to do everything, everything is dependent on Him, everything is easy for Him, and He does not need anything. 'There is nothing like Him and He is the Hearer, the Seer'. (al-Shura 42:11)
18. He created creation with His knowledge.
19. He appointed destinies for those He created.
20. He allotted to them fixed life spans.
21. Nothing about them was hidden from Him before He created them, and He knew everything that they would do before He created them.
22. He ordered them to obey Him and forbade them to disobey Him.
23. Everything happens according to His degree and will, and His will is accomplished. The only will that people have is what He wills for them. What He wills for them occurs and what He does not will, does not occur.
24. He gives guidance to whoever He wills, and protects them, and keeps them safe from harm, out of His generosity; and He leads astray whoever He wills, and abases them, and afflicts them, out of His justice.
25. All of them are subject to His will between either His generosity or His justice.
26. He is exalted beyond having opposites or equals.
27. No one can ward off His decree or put back His command or overpower His affairs.
28. We believe in all of this and are certain that everything comes from Him. 29. And we are certain that Muhammad (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) is His chosen servant and selected Prophet and His Messenger with whom He is well pleased.
30. And that he is the seal of the prophets and the Imam of the godfearing and the most honoured of all the messengers and the beloved of the Lord of all the Worlds.
31. Every claim to prophethood after Him is falsehood and deceit.
32. He is the one who has been sent to all the jinn and all mankind with truth and guidance and with light and illumination.
33. The Qur'an is the word of Allah. It came from Him as speech without it being possible to say how. He sent it down on His Messenger as revelation.
The believers accept it, as absolute truth. They are certain that it is, in truth, the word of Allah. It is not created, as is the speech of human beings, and anyone who hears it and claims that it is human speech has become an unbeliever. Allah warns him and censures him and threatens him with Fire when He says, Exalted is He: 'I will burn him in the Fire.' (al-Muddaththir 74: 26) When Allah threatens with the Fire those who say 'This is just human speech' (al-Muddaththir 74: 25) we know for certain that it is the speech of the Creator of mankind and that it is totally unlike the speech of mankind.
34. Anyone who describes Allah as being in any way the same as a human being has become an unbeliever. All those who grasp this will take heed and refrain from saying things such as the unbelievers say, and they will know that He, in His attributes, is not like human beings.
35. 'The Seeing of Allah by the People of the Garden' is true, without their vision being all-encompassing and without the manner of their vision being known. As the Book of our Lord has expressed it: 'Faces on that Day radiant, looking at their Lord'. (al-Qiyamah 75: 22-3) The explanation of this is as Allah knows and wills. Everything that has come down to us about this from the Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, in authentic traditions, is as he said and means what he intended. We do not delve into that, trying to interpret it according to our own opinions or letting our imaginations have free rein. No one is safe in his religion unless he surrenders himself completely to Allah, the Exalted and Glorified and to His Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and leaves the knowledge of things that are ambiguous to the one who knows them.
36. A man's Islam is not secure unless it is based on submission and surrender. Anyone who desires to know things which it is beyond his capacity to know, and whose intellect is not content with surrender, will find that his desire veils him from a pure understanding of Allah's true unity, clear knowledge and correct belief. and that he veers between disbelief and belief, confirmation and denial and acceptance and rejection. He will he subject to whisperings and find himself confused and full of doubt, being neither an accepting believer nor a denying rejector.
37. Belief of a man in the 'seeing of Allah by the people of the Garden is not correct if he imagines what it is like, or interprets it according to his own understanding since the interpretation of this seeing' or indeed, the meaning of any of the subtle phenomena which are in the realm of Lordship, is by avoiding its interpretation and strictly adhering to the submission. 'This is the din of Muslims. Anyone who does not guard himself against negating the attributes of Allah, or likening Allah to something else, has gone astray and has failed lo understand Allah's Glory, because our lord, the Glorified and the Exalted, can only possibly be described in terms of Oneness and Absolute Singularity and no creation is in any way like Him.
38. He is beyond having limits placed on Him, or being restricted, or having parts or limbs. Nor is He contained by the six directions as all created things are.
39. Al-Mi'raj (the Ascent through the heavens) is true. The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, was taken by night and ascended in his bodily form, while awake, through the heavens, to whatever heights Allah willed for him. Allah ennobled him in the way that He ennobled him and revealed to him what He revealed to him, 'and his heart was not mistaken about what it saw' (al-Najm 53: 11). Allah blessed him and granted him peace in this world and the next.
40. Al-Hawd, (the Pool which Allah will grant the Prophet as an honour to quench the thirst of his Ummah on the Day Of Judgement), is true.
41. Al-Shifa'ah, (the intercession, which is stored up for Muslims), is true, as related in the (consistent and confirmed) Ahadith.
42. The covenant 'which Allah made with Adam and his offspring' is true.
43. Allah knew, before the existence of time, the exact number of those who would enter the Garden and the exact number of those who would enter the Fire. This number will neither be increased nor decreased.
44. The same applies to all actions done by people, which are done exactly as Allah knew they would be done. Everyone is cased to what he was created for and it is the action with which a man's life is sealed which dictates his fate. Those who are fortunate are fortunate by the decree of Allah, and those who are wretched are wretched by the decree of Allah.
45. The exact nature of the decree is Allah's secret in His creation, and no angel near the Throne, nor Prophet sent with a message, has been given knowledge of it. Delving into it and reflecting too much about it only leads to destruction and loss, and results in rebelliousness. So be extremely careful about thinking and reflecting on this matter or letting doubts about it assail you, because Allah has kept knowledge of the decree away from human beings, and forbidden them to enquire about it, saying in His Book, 'He is not asked about what He does but they are asked'. (al-Anbiya' 21: 23) So anyone who asks: 'Why did Allah do that?' has gone against a judgement of the Book, and anyone who goes against a judgement of the Book is an unbeliever.
46. This in sum is what those of Allah's friends with enlightened hearts need to know and constitutes the degree of those firmly endowed with knowledge. For there are two kinds of knowledge: knowledge which is accessible to created beings, and knowledge which is not accessible to created beings. Denying the knowledge which is accessible is disbelief, and claiming the knowledge which is inaccessible is disbelief. Belief can only be firm when accessible knowledge is accepted and inaccessible knowledge is not sought after.
47. We believe in al-Lawh (the Tablet) and al-Qalam (the Pen) and in everything written on it. Even if all created beings were to gather together to make something fail to exist, whose existence Allah had written on the Tablet, they would not be able to do so. And if all created beings were to gather together to make something exist which Allah had not written on it, they would not be able to do so. The Pen has dried having written down all that will be in existence until the Day of Judgement. Whatever a person has missed he would have never got it, and whatever one gets, he would have never missed it.
48. It is necessary for the servant to know that Allah already knows everything that is going to happen in His creation and hits decreed it in a detailed and decisive way. There is nothing that He has created in either the heavens or the earth that can contradict it, or add to it, or erase it, or change it, or decrease it, or increase it in any way. This is a fundamental aspect of belief and a necessary element of all knowledge and recognition of Allah's oneness and Lordship. As Allah says in His Book: 'He created everything and decreed it he a detailed way'. (al-Furqan 25: 2) And He also says: 'Allah's command is always a decided decree'. (al-Ahzab 33: 38) So woe to anyone who argues with Allah concerning the decree and who, with a sick heart, starts delving into this matter. In his delusory attempt to investigate the Unseen, he is seeking a secret that can never be uncovered, and he ends up an evil-doer, telling nothing but lies.
49. Al-'Arsh (the Throne) and al-Kursi (the Chair) are true.
50. He is independent of the Throne and what is beneath it.
51. He encompasses everything and is above it, and what He has created is incapable of encompassing Him.
52. We say with belief, acceptance and submission that Allah took Ibrahim as an intimate friend and that He spoke directly to Musa.
53. We believe in the angels, and the Prophets, and the books which were revealed to the messengers, and we bear witness that they were all following the manifest Truth.
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