Description

A Guide To Conclusive Proofs For The Principles Of Belief

Book Specifications

 

Attribute	Details
Title	A Guide To Conclusive Proofs For The Principles Of Belief
Format	[A5] Paperback
Type	Book
Publication Date	2022
Edition	1st
Publisher	Garnet Publishing Limited
Author	Imam al-Haramayn al-Juwayni
Translator	Dr Paul E. Walker
Language	English
ISBN	9781902932620
Length (mm)	240
Width (mm)	170
Depth (mm)	18
Weight (g)	483
Numbered Pages	250
Total Pages	288
Added to our catalogue on	30th March 2023

 

 

*** New to our catalogue – On 30th March 2023 ***

Book Description

This work, commonly known simply as al-Irshad (The Guide); is a major classic of Islamic theology. Its author, Imam al-Haramayn al-Juwayni (d. 478/1085), was the leading Ash’arite (Sunni) theologian of his time but he was more famous for his many important treatises on the principles of law and for having been the teacher of the great al-Ghazzali. Nevertheless, his writings in the field of theology, especially the present book, represent the high point of its development in the Islamic world until then. Here the master sets out systematically what he considered the sure proofs for the principles of any discourse about God and His attributes, about what must be said concerning Him, and how the human being should understand what is possible in respect to God.

The translator, Paul E. Walker, gained his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago and is a historian of ideas at the same university. He specializes in various aspects of Islamic thought in its classical phrase-(from the ninth to twelfth century) and has written a number of books about individual figures from that period.

These include Early Philosophical Shism: The Ismaili Neoplatonism of Abu Ya’qub al-Sijistani (Cambridge University Press, 1993) and Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani: Ismaili Thought in the Age of al-Hakim (I.B. Tauris, 1999).

 

Table of Contents

• Foreword to the Second Edition
• About the Series
• Muhammad bin Hamad Al- Thani Center for Muslim Contribution to Civilization
• Translator’s Preface
• Introduction

 

A Guide to Conclusive Proofs for the Principles of Belief

• Author’s Preface
• Section: On the Character of Reason
• Chapters
• On the opposition of reasoning to knowledge, ignorance and doubt
• Sound reasoning and false reasoning
• On proofs
• Reasoning is a requirement of the law

 

• Section: The True Nature of Knowledge
• Chapters
• Knowledge is both eternal and temporally produced
• Kinds of knowledge and their contraries
• Intellect is necessary knowledge

 

• Section: The Doctrine of the World’s Contingency
• Chapter
• On the proof that the eternal cannot possibly be non-existent

 

• Section: A Statement Affirming the Knowledge of the Maker

 

• Section: A Statement of What Attributes God Requires
• Chapters
• The proof of the Exalted Creator’s eternity
• God, the Exalted, subsists by Himself
• One attribute of God is utter difference from the temporally produced
• On the mutually similar and dissimilar
• Concerning what cannot be attributed to God
• That God is not a body, in contrast to the doctrine of the Karramiyya
• That God does not accept accidents
• Proving the impossibility that the Exalted Lord is a substance (some notes for a refutation of the Christians)

 

• Section: The Knowledge of God’s Absolute Oneness

 

• Section: Affirming Knowledge of Qualifying Attributes
• Chapters
• That the Maker of the world is purposeful
• The Exalted Creator is all-hearing and all-seeing
• It cannot be said of the Creator, the Exalted, that He can taste and smell and so forth
• The Lord is perpetual and of continuous existence

 

• Section: A Statement Affirming Knowledge of the Attributes
• Chapters
• On affirming the modes and refuting those who deny them
• The causation of the necessary and the refutation of those who reject it
• The will of God is eternal
• The opinion of Jahm that affirms temporally contingent items of knowledge
• God speaks, commands and prohibits
• On the real nature of speech and its definition and meaning
• The Mutazilites deny interior speech
• That the speaker is the one in whom speech occurs
• Some doubts of the adversaries
• That the speech of God is eternal according to the literalists
• Our creed concerning recitation
• Our creed concerning what is recited
• The Exalted God’s word does not inhere in copies of the Quran
• The speech of God is heard
• The meaning of the revealing of the Exalted God’s speech
• The speech of the Exalted God is one
• The attributes are not distinct from the essence
• What we say about the attribute of perpetuity

 

• Section: A Statement of the Meaning in the Names of God, the Exalted
• Chapters
• What should be said about the designation and the name
• The law and the names of God
• The meanings of the names of God
• The two hands, the two eyes, and the face

 

• Section: A Statement of What is Possible for God

 

• Section: Proof that the Vision of God is Possible
• Chapters
• Affirming perception
• The perceptions are five
• Every existent may be seen
• The obstacles to perception
• The vision of God, the Exalted
• The vision of the Exalted God will take place in paradise
• The difference between the vision and smell, feeling, and taste

 

• Section: A Statement about the Creation of Acts
• Chapters
• That the human is not a creator
• The distinction between the claim upon the servant with respect to his colours and his body versus the claim upon him with respect to his acts
• On the application of the contingent power to what it empowers
• On being guided, in error, under seal and stamp

 

• Section: The Doctrine of Capacity and Its Characteristic Property
• Chapters
• The contingent power does not persist
• Once more on the contingent power
• The contingent being in the state of coming to be is subject to the power of God, the Exalted
• What is subiect to the contingent power is a single thing
• On obligating what cannot be done
• The power over colours, tastes and the like
• The power of God, the Exalted, to do what will not come to pass Those things that comprise the refutation of the upholders of the doctrine of production
• Concerning forces and intellects
• On willing things that come to exist
• Various arguments of the Mutazilites
• On grace and abandonment
• On censuring the Proponents of Oadar

 

• Section: The Doctrine of Justice and Injustice
• Chapters
• Preliminary points and the issues
• The good and the bad
• That neither humans nor God are subject to the obligations of reason
• On suffering and its characteristics
• On compensations
• Again on compensation

 

• Section: The Doctrine of the Good and the Best
• Chapter
• The doctrine of grace

 

• Section: A Statement in Proof of the Prophetic Missions
• Chapters
• On proving the possibility of prophetic missions
• On prophetic miracles and their conditions
• On the affirmation of saintly marvels and on distinguishing them from prophetic miracles
• Sorcery and what is connected with it
• Section: A Statement of the Way in Which a Miracle Proves the Veracity of the Prophet, God Bless Him and Keep Him Chapters
• That there is no proof of the veracity of the Prophet other than the miracle
• The impossibility of God lying is a condition in the miracle’s proof

 

• Section: The Doctrine about Proving the Prophecy of Our Prophet Muhammad, God Bless Him and Keep Him
• Chapters
• On abrogation
• On the miracles of Muhammad, God bless him and keep him On the various ways the Ouran is inimitable
• The miraculous signs of the apostle, God bless him and keep him, other than the Quran

 

• Section: The General Characteristics of the Prophets
• Chapters
• The doctrine of the prophets’ characteristics in general, the blessings of God be upon them all
• On the impeccability of the prophets

 

• Section: The Doctrine Concerning the Evidence from Tradition

 

• Section: On Time Limits

 

• Section: On Subsistence

 

• Section: On Prices

 

• Section: On Commanding the Good and Prohibiting the Reprehensible

 

• Section: On Resurrection

 

• Section: On Various Characteristics of the Afterlife as Stipulated in Tradition
• Chapters
• On the soul and its significance
• On paradise and hellfire
• On the bridge (and the balance, the pool and the pages)

 

• Section: On Reward and Punishment, the Spoiling of Human Acts, and the Refutation of the Mutazilites, the Khawäri), and the Murila on the Promise and the Threat
• Chapters
• On eternal reward
• On the spoiling of good deeds and the threat
• A grave sin ruins the reward for acts of obedience according to the Mutazilites
• On the difference between venial and grave sins
• On those who die while persevering in an act of disobedience
• On intercession

 

• Section: On Names and Characteristics
• Chapters
• On the meaning of faith
• The increase of faith and its diminution

 

• Section: On Repentance
• Chapters
• On the acceptance of contrition
• The necessitv of contrition
• On contrition for some sins but not others
• On the renewal of repentance
• Is the new found faith in an u believer contrition?
• On the contrition of a person who reverts to sin

 

• Section: The Doctrine of the Imamate

 

• Section: On the Various Categories of Reports in the Tradition

 

• Section: On the Denial of Succession to the Imamate by Designation and the Affirmation of Election

 

• Section: On Election, Its Characteristics, and How the Imamate is to be Invested Chapters
• On investing the imamate in two individuals
• On deposing the imam
• On the qualifications for the imamate

 

• Section: Our Doctrine Affirms the Imamate of Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and ‘Ali, May God be Pleased with Them All
• Chapters
• On the imamate of the less qualified and the relative superiority of the Companions
• On the unjust killing of Uthman
• On the calumny of the Companions
• On the rule regarding waging war against Ali

 

• Bibliography
• Index
• Appendix