Seadet-i Ebediyye - Endless Bliss Second Fascicle

great link in al-Imâm al-a’zam Abû Hanîfa’s chain of disciples.
Al-Ash’arî and al-Mâturîdî did not go out of their masters’
common Madhhab; they did not found new madhhabs. These two
and their teachers and the îmâms of the four Madhhabs had one
common Madhhab: the Madhhab well-known with the name of
the Ahl as-Sunnat wa-l-Jamâ’at. It would be more correct to call
it a firqa (group). The beliefs of the people of this group are the
beliefs of the Sahâba, the Tâbi’în and the Taba’at-Tâbi’în. The
book Fiqh al-akbar, written by al-Imâm al-a’zam Abû Hanîfa,
defends the Madhhab of the Ahl as-Sunnat. The word salafiyya
does not exist in that book or in Imâm al-Ghazâlî’s book, Iljâm alawâm
’ani-l-kalâm. We have read those two books several times.
Qawl al-fasl, one of the commentaries to the book Fiqh al-akbar,
is of more than four hundred pages, and teaches the Madhhab of
the Ahl as-Sunnat and answers the heretical groups and
philosophers. Thinking that the books Qawl al-fasl and Iljâm
would be very useful, we reproduced them by offset. Hakîkat
Kitâbevi has offset them a second time by using the same films.
Imâm al-Ghazâlî states in his book Iljâm-al-awâm: “In this book I
shall explain that the Madhhab of the Salaf is right and correct. I
shall explain that those who dissent from this Madhhab are
holders of bid’at. The Madhhab of the Salaf means the Madhhab
held by the Sahâba and the Tâbi’în. There are seven essentials in
this Madhhab.” As can be observed, the book Iljâm imparts the
seven essentials of the Madhhab of the Salaf. To say that they are
the essentials of the Salafiyya is to distort the text and to slander
Imâm al-Ghazâlî. As in all the books of the Ahl as-sunnat, it is
written after the words ‘Salaf’ and ‘Khalaf’ in the section dealing
with bearing witness in the book Durr-ul-Mukhtâr, a very
valuable book of Fiqh: “ ‘Salaf’ is an epithet for the Sahâba and
the Tâbi’în. They are also called the Salaf as-sâlihîn. And those
’ulamâ’ of the Ahl as-Sunnat succeeding the Salaf as-sâlihîn are
called the ‘Khalaf’.” The Taba’ at-tâbi’în, too, are included in the
Salaf as-sâlihîn. Imâm al-Ghazâlî, Imâm ar-Râdî, and Imâm al-
Baydâwî, who were loved and honoured above all by the ’ulamâ’
of Tafsîr, were all in the Madhhab of the Salaf as-sâlîhin. Groups
of bid’at that appeared in their time mixed ’ilm al-kalâm with
philosophy. In fact, they founded their belief on philosophy. The
book al-Milal wa-n-nihal provides detailed information on the
beliefs held by those heretical groups. While defending the
Madhhab of the Ahl as-sunnat against those corrupt groups and
rebutting their heretical ideas, these three imâms gave extensive
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