Believing, by Allah's Tawfīq

He says:

We assert about the unity of Allah — as did Imam Abū Ḥanīfah and the two aforementioned imams, Abū Yūsuf and Imam Muḥammad al-Shaybānī, may Allah have mercy on them — believing with providence that Allah is one without partner.

Topic headings of this kind are not from the original book. They were added later, simply to divide the text for the purposes of study; nor are they the translator's work.

Muʿtaqidīna bi-tawfīq Allāh: he is introducing the subject. After this he says qāla al-imām: the Imam said. Everything that comes afterwards is what the Imam said, or what he is saying that the Imam said. This whole book is like one sentence, or two sentences, because everything is what is stated.

He says bi-tawfīq Allāh: again, he is drawing on the mercy of Allah (swt). Tawfīq is a word used a lot, but what does it mean? Tawfīq is certainly ability; but al-Sayyid al-Jurjānī has defined it in his Taʿrīfāt as jaʿlu Allāhi fiʿla ʿibādihi muwāfiqan li-mā yuḥibbuhu wa yarḍāh: for Allah (swt) to make the actions of His servants in accordance with what Allah is pleased with and loves. That is what we hope for from Allah (swt). We do not want to do it alone. We want Allah (swt) to make our actions conform to what He is pleased with.

This begins the first section. This entire section, which is the longest section of the book and runs all the way until point 30, speaks about Allah, His attributes, divine oneness, or tawḥīd. There are other sections afterwards in which he reiterates some of these points and clarifies them further; so this is not the only section about Allah (swt) in the book.

A word about the book in general, and its different sections. It is not as though he said that the first half of the book would be about Allah, that all of the discussions about that would be brought together in this section, and that the book would then move on to something else. That has been done by, for example, al-Laqānī in Jawharat al-Tawḥīd, and by other authors. The earlier authors did not categorise things like that. Issues come back. Even Abū Ḥanīfah (may Allah have mercy on him) comes back to issues: he speaks about the kalām of Allah, goes on to something else, comes back, and then reiterates that point, because it is so important. This happens a lot, and there is no need to be put off by it; that is just the way the book is.

The first point is very, very important: inna Allāha wāḥidun lā sharīka lah. Another important point is that different editions of this book have split up the points in different ways. This one is done in 130 points; others do it differently. It seems that Imam al-Ṭaḥāwī did not actually number the points. His was just straight prose, and it was divided up afterwards.