1. Sura 13:11. 

2. For a further analysis of this passage, see Habib Ahmad Mashhur al-Haddad, Key to the Garden (Quilliam Press, London 1990 CE), 78-81. 

3. Sura 26:89. The archetype is Abrahamic: see Sura 37:84. 

4. This hadith is in fact an instance of takhsis al-amm: a frequent procedure of usul al-fiqh by which an apparently unqualified statement is qualified to avoid the contradiction of another necessary principle. See Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri, Reliance of the Traveller, tr. Nuh Ha Mim Keller (Abu Dhabi, 1991 CE), 907-8 for some further examples. 

5. Ibn Asakir, Tabyin Kadhib al-Muftari (Damascus, 1347), 97. 

6. Cited in Muhammad al-Jurdani, al-Jawahir al-lu'lu'iyya fi sharh al-Arba'in al-Nawawiya (Damascus, 1328), 220-1. 

7. 17:85. 

8. 79:40. 

9. al-Qushayri, al-Risala (Cairo, n.d.), I, 393. 

10. al-Zabidi, Ithaf al-sada al-muttaqin (Cairo, 1311), I, 27. 

11. Sha'rani, al-Tabaqat al-Kubra (Cairo, 1374), I, 4. 

\12. It is true that Ibn Kathir in his Bidaya is critical of some later Sufis. Nonetheless, in his Mawlid, which he asked his pupils to recite on the occasion of the Blessed Prophet's birthday each year, he makes his personal debt to a conservative and sober Sufism quite clear. 

13. See G. Makdisi's article 'Ibn Taymiyya: A Sufi of the Qadiriya Order' in the American Journal of Arabic Studies, 1973. 

14. Narrated by Bukhari. The translation is from J. Robson, Mishkat al-Masabih (Lahore, 1970), II, 1380.