Acknowledgements (of original German version)
The present work is a lightly revised version of my doctoral dissertation, entitled “The Methodological Foundations of Ibn Taymiyya’s Doctrine on the Divine Attributes, with an Analysis of Selected Attributes,”1 which I completed at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg in September 2017 and defended in July 2018. My primary supervisor, Prof. Abbas Poya, who accepted me as a PhD student in 2013 into a junior research group funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research under his direction, accompanied me graciously throughout this project, always with an open ear. It was he who honed my eye to focus on the essentials and who worked to ensure that I had enough time to complete the dissertation despite the many other obligations of university life. For this I extend to him a special note of thanks. I would also like to thank my secondary reader, Prof. Benjamin Jokisch, as well as Prof. Maha El Kaisy-Friemuth, who agreed to act as a third reviewer when the need arose.
I also owe a debt of gratitude to Prof. Frank Griffel, who took the time to discuss portions of this work with me, as well as Prof. Jon Hoover, who allowed me to present and discuss a chapter of this work in a doctoral seminar of his at the University of Nottingham. I would like to draw particular attention to the dedication of Yusuf Kuhn, who read the entire manuscript attentively and, through his well-informed remarks, contributed considerably to the quality of the work. Even in those cases where we continued to see things differently even after extensive discussion, I always came away with the feeling that I had gained a stronger understanding of the topic discussed. I would also like to thank Dr Thomas Hildebrandt for his eminently meticulous copyediting. Any residual errors or deficiencies—which, without the assistance of the aforementioned persons, would certainly have been more numerous and more substantial than they are—remain, naturally, my responsibility alone.
I would like to express my thanks to the editors at De Gruyter, particularly Prof. Ulrich Rudolph, for accepting this work for publication in the series Worlds of Islam. I also extend my gratitude to the anonymous reviewers who participated in the peer review process. Additional thanks go to Dr Christina Lembrecht, Ms Albina Töws, and Ms Gabrielle Cornefert at De Gruyter for their constantly friendly, competent, and patient editorial support. I also thank the Swiss Asia Society for generously assuming the full costs of printing and publication.
I cannot express adequate thanks here for all the emotional support that I have received from my family, most especially my parents. The same goes for my wife, Rozan Suleiman, who, with her excellent knowledge of Classical Arabic, also helped me decipher many a cryptic passage in Ibn Taymiyya’s works. To them I say from the bottom of my heart: Jazākum Allāhu khayran!
Original title: “Die methodischen Grundlagen der Attributenlehre Ibn Taymiyyas. Mit einer Analyse ausgewählter göttlicher Attribute,” published as Farid Suleiman, Ibn Taymiyya und die Attribute Gottes (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019).