ABSTRACT
In this chapter I will read closely ʿAyn al-Quḍāt’s Tamhīdāt (“Preparations”), a text which he completed in 521/1127. In the course of this chapter, it should become clear why ʿAyn al-Quḍāt failed to report on the existence of this text when in 525/1127 he wrote Shakwā al-Gharīb in his defense. Chronologically Tamhīdāt falls between Zubda al-Ḥaqā’iq, which he wrote in 516/1122 and Shakwā al-Gharīb which he composed in 525/1130. Tamhīdāt, plural of tamhīd, means “preparations,” as if ʿAyn al-Quḍāt wrote these ten preparatory chapters in anticipation of a fuller treatment of them at a future time. Or at least so the rhetorical set up of the text suggests. Another way of reading this title is that what ʿAyn al-Quḍāt, and by extension anyone, meant to write was always to be promised, anticipated, prepared for, but never fully delivered.
