and He is ever described by them: life, knowledge, power, hearing, sight, speech, will, face, two hands, two eyes, anger, and pleasure. This is the precise text of his words.

He said the same in his book al-Tamhīd and in his book al-Dhabb ʿan al-Ashʿarī.

He also stated: “We have clarified the religion of the ummah and of Ahl al-Sunnah—that these attributes are to be passed on exactly as they have come, without asking how, without delimiting them, without likening them to created things, and without picturing them.”

I comment: This method is the way of the early generations; it is what Abū al-Hasan and his companions set forth; it is submission to the texts of the Quran and the Sunnah. Ibn al-Bāqillānī, Ibn Fūrak, and the leading scholars upheld it until the time of Abū al-Maʿālī, then the time of Shaykh Abū Ḥāmid; after that, disagreements and diverse views appeared—may Allah pardon us.

Abū Dharr al-Harawī composed a work on the divine attributes fashioned after the book of Abū Bakr al-Bayhaqī, complete with the formulas “He narrated to us” and “He informed us.”

Al-Ḥasan ibn Baqī al-Māliqī said: A shaykh told me:
“It was said to Abū Dharr, ‘You are from Herat; how then did you adopt the school of Mālik and the view of Abū al-Hasan?’
“He replied, ‘I traveled to Baghdad,’ and he recounted something similar to what was mentioned earlier about Ibn al-Ṭayyib. He said, ‘So I followed his school.’” ⦗1⦘

ʿAbd al-Ghāfir ibn Ismāʿīl says in the History of Naysābūr: “Abū Dharr was ascetic, pious, and learned; he was generous, keeping nothing in reserve. He became one of the senior shaykhs of the Sacred Precinct, renowned in the field of Sufism. He produced a fine critical extraction for the two Ṣaḥīḥs and was a ḥāfiẓ with a great many teachers.” ⦗2⦘

I add: He also authored a concise one-volume Mustadrak on the two Ṣaḥīḥs, from which I have taken notes