(1) In the manuscript’s margin, penned in a different hand, one reads: “The speaker was certainly in error, as was the one who approved his words and the person who praised him. Indeed, it would not be far-fetched to declare the author of that statement an unbeliever, for he has denied Islam to a great scholar of this community—scholars who are not Hanbalis but represent the vast majority. In this book the compiler has exaggerated in extolling the foremost advocates of anthropomorphism, rehearsing their merits while ignoring their innovations, even counting those innovations as Sunnah. He at the same time belittles the champions of divine transcendence (tanzih), whether by insinuation or open statement, and overlooks their considerable virtues and their services to the religion, as he did in the biographies of Imamu-l-Haramayn and al-Ghazali. Allah is his reckoner; there is no power and no strength except with Allah, the Most High, the Most Great.” Shuayb comments: “From the lines of this note it is clear that its author is a staunch Ashari who bears rancour toward Imam al-Dhahabi, for he attributes to him what he is innocent of and puts in his mouth what he never said. The report al-Dhahabi cited in this biography did not pass without his criticising the one who uttered it and highlighting its weakness; he later described that man as rigid and coarse-mannered and concluded, ‘What he said is open to objection.’ “As for the charge that al-Dhahabi ‘goes to extremes in praising the heads of the mujassimah, often listing their virtues while overlooking their innovations and treating them as Sunnah,’ this is a baseless claim and an audacious falsification of facts. Al-Dhahabi merely esteems the leading figures of Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamaah who adopted the way of the pious predecessors (salaf) in the matter of the divine attributes: they believed in what Allah affirmed for Himself and what His Messenger affirmed for Him, accepting those attributes in their apparent sense befitting Allah’s majesty, without distortion (tahrif) or negation (taatil), and without inquiring into the how (takyif) or likening them to creation (tamthil), as the Quran states, ‘Nothing is like unto Him, and He is the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing.’ These are the men the author praises, whose merits he records and whose virtues he highlights so that scholars may take them as exemplars. Can such men be branded ‘leaders of the anthropomorphists’? Glory be to You! That is a tremendous slander. “In many places throughout his work one finds sturdy, balanced criticism coupled with rigorous argumentation and unwavering fairness toward any statement he deems erroneous or contrary to the method of the salaf, whoever the speaker may be, without favouritism or evasion. In this very biography he criticises Abu Ismail, noting that his Manazil al-Sa’irin contains problematic passages, despite Abu Ismail’s affirmation of the attributes. See pp. 286–287 of the biography of Imam Ahmad in volume XI of this book. I am inclined to think the author of that marginal note imagines that the salafi view of the attributes necessarily entails anthropomorphism, and that is what drove him to write this reprehensible comment.”