not? And did the early generations ever differ over this?

He replied, “This is a question from which I ask to be excused, for it is obscure and I do not fully grasp what the questioner is aiming at. Nevertheless, I shall point to something that has reached me. The people versed in the inner realities have explained the term ḥadd (limit) with various expressions whose common meaning is that the ḥadd of any thing is the point at which it is set apart from what is other than it. If the one who says, ‘Allah has no ḥadd,’ means that created knowledge cannot encompass His reality, he is correct; but if he means that Allah’s own knowledge—exalted is He—does not encompass Himself, he is misguided. And if he means that Allah, in His essence, is in every place, he is likewise misguided.

I say: The correct stance is to withhold from using this wording at all, for no scriptural text has addressed it. Even if we were to assume that the intended meaning is sound, we are not permitted to voice anything for which Allah has given no leave, lest some innovation creep into the heart. O Allah, preserve our faith.

Abū ’l-Qāsim Ibn ʿAsākir mentioned the ḥāfiẓ (hadith memoriser) Abū Naṣr al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad al-Yūnārātī (1) and preferred him to Abū ’l-Qāsim Ismāʿīl—Allah knows best. It seems Ibn ʿAsākir said this after seeing Ismāʿīl ibn Muḥammad when he had grown old and his memorisation had diminished.

It has already been stated that he died in the year thirty-five.

In that same year there also died: the eminent imam and hadith scholar Abū ’l-Ḥasan Razīn ibn Muʿāwiyah al-ʿAbdarī (2) of Saragossa, who had settled near the Sacred Precinct; the outstanding jurist Abū ʿAlī Aḥmad ibn Saʿd al-ʿIjlī al-Hamadhānī (3); the distinguished imam and linguist Abū ʿAbd Allāh Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad ibn Makkī ibn Abī Ṭālib al-Qaysī al-Qurṭubī (4); and the chief transmitter of Baghdad, Abū Manṣūr ʿAbd—