In any case, al-Ḥāfiẓ ʿAbd al-Ghanī was a man of piety, learning, devotion, and fearless proclamation of the truth, and his merits were many. We seek Allah’s protection from caprice, contentiousness, partisanship, and slander, and we disavow every anthropomorphist and every negator (1).
Of al-Ḥāfiẓ’s spiritual discernment and his extraordinary gifts:
Al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Ḍiyāʾ said: I heard al-Ḥāfiẓ Abū Mūsā ibn ʿAbd al-Ghanī relate, “I was with my father in Egypt while he was narrating the virtues of Sufyān al-Thawrī. Within myself I thought, ‘My father is like him.’ He turned to me and said, ‘How far we are from those men!’
I heard Naṣr ibn Riḍwān the Qur’an-reciter say: The pulpit of al-Ḥāfiẓ was rather low, and people had to crane their necks toward him. It crossed my mind that it would be better if it were raised a little. Al-Ḥāfiẓ immediately stopped reciting from the section in front of him and said, ‘One of the brothers wishes that this pulpit be raised a little (2).’ So they lengthened its legs.
(1) This is the position of Imam al-Dhahabi, and it is the sound one, for there is no benefit in plunging into all these mazes. In his Tarikh al-Islam, replying to al-Sibt, he writes: “I say: the claim that the jurists unanimously issued a fatwa declaring him an unbeliever is defective speech and a blatant lie. Only a few Shafi‘i jurists who were biased against him gave such a ruling, whereas Shaykh Muwaffaq al-Din and Abu’l-Yaman al-Kindi, the senior authorities of the Hanafis and Hanbalis, supported him. We seek refuge in Allah from injustice and ignorance.” (MS Ahmed III, fol. 273).
Ibn Rajab adds: “I read, in the handwriting of the hadith-master Imam al-Dhahabi, a refutation of the one who reported a consensus on his excommunication. Concerning his words ‘they unanimously agreed’, no such agreement existed; only some Ash‘ari leaders gave that verdict—men whom he, for his part, declared unbelievers. The man never said more than what many Hanbali scholars and hadith specialists say: that the established divine attributes are taken according to their literal reality, not figuratively, meaning they are accepted as they come without being re-phrased, as the Mu‘tazila or later Ash‘aris have done—while still affirming that His attributes resemble nothing in creation.” (Dhayl, 2/24).
(2) The wording in Ibn Rajab’s Dhayl has been corrupted because the book’s editor misunderstood the story, so it now reads: “One of the brothers said: We wish…”. The person intended by “one of the brothers” is Nasr b. Ridwan al-Maqri.