Musa ibn ʿIsa.

Saʿid said, “He passed away on the night preceding Friday.”

Khalid ibn ʿAbd al-Salam al-Sadafi recounted: “I attended the funeral of al-Layth ibn Saʿd with my father, and I have never seen a funeral more magnificent. I saw the people wholly overcome with grief; they were consoling one another and weeping. I said, ‘Father, it is as though every single person here were the one bereaved by this funeral.’ He replied, ‘My son, you will never witness the like of it again.’”

Abu Bakr al-Khallal, the jurist, said: “Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Waṣil the Qur’an-reciter informed me—he said: al-Haytham ibn Kharijah narrated to us—he said: al-Walid ibn Muslim told us: ‘I asked Malik, al-Thawri, al-Layth, and al-Awzaʿi about the reports that deal with the divine attributes, and they replied, ‘Let them pass exactly as they have come.’’’

Abu ʿUbayd said, “We never encountered anyone who interpreted these hadiths, and we ourselves do not interpret them.”

I say: Abu ʿUbayd (1) authored the book Kitab Gharib al-Hadith, yet he never treated the narrations concerning the divine attributes with any allegorical interpretation whatsoever, nor did he explain a single one of them. He himself informed us that he did not meet anyone who interpreted them. By Allah, had their interpretation been either permissible or obligatory, their concern for it would surely have exceeded their concern for the hadiths on subsidiary rulings and etiquette. Since they left those texts just as they had been transmitted, affirming them without interpretation, it is clear that this is the truth from which there is no turning away.

Al-Layth also narrated from some scholars of his own generation—indeed, from others who were even younger: he transmitted from Saʿid ibn Bashir, Saʿid ibn ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Jumahi, and Shuʿayb