Masʿūd al-Sijzī said, “I heard Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥākim say, ‘The entire community is unanimous that al-Qutabī is a liar.’”

I reply: This is reckless exaggeration and a sign of scant piety, for I know of no one who had ever accused him of fabrication before this remark. On the contrary, al-Khaṭīb said, “He is reliable.” (1)

Aḥmad ibn Salāmah informed me, on the authority of Ḥammād al-Ḥarrānī, that he heard al-Salafī censure al-Ḥākim for saying, “It is impermissible to transmit from Ibn Qutaybah,”

adding, “Ibn Qutaybah is one of the trustworthy transmitters and a man of the Sunnah.”

He then remarked, “But al-Ḥākim’s motive was doctrinal.”

I say: From what I have seen, al-Ḥākim inclines toward the Karrāmiyyah. Moreover, I have found nothing in Abū Muḥammad’s Mushkil al-Ḥadīth that clashes with the approach of the affirmers and the Hanbalīs—namely, that the reports concerning the divine attributes are to be accepted as they stand, without figurative interpretation. Allah knows best.

His son Aḥmad (2) was a prodigious memoriser: he committed his father’s works to heart and, when he became judge of Egypt, he narrated them there from memory. Crowds gathered to hear them in the year three-hundred-and-twenty-odd AH, and he would say that his father, Abū Muḥammad, had personally dictated them to him.

How excellent is the statement of Nuʿaym ibn Ḥammād, which we have received with the soundest chain from Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Tirmidhī, who heard him say:

“Whoever likens Allah to His creation has fallen into unbelief; and whoever denies what Allah has described Himself with has likewise fallen into unbelief. What He has described Himself with, or what His Messenger has described Him with, is in no way a comparison.”

I comment: His intent was that the attributes follow the One described. Therefore, since the One described—exalted is He—is, “There is nothing like unto Him” (Shura 42:11) in His sacred Essence, then likewise