peace be upon him, “There is no heart that is not between two fingers of the All-Merciful.” (1)
He went on to say: “The meanings just mentioned—and others like them that Allah and His Messenger have attributed to Him—are realities whose true nature cannot be established by reflection or deliberation. We do not deem anyone an unbeliever for being ignorant of them unless, after they have reached him, he persists in rejecting them.

Ahmad ibn Hibat Allah informed us; Zayn al-Umanaaʾ al-Ḥasan ibn Muhammad informed us; Abu al-Qāsim al-Asadī informed us; Abu al-Qāsim ibn Abī al-ʿAlāʾ informed us; ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Naṣr al-Tamīmī informed us; Abu Saʿīd al-Dīnawarī, the scribe of Ibn Jarīr, informed us; Abu Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī himself related his creed to us, saying, among other things: “It is enough for a person to know that his Lord is the One who is established over the Throne; whoever goes beyond that has failed and lost.”

The tafsīr of this Imām is filled, in the verses dealing with the divine attributes, with the statements of the salaf (early Muslims) that affirm those attributes, not with negation or allegorical reinterpretation, while also declaring that they never resemble the attributes of created beings.

Abu al-Faḍl Ahmad ibn Hibat Allah informed us; Muslim ibn Ahmad al-Māzinī informed us; ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥasan, the ḥāfiẓ of Baalbek, in the year 551 AH, informed us; ʿAlī ibn Ibrāhīm al-Ḥusaynī informed us; Abu Bakr al-Ḥāfiẓ informed us, saying:
“I read before Abu al-Ḥasan Hibat Allah ibn al-Ḥasan the litterateur the following elegy by Ibn Durayd. I said, ‘Ibn Durayd laments Ibn Jarīr with these verses:’

You cannot overturn Allah’s decree,
So seek the help of patience—or wear the cloak of remorse.

Take refuge in the shelter of submission and be content
With what the Guardian has ordained, whether loathed or loved.

A calamity—indeed a treasure—whose abundance
The hands of events have scattered and shorn away.”