of Your Throne(1)—does this amount to invoking a created thing or the Creator Himself? The scholars disagreed on that very question, and thus they differed over the permissibility of the phrase.

Abū Yūsuf received a report containing the wording:

“I ask You by the moorings of majesty of Your Throne, by the utmost reach of mercy in Your Book, by Your Greatest Name, Your most exalted glory, and Your perfect words.”(2)

On the basis of that tradition he deemed the supplication permissible.

Others, however, contested the matter and cited the ḥadīth of Abū Saʿīd, transmitted by Ibn Mājah, concerning the prayer a person recites on his way to the mosque:

“O Allah, I ask You by the right of those who beseech You, and by the right of this my going forth. I have not left my home out of insolence or pride, nor for show or reputation; I have gone out to avoid Your wrath and to seek Your good pleasure. I ask You to save me from the Fire and to forgive me.”(3)

Allah, exalted is He, has also said:

“And fear Allah, by Whom you appeal to one another, and the womb-ties.” [al-Nisāʾ 4:1](4)

According to the recitation of Ḥamzah and others who render “the womb-ties” (al-arḥām) in the genitive, the verse means: they appeal by Him and by the ties of kinship—just as one says, “I ask you by Allah and by the bond of kinship between us.”

Some grammarians have claimed that nothing may be conjoined to a pronoun governed by a preposition unless the preposition is repeated. They said this only because in most speech the preposition is in fact repeated; yet Arabic, in both prose and poetry, is also heard conjoining without repetition, as Sībawayh cited:

“mā fī-hā ghayru-hu wa farasu-h”
(“In it there is none but him and his horse”).(5)

Accordingly, there is no necessity here to repeat the preposition, contrary to what is sometimes alleged.