God (may He be glorified) is letters and sounds of the same kind as the sounds and letters attributed to His servants; they also maintained that His speech (kalam) is created, and held other doctrines that imply likening God to His creation. The first to go to extremes in anthropomorphism (tashbih) were the Sabaiyya, from the Rafida Shi‘is who affirmed the divinity (ilahiyya) of ‘Ali (may God be pleased with him). See: al-Firaq bayna al-Firaq (The Divisions among the Sects) by al-Baghdadi, pp. 225–230; and al-Tabsir fi al-Din (Illumination in Religion) by al-Isfarayini, pp. 119–221. (1) He is Muḥammad ibn Ismā‘īl ibn Ibrāhīm ibn al-Mughīra ibn Bardizbah al-Ju‘fī, their mawlā, known as al-Bukhārī (Shaikh al-Islām and leading imam of the ḥuffāẓ), Abu ‘Abd Allāh. Born 194 AH; died 256 AH. He authored several works, most notably Al-Ṣaḥīḥ, in which he collected authentic hadiths, each verified by its narrators, selected from 600,000 reports; this collection is the most reliable of the six canonical works. It has been explained by scholars such as Ibn Ḥajar and al-‘Aynī, among others. He concluded this Ṣaḥīḥ with a section entitled Kitāb al-Tawḥīd (Book of Monotheism) [vol. 8:162–219], comprising 58 chapters in which he refutes deviant sects such as the Jahmiyya and the Mu‘tazila. In this refutation he adopted a clear method, limiting himself to quotations from the Qur’ān and the Sunnah that demonstrate the falsity of these doctrines. As noted by Shaykh ‘Abd Allāh ibn Muḥammad al-Ghunaymān in the introduction to his commentary on this section (vol. 1 published 1405 AH)—may God grant him success in completing it. See: Tadhkirat al-Ḥuffāẓ by al-Dhahabī 2:555–557; Tahdhīb al-Tahdhīb by Ibn Ḥajar 9:47–55; Tārīkh Baghdād by al-Baghdādī 2:4–34; Tahdhīb al-Asmā’ wa al-Lughāt by al-Nawawī 1:67–76. (2) He is Abū Dāwūd Sulaymān ibn al-Ash‘ath ibn Isḥāq ibn Bashīr ibn Shaddād ibn ‘Amr al-Azdī al-Sijistānī, one of the foremost ḥuffāẓ and scholars of ḥadīth and its ‘ulūl (principles and underlying reasons). Born 202 AH; died in the year =