—and many of them went on to state the same about a host of other attributes.

[The consensus of the salaf on affirming the narrative attributes]
By Allah, after thorough investigation and reading everything I could find from the early generations, I have not encountered a single statement—explicit, implicit, or by any contextual indication—that negates the narrative attributes in their actual sense. On the contrary, I found that much of their speech—sometimes expressly, sometimes by clear implication—confirms the entire class of such attributes. I am not claiming that each individual among them affirmed every single attribute, but what I have seen is that they affirmed the category as a whole, and I did not find anyone among them who denied it. Rather, they rejected resemblance (tashbīh), censuring those who liken Allah to His creation, while also condemning those who deny the attributes altogether. As Nuʿaym ibn Ḥammād al-Khuzāʿī, the teacher of al-Bukhārī, said: “Whoever likens Allah to His creation has committed disbelief, and whoever rejects what Allah has described Himself with has committed disbelief. What Allah or His Messenger has used to describe Him is not tashbīh.”