al-Khalīl al-Sakkāk, Yūnus ibn ʿAbd al-Rahmān, and those Shia who followed their views: Allah Most High is a body unlike other bodies. This was the general position on which Hishām ibn al-Hakam and his followers agreed. His opponents’ accounts of this position were consistent, except for what al-Rāwandī suggested in his book defending Hishām’s doctrine concerning corporeality: he claimed that He—exalted and sanctified—is like created beings in one respect but not another.

What I subsequently established concerning Hishām’s position, through accounts later given by those of his followers who agreed with him, was that he claimed that, after places came into existence, Allah Most High was in one place rather than another, and that movement was possible for Him. I heard some of his followers relate that he claimed that He was light. Others among them said that he claimed that His essence was finite. And disagreement arose