and his companions are closer to Ibn Kullāb regarding temporal occurrences, for their position on this is the same as Ibn Kullāb’s, not that of the Karrāmiyyah. Thus, those theologians, jurists, and hadith scholars affiliated with Ibn Kullāb are not known to have differed with the scholars of hadith regarding the Throne. Rather, the dispute between them and others concerned the Quran. And Allah knows best.

What we have mentioned makes clear that, in the early days of Islam, those who differed from the Muslims concerning the Throne and Allah’s being above it were exceedingly few, as stated by Ibn Kullāb, the leading authority followed by al-Ashʿarī and his companions—even though most later Ashʿarīs came to side with the Muʿtazilah on this matter. Indeed, it may be said that, in his view and that of others like him, the group best known for the negation he mentioned is the Peripatetic philosophers: the followers of Aristotle among the earlier thinkers, and such later thinkers as al-Fārābī, Ibn Sīnā, and their like. And among