that go to extremes in negation and affirmation. Even where some of their statements contain errors in negation or affirmation, they are closer to the truth than the errors on either side found among the other groups, whose knowledge of the Sunnah and adherence to it are inferior to theirs.

If you mean that they describe Him with attributes known through revelation, such as the Face and the Hand, and that this entails division into parts; or that they describe Him in terms that entail His being a body, and a body is divisible into parts—even though they do not call Him a body—then the response is: This is not peculiar to the Hanbalīs. Rather, it is the position of the great majority of Muslims, indeed of the adherents of other religions as well, and of the early generations of this Ummah and its imams.

In sum, affirming these attributes is the position of those who affirm the divine attributes across all the groups of this Ummah, such as the Kullābiyyah and the imams of the Ashʿariyyah. It is also the position of the Karrāmiyyah. It is well known that what the Ashʿarīs and others like them affirm in this regard differs from what some Karrāmīs and others like them affirm. Many of them deny this; some neither deny nor affirm it; and some affirm what has been transmitted. Now Abū al-Hasan al-Ashʿarī, the imam of his school and one of the most knowledgeable people concerning the views of the speculative theologians, has stated in several places in his books that this is