However, when an inferior addresses a superior—as when a slave says to his master, “I am with you”—this conveys companionship and service, not assistance and care.

He said: Furthermore, if we say that Sufyān’s explanation of the verse is figurative interpretation, it is an interpretation transmitted from Ibn ʿAbbās, and the interpretations of the Companions are accepted for the reasons we have mentioned. Even if it is Sufyān’s own interpretation, the leading scholars nevertheless concurred with him, as we have related from Mālik and Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah, and likewise from al-Shāfiʿī, Ahmad, and others. For their statement that Allah is upon His Throne, distinct from