and the refreshment and comfort it brings, as in the expression “a cool life,” meaning a life of ease and abundance. What indicates that fullness of knowledge is intended is his statement, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, at the end of the hadith: “Then I knew what lies between the east and the west.” This was only because Allah Most High illuminated his heart and opened his breast through knowledge. Some versions read, “I felt the coolness of His fingertips.” Its explanation will follow, if Allah Most High wills.

The response to this is that he provided no chain of transmission for either of these two hadiths. I mean the kind of sourcing appropriate to his book: attributing the hadith to a hadith collection so that its source can be identified. It appears that he copied them from Ta’wīl al-akhbār (Interpretation of the Reports) by Abū Bakr ibn Fūrak, for this is the work on which he relies for much of what he cites concerning the reports about the divine attributes and their interpretation. In his book, Abū Bakr ibn Fūrak collected some of the interpretations offered by