Minjāb, who said: Bishr ibn ‘Umārah narrated to us, from Abū Rawq, from ‘Atiyyah ibn Sa‘d al-‘Awfī, from Abū Sa‘īd al-Khudrī, from the Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace), concerning the words of the Most High:

“No vision can encompass Him, but He encompasses all vision.” [al-An‘ām 103]

He said: “If all creatures, from the time they were created until they perished, were lined up in a single row, they would never encompass Allah, mighty and majestic.”

I say: Al-Tabarānī’s statement that al-Samad encompasses all these meanings is supported by the fact that members of the early generations of this community offered these various explanations. This occurs frequently in explanations of the meanings of His names, such as the Most Merciful, the Compeller, and God, among others. We have established elsewhere that the explanations given by the early generations generally do not conflict: sometimes they describe the same thing through different attributes, while at other times each mentions a type or an individual instance of what is being explained