and He is established above His Throne, as He, Mighty and Majestic, has said, and He is above everything, without boundary or contact, or separation involving isolation and spatial confinement.”

Then Abū Bakr ibn Fūrak said:

“Section. This concludes what our shaykh Abū al-Hasan—may Allah have mercy on him—related concerning the doctrines of the people of hadith, the doctrine of Shaykh Abū Muhammad ‘Abd Allāh ibn Sa‘īd, and the doctrines of his followers. He stated that he affirmed all of this and adhered to it. He also stated, in general terms, that the followers of ‘Abd Allāh ibn Kullāb affirm more than this.

“The sum of what we have related thus makes clear that matters stand as we have explained concerning our shaykhs: they uphold bonds of allegiance with one another, and no disagreement between them warrants, in the judgment of any of them, declaring another an unbeliever or misguided. They adhere to a single foundation and are guided by a single path: that which the Book of Allah establishes as sound, to which the Sunnah of Allah’s Messenger bears witness, and upon which the righteous predecessors acted—may Allah be pleased with them. They have neither invented a doctrine nor introduced a school of thought that is not grounded in one of these foundations.

“This summary is useful in this discussion; [in it] the disputed questions are set out in detail, their respective degrees are explained, and the order in which they are discussed is stated. Their true nature is as we have indicated, namely that