earths is five hundred years, and at its close he inserted a phrase we have already cited (1) in our commentary on this verse of Sūrat al-Ḥadīd.

Al-Tirmidhī then remarked, “This ḥadith is gharīb in this chain.” He added, “It is related from Ayyūb, Yūnus ibn ʿUbayd, and ʿAlī ibn Zayd that they said: al-Ḥasan did not hear from Abū Hurayrah (2).”

Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Ḥātim narrated it in his Tafsīr through Abū Jaʿfar al-Rāzī—Qatādah—from al-Ḥasan—from Abū Hurayrah, with exactly the same wording as al-Tirmidhī, though without the extra sentence at the end (3).

Ibn Jarīr likewise transmitted it in his Tafsīr via Bishr, from Yazīd, from Saʿīd ibn Abī ʿArūbah, from Qatādah in mursal form (4); this version may be closer to the truth—Allah knows best.

The ḥadīth scholars Abū Bakr al-Bazzār and al-Bayhaqī also reported it from Abū Dharr al-Ghifārī, on the authority of the Prophet ﷺ, in similar terms (5), but its chain of transmission is not sound—Allah knows best.

Earlier (6), under the description of the Throne, we cited the ḥadith of the Wild Goats, which disagrees with the present report concerning the Throne’s height above the seventh heaven, while also providing corroborative evidence. In that narration it says: “The distance between every two heavens is five hundred years, and their thickness—that is, their depth—is five hundred years.”

As for the view advanced by some speculative theologians with respect to the ḥadith, “He will be encircled by seven earths” (7)—namely, that the seven earths are merely seven climatic zones—this contradicts the plain sense of the Qur’ānic verse, the sound ḥadith, and the explicit wording of many of its phrases, especially the narration we have just cited through al-Ḥasan from Abū Hurayrah. It is an interpretation that forces both the verse and the ḥadith away from their evident meaning without any supporting proof—Allah knows best.

The same must be said of what many of the People of the Book relate—and what a number of our scholars have taken from them—claiming that this earth is made of soil, the one beneath it of iron, another of sulfurous stone, and so forth. Any such statement that is not conveyed with a sound chain back to an infallible source is to be rejected and returned to the one who uttered it.