the reports concerning the divine attributes. He replied, “Let them pass exactly as they have come.”

33 – ʿAlī ibn ʿĪsā also informed me that Hanbal related to them, saying: “I asked Abū ʿAbd Allāh about the hadiths that are transmitted—such as: ‘Allah descends every night to the lowest heaven,’ that ‘Allah will be seen,’ that ‘Allah puts His Foot,’ and the like. Abū ʿAbd Allāh said: ‘We believe in them and affirm them, without asking how, without probing for a meaning, and without rejecting any part of them. We know that whatever the Messenger has brought is truth, as long as it is supported by sound chains of transmission. We do not repudiate the statement of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and Allah, exalted is He, is not to be described with more than He has described Himself or His Messenger has described Him—without delimitation and without end: “There is nothing like unto Him, and He is the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing” (Q 42:11). Those who seek to describe Him can never attain the full reality of His attribute; His attributes are from Him alone. We do not go beyond the Quran and the hadith: we say as He has said, and we describe Him as He has described Himself, and we do not overstep that. We believe in the entire Quran, its decisive verses and its allegorical ones, and we do not strip from Him any of His attributes because some objector finds them objectionable.’”

34 – Shaykh al-Islām Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf al-Qurashī al-Hakkārī said: “Abū al-Qāsim ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Khallāl narrated to us…”