then the messengers’ closest followers would have known this, and they would have made their own closest followers aware of the matter. Denial would thus have been the doctrine of the community’s elite—those most accomplished in intellect, knowledge, and understanding. Yet the opposite is true. Whoever examines the statements of “the early generations and the imams” will find that those whom the community regards as its most knowledgeable members—such as Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿUthmān, ʿAlī, Ibn Masʿūd, Muʿādh ibn Jabal, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Salām, Salmān al-Fārisī, Ubayy ibn Kaʿb, Abū al-Dardāʾ, ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbbās, ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar, ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAmr, and others like them—were the strongest of all people in affirmation.

The same holds for the foremost of the Successors: Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyab and his peers, al-Hasan al-Basrī and his peers, ʿAlī ibn al-Husayn and his peers, and the companions of Ibn Masʿūd and Ibn ʿAbbās, who were among the most eminent Successors.

Indeed, the reports transmitted from these figures concerning affirmation include matters that many people shrink from affirming. It was in this light that Yahyā ibn ʿAmmār and his companion, Shaykh al-Islām Abū Ismāʿīl al-Ansārī, interpreted the report:

“There is knowledge that is, as it were, concealed, known only to those who possess knowledge of Allah. When they mention it, none reject it except those who are heedless concerning Allah.”

They understood this as referring to the reports concerning affirmation, for affirmation is established in what is transmitted from the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, the earliest believers, and those who followed them in righteousness. Denial, by contrast, is not found in their teachings, so the report cannot be understood as referring to it. The hadith scholars have collected so much material transmitted from the early generations concerning affirmation that none can enumerate