Al-Fudayl ibn ‘Iyād—may Allah have mercy on him—did not mean that the Throne is left without Him; rather, he intended to oppose the Jahmiyyah. His statement, “He does whatever He wills,” does not entail that He must be beneath the Throne. Rather, his words are of the same kind as those of his peers among the early scholars, such as al-Awzā‘ī, Hammād ibn Zayd, and others.

Some of them rejected what is reported from Ahmad in his letter to Musaddad, saying: “Its transmitter from Ahmad is unknown; no one named Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Barda‘ī is known among Ahmad’s companions.”

The scholars of hadith hold three positions on this matter. Some reject saying either that the Throne is left without Him or that it is not. This is the position of the hadith master ‘Abd al-Ghanī al-Maqdisī and others.

Others say that the Throne is indeed left without Him. Abū al-Qāsim ‘Abd al-Rahmān ibn Abī ‘Abd Allāh Muhammad ibn Mandah wrote a work refuting those who say that the Throne is not left without Him. He entitled it “A Refutation of Those Who Claim That Allah Is Everywhere, Those Who Claim That Allah Has No Place, and Those Who Interpret the Descent as Something Other Than Descent.”

He mentioned that he had been asked about a report recorded by Abū Sa‘īd al-Naqqāsh in “Statements of Ahl al-Sunnah,” from Abū al-Hasan Muhammad ibn ‘Alī al-Marwazī, from Muhammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Dīnawarī, from ‘Alī ibn Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Mūsā, from Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Barda‘ī al-Tamīmī, who said: “When Musaddad ibn Musarhad became uncertain about the Sunnah and the controversies into which people had fallen concerning ‘predestination’