and that the Quran is superior to Allah’s other Books, according to those who hold this view, including Ishāq ibn Rāhawayh and other scholars and theologians.”

He said:

“This refers to the great reward granted to those who recite these passages, and to the more abundant recompense for some parts than for others.”

He said:

“This is a matter on which the scholars have differed. Al-Ash‘arī, Ibn al-Bāqillānī, and a number of jurists and scholars rejected this, because superiority implies that the less excellent falls short of the more excellent, whereas Allah’s speech is indivisible. They said: ‘Where certain verses and surahs are described as “best” or “greatest,” the meaning is that they are excellent and great.’”

He said:

“It has also been said that the Verse of the Throne is the greatest because it encompasses the fundamental divine names and attributes: divinity, life, oneness, knowledge, dominion, power, and will. These seven, they said, are the foundations of the divine names and attributes.”

I say:

What concerns us here is his account of the scholars’ statements. As for the assertion that these seven are the foundations of the divine names, many theologians regard these seven as those known through reason, while maintaining that all others are known only through revelation. This, however, concerns how we come to know them, not an objective reality inherent in them. How, then, can this be so, when the majority hold that other attributes can also be known through reason, such as love, pleasure, commanding, and forbidding?

The position of Ibn Kullāb and most early scholars who affirmed the divine attributes is that Allah’s being above is among the attributes knowable through reason. This is also the position of Abū al-‘Abbās al-Qalānisī and al-Hārith al-Muhāsibī, as well as various groups of theologians, hadith scholars, and jurists. It was also the later of the two views held by al-Qādī