the Torah, the Gospel, or the Quran anything like it.” The rulings of Islamic law support this, and its meanings have been discussed at length elsewhere.

Among the verses, he singled out the Verse of the Throne for superiority. In an authentic hadith, he said to Ubayy ibn Kaʿb:

“Do you know which verse in Allah’s Book that you know is the greatest?”

He replied: “Allah—there is no deity worthy of worship except Him, the Ever-Living, the Sustainer of all existence.”

He then struck him on the chest with his hand and said: “May your knowledge bring you joy, Abū al-Mundhir!”

No other single verse in the Quran contains all that the Verse of the Throne contains. What Allah mentions at the beginning of Sūrat al-Hadīd and the end of Sūrat al-Hashr extends over several verses, not just one.

We shall explain, if Allah wills, that even though “Say, ‘He is Allah, One’” equals one-third of the Quran, it does not follow that it is superior to al-Fātihah, nor that reciting it three times suffices in place of reciting the Quran. Indeed, the early generations disapproved of reciting it more than once when reciting the entire Quran, just as it appears once in the written Quran. The Quran is to be recited as it is written in the written copy, without addition or omission.

The takbīr (declaration that Allah is the Greatest) transmitted from Ibn Kathīr is not traced through a chain of transmission to the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. No one traced it through such a chain to the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, except al-Bazzī, who thereby differed from everyone else who transmitted it. They transmitted it only as a practice chosen by someone below the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, whereas he alone traced it back to him. His weakness has been reported by scholars versed in hadith and its transmitters, among both scholars of Quranic recitation and scholars of hadith, as noted by more than