They added, “All such matters are attributes of bodies, whereas Allah, Exalted is He, is above corporeality!”
The people of the Sunnah and of transmitted tradition replied: “We do not pry into that; we merely affirm what we have stated in deference to the textual proofs. Even if you claim …, we do not subscribe to your view, for such purely negative statements are the traits of non-existence. Far exalted is Allah, Blessed and Most High, above non-existence. Rather, He truly exists, is distinct from His creation, and is described with the very words He has used for Himself: that He is above the Throne, without asking how.”
Ḥammād ibn Zayd held for the Iraqis a standing equal to that of Mālik ibn Anas for the people of the Ḥijāz, in dignity and knowledge.
122 – The compiler cites it through the narration of Ibn Abī Ḥātim al-Rāzī, the ḥāfiẓ, in “Kitāb al-Radd ʿalā al-Jahmiyyah”: “Sulaymān ibn Ḥarb narrated it to us.” I say: ʿAbd Allāh ibn Aḥmad also records it in “al-Sunnah,” pp. 9–10, through two other chains from Sulaymān.
142 – From Abū al-Nuʿmān ʿĀrim who said: Ḥammād ibn Zayd declared, “The Quran is the Speech of Allah; Gabriel brought it down from the Lord of all worlds.” Narrated by Ibn al-Imām Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal in “al-Sunnah.”
123 – I say: He states on p. 25, “I was informed by Abū al-Nuʿmān regarding it.”
12 – Ibn Abī Laylā¹, the judge and scholar of Kūfa, who died early … –148 AH.
143 – Reported by Aḥmad ibn Yūnus: “The first person to claim that the Quran is created was a certain man, and Ibn Abī Laylā made him recant, just as he made the Christians recant.”
Ibn Abī Laylā was one of the reservoirs of knowledge in the Quran, jurisprudence, and hadith, though others are more reliable in hadith than he; some scholars still cite his narrations. He belonged to the generation of Imām Abū Ḥanīfah.