—al-Baghawī—that he disliked explaining istawāʾ as “settled.” Indeed, he went so far as to repudiate the phrase bi-dhātihi when a number of scholars said, “He, exalted, is above His Throne bi-dhātihi,” on the grounds that it is not recorded from the early generations, even though it merely clarifies their statement that Allah’s istiwāʾ over His creation is a true istiwāʾ befitting His majesty and perfection. He therefore judged it to be superfluous speech. See the entries 136 – Ibn Abī Zayd, 144 – Yaḥyā ibn ʿAmmār, 146 – Abū ʿUmar aṭ-Ṭalamankī, and 149 – Abū Naṣr as-Sijzī.

As for the term bi-dhātihi, its meaning is, in my view, perfectly intelligible, and there is no harm in using it for the sake of clarification. It is comparable to another word that occurs frequently in the creed of the Salaf, namely bāʾin in their statement, “He, exalted, is above His Throne, bāʾin (separate) from His creation.” A number of them used this wording, as you will see in this Mukhtaṣar under the following biographies: 45 – ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Jaʿfar al-Rāzī; 53 – Hishām ibn ʿUbayd Allāh al-Rāzī; 56 – Sunayd ibn Dāwūd al-Maṣīṣī, the ḥāfiẓ; 67 – Isḥāq ibn Rāhwayh, the scholar of Khurāsān, who related it from Ibn al-Mubārak; 77 – Abū Zurʿah al-Rāzī; 87 – Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī, who, together with the previous, transmitted it from the scholars of all the regions; 79 – Yaḥyā ibn Muʿādh al-Rāzī; 84 – ʿUthmān ibn Saʿīd al-Dārimī, the ḥāfiẓ; 103 – Abū Jaʿfar ibn Abī Shaybah—every one of these belongs to the first three generations whose virtue has been attested. Then come 108 – Ḥammād al-Būshanjī, the ḥāfiẓ, who reported it from the scholars of the provinces; 109 – the Imām of the Imams, Ibn Khuzaymah; 125 – Abū al-Qāsim al-Ṭabarānī; 133 – Ibn Baṭṭah; 141 – Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣbahānī, who attributed it to the early authorities; 142 – Maʿmar ibn Ziyād; 155 – the jurist Naṣr al-Maqdisī; 158 – Shaykh al-Islām al-Anṣārī; and 164 – Ibn Wahb.

I say: From this survey it is clear that the two expressions bi-dhātihi and bāʾin were unknown in the time of the Companions, may Allah be pleased with them. Yet when Jahm ibn Ṣafwān and his followers introduced the notion that Allah is present in every place, the need for clarification obliged those eminent imams to employ the term bāʾin, and not one of them objected to its use.