Al-Bukhārī also cites this report in his treatise “Actions of the Servants,” pp. 69–70, through Abū al-Walīd.

30- Mansūr ibn ʿAmmār – the foremost preacher of his time

169- Salmuwaih ibn ʿĀṣim, the judge of Hajar, said: Bishr al-Muraysī wrote to Mansūr ibn ʿAmmār asking about the Almighty’s words, “The All-Merciful rose over the Throne” (Q 20:5): How did He rise? Mansūr replied, “His istiwāʾ (rising) is not delimited by any bounds. Attempting to explain it is unwarranted affectation, and your very question is an innovation (bidʿah); affirming it in its entirety is obligatory. Allah the Exalted says: ‘As for those in whose hearts is deviation, they pursue what is ambiguous of it, seeking discord and seeking its interpretation’” (Q 3:7).

Mansūr was proverbial for his power to admonish and stir hearts. Once he supplicated for rain on behalf of the people and they were granted rain, and al-Layth rewarded him with a slave-girl and one thousand dinars.

148- I remark: al-Khaṭīb recorded this incident in the biography of Mansūr in Tārīkh Baghdād 13/75–76, through the route of Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Qāsim al-Kawkabī: “Jarīr ibn Aḥmad ibn Abī Dāwūd Abū Mālik related to us: Salmuwaih ibn ʿĀṣim—judge of Hajar, who had also served as judge in al-Jazīrah and Syria—told me,” and then he mentioned the story.

I add: This chain is weak. Concerning al-Kawkabī, al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar says in al-Lisān, “A well-known transmitter of historical reports; I have found in his narrations many objectionable accounts with ostensibly sound chains.” He then cites for him a report in which two men—one of them Ibn Jurayj—sat in the Prophet’s Mosque. When someone objected, Ibn Jurayj said, “We are in a garden of the gardens of Paradise, and in Paradise there is whatever souls desire!” The ḥāfiẓ comments, “He records an astonishing story that is far from sound, and it is invalidated by the fact that…”

I further note: I do not know the transmitters above him. For Salmuwaih ibn ʿĀṣim, see also Ibn ʿAsākir’s History.

ʿAbd Allāh likewise narrated in al-Sunnah (p. 24): ‘ʿUthmān ibn Abī Shaybah told me: I was with Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah together with Abū Bakr and Abū Muḥammad—that is, his two brothers ʿAbd Allāh and Qāsim—when Mansūr ibn ʿAmmār asked him, “Is the Quran created?” Sufyān repudiated the question, became extremely angry, and said to him, “I suspect you are a devil, I suspect you are a devil—indeed, you are a devil!” Someone said, “Abū Muḥammad, he is a man of the sunnah and he…,” but Sufyān refused and rejected the question outright.’