Adam; the compelled are the angels, and the forsaken is Iblīs.

35- ʿAlī ibn ʿĀṣim, the ḥadith scholar of Wāsiṭ (108–201 AH)

180- Yaḥyā ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿĀṣim said: I was with my father when al-Marīsī asked permission to enter. I said, “Father, will someone like this be admitted to you?” He asked, “What is wrong with him?” I replied, “He says that the Quran is created and claims that Allah is with him on earth,” and I mentioned other things he said. I never saw my father react so fiercely as he did to the assertion that Allah is with him on earth and that the Quran is created.

181- ʿAlī ibn ʿĀṣim said: I set out on a journey, and my father gave me one hundred thousand dirhams; when I returned from that journey, I had written down one hundred thousand ḥadiths.

I say: He was an ocean of knowledge and lived ninety-four years, but he was lenient in ḥadith.

159- I say: I could not identify Yaḥyā ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿĀṣim, and none of the biographers mention him among those who narrated from his father ʿAlī ibn ʿĀṣim.

36- Yazīd ibn Hārūn, Shaykh al-Islām (d. 206 AH)

182- Shādh ibn Yaḥyā said: I heard Yazīd ibn Hārūn being asked, “Who are the Jahmites?” He answered, “Whoever claims that ‘the Most Merciful rose over the Throne’ means something other than what settles in the hearts of the common people is a Jahmite.”

“Settles” (yaqir) is read with light pronunciation. By “the common people” he means the great mass of the Ummah and the scholars. What has taken root in their hearts regarding the verse is precisely what the wording indicates, all the while being certain that the One who rose is unlike anything else. This is what their sound natures and healthy minds have embraced. Had it carried another meaning, they would have voiced it and not neglected it; and if any of them had interpreted istiwāʾ differently, efforts would have been made to transmit it, and once transmitted it would have become well known. If, among a handful of ignorant fools, someone understands from istiwāʾ something that implies deficiency or likens the unseen to the seen, the created to the Creator, such cases are rare. Whoever utters that must be rebuked and taught, and I do not think that any of