as a matter of religion and creed so long as it has no corroboration from the Qur’an and the Sunnah. How I wish the compiler, when he cited it, had decisively rejected it and declared it unsuitable as proof, without the slightest hesitation, for that would be more becoming of him and more in keeping with his scrupulous refusal to affirm the phrase “in His very Self.” Allah’s help is sought.

4 – I have also removed whatever I am convinced belongs to the Isrāʾīliyyāt, even when its chain of transmission is sound, unless its meaning accords with the Qur’an and the Sunnah.

5 – I allowed myself some leniency in quoting certain reports and statements whose chains to their original speakers contain weakness or anonymity, because they are not like the prophetic traditions that must be relied upon and adopted as part of the religion; they are cited only for illustration and corroboration.

6 – From the isnāds of the ḥadīths and reports I have omitted whatever is of no benefit to the general reader—especially in this “abridgement”—retaining only what is indispensable, such as the name of the Companion, the Successor, or whoever is credited with the statement in the chain.

7 – I have numbered the book’s ḥadīths and reports consecutively from beginning to end. I likewise numbered the biographical entries for the scholars from whom the author narrates—or to whom he attributes—the doctrine that Allah is above the Throne. To the left of each entry, inside square brackets, I placed the year of birth and death of the person concerned, so that readers may easily follow the chronological transmission of this teaching from one imām to the next, year after year, up to the close of the sixth century.

8 – I traced every ḥadīth and report in the book to its source and attributed each quoted statement to the reference named by the compiler, whether printed or, as far as possible, still in manuscript. I then appended useful notes, most of them devoted to examining the chains of transmission, so that what is genuinely attributable to its purported authority may be distinguished from what is not. It has become clear to us—praise be to Allah—that the greater part of them are authentic and firmly established, in accordance with the methodology of the ḥadīth specialists and their critique of isnāds.