nor do we approve of anyone’s using it in an unrestricted manner. Allah knows best.

Ibn Qutaybah died in 276 AH.
Ibn Qutaybah died in 276 AH.

244 – Mukhtalif al-Hadith, pp. 344–347.

100 – Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim (?–287 AH)

264 – The ḥadith authority, judge of Isfahān, and prolific author, Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn ʿAmr ibn Abī ʿĀṣim al-Shaybānī, said:

“All that is found in our book—al-Sunan al-Kabīr, with its various chapters—of those reports we have declared to yield certain knowledge, we believe in because of their soundness and the uprightness of their transmitters. One must accept them according to their outward wording and refrain from probing into how they are. Among them are the report of His descent to the lowest heaven and of His rising over the Throne.”

ʿĀtika bint Abī Bakr heard this statement from her father, and she herself was a learned jurist. Her father was the leading figure of the Ẓāhirīs in Isfahān, just as their teacher in Iraq was Dāwūd ibn ʿAlī. He narrated from the disciples of Shuʿbah and Ḥammād ibn Salamah. A number of his writings have come down to us. He died in 287 AH. He did not meet his paternal grandfather Abū ʿĀṣim al-Nabīl, but he did meet his maternal grandfather Mūsā ibn Ismāʿīl al-Tubudhakkī.

245 – I say: It is a great, comprehensive work on its subject, and I am currently editing it and tracing its chains of transmission—may Allah facilitate its completion⦗1⦘. Among its chapters is “Chapter: What has been reported that Allah is in His heaven and not on His earth,” after which he cites the hadith of the slave-girl mentioned at the beginning of this book.

101 – Abū ʿĪsā al-Tirmidhī (209–279 AH)

265 – Al-Ḥāfiẓ Abū ʿĪsā stated in his Jāmiʿ that when he narrated the hadith of Abū Hurayrah—a repudiated report, “If you were to lower a rope to the lowest earth it would descend upon Allah”—the scholars said