—“He is upon the Throne, just as He has described Himself in His Book.”

246 – Al-Tirmidhi, in his Jāmiʿ (2/226), hinted at the weakness of the report by saying: “It is a gharīb (singular) ḥadith.”

I say: Its defect lies in the fact that it is narrated by al-Ḥasan from Abū Hurayrah. Al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī was a mudallis, and he reported it with an ʿan-link, while the scholars differ over whether he ever heard directly from Abū Hurayrah. Aḥmad also recorded it through this same route (2/370). Yet Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah, in al-Risālah al-ʿArshiyyah (p. 23), after pointing out the problem of al-Ḥasan’s hearing from Abū Hurayrah, said: “It is, however, supported by the marfūʿ narration of Abū Dharr.” I have not been able to trace such a narration from Abū Dharr, nor did he cite any source for it so that its chain could be examined.

Note: In the Salafī Library manuscript—unlike all the printed editions—there is an addition in al-Tirmidhi’s wording that is not found in Sunan al-Tirmidhi or in the other principal manuscripts; its editor reproduced it on the authority of Shaykh ʿAbd al-Ghaffār al-Maslawī. I have omitted it for the reason stated, and it likewise has no basis in what Ibn al-Qayyim quotes from al-Tirmidhi in Juyūsh (p. 96). This clarification is therefore necessary.

266 – Abū ʿĪsā also said, after narrating Abū Hurayrah’s ḥadith that “Allah accepts charity, takes it in His right hand, and nurtures it …”:

More than one of the scholars have said, concerning this ḥadith and others dealing with the divine attributes—such as the Lord’s descent to the lowest heaven—“The reports on this subject are firmly established; we believe in them without imagining and without asking, ‘How?’” It is related from Mālik, Ibn ʿUyaynah, and Ibn al-Mubārak that they said about these ḥadiths, “Let them pass as they have come, without asking how.”

He [al-Tirmidhi] added: “This is the view of the scholars from Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamāʿah. As for the Jahmiyyah, they rejected these narrations, saying, ‘This is anthropomorphism,’ and interpreted them contrary to the explanation of the scholars. They claimed that Allah did not create Adam with His hand, and that ‘hand’ here merely means ‘power’.1”

Isḥāq ibn Rāhwayh said: “Anthropomorphism only occurs when a person says, ‘A hand like my hand,’ or ‘hearing like my hearing’; that is anthropomorphism. But when he says, as Allah has said, ‘Hand,’ ‘Hearing,’ and ‘Sight,’ he neither asks ‘how’ nor says ‘like,’