Ibn Jarīr’s Tafsīr is brimming with the statements of the early generations, all of them affirming the divine attributes. Concerning the Almighty’s words, thumma istawā ilā al-samāʾ ("then He rose toward the heaven"), he reports from al-Rabīʿ b. Anas that it means “He ascended.” Likewise, in every place where the verse thumma istawā ʿalā al-ʿarsh ("then He rose over the Throne") occurs, he explains it as “He rose and ascended.” He also transmits the opinion of Mujāhid and then remarks: “There is no sect within Islam that denies this—neither those who recite, ‘Allah is above the Throne,’ nor those who reject it among the Jahmiyyah and others.”¹

259 – I said: The compiler has narrated this through his chain from Abū Saʿīd al-Dīnawarī—whose full name is ʿAmr b. Muḥammad b. Yaḥyā—as it appears in the isnād of the tract al-Iʿtiqād by Ibn Jarīr, printed in Bombay. I do not know him, yet he is corroborated by Qāḍī Abū Bakr Aḥmad b. Kāmil, who said: “Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad b. Jarīr stated: ‘The first matter about which we begin to speak is the Speech of Allah…,’” whereupon he set out his creed, which contains what al-Dīnawarī related. Al-Lālakāʾī recorded it in Sharḥ Uṣūl al-Sunnah 1/49/1 with a sound chain. Later I found Ibn al-Qayyim in al-Juyūsh (p. 75) citing it from Ibn Jarīr in his work Ṣarīḥ al-Sunnah.

274 – He (Ibn Jarīr) also said in his book al-Tabsīr fī Maʿālim al-Dīn:

“The discourse on those attributes whose knowledge reaches us by transmitted report is such as His statement that He is All-Hearing, All-Seeing; that He has two hands, as He says: bal yadāhu mabsūṭatān ("Rather, both His hands are outstretched"); that He has a face, as He says: wa-yabqā wajhu rabbika ("And there will remain the Face of your Lord"); that He has a foot, as the Prophet ﷺ said: ‘until the Lord places His foot in it’; that He laughs, on the authority of the report, ‘He met Allah while He was laughing at him’; that He descends to the lowest heaven, as the Messenger of Allah ﷺ informed us; and that He has a finger, as the Messenger ﷺ said: ‘There is no heart except that it is between two fingers of the fingers of the Most Merciful.’ These attributes and their like—everything Allah or His Messenger has described Him with—are matters whose true nature cannot be grasped through speculation and reflection. We do not declare anyone an unbeliever for being ignorant of them until the reports concerning them have reached him.”

Qāḍī Abū Yaʿlā al-Ḥanbalī cited this passage from Ibn Jarīr in his book Ibṭāl al-Taʾwīl.