Al-Khaṭīb said: “Ibn Jarīr was one of the great scholars; his word carried authority and people deferred to his judgment. He mastered branches of knowledge in which none of his contemporaries matched him. He was versed in the Qur’an, insightful regarding its meanings, a jurist in its rulings, thoroughly acquainted with the Sunnah and its transmission chains—its sound and its weak, its abrogating and abrogated. He knew the statements of the Companions and Followers on legal matters, in both the lawful and the unlawful … I heard ʿAlī b. ʿUbayd Allāh the philologist relate that Muḥammad b. Jarīr spent forty years writing forty pages every single day. Al-Ustādh Abū Ḥāmid al-Isfarāyīnī said, ‘If someone were to travel all the way to China just to obtain Ibn Jarīr’s Tafsīr, it would not be excessive—or words to that effect.’”

And the Imām of Imams, Ibn Khuzaymah, said: “I do not know anyone on the face of the earth more knowledgeable than Muḥammad b. Jarīr.”

I say: He died in 310 AH at roughly ninety years of age—may Allah have mercy on him—and a slight tendency toward Shiʿism is reported of him.

108 – al-Būshanjī the ḥāfiẓ

275 – Shaykh al-Islām al-Harawī said: Ibn al-ʿĀlī narrated to us; my grandfather Manṣūr narrated to us; Aḥmad b. al-Ashraf informed me; he said: Ḥammād b. Hanād al-Būshanjī said:

“This is what we have witnessed the people of all cities upon, what their schools indicate, and what clarifies the path of the scholars and the profile of the Sunnah and its adherents: that Allah is above the seventh heaven, upon His Throne, distinct from His creation, while His knowledge, dominion, and power are everywhere.”

109 – The Imām of Imams Ibn Khuzaymah (223–311 AH)

276 – The ḥāfiẓ Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥākim said: I heard Muḥammad b. Ṣāliḥ b. Hānīʾ say: I heard the Imām of Imams Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Isḥāq b. Khuzaymah say:

“Whoever does not acknowledge that Allah is upon His Throne, having risen above His seven heavens, distinct from His creation …”