and His exaltedness above (al-fawqiyyah), and likewise His Self, His two hands, His hearing and His sight, the rising up to Him of the good word, His laughter, His wonder, and His descent—until he concluded:

‘Our conviction concerning these and every seemingly ambiguous verse is that we accept them as they have come and do not reject them. We do not reinterpret them with the glosses of the dissenters, nor do we impose upon them the likenesses imagined by the anthropomorphists. We do not translate His attributes into any language other than Arabic, and we submit the plain wording of both report and verse to the outward sense intended by the Revelation.’

Ibn Surayj was the ultimate authority in mastering the Shāfiʿī school, to the point that he was considered superior to all of al-Shāfiʿī’s companions—even al-Muzanī. Imām Abū Isḥāq, the author of al-Tanbīh, said: I heard Abū al-Ḥasan al-Shirjī say, ‘The catalogue of Abū al-ʿAbbās’s writings numbers four hundred works.’ The distinguished scholar Abū Ḥāmid al-Isfarāʾīnī used to say, ‘We follow Abū al-ʿAbbās in the outward matters of fiqh, though not in its finer points.’

I (the author) say: He studied under al-Zaʿfarānī, al-Ramādī, and Saʿdān b. Naṣr, and he acquired jurisprudence from Abū al-Qāsim b. Bashshār al-Anmāṭī, a disciple of al-Muzanī. He died in 306 AH—may Allah have mercy on him.

261 – He was a reliable, firmly established ḥāfiẓ, deeply versed in the Sunnah, and he composed a well-known poem on it that opens:
Ponder Allah’s words and follow the report;
And leave aside an opinion the evidence does not support.
He died in 471 AH, and he has an excellent biography in Tadhkirat al-Ḥuffāẓ and elsewhere.

262 – The manuscript reads ‘Abū Saʿd’; this requires verification, for I have not found a biographical entry for this ʿAbd al-Wāḥid in the works currently at my disposal. However, Taʾrīkh Baghdād 11/11 records:
‘ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. Aḥmad, Abū Saʿīd al-Maqbarī al-Nīsābūrī.
He came to Baghdad on pilgrimage and narrated there from Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Aṣamm. ʿAlī b. Muḥsin al-Tanūkhī narrated to us from him.’
No judgement of reliability or otherwise is given, and he was alive in 388 AH, so he may be the person intended here. Allah knows best.