Another Tier of the Imams of Islam

123 – Abū Aḥmad al-ʿAssāl – 349¹

297 – The eminent scholar and judge, Abū Aḥmad al-ʿAssāl, the ḥadith master of Isfahān, said in his own work al-Maʿrifa, under the heading explaining the verse, “The Most Merciful rose over the Throne” (Q 20:5). In that chapter he gathered everything transmitted on the subject from the words of the earliest authorities—Rabīʿa, Mālik, al-Thawrī, Abū ʿĪsā Yaḥyā ibn Rāfiʿ, Kaʿb, Ibn al-Mubārak—and the ḥadith of Ibn Masʿūd which states: “The Throne is above the water, and Allah is above the Throne; nothing of your deeds is hidden from Him.” This ḥadith is authentic and has already been cited.²

Abū Aḥmad was a vast storehouse of knowledge; he met Abū Muslim al-Kajjī, Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim, and their contemporaries, and he died in 349 AH.

282 – I say: he was a Successor who narrated from ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān and Abū Hurayrah, and Ismāʿīl ibn Abī Khālid transmitted from him, as noted in al-Jarḥ (4/2/143), where no explicit criticism or endorsement is recorded for him. Ibn Ḥibbān listed him among the reliable narrators in al-Thiqat (1/256) and mentioned that he was from Kūfa.

124 – The scholar Abū Bakr al-Ḍabʿī – ? – 342

298 – Abū ʿAbd Allah al-Ḥākim said: The jurist Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn Isḥāq al-Ḍabʿī of Nishapur said: