of His rising. He then went on to enumerate the rest of the creed held by Ahl al-Sunnah.
Al-Ismāʿīlī was one of the great shaykhs of Islam, a leading authority in hadith and jurisprudence. Abū Isḥāq says in Tabaqāt al-Fuqahāʾ al-Shāfiʿiyyah:
“Abū Bakr combined mastery of fiqh and hadith with leadership in both religious and worldly matters. He compiled the Ṣaḥīḥ¹, and the jurists of Jurjān studied under him.” Ḥamzah al-Sahmī said: “He died in Jurjān in 371 AH, at the age of ninety-four.”
286 – I say: The author produced this narration with his own chain of transmission; all its men are reliable and well-known except for Masʿūd ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Hāshimī, for whom I have found no biography. With this same chain he also cited it in the biography of Abū Bakr al-Ismāʿīlī in al-Tadhkirah 3/150–151.
129 – al-Azhari, the master of Arabic (282–370 AH)
303 – The distinguished scholar and teacher Abū Manṣūr Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn al-Azhar al-Harawī, author of al-Tahdhīb, said—as quoted by his fellow townsman Shaykh al-Islām in the book al-Fārūq:
“Allah, exalted be He, is upon the Throne, and it is permissible, figuratively, to say that He is in heaven, because of His saying: ‘Do you feel secure that He who is in heaven will not cause the earth to swallow you…?’²”
Al-Azhari is the author of Tahdhīb al-Lughah. He passed away in the month of Rabīʿ al-Ākhir³ in 370 AH. Among the signs of his piety was that, when he reached Baghdad to join Ibn Durayd⁴, he refrained from