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Ibn Abī Zayd (?–389 AH)
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Imām Abū Muḥammad Ibn Abī Zayd al-Maghribī, the leading Mālikī authority, writes at the very beginning of his well-known Epistle on the school of Imām Mālik:
“Indeed, He—exalted is He—is above His glorious Throne in His very essence, while He is in every place by His knowledge.”¹
We have already encountered identical wording from Abū Jaʿfar Ibn Abī Shaybah and ʿUthmān ibn Saʿīd al-Dāramī. The same phrase is used by Yaḥyā ibn ʿAmmār, the Sijistānī preacher, in his treatise, and by the ḥadith master Abū Naṣr al-Wāʾilī al-Sijzī in his book al-Ibānah, where he states:
“Our imams—al-Thawrī, Mālik, the two Ḥammāds, Ibn ʿUyaynah, Ibn al-Mubārak, al-Fuḍayl, Aḥmad, and Isḥāq—are unanimously agreed that Allah is above the Throne in His essence, and that His knowledge is in every place.”
Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr employs the same expression, as will be shown, as does Shaykh al-Islām Abū Ismāʿīl al-Anṣārī, who says: “In numerous reports it is affirmed that Allah is in the seventh heaven, upon the Throne, in His very Self.” Abū al-Ḥasan al-Karjī al-Shāfiʿī echoes this in his poem:
Their creed maintains that the Deity, in His essence,
Is upon His Throne, while His knowledge grasps the unseen.
In the hand of the eminent scholar Taqī al-Dīn Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, the marginal note reads: “This is the creed of Ahl al-Sunnah and the people of hadith.”
The same wording is also found in the statements of the ḥadith master Aḥmad ibn Thābit al-Ṭurqī, Shaykh ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlī, the muftī ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Qaḥīṭī, and others. Allah—exalted be He—is the Creator of all things in His very essence, the One who governs the creation in His very essence, without assistant or supporter.
Ibn Abī Zayd and those after him simply wished to distinguish between His being “with us” and His being above the Throne: He is with us by His knowledge, while He is upon the Throne as He has informed us in His words, “The All-Merciful rose over the Throne.” A number of other scholars have likewise articulated this very statement