137- al-Khattābī (d. 388 AH)

311- The eminent Imām, erudite scholar Abū Sulaymān Ḥamd ibn Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Khaṭṭāb al-Khattābī al-Bustī, author of Maʿālim al-Sunan, says in his treatise al-Ghunyah ʿan al-Kalām wa-Ahlih:

“As for the matter you asked about concerning the divine attributes, and what has been reported about them in the Quran and in sound Sunnah narrations, the way of the early generations is to affirm them, let them stand upon their apparent sense, and deny both modality and comparison with regard to them.”

Ḥāfiẓ Abū Bakr al-Khaṭīb, Ḥāfiẓ Abū al-Qāsim al-Taymī al-Iṣbahānī, and others likewise transmitted consensus from the Salaf on this point.

Al-Khattābī died in 388 AH; he narrated from Abū Saʿīd ibn al-Aʿrābī and his contemporaries.

138- Ibn Furak (d. 406 AH)

312- The distinguished Imām Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Furak—according to what his student Imām Abū Bakr al-Bayhaqī cites from him in al-Asmāʾ wa-l-Ṣifāt—said: “istawā means ʿalā (He ascended),” and regarding His words, “Do you feel secure from Him Who is in the heaven” (67:16), he said: “that is, the One above the heaven.”

Al-Bayhaqī then supported this with the Prophet’s ﷺ words already quoted to Saʿd: “You have judged among them with the judgment of Allah which He pronounced from above seven heavens,” and with Ibn ʿAbbās’s statement: “Between the seventh heaven and His Footstool are seven thousand lights, and He is above that.”

Ibn Furak was the leading scholar of Khurasan in dialectic theology and uṣūl; he produced nearly one hundred works and narrated al-Tayālisī’s Musnad from Abū Muḥammad ibn Fāris al-Iṣbahānī. He died in 406 AH.

294- pp. 411–420.