the Black Stone. He was also the author of the famous Rā’iyyah ode in defense of the Sunnah, which opens:

Hold fast to Allah’s rope and follow the transmitted way;
Leave every opinion no authentic report will sway.

A staunch advocate of the Sunnah and an enemy to innovation, he passed away in 471 AH.

158 – Shaykh al-Islām al-Ansārī (396–481 AH)

339 – The great Imām Abū Ismāʿīl ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Muṭīʿ al-Ansārī al-Harawī, author of Blameworthy Kalām and Its Adherents and of Stations of the Wayfarers on Sufism, says in his book The Divine Attributes:

“Chapter: Allah’s rising over His Throne above the seventh heaven, distinct from His creation, as established by the Book and the Sunnah.”
He then assembles his proofs from Qur’anic verses and prophetic reports, until he states:

“In several narrations it is related that Allah is in the seventh heaven upon the Throne in His very Self, watching how people act, while His knowledge, power, hearing, sight, and mercy are in every place.”

Abū Ismāʿīl was a marvel in Qur’anic exegesis, a leader in exhortation, a scholar of ḥadith and its pathways, and deeply versed in Arabic. He possessed notable spiritual states and stations—yet would that he had not composed Manāzil al-Sāʾirīn, for it contains matters at odds with the way and hallmarks of the salaf. It is said that he delivered 360 lessons on the verse, “Indeed, those for whom the best reward has preceded from Us …” (Q 21:101). He was threatened with death more than once so that he would curb his emphatic affirmation of the attributes and desist from criticizing the scholars of speculative theology, but he neither heeded their threats nor feared their warnings.

He died in 481 AH at the age of eighty-five, having heard ḥadith from ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-Jarrāḥ, Abū Saʿīd al-Ṣayrafī, and their peers.

309 – I say: This is the book known as al-Fārūq.

310 – I say: You will find examples of this in the writings of Ibn Taymiyyah—may Allah have mercy on him—among them his epistle on divine decree and predestination. The author mentions this in al-Tadhkirah, 3/355.