It embodies the creed of the Hanafī Māturīdīs, yet the vast majority of them today—under the sway of kalām—no longer believe it!

160 – Ibn Abī Kuddiyah al-Taymī “?–?”

341 – Al-Salafī relates in Muʿjam Baghdād: I asked Abū ʿAbdullāh Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr al-Taymī al-Qayrawānī, known as Ibn Abī Kuddiyah, the Ashʿarī theologian, about the divine rising (istiwaʾ). He answered:

“Some of our scholars have said that what is meant by it is elevation (ʿuluww); others that it is intention (qaṣd); others that it signifies dominion (istilāʾ); and some of our earliest teachers held that it is to be accepted as it has come, without interpretation. This is one of the two views transmitted from Abū al-Ḥasan.”

161 – Al-Baghawī “c. 436–516 AH”

342 – Imām Muḥyī al-Sunnah Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥusayn ibn Masʿūd al-Baghawī al-Shāfiʿī, author of Maʿālim al-Tanzīl¹, said with regard to the verse, “Then He rose over the Throne”:

“Al-Kalbī and Muqātil said: It means ‘He settled’; Abū ʿUbayda said: He ascended.”

I say: I am not pleased with the word “settled”; rather, I say as Imām Mālik said, “The rising is known.” Al-Baghawī then continued: “The Muʿtazila interpreted the rising as dominion, whereas the People of the Sunnah state: Rising over the Throne is an attribute of Allah without asking how; affirming it is obligatory.”

343 – Concerning His words, “Then He rose toward the heaven”:

“Ibn ʿAbbās and most of the early exegetes said: He ascended to the heaven.” And regarding the verse, “Are they waiting for anything but that Allah should come to them?”:

“The proper course with this verse and those like it is for a person to believe in their outward wording and consign the full knowledge of them to Allah, while holding that Allah is exalted above every mark of originatedness; such was the way of the imams of the early generations and the scholars of the Sunnah.” And he said, regarding “No private conversation takes place among three but that He is their fourth”: