Chapter: Addendum
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Printed at the end of the edition:
Addendum:
At the close of the manuscript from which we have quoted, the following note appears:
“This copy was taken from a transcript written in the author’s own hand; the scribe was Aḥmad ibn Zayd al-Maqdisī. I also found, in the handwriting of Ibn al-Muḥibb, the copyist who reproduced the author’s script, at the end of the book after completing the original, the following words:
‘I found, in the author’s own handwriting—may Allah have mercy on him—the statement:
One of the later scholars’ discussions declares that it is impermissible to describe Allah the Exalted as being above the Throne. They argue that this would necessarily entail one of three alternatives: either He is smaller than the Throne, or greater than it, or equal to it; all three alternatives, they say, are impossible for Allah,’ and so on to the end of their words.
He replied:
The answer is that such consequences pertain only to bodies, whereas the Creator—glorified be He—is not a body.
Second: We do not concede that His being greater would entail any objection, but we do not state such a thing except on the basis of explicit textual evidence.
Third: We rebut their very inquiry with its counterpart and say: Allah certainly exists, and everything Allah has created among existing beings likewise exists. We therefore ask them about the Necessary Existent: when we mention Him together with all that He has originated among contingent existents, is He—exalted is He—greater than the totality, or smaller, or equal to it? Whatever objection applies to us applies to them; they have no way around it.
Then you say, ‘He is neither inside the universe nor outside it, neither above the Throne nor beneath the Throne, neither in the heaven nor not in the heaven.’ If these negations make sense to you, by Allah, they do not make sense to us. Yet had a revealed text articulated these negations, we would have accepted and followed it; rather, when there came