to him:
“You appointed a created being as arbiter?!”
He replied:
“I did not appoint a created being as arbiter; I appointed only the Quran as arbiter.”
The same is true of what Ibn Abī Hātim related in The Refutation of the Jahmiyya (1). He said:
“Harb al-Kirmānī wrote to me: Muhammad ibn al-Musaffā (2) narrated to us: ʿAbd Allah ibn Muhammad narrated to us, from ʿAmr ibn Jumayʿ, from Maymūn ibn Mihrān, from Ibn ʿAbbās, who said:
“When ʿAlī appointed the two arbitrators, the Kharijites said, ‘You appointed two men as arbitrators?’
“He replied, ‘I did not appoint a created being as arbiter; I appointed only the Quran as arbiter.’
“Al-Ashajj narrated to us: Yahyā ibn Yamān narrated to us: Hasan ibn Sālih narrated to us, from ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Hasan, who said:
“ʿAlī told the two arbitrators, ‘Judge by the whole of the Quran, for all of it is in my favor.’”
Ibn Abī Hātim also said:
“My father (3) narrated to us: al-Suhaybī—the cousin of ʿAlī ibn ʿĀsim—and ʿAlī ibn Sālih narrated to us, from ʿImrān ibn Hudayr (4), from ʿIkrima, who said: Ibn—”
(1) The imam, hadith master and critic, Shaykh al-Islam Abū Muhammad ʿAbd al-Rahmān, son of the eminent hadith master Abū Hātim Muhammad ibn Idrīs al-Mundhir al-Tamīmī al-Hanzalī, was born in 240 AH and died in 327 AH. Al-Dhahabī said: “He authored a substantial work entitled *al-Radd ʿala al-Jahmiyya* (Refutation of the Jahmiyya), which attests to his standing as an imam.” For his biography and works, see al-Dhahabī, *Tadhkirat al-Huffāz*, 3rd ed. (Hyderabad, 1376/1957), 3/829–832; Ibn Shākir, *Fawāt al-Wafayāt*, 1/542–543; *Tabaqāt al-Hanābila*, 2; al-Dhahabī, *al-ʿIbar*, Kuwait ed., 2/208; Brockelmann, *Tārīkh al-Adab al-ʿArabī*, 3/223; al-Ziriklī, *al-Aʿlām*, 4/99; and Sezgin, M [0–9], vol. [0–9], pp. [0–9]52–355.
(2) He was Muhammad ibn al-Musaffā ibn Bahlūl al-Himsī, who died in 246 AH. For his biography, see *al-Jarh wa-l-Taʿdīl*, vol. [0–9], section [0–9], p. [0–9]04; al-Khazrajī, *al-Khulāsa*, p. 307; and Ibn al-Athīr, *al-Lubāb*, 1/319.
(3) The phrase “My father narrated to us” is omitted from ʿ and M but appears in N.
(4) Al-Khazrajī states in *al-Khulāsa*, p. 250: “ʿImrān ibn Hudayr—the name Hudayr is written with unpointed letters and is in the diminutive form … died in 149 AH.”