- “Allah, Exalted is He, says: ‘Majesty is My cloak and might is My waist-wrapper; whoever contends with Me for either of them, I shall cast him into the Fire.’”
Aḥmad recorded it (2/248): Sufyān narrated to us from ʿAṭāʾ ibn al-Sāʾib, from al-Agharr, from Abū Hurayrah. The first time, Sufyān said: “Indeed, the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace...” Then he repeated it and said: “Al-Agharr, from Abū Hurayrah, said...” and he mentioned the hadith.
I say: This is a chain whose narrators are trustworthy and are among the narrators of the two Ṣaḥīḥs. Sufyān is Ibn ʿUyaynah, and although he heard from ʿAṭāʾ after the latter had become confused in old age, Sufyān al-Thawrī corroborated him; he had heard from him before that deterioration. Thus, Aḥmad also recorded it (2/376): ʿAbd al-Razzāq narrated to us: Sufyān informed us from ʿAṭāʾ ibn al-Sāʾib, with the same chain. However, he said, “greatness” in place of “might.”
It was likewise recorded by Abū Dāwūd (4090), Ibn Mājah (4174), Aḥmad as well (2/414, 427, 442), and al-Ḍiyāʾ in al-Mukhtārah (61/246/1), through other routes from ʿAṭāʾ with the same chain. Ibn Ḥibbān also recorded it in his Ṣaḥīḥ (49—Mawārid), as did Ibn Mājah (4175) and al-Wāḥidī in his exegesis (4/61/2), through two other routes from ʿAṭāʾ ibn al-Sāʾib, from Saʿīd ibn Jubayr, from Ibn ʿAbbās, traced back to the Prophet, with the same wording. This is another chain from ʿAṭāʾ, and perhaps it is among the reports he confused.
Two matters support the preference for the first wording. First: Abū Isḥāq—al-Subayʿī—narrated from Abū Muslim al-Agharr, who related to him from Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī and Abū Hurayrah that they said: The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said: “Might is His waist-wrapper and majesty is His cloak. Whoever contends with Me over anything of either of them, I shall punish him.” Muslim recorded it in his Ṣaḥīḥ (8/35–36), as did al-Bukhārī in al-Adab al-Mufrad (552), whose wording is cited here.