109 – “The seven heavens, when compared to the Kursī (Divine Footstool), are no more than a ring cast onto a wide, desolate plain, and the superiority of the Throne over the Kursī is like the superiority of that plain over that ring.”

Muḥammad ibn Abī Shaybah related it in his Kitāb al-ʿArsh (114/1):

Al-Ḥasan ibn Abī Laylā narrated to us; Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī al-Asadī informed us; from al-Mukhtār ibn Ghassān al-ʿAbdī; from Ismāʿīl ibn Salm; from Abū Idrīs al-Khawlānī; from Abū Dharr al-Ghifārī who said:

“I entered the Sacred Mosque and saw the Messenger of Allah ﷺ alone, so I sat with him and asked, ‘O Messenger of Allah, which verse revealed to you is the greatest?’ He replied, ‘Āyat al-Kursī: ‘The seven heavens…’ ” — and he mentioned the ḥadīth.

I say: This chain of narration is weak. I do not know Ismāʿīl ibn Salm, and it is most likely that he is Ismāʿīl ibn Muslim; the biographers list him among the teachers of al-Mukhtār ibn ʿUbayd. He was a Makkan who lived in Baṣra, and he is weak.

As for al-Mukhtār, only three narrators transmitted from him, and none declared him reliable; al-Taqrīb describes him as “acceptable” (maqbūl).

I add: Ismāʿīl ibn Muslim was not the sole transmitter of this report. He was followed by Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā al-Ghassānī. The latter’s grandson, Ibrāhīm ibn Hishām ibn Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā al-Ghassānī, narrated: “My father told me from my grandfather, from Abū Idrīs al-Khawlānī,” with the same wording.