20- And Yūsuf b. Khalīl informed us — as I read to him more than once — Abū al-Faḍl Ismāʿīl b. ʿAlī al-Janzawī informed us — more than once — Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Aḥmad al-Ghassānī informed us: [10/a] the hadith master Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Aḥmad al-Kattānī narrated to us: Muḥammad b. Rizq — known as: Abū ʿAmr al-Aswad — informed us: Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh b. Jaʿfar al-Nahāwandī (1) narrated to us: Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbd Allāh b. Zāwzān narrated to us: Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. Jaʿfar al-Iṣṭakhrī narrated to us, he said:
Abū ʿAbd Allāh Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Ḥanbal al-Shaybānī, may Allah have mercy on him, said: God, Mighty and Majestic, has a Throne, and the Throne has bearers who carry it, and God, Mighty and Majestic, is over His Throne, and He has a limit (2), and God knows best His limit; He moves (3), speaks, looks, laughs, and rejoices.
Notes
- (1) It was written in the original: (Abū Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh b. Jaʿfar), and what we have established is the correct version. See his biography in Tārīkh Dimashq (32/174).
- (2) In Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanābila (1/61) there is an addition: (He has no Al-Ḥadd)!! This is an incorrect addition, as the context rejects it, and it contradicts what is mass-transmitted from Imam Aḥmad, may Allah have mercy on him, regarding the affirmation of Al-Ḥadd.
- (3) The first to deny (movement) for God Almighty were the Jahmiyya and the Mu'tazilites, as mentioned by Imam Aḥmad, may Allah have mercy on him, in his Radd ʿalā al-Jahmiyya, and al-Dārimī, may Allah have mercy on him, in his Naqḍ ʿalā al-Marīsī al-Jahmī. Then this view passed to the Kullābiyya, the Ash'arites, and other divestors of the attributes. [See: Majmūʿ al-Fatāwā (5/544), and Ḥadīth al-Nuzūl (p. 456)]. As for using the term (movement) in the Chapter of the attributes of God Almighty, it is a matter of disagreement among the people of the Sunna. Some of them acknowledged the meaning but refrained from using the term because the textual evidence did not explicitly state it. Others affirmed it for God Almighty in a manner befitting Him, Exalted is He, because it is among the necessary corollaries of the attributes: such as descending, coming, drawing near, and others that are reported in the Book and the Sunna. Among those who explicitly affirmed it for God Almighty are:
