al-Dārimī — from ʿAbd Allāh b. Rajāʾ / [Ḥ], and it was narrated by ʿUbayd Allāh b. Mūsā, and Muʾammal b. Ismāʿīl, all of them from Isrāʾīl.

5- The wording: [(So) and there does not remain of it except the measure (extent) of four fingers]: No one narrated this wording except Isrāʾīl; it was narrated from him with this wording by: Wakīʿ, Abū Aḥmad al-Zubayrī, and al-Dārimī from ʿAbd Allāh b. Rajāʾ.

Note: If the first wording is interpreted such that the "mā" (what) in it is a relative pronoun (mawṣūla), it agrees with the second wording, and this is more appropriate; because Reconciliation is more appropriate than Preference.

And if the first wording is interpreted such that the "mā" is a negating particle (nāfiya), the two wordings conflict, and there is a need for Preference, and this is what Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyya went with, and he gave Preference to the narration of negation with a lengthy discussion in Majmūʿ al-Fatāwā (16/434-439).

• Ruling on the hadith:

Some of the people of knowledge and those occupied with it have criticized the Chain of transmission of this hadith, and among those who spoke about it are: Ibn Maʿīn (al-Dūrī 3/2740), al-Bazzār in al-Musnad (1/458), Ibn Khuzayma in al-Tawḥīd (1/244), al-Ismāʿīlī in Musnad ʿUmar, Ibn al-Jawzī in al-ʿIlal (1/20), Ibn Kathīr in al-Tafsīr (1/681), and among the contemporaries, al-Albānī in his grading of al-Sunna by Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim (574), and al-Ḍaʿīfa (866). And many contemporaries followed him in that.

Note: Know that most of those who found a defect in this hadith from the people of the Sunna — and they are few — only found a defect in it from the perspective of its Chain of transmission, not its Matn. As for speaking about its Matn, and what it indicates of affirming the sitting of the Lord, Exalted is He, no one objected to it, as far as I know, except the Jahmiyya, the enemies of the Sunna and Monotheism (Tawhid).

And it is regrettable that someone who attributes himself to the Sunna and hadith aligns with them in this accusation, judging the hadith to be: (rejected [munkar])!! Like the action of al-Albānī in al-Ḍaʿīfa (866), for he said: (Rather, it is a rejected hadith in my view)! And praise be to God that he attributed this