39- And by it, Ibn Batta said: Abu Bakr bin Salman narrated to us, Mahmud bin Ja'far narrated to me, Abu Bakr al-Marwazi narrated to us, Abu 'Abdullah - meaning: Imam Aḥmad bin Hanbal - narrated to us, Hasan bin Musa al-Ashyab narrated to us, Hammad narrated to us, from 'Ata' bin al-Sa'ib, from al-Sha'bi, he said:
Indeed, God Almighty has filled the Throne until [indeed] it has a creaking like the creaking of a new saddle (1).
Notes
- (1) The author narrated it by way of Ibn Baṭṭa in al-Ibāna al-Kubrā (2693) by way of Mūsā. Abū al-Shaykh narrated it in al-ʿAẓama (224) from Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad, from ʿUbayd b. Ādam b. Abī Iyās. Ḥarb narrated it (Ijtimāʿ al-Juyūsh, p. 254) from Isḥāq b. Rāhawayh, from Rawḥ; both of them (ʿUbayd and Rawḥ) from Ādam, and both of them (Ādam and Mūsā) from Ḥammād b. Salama, from ʿAṭāʾ, from al-Shaʿbī. (Ādam added in it: from ʿAbdullāh b. Masʿūd May God be pleased with him) as a Mawquf report. Abū ʿAbdullāh said: It is Sahih, and ʿAṭāʾ is trustworthy; the two Ḥammāds narrated from him before his memory deteriorated. It is from the statement of al-Shaʿbī May Allah have mercy on him, and he is from the scholars of the Successors, or from the statement of ʿAbdullāh b. Masʿūd May God be pleased with him, and this is more correct. The narration of Mūsā, from Ḥammād, from ʿAṭāʾ, from al-Shaʿbī, from ʿAbdullāh May God be pleased with him regarding the establishment (al-istiwāʾ) will come under number (45). Some might find a defect in al-Shaʿbī's narration from ʿAbdullāh due to it being broken, but this is not correct: For al-Shaʿbī heard from the Companions of ʿAbdullāh and narrated abundantly, and his asserting it definitively from him in the like of this is stronger than naming the intermediary, as in the case of the Mursal reports of al-Nakhaʿī from ʿAbdullāh May God be pleased with him. And even if it were the statement of al-Shaʿbī himself: Then the like of this is stronger than the connected report (musnad); because with a connected report, its narrator refers you to its chain of transmission, unless its narrator is one who stipulates it being Sahih, or cited it in the context of adducing evidence.
