Daf' Shubah al-Tashbih

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Kitab Akhbar al-Sifat (

The imam Ahmad used to say "Let the texts of scripture stand as they are." Some of his leading disciples followed this principle ... However, three persons whom we have already mentioned viz. Ibn Hamid, the Qadi [Abu Ya'la], and Ibn az-Zaghuni are well known as advocates of a method of interpretation that takes sense experience as its point of departure.[4]

He writes elsewhere in the polemic:

I say to my fellow Hanbalis: You are proponents of scripture and tradition ... Has anyone ever reported to you that Ahmad taught God's [istawa'] on the throne is one of the attributes of his essence or an attribute of action? On what grounds do you justify venturing into [a discussion] of such matters?^[5]

Ibn Jawzi's Ta'wil

While

Both [being in a place and outside a place] along with movement, rest, and other accidents are constitutive of bodies ... The divine essence does not admit of any created entity [e.g. place] within it or inhering in it.[11]

Conception of the Hanbali school of jurisprudential thought

Ahmad ibn Hanbal

The

Ibn az-Zaghuni was asked whether a new attribute came into being upon the creation of the Throne, which had not existed previously, and he replied: "No, only the world was created with the attribute of being 'beneath' and so, in relation to [the Throne] which God occupies, the world is lower ... This man does not understand the implications of what he says, for when he ascribes to God ... a separation between the Creator and His creation, he imposes limits on Him and in effect, declares Him a body ... This shaykh does not comprehend what is necessarily entailed in God's status as Creator or what is incompatible with that status ...[13]

See also

• Asas al-Taqdis
• Al-Sayf al-Saqil fi al-Radd ala Ibn Zafil

References