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بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
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Respectful questions on fiqh, creed, tafsīr, ḥadīth, narrators, books, and related fields are welcome. Published responses appear below once reviewed.
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Unless another perspective is specifically requested, answers generally follow the early Mālikī school in law and the early Ashʿarī school in creed. Differing positions may still be addressed when they are relevant to the question.
The public record
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم. الحمد لله رب العالمين. والصلاة والسلام على سيدنا محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم.
In the Name of Allāh, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is for Allāh, Lord of the worlds. And blessings and peace upon our master Muḥammad ﷺ.
Short answer
It is true, and it is the manhaj of al-Mālikiyyah.
ʾImām al-Buk͟hārī (رحمه الله) narrates upon the authority of Ibn ʿUmar (رضي الله عنه) that a man asked the Messenger of Allāh ﷺ about the night prayer, and he ﷺ said:
“The night prayer is two by two. When one of you fears the approach of dawn, he prays one single rakʿah, which makes odd for him what he has prayed.”
The ḥadīth cited above became the foundational proof that the night prayer is performed two by two. However, the question arose as to whether this applies to all prayers, which is addressed by a second variant of the narration presented below.
ʾImām Ibn Ḥibbān (رحمه الله) narrates upon the authority of Ibn ʿUmar (رضي الله عنه), who said that the Messenger of Allāh ﷺ said:
“The prayer of the night and the day is two by two.”
Asked by Anonymous ·
This question has not yet received a published answer.
Asked by Anonymous ·
This question has not yet received a published answer.
Asked by Anonymous ·
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم. الحمد لله رب العالمين. والصلاة والسلام على سيدنا محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم. In the Name of Allāh, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is for Allāh, Lord of the worlds. And blessings and peace upon our master Muḥammad ﷺ. Short answer It is true, and it is the manhaj of al-Mālikiyyah. ʾImām al-Buk͟hārī (رحمه الله) narrates upon the authority of Ibn ʿUmar (رضي الله عنه) that a man asked the Messenger of Allāh ﷺ about the night prayer, and he ﷺ said: > “The night prayer is two by two. When one of you fears the approach of dawn, he prays one single rakʿah, which makes odd for him what he has prayed.” ╾ ***[Ṣaḥīḥu-l-Buk͟hārī (p. 241, no. 990)](/scan/sahih-al-bukhari-990)*** ╼ The ḥadīth cited above became the foundational proof that the night prayer is performed two by two. However, the question arose as to whether this applies to all prayers, which is addressed by a second variant of the narration presented below. ʾImām Ibn Ḥibbān (رحمه الله) narrates upon the authority of Ibn ʿUmar (رضي الله عنه), who said that the Messenger of Allāh ﷺ said: > “The prayer of the night and the day is two by two.” ╾ ***[Ṣaḥīḥ Ibn Ḥibbān bi-Tartīb Ibn Balbān (6/241, no. 2494)](/scan/sahih-ibn-hibban-2494)*** ╼ Despite this narration being authenticated by Ibn Ḥibbān and others, an issue exists within its isnād—namely ʿAlī, identified as ʿAlī ibn ʿAbdullāh al-Bāriqī al-ʾAzdī, as highlighted in the attached scan. This naturally raises three questions: * What is the general reliability of ʿAlī al-Bāriqī? * Who followed this view? * Does the ḥadīth remain authentic despite this isnād? For the first question, he was authenticated by the following individuals: * Ibn ʿAdī, who stated that although few ʾaḥādīth are narrated from him, there is nothing objectionable about him¹. * Ibn Ḥibbān, who included him in Kitābu-th-Thiqāt² and also narrated from him in his Ṣaḥīḥ, as noted earlier. * Muslim ibnu-l-Ḥajjāj, the author of Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, who included him in his Ṣaḥīḥ³. * ʾAbū ʿĪsā at-Tirmidhī, who narrated a chain on ʿAlī’s authority and explicitly declared it authentic, as reported by al-Mizzī⁴. * He was also included in the works of ʾAbū Dāwūd⁵ and an-Nasāʾī⁶. * Ibn K͟huzaymah, as mentioned by Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī⁷. * Al-Bayhaqī, who stated that all the narrators of a ḥadīth containing ʿAlī al-Bāriqī are trustworthy⁸. Those who narrated this variant in addition to Ibn Ḥibbān include aṭ-Ṭayālisī⁹, Ibn ʾAbī Shaybah¹⁰, ʾAḥmad ibn Ḥanbal¹¹, ad-Dārimī¹², al-Buk͟hārī in at-Tārīk͟hu-l-Kabīr¹³, ʾAbū Dāwūd¹⁴, Ibn Mājah¹⁵, at-Tirmidhī¹⁶, an-Nasāʾī¹⁷, Ibnu-l-Jārūd¹⁸, Ibn K͟huzaymah¹⁹, aṭ-Ṭaḥāwī²⁰, Ibn ʿAdī²¹, ad-Dāraquṭnī²², Ibn Ḥazm²³, al-Bayhaqī²⁴, al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī²⁵, Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr²⁶, and, most importantly, Mālik ibn ʾAnas. ʾImām al-ʿIrāqī (رحمه الله) mentions this variant and acknowledges its authenticity, writing: > “And in the Sunan of the four, with a ṣaḥīḥ isnād: ‘The prayer of the night and the day is two by two.’ It was authenticated by al-Buk͟hārī and Ibn Ḥibbān. An-Nasāʾī, however, said: ‘This, in my view, is an error.’” ╾ ***[Shurūḥu-l-Ḥadīth; Ṭarḥu-t-Tathrīb (3/73)](/scan/tarh-al-tathrib-night-day-prayer)*** ╼ It should be noted that an-Nasāʾī may have disagreed with its content; yet, with respect to its authenticity, he nevertheless authenticated it, stating: “This isnād is jayyid (good), but the other companions of Ibn ʿUmar said otherwise than what ʿAlī al-ʾAzdī reported.”²⁷ To address the second question, the position outlined above was upheld by leading authorities, including Mālik, al-Layth ibn Saʿd, ash-Shāfiʿī, Ibn ʾAbī Laylā, ʾAbū Yūsuf, Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan, ʾAḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, ʾAbū Thawr, Dāwūd, ʾAbū Ḥanīfah, and ath-Thawrī—as summarized by Ibn ʿAbdu-l-Barr²⁸. To answer the question, we must ask: did the early ʾAhlu-l-Madīnah settle upon this practice? ʾImām as-Salafu-ṣ-Ṣāliḥ wa-d-Dāru-l-Madīnah Mālik ibn ʾAnas (رحمه الله) writes: > It reached Mālik that ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿUmar used to say—and in a narration, “from ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿUmar that he used to say”: > > “The prayer of the night and the day is two by two; he gives salām after every two rakʿahs.” > > Mālik said: “This is the established practice with us.” ╾ ***[Al-Muwaṭṭaʾ (1/491–492)](/scan/al-muwatta-night-day-prayer)*** ╼ It should be noted that the ʿamal of Madīnah—and thus Mālik’s methodology—takes precedence over isolated ʾaḥādīth, as Mālik himself stated: “al-ʿamal is stronger than al-khabar.” And Allāh knows best.
Sayf al-Dīn al-Miknāsī ·
Asked by Anonymous ·
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم. الحمد لله رب العالمين. والصلاة والسلام على سيدنا محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم. In the Name of Allāh, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is for Allāh, Lord of the worlds. And blessings and peace upon our master Muḥammad ﷺ. We, the staff of ʾAhlu-l-Ḥadīth, thank you for your question. We would recommend al-Mizzī’s *“Tahdhību-l-Kamāl fī ʾAsmāʾu-r-Rijāl,”* as it is one of the most relied-upon works in ʿilmu-r-rijāl. It is a developed and expanded work based upon ʿAbdu-l-Ghanī al-Maqdisī’s *“al-Kamāl fī ʾAsmāʾu-r-Rijāl,”* which was compiled with the purpose of documenting the narrators of the Kutubu-s-Sittah. This is not a beginner’s book. For an abridged summary of al-Mizzī’s work, one may refer to Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī’s *“Taqrību-t-Tahdhīb,”* which is an extremely concise abridgment of his *“Tahdhību-t-Tahdhīb.”* The latter serves as a summary, refinement, and supplement to the material found in *“Tahdhību-l-Kamāl”* of al-Mizzī. A third option is adh-Dhahabī’s *“al-Kāshif fī Maʿrifatu Man lahu Riwāyah fī-l-Kutubu-s-Sittah,”* a concise yet highly beneficial work. Its title defines its purpose: identifying those who have narrations within the Six Books. In our view, it is the finest and summarized abridgment after *“Taqrību-t-Tahdhīb.”* It should be noted that the classical kutub of rijāl (books of narrator criticism and biography) have not, to our knowledge, been translated comprehensively into English. While the aforementioned works generally provide an accurate representation of the ḥāl (condition) of a narrator, all ʿulamāʾ are liable to error. Therefore, important matters should be verified with a person of knowledge. In sum: 1. Tahdhību-l-Kamāl fī ʾAsmāʾu-r-Rijāl li-l-Mizzī 2. al-Kamāl fī ʾAsmāʾu-r-Rijāl li-ʿAbdi-l-Ghanī al-Maqdisī 3. Tahdhību-t-Tahdhīb li-Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī 4. Taqrību-t-Tahdhīb li-Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī 5. al-Kāshif fī Maʿrifatu Man lahu Riwāyah fī-l-Kutubu-s-Sittah li-dh-Dhahabī And by Allāh, the Most High, success is granted. ¹ Meaning, Ṣaḥīḥu-l-Buk͟hārī, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Sunan ʾAbī Dāwūd, Jāmiʿu-t-Tirmidhī, Sunanu-n-Nasāʾī, and Sunan Ibn Mājah
Sayf al-Dīn al-Miknāsī ·
Asked by Anonymous ·
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم. الحمد لله رب العالمين. والصلاة والسلام على سيدنا محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم. In the Name of Allāh, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is for Allāh, Lord of the worlds. And blessings and peace upon our master Muḥammad ﷺ. Indeed, the statement you are referring to is that of ʾAbū Ḥanīfah رحمه الله, who writes, > *“He has a Yad (lt. Hand), a Wajh (lt. Face), and a Nafs (Self), as Allāh mentioned in the Qurʾān. Whatever Allāh mentioned in the Qurʾān regarding the Wajh, the Yad, and the Nafs are Ṣifāt (Attributes) of His without a how (bilā kayf). **It must not be said that His Yad is His Qudrah (Power) or His Niʿmah (Blessing), __because that contains the nullification of the Ṣifah.__** This [i.e., that al-Yad = Power/Blessing] is the saying of the Qadariyyah and the Muʿtazilah. Rather, His Yad is a Ṣifah of His, without a how.”* ╾ ***Al-Fiqhu-l-ʾAkbar (p. 27)*** ╼ However, it can still be said that His Yad may carry the meaning of His Qudrah. The reason for this, however, is entirely different from the manner in which some deviated groups approached the matter. The distinction lies in recognizing two separate categories of interpretation (taʾwīl) with respect to words and meanings: * *Contextual reinterpretation (at-taʾwīlu-s-siyāqī)*: a word is interpreted with a certain meaning inside a specific text, due to context, usage, and supporting indicators. * *Objective reinterpretation (at-taʾwīlu-l-muṭlaq)*: a word is made identical to another meaning in itself, outside any specific context. ʾAbū-l-Ḥasan al-ʾAs͟hʿarī رحمه الله writes: > *“They **nullified** that He has hearing, sight, and eye, and they agreed with the Christians; because the Christians did not affirm Allāh as Hearing and Seeing **except with the meaning that He is Knowing**. Likewise said the Jahmiyyah.”* > *“The Muʿtazilah **denied** the attributes of the Lord of the worlds, and claimed that the meaning of Hearing, Seeing, Seeing One is the meaning of Knowing.”* ╾ ***Al-ʾIbānah ʿan ʾUṣūlu-d-Diyānah (p. 122, 158)*** ╼ Here, al-ʾAs͟hʿarī himself demonstrates that it is a form of nullification (ibṭāl) to make the meaning of one Ṣifah identical to that of another. We say, if Ṣifah (A) simply means Ṣifah (B), in absolute, then A no longer has an independent meaning. It becomes only another label or synonym for B. The Shaykh of many of the early ʾAs͟hʿariyyah, ʾAbū Bakr Muḥammad ibnu-l-Ḥasan ibn Fūrak al-ʾIṣfahānī رحمه الله, the student of ʾAbū-l-Ḥasan al-Bāhilī رحمه الله, who was the close companion of ʾAbū-l-Ḥasan al-ʾAs͟hʿarī, understood this distinction well. He writes: > *“Al-Yad may also be attributed to Him with the meaning of dominion, strength, blessing, and power. **We only distinguish between its meanings by the places in which it is mentioned and the contextual indicators attached to it.**”* ╾ ***Mushkilu-l-Ḥadīth wa-Bayānuh (p. 433)*** ╼ A simple example is: “The king rules with an iron fist.” In that context, “iron fist” means harsh and severe rule. But outside that context, “iron fist” does not simply mean “harsh dictatorship.” If it did, then the first terminology would become a mere synonym for the second and lose its own meaning. And by Allāh, the Most High, success is granted.
Sayf al-Dīn al-Miknāsī ·
Asked by Anonymous ·
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم. الحمد لله رب العالمين. والصلاة والسلام على سيدنا محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم. In the Name of Allāh, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is for Allāh, Lord of the worlds. And blessings and peace upon our master Muḥammad ﷺ. To answer the first question, regarding the meaning of ʾAhlu-l-Fatrah, they are those to whom no binding prophetic message reached. This understanding is derived from numerous ʾaḥādīth, among them the authentic ḥadīth of al-ʾAswad ibn Sarīʿ رضي الله عنه, in which the Prophet ﷺ said, > *“Four will present their argument on the Day of Resurrection: a deaf man who could not hear anything, a mentally deficient man, a very old senile man, and **a man who died upon the Fatrah**.”* ╾ ***Al-Iʿtiqād li-l-Bayhaqī (p. 169)*** ╼ To further clarify what is intended by ʾAhlu-l-Fatrah, it is beneficial to consider the words of the great Mālikī mufassir al-Qurṭubī رحمه الله, who wrote, > *“This āyah also, by the possible scope of its wording, gives this meaning concerning those whom no message reached. They are al-ʾAhlu-l-Fatrah, whose existence some of the people of knowledge have affirmed.”* > *“Some people have used this as evidence that the people of islands, when they hear of ʾIslām and believe, are not legally accountable for what passed before. **This is correct.** __Whoever the call has not reached is not deserving of punishment from the standpoint of reason.__ And Allāh knows best.”* ╾ ***Al-Jāmiʿ li-ʾAḥkāmu-l-Qurʾān (10/231-232)*** ╼ As for the second question, concerning the parents of the Messenger of Allāh ﷺ, there are a number of ʾaḥādīth which, upon their apparent wording, may suggest that they are in the Fire. However, the scholars of ʾAhlu-s-Sunnah advanced numerous forms of taʾwīl regarding these reports, from which two principal positions emerged. The first position, held by the majority of the ʾUmmah, is that the parents of the Prophet ﷺ are among the saved. The second position, held by a minority, is that no definitive judgement is made concerning them. Both positions oppose those who categorically declare that they are in the Fire. Indeed, some scholars went so far as to pronounce takfīr or laʿnah against those who insist upon such a claim. Among the narrations cited by those affirming their salvation is the report of ʾUmmu-l-Muʾminīn ʿĀʾishah bint ʾAbī Bakr رضي الله عنها, in which the Messenger of Allāh ﷺ said, > *“I went to the grave of my mother and asked Allāh to bring her back to life. So He brought her back to life, she believed in me, and Allāh returned her.”* ╾ ***Nāsikhu-l-Ḥadīth li-Ibn Shāhīn (p. 489, no. 656)*** ╼ It is true that this ʾathar is weak. Nevertheless, az-Zurqānī writes¹ that it was accepted by some scholars because it concerns a faḍīlah of the Prophet ﷺ, and reports in virtues are treated with greater latitude. Furthermore, he argues that their salvation may be affirmed independently, since they died during the fatrah and there is no punishment before prophetic proof. He also cites the view that they were upon the ḥanīfiyyah and that no shirk preceded from them, referencing as-Sanūsī, at-Tilimsānī, al-ʾUbbī, and others. Qāḍī ʾAbū Bakr ibnu-l-ʿArabī² was also asked regarding a man who declared the parents of Muḥammad ﷺ to be inhabitants of the Hellfire. He responded that such a person is accursed, for he uttered a great harm against the Messenger of Allāh, citing the verse, > *{Indeed, those who harm Allāh and His Messenger, Allāh has cursed them in this world and the Hereafter and prepared for them a humiliating punishment} [33:57]* And by Allāh, the Most High, success is granted. ¹ See Sharḥu-l-Mawāhibu-l-Ladunniyyah (1/307-369). ² See Mawāhibu-l-Jalīl li-l-Ḥaṭṭāb (6/286).
Sayf al-Dīn al-Miknāsī ·
Asked by Anonymous ·
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم. الحمد لله رب العالمين. والصلاة والسلام على سيدنا محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم In the Name of Allāh, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is for Allāh, Lord of the worlds. And blessings and peace upon our master Muḥammad ﷺ. Yes, our scholars did engage in rigorous taḥqīq of the riwāyāt of the Kutub al-Sittah. However, no single classical scholar produced a manual grading every ḥadīth in all six books. This is more of a modern genre. Classical taḥqīq was embedded in the shurūḥ, ʿilal works, rijāl criticism, and takhrīj. A preliminary clarification first. Only Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī and Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim were compiled as ṣaḥīḥ-only collections. The four Sunan contain ṣaḥīḥ, ḥasan, and weak material. Grading the Ṣaḥīḥayn is therefore a different problem from grading the four Sunan. For Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, the most important works are those of Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī رحمه الله. His Fatḥ al-Bārī involves deep isnād and rijāl work, analysis of variant routes, and responses to objections raised against narrators and texts. His Hady al-Sārī contains a dedicated section on narrators of Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī who were criticized, along with responses to those criticisms. His Taghlīq al-Taʿlīq traces and examines the muʿallaqāt, the suspended reports Bukhārī included outside his fully musnad chains. The other major commentary on Bukhārī is ʿUmdat al-Qārī by Badr al-Dīn al-ʿAynī رحمه الله, particularly valuable for its Ḥanafī fiqh engagement and counter-reading of the isnāds. For Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, the standard reference is al-Minhāj Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim by al-Nawawī رحمه الله, which discusses isnāds, matn variants, and responds to criticisms including those of al-Dāraquṭnī. The earlier commentary is Ikmāl al-Muʿlim bi-Fawāʾid Muslim by Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ رحمه الله, which should be consulted alongside al-Nawawī. For the four Sunan, al-Suyūṭī رحمه الله produced commentary works on all four collections: Qūt al-Mughtadhī ʿalā Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī, Mirqāt al-Ṣuʿūd ilā Sunan Abī Dāwūd, Zahr al-Rubā ʿalā al-Mujtabā for al-Nasāʾī, and notes on Ibn Mājah. These serve as the classical commentarial layer on those collections, though they are not exhaustive grading manuals. For Ibn Mājah, the classical zawāʾid criticism is found in Miṣbāḥ al-Zujājah fī Zawāʾid Ibn Mājah by al-Būṣīrī رحمه الله. For taḥqīq of legal aḥādīth specifically, two works are indispensable though they are not sequential grading books of the Kutub al-Sittah: Naṣb al-Rāyah li-Aḥādīth al-Hidāyah by al-Zaylaʿī رحمه الله, and Iʿlāʾ al-Sunan by Ẓafar Aḥmad al-ʿUthmānī رحمه الله. In sum: * Fatḥ al-Bārī, Hady al-Sārī, Taghlīq al-Taʿlīq — Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī (Bukhārī) * ʿUmdat al-Qārī — Badr al-Dīn al-ʿAynī (Bukhārī) * al-Minhāj Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim — al-Nawawī (Muslim) * Ikmāl al-Muʿlim bi-Fawāʾid Muslim — Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ (Muslim) * Qūt al-Mughtadhī, Mirqāt al-Ṣuʿūd, Zahr al-Rubā, notes on Ibn Mājah — al-Suyūṭī (four Sunan) * Miṣbāḥ al-Zujājah fī Zawāʾid Ibn Mājah — al-Būṣīrī (Ibn Mājah) * Naṣb al-Rāyah — al-Zaylaʿī; Iʿlāʾ al-Sunan — al-ʿUthmānī (Ḥanafī-Māturīdī takhrīj of legal ʾaḥādīth) And by Allāh, the Most High, success is granted. ¹ Meaning: Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Sunan Abī Dāwūd, Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī, Sunan al-Nasāʾī, and Sunan Ibn Mājah.
Sayf al-Dīn al-Miknāsī ·
Asked by Anonymous ·
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم. الحمد لله رب العالمين. والصلاة والسلام على سيدنا محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم In the Name of Allāh, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is for Allāh, Lord of the worlds. And blessings and peace upon our master Muḥammad ﷺ. The Māturīdīs do have a principled answer to this, and it is more than "Allāh can do either one." It rests on a distinction the school draws between what sound is to hearing and what direction is to vision. Once that distinction is seen, the two cases stop being parallel. One important thing is, the objection assumes "hearing without sound" and "seeing without direction" are the same kind of thing, waiving an ordinary condition of a sense. The Māturīdīs deny the parity. Their position is that direction, facing (muqābala), distance, and ray-contact are ʿādī: customary accompaniments of vision in this world, not part of what vision is. Strip them away and an intact act of seeing remains. Sound works differently. It isn't a customary accompaniment of hearing; it's what samʿ is defined by, so strip it away and nothing remains that answers to the word "hearing." That is the Māturīdī answer in its essence. On the hearing side, Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī رحمه الله states in Kitāb al-Tawḥīd, and is reported to say again in Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān at Q. 9:6 ("ḥattā yasmaʿa kalām Allāh"), that it is impossible (yastaḥīl) to hear anything outside the genus of letters and sound, because samʿ in the observable world attaches to sound and revolves with it in existence and non-existence (yadūru maʿa al-ṣawt wujūdan wa ʿadaman)¹. On this basis he holds that Mūsā عليه السلام did not hear the eternal Kalām Nafsī itself, but a created sound that pointed to (dāll ʿalā) God's speech. This is preserved by Abū al-Muʿīn al-Nasafī رحمه الله in Tabṣirat al-Adilla (1:489), who gives the same wujūdan-wa-ʿadaman criterion and names it explicitly as "the doctrine of Shaykh Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī," and by Nūr al-Dīn al-Ṣābūnī رحمه الله (a Ḥanafī-Māturīdī who debated Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī on this exact question) in al-Kifāya fī al-Hidāya (pp. 132-133). Notably, al-Rāzī himself confirms this was the recognized Māturīdī position: in his own tafsīr, at Q. 7:143, he reports that what Mūsā heard was "disconnected sounds and composed letters subsisting in the tree" (aṣwāt muqaṭṭaʿa wa ḥurūf muʾallafa qāʾima bi-l-shajarah), never the eternal attribute itself; and at Q. 42:51 he reports the same doctrine by name: "Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī al-Samarqandī claimed that subsisting attribute cannot be heard; what is heard is only letters and sounds God creates in the tree." That an Ashʿarī opponent records the Māturīdī position in near-identical terms across two separate āyāt is good evidence it is being reported accurately. On the vision side, al-Nasafī's Tabṣirat al-Adilla (1:635, 641) is explicit that the stipulated conditions for ruʾyah (distance, facing, ray-contact, removal of veils) are not shurūṭ at all; vision occurs "as it is," and none of these count among its lawāzim. His conclusion is the formula familiar from every Sunnī creed: Allāh is seen, "not from a direction and not in a direction" (lā ʿan jihatin wa lā fī jihatin). Al-Ṣābūnī then states the two side by side, and this is the decisive text: "the speech itself is not heard, since it is impossible to hear what is not of the genus of letters and sounds; hearing, in the observable world, revolves with sound in existence and non-existence, unlike vision (bi-khilāf al-ruʾyah)."² He goes on: Mūsā heard a sound indicating Allāh's speech, not the speech itself, and his being singled out as Kalīm Allāh is because he heard without the mediation of a Book or a Messenger, not because he heard without the mediation of sound and letter. Al-Rāzī also records the opposing, Ashʿarī reasoning explicitly at Q. 2:253: since seeing what is not modally-delimited is not impossible, hearing what is not modally-delimited should likewise not be deemed remote, and on that basis the Ashʿarīs held Mūsā heard the eternal speech directly. This symmetry argument was felt by some within the Ḥanafī school too. Mullā ʿAlī al-Qārī رحمه الله is reported, in Minaḥ al-Rawḍ al-Azhar, to have favoured the Ashʿarī symmetrical position over the standard Māturīdī one on this specific point. Though, it does not change what the standard Māturīdī position is; it only shows the tension was live enough that at least one major figure moved to the other side of it. And by Allāh, the Most High, success is granted. ¹ "Revolves with sound in existence and non-existence" invokes the classical uṣūlī dawarān test (ṭard wa ʿaks): when an effect appears whenever a given attribute is present and disappears whenever it is absent, that attribute is treated as the effect's ʿilla, its definitional ground rather than merely an accompanying condition. The half doing the actual work in the Māturīdī argument is the ʿaks (absence) direction: no sound means no hearing, in every case anyone has observed, and that licenses the conclusion that the soundless eternal attribute cannot, by definition, be heard. ² al-Kifāya fī al-Hidāya, p. 132.
Ibn al-Naẓar al-Isrāʾīlī ·
Asked by Anonymous ·
In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is for Allah, Lord of the worlds. And blessings and peace upon our master Muḥammad, peace and blessings be upon him. We accept Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī no. 7404 as it stands. It does not say that Allah occupies a *makān* above the Throne. The most useful evidence here is another wording of the same ḥadīth in al-Bukhārī itself. Once the different routes are put beside each other, the thing described as being above the Throne is the book that Allah caused to be written. Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, may Allah have mercy on him, says exactly that in *Fatḥ al-Bārī*. A created book being above the created Throne is perfectly possible. Allah being contained in a spatial position above the Throne is a different claim altogether. The first proposition does not give us the second. In no. 7404, the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, tells us that when Allah created creation, He wrote in His Book concerning Himself that His mercy overcomes His anger. The report then refers to “it” as placed *ʿindahu* upon the Throne. Ibn Ḥajar pauses over that pronoun and says that “it” means **the written thing**. He also explains the wording translated as “placed” and notes another transmission in which that meaning is stated more explicitly. The pronoun is therefore referring back to what Allah caused to be written, not to Allah Himself. See *Fatḥ al-Bārī*, in Ibn Ḥajar's commentary on Bukhārī 7404. Bukhārī no. 7554 makes the point clearer still. In that version, the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, says that Allah wrote a book before creating creation, containing the declaration that His mercy preceded His anger, and then describes **it** as written with Him above the Throne. That wording is enough to settle the grammatical question. Allah is not “written.” The book is. There is another route at Bukhārī no. 3194. Again, the report begins with Allah writing in His Book and then continues by referring to it as *ʿindahu* above the Throne. Muslim also transmits the same ḥadīth with the wording that “it is placed with Him.” These routes explain the shorter wording in 7404 rather than leaving us to guess what the pronoun means. Ibn Ḥajar later puts the matter in one sentence: **“Above His Throne” is a description of the book.** He even rejects the need to force “above” into some unusual meaning. The Throne is created. The book is created. One created thing may be above another created thing without any difficulty. That point is worth keeping straight, because otherwise the Ashʿarī answer gets made more complicated than it needs to be. There is no reason to run away from “above” in this ḥadīth. The book can really be above the Throne. What cannot be done is to take the book's location and quietly transfer it to Allah. The more serious question is the word *ʿindahu*, usually translated here as “with Him.” Someone can concede that the book is what is above the Throne and still ask: if the book is “with Allah” there, does that not place Allah there as well? Ibn Baṭṭāl, may Allah have mercy on him, addresses this point, and Ibn Ḥajar preserves his discussion. Ibn Baṭṭāl acknowledges that *ʿinda* can be used spatially in ordinary Arabic, but he immediately denies that this forces a spatial meaning when the expression concerns Allah. His example is the divine ḥadīth, “I am with My servant's expectation of Me.” Nobody understands that to mean that Allah occupies a physical location inside a person's expectation. Ibn Ḥajar records the conclusion that there is certainly no place intended there. He also notes that *ʿinda* is used for relations other than physical proximity. Ibn al-Tīn explains it in this report with reference to Allah's knowledge of the book upon the Throne. Badr al-Dīn al-ʿAynī, may Allah have mercy on him, says it even more plainly in *ʿUmdat al-Qārī*: the subject is the book, and **the *ʿindiyyah* here is not spatial**. That is probably the cleanest comment to remember after Ibn Ḥajar's. The book is above the Throne. Its being *ʿindahu* does not mean that Allah shares a spatial location with it. Ibn Ḥajar also preserves an important passage from al-Khaṭṭābī, may Allah have mercy on him, while discussing the Throne reports. Al-Khaṭṭābī rejects the idea that these texts mean Allah is touching the Throne, settled into it, or confined by one of its spatial directions. The Throne and those who carry it are themselves creatures of Allah. The language of revelation is affirmed without turning the Creator into something contained by the created order. At this point, the attempted proof from Bukhārī 7404 has already failed. The ḥadīth gives us a book above the Throne. It gives us the expression *ʿindahu*. It never says, “Allah is in a place above the Throne.” That proposition has to be added to the report. The wider Ashʿarī doctrine explains why we reject that addition. Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī, may Allah have mercy on him, discusses this in the seventh principle of *Qawāʿid al-ʿAqāʾid*. His position is that the Divine Essence is transcendent above being confined to created directions. His first argument is straightforward. Spatial direction belongs to creation. “Above” and “below,” when meant as bodily spatial relations, depend upon the existence and arrangement of created things. Allah existed eternally before the world existed. A relation which begins with creation cannot become something that contains, carries, or limits the Creator. Al-Ghazālī then asks what someone actually means by saying that Allah is spatially above the world. If he means the kind of “above” by which one spatial object stands opposite another, then spatial measurement has entered the claim. There is now a relation of distance and opposition between two things. Questions of extension and delimitation follow. For al-Ghazālī, this tells us that the proposed meaning belongs to the category of spatially bounded things. This is what the Ashʿarīs mean when they deny *makān* for Allah. We are not denying Allah's transcendence, majesty, or exaltedness. We are denying that His Essence occupies a created spatial locus. If *makān* means a genuine location, then whatever occupies it is here rather than there. It bears some spatial relation to what lies around it. Questions of distance, boundary, opposition, and containment become meaningful. Those are created relations. There is also a simple problem of dependence. Allah existed before the Throne. He existed before every place and every direction. The creation of the Throne did not give Allah something He previously lacked. The Throne does not carry Him in the way a created support carries what rests upon it, and He does not require a spatial region in order to exist. Sometimes the disagreement becomes muddled because the word *makān* itself is used without being defined. If someone says, “Allah has a *makān*,” but then denies that he means a created location, containment, measurable distance, or spatial delimitation, the obvious question is what he means by *makān* at all. Part of the dispute may then be verbal. Our objection is to the spatial meaning. An Atharī can still make a more careful argument. He may say: “I accept that ‘above the Throne’ in this particular sentence describes the book. I am not claiming that the grammar of 7404 itself makes Allah the thing above the Throne. I understand *ʿindahu* together with the other texts concerning divine *ʿuluww* and *istiwāʾ*.” That is a real theological disagreement. It is also a different argument. Once the grammar of 7404 is conceded, this ḥadīth is no longer proving spatial location by itself. The discussion has moved to the wider meaning of *ʿuluww*, *istiwāʾ*, direction, and the principles by which the texts of the attributes are understood. Those questions have their own proofs and their own long debate among the scholars. As for this report, making *ʿindahu* necessarily mean physical co-location simply assumes what needs to be proved. Ibn Baṭṭāl's example already shows that the word does not demand that meaning whenever it is used concerning Allah. Al-ʿAynī then removes any doubt about his own interpretation by saying that the *ʿindiyyah* here is not spatial. So if somebody cites Bukhārī 7404 and paraphrases it as “Allah is in a place above the Throne,” the answer is fairly short. That is not what the ḥadīth says. Bukhārī's fuller wording identifies the thing above the Throne as the written book. Ibn Ḥajar says that “above His Throne” describes the book. Al-ʿAynī says that the *ʿindiyyah* is not spatial. A doctrine of *makān* cannot be extracted from this report without first adding a spatial premise which the report itself does not supply. **In sum:** * *Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī* — Imām al-Bukhārī * *Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim* — Imām Muslim * *Fatḥ al-Bārī* — Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī * *Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī* — Ibn Baṭṭāl * *ʿUmdat al-Qārī* — Badr al-Dīn al-ʿAynī * *Qawāʿid al-ʿAqāʾid* — Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī And by Allah, the Most High, success is granted. ¹ *Makān* here means an actual spatial locus or *ḥayyiz*. If someone uses the same word while denying spatial location, containment, and delimitation, the intended meaning has to be established before the disagreement can be judged.
Ibn al-Naẓar al-Isrāʾīlī ·
Asked by Anonymous ·
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم. الحمد لله رب العالمين. والصلاة والسلام على سيدنا محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم In the Name of Allāh, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is for Allāh, Lord of the worlds. And blessings and peace upon our master Muḥammad ﷺ. Your imam is right about part of this and needs correcting on the other, because Baghdad and Constantinople aren't tested the same way at all. A preliminary clarification first. Whether Baghdad fell, and how badly it suffered, is a question of tārīkh, and it gets settled the way any pre-modern event gets settled: how close the witness stood to it, and whether independent chronicle traditions agree with each other rather than one loud retelling simply getting repeated. A chronicle report carries no isnād, so you weigh it as testimony rather than as transmission. Whether a given wording about Constantinople actually came from the Prophet ﷺ is a question of ḥadīth, settled instead by isnād and rijāl: who said it, through whom, and whether each link in that chain can be trusted. Baghdad first. The skeleton of it is about as solid as pre-modern history gets. Ibn Kathīr رحمه الله records, under the year 656 AH in al-Bidāya wa-l-Nihāya, that the Tatars took Baghdad, killed most of its people including the caliph al-Mustaʿṣim, and ended Abbasid rule there.¹ He isn't alone in this. The near-contemporary local chronicle known as Kitāb al-Ḥawādith reports the same sequence from inside the city. Its printed attribution to Ibn al-Fuwaṭī was later rejected by its own editor, Muṣṭafā Jawād, though the text itself stays valuable as a near-contemporary witness. The Persian chronicler Juwaynī, who served the Mongols directly, and the Syriac Christian chronicler Bar Hebraeus, writing from a completely different community, both confirm the same skeleton from very different vantage points. What gets shaky is the detail piled on top of it afterward. The death toll is where this starts to slip. Ibn Kathīr introduces it with "the people differed" (ikhtalafa al-nās) and lists three incompatible figures, 800,000, 1,800,000, and 2,000,000, before closing with Allāhu aʿlam.² Al-Dhahabī رحمه الله shows the same unease in Taʾrīkh al-Islām: he transmits 1.8 million by balaghanā ("it reached us"), then gives his own preference as 800,000, calling it al-aṣaḥḥ, "the more correct." No source behind any of these figures gives a demographic base, and the later the retelling, the higher the number tends to climb. The Tigris turning black with drowned ink, or red with blood, is weaker still. Ibn Kathīr's own wording has blood running through the gutters and alleys of the city, which is grim enough on its own but is not the river changing colour. The literal river-black-with-ink image only shows up centuries later, in retellings like al-ʿIṣāmī al-Makkī's Simṭ al-Nujūm al-ʿAwālī: a later literary flourish, not something anyone actually witnessed. The same caution applies to the House of Wisdom being emptied into the river as one clean event, closing the book on Baghdad's scholarship in a single afternoon. Ibn al-Fuwaṭī, whose name got attached to the Ḥawādith chronicle, is a useful check on that story: he was a boy of fourteen taken captive in the very sack we're discussing, and within two or three years he had been appointed librarian of the observatory at Marāgha. By 679 AH he was back in Baghdad running the library of the Mustanṣiriyya madrasa, where he wrote his own biographical dictionary of the scholars of his age. Some collections were surely lost in a month of sack and fire, but a boy formed by that catastrophe going on to run two major libraries within a generation is not what the end of a civilization's scholarship looks like. Ibn al-ʿAlqamī's alleged betrayal sits in between the two. Ibn Kathīr's account, that the vizier deliberately gutted the caliph's army and corresponded with the Mongols to finish off Sunni rule, is openly anti-Shīʿī in its language and was written more than a century after the fact. Ibn al-Ṭiqṭaqā, writing closer to the event, with his own father among the dead, paints a different man entirely: capable, but overruled and living in fear of arrest. Now the ḥadīths. The first thing to fix is that there is no single "Constantinople ḥadīth." People run four separate reports together, and they don't describe the same conquest. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī (no. 2924) has the Prophet ﷺ tell Umm Ḥarām bint Milḥān that the first army of his ummah to raid by sea have earned Paradise, then that the first army to raid madīnat Qayṣar, the city of Caesar, will be forgiven. Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī رحمه الله, in Fatḥ al-Bārī, glosses "the city of Caesar" as Constantinople and ties the report to the early Umayyad campaign under Yazīd b. Muʿāwiya, in which Abū Ayyūb al-Anṣārī died and was buried outside the walls. This report is ṣaḥīḥ, and nobody disputes that. But it praises the first raiding army rather than the conquering one, and it has nothing to do with 857 AH. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim (no. 2897), in the chapter Muslim himself titles "The Conquest of Constantinople, the Emergence of the Dajjāl, and the Descent of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam," has the Romans camp at al-Aʿmāq or Dābiq, an army from Medina fight them, and while they're dividing the spoils with their swords hung on olive trees, Satan cries out that the Dajjāl has taken their place among their families, which brings on the descent of ʿĪsā عليه السلام. Muslim (no. 2920) gives a second report: seventy thousand from Banū Isḥāq take a city that is part land, part sea, without a single weapon, purely by takbīr, and are then called away by news that the Dajjāl has appeared. Both are ṣaḥīḥ by inclusion in Muslim, and both are plainly tied to the end of time. Whatever these describe, it did not happen in 1453. The report actually applied to Sultan Meḥmed II is the one genuinely disputed: "Constantinople will surely be conquered; how excellent is its commander, and how excellent is that army." It isn't in Bukhārī or Muslim. It comes through Aḥmad's Musnad (no. 18957), al-Ḥākim's al-Mustadrak (4:468), and al-Ṭabarānī's al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr (no. 1216), via al-Walīd ibn al-Mughīra from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Bishr al-Ghanawī/al-Khathʿamī, from his father. Al-Ḥākim رحمه الله graded it ṣaḥīḥ al-isnād, and al-Dhahabī is reported to have agreed. Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr رحمه الله called the isnād ḥasan in al-Istīʿāb, and al-Haythamī رحمه الله said its men were thiqāt in Majmaʿ al-Zawāʾid. Against that, ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī رحمه الله judged the narrator majhūl, and the only critic who ever authenticated him was Ibn Ḥibbān.³ That is why al-Albānī رحمه الله, in al-Silsila al-Ḍaʿīfa (no. 878) and Ḍaʿīf al-Jāmiʿ (no. 4655), refused to lean on that alone and graded the whole report weak, and Shuʿayb al-Arnaʾūṭ رحمه الله reached the same conclusion in his taḥqīq of the Musnad. Qualified rijāl critics genuinely disagree here about how much weight one generous tawthīq of an otherwise unknown man can carry. And even for scholars who accept the isnād, pinning it on Meḥmed II specifically is an extra step the text itself doesn't take, since it names no sultan and no date. The same wording was already being quoted in early Islamic history for Maslama ibn ʿAbd al-Malik's Umayyad campaign against Constantinople, which tells you early Muslims themselves didn't read it as pointing to one future conqueror alone. Applying it to 1453 is a reasonable reading, but it isn't the only one the text allows. In sum: al-Bidāya wa-l-Nihāya, events of 656 AH — Ibn Kathīr (Baghdad's fall and the caliph's death well-attested; death tolls flagged by the author himself as disputed) Kitāb al-Ḥawādith — local Baghdadi chronicle, independent near-contemporary corroboration; its attribution to Ibn al-Fuwaṭī was rejected by its own editor, Muṣṭafā Jawād Taʾrīkh al-Islām — al-Dhahabī (a separate numeric tradition; prefers 800,000) Talkhīṣ Majmaʿ al-Ādāb — Ibn al-Fuwaṭī (his own career stands against the total-destruction narrative) Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, no. 2924 — first army to raid Caesar's city (ṣaḥīḥ; early Umayyad raid, not 1453) Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, nos. 2897 and 2920 — the conquest tied to the Dajjāl and the descent of ʿĪsā (ṣaḥīḥ; eschatological, not 1453) Musnad Aḥmad no. 18957 / al-Mustadrak 4:468 / al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr no. 1216 — the "excellent commander" praise-report (disputed: ṣaḥīḥ per al-Ḥākim, Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, al-Haythamī; ḍaʿīf per Ibn al-Madīnī, al-Albānī, al-Arnaʾūṭ) And by Allāh, the Most High, success is granted. ¹ vol. 17, pp. 356–364; the same passage is commonly cited around vol. 13, pp. 200–204 in older printings. ² Ibn Kathīr uses qīla and closes with Allāhu aʿlam because he's relaying a report he can't verify himself, a distinction most of the popular retellings drop. ³ Ibn Ḥibbān رحمه الله set a comparatively generous bar for tawthīq: he'd list a narrator among the thiqāt on a clean record alone, even where no one else had said a word about him.
Ibn al-Naẓar al-Isrāʾīlī ·
Despite this narration being authenticated by Ibn Ḥibbān and others, an issue exists within its isnād—namely ʿAlī, identified as ʿAlī ibn ʿAbdullāh al-Bāriqī al-ʾAzdī, as highlighted in the attached scan.
This naturally raises three questions:
For the first question, he was authenticated by the following individuals:
Those who narrated this variant in addition to Ibn Ḥibbān include aṭ-Ṭayālisī⁹, Ibn ʾAbī Shaybah¹⁰, ʾAḥmad ibn Ḥanbal¹¹, ad-Dārimī¹², al-Buk͟hārī in at-Tārīk͟hu-l-Kabīr¹³, ʾAbū Dāwūd¹⁴, Ibn Mājah¹⁵, at-Tirmidhī¹⁶, an-Nasāʾī¹⁷, Ibnu-l-Jārūd¹⁸, Ibn K͟huzaymah¹⁹, aṭ-Ṭaḥāwī²⁰, Ibn ʿAdī²¹, ad-Dāraquṭnī²², Ibn Ḥazm²³, al-Bayhaqī²⁴, al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī²⁵, Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr²⁶, and, most importantly, Mālik ibn ʾAnas.
ʾImām al-ʿIrāqī (رحمه الله) mentions this variant and acknowledges its authenticity, writing:
“And in the Sunan of the four, with a ṣaḥīḥ isnād: ‘The prayer of the night and the day is two by two.’ It was authenticated by al-Buk͟hārī and Ibn Ḥibbān. An-Nasāʾī, however, said: ‘This, in my view, is an error.’”
It should be noted that an-Nasāʾī may have disagreed with its content; yet, with respect to its authenticity, he nevertheless authenticated it, stating: “This isnād is jayyid (good), but the other companions of Ibn ʿUmar said otherwise than what ʿAlī al-ʾAzdī reported.”²⁷
To address the second question, the position outlined above was upheld by leading authorities, including Mālik, al-Layth ibn Saʿd, ash-Shāfiʿī, Ibn ʾAbī Laylā, ʾAbū Yūsuf, Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan, ʾAḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, ʾAbū Thawr, Dāwūd, ʾAbū Ḥanīfah, and ath-Thawrī—as summarized by Ibn ʿAbdu-l-Barr²⁸.
To answer the question, we must ask: did the early ʾAhlu-l-Madīnah settle upon this practice?
ʾImām as-Salafu-ṣ-Ṣāliḥ wa-d-Dāru-l-Madīnah Mālik ibn ʾAnas (رحمه الله) writes:
It reached Mālik that ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿUmar used to say—and in a narration, “from ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿUmar that he used to say”:“The prayer of the night and the day is two by two; he gives salām after every two rakʿahs.”Mālik said: “This is the established practice with us.”
It should be noted that the ʿamal of Madīnah—and thus Mālik’s methodology—takes precedence over isolated ʾaḥādīth, as Mālik himself stated: “al-ʿamal is stronger than al-khabar.”
And Allāh knows best.
— Sayf al-Dīn al-Miknāsī
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم. الحمد لله رب العالمين. والصلاة والسلام على سيدنا محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم.
In the Name of Allāh, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is for Allāh, Lord of the worlds. And blessings and peace upon our master Muḥammad ﷺ.
We, the staff of ʾAhlu-l-Ḥadīth, thank you for your question.
We would recommend al-Mizzī’s “Tahdhību-l-Kamāl fī ʾAsmāʾu-r-Rijāl,” as it is one of the most relied-upon works in ʿilmu-r-rijāl. It is a developed and expanded work based upon ʿAbdu-l-Ghanī al-Maqdisī’s “al-Kamāl fī ʾAsmāʾu-r-Rijāl,” which was compiled with the purpose of documenting the narrators of the Kutubu-s-Sittah. This is not a beginner’s book.
For an abridged summary of al-Mizzī’s work, one may refer to Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī’s “Taqrību-t-Tahdhīb,” which is an extremely concise abridgment of his “Tahdhību-t-Tahdhīb.” The latter serves as a summary, refinement, and supplement to the material found in “Tahdhību-l-Kamāl” of al-Mizzī.
A third option is adh-Dhahabī’s “al-Kāshif fī Maʿrifatu Man lahu Riwāyah fī-l-Kutubu-s-Sittah,” a concise yet highly beneficial work. Its title defines its purpose: identifying those who have narrations within the Six Books. In our view, it is the finest and summarized abridgment after “Taqrību-t-Tahdhīb.”
It should be noted that the classical kutub of rijāl (books of narrator criticism and biography) have not, to our knowledge, been translated comprehensively into English. While the aforementioned works generally provide an accurate representation of the ḥāl (condition) of a narrator, all ʿulamāʾ are liable to error. Therefore, important matters should be verified with a person of knowledge.
In sum:
And by Allāh, the Most High, success is granted.
¹ Meaning, Ṣaḥīḥu-l-Buk͟hārī, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Sunan ʾAbī Dāwūd, Jāmiʿu-t-Tirmidhī, Sunanu-n-Nasāʾī, and Sunan Ibn Mājah
— Sayf al-Dīn al-Miknāsī
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم. الحمد لله رب العالمين. والصلاة والسلام على سيدنا محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم.
In the Name of Allāh, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is for Allāh, Lord of the worlds. And blessings and peace upon our master Muḥammad ﷺ.
Indeed, the statement you are referring to is that of ʾAbū Ḥanīfah رحمه الله, who writes,
“He has a Yad (lt. Hand), a Wajh (lt. Face), and a Nafs (Self), as Allāh mentioned in the Qurʾān. Whatever Allāh mentioned in the Qurʾān regarding the Wajh, the Yad, and the Nafs are Ṣifāt (Attributes) of His without a how (bilā kayf). It must not be said that His Yad is His Qudrah (Power) or His Niʿmah (Blessing), because that contains the nullification of the Ṣifah. This [i.e., that al-Yad = Power/Blessing] is the saying of the Qadariyyah and the Muʿtazilah. Rather, His Yad is a Ṣifah of His, without a how.”
However, it can still be said that His Yad may carry the meaning of His Qudrah. The reason for this, however, is entirely different from the manner in which some deviated groups approached the matter.
The distinction lies in recognizing two separate categories of interpretation (taʾwīl) with respect to words and meanings:
ʾAbū-l-Ḥasan al-ʾAs͟hʿarī رحمه الله writes:
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم. الحمد لله رب العالمين. والصلاة والسلام على سيدنا محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم.
In the Name of Allāh, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is for Allāh, Lord of the worlds. And blessings and peace upon our master Muḥammad ﷺ.
To answer the first question, regarding the meaning of ʾAhlu-l-Fatrah, they are those to whom no binding prophetic message reached.
This understanding is derived from numerous ʾaḥādīth, among them the authentic ḥadīth of al-ʾAswad ibn Sarīʿ رضي الله عنه, in which the Prophet ﷺ said,
“Four will present their argument on the Day of Resurrection: a deaf man who could not hear anything, a mentally deficient man, a very old senile man, and a man who died upon the Fatrah.”
To further clarify what is intended by ʾAhlu-l-Fatrah, it is beneficial to consider the words of the great Mālikī mufassir al-Qurṭubī رحمه الله, who wrote,
“This āyah also, by the possible scope of its wording, gives this meaning concerning those whom no message reached. They are al-ʾAhlu-l-Fatrah, whose existence some of the people of knowledge have affirmed.”
“Some people have used this as evidence that the people of islands, when they hear of ʾIslām and believe, are not legally accountable for what passed before. This is correct. Whoever the call has not reached is not deserving of punishment from the standpoint of reason. And Allāh knows best.”
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم. الحمد لله رب العالمين. والصلاة والسلام على سيدنا محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم
In the Name of Allāh, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is for Allāh, Lord of the worlds. And blessings and peace upon our master Muḥammad ﷺ.
Yes, our scholars did engage in rigorous taḥqīq of the riwāyāt of the Kutub al-Sittah. However, no single classical scholar produced a manual grading every ḥadīth in all six books. This is more of a modern genre. Classical taḥqīq was embedded in the shurūḥ, ʿilal works, rijāl criticism, and takhrīj.
A preliminary clarification first. Only Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī and Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim were compiled as ṣaḥīḥ-only collections. The four Sunan contain ṣaḥīḥ, ḥasan, and weak material. Grading the Ṣaḥīḥayn is therefore a different problem from grading the four Sunan.
For Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, the most important works are those of Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī رحمه الله. His Fatḥ al-Bārī involves deep isnād and rijāl work, analysis of variant routes, and responses to objections raised against narrators and texts. His Hady al-Sārī contains a dedicated section on narrators of Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī who were criticized, along with responses to those criticisms. His Taghlīq al-Taʿlīq traces and examines the muʿallaqāt, the suspended reports Bukhārī included outside his fully musnad chains. The other major commentary on Bukhārī is ʿUmdat al-Qārī by Badr al-Dīn al-ʿAynī رحمه الله, particularly valuable for its Ḥanafī fiqh engagement and counter-reading of the isnāds.
For Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, the standard reference is al-Minhāj Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim by al-Nawawī رحمه الله, which discusses isnāds, matn variants, and responds to criticisms including those of al-Dāraquṭnī. The earlier commentary is Ikmāl al-Muʿlim bi-Fawāʾid Muslim by Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ رحمه الله, which should be consulted alongside al-Nawawī.
For the four Sunan, al-Suyūṭī رحمه الله produced commentary works on all four collections: Qūt al-Mughtadhī ʿalā Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī, Mirqāt al-Ṣuʿūd ilā Sunan Abī Dāwūd, Zahr al-Rubā ʿalā al-Mujtabā for al-Nasāʾī, and notes on Ibn Mājah. These serve as the classical commentarial layer on those collections, though they are not exhaustive grading manuals. For Ibn Mājah, the classical zawāʾid criticism is found in Miṣbāḥ al-Zujājah fī Zawāʾid Ibn Mājah by al-Būṣīrī رحمه الله.
For taḥqīq of legal aḥādīth specifically, two works are indispensable though they are not sequential grading books of the Kutub al-Sittah: Naṣb al-Rāyah li-Aḥādīth al-Hidāyah by al-Zaylaʿī رحمه الله, and Iʿlāʾ al-Sunan by Ẓafar Aḥmad al-ʿUthmānī رحمه الله.
In sum:
And by Allāh, the Most High, success is granted.
¹ Meaning: Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Sunan Abī Dāwūd, Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī, Sunan al-Nasāʾī, and Sunan Ibn Mājah.
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم. الحمد لله رب العالمين. والصلاة والسلام على سيدنا محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم
In the Name of Allāh, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is for Allāh, Lord of the worlds. And blessings and peace upon our master Muḥammad ﷺ.
The Māturīdīs do have a principled answer to this, and it is more than "Allāh can do either one." It rests on a distinction the school draws between what sound is to hearing and what direction is to vision. Once that distinction is seen, the two cases stop being parallel.
One important thing is, the objection assumes "hearing without sound" and "seeing without direction" are the same kind of thing, waiving an ordinary condition of a sense. The Māturīdīs deny the parity. Their position is that direction, facing (muqābala), distance, and ray-contact are ʿādī: customary accompaniments of vision in this world, not part of what vision is. Strip them away and an intact act of seeing remains. Sound works differently. It isn't a customary accompaniment of hearing; it's what samʿ is defined by, so strip it away and nothing remains that answers to the word "hearing." That is the Māturīdī answer in its essence.
On the hearing side, Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī رحمه الله states in Kitāb al-Tawḥīd, and is reported to say again in Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān at Q. 9:6 ("ḥattā yasmaʿa kalām Allāh"), that it is impossible (yastaḥīl) to hear anything outside the genus of letters and sound, because samʿ in the observable world attaches to sound and revolves with it in existence and non-existence (yadūru maʿa al-ṣawt wujūdan wa ʿadaman)¹. On this basis he holds that Mūsā عليه السلام did not hear the eternal Kalām Nafsī itself, but a created sound that pointed to (dāll ʿalā) God's speech. This is preserved by Abū al-Muʿīn al-Nasafī رحمه الله in Tabṣirat al-Adilla (1:489), who gives the same wujūdan-wa-ʿadaman criterion and names it explicitly as "the doctrine of Shaykh Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī," and by Nūr al-Dīn al-Ṣābūnī رحمه الله (a Ḥanafī-Māturīdī who debated Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī on this exact question) in al-Kifāya fī al-Hidāya (pp. 132-133). Notably, al-Rāzī himself confirms this was the recognized Māturīdī position: in his own tafsīr, at Q. 7:143, he reports that what Mūsā heard was "disconnected sounds and composed letters subsisting in the tree" (aṣwāt muqaṭṭaʿa wa ḥurūf muʾallafa qāʾima bi-l-shajarah), never the eternal attribute itself; and at Q. 42:51 he reports the same doctrine by name: "Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī al-Samarqandī claimed that subsisting attribute cannot be heard; what is heard is only letters and sounds God creates in the tree." That an Ashʿarī opponent records the Māturīdī position in near-identical terms across two separate āyāt is good evidence it is being reported accurately.
On the vision side, al-Nasafī's Tabṣirat al-Adilla (1:635, 641) is explicit that the stipulated conditions for ruʾyah (distance, facing, ray-contact, removal of veils) are not shurūṭ at all; vision occurs "as it is," and none of these count among its lawāzim. His conclusion is the formula familiar from every Sunnī creed: Allāh is seen, "not from a direction and not in a direction" (lā ʿan jihatin wa lā fī jihatin).
Al-Ṣābūnī then states the two side by side, and this is the decisive text: "the speech itself is not heard, since it is impossible to hear what is not of the genus of letters and sounds; hearing, in the observable world, revolves with sound in existence and non-existence, unlike vision (bi-khilāf al-ruʾyah)."² He goes on: Mūsā heard a sound indicating Allāh's speech, not the speech itself, and his being singled out as Kalīm Allāh is because he heard without the mediation of a Book or a Messenger, not because he heard without the mediation of sound and letter.
Al-Rāzī also records the opposing, Ashʿarī reasoning explicitly at Q. 2:253: since seeing what is not modally-delimited is not impossible, hearing what is not modally-delimited should likewise not be deemed remote, and on that basis the Ashʿarīs held Mūsā heard the eternal speech directly. This symmetry argument was felt by some within the Ḥanafī school too. Mullā ʿAlī al-Qārī رحمه الله is reported, in Minaḥ al-Rawḍ al-Azhar, to have favoured the Ashʿarī symmetrical position over the standard Māturīdī one on this specific point. Though, it does not change what the standard Māturīdī position is; it only shows the tension was live enough that at least one major figure moved to the other side of it.
And by Allāh, the Most High, success is granted.
¹ "Revolves with sound in existence and non-existence" invokes the classical uṣūlī dawarān test (ṭard wa ʿaks): when an effect appears whenever a given attribute is present and disappears whenever it is absent, that attribute is treated as the effect's ʿilla, its definitional ground rather than merely an accompanying condition. The half doing the actual work in the Māturīdī argument is the ʿaks (absence) direction: no sound means no hearing, in every case anyone has observed, and that licenses the conclusion that the soundless eternal attribute cannot, by definition, be heard.
² al-Kifāya fī al-Hidāya, p. 132.
In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is for Allah, Lord of the worlds. And blessings and peace upon our master Muḥammad, peace and blessings be upon him.
We accept Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī no. 7404 as it stands. It does not say that Allah occupies a makān above the Throne. The most useful evidence here is another wording of the same ḥadīth in al-Bukhārī itself. Once the different routes are put beside each other, the thing described as being above the Throne is the book that Allah caused to be written. Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, may Allah have mercy on him, says exactly that in Fatḥ al-Bārī.
A created book being above the created Throne is perfectly possible. Allah being contained in a spatial position above the Throne is a different claim altogether. The first proposition does not give us the second.
In no. 7404, the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, tells us that when Allah created creation, He wrote in His Book concerning Himself that His mercy overcomes His anger. The report then refers to “it” as placed ʿindahu upon the Throne. Ibn Ḥajar pauses over that pronoun and says that “it” means the written thing. He also explains the wording translated as “placed” and notes another transmission in which that meaning is stated more explicitly. The pronoun is therefore referring back to what Allah caused to be written, not to Allah Himself. See Fatḥ al-Bārī, in Ibn Ḥajar's commentary on Bukhārī 7404.
Bukhārī no. 7554 makes the point clearer still. In that version, the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, says that Allah wrote a book before creating creation, containing the declaration that His mercy preceded His anger, and then describes it as written with Him above the Throne.
That wording is enough to settle the grammatical question. Allah is not “written.” The book is.
There is another route at Bukhārī no. 3194. Again, the report begins with Allah writing in His Book and then continues by referring to it as ʿindahu above the Throne. Muslim also transmits the same ḥadīth with the wording that “it is placed with Him.” These routes explain the shorter wording in 7404 rather than leaving us to guess what the pronoun means.
Ibn Ḥajar later puts the matter in one sentence: “Above His Throne” is a description of the book. He even rejects the need to force “above” into some unusual meaning. The Throne is created. The book is created. One created thing may be above another created thing without any difficulty.
That point is worth keeping straight, because otherwise the Ashʿarī answer gets made more complicated than it needs to be. There is no reason to run away from “above” in this ḥadīth. The book can really be above the Throne. What cannot be done is to take the book's location and quietly transfer it to Allah.
The more serious question is the word ʿindahu, usually translated here as “with Him.” Someone can concede that the book is what is above the Throne and still ask: if the book is “with Allah” there, does that not place Allah there as well?
Ibn Baṭṭāl, may Allah have mercy on him, addresses this point, and Ibn Ḥajar preserves his discussion. Ibn Baṭṭāl acknowledges that ʿinda can be used spatially in ordinary Arabic, but he immediately denies that this forces a spatial meaning when the expression concerns Allah. His example is the divine ḥadīth, “I am with My servant's expectation of Me.” Nobody understands that to mean that Allah occupies a physical location inside a person's expectation. Ibn Ḥajar records the conclusion that there is certainly no place intended there. He also notes that ʿinda is used for relations other than physical proximity. Ibn al-Tīn explains it in this report with reference to Allah's knowledge of the book upon the Throne.
Badr al-Dīn al-ʿAynī, may Allah have mercy on him, says it even more plainly in ʿUmdat al-Qārī: the subject is the book, and the ʿindiyyah here is not spatial.
That is probably the cleanest comment to remember after Ibn Ḥajar's. The book is above the Throne. Its being ʿindahu does not mean that Allah shares a spatial location with it.
Ibn Ḥajar also preserves an important passage from al-Khaṭṭābī, may Allah have mercy on him, while discussing the Throne reports. Al-Khaṭṭābī rejects the idea that these texts mean Allah is touching the Throne, settled into it, or confined by one of its spatial directions. The Throne and those who carry it are themselves creatures of Allah. The language of revelation is affirmed without turning the Creator into something contained by the created order.
At this point, the attempted proof from Bukhārī 7404 has already failed. The ḥadīth gives us a book above the Throne. It gives us the expression ʿindahu. It never says, “Allah is in a place above the Throne.” That proposition has to be added to the report.
The wider Ashʿarī doctrine explains why we reject that addition.
Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī, may Allah have mercy on him, discusses this in the seventh principle of Qawāʿid al-ʿAqāʾid. His position is that the Divine Essence is transcendent above being confined to created directions. His first argument is straightforward. Spatial direction belongs to creation. “Above” and “below,” when meant as bodily spatial relations, depend upon the existence and arrangement of created things. Allah existed eternally before the world existed. A relation which begins with creation cannot become something that contains, carries, or limits the Creator.
Al-Ghazālī then asks what someone actually means by saying that Allah is spatially above the world. If he means the kind of “above” by which one spatial object stands opposite another, then spatial measurement has entered the claim. There is now a relation of distance and opposition between two things. Questions of extension and delimitation follow. For al-Ghazālī, this tells us that the proposed meaning belongs to the category of spatially bounded things.
This is what the Ashʿarīs mean when they deny makān for Allah. We are not denying Allah's transcendence, majesty, or exaltedness. We are denying that His Essence occupies a created spatial locus.
If makān means a genuine location, then whatever occupies it is here rather than there. It bears some spatial relation to what lies around it. Questions of distance, boundary, opposition, and containment become meaningful. Those are created relations.
There is also a simple problem of dependence. Allah existed before the Throne. He existed before every place and every direction. The creation of the Throne did not give Allah something He previously lacked. The Throne does not carry Him in the way a created support carries what rests upon it, and He does not require a spatial region in order to exist.
Sometimes the disagreement becomes muddled because the word makān itself is used without being defined. If someone says, “Allah has a makān,” but then denies that he means a created location, containment, measurable distance, or spatial delimitation, the obvious question is what he means by makān at all. Part of the dispute may then be verbal. Our objection is to the spatial meaning.
An Atharī can still make a more careful argument. He may say: “I accept that ‘above the Throne’ in this particular sentence describes the book. I am not claiming that the grammar of 7404 itself makes Allah the thing above the Throne. I understand ʿindahu together with the other texts concerning divine ʿuluww and istiwāʾ.”
That is a real theological disagreement. It is also a different argument.
Once the grammar of 7404 is conceded, this ḥadīth is no longer proving spatial location by itself. The discussion has moved to the wider meaning of ʿuluww, istiwāʾ, direction, and the principles by which the texts of the attributes are understood. Those questions have their own proofs and their own long debate among the scholars.
As for this report, making ʿindahu necessarily mean physical co-location simply assumes what needs to be proved. Ibn Baṭṭāl's example already shows that the word does not demand that meaning whenever it is used concerning Allah. Al-ʿAynī then removes any doubt about his own interpretation by saying that the ʿindiyyah here is not spatial.
So if somebody cites Bukhārī 7404 and paraphrases it as “Allah is in a place above the Throne,” the answer is fairly short. That is not what the ḥadīth says. Bukhārī's fuller wording identifies the thing above the Throne as the written book. Ibn Ḥajar says that “above His Throne” describes the book. Al-ʿAynī says that the ʿindiyyah is not spatial. A doctrine of makān cannot be extracted from this report without first adding a spatial premise which the report itself does not supply.
In sum:
And by Allah, the Most High, success is granted.
¹ Makān here means an actual spatial locus or ḥayyiz. If someone uses the same word while denying spatial location, containment, and delimitation, the intended meaning has to be established before the disagreement can be judged.
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم. الحمد لله رب العالمين. والصلاة والسلام على سيدنا محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم
In the Name of Allāh, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is for Allāh, Lord of the worlds. And blessings and peace upon our master Muḥammad ﷺ.
Your imam is right about part of this and needs correcting on the other, because Baghdad and Constantinople aren't tested the same way at all.
A preliminary clarification first. Whether Baghdad fell, and how badly it suffered, is a question of tārīkh, and it gets settled the way any pre-modern event gets settled: how close the witness stood to it, and whether independent chronicle traditions agree with each other rather than one loud retelling simply getting repeated. A chronicle report carries no isnād, so you weigh it as testimony rather than as transmission. Whether a given wording about Constantinople actually came from the Prophet ﷺ is a question of ḥadīth, settled instead by isnād and rijāl: who said it, through whom, and whether each link in that chain can be trusted.
Baghdad first. The skeleton of it is about as solid as pre-modern history gets. Ibn Kathīr رحمه الله records, under the year 656 AH in al-Bidāya wa-l-Nihāya, that the Tatars took Baghdad, killed most of its people including the caliph al-Mustaʿṣim, and ended Abbasid rule there.¹ He isn't alone in this. The near-contemporary local chronicle known as Kitāb al-Ḥawādith reports the same sequence from inside the city. Its printed attribution to Ibn al-Fuwaṭī was later rejected by its own editor, Muṣṭafā Jawād, though the text itself stays valuable as a near-contemporary witness. The Persian chronicler Juwaynī, who served the Mongols directly, and the Syriac Christian chronicler Bar Hebraeus, writing from a completely different community, both confirm the same skeleton from very different vantage points. What gets shaky is the detail piled on top of it afterward.
The death toll is where this starts to slip. Ibn Kathīr introduces it with "the people differed" (ikhtalafa al-nās) and lists three incompatible figures, 800,000, 1,800,000, and 2,000,000, before closing with Allāhu aʿlam.² Al-Dhahabī رحمه الله shows the same unease in Taʾrīkh al-Islām: he transmits 1.8 million by balaghanā ("it reached us"), then gives his own preference as 800,000, calling it al-aṣaḥḥ, "the more correct." No source behind any of these figures gives a demographic base, and the later the retelling, the higher the number tends to climb.
The Tigris turning black with drowned ink, or red with blood, is weaker still. Ibn Kathīr's own wording has blood running through the gutters and alleys of the city, which is grim enough on its own but is not the river changing colour. The literal river-black-with-ink image only shows up centuries later, in retellings like al-ʿIṣāmī al-Makkī's Simṭ al-Nujūm al-ʿAwālī: a later literary flourish, not something anyone actually witnessed.
The same caution applies to the House of Wisdom being emptied into the river as one clean event, closing the book on Baghdad's scholarship in a single afternoon. Ibn al-Fuwaṭī, whose name got attached to the Ḥawādith chronicle, is a useful check on that story: he was a boy of fourteen taken captive in the very sack we're discussing, and within two or three years he had been appointed librarian of the observatory at Marāgha. By 679 AH he was back in Baghdad running the library of the Mustanṣiriyya madrasa, where he wrote his own biographical dictionary of the scholars of his age. Some collections were surely lost in a month of sack and fire, but a boy formed by that catastrophe going on to run two major libraries within a generation is not what the end of a civilization's scholarship looks like.
Ibn al-ʿAlqamī's alleged betrayal sits in between the two. Ibn Kathīr's account, that the vizier deliberately gutted the caliph's army and corresponded with the Mongols to finish off Sunni rule, is openly anti-Shīʿī in its language and was written more than a century after the fact. Ibn al-Ṭiqṭaqā, writing closer to the event, with his own father among the dead, paints a different man entirely: capable, but overruled and living in fear of arrest.
Now the ḥadīths. The first thing to fix is that there is no single "Constantinople ḥadīth." People run four separate reports together, and they don't describe the same conquest.
Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī (no. 2924) has the Prophet ﷺ tell Umm Ḥarām bint Milḥān that the first army of his ummah to raid by sea have earned Paradise, then that the first army to raid madīnat Qayṣar, the city of Caesar, will be forgiven. Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī رحمه الله, in Fatḥ al-Bārī, glosses "the city of Caesar" as Constantinople and ties the report to the early Umayyad campaign under Yazīd b. Muʿāwiya, in which Abū Ayyūb al-Anṣārī died and was buried outside the walls. This report is ṣaḥīḥ, and nobody disputes that. But it praises the first raiding army rather than the conquering one, and it has nothing to do with 857 AH.
Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim (no. 2897), in the chapter Muslim himself titles "The Conquest of Constantinople, the Emergence of the Dajjāl, and the Descent of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam," has the Romans camp at al-Aʿmāq or Dābiq, an army from Medina fight them, and while they're dividing the spoils with their swords hung on olive trees, Satan cries out that the Dajjāl has taken their place among their families, which brings on the descent of ʿĪsā عليه السلام. Muslim (no. 2920) gives a second report: seventy thousand from Banū Isḥāq take a city that is part land, part sea, without a single weapon, purely by takbīr, and are then called away by news that the Dajjāl has appeared. Both are ṣaḥīḥ by inclusion in Muslim, and both are plainly tied to the end of time. Whatever these describe, it did not happen in 1453.
The report actually applied to Sultan Meḥmed II is the one genuinely disputed: "Constantinople will surely be conquered; how excellent is its commander, and how excellent is that army." It isn't in Bukhārī or Muslim. It comes through Aḥmad's Musnad (no. 18957), al-Ḥākim's al-Mustadrak (4:468), and al-Ṭabarānī's al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr (no. 1216), via al-Walīd ibn al-Mughīra from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Bishr al-Ghanawī/al-Khathʿamī, from his father. Al-Ḥākim رحمه الله graded it ṣaḥīḥ al-isnād, and al-Dhahabī is reported to have agreed. Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr رحمه الله called the isnād ḥasan in al-Istīʿāb, and al-Haythamī رحمه الله said its men were thiqāt in Majmaʿ al-Zawāʾid. Against that, ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī رحمه الله judged the narrator majhūl, and the only critic who ever authenticated him was Ibn Ḥibbān.³ That is why al-Albānī رحمه الله, in al-Silsila al-Ḍaʿīfa (no. 878) and Ḍaʿīf al-Jāmiʿ (no. 4655), refused to lean on that alone and graded the whole report weak, and Shuʿayb al-Arnaʾūṭ رحمه الله reached the same conclusion in his taḥqīq of the Musnad. Qualified rijāl critics genuinely disagree here about how much weight one generous tawthīq of an otherwise unknown man can carry.
And even for scholars who accept the isnād, pinning it on Meḥmed II specifically is an extra step the text itself doesn't take, since it names no sultan and no date. The same wording was already being quoted in early Islamic history for Maslama ibn ʿAbd al-Malik's Umayyad campaign against Constantinople, which tells you early Muslims themselves didn't read it as pointing to one future conqueror alone. Applying it to 1453 is a reasonable reading, but it isn't the only one the text allows.
In sum:
al-Bidāya wa-l-Nihāya, events of 656 AH — Ibn Kathīr (Baghdad's fall and the caliph's death well-attested; death tolls flagged by the author himself as disputed)
Kitāb al-Ḥawādith — local Baghdadi chronicle, independent near-contemporary corroboration; its attribution to Ibn al-Fuwaṭī was rejected by its own editor, Muṣṭafā Jawād
Taʾrīkh al-Islām — al-Dhahabī (a separate numeric tradition; prefers 800,000)
Talkhīṣ Majmaʿ al-Ādāb — Ibn al-Fuwaṭī (his own career stands against the total-destruction narrative)
Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, no. 2924 — first army to raid Caesar's city (ṣaḥīḥ; early Umayyad raid, not 1453)
Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, nos. 2897 and 2920 — the conquest tied to the Dajjāl and the descent of ʿĪsā (ṣaḥīḥ; eschatological, not 1453)
Musnad Aḥmad no. 18957 / al-Mustadrak 4:468 / al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr no. 1216 — the "excellent commander" praise-report (disputed: ṣaḥīḥ per al-Ḥākim, Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, al-Haythamī; ḍaʿīf per Ibn al-Madīnī, al-Albānī, al-Arnaʾūṭ)
And by Allāh, the Most High, success is granted.
¹ vol. 17, pp. 356–364; the same passage is commonly cited around vol. 13, pp. 200–204 in older printings.
² Ibn Kathīr uses qīla and closes with Allāhu aʿlam because he's relaying a report he can't verify himself, a distinction most of the popular retellings drop.
³ Ibn Ḥibbān رحمه الله set a comparatively generous bar for tawthīq: he'd list a narrator among the thiqāt on a clean record alone, even where no one else had said a word about him.
“They nullified that He has hearing, sight, and eye, and they agreed with the Christians; because the Christians did not affirm Allāh as Hearing and Seeing except with the meaning that He is Knowing. Likewise said the Jahmiyyah.”
“The Muʿtazilah denied the attributes of the Lord of the worlds, and claimed that the meaning of Hearing, Seeing, Seeing One is the meaning of Knowing.”
Here, al-ʾAs͟hʿarī himself demonstrates that it is a form of nullification (ibṭāl) to make the meaning of one Ṣifah identical to that of another.
We say, if Ṣifah (A) simply means Ṣifah (B), in absolute, then A no longer has an independent meaning. It becomes only another label or synonym for B.
The Shaykh of many of the early ʾAs͟hʿariyyah, ʾAbū Bakr Muḥammad ibnu-l-Ḥasan ibn Fūrak al-ʾIṣfahānī رحمه الله, the student of ʾAbū-l-Ḥasan al-Bāhilī رحمه الله, who was the close companion of ʾAbū-l-Ḥasan al-ʾAs͟hʿarī, understood this distinction well. He writes:
“Al-Yad may also be attributed to Him with the meaning of dominion, strength, blessing, and power. We only distinguish between its meanings by the places in which it is mentioned and the contextual indicators attached to it.”
A simple example is: “The king rules with an iron fist.” In that context, “iron fist” means harsh and severe rule. But outside that context, “iron fist” does not simply mean “harsh dictatorship.” If it did, then the first terminology would become a mere synonym for the second and lose its own meaning.
And by Allāh, the Most High, success is granted.
— Sayf al-Dīn al-Miknāsī
As for the second question, concerning the parents of the Messenger of Allāh ﷺ, there are a number of ʾaḥādīth which, upon their apparent wording, may suggest that they are in the Fire. However, the scholars of ʾAhlu-s-Sunnah advanced numerous forms of taʾwīl regarding these reports, from which two principal positions emerged.
The first position, held by the majority of the ʾUmmah, is that the parents of the Prophet ﷺ are among the saved.
The second position, held by a minority, is that no definitive judgement is made concerning them.
Both positions oppose those who categorically declare that they are in the Fire. Indeed, some scholars went so far as to pronounce takfīr or laʿnah against those who insist upon such a claim.
Among the narrations cited by those affirming their salvation is the report of ʾUmmu-l-Muʾminīn ʿĀʾishah bint ʾAbī Bakr رضي الله عنها, in which the Messenger of Allāh ﷺ said,
“I went to the grave of my mother and asked Allāh to bring her back to life. So He brought her back to life, she believed in me, and Allāh returned her.”
It is true that this ʾathar is weak. Nevertheless, az-Zurqānī writes¹ that it was accepted by some scholars because it concerns a faḍīlah of the Prophet ﷺ, and reports in virtues are treated with greater latitude.
Furthermore, he argues that their salvation may be affirmed independently, since they died during the fatrah and there is no punishment before prophetic proof. He also cites the view that they were upon the ḥanīfiyyah and that no shirk preceded from them, referencing as-Sanūsī, at-Tilimsānī, al-ʾUbbī, and others.
Qāḍī ʾAbū Bakr ibnu-l-ʿArabī² was also asked regarding a man who declared the parents of Muḥammad ﷺ to be inhabitants of the Hellfire. He responded that such a person is accursed, for he uttered a great harm against the Messenger of Allāh, citing the verse,
{Indeed, those who harm Allāh and His Messenger, Allāh has cursed them in this world and the Hereafter and prepared for them a humiliating punishment} [33:57]
And by Allāh, the Most High, success is granted.
¹ See Sharḥu-l-Mawāhibu-l-Ladunniyyah (1/307-369).
² See Mawāhibu-l-Jalīl li-l-Ḥaṭṭāb (6/286).
— Sayf al-Dīn al-Miknāsī
— Sayf al-Dīn al-Miknāsī
— Ibn al-Naẓar al-Isrāʾīlī
— Ibn al-Naẓar al-Isrāʾīlī
— Ibn al-Naẓar al-Isrāʾīlī