The Ḥanbalīs

of the great. (1) See, then, the evil issue of pretensions and of the love of prominence; we ask God for indulgence. For there rose up against him men no more scrupulous than he, nor more learned than he, nor more abstinent than he — men who rather pass over the sins of their own fellows and the offences of their friends. God did not set them in power over him by their piety and their eminence, but by his own sins; and what God warded off from him and from his followers is the greater part; and nothing befell them but a portion of what they deserve. So be in no doubt of that.

( The Ḥanbalīs )

As for the Ḥanbalīs, they possess profitable sciences, and there is religion in them on the whole, and they have little luck in this world. People speak against their creed and charge them with corporealism (tajsīm), and with its following necessarily from their doctrine; yet they are innocent of it, save for the rare case, (2) and God forgive them.

— Notes —

[18] (1) Among the things al-Dhahabī says concerning him is what Ibn Ḥajar transmitted in al-Durar al-kāminah: “… whoever mixed with him and knew him may charge me with falling short in his regard, and whoever broke with him and opposed him may charge me with going to excess in his regard; and I have been hurt by both parties, by his companions and by his adversaries … and I do not hold him to be preserved from error; indeed I differ from him in questions both of principle and of detail.” End. And one thing that must be noticed is that al-Dhahabī's habit in men's biographies is to distribute his opinions of a man across his books, so that no one book of his on biography dispenses with another of his; and this is among the faults of his books. Perhaps the cause of it is that he was one of those who set about composing biographies early, so that he writes the life of those he treats before he has studied their lives properly, and then makes good what he missed in the rest of his books — and this is wearisome for the investigator.

[18] (2) As for the express assertion of corporeality, it is, as the author says, rare among them; but its sense is predominant in them and follows necessarily from their plain statements — excepting the Tamīmīs, and Ibn ʻAqīl, and Ibn al-Jawzī, and those who went their way among the well-guided, and few they are among them. As for the author's own case in the matter of creed, it is plain and uncovered in the book al-ʻUluw and elsewhere.