Al-­Imaam Khateeb Al-Baghdaadee’s Risaalah on the Names & Attributes of Allaah

[Shehzad Sattar]

The narrated Ahaadeeth regarding the Attributes are divided into three categories

The First of them are Established Narrations {1}:

The Imaams of the texts have consensus regarding their authenticity due to their reliability and the uprightness of their narrators. So accepting them and believing in them is obligatory – Along with protecting the heart from ever nearing a belief of anything which results in likening Allaah to His creation, or describing Him with something that does not befit Him, such as limbs, features, changes and movements {2}.

And the Second Type:

Declined reports with very weak chains of narration, and incompatible words. The people of knowledge have consensus of the falseness of such texts. So it is not permissible to engage in them, and nor to circulate them {3}.

And the Third Type:

Reports about which the people of knowledge have differed in regarding the condition of their narration – So some accepted them, not all (the people of knowledge). So in these it is necessary to analyse and look further into them so that you may conciliate with those who accept them, or that you may be upon the position of rejecting them.

And as for the specification of various Ahaadeeth, I have not yet engaged in this, and neither is there anything previously compiled by me in it. Perhaps that will be something to come soon after this, if Allaah, the High so wills.

Translated by Markaz-us-Sunnah Leicester

Footnotes:

1 - Such as the ‘Saheeh’ (Authentic) narrated ahadeeth regarding the attribute of the ‘Hand’, ‘Speech’, the ‘Shin’, the ‘Foot’, and other such things from those attributes which the people of denial and misguidance reject or seek to re-interpret.

2 - As indicated to in the book ‘Al-Asl’ – Then see – ‘Then the movements…’

3 - For example the hadeeth of the ‘sweat of horses’, and the hadeeth of the ‘dark coloured camel’ – and both are fabricated. To state an opinion based on them is manifest disbelief – We seek refuge with Allaah from disbelief after faith.