The Attributes of God

Author: Abd ar-Rahman ibn al-Jawzi (Translation, notes and appencies by ‘Abdullah bin Hamid ‘Ali)

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Introduction by Khalid Yahya Blankinship

Written by one of the most prolific scholars in the history of Islam, this book constitutes an important milestone in the classical Muslim discourse about the nature of God. ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn al-Jawzi (d. 1201/597) repudiates those who claimed to be followers of Ahmad ibn Hanbal while claiming to believe in God as a corporeal entity possessing a hand, a foot, a shin, a face, and sitting on the Throne in person. By deconstructing this anthropomorphic conception of God, Ibn al-Jawzi examines their literal understanding of an assortment of Qur’anic verses and provides clarification and classification of sixty prophetic traditions.

Even today, the debate over figurative interpretation and literalism rages on, making this twelfth-century work and indispensable and authoritative resource for navigating through and understanding the “ambiguous verses” from the Qur’an according to Muslim orthodoxy.