The Response to the Allegation That God Sits on a Throne and Creaks Like a Saddle
Content of the Doubt
The pagan Shiites denounce some narrations that speak of the Throne, as these narrations indicate that God sits on the Throne and a creaking sound emanates from it, like the creaking of a saddle…
Response to This Lie
Firstly:
All the hadiths and narrations about creaking that the Rafidis cite are weak and none of them are authentic; none of them are authentic, neither with a chain of transmission traceable to the Prophet nor with a chain of transmission traceable to the Companions. Everyone who claims that these hadiths are authentic is mistaken.
Let us review these hadiths and narrations and prove to you their weakness, that they are fundamentally false, and that they contradict the beliefs of Muslims…
1A suspended narration attributed to Omar bin Al-Khattab:
[ Abd al-Rahman narrated to us , on the authority of Sufyan , on the authority of Abu Ishaq , on the authority of Abdullah ibn Khalifa , on the authority of Umar , that he said: ” When the Blessed and Exalted sits on the Throne, a creaking sound is heard from Him like the creaking of a new saddle.” ]
The previous narration 👆 is a weak narration and is not authentic, because the narrator Abdullah bin Khalifa is one of the Kufi followers, and he did not meet Omar bin Al-Khattab nor did he hear from him at all. Therefore, the hadith here is weak and mursal… In addition, Abdullah bin Khalifa is an unknown man and not famous, and therefore Ibn Kathir says the following in his book (Al-Bidayah wa Al-Nihayah 1/18) :
[ Abdullah bin Khalifa is not that famous, and there is doubt about his hearing from Omar .]
The second narrator is Abu Ishaq al-Sab’ini , a narrator known for concealing narrations from unknown people. His hadith is not accepted unless he explicitly states that he heard it, because he belongs to the third class of concealers.
This narration has two problems. First, this narration is not narrated here from the Prophet himself, but rather it is falsely attributed to the companion Omar ibn al-Khattab himself.
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2A hadith attributed to the Prophet:
Abdullah ibn Raja ’ narrated to us, Isra’il informed us , on the authority of Abu Ishaq , on the authority of Abdullah ibn Khalifa , who said: A woman came to the Prophet and said: “Pray to God to admit me into Paradise.” The Prophet glorified the Lord and said : ” His Throne extends over the heavens and the earth, and He sits on it, and nothing of it remains except the width of four fingers.” And he stretched out His four fingers, and he has a creaking sound like the creaking of a new saddle when someone rides it, making it too heavy .”
The previous narration 👆 was narrated by Abdullah bin Khalifa directly from the Prophet without an intermediary, even though Abdullah bin Khalifa never met the Prophet , nor heard from him, nor lived in his time…
So this narration is also weak and not authentic. It is confused and contradicts the narration before it!
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3A suspended narration attributed to Abu Musa Al-Ash’ari:
[On the authority of Ibn Juhadah , on the authority of Salamah ibn Kuhayl , on the authority of ‘Amara ibn ‘Umair , on the authority of Abu Musa , who said: “The Throne is the place where the feet rest, and it makes a creaking sound like the creaking of a saddle.”]
The previous narration 👆 is weak and invalid. The narrator, Umara ibn Umair, did not meet the companion Abu Musa al-Ash’ari, nor did he hear from him. Therefore, the narration here has a gap in the chain of transmission. Therefore, Sheikh Ahmad Shakir says the following in his commentary on “Tafsir al-Tabari 5/398 ” :
[The hadith is interrupted because Ammarah ibn Umair did not meet Abu Musa al-Ash’ari .]
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4A suspended novel by Al-Shaabi:
Ibrahim narrated to us , Ubayd ibn Adam al-Asqalani narrated to us, my father narrated to us , on the authority of Hammad ibn Salamah , on the authority of Ata’ ibn al-Sa’ib , on the authority of al-Sha’bi , who said: “God, Blessed and Exalted be He, is on the Throne, to the point that it creaks like the creaking of a saddle.”
The previous narration 👆 is from Al-Shaabi himself, and he did not attribute it to the Prophet or any of the Companions. Rather, it was a weak narration that was widespread in his time, just like rumors, and he repeated it.
🛑 Ibn Uthaymeen said in Explanation of the Safarini Creed 297 that this hadith is questionable.
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5A fabricated hadith attributed to the Prophet:
[ Ubayd ibn Ya’ish narrated to us, Abu Yazid al-Mu’anna narrated to us , Isra’il narrated to us , on the authority of Ja’far ibn al-Zubayr , on the authority of al-Qasim , on the authority of Abu Umamah , who said: The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said : “Ask Allah for the Paradise of Firdaws, for it is the secret of Paradise, and the people of Firdaws hear the creaking of the Throne .”]
The previous hadith is fabricated 👆; It is narrated by Ja’far ibn al-Zubayr , who is a liar and fabricator of hadith. Even Imam al-Haythami himself, in his book Majma’ al-Zawa’id, left out this hadith, indicating that the narrator Ja’far ibn al-Zubayr is a rejected hadith narrator… and al-Albani also weakened it .
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6The saying of Wahb and Ibn Al-Azhar, but it was mistakenly attributed to the Prophet:
[ Muhammad ibn Ishaq , narrating on the authority of Ya’qub ibn Utbah , on the authority of Jubayr ibn Muhammad ibn Jubayr ibn Mut’im , on the authority of his father , on the authority of his grandfather Jubayr ibn Mut’im : The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said to the Bedouin in the hadith of istisqa’: Woe to you! Do you know who Allah is? His status is too great to be interceded for on behalf of anyone. He is above His Throne, above His heavens, in the form of a dome, and He creaks like the creaking of a saddle when it is traveling. ]
The previous hadith 👆 is originally a weak hadith, because Muhammad ibn Ishaq is a mudallis narrator, and he did not explicitly state that he heard it here. Therefore, this hadith was weakened by Al-Albani and Shu`ayb Al-Arna’ut in Takhrij Sharh Al-Tahawiyyah, and it was weakened by Al-Wadi’i in the book (Al-Shafa’ah 191).
🛑 Al-Bayhaqi said in the book ( The Names and Attributes 2/159) the following:
[ It is unique to Muhammad ibn Ishaq, and if he is not to be relied upon in matters of what is lawful and what is unlawful, [then the attributes of Allah are even more so] . They only criticized him for narrating from the People of the Book and then from weak narrators and for concealing their names. [In this hadith], he did not make clear that he heard it from [Ya’qub and Jubayr] and there is disagreement about its wording .]
🛑 Al-Albani said in Takhrij Mishkat Al-Masabih 5660 the following:
Its chain of transmission is weak, and there is no authentic hadith about the creaking of the throne .
Then the Prophet did not say : “The Throne creaks like a saddle creaks under the rider.” Rather, this statement is from the words of the narrator Wahb , Ibn Al-Azhar , and Yahya bin Ma’in themselves:
🛑 Therefore, the following was mentioned in the book (The Throne and What Was Narrated About It) :
Wahb described this and tilted his right hand and fingers, and said thus, “And it creaks with it like a saddle creaks with a rider . ”
🛑 The following is mentioned in the book (Explanation of the Sunnah) :
Wahb pointed with his hand , like a dome, at it, and Abu Al-Azhar also pointed and said: “It creaks with it like a saddle creaks with a rider .”
🛑 Ibn Abd al-Barr mentioned the following in the book (Al-Tamhid) :
Yahya ibn Ma’in pointed with his fingers in the form of a dome, and it creaked like a saddle creaks with a rider .
🛑 Al-Dhahabi mentioned the following in his book (Al-Ulu) :
Ibn Al-Azhar also indicated : “And it creaks with him like a saddle creaks with a rider .”
🛑 Ibn Khaythama mentioned in his history (the second book), saying:
Yahya ibn Ma’in pointed with his five fingers in the shape of a dome, and it creaked like a saddle creaks with a rider .
Al -Dhahabi also said:
He said: ” And Wahb showed us his hand like this and said: ‘Like a dome, and it creaked with it like a saddle creaks with a rider.’ ” This is a very strange and unique hadith. Ibn Ishaq is an authority on military campaigns when he provides a chain of transmission. He has strange and strange narrations, but Allah knows best whether the Prophet said this or not. By Allah, there is nothing like Him .
The phrase “the creaking” is from the words of the narrators Wahb , Ibn al-Azhar , and Ibn Ma’in themselves, but some of the hadith scholars got confused and thought that the phrase “the creaking” was from the words of the Prophet himself. This is called an interpolated hadith in which the personal words of the narrator are mixed with the words of the Prophet . We can discover this error by comparing the chains of transmission of the hadith with each other, in order to know what is the words of the Prophet and what is the words of the narrator himself.
As for the narrations that claim that the Prophet himself said the phrase “the creaking,” this narration was included by Al-Baghdadi in his book “History of Baghdad ,” and it was also included in his book ” The Second of the Benefits of Abu Uthman Al-Buhayri ,” but they are corrupt narrations because they were narrated by way of the weak narrator ( Abu Hamid Ahmad bin Ali bin Hasanuwayh) , and his hadith cannot be relied upon at all. In fact, Al-Khatib Al-Baghdadi himself did not authenticate it.
So the saying “The throne creaks like the saddle creaks” is attributed to the narrators Wahb , Ibn al-Azhar , and Yahya ibn Ma’in themselves, and is not attributed to the Prophet himself. This is what is called an interpolated hadith . Imam Abu Dawud and Imam al-Mizzi made a mistake when they attributed it to the Prophet .
We have previously said that this statement was one of the weak rumors that spread in the past, even though there is no evidence for it. Many people believed it, as Ibn Taymiyyah indicated in the book (Talbis al-Jahmiyyah 3/253).
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Then the scholars noticed that these previous narrations were horribly confused and contradictory, and therefore Imam Ibn al-Jawzi said in his book (Al-Ilal al-Mutanahiya) the following:
[This is a hadith that is not authentic from the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, and its chain of transmission is very confused… Sometimes Ibn Khalifa narrates it : on the authority of Umar , on the authority of the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him . Sometimes he stops it with Umar , and sometimes he stops it with Ibn Khalifa . Sometimes it says: “And nothing remains of it except the amount of four fingers,” and sometimes it says: “And nothing remains of it the amount of four fingers.” All of this is a mix-up by the narrators, so it cannot be relied upon.]
This is indeed what you will notice in the previous narrations, as they are contradictory. Once they talk about the creaking of the chair , another time they talk about the creaking of the throne , another time Abdullah bin Khalifa attributes it to the Prophet , another time he attributes it to Omar bin Al-Khattab , and another time he attributes it to himself. Another time he narrates the phrase Nothing is left over from it the length of four fingers , then he narrates it again like this: Nothing is left over from it except the length of four fingers What a difference between all of this and that!!
secondly:
🔴 As for those who cite Al-Dhahabi to prove the authenticity of the previous narrations, I respond to them and say:
Al-Dhahabi himself weakened the narrator Abdullah bin Khalifa because he was unknown. He said about him in Al-Mizan (2/414) that he [is hardly known].
Al-Dhahabi said in his book (The Throne, 2/153) the following:
[ This hadith was unique to Abdullah bin Khalifa , who was one of the early followers. We do not know of his status as a narrator of criticism or approval .]
Indeed, Al-Dhahabi himself said in his book (Al-Uluw, p. 39) :
Creaking has no place among the attributes at all. Rather, it is like the shaking of the throne upon the death of Sa’d , or the splitting of the sky on the Day of Resurrection, and so on. God forbid that we consider it an attribute of God. Moreover, the word creaking does not come from an authentic text .
Al-Dhahabi did not attribute these words to the Prophet, but rather all he said was that many of the ancients believed in the content of this hadith…
🔴 As for those who cite Ibn Hibban’s words regarding the authenticity of the narrator Abdullah bin Khalifa , I respond to them and say:
Ibn Hibban was very lenient in his verification of hadiths, and therefore he would not accept Ibn Hibban ‘s authentication of a narrator if he was the only one to authenticate him. This is a well-known point among scholars of criticism and authentication.
🔴 As for those who cite the words of Abu Muhammad al-Dashti in the book (Proof of the Limit) when he claimed that this is “an authentic hadith, and its narrators meet the conditions of al-Bukhari and Muslim,” Sheikh al-Albani responded to him, saying: “This is a clear, double error. The hadith is not authentic, and its narrators do not meet their conditions… So how can the hadith be authentic?! Rather, it is a rejected hadith in my opinion.”
🔴 As for those who cite Ibn al-Qayyim’s words in his attempt to correct these narrations, I respond to them and say:
Ibn al-Qayyim tried to strengthen this hadith by strengthening Abdullah ibn al-Hakam al-Qatwani and Uthman ibn Abi Shaybah , but he did not realize that these narrations were weak and corrupt for entirely different reasons.
🔴 As for Al-Haythami’s claim that the narrators who transmitted the hadith of the creaking of the chair are from the men of Sahih, this is a mistake on his part, because none of the authors of the Four Sunans or the Two Sahihs narrated it for Abdullah bin Khalifa, contrary to what he claimed.
🔴 As for those who claim that Al-A’mash and Sufyan did not deny these narrations, I respond to them and say:
Al-A’mash and Sufyan mistakenly believed the content of this hadith, as its chain of transmission is not authentic at all. The narrator, Sufyan, narrated this hadith on the authority of Abu Ishaq, but I explained earlier that Sufyan transmitted this hadith and believed it in error, ignoring its weakness.
From the above, it becomes clear to us that this hadith is not authentic at all, but rather it was famous among the Salaf only to prove the transcendence of God and nothing else.
The
Third:
These weak hadiths contradict the Muslim faith and reason, for several reasons:
1The weak hadith says that Allah sits on the throne , and this is wrong; because according to us in the Qur’an and the Sunnah of the Prophet, Allah sis above throne and not on the chair, and there is a big difference between the throne of Allah and the chair, and therefore some people were forced to distort the word (the chair) and interpret it as meaning the throne in order to evade this contradiction!!
2Sometimes it is mentioned in this weak hadith that God sits on the chair, and there is an area of the chair that is estimated to be four fingers wide!
This is a statement that no sane person would accept, because it is not reasonable for the Throne to be larger than God by the size of four fingers. Moreover, there is no value in mentioning this small area, especially since God and the Throne are very large.
3The fact that the people of Paradise hear the creaking of the Throne is unacceptable to reason, because the creaking of this great Throne means that the Throne emits a loud creaking sound, which is an annoying sound to the ears, and this contradicts the tranquility of Paradise that the Holy Qur’an has told us about.