> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Belief in God, the Prophets and the Unseen - URL: https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/creed/ - Published: 2026-09-30T21:36:56.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-02T00:12:17.000Z - Description: Every Muslim creed starts with one God, unlike anything. The arguments begin after that: His hand and Throne, seeing Him, the created Qur'an, free will. Five schools of theology, set side by side. - Author: Mohammad Siddiqui - Tags: Deen New to the Qur'an? Start with [The Qur'an: What It Is, How It Came Down, and How It Was Kept](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/the-quran/), then read [Muhammad ﷺ: A Life](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/prophet-muhammad/). All articles: [Deen: Start Here](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/deen/). Deen · Belief Every Muslim creed begins in the same place: God is one, and nothing is like Him. The arguments start with the second sentence. What does it mean that God has a hand, or sits on a throne, or will be seen? If He decrees everything, how are we free? Is the Qur'an created? Can reason tell right from wrong without revelation? Muslims have given more than one answer to each, and this page sets the main answers next to each other. It follows the six articles of faith from the Hadith of Jibrīl, the scene described in the [five pillars post](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/five-pillars/): God, His angels, His books, His messengers, the Last Day and the decree. For each I give what the Qur'an and the hadith say, and then how five traditions of theology have read them: the Ashʿarī and Māturīdī schools, which between them account for most Sunni seminaries; the Atharī or traditionalist school, associated today with Salafism; the Muʿtazila, the early rationalists, whose school did not survive as a Sunni movement but whose ideas did; and the Twelver Shia, who took much of their theology from the Muʿtazila and changed it. Near the end is a table where you can highlight any school and compare it with another. I have tried to describe each school in terms its own scholars would recognise. Where they accuse each other of error I say so, because the accusations are part of the history, but I do not take sides. Arabic terms are explained on first use and collected in the glossary. ### The short version 1. All Muslim schools agree that God is one, eternal, unlike anything created, and the only creator; that angels, revealed books and prophets are real; that there will be a resurrection and judgement; and that nothing happens outside God's knowledge. 2. They disagree on how to read the verses that describe God with words like hand, face and throne. Atharīs affirm them as they come "without asking how"; Ashʿarīs and Māturīdīs either leave their meaning to God or read them figuratively; Muʿtazilīs and Twelvers read them figuratively. 3. They disagree on whether the believers will see God in Paradise (Sunni schools: yes; Muʿtazilīs and Twelvers: not with the eyes). 4. They disagree on how God's decree fits with human choice: from the Ashʿarī "acquisition" to the Muʿtazilī view that we originate our own acts, with the Twelver "matter between the two" and the Māturīdī emphasis on real human choice in between. 5. The Qur'an names twenty-five prophets, from Adam to Muhammad ﷺ, and says there were many more whose stories it does not tell. 6. The differences are real, but so is the common ground, and statements such as the Amman Message have tried in recent decades to stop them being used to expel people from Islam. ### Contents 1. [The five traditions](#schools) 2. [God is one](#tawhid) 3. [Names and attributes](#attributes) 4. [Where is God, and will He be seen?](#seeing) 5. [Is the Qur'an created?](#speech) 6. [The unseen: angels and jinn](#unseen) 7. [The books](#books) 8. [The prophets](#prophets) 9. [The twenty-five named prophets](#twenty-five) 10. [The Last Day](#last-day) 11. [The decree and human choice](#qadar) 12. [Can reason know right from wrong?](#reason) 13. [What counts as faith](#faith) 14. [Who holds what: a comparison](#compare) 15. [Reading the arguments fairly](#fairly) 16. [Glossary](#glossary) 17. [Sources](#sources) ## The five traditions The Arabic word for creed is *ʿaqīda*, from a root meaning to tie a knot: the things one's heart is tied to. The discipline that argues about it is *kalām*, literally "speech", the name given to the rational defence of doctrine. Muslims have written thousands of creeds, but a handful became teaching texts, and it helps to know them because they are still the books students memorise. **The Muʿtazila** come first chronologically. They were a school of theologians that flourished from the eighth to the tenth century, the first to bring the methods of Greek logic systematically into Islamic theology, and for a period in the ninth century they had the backing of the caliphs.[1](#src-1) Their best-known teachings were that God's justice binds Him to act in ways reason recognises as right, that human beings originate their own acts, that the Qur'an is created, and that the verses describing God in bodily terms must be read figuratively. Between about 833 and 848 the caliph al-Maʾmūn and his successors ran an inquisition, the *miḥna*, requiring judges and scholars to affirm that the Qur'an was created. The caliph al-Mutawakkil ended it.[2](#src-2) **The Atharīs**, from *athar*, a transmitted report, are the traditionalists, the scholars of hadith who refused the inquisition. Their hero is Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal (d. 855), who was flogged rather than say the Qur'an was created.[3](#src-3) Their method is to affirm what the Qur'an and the authentic hadith say about God, in the words used, and to refuse both speculative interpretation and speculation about "how".[4](#src-4) The school's great later systematiser was Ibn Taymiyya of Damascus (d. 1328), and its creed is the one taught today in Saudi Arabia and in the Salafi movements.[3](#src-3) The [Salafism post](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/salafism/) covers its modern history. **The Ashʿarīs** take their name from Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī (c. 874–936), who was for years a leading pupil of the Basran Muʿtazilī master al-Jubbāʾī, and who around 912 publicly abandoned the Muʿtazila for the positions of the traditionalists.[5](#src-5)[6](#src-6) What made his school distinctive was that it defended traditionalist conclusions, the eternal uncreated Qur'an above all, with the Muʿtazila's own weapon, rational argument.[7](#src-7) It became the dominant creed of Shāfiʿī and Mālikī scholars, and of institutions such as al-Azhar.[8](#src-8) **The Māturīdīs** follow Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī of Samarqand (d. 944), a Ḥanafī theologian working in Central Asia at the same time as al-Ashʿarī in Iraq, apparently without either knowing much of the other.[9](#src-9)[10](#src-10) Their conclusions are close to the Ashʿarīs', with a stronger emphasis on human responsibility and on what reason can know. Britannica's summary says the later Māturīdīs came to hold that man "has the utmost freedom to act".[11](#src-11) Wherever Ḥanafī law spread, in Turkey, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, Māturīdī creed usually went with it. Two short creeds sit behind much Ḥanafī teaching: that of Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭaḥāwī of Egypt (d. 933), which is claimed by Ashʿarīs, Māturīdīs and Atharīs alike, and that of Najm al-Dīn al-Nasafī (d. 1142), known through al-Taftāzānī's commentary.[12](#src-12)[13](#src-13) **The Twelver Shia** built their theology partly out of the Muʿtazilī inheritance. The Baghdad scholar al-Shaykh al-Mufīd (d. 1022) wrote a short book listing where the Imāmīs agreed and disagreed with the Muʿtazila. He sided with them on God's justice and attributes and in denying that God can be seen, and against them on the infallibility of the imams, on the return (*rajʿa*), and on whether a believer who commits a grave sin is punished forever.[14](#src-14) Later creeds, from al-Ṣadūq's *al-Iʿtiqādāt* in the tenth century to al-Muẓaffar's *ʿAqāʾid al-Imāmiyya* in the twentieth, remain the standard short statements.[15](#src-15)[16](#src-16) **Modern reformers** are not a sixth school, but they changed how the old questions are put. The Egyptian scholar Muḥammad ʿAbduh (d. 1905) wrote *Risālat al-tawḥīd*, a short modern restatement of theology,[105](#src-105) and in another work listed among Islam's principles "rational enquiry to attain faith" and the preference of reason over the apparent sense of a text where the two seem to conflict.[106](#src-106) Readers of the sections below will recognise the question; it is the one the Muʿtazila and al-Māturīdī were arguing about a thousand years earlier. Two general guides sit behind this whole page and are the places to go next: *The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology* and *The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Theology*.[8](#src-8)[1](#src-1) For how the schools branch into one another over fourteen centuries, see the [complete tree of schools](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/schools-of-thought/). ## God is one *Tawḥīd*, the affirmation of God's oneness, is the one doctrine every school puts first and none disputes. Its shortest statement is the 112th chapter of the Qur'an, sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ ("Sincerity").[17](#src-17) قُلْ هُوَ ٱللَّهُ أَحَدٌ ۝ ٱللَّهُ ٱلصَّمَدُ ۝ لَمْ يَلِدْ وَلَمْ يُولَدْ ۝ وَلَمْ يَكُن لَّهُۥ كُفُوًا أَحَدٌۢ Say, \[O Prophet,\] "He is Allah, One \[and Indivisible\]; Allah, the Sustainer \[needed by all\]. He has never had offspring, nor was He born. And there is none comparable to Him." Qur'an 112:1–4 Two further verses frame most of what follows. The first is a single line that every theologian quotes: *laysa ka-mithlihi shayʾ*, "there is nothing like Him, for He \[alone\] is the All-Hearing, All-Seeing".[18](#src-18) Its two halves are the whole problem of the attributes in miniature. God is unlike anything, and yet He hears and sees, words we also use of ourselves. The second is the verse on the one sin the Qur'an says God does not forgive, *shirk*, associating partners with Him.[19](#src-19) لَيْسَ كَمِثْلِهِۦ شَىْءٌ ۖ وَهُوَ ٱلسَّمِيعُ ٱلْبَصِيرُ There is nothing like Him, for He \[alone\] is the All-Hearing, All-Seeing. Qur'an 42:11 The schools classify tawḥīd differently. Later Atharī teaching, following Ibn Taymiyya, speaks of three aspects: God's oneness as Lord and creator, His sole right to worship, and the uniqueness of His names and attributes. The division is meant to show that acknowledging God as creator is not enough if worship is directed elsewhere, and it underlies the Salafi critique of practices such as seeking help at shrines.[3](#src-3) Ashʿarī and Māturīdī manuals tend instead to discuss oneness in God's essence, attributes and acts, and some of their scholars reject the threefold scheme outright. One of the earliest was Yūsuf al-Dijwī of al-Azhar, writing in the Azhar journal *Nūr al-Islām* in the early 1930s: the division, he said, was "unknown to anyone before Ibn Taymiyya", the Prophet ﷺ never told a new Muslim that there were two tawḥīds, and "the true god is the true lord". He read 19:65 as making worship follow from lordship rather than standing apart from it.[119](#src-119) Ḥasan al-Saqqāf of Amman wrote a whole book against it, *al-Tandīd bi-man ʿaddada al-tawḥīd* (1992), and a 2015 fatwa of Egypt's Dār al-Iftāʾ under Shawqī ʿAllām calls the separation of lordship from divinity incorrect: no one among the early generations made it, the fatwa says, and the Qur'an uses "Lord" and "God" in one sense.[108](#src-108)[109](#src-109) In Amman too, the Ashʿarī theologian Saʿīd Fūda calls the division "a mistake" in his long commentary on al-Ṭaḥāwī's creed, and argues against its central premise, that the Meccan idolaters already affirmed God's lordship.[120](#src-120) The Atharī reply is that the labels are a summary, not a claim about the Companions' vocabulary. Asked for the evidence, Ibn Bāz said the division comes from induction (*istiqrāʾ*): scholars who gathered the verses found some commanding worship of God alone, others presenting Him as creator, provider and disposer of affairs, and others affirming His names and attributes, and some added a fourth heading, following the Messenger.[110](#src-110) Ibn ʿUthaymīn, teaching the same creed, said the scholars reached the three headings by tracing the texts, and found support for them in a single verse: "\[He is the\] Lord of the heavens, and the earth, and everything in between. So worship Him \[alone\], and be steadfast in His worship. Do you know of anyone equal to Him \[in His attributes\]?"[122](#src-122) On his reading the first clause is lordship, the second worship, the third the names and attributes. To the charge of innovation he answered that the division adds nothing and denies nothing: like counting the pillars and conditions of prayer, it is a way of teaching, not an act of worship.[121](#src-121) Twelver creeds treat tawḥīd as the first root of religion and include within it the claim that God's attributes are not additional to His essence, of which more below.[16](#src-16) ## Names and attributes "Allah has the Most Beautiful Names. So call upon Him by them."[20](#src-20) The Qur'an uses dozens of them: the Merciful, the Compassionate, the King, the Holy, the Peace, the Creator, the Fashioner, the Forgiving and many more, several in a single run at the end of sūrat al-Ḥashr.[21](#src-21) A hadith in al-Bukhārī says that God has ninety-nine names, a hundred less one, and that whoever "enumerates" them will enter Paradise.[22](#src-22) The familiar list of ninety-nine, often printed in calligraphy, comes from a different hadith in al-Tirmidhī. Al-Tirmidhī himself called that chain unusual, and Darussalam's grading on sunnah.com is weak; scholars have long treated the list as a compilation rather than a fixed revelation, and other lists exist.[23](#src-23) The names are not in dispute. The attributes behind them are. When the Qur'an says God is "All-Knowing", does He have a quality called knowledge, distinct from Himself? And what of the verses that seem to describe Him in terms we would use of bodies? God is "established on the Throne".[24](#src-24) "Both His hands are outstretched" (*bal yadāhu mabsūṭatān*; Khattab's translation gives the sense rather than the words: "He is open-handed").[25](#src-25) Iblīs is asked why he would not bow to what God created "with My Own Hands", a dual in the Arabic (*bi-yadayya*).[26](#src-26) "Every being on earth is bound to perish", and there remains *wajh rabbika*, "the Face of your Lord" (Khattab renders it "your Lord Himself").[27](#src-27) Yet the same book says God is "with you wherever you are" and "closer to them than \[their\] jugular vein".[28](#src-28)[29](#src-29) The Qur'an itself warns that some of its verses are *muḥkam*, precise, "the foundation of the Book", and others *mutashābih*, ambiguous or, in Khattab's word, "elusive", and that "those with deviant hearts follow the elusive verses". Even the grammar of that warning is disputed: depending on where one pauses in the verse, either no one but God knows the interpretation of the ambiguous verses, or God and "those well-grounded in knowledge" do (Khattab's translation follows the first reading).[30](#src-30) The schools' positions line up almost exactly with the two ways of reading that sentence. ### The Atharī answer Affirm what God affirmed of Himself, in the words He used, without distorting their meaning, without denying them, without asking how, and without likening them to created things. The traditionalists, as the Stanford Encyclopedia puts it, held that one knows *that* God has these attributes but should not delve into *how* (*kayf*) He has them.[4](#src-4) The phrase associated with this is *bi-lā kayfa*, "without how". God has a hand, not a hand like ours; He rose over the Throne, in a way befitting Him. Atharīs insist this is not anthropomorphism, since the other half of 42:11, "there is nothing like Him", is affirmed with equal force. Their critics reply that affirming a "hand" with a known meaning but an unknown manner still smuggles in something bodily.[3](#src-3) ### The Ashʿarī and Māturīdī answers Both schools affirm a set of real, eternal attributes: in the Ashʿarī list, usually life, knowledge, power, will, hearing, sight and speech. The Māturīdīs add *takwīn*, God's eternal attribute of bringing things into being.[13](#src-13)[10](#src-10) On the bodily-sounding texts they offer two routes, and both have a long pedigree. The first, *tafwīḍ* ("consigning"), accepts the words and leaves their meaning to God while denying anything bodily. The second, *taʾwīl* ("interpretation"), reads them figuratively, as Arabic allows: the hand as power or generosity, "establishing Himself over the Throne" as dominion. Earlier Ashʿarīs leaned towards the first and later ones increasingly to the second.[8](#src-8) Their critics reply that consigning a meaning to God is to empty the text, and that figurative reading is denial by another name. ### The Muʿtazilī and Twelver answers The Muʿtazila worried that if God has eternal attributes distinct from Himself, then there are several eternal things, which compromises His oneness. They held that God knows, wills and acts by His own essence, and they read the bodily-sounding verses figuratively as a matter of course.[1](#src-1) Twelver theology takes the same line. A report in al-Kāfī has the Imam al-Ṣādiq say that God "has always been our Lord", with knowledge as His essence when there was nothing known, hearing when there was nothing heard, and power when there was nothing to be empowered.[31](#src-31) Al-Mufīd, McDermott notes, refused to ascribe to God any attribute not in the Qur'an, and on these questions sided with the Baghdad Muʿtazila.[14](#src-14) The disagreement is sharper on paper than in prayer. All five schools call on God by the same names in the same words, and none of them believes God has a body like ours. What they argue about is which safeguard matters more: protecting the plain words of scripture, or protecting God from any resemblance to His creation. ## Where is God, and will He be seen? A hadith in Muslim makes the question concrete. A Companion, Muʿāwiya b. al-Ḥakam al-Sulamī, had struck his slave-girl in anger and wanted to free her in expiation. The Prophet ﷺ asked her, "Where is God?" She said, "In the heaven." "Who am I?" "You are the Messenger of God." "Free her," he said, "for she is a believer."[32](#src-32) Atharīs read that exchange at face value: God is above His creation, over the Throne, and the question "where?" is a legitimate one with a scriptural answer. Ashʿarīs and Māturīdīs read it as the Prophet meeting a simple woman where she was, and her answer as an affirmation of God's exaltation rather than a location. They point to al-Ṭaḥāwī's creed, which says God is not "contained by the six directions as all created things are".[12](#src-12) Atharīs reply that al-Ṭaḥāwī was denying that anything created encloses God, not that He is above. Both sides have been having this exchange over the same sentence for centuries. The vision of God divides the schools along a different line. Two verses describe the Day of Judgement: "On that Day \[some\] faces will be bright, looking at their Lord".[33](#src-33) In al-Bukhārī, Jarīr ibn ʿAbd Allāh recalls the Prophet ﷺ looking at a full moon and telling his Companions, "Certainly you will see your Lord as you see this moon and you will have no trouble in seeing Him."[34](#src-34) All three Sunni schools affirm that the believers will see God in the Hereafter, without that vision encompassing Him; al-Ṭaḥāwī says the vision is real "without their vision being all-encompassing and without a manner".[12](#src-12) The Muʿtazila and the Twelvers deny that God can be seen with the eyes, in this life or the next. Their verses are "No vision can encompass Him, but He encompasses all vision", and God's answer to Moses when Moses asked to see Him: "You cannot see Me!" (*lan tarānī*).[35](#src-35)[36](#src-36) A report in al-Kāfī has ʿAlī say that eyes do not see Him by sight, "but hearts see Him by the realities of faith".[37](#src-37) Al-Mufīd lists denial of the vision among the points where the Imāmīs and the Muʿtazila agree.[14](#src-14) The "looking" of 75:23 is read by them as expectation of God's reward or as vision of the heart. ## Is the Qur'an created? This was the question of the inquisition, and for a century it was the dividing line of Sunni identity. The Qur'an calls itself the speech of God, and says that God creates by His word: "All it takes, when He wills something \[to be\], is simply to say to it: 'Be!' And it is!"[38](#src-38) If God's speech is how He creates, can it itself be created? The Muʿtazila said yes: the Qur'an is created, since anything other than God that begins in time is created, and to call it eternal is to make a second eternal being. The caliphs enforced that view between 833 and 848.[2](#src-2) The traditionalists said no, and Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal's refusal made "the Qur'an is uncreated" a badge of Sunni belief.[3](#src-3) The Ashʿarīs made the same affirmation their own.[7](#src-7) Al-Ṭaḥāwī's creed puts it plainly: the Qur'an is the word of God and "is not created, as is the speech of human beings".[12](#src-12) Behind the shared slogan, the Sunni schools explain it differently. Ashʿarīs and Māturīdīs typically distinguish God's eternal speech, an attribute of His, from its expression in Arabic letters, sounds, ink and paper, which are created. Atharīs such as Ibn Taymiyya rejected that division, holding that the Qur'an as recited, letters and meaning together, is God's uncreated speech, and that God speaks when He wills.[3](#src-3)[8](#src-8) For Twelvers the question has never been a test of faith in the same way, though on the substance their creeds side with the Muʿtazila: al-Ṣadūq calls God the Qur'an's "Creator and Revealer", which, as his translator notes, makes it created.[107](#src-107) Their creedal emphasis falls elsewhere: the same creed insists that the Qur'an revealed to the Prophet ﷺ is exactly the text "between the two boards", 114 sūras, no more, and that anyone who says the Shia claim otherwise "is a liar".[39](#src-39) The history of that text is told in the [Qur'an post](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/the-quran/). ## The unseen: angels and jinn The Qur'an opens its description of the God-conscious with a phrase that covers half of this page: they "believe in the unseen" (*al-ghayb*).[40](#src-40) The unseen is everything real that the senses cannot reach: God, the angels, the jinn, the Garden and the Fire, the future. Its keys are with God alone; He discloses parts of it to messengers He chooses; and the Prophet ﷺ is told to say plainly that he does not know the unseen himself.[41](#src-41)[42](#src-42)[43](#src-43) ### Angels Angels (*malāʾika*) are God's messengers, "with wings, two, three, or four".[44](#src-44) A hadith in Muslim says they were created from light, the jinn from *mārij min nār*, "a flame of fire" (the same Arabic words as Qur'an 55:15), and Adam from what has been described to you.[45](#src-45) They do not disobey what God commands.[46](#src-46) A few are named in the Qur'an: Jibrīl (Gabriel), who brought the revelation, and Mīkāl (Michael), mentioned beside him; Mālik, keeper of the Fire; Hārūt and Mārūt, the two angels at Babylon.[47](#src-47)[48](#src-48)[49](#src-49) Others are described by their work: the angel of death, and the noble recorders who "know whatever you do".[50](#src-50)[51](#src-51) The schools say little different about angels. The disagreements that matter are further down the page. It is worth noting only that belief in angels is not optional in any of them: it is named in the Qur'an's own list of beliefs, and denying it is denying a text. ### Jinn and Iblīs The jinn are a third kind of creature, created "from a \[smokeless\] flame of fire" (the bracketed "smokeless" is Khattab's gloss on *mārij*, not a separate word in the Arabic), with choice like humans; a whole sūra is named after a group of them who heard the Qur'an and believed.[52](#src-52)[53](#src-53) The Qur'an says both jinn and humans were created to worship God.[54](#src-54) Iblīs, the devil, is the subject of an old argument. When the angels were told to bow to Adam, "they all did, but not Iblīs".[55](#src-55) Was he then an angel? Another verse answers directly: Iblīs "was one of the jinn, but he rebelled against the command of his Lord".[56](#src-56) Al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī took that as decisive: Iblīs, he said in a report Ibn Kathīr quotes on this verse, "was not one of the angels, not even for a second".[123](#src-123) Other early reports, such as one from Ibn ʿAbbās that Ibn Kathīr gives on 2:34, have him living among the angels as one of their most devoted worshippers before his fall, while still saying he was of the jinn.[124](#src-124) Either way, his refusal is the Qur'an's first story of pride. ## The books Muslims believe that God revealed scriptures before the Qur'an. Four are named: the Torah (*Tawrāt*) to Moses, the Psalms (*Zabūr*) to David, the Gospel (*Injīl*) to Jesus, and the Qur'an to Muhammad ﷺ, with the "scriptures (*ṣuḥuf*) of Abraham and Moses" mentioned separately.[57](#src-57)[58](#src-58)[59](#src-59) The believers are told to say, "We believe in Allah and what has been revealed to us; and what was revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and his descendants; and what was given to Moses, Jesus, and other prophets from their Lord."[60](#src-60) The Qur'an describes itself as confirming what came before it and as *muhaymin* over it, a guardian or arbiter.[61](#src-61) In practice, Muslims hold that the earlier books were revealed, and that the texts which survive of them have been altered or lost in part; how much, and in what way, has been argued since the early centuries. The Prophet's own instruction on reports from them was cautious: "Do not believe the People of the Scripture, and do not disbelieve them."[62](#src-62) ## The prophets God, the Qur'an says, sent a messenger to every nation, and "there is no community that has not had a warner".[63](#src-63)[64](#src-64) Some of those messengers it names and tells about; others it does not.[65](#src-65)[66](#src-66) That is the basis for the common Muslim view that figures outside the Abrahamic story may have been prophets, though no one can name them with certainty. The Qur'an uses two words: *nabī*, prophet, and *rasūl*, messenger. It calls Moses both, "a messenger and a prophet".[67](#src-67) The usual scholarly distinction is that every messenger is a prophet but not every prophet is a messenger, the messenger being sent with a new message or law. The Qur'an also says some messengers were raised above others, and it singles out "the Messengers of Firm Resolve" (*ulū al-ʿazm*) among them.[68](#src-68)[69](#src-69) A verse naming the covenant God took from the prophets names Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus alongside Muhammad ﷺ, and al-Ṣadūq's creed identifies those five as the prophets of resolve.[70](#src-70)[71](#src-71) How many prophets were there? A report cited in *Mishkāt al-Maṣābīḥ* from Abū Dharr and Abū Umāma gives 124,000 prophets, of whom 315 were messengers (the shorter version from Abū Dharr gives the messengers only, as "three hundred and between ten and twenty"); sunnah.com shows no grading for it.[72](#src-72) The long versions that carry the figure have weak chains. Shuʿayb al-Arnaʾūṭ grades Abū Umāma's in the *Musnad* (Aḥmad 22288) very weak in its chain, Ibn Kathīr calls it weak by that route, and al-Haythamī notes that it turns on ʿAlī b. Yazīd, who is weak; Abū Dharr's long version (Ibn Ḥibbān 361) Ibn al-Jawzī counted among fabrications.[126](#src-126)[127](#src-127) Al-Albānī graded sound in its chain only a shorter report from Abū Umāma that gives the messengers as 315 and has no figure for the prophets (*al-Silsila al-ṣaḥīḥa* 2668), and I found no grading of his for the 124,000 itself.[128](#src-128) I treat the number as a report rather than a doctrine. Al-Ṣadūq's creed gives the same figure of 124,000, with the same number of *awṣiyāʾ*, appointed successors.[71](#src-71) The last of them is Muhammad ﷺ, "the Messenger of Allah and the seal of the prophets".[73](#src-73) He described himself as the brick that completed a house otherwise finished.[74](#src-74) All the schools agree on that finality. They differ on the degree of the prophets' protection from error (*ʿiṣma*). Sunni theologians generally hold that prophets were protected from grave sin and from error in conveying the message, and discuss whether minor slips were possible, pointing to verses in which prophets ask forgiveness. Twelver theology holds that prophets, and the imams after them, were protected from all sin and error throughout their lives.[16](#src-16) Both sides stress that the prophets were human: "Say, \[O Prophet,\] 'I am only a man like you, \[but\] it has been revealed to me that your God is only One God.'"[75](#src-75) ### Figures whose status is disputed Several people in the Qur'an are honoured without being clearly called prophets, and scholars have argued about each. Dhu'l-Qarnayn, the "two-horned" ruler of sūrat al-Kahf; Luqmān, whom God "blessed … with wisdom"; the servant Moses travels with, identified in hadith as al-Khiḍr; ʿUzayr, usually identified with Ezra; and Mary, chosen "over all women of the world", whom a minority of scholars considered a prophet because angels spoke to her.[76](#src-76)[77](#src-77)[78](#src-78)[79](#src-79)[80](#src-80) None of them is on the standard list below. ## The twenty-five named prophets Muslim children are commonly taught that the Qur'an names twenty-five prophets. Ibn Kathīr's commentary on 4:164 gives the list under a heading saying so, adding that "several scholars of tafsir" also counted Dhu'l-Kifl among them; eighteen appear together in a single passage of sūrat al-Anʿām.[81](#src-81)[82](#src-82) The table gives each with one verse in which he is named. The Arabic form comes first, then the English form most readers will know. | # | Name | Known in English as | Named at | Note | | -- | ---------- | --------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------- | | 1 | Ādam | Adam | [2:31](https://quran.com/2/31?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) | First human and first prophet | | 2 | Idrīs | Often identified with Enoch | [19:56](https://quran.com/19/56?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) | "a man of truth and a prophet" | | 3 | Nūḥ | Noah | [71:1](https://quran.com/71/1?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) | A sūra bears his name; one of "those of resolve" | | 4 | Hūd | | [11:50](https://quran.com/11/50?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) | Sent to the people of ʿĀd | | 5 | Ṣāliḥ | | [11:61](https://quran.com/11/61?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) | Sent to Thamūd | | 6 | Ibrāhīm | Abraham | [19:41](https://quran.com/19/41?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) | God's "intimate friend"; one of "those of resolve" | | 7 | Lūṭ | Lot | [37:133](https://quran.com/37/133?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) | "among the messengers" | | 8 | Ismāʿīl | Ishmael | [19:54](https://quran.com/19/54?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) | "a messenger and a prophet" | | 9 | Isḥāq | Isaac | [37:112](https://quran.com/37/112?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) | "a prophet from among the righteous" | | 10 | Yaʿqūb | Jacob | [19:49](https://quran.com/19/49?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) | Also called Israel | | 11 | Yūsuf | Joseph | [12:4](https://quran.com/12/4?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) | A whole sūra tells his story | | 12 | Ayyūb | Job | [21:83](https://quran.com/21/83?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) | The model of patience | | 13 | Shuʿayb | | [11:84](https://quran.com/11/84?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) | Sent to Madyan | | 14 | Mūsā | Moses | [19:51](https://quran.com/19/51?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) | The most often named prophet in the Qur'an; one of "those of resolve" | | 15 | Hārūn | Aaron | [19:53](https://quran.com/19/53?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) | Given to Moses "as a prophet" | | 16 | Dhu'l-Kifl | Identity uncertain | [21:85](https://quran.com/21/85?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) | Named with Ishmael and Idrīs; his prophethood was debated | | 17 | Dāwūd | David | [38:17](https://quran.com/38/17?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) | Given the Psalms | | 18 | Sulaymān | Solomon | [27:15](https://quran.com/27/15?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) | Son of David | | 19 | Ilyās | Elijah (Elias) | [37:123](https://quran.com/37/123?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) | "among the messengers" | | 20 | al-Yasaʿ | Elisha | [6:86](https://quran.com/6/86?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) | Also at 38:48 | | 21 | Yūnus | Jonah | [37:139](https://quran.com/37/139?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) | Also called Dhu'l-Nūn, "the man of the fish" | | 22 | Zakariyyā | Zechariah | [19:7](https://quran.com/19/7?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) | Father of John | | 23 | Yaḥyā | John the Baptist | [19:12](https://quran.com/19/12?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) | Given wisdom as a child | | 24 | ʿĪsā | Jesus | [19:34](https://quran.com/19/34?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) | "son of Mary"; one of "those of resolve" | | 25 | Muḥammad ﷺ | Muhammad | [47:2](https://quran.com/47/2?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) | Also at 3:144, 33:40, 48:29; "Aḥmad" at 61:6 | Two small cautions about the list. The number twenty-five is a teaching convention built on who is named; it is not stated in the Qur'an itself. And some identifications, of Idrīs with Enoch or Dhu'l-Kifl with any biblical figure, are guesses that the text does not settle. ## The Last Day Belief in the Last Day (*al-yawm al-ākhir*) covers everything from death to the final destination. The Qur'an describes a barrier, *barzakh*, between the dead and the living "until the Day they are resurrected"; a trumpet that is blown, at which the dead "rush from the graves to their Lord"; scales of justice by which "no soul will be wronged in the least"; and a reckoning so exact that "whoever does an atom's weight of good will see it, and whoever does an atom's weight of evil will see it".[83](#src-83)[84](#src-84)[85](#src-85)[86](#src-86) When it will come is among the five things only God knows.[87](#src-87) Sound hadith describe signs that come before it. In the Hadith of Jibrīl the Prophet ﷺ, asked about the Hour, answers that the one asked knows no more about it than the one asking, and then gives two of its indications: that "the slave-girl will give birth to her mistress and master", and that barefoot, destitute herders will be seen "vying with one another in the construction of magnificent buildings".[88](#src-88) Another report in Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ lists ten signs: the smoke, the Dajjāl, the beast, the sun rising from the west, the descent of ʿĪsā son of Maryam, Gog and Magog, three landslides (in the east, the west and Arabia) and a fire from Yemen that drives people to their place of gathering.[111](#src-111) Every prophet, says a hadith in al-Bukhārī, warned his people against the one-eyed liar, the Dajjāl.[115](#src-115) The Qur'an says of ʿĪsā, "his \[second\] coming is truly a sign for the Hour"; the bracketed word is Khattab's, and Ibn Kathīr calls this reading, that the verse refers to his descent before the Day of Resurrection, the correct one.[112](#src-112)[113](#src-113) In al-Bukhārī, Abū Hurayra relates that the son of Maryam "will soon descend amongst you" and judge justly, and then recites 4:159, "Every one of the People of the Book will definitely believe in him before his death", which Ibn Kathīr, citing Ibn ʿAbbās, reads as meaning before ʿĪsā's death.[114](#src-114)[116](#src-116) The Mahdī, a rightly guided man of the Prophet's family expected before the end, rests on different ground. No report in al-Bukhārī's or Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ names him; a search of both on sunnah.com finds the word only in narrators' names. The reports Sunni scholars cite are in Abū Dāwūd's *Sunan*: that God would raise up a man of the Prophet's family "who would fill this earth with justice as it has been filled with oppression", and that "the Mahdi will be of my family, of the descendants of Fatimah". Al-Albānī graded Ibn Masʿūd's version (4282) ḥasan ṣaḥīḥ, and ʿAlī's (4283) and Umm Salama's (4284) ṣaḥīḥ.[117](#src-117) Not every Sunni scholar has been so confident. Ibn Khaldūn (d. 1406) went through the Mahdi reports one by one in his *Muqaddima* and concluded that "very few are above criticism";[125](#src-125) the gradings above show that al-Albānī, for one, did not share his doubts about these three. Twelver Shia belief identifies him with the twelfth Imam, Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan: Ibn Bābawayh's creed calls him the rightly guided one (*mahdī*), "present in the earth but invisible (*ghāʾib*) to the eyes", behind whom ʿĪsā will pray when he descends.[118](#src-118) None of these texts gives a date, and in the Hadith of Jibrīl the Prophet ﷺ himself declined to give one.[88](#src-88) The schools agree on the outline. They disagree on the fate of the believer who commits a grave sin and dies without repenting, and that disagreement goes back to the first theological splits. The Muʿtazila held that such a person is in an "intermediate position" (*al-manzila bayna al-manzilatayn*), neither believer nor unbeliever, and, since God's threats must be carried out as surely as His promises, will remain in the Fire.[1](#src-1) The Sunni schools hold that he remains a believer, that God may forgive him or punish him for a time, and that he will not be in the Fire forever; al-Ṭaḥāwī's creed says exactly this.[12](#src-12)[19](#src-19) The Twelvers, though close to the Muʿtazila on so much else, side with the Sunnis here: al-Mufīd rejected both the intermediate position and the eternal punishment of the grave sinner.[14](#src-14) Death, the questioning in the grave, intercession, the bridge, the Garden and the Fire, and the practical side of Muslim funerals in Australia are all in the [afterlife post](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/afterlife/). ## The decree and human choice This is the argument that began it all. The Hadith of Jibrīl in Muslim's collection is told by a man from Basra who had gone looking for a Companion because a certain Maʿbad al-Juhanī was teaching that there is no decree. Ibn ʿUmar's reply, before he told the story, was that he had nothing to do with such people, and that God would accept nothing from them, even gold the size of Mount Uḥud, until they believed in the decree.[88](#src-88) The group Maʿbad led became known as the *Qadariyya*, confusingly, because of how much they talked about qadar. ### What the texts say The Qur'an says two things and does not stop to reconcile them. On one side: "Indeed, We have created everything, perfectly preordained."[89](#src-89) No calamity occurs "without being \[written\] in a Record before We bring it into being".[90](#src-90) "You cannot will \[to do so\] unless Allah wills."[91](#src-91) "It is Allah Who created you and whatever you do."[92](#src-92) A hadith adds that God recorded the measures of creation fifty thousand years before the heavens and the earth.[93](#src-93) On the other side: "\[This is\] the truth from your Lord. Whoever wills let them believe, and whoever wills let them disbelieve."[94](#src-94) "Allah would never change a people's state \[of favour\] until they change their own state \[of faith\]."[95](#src-95) The soul was inspired with \[the knowledge of\] right and wrong, and "successful indeed is the one who purifies their soul".[96](#src-96) "Whatever good befalls you is from Allah and whatever evil befalls you is from yourself", in a passage that has just said of good and evil alike, "Both have been destined by Allah".[97](#src-97) God wrongs no one by an atom's weight.[98](#src-98) The Prophet ﷺ was asked the obvious question. At a funeral, scratching the ground with a stick, he said that everyone's place in Paradise or the Fire has been written. His Companions asked whether they should then rely on what was written and stop working. "Act," he said, "for each will find easy what he was created for," and he recited verses about giving and believing.[99](#src-99) In another hadith he tells believers to strive for what benefits them and seek God's help, and, when something goes wrong, not to say "if only I had done this", but "God decreed, and did what He willed", because "your 'if' opens the door to Satan".[100](#src-100) The texts, in other words, command effort and forbid fatalism while affirming the decree. ### How the schools reconcile them **The Muʿtazila** put God's justice first. A just God cannot create a sin and then punish the sinner for it, so human beings must be the real originators of their own acts, with a power God gives them in advance. They were the heirs, in this respect, of the Qadariyya the hadith condemns, though they would have described their view more carefully.[4](#src-4) **The Ashʿarīs** put God's sovereignty first. God is the only creator of everything, including human acts; "it is Allah Who created you and whatever you do". The human being "acquires" (*kasb*) the act, and is responsible for it, but the power to act is created by God at the very moment of the act, not given in advance.[7](#src-7) In its developed form, the Stanford Encyclopedia notes, the school adopted occasionalism: God is not simply the cause of causes but the only real cause.[4](#src-4) Critics, from the Muʿtazila onwards, said that "acquisition" was a word covering a gap. **The Māturīdīs** also hold that God creates all acts, but they give much more weight to human choice (*ikhtiyār*) as a real contribution for which people are rightly held responsible. Britannica's summary goes as far as saying the later school held that man "has the utmost freedom to act".[11](#src-11)[10](#src-10) **The Atharīs**, in Ibn Taymiyya's version, affirm both halves as strongly as the texts do: God creates everything, including human acts, and human beings are nonetheless real agents with real will and power, and the acts are truly theirs. Ibn Taymiyya also insisted that God acts with wisdom and purpose, which set him against the Ashʿarī view that God's acts need no reason.[3](#src-3) **The Twelvers** take their formula from the imams. "No compulsion and no delegation," Imam al-Ṣādiq is reported as saying, "but a matter between the two."[101](#src-101) Compulsion (*jabr*) would make God unjust; delegation (*tafwīḍ*) would leave Him out of His own creation. The human being acts freely, by a power that God sustains at every moment. Al-Muẓaffar's creed gives the doctrine its own chapter, next to God's justice, and al-Ṣadūq's definition of justice as God requiting good with good and evil with evil sits behind it.[16](#src-16)[15](#src-15) Al-Majlisī graded that particular report *mursal*, a chain with a gap, but the formula recurs through Twelver literature and is the school's settled position. No school claims to have dissolved the mystery. The Qur'an itself says God "cannot be questioned about what He does, but they will \[all\] be questioned", and many scholars of every school have warned students off pressing the question beyond what the texts say.[102](#src-102) ## Can reason know right from wrong? Underneath the argument about the decree is another: whether "good" and "evil" are facts that reason can recognise, or simply what God commands and forbids. The Muʿtazila held that moral standards are objective, that they apply to God as to us, and that God therefore does what is best; the Stanford Encyclopedia notes that most of them came to agree that God "does what is best in all his actions".[4](#src-4) The Twelvers share this position, which is why justice appears among their roots of religion.[16](#src-16) The Ashʿarīs rejected it. For them, an act is good because God commands it and evil because He forbids it, and nothing obliges God. The Māturīdīs took a middle course: reason can know some things to be good or bad, and in al-Māturīdī's view human beings are responsible through their own reason for recognising that God exists, is just and sends messengers, even before revelation reaches them.[4](#src-4) The Qur'an's statement that God does not punish "until We have sent a messenger" is one of the verses each side reads its own way.[103](#src-103) ## What counts as faith The last cluster of disagreements concerns the believer, not God. Is faith (*īmān*) the assent of the heart, or does it include words and deeds? Does it grow and shrink? Al-Ṭaḥāwī's creed gives the Ḥanafī answer that the Māturīdīs inherited: "Belief consists of affirmation by the tongue and acceptance by the heart. Belief is, at base, the same for everyone, but the superiority of some over others in it is due to their piety and fear of God."[12](#src-12) Al-Nasafī's creed, in the same tradition, says faith itself neither increases nor decreases, while its fruits do.[13](#src-13) The Atharīs define faith as belief in the heart, statement on the tongue and action with the limbs, which increases with obedience and decreases with sin; many Ashʿarīs, while defining faith as assent, also speak of it growing and shrinking.[3](#src-3)[8](#src-8) These can sound like the same view in different words, and to some degree they are: nobody holds that deeds do not matter, and nobody holds that a single sin ends faith. The difference shows at the edges, in whether a Muslim who neglects the prayer is a weak believer or something worse, and it is part of why the verse "the Bedouins say 'we have believed'" is quoted so often in these debates. The five pillars post discusses that verse. ## Who holds what: a comparison The table compresses the sections above into one grid. Each cell is a simplification of a school's usual position; individual scholars within each school differ, and the sources for each claim are cited in the section where it is discussed. Choose a school to highlight its column, then choose a second to see which rows the two broadly agree on. Highlight: Ashʿarī Māturīdī Atharī Muʿtazilī Twelver Show only rows where they differ | Question | Ashʿarī | Māturīdī | Atharī | Muʿtazilī | Twelver | | --------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Place of reasoned theology (kalām) | Used to defend revealed doctrine | Used freely; reason given a large role | Distrusted; follow the texts and the early generations | Reason first; texts read in its light | Reason alongside the teaching of the imams | | God's attributes | Real, eternal attributes such as knowledge and power | The same, with takwīn (bringing into being) added | Affirm every attribute in the texts as it comes | Not distinct from God; He knows by His essence | Identical with His essence | | "Hand", "face", "over the Throne" | Leave the meaning to God, or read figuratively | Leave the meaning to God, or read figuratively | Affirm, without asking how and without likening | Read figuratively | Read figuratively | | Believers will see God | Yes, without encompassing Him | Yes, without encompassing Him | Yes | No | Not with the eyes; with the heart | | Is the Qur'an created? | God's speech is uncreated; its letters and ink are created | As the Ashʿarīs | Uncreated, words and meaning together | Created | Created (al-Ṣadūq: God is its "Creator"), but not a creedal test; the stress falls on the text being complete | | Human acts | Created by God, "acquired" by the human | Created by God; real human choice carries responsibility | Created by God; humans are real agents with real will | Originated by the human | No compulsion, no delegation: "a matter between the two" | | Can reason know good and evil? | No; good is what God commands | Partly; reason can know some good and the duty to know God | Partly | Yes; moral standards are objective | Yes | | Is God bound to do what is best? | No; nothing obliges God | He acts with wisdom | He acts with wisdom and purpose | Yes | His justice means He does no wrong | | What is faith? | Assent of the heart; many say it grows and shrinks | Assent of the heart and affirmation of the tongue; does not grow or shrink in itself | Belief, word and deed; grows and shrinks | Includes deeds | Assent and confession; belief in the imamate in the special sense | | The grave sinner who dies unrepentant | A believer; may be forgiven, not in the Fire forever | The same | The same | "Intermediate position"; in the Fire forever | A believer; not in the Fire forever | | Protection of prophets from sin (ʿiṣma) | From grave sin and error in the message | Broadly the same | Broadly the same | Protected from grave sin; details debated | From all sin and error, and the imams likewise | | Is the imamate a root of belief? | No | No | No | No | Yes | ## Reading the arguments fairly It is easy to read a table like that and conclude that Muslims agree on nothing. The opposite is closer to the truth. Every school on it affirms one God with no partner, the angels, the books, the prophets ending with Muhammad ﷺ, the resurrection and the judgement, and the decree. They pray the same prayers in the same direction and recite the same Qur'an. What they argue about is how to speak about God without either emptying His words or making Him like His creation, and how to hold together His power and His justice with our responsibility. The arguments have not always been polite. Each school has a vocabulary for the others' errors: Atharīs accuse Ashʿarīs and Muʿtazilīs of *taʿṭīl*, "stripping" God of His attributes; Ashʿarīs accuse Atharīs of *tashbīh* or *tajsīm*, likening God to creation or ascribing Him a body; Sunni writers accuse the Muʿtazila of elevating reason over revelation, and the Muʿtazila accused the traditionalists of making God unjust. At the worst moments, as in the miḥna, the arguments were enforced with prison and the lash.[2](#src-2) In recent decades there have been deliberate efforts to stop the disagreements being used to deny that other Muslims are Muslims. The Amman Message's three points affirm that whoever follows one of the four Sunni schools of law, the Jaʿfarī or Zaydī Shia schools, the Ibāḍī or the Ẓāhirī is a Muslim, and extend the same recognition to followers of the Ashʿarī creed, of authentic Sufism and of "true Salafi thought".[104](#src-104) It did not end the arguments, and was not meant to. It drew a line around them. If you are a Muslim reading this, the likelihood is that you were taught one of these positions as simply "what Muslims believe", without being told that it was one answer among several. That is how most religious teaching works, and it is not a scandal. But it helps, when you meet a Muslim who was taught a different answer, to know that the disagreement is old, that serious and devout scholars stood on each side of it, and that the verses they argued over are the same verses you recite. ## Glossary ʿaqīda Creed; the things the heart is "tied" to. Ashʿarī Follower of the theological school of Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī (d. c. 936). Atharī Traditionalist; from *athar*, a transmitted report. The creed of the scholars of hadith and of today's Salafis. barzakh The barrier between death and resurrection. bi-lā kayfa "Without how": affirming God's attributes without asking how they are. ghayb The unseen: what is real but beyond the senses. ʿiṣma Protection from sin and error, of prophets (and, in Twelver belief, the imams). jabr / tafwīḍ Compulsion / delegation. In Twelver theology the two errors between which the truth lies. (*Tafwīḍ* also names, in Sunni theology, consigning the meaning of ambiguous verses to God.) jinn Beings created from "a flame of fire" (*mārij min nār*, Qur'an 55:15), with choice like humans. kalām Rational theology; the discipline of arguing about doctrine. kasb "Acquisition": the Ashʿarī account of human responsibility for acts God creates. Māturīdī Follower of Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī of Samarqand (d. 944), the creed of most Ḥanafīs. miḥna The inquisition of about 833–848 enforcing the doctrine of the created Qur'an. muḥkam / mutashābih Precise / ambiguous verses of the Qur'an (3:7). Muʿtazila The early rationalist school of theology. nabī / rasūl Prophet / messenger. qadar The divine decree or measure. shirk Associating partners with God. taʾwīl Interpretation; in theology, reading a text figuratively. tawḥīd God's oneness, and the affirmation of it. ulū al-ʿazm "Those of resolve": the greatest messengers, usually named as Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. This is a research article, not a fatwa. It describes what the texts say and how the schools of theology have read them, as fairly as I can. For guidance on your own belief, please ask a qualified scholar you trust. **Spotted a mistake, or know a better source?** I check and correct these pages when readers point things out. Please email [mohammad.siddiqui@icloud.com](mailto:mohammad.siddiqui@icloud.com?subject=Correction%3A%20Belief%20in%20God%2C%20the%20Prophets%20and%20the%20Unseen) with the passage, what you think is wrong, and your source (Qur'an reference, hadith with collection and number, or a book with page). ## Sources Qur'an references link to quran.com, and quotations follow Mustafa Khattab's translation there (The Clear Quran), with his bracketed words shown in square brackets. Where his translation gives the sense of a phrase rather than its words, as with God's "hands" and "face", I say so and give the Arabic. Hadith references link to sunnah.com. Reports in al-Bukhārī's and Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ are accepted as authentic by Sunni scholarship and sunnah.com gives no separate grade for them; for other collections I give the grade sunnah.com shows and who made it. Shia hadith link to Thaqalayn with al-Majlisī's grading from *Mirʾāt al-ʿuqūl*. Books without links are standard academic works I recommend for going further. 1. Sabine Schmidtke (ed.), *The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Theology* (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 2. Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Miḥnah": [britannica.com/topic/mihnah](https://www.britannica.com/topic/mihnah?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 3. Jon Hoover, *Ibn Taymiyya* (Makers of the Muslim World; London: Oneworld, 2019). 4. Rahim Acar, "Arabic and Islamic Philosophy of Religion", *Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy* (2023), sections 3.2.2, 6.2.1 and 7.1: [plato.stanford.edu/entries/arabic-islamic-religion](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arabic-islamic-religion/?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 5. C. E. Bosworth, "Ašʿarī, Abu'l-Ḥasan", *Encyclopaedia Iranica*: [iranicaonline.org/articles/asari-abul-hasan-ali-b](https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/asari-abul-hasan-ali-b/?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 6. Sabine Schmidtke, "Jobbāʾi", *Encyclopaedia Iranica*: [iranicaonline.org/articles/jobbai-name-of-two-mutazilite-theologians](https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/jobbai-name-of-two-mutazilite-theologians/?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 7. Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Ashʿariyyah": [britannica.com/topic/Ashariyyah](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ashariyyah?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 8. Tim Winter (ed.), *The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 9. Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Abū Manṣūr Muḥammad al-Māturīdī": [britannica.com/biography/Abu-Mansur-Muhammad-al-Maturidi](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Abu-Mansur-Muhammad-al-Maturidi?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 10. Ulrich Rudolph, *Al-Māturīdī and the Development of Sunnī Theology in Samarqand*, tr. Rodrigo Adem (Leiden: Brill, 2015). 11. Encyclopaedia Britannica (rev. Adam Zeidan), "Māturīdiyyah": [britannica.com/topic/Maturidiyah](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Maturidiyah?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 12. Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭaḥāwī, *al-ʿAqīda al-Ṭaḥāwiyya*, English text published by Darul Fatwa Australia: [darulfatwa.org.au/en/al-aqidah-at-tahawiyyah](https://www.darulfatwa.org.au/en/al-aqidah-at-tahawiyyah/?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). A widely used alternative translation is Hamza Yusuf, *The Creed of Imam al-Ṭaḥāwī* (Zaytuna Institute, 2007). 13. Earl Edgar Elder (tr.), *A Commentary on the Creed of Islam: Saʿd al-Dīn al-Taftāzānī on the Creed of Najm al-Dīn al-Nasafī* (New York: Columbia University Press, 1950). 14. Martin J. McDermott, "Awāʾel al-maqālāt", *Encyclopaedia Iranica*, on al-Shaykh al-Mufīd's catalogue of Imāmī and Muʿtazilī positions: [iranicaonline.org/articles/awael-al-maqalat-an-11th-century-shiite-doctrinal-work](https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/awael-al-maqalat-an-11th-century-shiite-doctrinal-work/?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 15. al-Shaykh al-Ṣadūq, *A Shiʿite Creed* (al-Iʿtiqādāt), tr. Asaf A. A. Fyzee (WOFIS, 1982), "Concerning Justice": [al-islam.org/shiite-creed-shaykh-saduq/concerning-justice-al-adl](https://al-islam.org/shiite-creed-shaykh-saduq/concerning-justice-al-adl?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 16. Muḥammad Riḍā al-Muẓaffar, *The Faith of the Imāmiyyah Shīʿah* (ʿAqāʾid al-Imāmiyya), tr. Badr Shahin (Ahl al-Bayt World Assembly): [al-islam.org/faith-imamiyyah-shiah-muhammad-ridha-al-muzaffar](https://al-islam.org/faith-imamiyyah-shiah-muhammad-ridha-al-muzaffar?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 17. Qur'an 112:1–4: [quran.com/112](https://quran.com/112?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 18. Qur'an 42:11 ("there is nothing like Him"): [quran.com/42/11](https://quran.com/42/11?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 19. Qur'an 4:48: [quran.com/4/48](https://quran.com/4/48?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 20. Qur'an 7:180 ("the most beautiful names"): [quran.com/7/180](https://quran.com/7/180?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 21. Qur'an 59:22–24: [quran.com/59/22-24](https://quran.com/59/22-24?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 22. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 7392: ninety-nine names. [sunnah.com/bukhari:7392](https://sunnah.com/bukhari:7392?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ. 23. Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī 3507: the list of ninety-nine names. [sunnah.com/tirmidhi:3507](https://sunnah.com/tirmidhi:3507?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). al-Tirmidhī calls it *gharīb* and says only this chain names the names; graded *ḍaʿīf* (weak) by Darussalam, as shown on sunnah.com. 24. Qur'an 20:5 (the Throne): [quran.com/20/5](https://quran.com/20/5?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 25. Qur'an 5:64 ("both His hands are outstretched"): [quran.com/5/64](https://quran.com/5/64?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 26. Qur'an 38:75 ("what I created with My two hands"): [quran.com/38/75](https://quran.com/38/75?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 27. Qur'an 55:26–27 (*wajh rabbika*, "the Face of your Lord"): [quran.com/55/26-27](https://quran.com/55/26-27?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 28. Qur'an 57:4 ("He is with you wherever you are"): [quran.com/57/4](https://quran.com/57/4?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 29. Qur'an 50:16 ("closer than his jugular vein"): [quran.com/50/16](https://quran.com/50/16?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 30. Qur'an 3:7 (verses precise and verses ambiguous): [quran.com/3/7](https://quran.com/3/7?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 31. al-Kulaynī, *al-Kāfī*, vol. 1, Book of Divine Unity, chapter 12, hadith 1: [thaqalayn.com/hadith/1/3/12/1](https://thaqalayn.com/hadith/1/3/12/1?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). Imam al-Ṣādiq: God has always been our Lord, and knowledge was His essence when there was nothing known. Graded *majhūl* (a narrator unknown) by al-Majlisī, as shown on Thaqalayn. 32. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 537a: "Where is God?" "In the heaven". [sunnah.com/muslim:537a](https://sunnah.com/muslim:537a?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ. 33. Qur'an 75:22–23 (faces looking at their Lord): [quran.com/75/22-23](https://quran.com/75/22-23?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 34. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 554 (Jarīr ibn ʿAbd Allāh): "you will see your Lord as you see this moon". [sunnah.com/bukhari:554](https://sunnah.com/bukhari:554?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ. 35. Qur'an 6:103 ("No vision can encompass Him"): [quran.com/6/103](https://quran.com/6/103?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 36. Qur'an 7:143 ("You cannot see Me!"): [quran.com/7/143](https://quran.com/7/143?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 37. al-Kulaynī, *al-Kāfī*, vol. 1, Book of Divine Unity, chapter 9, hadith 6: [thaqalayn.com/hadith/1/3/9/6](https://thaqalayn.com/hadith/1/3/9/6?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). Imam ʿAlī: eyes do not see Him by sight, but hearts see Him by the realities of faith. Graded *majhūl* by al-Majlisī, as shown on Thaqalayn. 38. Qur'an 36:82 ("Be, and it is"): [quran.com/36/82](https://quran.com/36/82?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 39. al-Ṣadūq, *A Shiʿite Creed*, "Concerning the Extent of the Qur'an": [al-islam.org/shiite-creed-shaykh-saduq/concerning-extent-quran](https://al-islam.org/shiite-creed-shaykh-saduq/concerning-extent-quran?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 40. Qur'an 2:3 ("who believe in the unseen"): [quran.com/2/3](https://quran.com/2/3?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 41. Qur'an 6:59 (the keys of the unseen): [quran.com/6/59](https://quran.com/6/59?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 42. Qur'an 72:26–27: [quran.com/72/26-27](https://quran.com/72/26-27?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 43. Qur'an 6:50 ("nor do I know the unseen"): [quran.com/6/50](https://quran.com/6/50?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 44. Qur'an 35:1: [quran.com/35/1](https://quran.com/35/1?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 45. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 2996 (ʿĀʾisha): angels created from light, jinn from *mārij min nār* ("a flame of fire"), Adam from what has been described to you. [sunnah.com/muslim:2996](https://sunnah.com/muslim:2996?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ. 46. Qur'an 66:6: [quran.com/66/6](https://quran.com/66/6?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 47. Qur'an 2:97–98 (Gabriel and Michael): [quran.com/2/97-98](https://quran.com/2/97-98?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 48. Qur'an 43:77 (Mālik, keeper of the Fire): [quran.com/43/77](https://quran.com/43/77?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 49. Qur'an 2:102 (Hārūt and Mārūt): [quran.com/2/102](https://quran.com/2/102?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 50. Qur'an 32:11 (the angel of death): [quran.com/32/11](https://quran.com/32/11?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 51. Qur'an 82:10–12 (the noble recorders): [quran.com/82/10-12](https://quran.com/82/10-12?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 52. Qur'an 55:15 (jinn created "from a \[smokeless\] flame of fire"; "smokeless" is Khattab's bracketed gloss on *mārij*): [quran.com/55/15](https://quran.com/55/15?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 53. Qur'an 72:1 (jinn who heard the Qur'an): [quran.com/72/1](https://quran.com/72/1?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 54. Qur'an 51:56: [quran.com/51/56](https://quran.com/51/56?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 55. Qur'an 2:34: [quran.com/2/34](https://quran.com/2/34?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 56. Qur'an 18:50 (Iblīs "was of the jinn"): [quran.com/18/50](https://quran.com/18/50?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 57. Qur'an 3:3 (the Torah and the Gospel): [quran.com/3/3](https://quran.com/3/3?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 58. Qur'an 4:163 (the Psalms (Zabūr) given to David): [quran.com/4/163](https://quran.com/4/163?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 59. Qur'an 87:18–19: [quran.com/87/18-19](https://quran.com/87/18-19?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 60. Qur'an 2:136: [quran.com/2/136](https://quran.com/2/136?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 61. Qur'an 5:48 (the Qur'an as "guardian" over earlier scripture): [quran.com/5/48](https://quran.com/5/48?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 62. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 4485: "do not believe the People of the Scripture, nor disbelieve them". [sunnah.com/bukhari:4485](https://sunnah.com/bukhari:4485?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ. 63. Qur'an 16:36 (a messenger to every nation): [quran.com/16/36](https://quran.com/16/36?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 64. Qur'an 35:24: [quran.com/35/24](https://quran.com/35/24?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 65. Qur'an 4:164: [quran.com/4/164](https://quran.com/4/164?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 66. Qur'an 40:78: [quran.com/40/78](https://quran.com/40/78?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 67. Qur'an 19:51 (Moses "a messenger and a prophet"): [quran.com/19/51](https://quran.com/19/51?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 68. Qur'an 2:253 (some messengers raised above others): [quran.com/2/253](https://quran.com/2/253?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 69. Qur'an 46:35 ("the Messengers of Firm Resolve"): [quran.com/46/35](https://quran.com/46/35?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 70. Qur'an 33:7 (the covenant with Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus): [quran.com/33/7](https://quran.com/33/7?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 71. al-Ṣadūq, *A Shiʿite Creed*, "The Number of Prophets and Vicegerents": [al-islam.org/shiite-creed-shaykh-saduq/number-prophets-and-vicegerents](https://al-islam.org/shiite-creed-shaykh-saduq/number-prophets-and-vicegerents?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 72. Mishkāt al-Maṣābīḥ 5737: Abū Dharr, and Abū Umāma's version: 124,000 prophets, of whom 315 were messengers. [sunnah.com/mishkat:5737](https://sunnah.com/mishkat:5737?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). sunnah.com shows no grade for it; for other graders see notes 126–128. 73. Qur'an 33:40: [quran.com/33/40](https://quran.com/33/40?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 74. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 3535: the missing brick. [sunnah.com/bukhari:3535](https://sunnah.com/bukhari:3535?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ. 75. Qur'an 18:110 ("I am only a man like you"): [quran.com/18/110](https://quran.com/18/110?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 76. Qur'an 18:83 (Dhu'l-Qarnayn): [quran.com/18/83](https://quran.com/18/83?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 77. Qur'an 31:12 (Luqmān): [quran.com/31/12](https://quran.com/31/12?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 78. Qur'an 18:65 (the servant Moses met, identified in hadith as al-Khiḍr): [quran.com/18/65](https://quran.com/18/65?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 79. Qur'an 9:30 (ʿUzayr): [quran.com/9/30](https://quran.com/9/30?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 80. Qur'an 3:42 (Mary chosen "over all women of the world"): [quran.com/3/42](https://quran.com/3/42?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 81. Ibn Kathīr, *Tafsīr* on Qur'an 4:164, "Twenty-Five Prophets Are Mentioned in the Qur'an", English abridgement on quran.com: [quran.com/4:164/tafsirs/en-tafisr-ibn-kathir](https://quran.com/4:164/tafsirs/en-tafisr-ibn-kathir?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 82. Qur'an 6:83–86 (eighteen prophets named in one passage): [quran.com/6/83-86](https://quran.com/6/83-86?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 83. Qur'an 23:99–100 (the barrier (barzakh)): [quran.com/23/99-100](https://quran.com/23/99-100?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 84. Qur'an 36:51: [quran.com/36/51](https://quran.com/36/51?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 85. Qur'an 21:47 (the scales): [quran.com/21/47](https://quran.com/21/47?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 86. Qur'an 99:7–8: [quran.com/99/7-8](https://quran.com/99/7-8?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 87. Qur'an 31:34: [quran.com/31/34](https://quran.com/31/34?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 88. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 8a: the Hadith of Jibrīl, with the Qadariyya in Basra. [sunnah.com/muslim:8a](https://sunnah.com/muslim:8a?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ. 89. Qur'an 54:49: [quran.com/54/49](https://quran.com/54/49?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 90. Qur'an 57:22: [quran.com/57/22](https://quran.com/57/22?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 91. Qur'an 76:30 ("you cannot will unless Allah wills"): [quran.com/76/30](https://quran.com/76/30?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 92. Qur'an 37:96 ("Allah Who created you and whatever you do"): [quran.com/37/96](https://quran.com/37/96?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 93. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 2653b: measures decreed fifty thousand years before the heavens and the earth. [sunnah.com/muslim:2653b](https://sunnah.com/muslim:2653b?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ. 94. Qur'an 18:29 ("whoever wills let them believe"): [quran.com/18/29](https://quran.com/18/29?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 95. Qur'an 13:11: [quran.com/13/11](https://quran.com/13/11?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 96. Qur'an 91:7–10: [quran.com/91/7-10](https://quran.com/91/7-10?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 97. Qur'an 4:78–79 ("Both have been destined by Allah" and "whatever evil befalls you is from yourself"): [quran.com/4/78-79](https://quran.com/4/78-79?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 98. Qur'an 4:40: [quran.com/4/40](https://quran.com/4/40?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 99. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 4949: "each will find easy what he was created for". [sunnah.com/bukhari:4949](https://sunnah.com/bukhari:4949?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ. 100. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 2664: the strong believer, and "your 'if' opens the door to Satan". [sunnah.com/muslim:2664](https://sunnah.com/muslim:2664?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ. 101. al-Kulaynī, *al-Kāfī*, vol. 1, Book of Divine Unity, chapter 30, hadith 13: [thaqalayn.com/hadith/1/3/30/13](https://thaqalayn.com/hadith/1/3/30/13?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). Imam al-Ṣādiq: "no compulsion and no delegation, but a matter between the two". Graded *mursal* (a gap in the chain) by al-Majlisī, as shown on Thaqalayn. 102. Qur'an 21:23 ("He cannot be questioned about what He does"): [quran.com/21/23](https://quran.com/21/23?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 103. Qur'an 17:15 ("We would never punish \[a people\] until We have sent a messenger"): [quran.com/17/15](https://quran.com/17/15?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 104. The Amman Message, "The Three Points of the Amman Message": [ammanmessage.com/the-three-points-of-the-amman-message-v-1](https://ammanmessage.com/the-three-points-of-the-amman-message-v-1/?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 105. Muḥammad ʿAbduh, *The Theology of Unity* (Risālat al-tawḥīd), tr. Ishāq Musaʿad and Kenneth Cragg (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1966). 106. Muḥammad ʿAbduh, *Science and Civilisation between Islam and Christianity* (London: Gingko, 2025), contents and description as given by the distributor: [press.uchicago.edu](https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/S/bo245009719.html?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 107. al-Shaykh al-Ṣadūq, *A Shiʿite Creed*, tr. Fyzee, "The Belief Concerning the Qur'an": God is its "Creator and Revealer", with Fyzee's note that this makes the Qur'an created, as the Muʿtazila held: [al-islam.org/shiite-creed-shaykh-saduq/belief-concerning-quran](https://al-islam.org/shiite-creed-shaykh-saduq/belief-concerning-quran?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 108. Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī al-Saqqāf, *al-Tandīd bi-man ʿaddada al-tawḥīd: ibṭāl muḥāwalat al-tathlīth fī al-tawḥīd wa-al-ʿaqīda al-islāmiyya* (Amman: Dār al-Imām al-Nawawī, 1992): [Google Books record](https://books.google.com/books?id=3fT3jwEACAAJ&ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com); scan: [archive.org/details/Tandid](https://archive.org/details/Tandid) 109. Dār al-Iftāʾ al-Miṣriyya, fatwa 6002 (Shawqī ʿAllām, 20 December 2015), "Madā ṣiḥḥat al-tafriqa bayna tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya wa-tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya" (Arabic): [dar-alifta.org/ar/fatwa/details/16606](https://www.dar-alifta.org/ar/fatwa/details/16606?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 110. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Bāz, "Taqsīm al-tawḥīd ilā thalātha aqsām" (Arabic fatwa): the division is taken from induction (*istiqrāʾ*) of the Qur'an and Sunna. [binbaz.org.sa/fatwas/1655](https://binbaz.org.sa/fatwas/1655/%D8%AA%D9%82%D8%B3%D9%8A%D9%85-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AA%D9%88%D8%AD%D9%8A%D8%AF-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%89-%D8%AB%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%AB%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%82%D8%B3%D8%A7%D9%85?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 111. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 2901a (Ḥudhayfa ibn Asīd): the ten signs before the Hour. [sunnah.com/muslim:2901a](https://sunnah.com/muslim:2901a?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ. 112. Qur'an 43:61: [quran.com/43/61](https://quran.com/43/61?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 113. Ibn Kathīr, *Tafsīr* (abridged English), on 43:61: "The correct view concerning this phrase is that it refers to his descent before the Day of Resurrection". [quran.com/43:61/tafsirs/en-tafisr-ibn-kathir](https://quran.com/43:61/tafsirs/en-tafisr-ibn-kathir?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 114. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 3448 (Abū Hurayra): the son of Maryam will descend; Abū Hurayra recites 4:159\. [sunnah.com/bukhari:3448](https://sunnah.com/bukhari:3448?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ. 115. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 7131 (Anas): every prophet warned against the one-eyed liar, the Dajjāl. [sunnah.com/bukhari:7131](https://sunnah.com/bukhari:7131?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ. 116. Qur'an 4:159: [quran.com/4/159](https://quran.com/4/159?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com); Ibn Kathīr (abridged English) on the verse, taking "his death" as ʿĪsā's, from Ibn ʿAbbās via al-Ṭabarī: [quran.com/4:159/tafsirs/en-tafisr-ibn-kathir](https://quran.com/4:159/tafsirs/en-tafisr-ibn-kathir?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 117. Sunan Abī Dāwūd 4282 (Ibn Masʿūd), 4283 (ʿAlī) and 4284 (Umm Salama), the Book of the Mahdī: [sunnah.com/abudawud:4282](https://sunnah.com/abudawud:4282?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com), [4283](https://sunnah.com/abudawud:4283?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com), [4284](https://sunnah.com/abudawud:4284?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). Graded ḥasan ṣaḥīḥ (4282) and ṣaḥīḥ (4283, 4284) by al-Albānī, as shown on sunnah.com. 118. al-Shaykh al-Ṣadūq (Ibn Bābawayh), *A Shiʿite Creed*, tr. Fyzee, "The Number of Prophets and Vicegerents": [al-islam.org/shiite-creed-shaykh-saduq/number-prophets-and-vicegerents](https://al-islam.org/shiite-creed-shaykh-saduq/number-prophets-and-vicegerents?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 119. Yūsuf al-Dijwī, "Tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya wa-al-rubūbiyya", *Nūr al-Islām* (the Azhar journal, later *Majallat al-Azhar*), vol. 4, pp. 255–260 and 319–330, as listed in ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, *Daʿāwā al-munāwiʾīn li-daʿwat al-Shaykh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb*, bibliography: [shamela.ws/book/11186/387](https://shamela.ws/book/11186/387?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). The article is reprinted, with the journal's footnote, in *Fatāwā al-Shaykh Yūsuf al-Dijwī al-Azharī*, vol. 1 (Arabic), scan: [archive.org/details/fatawadejoui](https://archive.org/details/fatawadejoui) 120. Saʿīd ʿAbd al-Laṭīf Fūda, *al-Sharḥ al-kabīr ʿalā al-ʿAqīda al-Ṭaḥāwiyya* (Arabic), section on tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya, replying to Ibn Bāz's notes on the Ṭaḥāwiyya: "they divided tawḥīd into tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya and al-rubūbiyya, and this is a mistake". Scan: [archive.org/details/SaidFouda031](https://archive.org/details/SaidFouda031); the same argument in his *Naqḍ al-Risāla al-Tadmuriyya*: [archive.org/details/SaidFouda003](https://archive.org/details/SaidFouda003) 121. Muḥammad ibn Ṣāliḥ al-ʿUthaymīn, oral commentary on his *ʿAqīdat ahl al-sunna wa-al-jamāʿa*, lesson 1 (Arabic transcript): the division rests on "tracing and induction" (*al-tatabbuʿ wa-al-istiqrāʾ*) with support from 19:65, and his reply to those who call it an innovation. [alathar.net, Ibn ʿUthaymīn, ʿAqīdat ahl al-sunna 01a-1](https://www.alathar.net/home/esound/index.php?op=codevi&coid=154080&ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 122. Qur'an 19:65 (Khattab): [quran.com/19/65](https://quran.com/19/65?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 123. Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr (abridged English), on 18:50: al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, "Iblis was not one of the angels, not even for a second. He was the origin of the Jinn just as Adam ... was the origin of mankind": [quran.com/18:50 (Ibn Kathīr)](https://quran.com/18:50/tafsirs/en-tafisr-ibn-kathir?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 124. Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr (abridged English), on 2:34: Ibn ʿAbbās's report that Iblīs, before his sin, was with the angels and among their most active worshippers, and "was from a genus called Jinn": [quran.com/2:34 (Ibn Kathīr)](https://quran.com/2:34/tafsirs/en-tafisr-ibn-kathir?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 125. Ibn Khaldūn, *The Muqaddimah*, tr. Franz Rosenthal, ch. 3, section 51, "The Fatimid. The opinions of the people about him. The truth about the matter" (after reviewing the Mahdi traditions: "Very few are above criticism"): [muslimphilosophy.com](https://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ik/Muqaddimah/Chapter3/Ch%5F3%5F51.htm?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 126. al-Durar al-Saniyya, hadith encyclopedia, gradings of the report of 124,000 prophets: Shuʿayb al-Arnaʾūṭ, *Takhrīj al-Musnad* 22288 (Abū Umāma): "its chain is very weak"; Ibn Kathīr, *al-Bidāya wa-l-nihāya* 2/140: "weak by this route"; al-Haythamī, *Majmaʿ al-zawāʾid* 1/164: it turns on ʿAlī b. Yazīd, who is weak: [dorar.net](https://dorar.net/hadith/search?q=%D8%A3%D8%B1%D8%A8%D8%B9%D8%A9+%D9%88%D8%B9%D8%B4%D8%B1%D9%88%D9%86+%D8%A3%D9%84%D9%81%D8%A7+%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B1%D8%B3%D9%84&m=1&ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 127. IslamQA (Arabic), answer 95747, "How many prophets and messengers were there?" (Abū Dharr's report in Ibn Ḥibbān 361; Ibn al-Jawzī judged it fabricated; all reports on the number weak): [islamqa.info/ar/answers/95747](https://islamqa.info/ar/answers/95747?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) 128. al-Durar al-Saniyya: al-Albānī, *al-Silsila al-ṣaḥīḥa* 2668 (Abū Umāma: "Adam was a prophet spoken to ... the messengers were three hundred and fifteen"), "its chain is sound"; with al-Arnaʾūṭ on Abū Dharr's long version in the *Musnad* (21546), "its chain is very weak": [dorar.net](https://dorar.net/h/AxhtneNT?alts=1&ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) Related reading - [The Qur'an: What It Is, How It Came Down, and How It Was Kept](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/the-quran/): revelation, compilation and preservation of the text - [Muhammad ﷺ: A Life](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/prophet-muhammad/): from Mecca to Medina, with a timeline and family tree - [The People Around Muhammad ﷺ: Companions, Wives and Family](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/companions/): short sourced profiles of those closest to him - [The Five Pillars and the Six Articles of Faith](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/five-pillars/): the hub for this series - [Death, the Grave and the Afterlife](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/afterlife/): dying, burial, the questioning and the Day of Judgement - [Islamic Schools of Thought: The Complete Tree](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/schools-of-thought/): every madhhab, creed and movement on one interactive map - [Salafism: Origins, Beliefs and the Arguments Around It](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/salafism/): its creed, and the disputes over innovation - [Sunni and Shia](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/sunni-and-shia/): the hub for the three-part series - [The House and the Schools](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/the-house-and-the-schools/): the Imams, and how each tradition derives law - [How a Hadith Is Judged](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/how-a-hadith-is-judged/): what ṣaḥīḥ, ḥasan and ḍaʿīf mean - [Sufism: Origins, Orders and Critiques](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/sufism/): the ṭarīqas and the arguments around them