, for that is your greeting and the greeting of your descendants.’ He continued: “So he went and said, ‘Peace be upon you.’ They replied, ‘And upon you be peace and the mercy of Allah,’ adding ‘and the mercy of Allah.’ Everyone who enters Paradise will have Adam’s form, sixty cubits tall. Human stature has continued to decrease ever since, until now.”

Abū Bakr said: Adam’s form, then, is the sixty-cubit form in which the Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) said Adam was created. It is not as someone lacking depth in knowledge mistakenly imagined, supposing that ‘in his image’ meant ‘in the image of the Most Merciful,’ as an attribute of His Essence. Majestic and exalted is He above being described in terms of cubits and handspans. Allah has declared