held that he saw Him with his heart. This agrees with Hanbal’s report. Al-Marwadhī transmitted the report without qualification, whereas the hadiths he narrated specify vision with the heart and vision in a dream. I have found no explicit statement by Ahmad affirming vision with the eyes, nor any unqualified denial of the vision.

Moreover, the belief that denying vision with the eyes entails denying the vision altogether, as al-Qādī stated, does not follow from what Ahmad and other scholars said. What Imam Ahmad affirmed—vision with the heart—is what is established from Companions such as Abū Dharr and Ibn Abbās. This has also been reported in these very words from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, through a disconnected chain, as narrated by Abū al-Qāsim al-Tabarānī in his Book of the Sunnah: “Al-Husayn ibn Ishāq narrated to us