‘Abd al-Wahhāb al-Warrāq, who said: “I heard Aswad ibn Sālim say concerning these hadiths about seeing Allah: ‘We swear, on pain of divorce and manumission, that they are true.’”

I say: Ahmad identified the hadith of Qatādah, from ‘Ikrimah, from Ibn ‘Abbās, which contains the words “in the form of a beardless young man with a full head of hair,” as the well-known hadith from Ibn ‘Ā’ish, transmitted both with an interrupted chain and with a connected chain through Mu‘ādh, which mentions the placing of the palm between the Prophet’s shoulders. It explicitly states that this occurred in a dream in Madinah, for Mu‘ādh never prayed behind the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, except in Madinah.

The previously cited hadith of Umm al-Tufayl also explicitly states that this occurred in a dream. The hadith of Thawbān, like that of Mu‘ādh, mentions that the Prophet was late for the dawn prayer. Thawbān, too, never prayed behind him except in Madinah, and the two accounts are alike.

All these hadiths derive from these four reports: the hadith of Umm al-Tufayl, the hadith of Ibn ‘Ā’ish from Mu‘ādh, and the hadith of