Abū al-Qāsim said: Shaykh Abū ʿAbd al-Rahmān narrated to us: I heard Abū al-ʿAbbās ibn al-Khashshāb al-Baghdādī say: I heard Abū al-Qāsim ibn Mūsā say: I heard Muhammad ibn Ahmad say: I heard al-Ansārī say: I heard al-Kharrāz say, “The reality of nearness is for the beauty of things to fade from the heart, and for the inner self to find tranquillity with Allah.”

I say: This account’s chain of transmission contains someone whose reliability is unknown. Even if these words are authentically attributed to Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz, he did not mean that nearness to Allah consists of nothing more than this. Rather, he meant that this is what makes nearness real. By the “reality” of a thing, they mean what brings it into being, thus serving both as a cause of its existence and as evidence of its genuineness.

This is similar to what they relate in the hadith transmitted by Ibn ʿAsākir with a discontinuous chain omitting the Companion, and also transmitted with a connected chain through a weak route that does not establish its authenticity: the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said to Hārithah ibn Surāqah, “How are you this morning, Hārithah?”

He replied, “This morning I am truly a believer.”

He asked, “What, then, is the reality of your faith?”

He replied, “My soul has turned away from this world, so that its stones and its gold are alike to me. It is as though I were looking upon my Lord’s Throne in plain view, and as though I were looking upon the people of Paradise enjoying its delights and the people of the Fire being punished within it.”

He then said: