I said, “A hadith reached me that you heard from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ in the darkness; I did not hear it, and I feared that I might die—or you might die—before I heard it.” He replied, “I heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ say: ‘Allah will gather the servants’—or he said, ‘Allah will gather the people’—and he gestured toward ash-Shām (the Levant)—‘naked, uncircumcised, with no covering between them.’ I asked, ‘What is wrong with them?’ He said, ‘They have nothing.’ Then he said, ‘He will call them with a voice heard from afar as it is heard from near: ‘O assembly, I am al-Dayyan (the Judge). It is not fitting for anyone among the people of Paradise to enter Paradise, nor for anyone among the people of Hell to enter Hell; nor for any of the people of Hell to claim it by injustice, nor for any of the people of Paradise to claim it by injustice—even by the slightest blow.’” He added, “We said, ‘How is that, since we present our good deeds and bad deeds before Allah?’ He said, ‘By the good deeds and the bad deeds.’ This hadith is narrated by al-Bukhārī in al-Adab al-Mufrad, chapter “Embracing” (pp. 143); by Aḥmad in his Musnad (3:495); by Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr in Jamʿ Bayān al-ʿIlm wa Faḍlihi (1:93); and by al-Qurṭubī in al-Tadhkirah (1:323). A third chain appears in al-Ṭabarānī’s Musnad al-Shāmiyyīn and in al-Rāzī’s Tamām al-Rāzī fī Fawāʾid (via al-Ḥajjāj ibn Dīnār from Muḥammad ibn al-Munkadir from Jābir, who said, “A report on qiṣāṣ reached me from the Prophet ﷺ…”). Al-Ḥāfiẓ records this in Fath al-Bārī and declares its isnād sound (Fath al-Bārī 1:174). The term “the witness” (al-shāhid) does not occur in these two chains. Nevertheless, all versions agree that Allah speaks with a voice heard equally from far and near. This demonstrates that Allah truly speaks—an attribute that admits no allegorical interpretation. His speech is audible, yet unlike created speech, and His voice is not like the voices of His creatures, as this hadith indicates. The attribute of speech was one of the most hotly contested by the mutakallimūn, who denied that Allah speaks with an audible voice, asserting instead that His speech is nafsī (spiritual), eternal, and self-subsistent—implying that He does not truly speak. For further discussion, see: • Lumaʿ al-Adillah by al-Juwaynī, ed. Fuqayya Ḥusayn Maḥmūd, p. 92. • al-Irshād, p. 115. • al-Asmāʾ wa al-Ṣifāt by al-Bayhaqī, p. 273. • al-Mawāqif with al-Jurjānī’s commentary (Theology), pp. 149–150. • Sharḥ Umm al-Barāʾīn by al-Sinnūṣī, p. 31.