the Friends of Allah. We say:

This is an invalid designation, with no basis in the Quran, the Sunnah, or any statement transmitted from someone generally accepted by the Muslim community. Broadly speaking, however, it is understood that the last God-fearing believer remaining in the world will be the last of Allah’s friends.

Second, we say:

The last of Allah’s friends, or their seal—whether an actual person or merely a hypothetical figure—need not be superior to other friends of Allah, let alone the best of them. This notion arose solely from an analogy with the Seal of the Prophets. Seeing that the Seal of the Prophets was their foremost, they imagined an analogy based merely on the shared word “seal.” They therefore said: “The Seal of the Friends of Allah is the best of them.” This reasoning is mistaken, for the superiority of the Seal of the Prophets over the other prophets does not follow merely from his being their seal. Rather, other evidence establishes it.

We further say:

On the contrary, the earliest of Allah’s friends in this community, the first among them, is the best of them. The best of this community is the Seal of the Prophets, and the best of Allah’s friends is the first of them to follow the Seal of the Prophets. This is because a friend of Allah receives his knowledge and guidance from the Prophet and follows him. The closer he is to the Prophet, the better he is; the farther away, the reverse. This differs from the Seal of the Prophets, who receives his knowledge and guidance from Allah alone. His coming later in time therefore entails no inferiority in rank. Indeed, Allah may bring together in him qualities that He distributed among the other prophets.

What we have stated—that the earliest of Allah’s friends are the best of them—is established by the Quran, the Sunnah transmitted through numerous independent chains, and the consensus of the early generations.

Related to this is the belief held by certain groups that some people of later generations may surpass the eminent Companions. This view is found among those associated with scholarship, worship, jihad, leadership, and kingship. Even among students of jurisprudence, some have said: “Abū Hanīfah had a greater understanding of jurisprudence than ʿAlī.” Others have said: “Al-Shāfiʿī may be followed as a legal authority, but Abū Bakr and ʿUmar may not.”

They sometimes cling to specious arguments based on reason or spiritual experience, arguing that later practitioners of every discipline master it more thoroughly than their predecessors. They benefit from their predecessors’ attainments in addition to the knowledge peculiar to themselves, as is found among practitioners of arithmetic, natural philosophers, astrologers, and others.