the noble, the virtuous, the generous, the forbearing, the one who endures the harm of his people, the spouse, the leader, and the one accorded precedence. As for his words, “This noble hadith—‘The Master is Allah’—,” he means that true mastery belongs to Allah alone and that all created beings are His slaves. Whenever the title sayyid is applied to Allah, Exalted is He, it carries the sense of Owner, Patron, and Lord. Ibn ʿAbbās said about the verse, “Allah, al-Ṣamad” (112:2): that is, “the Master who is perfect in every type of mastery.”

Ibn al-Athīr further remarked: “A man from Quraysh once came and said, ‘You are the master of Quraysh.’ He answered, ‘The Master is Allah’—meaning He alone deserves mastery. It appears that the Prophet disliked being praised to his face and preferred humility. As for the statement, ‘I am the master of the children of Adam, and I say this without boasting,’ he uttered it only to inform people of the honor and rank with which Allah distinguished him, to proclaim Allah’s favor upon him, and to apprise his community so that their faith in him might correspond to that reality and its implications. For this reason he added, ‘and no boast,’ that is: this distinction I have attained is a bounty from Allah; I did not achieve it by myself nor reach it through my own power, so I have no right to be proud of it.” End quote.

Thus he ﷺ is indeed the master of the children of Adam, as he himself declared. Yet when those people addressed him with that word he forbade them to do so, fearing that excess might lead them into shirk.

This is further illustrated by the report from Anas ibn Mālik—may Allah be pleased with him—that some people said, “O best of us and son of the best of us! O our master and son of our master!” He replied, “People! Keep to your normal speech and do not let Satan carry you away. I am Muhammad, the servant of Allah and His Messenger; I do not wish you to raise me above the station Allah has granted me.” Al-Nasāʾī narrated it with a sound chain.

This hadith shows that he forbade them to say, “O our master,” out of fear that they might exaggerate concerning him. By doing so he blocked that path from the outset and directed them to describe him with two epithets that represent the highest degrees of servitude—epithets by which Allah Himself describes him in several places in His Book, namely, “the servant of Allah and His Messenger.” He did not want them to elevate him above what Allah had granted him, in order to protect