Azami 433

Muslim narrated it in the Book of Faith (178) from Abu Bakr bin Abu Shayba, from Waki, from Yazid bin Ibrahim, from Qatada, from Abdullah bin Shaqiq, from Abu Dharr, who related it. He also narrated it through the route of Hammam and Hisham, from Qatada, from Abdullah bin Shaqiq, who said, I said to Abu Dharr, "If only you had seen the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, I would have asked him." He said, "About what would you have asked him?" I said, "I would have asked him, did you see your Lord?" Abu Dharr said, "I did ask, and he said, 'I saw light.'"His saying, "Light, how could I see Him," means a denial of seeing Allah , because by "light" he meant the veiling light, as is stated in the hadith of Abu Musa, "His veil is light, if He were to remove it the radiant splendor of His face would burn up everything the sight perceives." So what prevents seeing Him is the veiling light. And his saying, "I saw light," carries the same meaning as before, he meant by "light" the light of the veil, because if he had meant by that the light of His essence , he would have said to the questioner, "Yes, I saw Him." Rather, he wanted the questioner to understand that what he saw was the veiling light. See the chapter "His light is the veil."Ibn Hibban said in his Sahih (58), after narrating the hadith through the route of Hisham with his chain, similarly, "Its meaning is that he did not see his Lord, but rather saw a celestial light from among the created lights."Ibn Khuzayma, in Kitab Tawhid (1/439), attempted to refute the report of Abu Dharr, claiming that Abdullah bin Shaqiq did not hear it directly from Abu Dharr. He said, "There is something in my heart regarding the soundness of this report. I have not seen any of our companions among the scholars of the people of hadith notice a flaw in the chain of this report. For Abdullah bin Shaqiq seems not to have been certain of Abu Dharr, nor did he know him by his person, name, and lineage. This is because Abu Musa Muhammad bin narrated to us, he said, Muaz bin Hisham narrated to us, he said, my father narrated to me, from Qatada, from Abdullah bin Shaqiq, who said, 'I came to Madinah, and there was a man standing on black sacks saying, "Let the hoarders of treasure be given the glad tidings of branding on the foreheads and the sides." They said, "This is Abu Dharr, the companion of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ."'"Ibn Khuzayma said, "So Abdullah bin Shaqiq mentions, after the death of Abu Dharr, that he saw a man saying this statement while standing on black sacks, and was told that it was Abu Dharr, as though he did not affirm it with certainty and did not know for sure that it was Abu Dharr." End of quote.I say, if the account that Ibn Khuzayma mentioned is sahih, then that would have been at the time of his first entering Madinah, and afterward he sat with him and questioned him, as the sahih narrations indicate.