An Assembly Higher Than the Angels'

On the authority of Muʿādh ibn Jabal (may Allah be pleased with him), the Prophet (peace be upon him) related this ḥadīth qudsī: "No servant of Mine remembers Me within himself but I remember him in an assembly of My angels, and none remembers Me in an assembly but I remember him in a still higher gathering, fī al-Rafīq al-Aʿlā."

Abū Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) narrates that the Prophet (peace be upon him), travelling the road to Makkah, passed a mountain called Jumdān — the name meaning something frozen fast in its place — and said, "Move on, for here is Jumdān, which the single-minded, the mufarridūn, have outstripped." It was a manner of speech he used elsewhere: of Mount Uḥud he said, "Uḥud loves us and we love it," and passing a mountain opposite Uḥud, entirely black, which began to shake beneath him, he said at once, "this is one of the mountains of Jahannam" — and yet, turning toward Uḥud, he said, "this is one of the mountains of Jahannam, Uḥud."^* The mountain he had been passing through, in other words, had claimed a life.

Asked, "O Messenger of Allah, who are the mufarridūn?" he replied, "The men and women who remember Allah much" — al-dhākirūna Allāha kathīran wa al-dhākirāt. This is a sound hadith in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim. The version in Sunan al-Tirmidhī has it that, asked the same question, he answered that they are those given over to the remembrance of Allah beyond the ordinary measure, al-mustaḥtirūna bi-dhikri Allāh — who love it so intensely that they are mocked for it — and that dhikr lifts from them their burdens, yadaʿu ʿanhum al-dhikru athqālahum, so that they come to Allah khifāqan, a word better rendered as fluttering, or taking flight, than translated exactly: as though they arrived before Him on wings.