يا رسول الله، دلّني على أقرب الطرق إلى الله وأسهلها على عباده وأفضلها عنده تعالى
“O Messenger of Allah, guide me to the nearest way to Allah, the easiest for His servants, and the most excellent in His sight.” — Sayyidunā ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, as recorded by al-Bazzār and al-Ṭabarānī
I.
Many of us would have heard of this particular hadith attributed to the Prophet, ‘alayhi salat wa salam:
Anā madīnat al-ʿilm wa-ʿAliyyun bābuhā
“I am the city of knowledge and ʿAlī is its gate.”
The critics have examined the chain, and its precise grading is not the concern here, although one can see that the likes of Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani and al-Suyuti had positive views of it. What the statement names is something the tradition had already understood: that among all who sat with the Prophet ṣallallahu ʿalayhi wa-salam, there was something particular and special about Sayyidina ʿAlī. One can see that all of the orders of Sufism have chains of transmission that go back to Sayyidina ʿAlī – and there is a particular hadith that is of relevance for us to discuss here.
It is the account of the moment in which the Prophet ṣallallahu ʿalayhi wa-sallam sat with ʿAlī, and transmitted the shahada in the manner of talqīn: eyes closed together, voice raised together. The transmission that takes place subsequently – everytime a murshid initiates a murīd in this way – traces back to this moment. But few are aware that when this takes place, there is a direct basis in the sunna of the Prophet, enacted with Sayyidina ʿAlī.
Among the scholars who most carefully attended to this chain was Shaykh Muḥammad Yāsīn al-Fādānī al-Makkī (1916–1990). Known as the musnid al-ʿaṣr — the foremost transmitter of connected ḥadīth chains in his age — he received ijāza from approximately seven hundred scholars and gave it generously in return. He was also, less visibly, a teaching murshid authorised across multiple ṭuruq, and it would be via this hadith that he reportedly would engage in the baya’, or what would be called musalsal bil-mubāyaʿah ʿalā adh-dhikr.
II.
Sayyidunā ʿAlī asked:
سألتُ النبيَ صلى الله عليه وسلم: يا رسول الله، دلّني على أقرب الطرق إلى الله وأسهلها على عباده وأفضلها عنده تعالى
Saʾaltu al-nabiyya ṣallallāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam: yā rasūla Llāh, dullnī ʿalā aqrabi al-ṭuruqi ilā Allāh wa-ashalihā ʿalā ʿibādih wa-afḍalihā ʿindahu taʿālā
“O Messenger of Allah, guide me to the nearest way to Allah and the easiest for His servants and the most excellent in His sight.”
The Prophet replied: “You must continuously make dhikr of Allah, both silently and aloud.” ʿAlī said: “All people make dhikr — give me something particular.”
The reply came:
أفضلُ ما قلتُ أنا والنبيون من قبلي لا إله إلا الله، ولو أنَّ السمواتِ والأرضَ وُضِعَتا في كِفَّةٍ ووُضِعَتْ لا إله إلا الله في الكِفَّةِ الأخرى لرجَحَتْ بهنَّ لا إله إلا الله
Afḍalu mā qultu anā wa-al-nabiyyūna min qablī lā ilāha illā Allāh, wa-law anna al-samawāti wa-al-arḍa wuḍiʿatā fī kiffatin wa-wuḍiʿat lā ilāha illā Allāh fī al-kiffati al-ukhrā la-rajaḥat bihinna lā ilāha illā Allāh
“The best of what I and the prophets before me have said is lā ilāha illā Allāh. If the heavens and the earth were placed on one side of the Scale and lā ilāha illā Allāh on the other, lā ilāha illā Allāh would outweigh them.”
ʿAlī then asked how he should recite it. The Prophet replied:
اغمِضْ عينيك واسمَعْ منِّي لا إله إلا الله ثلاثَ مرَّات، ثم قُلْها ثلاثاً وأنا أسمَعُ
Ughmiḍ ʿaynayka wa-ismaʿ minnī lā ilāha illā Allāh thalātha marrāt, thumma qulhā thalāthan wa-anā asmaʿ
“Close your eyes and listen to me reciting lā ilāha illā Allāh three times; then recite it three times while I listen.”
The Prophet recited lā ilāha illā Allāh three times, eyes closed and voice raised. Sayyidunā ʿAlī repeated it after him exactly as he had been taught — three times, aloud.
Transmitted by al-Bazzār and al-Ṭabarānī.
The choice of lā ilāha illā Allāh as the content of this first transmission is not incidental. In the understanding of the classical masters, the kalimah is not a creedal proposition to be memorised but a movement of the soul.
Ibn ʿArabī reflects in the Futūḥāt al-Makkiyyah on its internal structure: the lā — the negation, the clearing away of everything to which real existence has been falsely attributed — this must precede the illā Allāh, the affirmation of the One whose existence alone is necessary and self-subsisting.
III.
The structure of this moment repays attention. The Prophet does not merely say “recite this” and walk away. He participates. He closes his own eyes. He raises his own voice. He recites the kalimah himself, in the very manner he is asking ʿAlī to receive it.
The tradition of al-Ṭabarānī and Aḥmad records a parallel narration about the Prophet’s collective talqīn to the Companions. Before the group dhikr, he asked:
هل فيكم غريب؟
Hal fīkum gharīb?
“Is there any stranger among you?” — meaning anyone who had not yet entered Islam. When the Companions confirmed there was none:
أَغلِقوا البابَ
Aghliqū al-bāb
“Close the door.”
Only then did he instruct them to raise their hands and recite together, after which:
أُبشِّركم أنَّ الله قد غفر لكم
Ubashshshirukum anna Allāha qad ghafara lakum
“I give you glad tidings — Allah has forgiven you.”
The closed door in the collective transmission mirrors the closed eyes in the individual one; the space of talqīn must be sealed, and privacy and focus ensured. It is a type of khalwa – seclusion – if you will. The world is held briefly outside, so that something else may enter.
IV.
The Musalsal bil-Mubāyaʿah ʿalā adh-Dhikr belongs to the category of musalsal bil-fiʿl — chains whose continuity is established not through a repeated verbal formula but through a repeated ritual action. Its technical designation is tasalsul bi’l-ḥāl: the condition of each narrator while transmitting mirrors the condition of the one from whom he received. What each transmitter does to his student, he himself received from his teacher. The chain carries not merely the report of what the Prophet did with ʿAlī, but the living re-enactment of it at every link.
These are not ceremonies of etiquette. They are the conditions by which the transmission re-enacts — rather than merely reports — what the Prophet did with Sayyidina ʿAlī. Each link in the chain is a gate opened once more: one person transmitting to another the same movement of the soul, the same withdrawal of outward perception, the same shared utterance of the most excellent of all words, that the Prophet transmitted at the beginning.
In that regard, it’s not just the conveying of information about a sacred moment, but the reconstitution of that moment. The silsila that runs from murshid to murīd, back through the line of the awliyāʾ to Sayyidunā ʿAlī and through him to the Prophet ṣallallahu ʿalayhi wa-sallam — that silsila is the gate. A gate that is still open, and still transmitting.
May Allah make our hearts receptive to the light that passes through them.
