Musnad Ahmad, hadithi 1

The Musnad Ahmad, compiled by Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal (164–241 AH), opens with hadiths narrated through the chain from Abu Sa'id al-Khudri and Abu Hurairah, and among the earliest entries is this magnificent hadith about Allah's nightly descent (nuzul) to the lowest heaven. This hadith belongs to the category of the Sifat (divine attributes) hadiths and is one of the foundational texts in Islamic theology about how Allah relates to His servants in their moments of need.

The Prophet ﷺ describes a divine act: every single night, after the first third has passed — that is, during the middle and final third of the night, encompassing the time of Tahajjud prayer — Allah descends to the lowest heaven in a manner that befits His majesty, and calls out with four invitations: Is there anyone seeking forgiveness (mustaaghfir)? Is there anyone repenting (ta'ib)? Is there anyone asking (sa'il)? Is there anyone supplicating (da'i)? This call continues until the Fajr prayer breaks the night.

The theological significance of this hadith is immense. It establishes that Allah is not a distant, disengaged Deity who created the universe and withdrew from it, but a Lord who actively, personally, and repeatedly reaches toward His servants, calling them to connect with Him during the night's most sacred hours. The four categories in His call — seeking forgiveness, repenting, asking, and supplicating — cover the full spectrum of the human soul's needs: the need to be cleansed of past wrongs, the need to turn away from what corrupts, the need to receive provision and help, and the need to articulate one's deepest desires before the only One who can truly fulfill them.

The Ahlu Sunnah wal-Jamaah holds that this descent is real and befits Allah's majesty without resembling the descent of created beings (bi la kayf), and this is the position of Imam Ahmad himself, who was the foremost defender of the divine attributes in his era.

Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal stands as one of the most heroic figures in Islamic scholarly history. He compiled his Musnad — the largest of the major hadith collections, containing approximately twenty-eight thousand hadiths — not as a jurisprudential reference but as an archive of the prophetic tradition, organised by the companion from whom each chain of narration originates. Ahmad lived through the Mu'tazilite inquisition (mihnah) under Caliph al-Ma'mun, during which scholars were forced on pain of imprisonment and torture to affirm the Mu'tazilite doctrine that the Quran was created.

Ahmad refused, enduring imprisonment and flogging rather than compromise his theological convictions — a stance that made him the defining symbol of Sunni orthodoxy and gave the Musnad an authority that transcends its scholarly merit alone.

This hadith about the nightly descent is precisely the kind of hadith that the Mu'tazilites would have sought to explain away allegorically, denying Allah any attribute that resembles the attributes of created beings. Ahmad's insistence on preserving and transmitting this hadith as it came, without allegory or denial, was itself a theological act — a declaration that the divine attributes affirmed in prophetic speech must be believed as true, without asking how (bi la kayf) and without likening them to created beings (bi la tashbih). Opening the Musnad with hadiths that touch on Allah's relationship with His servants during the night is therefore not merely a scholarly arrangement but a spiritual and theological statement.

Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyyah discusses this hadith extensively in his monumental work Kitab al-Salah (The Book of Prayer) and in Miftah Dar al-Sa'adah, arguing that this nightly invitation from Allah is one of the most powerful motivations a Muslim could ever have for performing Tahajjud prayer. He notes that the call — 'Is there anyone seeking forgiveness? Is there anyone repenting?' — is an act of divine generosity that the human mind can barely comprehend: the Lord of all existence actively calling out to His servants, not because He needs them, but because His mercy is so vast that He desires to give them what they need.

Ibn al-Qayyim draws the contrast between how human beings respond to this call: the heedless one sleeps through the night unaware; the sincere believer rises, humbles themselves before their Lord, and finds themselves in direct reception of this divine invitation.

Imam Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, in his commentary Fath al-Bari on the parallel narration in Sahih al-Bukhari, discusses the theological debate about the nature of the divine descent (nuzul) at length. He presents the Ash'ari position — that the descent must be understood as the descent of Allah's mercy or His command, not a physical movement — and the Athari/Hanbali position — that the descent is real and affirmed without asking how, following the methodology of Imam Malik who famously said about the divine attributes: 'The how is unknown, belief in it is obligatory, and asking about it is an innovation.' Ibn Hajar carefully notes that al-Bukhari and the major hadith scholars preserved this hadith without alteration or allegorical interpretation, following the path of the Salaf al-Salih (the pious predecessors).

The most direct application of this hadith is the revival of Tahajjud prayer — or at minimum, a period of istighfar and du'a in the latter portion of the night. The Prophet ﷺ is telling us that right now, in the hours before Fajr, Allah is calling out: is there anyone seeking forgiveness? The question is not rhetorical — it is an active invitation. A Muslim who sets an alarm for forty-five minutes before Fajr, rises, performs wudu, prays two to eight rakahs of Tahajjud, and then sits in the darkness asking forgiveness and making du'a, is responding to a divine call that has been going out every single night since the Prophet ﷺ told us of it.

Begin small: even one night a week, even two rakahs and ten minutes of istighfar. The regularity of even a small practice done consistently is more beloved to Allah than a large practice done occasionally.

For those who find waking before Fajr genuinely difficult, this hadith should also reframe the last portion of the night when one happens to be awake — whether from insomnia, caring for a young child, or working night shifts. These waking hours in the middle of the night, often experienced as inconvenient or frustrating, are in fact sacred time during which the divine invitation is extended. Keep a tasbeeh by your bed, know the short phrases of istighfar by heart — 'Astaghfirullaha wa atubu ilayh,' 'Subhana Allahumma wa bihamdik, astaghfiruk wa atubu ilayk' — and use these night wakings as the gift they actually are: unscheduled appointments with the divine invitation that the Prophet ﷺ described.

This hadith reveals the Prophet ﷺ as a bearer of tidings so magnificent that their full import is almost difficult to absorb. He could have simply said 'the night prayer is virtuous' or 'Allah answers du'a before Fajr.' Instead, he opened a window into the divine reality with stunning intimacy and specificity: Allah descends, calls out, asks for the repentant, waits for the supplicant, continues until dawn. The Prophet ﷺ chose to give his community not a rule but a vision — not a legal obligation but a glimpse of what actually happens while they sleep — because he understood that a vision transforms behaviour far more profoundly than a command. This is the teaching style of a man who wanted his community not merely to comply but to be moved.

Abu Sa'id al-Khudri (RA) was among the most learned of the Ansar companions and one of the most prolific narrators of hadith, transmitting over one thousand traditions. Born in Madinah, he was the son of Malik ibn Sinan who was martyred at the Battle of Uhud. Abu Sa'id participated in twelve military expeditions with the Prophet ﷺ and was known for his directness and willingness to state difficult religious truths even to those in authority. His joint narration of this particular hadith with Abu Hurairah carries particular weight — two witnesses testifying together to the same statement of the Prophet ﷺ reinforces the hadith's reliability and reflects the companions' practice of corroborating significant prophetic teachings through multiple witnesses.

Abu Hurairah and I were together today when we both recalled the Prophet ﷺ saying this, and we bore witness to each other: we had heard him with our own ears say that Allah descends to the lowest heaven in the last portion of the night and calls out — is there anyone seeking forgiveness? Is there anyone repenting? Is there anyone asking? Is there anyone supplicating? I think of the nights I have slept through this call, unaware, my soul wrapped in the warmth of sleep while my Lord was calling.

And I think of the nights I have risen and found something — something I cannot name but only feel — a kind of answer that settles in the heart when one stands in the dark and speaks to Allah when the world is quiet. Let whoever reads this understand: the invitation is real. The One calling is real. And the dawn will come soon enough — rise before it does. (Creative narrative based on authentic hadith)

Chronobiology — the scientific study of biological rhythms — has established that the final third of the night, roughly the two to three hours before dawn, represents a distinct physiological state in the human body. During this period, the body is in its deepest phase of REM sleep if uninterrupted, but when a person wakes voluntarily during this period, they often experience heightened emotional sensitivity, increased introspective awareness, and a reduced filtering of the prefrontal cortex — conditions that, from a psychological perspective, are conducive to deep emotional processing, genuine self-reflection, and the kind of heartfelt communication that the Tahajjud prayer demands.

Research on the psychophysiology of prayer and meditation consistently shows that the pre-dawn hours, when cortisol levels are beginning their early-morning rise and the brain is transitioning between sleep stages, are associated with heightened states of emotional receptivity. While science cannot describe the divine invitation itself, it does confirm that the human being is physiologically most open to the kind of genuine emotional engagement that sincere du'a requires precisely during the hours this hadith identifies.

The theological debate about this hadith centres on the interpretation of 'nuzul' (descent). The Mu'tazilites and later some Ash'ari scholars interpreted the descent as metaphorical — meaning the descent of Allah's mercy, or the hour in which du'a is most likely to be answered, rather than a real divine act. Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal and the Athari scholars held firmly to the literal affirmation of the descent while categorically rejecting any comparison to the descent of created beings (tashbih) or any inquiry into its modality (takyif).

Imam Malik ibn Anas, when asked about the 'istiwa' of Allah mentioned in the Quran (a parallel case), gave the famous response: 'The istiwa is known, the how is unknown, belief in it is obligatory, and asking about the how is an innovation.' The majority position among classical Sunni scholars accepts the divine descent as a real attribute of Allah's action, affirmed without interpretation (ta'wil) or likening (tashbih), following the methodology of the Salaf al-Salih.

You have been struggling for months with a serious sin that you keep returning to despite sincere intentions to stop. You have made du'a, you have cried, you have promised Allah you would not return to it — and yet you keep falling back. You feel spiritually exhausted and beginning to lose hope that you can ever be forgiven or that your du'a can ever be heard. Reflecting on this hadith — in which Allah Himself calls out every night asking 'is there anyone repenting? is there anyone seeking forgiveness?' — how does this change your understanding of your situation, and what specific nighttime practice would you commit to that would allow you to respond to this divine call with renewed hope?