"when Ibn Sīrīn was told by a man that he saw the Prophet (ṣallá Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam), he would say: Describe to me the one you saw, and if he described a form he did not recognize, he would say: You did not see him." The scholar Ibn Rushd also said this, as mentioned in "al-Iʿtiṣām" by Imām al-Shāṭibī (1/355): "The meaning of his saying (ṣallá Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam): 'Whoever sees me has truly seen me' is not that everyone who dreams of seeing him has truly seen him. The proof is that the dreamer may see him multiple times in different forms, and one person may see him in one form and another person in a different form. The Prophet's (ṣallá Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) forms and attributes cannot differ. The meaning of the ḥadīth is: Whoever sees me in the form I was created in has truly seen me, for Satan cannot imitate me. He did not say (ṣallá Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam): Whoever dreams of seeing me has seen me, but rather: 'Whoever sees me has truly seen me.' How can the dreamer who thinks he saw him in his true form be sure he saw him in that form, unless he knows that the form is exactly his, which is something no one can know." al-Ḥāfiẓ said: "Some have restricted the obligation in this matter, saying: One must see him in the form he was taken in, down to counting the white hairs, which did not reach twenty." The correct view is to generalize in all his states, provided it is his true form at some time, whether in his youth, manhood, middle age, or at the end of his life..." Shaykh ʿAlī al-Qārī said in "Sharḥ al-Shamāʾil" (2/293): "It is said that this is specific to the people of his time (ṣallá Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam), meaning whoever sees me in a dream, Allāh will grant him to see me while awake. This meaning is evidently distant, as it does not suit the generality of (whoever) in