The Vision of God, and the Levels of Reward

For all its sensory description, the tradition holds that the supreme joy of Jannah is not the gardens but the vision of God (ru'yat Allah), the beatific sight of the divine face, promised in the hadith as the greatest of all the garden's gifts, before which its physical delights pale. Jannah is not a single undifferentiated place but a hierarchy of ascending levels or gardens, culminating in Firdaus, the highest, nearest the Throne; the believer's station is proportioned to faith and deed. Entry follows the resurrection and the judgement, when deeds are weighed and each person's record given; the saved cross the bridge (Sirat) over the Fire and are admitted through the garden's gates.

Much theological and mystical reflection, especially in Sufism, reads the sensory descriptions as pointing beyond themselves toward the reality of nearness to God, of which the garden's pleasures are the outward figure. Jannah thus holds together two registers, the frankly bodily and the wholly spiritual, and makes the choice between it and Jahannam the axis of Islamic moral life.