19. Muḥammad al-Samsār narrated to me; Abū al-Yamān informed us; Ṣafwān ibn ʿAmr reported from Sulaymān ibn Yasār al-Ḥaḍramī, who said: “A group of people were walking through a cemetery when they heard a voice rise from one of the graves, reciting:

O travelers, press on your way—
before the day comes when you can journey no more!
For this abode is certain:
to it, in the end, we are all conveyed.
How many a man once bathed in delight
has the passage of ages stripped of every pleasure;
And how many another lies bound in torment—
a miserable fate indeed!
As you are now, so once were we;
death’s sudden blow has changed us,
and soon you shall become as we have become.”