22 – Muḥammad ibn Abī Sumaynah related to us; he said: ʿAbd Allāh ibn Rajāʾ narrated to us; he said: Jarīr ibn Ayyūb narrated to us, from al-Shaʿbī, from Nāfiʿ ibn Burdah, from Ibn Masʿūd, who said:

He heard the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, say when the month of Ramadan had just begun: “If the servants knew the blessings contained in Ramadan, my community would wish that the whole year were Ramadan.”

A man from Khuzaʿah thereupon said, “Tell us more, O Messenger of Allah.” He replied:

“Paradise is adorned for Ramadan from one year’s beginning to the next. When the first day of Ramadan arrives, a breeze blows from beneath the Throne and causes the leaves of Paradise to rustle. The wide-eyed maidens look on and say, ‘Our Lord, appoint for us in this month husbands from among Your servants who will delight our eyes and whose eyes we shall delight.’

No servant fasts Ramadan except that he will be married to one of these wide-eyed maidens in a pavilion made of a single hollow pearl, just as Allah—exalted is He—has described: ‘Fair-skinned, wide-eyed maidens sheltered in pavilions’ (55:72).

Each of them wears seventy garments, no two of which share the same colour, and she is perfumed with seventy fragrances, each unlike the other. For every one of them there is a couch of red ruby inlaid with pearls; upon every couch are seventy mattresses whose linings are of brocade, and above the seventy mattresses are seventy canopies.

Every one of these women is attended by seventy thousand maidservants for her needs and seventy thousand manservants. With every servant is a golden platter holding a dish of food whose last morsel is more delicious than the first. Her husband is granted the like: he reclines on a couch of red ruby, wearing two bracelets of gold set with red ruby. This reward is for every day he fasted in Ramadan, over and above the other good deeds he performed.”