at all. So we asked him, and he answered, “His—Most High—statement: ‘Say: If your fathers, your sons…’ up to His words, ‘…are dearer to you than Allah and His Messenger’ (9:24).”

He went on, “Allah threatened them for preferring love of anything over love of Him, and such a threat is issued only in connection with an obligation that is binding.”

Ibn Bakawayh said: I heard Ibn Khafīf say, “In my early days I would sometimes recite in a single rakʿah ‘Qul huwa Allāhu Aḥad’ (‘Say: He is Allah, the One’) eleven thousand times, and at other times I would recite the entire Qur’an in one rakʿah.”

It is related of Ibn Khafīf that he suffered from a sharp pain in his flank which, when it struck, prevented him from moving. Yet whenever the call to prayer was made, he would be carried on a man’s back. Someone said to him, “Why not lighten things for yourself?” He replied, “If you hear ḥayya ʿala al-ṣalāh (‘Come to prayer’) and do not see me in the row, then look for me in the graveyard.”

Ibn Bakawayh said: I heard Ibn Khafīf declare, “Zakat al-Fitr has not been due from me for forty years.” (1)

Ibn Bakawayh also recounted: One day Abū ʿAbd Allah Ibn Khafīf saw Ibn Maktūm and a group writing something. He asked, “What is this?” They replied, “We are writing such-and-such.” He said, “Busy yourselves with learning, and do not be deceived by the talk of the Sufis. I used to hide my inkwell in the pocket of my patched cloak and my papers in the waistband of my trousers, and I would slip away secretly to the people of knowledge. If they discovered me they would quarrel with me, saying, ‘He will never prosper,’ yet later they found themselves in need of me.” (2)

I say: This shaykh combined knowledge with practice and possessed elevated chains of transmission,