and his face changed colour and he said, “By Allah, my brother! I reached Baghdad with a little of my travel allowance still left. I asked after you but no one could direct me to you until my money was finished. I then spent three days with no means to buy my food except from what belongs to you. When this fourth day came I said, ‘Three days have passed and carrion has now become lawful for me.’ So I took from the trust you had deposited with me the price of this bread and roast meat. Eat freely, for it is yours, and I am now your guest.”
I asked, “What trust is that?”
He replied, “Your mother sent eight dinars with me, and by Allah I have never betrayed you in a single coin of it up to this very day.”
So I reassured him, put his mind at ease, and handed him some of it (1).
Ibn al-Najjār said: ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī al-Ḥasan al-Jubbāʾī wrote to me, saying: The shaykh ʿAbd al-Qādir told me:
“I was in the wilderness reviewing my fiqh lessons while in dire poverty when a voice, whose speaker I could not see, said to me, ‘Take a loan to help you pursue jurisprudence.’
I replied, ‘How can I borrow when I am poor and have nothing with which to repay?’
He said, ‘Borrow, and the repayment is upon Us.’
So I went to a grocer and said, ‘Will you deal with me on the understanding that, when Allah makes things easy, I will repay you; and if I die you will absolve me? Provide me each day with one loaf of bread and some rashād (garden cress) (1).’
He wept and said, ‘I am under your command.’
I lived on his provision for a time, then my breast became constricted. I think he (the shaykh) said: It was then said to me, ‘Go to such-and-such a place; whatever you see on the platform, take it and give it to the grocer.’
When I went there I found a large piece of gold, so I gave it to the grocer.
Madness overtook me once, and I was carried to the bīmāristān (hospital). Spiritual states kept seizing me until they thought I had died (2); they brought the shroud and placed me on the washing bench. Then the state lifted, I rose, and it occurred to me to leave Baghdad because of the multitude of tribulations