in them; take them back to him!”

His wife said, “If you ever need them, then use them; otherwise, put them where they belong.”

“I have nothing in which to carry them,” he answered.

So the woman tore a strip from her tunic, gave it to him, and he wrapped the coins in it. He then went out and distributed them among the children of the martyrs.

The messenger returned to ʿUmar, who asked, “What did he do with the gold?”

“I do not know,” he replied.

ʿUmar wrote, summoning him. When he arrived, the Caliph asked, “What became of the dinars?”

He said, “Why do you ask? I have already sent them on ahead for myself.”

ʿUmar ordered that food and two garments be given to him. He said, “I have no need of the food; as for the two garments, such-and-such a woman is without clothing.”

He took the garments and returned, and before long he died … and the remainder of the story was related. (1)

A similar account was transmitted by Kātib al-Layth from Saʿīd ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, who received it from al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī: that ʿUmar… and he mentioned it.

Abū Ḥudhayfa likewise recorded something comparable in al-Mubtadaʾ, from a shaykh on the authority of another.

It is said: The ascetics of the Anṣār were three—Abū al-Dardāʾ, Shaddād ibn Aws, and ʿUmayr ibn Saʿd.

119 – Ṣafwān ibn Umayya ibn Khalaf al-Jumaḥī * (M, 4),
the son of Wahb ibn Ḥudhāfa ibn Jumah ibn ʿAmr ibn Ḥuṣayṣ ibn Kaʿb.