—while I was listening—
“Did you live to see the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him?”
He replied, “Yes. I remitted three acts of charity to him, though I never met him in person. During ʿUmar’s caliphate I took part in a number of campaigns: Yarmūk, al-Qādisiyyah, Jalūlāʾ, Tustar, Nihāwand, Azerbaijan, Mihrān, and Rustum (1).”

ʿAbd al-Qāhir ibn al-Sarī related—through his father from his grandfather:
“Abū ʿUthmān was from Quḍāʿah. He had settled in Kūfah, but when al-Ḥusayn was killed he moved to Basra, saying, ‘I will not live in a land where the grandson of the Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him, was slain.’
He performed the pilgrimage sixty times, whether a ḥajj or an ʿumrah, and he used to say, ‘A hundred and thirty years have passed over me, and there is nothing whose former state I still recognize—except my hope, for it is exactly as it was.’ (2)”

Zuhr ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿĀṣim reported from Abū ʿUthmān: “I accompanied Salmān the Persian for twelve years.”

Ḥammād narrated—on the authority of ʿAlī ibn Zayd from Abū ʿUthmān al-Nahdī—who said, “I came to ʿUmar, may Allah be pleased with him, bearing the good news on the day of Nihāwand.”

Muʿtamar related from his father: “Abū ʿUthmān al-Nahdī would pray until he lost consciousness.”

Muʿādh ibn Muʿādh said: “People believed that Sulaymān al-Taymī’s devotion was something he had adopted from Abū ʿUthmān al-Nahdī.”

Abū ʿUmar al-Ḍarīr narrated to us; Muʿtamar related from his father:
“I am inclined to think that Abū ʿUthmān took nothing of this world: his nights were spent standing in prayer, his days in fasting, and he would pray until he collapsed.”

ʿĀṣim al-Aḥwal said, “News reached me that Abū ʿUthmān al-Nahdī used to perform one hundred rakʿahs between Maghrib and ʿIshāʾ.”