to it and pray before it; but if they then noticed one that looked still finer, they would cast the first aside.

The Messenger of Allah ﷺ was commissioned while I was tending my family’s camels. When we heard of his emergence, we attached ourselves to Musaylima. (1)

It is said that Abu Rajāʾ al-ʿAṭāridī’s given name was ʿImrān ibn Taym, and that the Banū ʿAṭārid are a branch of Tamīm. It is also reported that Abu Rajāʾ used to dye the hair on his head, but not his beard.

Ibn al-Aʿrābī said: Abu Rajāʾ was a devout worshipper, much engaged in prayer and in reciting the Quran. He would say, “I regret nothing of this world except that I cannot press my face into the dust in prostration five times every day.” (2)

Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr said: He (3) was a man of some heedlessness, yet devoted to worship, and he lived a long life—more than one hundred and twenty years.

Al-Haytham ibn ʿAdī related, from Abū Bakr ibn ʿAyyāsh: At Abu Rajāʾ’s funeral both al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and al-Farazdaq were present.

Al-Farazdaq said, “Abū Saʿīd, people are saying that at this funeral the best of men and the worst of men have met together.”

Al-Ḥasan replied, “I am not the best of men, and you are not the worst; but what have you prepared for this day, Abū Firās?”

He answered, “The testimony that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, His servant and His Messenger.”

He then left, reciting:

Do you not see how mankind’s elders have all passed on—
and that was before Muhammad was ever sent?
Seventy years of cheerful living, then another sixty,
could not avail him once he lay down unpillowed.
To a dusty grave he went, one all men loathe to enter,
yet it is the resting-place of both the lowly and the lordly.