except while you are Muslims.” [Al-Baqarah 2:132] He also charged them never to cease being the brethren of the Helpers and their freedmen in faith, for chastity and truthfulness are better, more enduring, and more honorable than fornication and lying. In the document he left behind he added: “If something happens to me before I amend my testament…,” and he went on to detail the bequest. (1)

Muḥammad ibn Saʿd narrated: Bakkār ibn Muḥammad al-Sīrīnī informed us, saying: My father related to me from his father, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Sīrīn, who said:
“When I undertook to guarantee my father’s debts, he asked me, ‘Will you settle them in full?’
‘I will settle them in full,’ I replied. He invoked Allah’s blessing for me, and ʿAbd Allāh paid on his behalf thirty-thousand dirhams. ʿAbd Allāh himself did not die until we had valued his estate at three-hundred-thousand dirhams, or thereabouts.” (2)

Ayyūb al-Sikhtiyānī said, “I was the one who buttoned Muḥammad’s shirt—meaning when he was being shrouded.” (3)

Ayyūb also transmitted from Muḥammad that “he used to order that the shirt of the deceased be fitted with buttons and fastened.” (4)

More than one narrator stated: Muḥammad died one hundred days after al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, in the year 110 AH.

Khālid ibn Khidāsh narrated: Ḥammād ibn Zayd told us, “Ibn Sīrīn died when nine days of Shawwāl had passed, in the year 110 AH.” (5)

Abū Ṣāliḥ, the scribe of al-Layth, related to me—Yahyā ibn Ayyūb—that two men pledged brotherhood. They agreed that if one of them died before the other, he would inform his companion of what he encountered. One of them died, and the other saw him