against ʿAlī (may Allah be pleased with him). I said, “No reliable report proves that he actually disparaged him; all that is confirmed is that he regarded ʿUthmān as superior to him—and that position is sound.”

ʿAbd Allah ibn Jābir al-Tarsūsī related—through Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad ibn Nūḥ, from Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad al-Sammarī—that Maymūn ibn Mihrān performed seventeen thousand rakʿas of prayer in the course of seventeen days. On the eighteenth day something ruptured inside him and he died.

ʿAbd Allah ibn Jaʿfar narrated to us: Abū al-Malīḥ, from Maymūn, said, “I met people who, out of fear of their Lord, would not raise their eyes fully to the sky.”
He also said, “I met people before whom I was too shy even to speak.”

Ibn Saʿd said, “Maymūn’s kunya was Abū Ayyūb. He is reliable and transmitted extensively.”

Abū ʿArūbah said, “He settled in Raqqa, and his descendants still reside there.”

Maʿmar ibn Sulaymān—on the authority of Furāt ibn al-Sāʾib, from Maymūn ibn Mihrān—reported that he said: “There are three things with which you must never test yourself: do not enter upon the ruler, even if you tell yourself, ‘I will command him to obey Allah’; do not lend your ear to passion, for you do not know what part of it will cling to your heart; and do not go in to a woman, even if you say, ‘I am teaching her the Book of Allah.’”

Ḥabīb ibn Abī Marzūq narrated from Maymūn that he said, “I wish one of my eyes were lost and the other remained for me to see with, and that I had never held any post whatsoever.” I asked him, “Not even under ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz?” He replied, “Neither under ʿUmar nor under anyone else.”

Abū al-Malīḥ, from Maymūn, said: “Do not strike a servant for every fault; rather, keep a record for him. When he disobeys Allah, punish him for that act of disobedience and remind him of the transgressions that lie between you and him.”

Abū al-Malīḥ also said, “I heard Maymūn declare: ‘To be entrusted with the public treasury is dearer to me than to be entrusted with a woman.’”