He would then say, “If I nod off, tug a strand of my beard.” On one occasion his patron passed by, saw what they were doing, and exclaimed, “Shaykh, heedlessness has overtaken you!” Abū Jaʿfar would reply, “That is simply his nature; come, let us move to the other side of the grave.”
Ibn Wahb related: Ibn Zayd ibn Aslam told us that a man—well-versed in religion yet naïve in worldly matters—once said to Abū Jaʿfar, “Congratulations on the portion of the Qurʾān you have been granted.” He answered, “It will truly be a blessing only when I treat as lawful what it makes lawful, forbid what it forbids, and act on what it contains.”
During Ramaḍān he would stand behind the prayer-leaders who recited aloud, prompting them; he had been appointed to that task, and after him Shaybah was given the post. It was also said that he would give in charity even the waist-cloth he was wearing, and that he was counted among the devoted worshippers.
Zayd ibn Aslam narrated from Sulaymān ibn Muslim: “I saw Abū Jaʿfar the reciter at the Kaʿbah. He said, ‘Convey my greetings of peace to my brothers and inform them that Allah has made me one of the living, provided-for martyrs.’”
Isḥāq al-Musayyibī reported from Nāfiʿ: “When Abū Jaʿfar was washed for burial, those present noticed that the skin between his upper chest and his heart looked like a page of the muṣḥaf; no one doubted that it was the light of the Qurʾān.”
I have included many more accounts of Abū Jaʿfar in my Tabaqāt al-Qurrāʾ.
He died in 127 AH, according to Muḥammad ibn al-Muthannā; Shabbān said it was in 132 AH. He lived a little over ninety years.
- Ḥabīb ibn Abī Thābit, Abū Yaḥyā al-Qurashī * (ʿ)
An imam, ḥāfiẓ, and the leading jurist of Kūfa; Abū Yaḥyā al-Qurashī, a client of the Asad clan. His father’s name was Qays.