he would do.

He pulled his mantle over his head, sat down beside one of the graves, and went on weeping until I felt pity for him, thinking it must be the grave of a relative. On another occasion he passed by me again; I followed him, and he seated himself next to a different grave and did exactly the same.

I reported this to Muhammad ibn al-Munkadir, saying, “I had assumed it was the grave of one of his family members.” Muhammad replied, “They are all his family and his brothers; he is a man who stirs his heart by remembering the dead whenever hardness comes over it.”

He (the narrator) continued: After that, Muhammad would pass by me on his way to al-Baqiʿ. One day I greeted him, and he said, “Has the admonition of Safwan not benefitted you?” I realised then that he had taken to heart what I had told him.

Abu Ghassan al-Nahdi said: I heard Sufyan ibn ʿUyaynah—his brother assisting him in the narration—say:

“Safwan swore that he would not lay his side upon the ground until he met Allah, and he adhered to that for more than thirty years. When death approached him and the agonies and al-ʿalaz (1) intensified while he was still sitting, his daughter said, ‘Father, if only you would lie on your side.’ He replied, ‘My dear daughter, were I to do that I would not have fulfilled my vow and oath to Allah.’ He then died while still seated.

Sufyan added: The gravedigger who excavates the graves of the people of Medina told me,

‘I was digging a man’s grave when I broke into another grave and came upon a skull on which the marks of prostration had imprinted themselves into the very bone. I asked someone, “Whose grave is this?” He said, “Do you not know? This is the grave of Safwan ibn Sulaym.”’

Sahl ibn ʿAsim also narrated, from Muhammad ibn Mansur, who said:

Safwan ibn Sulaym declared, ‘I have pledged to Allah that I will not rest my side on a bed until I meet my Lord.’ I was informed that Safwan lived another forty years after that, never laying his side down. When death finally overtook him, he was asked, ‘May Allah have mercy on you—will you not recline?’ He replied, ‘Then I would not have fulfilled my covenant with Allah.’ So he remained propped up and continued in that state until his soul departed.

The people of Medina used to say that his forehead had become thickened from the abundance of his prostrations.