pray one thousand units of prayer in the course of every day and night; and whenever weariness overtook him he would say, “Rise, O dwelling-place of all evil! By Allah, I have never been pleased with you for Allah’s sake for even an hour.”

It is related that a dinar once slipped from Kahmas’s hand. He searched until he found it, yet he left it where it was, saying, “Perhaps it belongs to someone else.”

May Allah have mercy on him—he was extraordinarily dutiful to his mother. When she died he performed the pilgrimage, remained in Mecca until his own death, earned his living as a plasterer, and served as a muʾadhdhin.

Yaḥyā ibn Kathīr al-Baṣrī recounted: “Kahmas bought some flour for a single dirham. He ate from it, and after a long while he weighed it again and found it exactly as he had first placed it.”

Kahmas died in the year 149 AH and was regarded as one of the foremost authorities in proof and transmission.

Abū ʿAtāʾ al-Ramlī said: “Kahmas would say in the depths of night, ‘Do You intend to punish me, while You are the comfort of my eyes—O Beloved of my heart!’”

It is also said that he once tried to kill a scorpion; it darted into its hole, whereupon he thrust his fingers in after it and was stung. When asked why he had done so, he replied, “I feared it might come back out and crawl to my mother and sting her.”

135 – Muḥammad ibn ʿAjlān al-Qurashī al-Madanī (Kh, M, 4)
The Imām, exemplar, truthful narrator, and last of the great figures, Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Qurashī al-Madanī. ʿAjlān had been the client of Fāṭimah bint al-Walīd ibn ʿUtbah ibn Rabīʿah ibn ʿAbd Shams ibn ʿAbd Manāf.

He was born during the caliphate of ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān.

He transmitted hadith from his father, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Hurmuz al-Aʿraj, ʿAmr ibn Shuʿayb, Abū Ḥāzim Salmān al-Ashjaʿī—his earliest shaykh—Rajāʾ ibn Ḥaywah, Nāfiʿ, Muḥammad