Then, a week later, she came back and I had already taken the coin, so she burst into tears. I said, “The mother died in child-bed.” She began to wail, and I added, “You believed in the birth—will you not believe in the death?”
Abū ʿĀṣim said: Ibn Jurayj once stopped me in front of Ashʿab and asked him, “Just how far does your greed go?” He replied, “Never is a bride escorted to her husband’s house without my first sweeping my own home, hoping that some of the wedding gifts will reach me.” (1)
Abū ʿĀṣim also related that Ashʿab passed by a man making a large tray and said, “Make it wider; perhaps they will send us something on it.”
On another day I was walking along when I suddenly found him behind me. I asked, “What is the matter with you?” He said, “I saw your cap leaning to one side and thought it might fall so I could pick it up.” I therefore handed it to him.
Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān the Qur’an-reciter reported that Ashʿab used to say, “Whenever I attend a funeral and see two men whispering, I imagine the deceased has left me something in his will.”
It is also said that he was an accomplished singer.
They say he died in 154 AH.
27 – Ḥajjāj ibn Arṭāʾah ibn Thawr ibn Hubayrah al-Nakhaʿī (4, M)
The son of Sharāḥīl ibn Kaʿb, an imām, erudite scholar, and mufti of Kūfa alongside Imām Abū Ḥanīfah and the judge Ibn Abī Laylā. Abū Arṭāʾah al-Nakhaʿī, the Kufan jurist, was one of the leading authorities.
He was born during the lifetime of Anas ibn Mālik and other junior Companions.