Silence adorns a young man
more than words let slip at the wrong moment;
truthfulness, in my view, becomes him better in speech
than any oath sworn with his right hand.
Upon a youth, his gravity
leaves a mark that shines upon his brow;
so who, then, can be hidden from you
once you look at the company he keeps?
Many a man of firm conviction
has had misfortune overpower that certainty,
so that it stripped him of sound judgment
and he purchased his worldly lot at the price of his religion.

Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-ʿIjlī said: My father narrated to me: When Ibn al-Mubārak was in the throes of death, a man began prompting him, saying, “Say: Lā ilāha illā Allāh.” He repeated it excessively, whereupon Ibn al-Mubārak said to him, “You are not doing it properly, and I fear you may trouble a Muslim after me. When you prompt me and I say, ‘Lā ilāha illā Allāh,’ and then fall silent, leave me be. If I speak again, then prompt me, so that it will be the last word I utter.”

It is reported that when the caliph al-Rashīd heard of ʿAbd Allāh’s death he said, “Today the leader of the scholars has died.”

ʿAbdān ibn ʿUthmān said: Ibn al-Mubārak died at Hīt and ʿĀnāt (1) in the month of Ramaḍān, in the year 181 AH.

Ḥasan ibn al-Rabīʿ said: Ibn al-Mubārak told me before he died, “I am sixty-three years old.”

Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal said: I went hoping to hear hadith from Ibn al-Mubārak, but I did not catch him. He had come to Baghdad and then set out for the frontier, so I never saw him.