was plaintive yet appealing, slow and well-paced, as though he were speaking directly to someone. Whenever he reached a verse that mentioned the Garden he would linger over it, repeating it and supplicating. Most of his night prayer he performed sitting. A mat would be spread for him in his mosque; he would pray for an hour at the start of the night, then when sleep overcame him he would drop onto the mat and rest a little before rising again. If drowsiness returned he would sleep, then rise—continuing in that manner until daybreak. It was his constant habit that whenever sleepiness came he would sleep, and people used to say, “The hardest worship is the one practiced like this.”

He was sound in the hadiths he transmitted, truthful in speech, and held the prophetic reports in great awe whenever he narrated them. Relating hadith weighed heavily on him; he would sometimes say to me, “If you asked me for gold dinars it would be easier for me than your asking me for a hadith.”

I said, “If you would relate to me useful hadiths I do not yet know, that would be dearer to me than your giving me the same number of dinars.”

He replied, “You are beguiled. By Allah, were you to act on what you have already heard, it would keep you occupied from seeking what you have not heard. I heard Sulayman ibn Mihran say:

‘If food is set before you and you take a morsel only to fling it over your shoulder, when will you ever be full?’”

Ahmad ibn Salamah informed us, from Abu’l-Makārim al-Taymi; al-Haddad informed us; Abu Nuʿaym narrated to us; al-Tabarani narrated to us; Muhammad ibn Zakariyya al-Ghalabi narrated to us; Abu ʿUmar al-Jarmi the grammarian narrated to us; al-Fadl ibn al-Rabiʿ said:

“The Commander of the Faithful—meaning Harun—performed the pilgrimage and said to me, ‘Woe to you! Something is troubling me; find me a man whom I can question.’

I said, ‘Sufyan ibn ʿUyaynah is here.’

He said, ‘Take us to him.’

So we went to him and I knocked on his door. He asked, ‘Who is it?’

I said, ‘Respond to the Commander of the Faithful.’

He came out hastily and said, ‘O Commander of the Faithful! Had you sent for me, I would have come to you.’

Harun said, ‘Address what I have come to you for.’

He spoke with him for a while and then asked, ‘Do you have any debt?’

He replied, ‘Yes.’

Harun said to me, ‘Pay his debt.’

When we left he said, ‘Your companion has not benefited me at all.’

I said, ‘Abd al-Razzaq is here.’

He said, ‘Take us to him.’”