Abu al-Qasim al-Baghawi say, “I heard ʿUbayd Allah al-Qawārīrī relate:

‘I could scarcely remember ever missing salat al-ʿatama (the ʿIshaʾ prayer) in congregation. One night a guest arrived and occupied me, so I went out looking for the prayer among the quarters of Basra, only to find that the people had already finished. I said to myself:

It is transmitted from the Prophet ﷺ that he said, “The congregational prayer surpasses the solitary prayer by twenty-one degrees.”

Another narration states: “by twenty-five degrees.”

And another: “by twenty-seven degrees.”(1)

So I returned home and repeated salat al-ʿatama twenty-seven times. Then I lay down to sleep and saw myself among a company of riders on horseback; I too was mounted and we were racing, but their horses outstripped mine. I began striking my mount to catch up, whereupon the last of them turned to me and said, “Do not exhaust your horse; you will never overtake us.”

I asked, “Why not?”

He replied, “Because we performed salat al-ʿatama in congregation.”’

With this same chain al-Khatib said: Abu al-Ghanaʾim ibn al-Ghazzāʾ in Bayt al-Maqdis informed us; Ahmad ibn al-Husayn ibn Jaʿfar al-ʿAṭṭār in Egypt narrated to us; ʿAbd al-Hamid ibn Ahmad al-Warraq narrated to us; ʿAbd Allah ibn Jaʿfar ibn al-Ward narrated to us; Ismaʿil ibn Abi al-Yaman al-Harithi narrated to us; I heard Hafs ibn ʿAmr al-Rabali say:

‘I saw ʿUbayd Allah al-Qawārīrī in a dream and asked him, “What did Allah do with you?”

He answered, “He forgave me, yet He reproached me. He said, ‘O ʿUbayd Allah! Did you take from these people?’ I said, ‘My Lord, You made me dependent on them; had You not done so, I would not have taken.’ He said, ‘When they come to Us We shall recompense them on your behalf.’ Then He said to me, ‘Are you not pleased that I have inscribed you in the Mother of the Book as one of the blessed?’”’