whereupon the apprentice lost consciousness, so Abū Hafs closed the shop and devoted himself to caring for him.

It is also reported that Abū Hafs once visited a sick man who sighed, “Ah!” Abū Hafs asked, “From whom?” The man remained silent. He then asked, “With whom?” The man replied, “Then how am I to speak?” Abū Hafs said, “Let your groaning be neither a complaint nor your silence a show of stoic pride, but something in between.”

Abū Hafs said, “I guarded my heart for twenty years; then for twenty years it guarded me; afterward a state descended upon both of us so that we were protected together.”

Someone asked Abū Hafs, “Who is the walī (friend of Allah)?” He answered, “The one who is supported by miraculous gifts and kept unaware of them.”

Al-Khuldī (1) said: I heard al-Junayd mention Abū Hafs of Naysābūr. A companion then said to al-Ḥallāj, “Indeed, Abū al-Qāsim, he possessed a spiritual state that, once it overtook him, could last two or three days. During that time no one could bear to look at him, so they would leave him until it passed.”

I was also informed that on one occasion he spent more than ten thousand dinars in a single day to ransom captives; when evening came, he had nothing left for supper.

Al-Murtaʿish said: I entered with Abū Hafs upon a sick man. Abū Hafs asked him, “What do you desire?” He replied, “That I be cured.” Abū Hafs said to his companions, “Take his burden away.” The man rose and walked out with us, and by morning we were the ones being visited in our beds.

Al-Sulamī said: Abū Hafs was a blacksmith, and he was the first to make the Sufi path openly known in Naysābūr.