25 – Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn narrated to me; al-Ḥusayn b. Muḥammad narrated to me; I heard Abū Bakr b. ʿAyyāsh say:
A man once asked Ḥātim, “Is there anyone among the Arabs more generous than you?”
He answered, “All the Arabs are more generous than I am.” Then he began to recount:
“I spent a night as the guest of an orphaned Arab youth who owned a hundred sheep. He slaughtered one of them for me and brought it to me. When he placed the animal’s brain before me, I exclaimed, ‘How delicious this brain is!’ So he left and kept bringing me more of it until I said, ‘I have had enough.’
“At daybreak I discovered that he had slaughtered all one hundred sheep and kept nothing for himself.”
The man said, “I asked him, ‘What have you done with them?’
“He replied, ‘How could I ever repay him, even if I gave him everything?’
“Even so,” Ḥātim said, “I gave him one hundred camels from the best of my herd.”