79 – ʿAbdullāh narrated to us; al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Jarawī narrated to us; Ayyūb ibn Suwayd narrated to us; Abū al-Haytham transmitted from ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿUbayd ibn ʿUmayr al-Laythī, who said:

“I was travelling with my father and we entered a desolate stretch of wilderness. When we reached its middle, we saw a man standing and praying. My father waited for him to finish so that he might speak to him, but the man did not conclude his prayer. My father therefore called out, ‘Sir, we see you here with neither food nor drink. We were thinking of leaving some provisions for you—would you like that?’ The man merely gestured to us to decline.

By Allah, we had not moved away before a cloud formed and rain fell until everything around him was watered. We then continued on, and when we reached the first inhabited settlement my father mentioned what we had seen. The people there recognised the description and said, ‘That man is never present in a land without its inhabitants being blessed with rain.’”