30 – Muhammad ibn Idris narrated to us. He said: I heard Abu Ṣāliḥ, the scribe of al-Layth, recount—on the authority of al-Hiql ibn Ziyād, from al-Awzāʿī—that al-Awzāʿī once preached, saying in his exhortation:

“O people, draw strength from the blessings in which you awaken so that you may flee from Allah’s blazing Fire, the Fire that rises up to the hearts. You are living in a world where the time allotted for staying is but brief, and you have merely been granted a respite as successors to those who once enjoyed the freshest and most splendid share of this life. They were longer-lived than you, mightier in physique, and greater in the works they left behind. They stripped the mountains, hewed the rocks, and tunneled through the land, exercising fierce power with bodies like lofty pillars. Yet it was not long before days and nights folded up their cities, erased their traces, emptied their homes, and effaced their memory, so that you feel none of them nor hear the faintest whisper.

They lived securely, distracted by hopeful illusions—safe from a night raid that would overtake a heedless people and from a dawn that would break upon a people full of regret. You already know of those upon whose courtyards a sudden visitation of Allah’s punishment descended in the night: many of them awoke lifeless in their own dwellings, while the survivors gazed upon the remnants of a vanished favor, empty houses, and squandered bounty. In that there is a sign for those who fear the painful chastisement and a lesson for whoever is mindful.

As for you, after them you rise each day within a lifespan that is running short and a world that is dwindling, in an era whose indulgence has passed and whose hope has fled. Nothing of it remains but the searing core of evil, the dregs of foulness, terrifying events and punishments for the servant, the unleashing of tribulations, successive earthquakes, and the vilest of later generations—through them corruption has spread on land and sea.

So do not be like those whom wishful thinking deceived, whom the length of their expectations deluded, and who made do with empty desires. We ask Allah to make us and you among those who come to their senses and desist, who understand the course of their journey and therefore lay down provisions for themselves.”