462 – Muḥammad ibn al-Jawharī narrated to me; Abū ʾUsāmah narrated to us; one of our companions narrated to me, from Raqabah ibn Maṣqalah, from al-Ḥakam, from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Laylā, who said:

Muʿādh ibn ʿAfrāʾ never encountered anything without giving it away in charity. When a child was born to him, his wife enlisted the help of her maternal uncles; they spoke to him, saying, “You have made yourself destitute—why not save something for your son?” He replied, “My soul will accept nothing but to shield itself from the Fire with every possession I can find.”

When he died, he left a plot of land adjoining that of another man. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān said, “He was shrouded in a yellow cloak that was not even worth three dirhams; that piece of land, in my eyes, was not worth as much as this cloak of mine.” The children’s guardian at first refused, but the neighbor was in need of the land, so he eventually sold it for three hundred thousand.