91 – ʿAbd Allah narrated to us: Abu Zakariyya al-Balkhi told me; Muʿtamir b. Sulayman related, from al-Furat b. Sulayman, that al-Hasan b. Abi al-Hasan used to say:

“Allah has servants who behold Paradise as though they have truly seen it, so they picture themselves already reclining within it; and they behold the Fire as though they have truly seen it, so they feel themselves already being punished in it. Their hearts are full of sorrow; people are safe from their harm; their needs are light; their souls are chaste.

By night their feet are aligned in prayer, their foreheads spread upon the ground, privately conversing with their Lord in hopes of freeing their necks (from the Fire). By day they are forbearing and learned, righteous and God-fearing. Awe has worn them thin, so that they resemble arrow-shafts. An onlooker gazes at them and says, ‘They are ill,’ when no illness afflicts them; he says, ‘They have lost their minds, or some tremendous affair has preoccupied these people.’”