136 – ʿAbd Allah narrated to us; Muḥammad narrated to me; and Ahmad ibn Sahl al-Urdunni narrated to me:

“I once passed by a monk on the Black Mountain. I called out, ‘Monk! O monk!’ He looked down at me from a fortress, and I asked him, ‘By what means are sorrows summoned?’ He replied, ‘By prolonged estrangement. I have never seen anything that draws the motives of grief out of their nests more powerfully than extended loneliness and exile.’”