He would lay his wealth before the one who had declined the keys to all earthly treasures, and bring provisions to someone already full—he who said, “I spend the night with my Lord; He feeds me and gives me drink.” (1)

The singular distinction contained in the Qur’anic phrase “the second of the two” (At-Tawbah 40) had been reserved for al-Ṣiddīq alone. He was the second in accepting Islam, the second in offering up his very life, the second in renunciation, the second in companionship, the second in the caliphate, the second in length of life, and even the second in the cause of death: the Messenger ﷺ died from the lingering effect of poison (2), and Abū Bakr was himself poisoned and died (3).

Among the ten men promised Paradise, those who entered Islam at his hands were ʿUthmān, Ṭalḥah, al-Zubayr, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf, and Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ.

On the very day he embraced the faith he possessed forty (4) thousand dirhams, and he spent every coin at the moment Islam needed it most; hence the Prophet declared, “No wealth has ever benefited me as the wealth of Abū Bakr has.” (5)

He is superior to the believer from Pharaoh’s household, for that man kept his faith concealed whereas al-Ṣiddīq proclaimed his openly; and he surpasses the believer of the People of Yāsīn, for that man strove for an hour whereas al-Ṣiddīq strove for years.

He saw the bird of need hovering over the seed of self-sacrifice, crying out, “Who is it that will lend to Allah a goodly loan?” (Al-Baqarah 245). So he cast the seed of his wealth onto the meadow of contentment and reclined upon the couch of poverty, whereupon the bird carried that seed into the crop of manifold increase,