She said, “Do you recite Sūrah al-Muʾminūn? Then recite: ‘Successful indeed are the believers…’ up to the tenth verse.” (1)

She added, “Such was the character of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.” Al-Nasāʾī (2) recorded the same report through Qutaybah.

Al-Bukhārī transmitted—from Hishām ibn ʿUrwah, from his father, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr—regarding the verse, “Show forgiveness, enjoin what is right, and turn away from the ignorant” (al-Aʿrāf 7:199), that he said: “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ was commanded to adopt the forgiving traits of people.” (3)

Imām Aḥmad (4) said: Sāʿīd ibn Manṣūr narrated to us; ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Muḥammad narrated to us; from Muḥammad ibn ʿAjlān; from al-Qaʿqāʿ ibn Ḥakīm; from Abū Ṣāliḥ; from Abū Hurayrah, who said that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ declared, “I was only sent to perfect righteous conduct.” Aḥmad alone preserved this wording. (5)

The ḥadīth master Abū Bakr al-Kharrāṭī also recorded it in his book (6) with the wording, “I was sent solely to perfect noble character.”

We have already cited al-Bukhārī’s narration from Abū Isḥāq, from al-Barāʾ ibn ʿĀzib, who said, “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ was the most handsome of people and the finest of them in character.”

Mālik (7) narrated—through al-Zuhrī, from ʿUrwah, from ʿĀʾishah—that she said: “Whenever the Messenger of Allah ﷺ was given a choice between two matters he would choose the easier of the two, so long as it involved no sin; but if it involved sin, he was the furthest of people from it. He never took revenge for himself unless one of Allah’s sanctities was violated, in which case he retaliated for Allah’s sake.”

Both al-Bukhārī and Muslim (8) transmitted this narration through Mālik.

Muslim also related—from Abū Kuraib, from Abū Usāmah, from Hishām, from his father, from ʿĀʾishah—that she said: