ʿĀʾishah said, “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ passed away while there was nothing in my house that any living creature could eat except for half a sāʿ of barley that sat on a shelf of mine. I kept eating from it for some time; when at last I measured it, it was gone.” (1)

Another ḥadīth

Muslim relates in his Ṣaḥīḥ—through Salamah ibn Shabīb, al-Ḥasan ibn Aʿyan, Maʿqil, Abū al-Zubayr—on the authority of Jābir:

A man came to the Prophet ﷺ asking for food, so he gave him half a wasq of barley. The man, together with his wife and their guest, kept eating from it until he measured it; after that it ran out, and he went back to the Prophet ﷺ. The Prophet said,

“Had you not measured it, you would have continued eating from it and it would have remained for you.” (2)

With this same chain, on the authority of Jābir:

Umm Mālik used to present the Messenger of Allah ﷺ with clarified butter in a small leather skin. Whenever her children came asking for a relish and she had nothing, she would turn to the vessel in which she used to send butter to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and find butter inside. It went on providing a condiment for her household until she squeezed it dry. She then came to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, who asked,

“Did you squeeze it out?”

“Yes,” she replied.

He said, “Had you left it, it would have kept on providing.” (3)

Imām Aḥmad also recorded both of these reports, through Mūsā, from Ibn Luhayʿah, from Abū al-Zubayr, from Jābir. (4)

Another ḥadīth

Al-Bayhaqī (5) said: Abū ʿAbdullāh al-Ḥāfiẓ informed us; Abū Jaʿfar al-Baghdādī informed us; Yaḥyā ibn ʿUthmān ibn Ṣāliḥ narrated to us; Ḥassān ibn ʿAbdullāh narrated to us; Ibn Luhayʿah narrated to us; Yūnus ibn Yazīd narrated to us; Abū Isḥāq (6) narrated to us, from Saʿīd ibn al-Ḥārith, from his grandfather Naufal ibn al-Ḥārith ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib: he sought the Messenger of Allah’s help in arranging a marriage, so the Prophet ﷺ married him to a woman. Finding nothing to give her, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ dispatched Abū Rāfiʿ and Abū Ayyūb with his coat of mail, and they pawned it with a man from