Hammad ibn Salamah also narrated it, through ʿAlī ibn Zayd, from Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyab, and he reported something similar.
Ibn Abī al-Dunyā said: Ḥasan ibn Dāwūd ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Munkadir al-Qurashī told me—ʿAbd al-Razzāq related to us, from his father, from Mīnā (1), the client of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf—that a woman used to spy on Saʿd. He forbade her, but she would not desist. One day she peered in while he was performing ablution, whereupon he said, “May your face be disfigured!” and her face turned around to the back of her head.
Kathīr al-Nawwāʾ reported—from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Budayl—that Saʿd once entered upon Muʿāwiyah. Muʿāwiyah asked him, “Why did you not fight on our side?” Saʿd replied, “A dark wind passed over me, so I said, ikh, ikh (2), and I made my mount kneel until it cleared; then, once I recognized the road, I went on.” Muʿāwiyah said, “There is no ikh, ikh in the Book of Allah. Rather, Allah the Exalted says: ‘If two groups of the believers fight, make peace between them; but if one of them transgresses against the other, then fight the one that transgresses until it returns to Allah’s command’ (Qur’an 49:9). By Allah, you were neither with the aggressor against the just party nor with the just party against the aggressor.”
Saʿd replied, “I would never fight a man to whom the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said, ‘Your relation to me is that of Hārūn to Mūsā, except that there is no prophet after me.’” Muʿāwiyah asked, “Who heard this with you?” Saʿd answered, “So-and-so, so-and-so, and Umm Salamah.” Muʿāwiyah said, “Had I heard it from him—peace and blessings be upon him—I would never have fought ʿAlī.”
In another version, transmitted through a different chain, this conversation took place in Madinah during a pilgrimage Muʿāwiyah performed. The two of them went to Umm Salamah, questioned her, and she told them exactly what Saʿd had narrated. Muʿāwiyah then said, “Had I heard this before today, I would have served ʿAlī until either he died or I died.” Its chain of transmission is weak (3); Allah knows best.
It is also related from Saʿd that he heard a man speaking ill of ʿAlī and of Khālid, whereupon he said, “That has not reached the point of affecting our religion.”
Muḥammad ibn Sīrīn said: Saʿd visited nine slave-girls in a single night; when he reached the tenth, sleep overcame him, and she was too shy to wake him.
Among his fine counsel is what he said to his son Muṣʿab: “My son, when you seek something, seek it with contentment, for whoever lacks contentment will never be enriched by wealth.”
Hammad ibn Salamah also related—from Simāk ibn Ḥarb, from Muṣʿab ibn Saʿd—that Muṣʿab said: My father’s head was in my lap as he was breathing his last, and I wept. He said, “What makes you weep, my son? By Allah, Allah will never punish me, for I am among the people of Paradise; indeed—