were travelling in company. When they dismounted they spread out the food cloth and sent someone to invite him to eat with them, but he said, “I am fasting.” When they were about to finish their meal he came and began to eat, at which the people kept staring at the messenger they had sent to him. The messenger said, “I see you looking at me. By Allah, he told me that he was fasting.” Abū Hurayrah replied, “He has spoken the truth. I heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ say:

‘Fasting the month of patience and fasting three days of every month equals the fast of a lifetime.’

I fasted the first three days of this month, so I may now eat by Allah’s concession, while still counted as fasting through Allah’s multiplication of the reward—glorified be He—(1).

Imām Aḥmad narrated: ʿAbd al-Malik ibn ʿAmr told us; Ismāʿīl told us; from Abū al-Mutawakkil, from Abū Hurayrah: that he and some companions, whenever they fasted, would sit in the mosque and say, “We are purifying our fast (2).”

Imām Aḥmad also said: Abū ʿUbaydah al-Ḥaddād told us; ʿUthmān al-Shahhām Abū Salamah told us; Farqad al-Sabakhī said: Abū Hurayrah used to circumambulate the Kaʿbah saying, “Woe to me because of this stomach of mine: if I fill it, it weighs me down (3), and if I leave it hungry, it weakens me (4).”

He further related through ʿIkrimah that Abū Hurayrah said, “I seek Allah’s forgiveness and repent to Him twelve thousand times every day; that equals the amount of my blood-money (5).”

ʿAbd Allāh ibn Aḥmad also reported from Abū Hurayrah that he owned a cord with twelve thousand knots on which he glorified Allah before sleeping. In another version it was two thousand knots, and he would not sleep until he had completed the glorification on them; the latter report is more authentic.

When death approached him he wept. He was asked, “Why are you weeping?” He replied, “I do not weep for this worldly life of yours. I weep for the length of my journey, the scarcity of my provisions, and because I now stand on a slope that descends either to Paradise or to the Fire, and I do not know to which of the two I shall be taken (6).”

Qutaybah ibn Saʿīd narrated to us; al-Faraj ibn Faḍālah narrated; from Abū Hurayrah, who said, “When you decorate your mosques and gild your codices of the Qur’an, destruction will descend upon you (7).”

Al-Ṭabarānī likewise reported, from Maʿmar, who said: It reached me that whenever a funeral procession passed by Abū Hurayrah he would say, “Proceed on, for indeed we…"