from the path of Allah. Indeed, those who stray from the path of Allah shall have a severe punishment for having forgotten the Day of Reckoning. (26) [Sad 38:26]
Do those people not realize that they will be resurrected (4) for a momentous Day, (5) the Day when all mankind will stand before the Lord of the worlds? (6) [Al-Mutaffifin 83:4-6]
That is a Day on which all people will be gathered together, and it is a Day that will be witnessed. (103) [Hud 11:103]
We defer it only until a term already appointed. (104) [Hud 11:104]
The day you now enjoy—had it been meant to remain with anyone else, it would never have come to you; “so these are their houses, desolate because of the wrong they committed.” [Al-Naml 27:52]
I warn you of the Day when the herald will proclaim, “Gather those who did wrong and their counterparts,” [Al-Saffat 37:22] and, “Behold! The curse of Allah is upon the wrongdoers.” [Hud 11:18]
It is said that ʿAbd al-Malik’s face changed; he withdrew to the women’s quarters, and gloom remained upon him for several days. (1)
Zirr ibn Hubaysh once wrote a letter to ʿAbd al-Malik and ended it with these lines:
“Do not, O Commander of the Believers, let the good health you perceive in yourself deceive you into hoping for long life—you know your own state best. Recall what the ancients said:
When men have begotten their sons
and age has worn away their frames,
when illness comes to visit them again and again—
these are fields whose harvest time draws near.”
When ʿAbd al-Malik read the letter, he wept until the edge of his robe was soaked and said, “Zirr has spoken the truth, yet had he written to us about something else it would have been kinder.” (2)
He once heard a group of his companions speaking of the conduct of ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab and said, “I forbid the mention of ʿUmar; it is bitterness for rulers and a cause of unrest for subjects.”
Ibrāhīm ibn Hishām ibn Yaḥyā al-Ghassānī (3) narrated—from his father, from his grandfather—that ʿAbd al-Malik used to sit in the study circle of Umm al-Dardāʾ at the rear of the mosque in Damascus. She once said to him, “News has reached me that you have drunk ṭalāʾ (4) after all your worship and devotion.” He replied, “Yes, by Allah—and I have drunk blood as well. (5)”
A servant he had sent on an errand then arrived, and he said, “What delayed you? May Allah curse you!” Umm al-Dardāʾ said, “Do not do that, O Commander of the Believers, for I heard Abū al-Dardāʾ say that he heard the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—say: “No habitual curser will enter Paradise.” (6)
Abū Bakr ibn Abī al-Dunyā reported: al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (7) told us that people said to Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib, “ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān has said, ‘I no longer rejoice at a good deed I do, nor grieve over an evil deed I commit.’” Saʿīd replied, “Now the death of his heart is complete.”