He is also the one who said:
“Though wearied, I rise to serve the guest
when the niggardly overseer of the meal lets the curtain fall,¹
He calls, and many dogs answer him,
trusting that I will certainly act.
Between my guest and any ancestral wealth I hold
stands nothing—so far as my own soul is concerned—
save the inviolability of the womenfolk.”²
Mutarrif ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Shikhkhir³ was among the leading Successors. He kept company with ʿImran ibn Husayn, and his supplications were answered.
He used to say, “No one has been given anything better than intellect,⁴ and people’s intellects are in proportion to the age in which they live.”
He also said, “When a servant’s inner state matches his outward conduct, Allah says, ‘This is truly My servant.’”
And he said, “When you visit a sick person, if you can, ask him to pray for you, for he has been stirred—that is, awakened from his heedlessness by his illness—and his supplication is answered because of his brokenness and the tenderness of his heart.”
He further said, “The most disgraceful way to seek the world is through work that pretends to be for the Hereafter.”⁵
The Caliphate of al-Walid ibn ʿAbd al-Malik, builder of the Great Mosque of Damascus
When he returned from burying his father outside the Small Jabiya Gate—this occurred on Thursday, though some say Friday, the fifteenth of Shawwal of that year—he did not enter his house until he had mounted the pulpit of the Great Mosque in Damascus.
He addressed the people, saying among other things: “Indeed we belong to Allah and to Him we shall return. Allah alone is the One from Whom help is sought in our calamity at the death of the Commander of the Believers. Praise be to Allah for the favor He has granted us in bestowing the caliphate. Rise, therefore, and pledge your allegiance.”
The first to stand was ʿAbd Allah ibn Hammam al-Saluli, who recited:
“Allah has given you a gift beyond which there is nothing higher;
the misbelievers wanted to keep it from you,
But Allah would have none of that—He drove it toward you
until they fastened its collar round your neck.”⁶