Muhammad ibn Wasi‘ – His biography is recorded in Ibn Sa‘d, Ṭabaqāt (7:241); al-Khalīfa, Ṭabaqāt (p. 215) and Tārīkh (p. 378); al-Tārīkh al-Kabīr (1:255) and al-Tārīkh al-Ṣaghīr (p. 354); al-Jarḥ wa’l-Ta‘dīl (8:113); Thiqāt Ibn Ḥibbān (7:366); Ḥilyat al-Awliyāʾ (2:345); Sifāt al-Ṣafwa (3:266); Ibn al-Athīr, al-Mukhtār min Manāqib al-Akhyār (4:469); Mukhtaṣar Tārīkh Dimashq (23:286); Tahdhīb al-Kamāl (26:576); Siyar A‘lām al-Nubalāʾ (6:119); al-ʿIbar (1:290); Mīzān al-I‘tidāl (4:258); al-Wāfī bi’l-Wafayāt (5:172); Tahdhīb al-Tahdhīb (9:499); Ṭabaqāt al-Shiʿrānī (1:36); and al-Kawākib al-Durriyya (1:430). He said: “The first to be summoned on the Day of Resurrection for reckoning will be the judges.” He added: “Five qualities kill the heart: one sin piled upon another; sitting in the company of the dead.” They asked, “Who are the dead?” He replied, “Every rich, pampered person and every tyrannical ruler.” He also mentioned “undue harshness toward women and their idle talk, and familiar intimacy with one’s kin.” Malik ibn Dinar said, “I envy the man whose livelihood is sufficient and who is content with it.” Muhammad ibn Wasi‘ responded, “I envy someone else even more: by God, I know a man who wakes up hungry yet is pleased with God.” He further remarked: “I grieve over the world for only three things: a companion who, when I err, straightens me; a congregational prayer in which my forgetfulness is overlooked so that I may gain its reward; and provision from which no one can claim a favor against me, nor I bear any debt before God.” Ziyād related (the reading “Ruwād ibn al-Rabīʿ” is a scribal error; the correct name is confirmed by the chains) from his father: “I saw Muhammad ibn Wasi‘ in the market of Marw (some sources read Buzūr, others Murra) offering his donkey for sale. A man asked him, ‘Will you accept [this price] for it?’ He answered, ‘If I would have accepted it, I would not have sold it.’” This anecdote appears in al-Bukhārī’s al-Tārīkh al-Kabīr (1:255), Abū Na‘īm’s Ḥilya (2:349), al-Khaṭīb’s Tārīkh Baghdād (12:16), al-Bayhaqī’s Shu‘b al-Īmān (4:330, no. 5296), and Ibn al-Jawzī’s Sifāt al-Ṣafwa (3:270). When Muhammad ibn Wasi‘ grew old, many came to visit him. One companion reported: “I entered and found some seated and some standing.” He said, “What benefit will these people be to me when tomorrow my forelock and my foot are seized and I am cast into the Fire?” A later caliph sent a large sum to Basra for the poor and ordered that a share be given to Muhammad ibn Wasi‘, but he refused to accept or even request any of it. Malik ibn Dinar, by contrast, accepted his share, purchased slaves with it, and manumitted them, taking nothing for himself. Muhammad ibn Wasi‘ reproached him: “O Malik, you accepted the sultan’s gifts!?” Malik replied, “O Abu ʿAbd Allah, ask my companions what I did with it.” They answered, “He bought slaves and freed them.” Muhammad ibn Wasi‘ asked, “By God, shall I restore your share to them as it was before it reached you?” Malik stood, scattered dust on his head, and said: “Only Muhammad ibn Wasi‘ truly knows God. I am but a beast of burden.” The sayings of Muhammad ibn Wasi‘ are indeed very numerous. May God have mercy on him.