Hudhayfa al-Marʿashi said:

I and Ibrahim once sought shelter in a ruined mosque in Kufa. Several days had passed in which we had eaten nothing. He said to me, “You look hungry.”

“Yes,” I replied. He took a small piece of parchment and wrote on it:

In the name of Allah, the All-Merciful, the Compassionate.
You are the One to Whom all turn in every circumstance,
the One to Whom every meaning points.
I am one who praises, remembers, and gives thanks…
I am hungry, bare-headed, and unclothed.
They are six, and for three of them I stand surety;
so be Thou, O Creator, the surety for the other three.
My praising any but You is the blaze of a fire I have entered;
so rescue Your slave from entering the Fire.

He then said, “Go out with this note, let your heart cling to none but Allah—glorified and exalted is He—and hand this parchment to the first man you meet.”

I went out and there was a man riding a mule. I gave it to him. When he read it, he wept, handed me six hundred dinars, and rode off. I asked someone, “Who is that man on the mule?” They said, “He is a Christian.”

I returned to Ibrahim and informed him. He said, “He will soon come and accept Islam.” It was not long before the man arrived, threw himself upon Ibrahim’s head, and embraced Islam (1).

Ibrahim would say: “Our home lies ahead of us, and our true life begins after we die—either to Paradise or to the Fire. Imagine, with the eye of your heart, the arrival of the Angel of Death and his helpers to seize your soul, and consider how you will be then. Picture the terror of the grave and the questioning by Munkar and Nakir, and think how you will be. Then picture the Resurrection, its terrors and alarms, the Gathering and the Reckoning, and consider how you will be.” He then cried out and fell unconscious.

He once saw one of his companions laughing and said to him, “Do not hope for what will never be, and do not forget what certainly will be.” He was asked, “How is that, Abū Isḥāq?” He replied, “Do not hope for permanence while death is pursuing you. How can a man laugh when he is going to die without knowing whether he will be taken to Paradise or to the Fire? And do not forget what will be: death will come to you morning or evening.” Then he said, “Alas, alas!” and fell unconscious.

He used to say: “Why do we complain of our poverty to people like ourselves, yet fail to ask our Lord to remove it?! Woe to the servant whose mother should lose him—he loved this world and forgot what is in the treasuries of his Master.”

He also said: “If at night you sleep, by day you wander aimlessly, and in sin you persist, how will you please the One who oversees all your affairs?”

One of his companions saw him in the mosque of Beirut, weeping and striking his hands upon his head. He asked, “What makes you weep?” He answered, “I have remembered the Day when hearts and eyes will be overturned.”