and tending.
I said, “I see nothing before you except stones.”
He answered, “I am examining the stirrings of my heart and tending to the commands of my Lord. By the One who has caused you to appear before me, move on and leave me. (1)”
I said, “Give me a word from which I may benefit before I go.”
He replied, “Whoever keeps to the door is firmly enrolled among the servants; whoever multiplies the remembrance of his sins (2) multiplies his remorse; and whoever finds sufficiency in Allah is safe from want.” Then he left me and went on his way. (3)
Shaykh Abū Ṣāliḥ also related:
“I once stayed six or seven days without eating or drinking, and an intense thirst overtook me. I went to the river behind the mosque and sat looking at the water. Then I recalled the words of the Most High: ‘And His Throne was upon the water’ (Qur’an 11:7). My thirst departed, and I completed the full ten days. (4)
He likewise said:
“I remained forty days without drinking water. Shaykh Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Sayyid Ḥamdawayh met me, took me by the hand, led me into his house, and brought some water, saying, ‘Drink.’ I drank, and he took what was left, went to his wife, and said, ‘Drink the remainder of a man who has gone forty days without water.’ Abū Ṣāliḥ said: No one knew this about me save Allah—exalted is He. (5)
Among Abū Ṣāliḥ’s sayings:
‘The world is forbidden to the hearts yet lawful to the souls; for whatever you are permitted to look at with the eye of your head, you are forbidden to gaze upon with the eye of your heart.’ (6)
He would say:
‘The body is the garment of the heart, the heart is the garment of the fuʾād (inner core), the fuʾād is the garment of the conscience, the conscience is the garment of the secret, and the secret is the garment of gnosis.’
Abū Ṣāliḥ possessed many virtues—may Allah have mercy on him and honor his resting place—and he died in Jumādā al-Ūlā of this year.
[Then the year 331 AH began.]
In this year Sayf al-Dawla entered Wāsiṭ after Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Buraydī and his brother Abū al-Ḥusayn had fled from it. The Turks turned against Sayf al-Dawla, inclined toward Tuzun, and plotted to seize him, so he escaped from them.