Imām Aḥmad said (1): “ʿAbd al-Razzāq narrated to us; Maʿmar informed us; from Zayd ibn Aslam; from a man; from Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī, who said:

A man placed his right hand (2) on the Prophet ﷺ and said, ‘By Allah, I can hardly keep my hand on you because of the intensity of your fever.’ The Prophet ﷺ replied:

‘We, the company of prophets, have our trials doubled just as our reward is doubled. A prophet among the prophets would be tested with lice until it killed him, and a prophet among the prophets would be tested with poverty until he would take his cloak and cut it up. Yet they would rejoice in affliction just as they rejoiced in ease.’

Thus Imām Aḥmad related it through Zayd ibn Aslam, from an unnamed man, from Abū Saʿīd. Ibn Mājah (3) also transmitted it from Duḥaym, from Ibn Abī Fudayk, from Hishām ibn Saʿd, from Zayd ibn Aslam, from ʿAṭāʾ ibn Yasār, from Abū Saʿīd, in similar wording.

Imām Aḥmad added (4): “Wakīʿ narrated to us; Sufyān narrated to us; from ʿĀṣim ibn Abī al-Najūd; (5) from Muṣʿab ibn Saʿd; from his father, who said:

I asked, ‘Messenger of Allah, which people undergo the severest trials?’ He said:

‘The prophets; then the righteous; then those nearest to them and then those next to them. A man is tested in proportion to his religion: if his religious commitment is firm, his trial is intensified; if his commitment is soft, the trial is lightened. Tribulation continues to afflict the servant (6) until he walks upon the earth with no sin upon him.’

Al-Tirmidhī (7), al-Nasāʾī (8) and Ibn Mājah (9) all narrated it through ʿĀṣim ibn Abī al-Najūd (10), and al-Tirmidhī said: ‘ḥasan ṣaḥīḥ.’

It was mentioned earlier (11) in the ḥadīth: ‘We, the company of prophets, are half-brothers; our religion is one, though our mothers differ.’ The meaning is that although their laws varied in secondary matters, with some abrogating others until all culminated in what Allah legislated for Muḥammad ﷺ—peace be upon them all—every prophet whom Allah sent preached the same religion, Islam, that is, tawḥīd: to worship Allah alone with no partner, as the Most High says: ‘We never sent a messenger before you without revealing to him, “There is no deity but I, so worship Me.”’ (al-Anbiyāʾ 21:25).