to Him in proportion to their haste in attending Friday prayer in this world. He will then bestow upon them an honor they had never seen before.”

He said: No one used to precede ‘Abd Allāh ibn Mas‘ūd to Friday prayer. One day, however, he arrived to find that two men had preceded him. He said: “Two men, and I am the third! Indeed, Allah blesses the third.”

Ibn Battah also narrated it through this route with an authentic chain, adding:

“Then they return to their families and tell them of the honor He has newly bestowed upon them—something they had never seen before.”

This is a sound chain of transmission, deemed sound by al-Tirmidhī and others. It is said that Abū ‘Ubaydah did not hear directly from his father. Nevertheless, he knew his father’s circumstances well and received the reports concerning him from his father’s leading companions. This was a recurring practice of ‘Abd Allāh—may Allah be pleased with him—and would therefore have been well known among his companions, with many recounting it. None of ‘Abd Allāh’s companions was suspected of falsely attributing reports to him, such that one might fear that such a person was the intermediary. For this reason, people have relied on his son’s narrations from him as evidence, even though it is said that he did not hear directly from his father.

This has also been narrated from Ibn Mas‘ūd through another route. Ibn Battah narrated it in al-Ibānah with an authentic chain from al-Walīd ibn Muslim, from Thawr ibn Yazīd, from ‘Amr ibn Qays, reaching ‘Abd Allāh ibn Mas‘ūd, who said:

“Allah will appear before the people of His Paradise every Friday on a mound of white camphor. Their nearness to Him will correspond to their haste in attending Friday prayer. He will then grant them life and honor such as they had never seen before.”

It has also been narrated from Ibn Mas‘ūd through “a third route.” Sa‘īd narrated it in his Sunan: We were told by