He replied, “That was a jinn who appears to us from time to time and recites poetry. ” I asked, “Do you have any of his verses?” “Yes,” he said, and chanted:

O heedless sinner, take pause!
How long will you persist, piling up sin in ignorance?1
Time and again you incur the Majestic One’s anger with a loathsome deed,
While He continues to act toward you with perfect grace.
How can the eyelids of one who does not know
Whether the One on the Throne is pleased with him ever find rest?

The great ḥadith master of his age, Abū Muslim Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAbd Allah al-Baṣrī al-Kajjī, author of al-Sunan, died in 292 AH. He had met Abū ʿĀṣim al-Anṣārī and lived to an advanced age.

258 – I say: The chain of transmission for this story that reaches al-Kajjī is sound; its narrators are trustworthy. The compiler narrates it with his isnād to al-Khaṭīb, who records it in his History (6/122): “Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Qurashī told us, ‘ʿAbd Allah ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Ayyūb ibn Māsī related it to us.’”

Ibn Māsī is reliable and precise; he died in 369 AH. As for Abū Muḥammad al-Qurashī—the principal witness—al-Khaṭīb gives his biography (10/14), saying, “I wrote from him, and his audition was sound. He was born in 355 AH and died in 429 AH.”