228 – Our shaykh Abū al-Ḥusayn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd-Allāh ibn ʿUbayd-Allāh ibn Yaḥyā informed us; he said: ʿAbdullāh ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿUbayd ibn Abī al-Dunyā narrated to us; he said: ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ṣāliḥ narrated to us; he said: Ibn ʿUlayyah narrated to us, ⦗155⦘ through Ayyūb, who said:

“One day al-Ḥasan recited the Almighty’s words, ‘And ask them about the town that stood by the sea’ (al-Aʿrāf 163) to the end of the verse, then commented:

‘It was merely a single species of fish that Allah forbade them to catch on one day, while making it lawful on all the others. Yet on the very day it was forbidden the fish would swim up to them in great shoals—like a surging flood—holding back from no one. They kept flirting with the idea of taking it, then refrained; and rarely have I seen anyone who preoccupies himself with a sin without eventually falling into it. So they went on cherishing the thought of that sin and then holding back—only to incur a harsher punishment in the Hereafter. By Allah, a believer enjoys far greater sanctity in Allah’s sight than any fish; but Allah has deferred their reckoning to the Day of Resurrection: “and the Hour is more calamitous and more bitter” (al-Qamar 46).’”