968 – ʿAbd Allah narrated to us—and I found in my father’s notebook, written in his own hand—that Yūnus ibn Muḥammad narrated:

“There was in Basra a judge whose kunya was Abu Sālim. Yūnus went on to extol his virtues and said: He used to sit in the mosque of one of the ⦗143⦘ elders—and I myself have sat with him. I was informed that, while he was praying, he came upon the verse, ‘couches whose inner linings are of brocade’ (Surah al-Raḥmān 55:54). He exclaimed, ‘My Lord, these are the linings—what, then, of the outer surfaces?’ A voice then called out to him—he knew not from where—‘The outer surfaces are the good pleasure of Allah.’ He also used to preach in Persian.”