5/578 – Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) reported that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “Compete in performing good deeds before seven things overtake you. What are you waiting for except
- poverty that makes a person forget, or
- affluence that drives him to tyranny, or
- illness that ruins the body, or
- senility that strips the mind, or
- sudden death that strikes without warning, or
- the Antichrist—for he is the worst absentee whose arrival is awaited—or
- the Hour? And the Hour is more grievous and more bitter still!”
Al-Tirmidhi narrated it and said: “A ḥasan ḥadith.”
[Explanation]
Imam al-Nawawi—may Allah have mercy on him—cited this ḥadith in Riyād al-Ṣāliḥīn, in the chapter on remembering death and the shortness of one’s hopes. Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) relates that the Prophet ﷺ said: “Hasten to good deeds before seven (events occur).” In other words, act now, before any of the seven calamities the Prophet ﷺ listed befall you.
The first is “poverty that makes one forget,” meaning a poverty so severe that it distracts a servant from the remembrance of his Lord. Poverty—may Allah protect us and you from it—is the worst armor a person can be made to wear. When someone is destitute he needs food, drink, clothing, housing, and a spouse yet finds none of these. The vast earth feels constricted to him, and he goes out searching for the bare minimum, whereby he forgets to remember Allah and cannot perform his worship as it should be.
Furthermore, many acts of devotion that depend on wealth also slip away from him: obligatory almsgiving, voluntary charity, manumitting slaves, pilgrimage, spending in the path of Allah, and similar deeds.