nor anyone at all without greeting him.

Tufayl continued: “One day I came to ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿUmar and he asked me to accompany him to the marketplace. I said to him, ‘What do you want with the market when you never stop to look at the goods, you do not ask about prices, you do not bargain, and you never sit in the merchants’ gatherings? Sit with us here and let us talk instead.’ He replied, ‘O Abā Baṭn’—and Tufayl had a large belly—‘we go out only for the greeting of peace; we offer it to everyone we meet.’

Mālik narrated it in the Muwaṭṭaʾ with a sound chain of transmission.

[Explanation]

These ḥadiths fall under the chapter on the merit of the salutation of peace and its widespread practice. We have already discussed the reports of al-Barāʾ, Abū Hurayrah, and ʿAbd Allah ibn Salām, so there is no need to repeat that discussion here. As for the ḥadith of Tufayl ibn Ubayy ibn Kaʿb, he recounts an incident with ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿUmar (may Allah be pleased with them both). ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿUmar once took him along to the marketplace, and there he began to greet everyone—shopkeepers and every passer-by, whether he knew them or not. On another day Tufayl said to him, ‘Let us go to the market.’ ʿAbd Allah replied, ‘What will you do there? You buy nothing and sell nothing. Sit with us and let us talk.’ ʿAbd Allah said, ‘I only go to the market in order to greet the people, for when a person gives the salutation of peace and spreads it…’