Of Bishr Ibn Al-Harith Al-Hafi, one of Baghdad's holiest ascetics, it is
told that his choice of the life of saintliness thus came about.
Happening to find on the road a leaf of paper with the name of God
written on it, which had been trampled underfoot, he bought ghalia with
some dirhems which he had about him, and, having perfumed the leaf with
it, deposited it in a hole in a wall.
Afterwards he had a dream, in which a voice seemed to say to him: "O
Bishr! thou hast perfumed my name, and I shall surely cause thine to be
a sweet odour both in this world and the next."
When he awoke, he gave up the world, and turned to God.
Bishr being once asked with what sauce he ate his bread, replied: "I
think on good health, and I take that as my sauce."
One of his prayers was this: "O, my God! deprive me of notoriety, if
thou hast given it to me in this world for the purpose of putting me to
shame in the next."
It was a true saying of another famous ascetic, Al-Fudail, that, when
God loves a man, He increases his afflictions, and when He hates a man,
He increases his worldly prosperity.
Asceticism, however, had not robbed him of human sympathy or warped his
nature, for he said at another time: "For a man to be polite to his
company and make himself agreeable to them is better than to pass nights
in prayer and days in fasting."
Abu Ali Ar-Razi said: "I kept company with Al-Fudail during thirty
years, and I never saw him laugh or smile but on one occasion, and that
was the death of his son. On my asking him the reason, he replied:
'Whatever is pleasing to God is pleasing to me.'"
Maruf Al-Karkhi, another celebrated saint, who died in Baghdad in 805,
had a sensible elasticity. Passing, one day, by a water-carrier who was
crying out: "God have mercy on him who drinketh!" he went up to him and
took a drink, although he was at that time keeping a strict fast.
Some one, horrified at the impiety, said to him: "Art thou not keeping a
fast?"
He replied: "Yes, I am, but I hoped for the fulfilment of that man's
prayer."
One of the sayings of Abd Al-Ala, a man of holy life, was this: "Buying
what one does not require, is selling what one requires."
Another pious man, Abu Othman Al-Mazini the grammarian, used to tell the
following story against himself: "There was a person who, for a long
time, studied under me the grammar of Sibawaih, and who said to me, when
he got to the end of the book, 'May God requite you well! As for me, I
have not understood a letter of it.'"
Yahya, a celebrated preacher, on being asked by a descendant of the
Prophet, "Tell me, Master! and may God assist you! what is your opinion
of us who are the people of the house,"--that is to say, the members of
Muhammad's family,--replied: "It is that which I would say of clay
kneaded with the water of divine revelation and sprinkled with the water
of the heavenly mission: can it give out any other odour than the musk
of true direction and the ambergris of piety?"
The Alide was so highly pleased with this answer that he filled Yahya's
mouth with pearls.
Yahya, who died on March 30, 872, had a very graceful turn for
apophthegms. "True friendship," said he, "cannot be augmented by
kindness nor diminished by unkindness." And again, he said: "To him who
is going to see a true friend the way never appears long; he who goes
to visit his beloved never feels lonely on the road."
The exaltation of friendship is indeed one of the beautiful things about
this book. And the reader can never have too much of it. Buri Taj
Al-Muluk was, says Ibn Khallikan, merely a man of talent, but the
following verse by him contains a perfectly splendid compliment: _My
friend approached from the west, riding on a grey horse, and I
exclaimed: "Glory to the Almighty! the sun has risen in the west!"_
At-Tihami, the poet, one of whose poems, an elegy on the death of his
son, brings ill-luck when quoted, wrote these admirable lines on the
same theme: _In the company of noble-minded men there is always room for
another. Friendship, it is true, renders difficulties easy: a house may
be too small for eight persons, yet friendship will make it hold a
ninth._