Hadith 219

rom Abu Al Abbas Al Deynawry, from Muhammad Bin Al Hanafiyya who said, ‘When Amir Al-Momineen-asws proceeded to Basra after the fighting the people of the camel (Battle of the Camel), Al-Ahnaf Bin Qays invited him-asws and took some food for him-asws and took it to him-asws and his-asws companions. He-asws turned, then said: ‘O Ahmad! Call my-asws companions for me-asws’. A group came to him-asws, ragged, as if they were worn out. Al-Ahnaf Bin Qays said, ‘O Amir Al-Momineen-asws! What is this that has befallen them? Is it from the scarcity of the good or from the horrors of the war? ’
He-asws said: ‘No, O Ahnaf! Allah-azwj the Glorious Loves people who perform rituals for Him-azwj in the house of the world, rituals of the ones who pounce upon what is known from their nearness from the Day of Qiyamah, before they witness it. They carry themselves upon its striving, and they, when they recall the morning of the Day of the presentation to Allah-azwj the Glorious, they imagine the emergence of the necks coming out from the Fire, gathering the creatures to their Lord-azwj Blessed and Exalted, and the book in which would appear upon the heads of the attendees, so their sins would be scandalised. Their souls almost flow out with a flow, or their hearts fly off with the wings of fear with a flying, and their intellects separate from them when they are vanquished by them from the reasons of the exposure to Allah-azwj the Glorious at boiling point. They were yearning for the craving of godliness in the darkness of injustice, and they were angry from fear of what their selves had paused upon, so they went on to melt (wither) their bodies with grieving hearts, their faces being like grim, their lips dried out, their bellies full of hunger, fearing as if they are completely worn out. They had been sincere to Allah-azwj of their deeds, privately and publicly, so they were secure from the panicking of their hearts, but they were like the ones who fear the consequences of their gathering. If you were to see them in their nights, and the eyes (of the people) had slept, and the voices had died down, and the movements had calmed, and horrors of the Day of Qiyamah and the Threat alerted them, just as the Glorious Said: Are the people of the towns feeling secure from Our Punishment coming to them at night while they are sleeping? [7: 97]. They kept awake for it panicking, and they stood to their Salats, wailing, crying at times, and at another (times), Glorifying, crying in their (prayer) niches, bending, standing in the dark night crying. If you were to see them, O Ahmad, in their nights, standing upon their toes, bending their back, reciting parts of the Quran to their Salats, their wailing intensified, and their crying, and their exhalations. When they exhale, the fire vacates and it had seized them to their throats, and when they wail, the chains are withheld, and they had shackled them in their necks. If you were to see them in their days, then you would have seen a people who walk on the earth humbly, and when the ignorant one address them, they say, ‘Peace! ’ [25: 63] and when they pass by the vanities, they pass by nobly [25: 72], having tied their feet