3 of 4 · During and after the Prophet's ﷺ life · Madinah
Thawban رضي الله عنه
He Never Asked Anyone
The Prophet ﷺ once said: "Whoever guarantees me that he will not ask people for anything, I will guarantee him Paradise." Thawban said: "I will." After that he never asked anyone for anything (Sunan Abi Dawud 1643).
A man who had once been a slave, owning nothing, held to this promise for the rest of his life.
01Why it matters
Dignity is not wealth; it is depending on Allah alone and not on what is in people's hands.
02Reflection
What do you ask of people that you could ask of Allah instead?
03Sources
- Sunan Abi Dawud 1643 Graded by Al-Albani: Sahih · Muhammad Muhyi Al-Din Abdul Hamid: Sahih · Shuaib Al Arnaut: Sahih · Zubair Ali Zai: Isnaad SahihSahih
What the hadith grades mean
- Sahih (authentic): an unbroken chain of trustworthy, precise narrators, free of hidden flaws or contradiction. It is acted upon.
- Hasan (good): like sahih, but a narrator's precision is slightly lighter. It is also accepted and acted upon. "Hasan sahih" means it reaches sahih by its routes.
- Da'if (weak): a break in the chain or a narrator who is not reliable enough. It is not used to establish beliefs or rulings.
- Very weak (munkar, matruk): a seriously flawed chain or a narrator accused of lying. It is not relied on at all.
- Mawdu' (fabricated): falsely attributed to the Prophet ﷺ. It may not be narrated as his words except to warn against it.
- The two Sahihs: every hadith with a full chain in Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim is accepted as sahih by the scholars of hadith.
- Historical report: biographies and histories (Ibn Ishaq, Ibn Sa'd, al-Tabari) record events with chains that are often incomplete. They are used for the story, not for rulings.
- Hadith scholars grade a narration; the four madhhabs do not. Where a hadith carries a ruling, the page shows which schools act on it.
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