Then Fudhayl added, "O Harun, if thou wishest to escape the punishment
of the Day of Judgment, regard each old man among the Moslems as thy
father, the young men as thy brothers, the women as thy sisters. O
Harun, I fear lest thy handsome visage be scorched by the flames of
hell. Fear the Most High, and know that He will interrogate thee on the
Day of Resurrection." At these words, Harun-al-Rashid wept copiously.
Then Fazl said to Fudhayl, "Say no more; you have killed the Caliph with
grief." "Oh Haman!"[14] Fudhayl answered, "it is not I, it is thou and
thy relations who have misled the Caliph and destroyed him." Hearing
these words, Harun-al-Rashid wept still more bitterly, and said to Fazl,
"Be silent! If he has called you Haman, he has (tacitly) compared me to
Pharaoh." Then, addressing Fudhayl, he asked him, "Have you any debt to
pay?" "Yes," he answered, "that of the service which I owe to the Most
High. He furnishes me with subsistence, I have no need to borrow." Then
Harun-al-Rashid placed in Fudhayl's hand a purse in which were a
thousand pieces of gold, saying, "This money is lawfully acquired, I
have inherited it from my mother." "Ah!" exclaimed Fudhayl, "my advice
has been wasted; my object in giving it was to lighten thy burden; thou
seekest to make mine more heavy." At these words, Harun-al-Rashid rose,
saluted him, and departed. All the way home he kept repeating to
himself, "This Fudhayl is a great teacher." On another occasion the
Caliph is reported to have said to Fudhayl, "How great is thy
self-abnegation," to which Fudhayl made answer, "Thine is greater." "How
so?" said the Caliph. "Because I make abnegation of this world, and thou
makest abnegation of the next; now this world is transitory, and the
next will endure for ever."
Sofian Tsavri relates the following anecdote. "One night I was talking
with Fudhayl, and after we had been conversing on all kinds of subjects,
I said to him, 'What a pleasant evening we have had, and what
interesting conversation.' 'No,' he said, 'neither the evening nor the
conversation have been good.' 'Why so?' I remarked. 'Because,' he said,
'you sought to speak words which might please me, and I sought to answer
so as to gratify you. Both of us, pre-occupied with our talk, had
forgotten the Most High. It would be better for each of us to sit still
in his place and to lift up his heart towards God.'"
A stranger coming to Fudhayl one day was asked by the latter for what
purpose he came. "I have come," he answered, "to talk with you, and to
find in so doing calm of mind," "That is to say," broke in Fudhayl, "you
wish to mislead me with lies, and desire me to do the same to you. Be
off about your business."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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