I dreamed that I saw the Apostle and asked him to give me a word of counsel, and that he replied: “Imprison thy tongue and thy senses.” To imprison the senses is complete self-mortification, because all kinds of knowledge are acquired through the five senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. Four of the senses have a particular _locus_, but the fifth, namely touch, is spread over the whole body. Everything that becomes known to human beings passes through these five doors, except intuitive knowledge and Divine inspiration, and in each sense there is a purity and an impurity; for, just as they are open to knowledge, reason, and spirit, so they are open to imagination and passion, being organs which partake of piety and sin and of felicity and misery. Therefore it behoves him who is keeping a fast to imprison all the senses in order that they may return from disobedience to obedience. To abstain only from food and drink is child’s play. One must abstain from idle pleasures and unlawful acts, not from eating lawful food. I marvel at those who say that they are keeping a voluntary fast and yet fail to perform an obligatory duty. Not to commit sin is obligatory, whereas continual fasting is an apostolic custom (which may be observed or neglected). When a man is divinely protected from sin all his circumstances are a fast. It is related by Abú Ṭalḥa al-Málikí that Sahl b. `Abdalláh of Tustar was fasting on the day of his birth and also on the day of his death, because he was born in the forenoon and tasted no milk until the evening prayer, and on the day of his decease he was keeping a fast. But continual fasting (_rúza-i wiṣál_) has been forbidden by the Apostle, for when he fasted continually, and his Companions conformed with him in that respect, he forbade them, saying: “I am not as one of you: I pass the night with my Lord, who gives me food and drink.” The votaries of self-mortification assert that this prohibition was an act of indulgence, not a veto declaring such fasts to be unlawful, and others regard them as being contrary to the Sunna, but the fact is that continuance (_wiṣál_) is impossible, because the day’s fast is interrupted by night or, at any rate, does not continue beyond a certain period. It is related that Sahl b. `Abdalláh of Tustar used to eat only once in fifteen days, and when the month of Ramaḍán arrived he ate nothing until the Feast, and performed four hundred bowings in prayer every night. This exceeds the limit of human endurance, and cannot be accomplished by anyone without Divine aid, which itself becomes his nourishment. It is well known that Shaykh Abú Naṣr Sarráj,[160] the author of the _Luma`_,[161] who was surnamed the Peacock of the Poor (_Ṭá´ús al-fuqará_), came to Baghdád in the month of Ramaḍán, and was given a private chamber in the Shúníziyya mosque, and was appointed to preside over the dervishes until the Feast. During the nightly prayers of Ramaḍán (_taráwíḥ_) he recited the whole Koran five