2.9.18 - Shaykh Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Jumhur

This man was a contemporary of Abu Ali al-Shakkaz and the above-mentioned Abu Abdullah al-Khayyat, one much given to worship. He had studied the Quran and the grammar of the Arabic language, but not prosody. It was told by Abu al-Hasan al-Uthmani that once, when he was young, he was reading the Quran to his Shaykh, when the sound of a tambourine could be heard, whereupon the Shaykh put his fingers into his ears and sat in silence. after a while he inquired whether the noise had stopped. On being told that it had not, he got up with his fingers still in his ears and retired to his quarters, summoning Abu al-Hasan to follow him so that he might complete the part he had begun to read to him.

Whenever he heard the voice of a beggar or of one reciting the Quran for the same purpose, he would stop up his ears. He was one of the bowing and prostrating ones until he was taken from this life. He was stout of heart, but weak of body, pale in color and very hard on himself. When someone suggested to him that he be more gentle with his soul, he replied that it was in order to merit the compassion of God that he so exerted himself. During the hours of night he would stand and recite passages from the Quran until he collapsed from exhaustion. Only then would he lie down to sleep, saying to himself as he did so, O my cheek, since you cushion yourself so softly now, you will lie on hard rock after death. At this he would leap up again, as if bitten by some snake and stay on his prayer carpet until morning.

He died while I was in the service of Abu Yaqoub al-Kumi As he was being lowered into his grave I saw an amazing thing: God had caused a large rock to be in the grave with him. Someone seeing this called attention to it, whereupon the person who was lowering his body into the grave took the rock and placed it under his cheek. Thus did God fulfill what he had said to himself before going to sleep.

An ascetic and a gnostic who secluded himself from men, he held closely to God and sought Union with Him, loving all those devoted to God and His Book. God took him from this life in his prime and at the peak of his spiritual endeavor. He would often say to his soul, Our efforts together will not be done until I die. His devotion to the worship of God was un-excelled.

Then in al-Durrah al-Fakhirah, he says: He grew up from childhood in the worship of God. He was learned in jurisprudence, the recitation of the Quran and the Arabic language. Whenever he went out on a journey with others he would insist that he was their leader and that they must obey him, to which they always agreed. His only purpose in this was to take their burdens upon his own back and thus relieve them.