Until His Feet Swelled
Al-Mughīrah ibn Shuʿbah reported that the Prophet ﷺ used to stand in prayer at night until his feet became swollen. He was asked why he burdened himself so, when God had already forgiven him what preceded and what followed. He answered with a question of his own: “Shall I not be a grateful servant?”1
The exchange is the hinge of the whole subject. Worship in his practice was not a transaction to clear a debt; it was the response of someone who considered himself already given everything. ʿĀʾishah reports the same episode with the same answer, and the scholars have quoted it ever since against the idea that devotion is a means of settling accounts with God.1
The Night Prayer
ʿĀʾishah, asked how he prayed at night, described the pattern precisely: he did not exceed eleven cycles in Ramaḍān or outside it; he prayed four, “and do not ask about their beauty and their length,” then four again, then three.2 He would sleep the first part of the night and stand the last part.
When he stood he would say a long opening supplication — “O God, Lord of Jibrīl, Mīkāʾīl and Isrāfīl, Originator of the heavens and the earth… guide me in that which is disputed to the truth by Your permission” — and he would recite at length. Ḥudhayfah, praying behind him one night, expected him to bow after a hundred verses and found that he continued through the whole of al-Baqarah, then al-Nisāʾ, then Āl ʿImrān, reciting slowly, stopping at every verse of mercy to ask and every verse of punishment to seek refuge.3
ʿAbdullāh ibn al-Shikhkhīr came upon him praying, “and in his chest was a sound like the boiling of a pot, from weeping.”4 And ʿĀʾishah once found him absent at night and, searching the room in the dark, found him prostrate saying, “My Lord, I seek refuge in Your pleasure from Your displeasure, and in Your pardon from Your punishment… I cannot enumerate praise of You; You are as You have praised Yourself.”5
The Daily Measure
The private discipline did not translate into severity toward others. He fasted so often in some months that they thought he would never break it, and left fasting so long in others that they thought he would never fast; he never fasted a whole month besides Ramaḍān.6 Told of three men who had resolved to pray all night, fast forever, and never marry, he came to them and said: “By God, I am the most fearful of God among you and the most conscious of Him — yet I fast and break my fast, I pray and I sleep, and I marry women. Whoever turns away from my way is not of me.”7
He sought forgiveness constantly, and the number is recorded: “By God, I seek God's forgiveness and turn to Him in repentance more than seventy times a day,” and in another report a hundred.8 Asked which deeds God loves most, he answered, “The most consistent, even if it is little” — and ʿĀʾishah said that when he took up an act of worship, he kept to it.9