Arba'un 19 — O boy, I shall teach you words

الأربعون 19 — يا غلام إني أعلمك كلمات

Abdullah ibn Abbas (may God be pleased with him)'s hadith, the nineteenth of al-Nawawi's Forty and of Ibn Rajab's commentary; transmitted by al-Tirmidhi (2516, hasan sahih) through Hanash al-San'ani — the soundest route in Ibn Mandah's view — and by Ahmad in a fuller wording beginning 'O boy, shall I not teach you words by which God will benefit you', adding 'be known to God in ease and He will know you in hardship' and 'know that in patience over what you dislike lies much good, that victory is with patience, relief with affliction and with hardship ease'; it is narrated from Ibn Abbas through many routes — his son Ali, his freedman Ikrimah, Ata, Amr ibn Dinar, Amr mawla Ghafra and Ibn Abi Mulayka — and from Ali ibn Abi Talib (may God be pleased with him), Abu Sa'id al-Khudri, Sahl ibn Sa'd and Abdullah ibn Ja'far with weakness, al-Uqayli noting all its chains are soft, some better than others; Ibn Rajab says it comprises great counsels and universal maxims among the religion's most important matters, that he devoted a separate treatise to it — Nur al-Iqtibas fi Mishkat Wasiyyat al-Nabi li-Ibn Abbas — and cites the scholar named in one manuscript as Abu al-Faraj who was stunned upon contemplating it; he glosses 'guard God' as guarding His limits, rights, commands and prohibitions by standing at His commands in obedience and His prohibitions in avoidance — the greatest of what is guarded being prayer, ablution, oaths and the head and belly — and the clauses 'if you ask, ask God; if you seek help, seek God's help' as unifying petition and reliance since the whole community's benefit or harm can only be what God has written — 'the pens are lifted and the scrolls dried' — and explains that contentment is a commended excellence while patience is binding on the believer with much good in it, and that 'victory is with patience' covers both jihads, the outer and the inner (Jami' al-Ulum wal-Hikam pp. 432–463).