Ufayra the Devout

Ufayra the Devout was a woman of Basra recorded by Ibn al-Jawzi in Sifat al-Safwa, who gave herself to worship and wept until she went blind. ¹

He relates that Rawh ibn Salama al-Warraq told her, "I hear you do not sleep at night", and she wept and said, "Sometimes I long to sleep and cannot; how can one sleep whose two guardian angels never sleep from him, night or day?" ¹ When a visitor remarked how hard blindness is for one who once could see, she said: "The heart's blindness to God is worse than the eye's blindness to the world." ¹ Asked to pray for others, she said, "If sinners were struck dumb, your old woman would not speak — but the doer of good has bidden the wrongdoer to pray", and prayed for them. She used to say: "I disobeyed You with every limb of mine, each on its own; if You help me, I will obey You with every limb I disobeyed You with." ¹