54 - Abū al-Ḥasan al-Raqqī narrated to me, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ṣāliḥ Abū Ṣāliḥ narrated to us, from Yaʿqūb ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, from his father, he said: Ziyād, the freed slave of Ibn ʿAyyāsh, sat with me one day and said to me: “O ʿAbd Allāh!” I said: “What do you wish?” He said: “Is it not nothing but Paradise and Hellfire?” I said: “No, by God, it is nothing but Paradise and Hellfire.” He said: “Is there no abode between them where servants stay?” So I said: “There is no abode between them where servants stay.” He said: “By God, my soul is a soul I am too stingy with to surrender to Hellfire, and patience today against the acts of disobedience to God is better than patience under shackles in the Fire of Hell.”