3.1.4.1 - The Story of the Death of Shaykh Ibn Tarif

Shaykh Muhyiddin says that Ibn Tarif was one of those people who watch their self and punish it for any misbehavior, and he died as a result of one such incident. The Shaykh later met in Mecca with his son Muhammad Ibn Ibrahim Ibn Tarif, who told him the reason for the death of his father that it came about in the following way: One day as he was walking in the street someone asked him, was it so-and-so who passed you just now? He was asking about a man of the locality whom God had afflicted with a disease of the throat which we called al-naghnaghah, and whom the Shaykh did not know very well. When the man persisted in his questions, the Shaykh said: Do you mean the man with the diseased throat? The man replied that it was.

Sometime later the Shaykh said that at that very moment God called him inwardly and said, O Ibrahim, do you know our servants only by their afflictions? Has the man no name by which to call him? We will cause you to die by the very same disease.

By the next morning he had contracted the disease and died a short time afterwards.His son said that his father told him that he has not committed such a fault for twenty years.