Arba'un 23 — purity is half of faith

الأربعون 23 — الطهور شطر الإيمان

The hadith of Abu Malik al-Ash'ari that the Messenger of God said 'purity is half of faith; praise belongs to God fills the scale; glory to God and praise belong to God fill, or fill, what is between the heavens and the earth; prayer is light; almsgiving is proof; patience is radiance; the Qur'an is an argument for you or against you; every person sets out each day selling his own soul, either freeing it or destroying it' — the twenty-third of al-Nawawi's Forty and of Ibn Rajab's commentary; transmitted by Muslim (223) through Yahya ibn Abi Kathir from Zayd ibn Salam from Abu Salam from him, Yahya's hearing from Zayd being disputed — denied by Yahya ibn Ma'in, affirmed by the Imam Ahmad — with this route explicitly stating his hearing; al-Nasa'i and Ibn Majah transmit it through Mu'awiya ibn Salam from his brother Zayd ibn Salam from his grandfather Abu Salam from Abd al-Rahman ibn Ghunam from Abu Malik, adding Abd al-Rahman ibn Ghunam to the chain, and some memorisers preferred this route since Mu'awiya knows his brother's hadith better than Yahya ibn Abi Kathir — which would leave Muslim's chain disconnected — while al-Nawawi, in his commentary on Muslim, answered that Abu Salam apparently heard it both from Abu Malik directly and from Abd al-Rahman ibn Ghunam, narrating it once one way and once the other; Mu'awiya's wording in Ibn Majah runs 'perfecting the ablution is half of faith … the glorification and magnification fill the heaven and the earth … almsgiving [zakat] is proof', al-Tirmidhi (3517) has 'the ablution is half of faith', and most copies of Sahih Muslim read 'patience is radiance' while some read 'fasting is radiance' (Jami' al-Ulum wal-Hikam pp. 489–490).